I have a passing acquaintance with a voice actor who, some time ago, told me that some were hired to do work, unaware their voices were being used to train AI. I don't know if that was straight-up cloning or simply to create/hone the process of enabling generation/cloning but it's still pretty wretched.
Good morning Mr Dancer,
Were they actively misled or was the puropse hidden in the small print and passed off as being used for another purpose?
If the voice actors were not informed or actively misinformed that they were training AI machines and their voice appears in public/online, this would be a very clear breach of the strict data protection laws in Germany. If a voice actor recorded their voice in Germany or was a German company, it would be relatively easy to prosecute. I fear in the UK it would be much harder to sucessfully prosecute.
What a bunch of shysters OpenAI are. They ask her permission she refuses, so they just get someone (allegedly) to 'copy' her voice.
Don't expect them to treat you, your data, or your privacy, any differently.
AI fundamentally is data aggregation. The value is in the data, not the aggregation technique. As OpenAI didn't have any data, it stole it, to put it plainly.
What a bunch of shysters OpenAI are. They ask her permission she refuses, so they just get someone (allegedly) to 'copy' her voice.
Don't expect them to treat you, your data, or your privacy, any differently.
I suspect the current tech stock boom is driven by fear as much as greed. Either own OpenAI via Alphabet, or be owned by it
Has anyone found any viable use for this yet? When I have tried using it for work it's full of so many errors that it's quicker to do the research and writing myself. It can be useful for getting ideas, but most of the stuff it churns out (for proposals etc) is derivative and obvious. I'm interested but as yet far from converted.
It's boilerplate. Boilerplate is often what's needed and so it can be useful. Nevertheless AI is most effective when it's not replacing humans but is ubiquitously available when humans can't be .
We urgently need to unwind the sector’s growing dependency on foreign students.
The graduate route should be scrapped and we must fundamentally rethink our International Education Strategy (IES), including the completely arbitrary target of attracting 600,000 foreign students pa"
No problem! Simply provide the missing funding which the influx of mainly chinese students replaced.
You don't want to do that either? Oh. Bit stupid aren't you?
Just goes to show that going abroad to study (Pennsylvania, Political Science in Jenrick's case) isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Its just adding. Basic maths. Today's Tories remind me of Baldrick - no matter how simple you try and make it they still can't add the beans together.
Why have we had such an influx of foreign students? Because of government policy! Cut funding by substituting in tuition fees. Great - but we could cut even more funding if universities can get even more fees. Which means foreign students - lets do that!
A few years later - why do we have all these Chinese students? Bloody foreigners, lets make them Go Home. [but what about funding?] Funding? Nothing to do with the government, we don't fund you, your problem, we must do what is Right For Britain.
And still a dogged handful of people insist that we should vote for them.
If government were serious about the benefits of university education, they'd be thinking more about this problem.
https://tomblomfield.com/post/750852175114174464/taking-risk I just spent a week talking with some exceptional students from three of the UK’s top universities; Cambridge, Oxford and Imperial College. Along with UCL, these British universities represent 4 of the top 10 universities in the world. The US - a country with 5x more people and 8x higher GDP - has the same number of universities in the global top 10. On these visits, I was struck by the world-class quality of technical talent, especially in AI and biosciences. But I was also struck by something else. After their studies, most of these smart young people wanted to go and work at companies like McKinsey, Goldman Sachs or Google. I now live in San Francisco and invest in early-stage startups at Y Combinator, and it’s striking how undergraduates at top US universities start companies at more than 5x the rate of their British-educated peers. Oxford is ranked 50th in the world, while Cambridge is 61st. Imperial just makes the list at #100. I have been thinking a lot about why this is. The UK certainly doesn’t lack the talent or education, and I don’t think it’s any longer about access to capital. People like to talk about the role of government incentives, but San Francisco politicians certainly haven’t done much to help the startup ecosystem over the last few years, while the UK government has passed a raft of supportive measures. Instead, I think it’s something more deep-rooted - in the UK, the ideas of taking risk and of brazen, commercial ambition are seen as negatives...
Interesting; but it would be useful to know also how UK compares in this regard with France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Australia. The USA is a very distinctive culture. We don't often ask why is it that USA and Mexico, its large immediate neighbour, are so different.
Would it ? We should be comparing ourselves with the higher growth western economies - I thought that was supposed to be the point of Brexit ?
None of your comparators have quite our strength at the top end of the university system, for a start.
Ycombinator (which is where this vcap guy hails from) is particularly interesting from our point of view, as it's very early stage stuff, and relatively small investments (starting around $500k).
And he's not talking about the follow on funding problem (which we obsess over, and which is a separate problem), but the fact that so few of our STEM grads become entrepreneurs.
A different perspective would be to ask how somewhere like South Korea gets it right.
The UK has never and will never be as entrepreneurial as the US. The British middle class for starters has always been a bit snobby about their children going into trade rather than the professions.
However the UK still is the 3rd best nation for entrepreneurs according to CEO World after the US and Germany, South Korea is only 16th
On the polling, I was idly wondering if Labour is benefiting from having continuity of leadership. Starmer has now been leader for four years, Sarwar for over three (and replaced a dud). By contrast, both the SNP and the UK Tories have had three leaders in that time. Starmer may not be to everybody's taste, but at least you know what you're getting.
Not so long ago, four years was considered to be the shortest time one expected a Westminster party leader to be in office.
No-one has yet mentioned, let alone derided, the fact that the SNP have had a chance to appoint their best chance of renewal as leader and have blown it in appointing Yousaf (52/48) and blown it again in appointing (by coronation) a steady as you go, at least he hasn't been arrested, really decent old timer who failed to deal with the hard questions at referendum time.
As a consequence of which, when K Forbes does become leader, which she will unless she joins the Tories first, it will be of a party in a position of coming second and with absolutely zero chance of independence within decades.
Betting post: I suggest she will be next leader of the SNP (60% probability). The main risks are as above, or that she will decide being a mother is more fun.
(On religion, PBers and politics anoraks generally forget that among the ordinary mainstream population, they don't go to church and don't sing unaccompanied psalms to tuneless drones, but they admire and respect those who do).
I disagree.
Right-wing parties make up a small minority of voters in Scotland according to the latest polls. There are no votes there. Kate Forbes might win Moray, some Aberdeenshire seats and errrr...
And while Labour now have a lead in Scotland, it's not like the SNP have crashed. What's even more impressive is that a SNP to Labour or Green switch is quite an easy one, ideologically speaking, yet the SNP have managed to cling onto most of their supporters.
The SNP have, quite sensibly, recognised they have lost the next couple of elections and gone for a sedate cruise into the political wilderness. They need to ruffle as few feathers as possible to retain what donations, legacies and short money they can. From there they can rebuild.
I remind you that this is the party of the motorhome, currently polling on 29% in a crowded left field!
Swinney and Forbes is a clear shift right by the SNP, indeed Forbes is right of even most Tories (especially Scottish ones). Scottish Labour is likely to retain its lead in the central belt especially accordingly for some time to come
Get well soon. We need you fighting fit when Sunak calls the election tomorrow.
I was told confidently by someone who considers themselves to be well informed that the election will be in July. I told them equally confidently that this was nonsense, but there's clearly a view out there that an election is indeed imminent.
Who exactly has made this Delphic utterance?
Answer 'Moon Rabbit' and you can go straight to ConHome.
Did George Osborne say the election will be in July? I can't remember. Hold on, no, Osborne said 14th November. Anyway, it is good there are different beliefs so we can bet on them. One advantage I have in forecasting a January election is I can only be wrong once. Those who said May have already been wrong once, and if they switch to June or July they can be wrong for a second time, and wrong again in September, October, November and December.
I wonder what, if any, effect the Infected Blood Scandal will have. Clearly neither party has clean hands, although Andy Burnham is doing his best to distance himself from blame, and Kenneth Clarke seems to be digging a hole for himself. Doing a good job on the compensation scheme might be seen to be to Sunak’s credit, of course.
Scotland, like other parts of the UK, is suffering the consequences of a very long period of inept government with politicians who are peculiarly uninterested in actually governing. They are much more interested in gestures, trivialities and positions which they think will help them win the next election.
So, inevitably, our health service is in crisis, education is not performing well, our infrastructure is inadequate, criminal justice is on its knees, social care is becoming unaffordable resulting in never ending paring to stretch what is available to cover unmet needs and our housing stock is not meeting demand, at least where people actually want to live. The cumulative consequence of these failures is an economy that is feeble and does not provide the tax base to fix the problems.
Swinney is not innocent of these failures as he has been an incompetent minister in various departments over the years, just as his predecessor was, but even I can feel a bit sorry for him given the size and complexity of the intray.
We desperately, urgently need to find ways to improve public services without throwing money we don’t have at them. There are no easy solutions to this. Simply blaming the current crop of politicians is simplistic and irrelevant. But they do need to at least start to address real issues rather than hand waving.
We're spending the right money on the wrong things. Cut costs in school and hospital budgets, create a staffing and resources crisis which you have to throw even more money at in short-term emergency fixes.
The solution in the short term is to spend more money - fix the crumbling infrastructure, hire the staff, create an environment where things actually work. Then you don't need temp staff and emergency measures which cost so much more.
Plan the work, work the plan. Problem is that we have a revolving door of ministers in both governments with a need for very short term political fixes. So we spend £lots on stupid, make the problem worse, and then as always blame the users.
Your 'short term' would be at least five years and probably more than ten years.
Assuming it worked, which is doubtful.
And that 'events' do not intervene.
More than a parliamentary term? Oh My God!!!!
What is the alternative? You say it is "doubtful" that spending money on permanent staff (cheaper) would work vs the current crisis spending on temps and moving from crisis to crisis (more expensive). Your proposal is?
Short-termism is a disease which has done serious damage to both our economy and our political system. We have weaponised the stock exchange so that businesses operate on a quarterly basis, focused on keeping the speculators happy in the immediate term rather than focusing on long term value.
Same in pur politics. We need services - education, healthcare, transport, utilities, defence etc - planned on a longer cycle than the next election. Is that not self-evident? Again, what is your alternative?
Short term or long term it doesn't matter if the money is spent inefficiently.
And the assumption that spending more money will somehow be spent more efficiently than what is currently being spent is more than optimistic.
The law of diminishing returns almost always applies to government spending.
Still if you're able to convince the public sector workforce to forego pay rises for the next five years so that extra money can be found to resolve long term problems then go for it.
But you don't have to because Wes Streeting will be having a go at his long term reforms later this year.
And immediately running into the opposition of all the vested interests.
We aren't going to be spending more money. We're going to be spending less money. Full time permanent staff in a properly resourced department cost less than a department in endless crisis full of agency staff.
We're back to people being able to add some beans by the look of it...
I'd be interested to know how common this is across the public sector. In the government programme where I'm working at the moment, only about 20-25% of the staff are permanent Civil Servants, because the salaries are too low to be able to recruit anyone. So instead of paying (say) £80k per year for somebody like me, they end up paying my employer £1xxx per day. So instead of an actual annual cost of £120k or so they end up paying £350k.
This is normal for all government IT projects that I know of.
Sure, a few of the project team are better resourced as specialist external consultants, but shall we say on my programme of about 100 at least 50 ought to be staff not contractors? That's £11m a year wasted right there, simply by not paying market rates. In one small programme, in one small cog of the national machine. In an organisation where there is no money to do anything not viewed as critical, and needs massive investment just to catch up.
Is this a problem because it's IT in London, or more widespread?
It’s widespread.
As usual, the public sector hasn’t caught up. In the private sector, we used have “Can’t promote to senior level - mere techies. Can’t pay a junior more than his boss. Answer=contractors”
The smart outfits have realised that having the same people permanent is cheaper. So the dam broke in the end - with a bit of a push from IR35. So I get job offers of “Director” - with no one to direct! But with the money..
Also, with permanent staff, the knowledge of your systems is in house and under your control. The smart outfits (again) keep people on for this - expanding teams with contractors when building out new systems.
Scotland, like other parts of the UK, is suffering the consequences of a very long period of inept government with politicians who are peculiarly uninterested in actually governing. They are much more interested in gestures, trivialities and positions which they think will help them win the next election.
So, inevitably, our health service is in crisis, education is not performing well, our infrastructure is inadequate, criminal justice is on its knees, social care is becoming unaffordable resulting in never ending paring to stretch what is available to cover unmet needs and our housing stock is not meeting demand, at least where people actually want to live. The cumulative consequence of these failures is an economy that is feeble and does not provide the tax base to fix the problems.
Swinney is not innocent of these failures as he has been an incompetent minister in various departments over the years, just as his predecessor was, but even I can feel a bit sorry for him given the size and complexity of the intray.
We desperately, urgently need to find ways to improve public services without throwing money we don’t have at them. There are no easy solutions to this. Simply blaming the current crop of politicians is simplistic and irrelevant. But they do need to at least start to address real issues rather than hand waving.
We're spending the right money on the wrong things. Cut costs in school and hospital budgets, create a staffing and resources crisis which you have to throw even more money at in short-term emergency fixes.
The solution in the short term is to spend more money - fix the crumbling infrastructure, hire the staff, create an environment where things actually work. Then you don't need temp staff and emergency measures which cost so much more.
Plan the work, work the plan. Problem is that we have a revolving door of ministers in both governments with a need for very short term political fixes. So we spend £lots on stupid, make the problem worse, and then as always blame the users.
When the solution is to spend more money, further analysis is needed. We already are borrowing £150 billion pa, and our current debt, deficit and interest payments are heading towards crippling levels. Taxes are highish, and, according to PB/media generally, nothing works and everything is broken.
Only three ways apply to spending more until the promised growth arrives: borrowing more, taxing more or cutting (massively) elsewhere.
Do let us know the plan.
We can always find money to spend in a crisis - wasteful but sometimes you can't afford not to spend money. We need to redirect money from the high cost short term to the low cost long term. That means pain now to save long term. And we're already in pain. Better to be in pain for a good reason than in pain because we have a Tory government burning money on nonsense like Rwanda or handing it to Teesport developers. You can find money for that...
Thanks. That's a start and I don't disagree. But how much and where from? Even when 'you can't afford not to spend money' the OBR, IFS, taxpayer and Treasury still need not only the policy but the detail. If it were easy I think the IFS, Resolution Foundation, IEA and various other outfits would have the plan up in bright lights.
Did Venice really think that charging €5 to get into the old city at the weekend in the summer, was going to put much of a dent in the numbers visiting?
No-one has yet mentioned, let alone derided, the fact that the SNP have had a chance to appoint their best chance of renewal as leader and have blown it in appointing Yousaf (52/48) and blown it again in appointing (by coronation) a steady as you go, at least he hasn't been arrested, really decent old timer who failed to deal with the hard questions at referendum time.
As a consequence of which, when K Forbes does become leader, which she will unless she joins the Tories first, it will be of a party in a position of coming second and with absolutely zero chance of independence within decades.
Betting post: I suggest she will be next leader of the SNP (60% probability). The main risks are as above, or that she will decide being a mother is more fun.
(On religion, PBers and politics anoraks generally forget that among the ordinary mainstream population, they don't go to church and don't sing unaccompanied psalms to tuneless drones, but they admire and respect those who do).
I disagree.
Right-wing parties make up a small minority of voters in Scotland according to the latest polls. There are no votes there. Kate Forbes might win Moray, some Aberdeenshire seats and errrr...
And while Labour now have a lead in Scotland, it's not like the SNP have crashed. What's even more impressive is that a SNP to Labour or Green switch is quite an easy one, ideologically speaking, yet the SNP have managed to cling onto most of their supporters.
The SNP have, quite sensibly, recognised they have lost the next couple of elections and gone for a sedate cruise into the political wilderness. They need to ruffle as few feathers as possible to retain what donations, legacies and short money they can. From there they can rebuild.
I remind you that this is the party of the motorhome, currently polling on 29% in a crowded left field!
Good morning everyone. I believe that the appointment of Swinney and Forbes will be good for the SNP, and therefore for independence in the long term. A prosperous, business friendly Scotland is essential, and they will help in that respect. However, the poll maybe indicates that the young, left wing metropolitans that joined the SNP after 2014 are going back to Labour or joining the Greens, as left wing “progressive” policies matter to them more than independence.
Get well soon. We need you fighting fit when Sunak calls the election tomorrow.
I was told confidently by someone who considers themselves to be well informed that the election will be in July. I told them equally confidently that this was nonsense, but there's clearly a view out there that an election is indeed imminent.
Who exactly has made this Delphic utterance?
Answer 'Moon Rabbit' and you can go straight to ConHome.
Did George Osborne say the election will be in July? I can't remember. Hold on, no, Osborne said 14th November. Anyway, it is good there are different beliefs so we can bet on them. One advantage I have in forecasting a January election is I can only be wrong once. Those who said May have already been wrong once, and if they switch to June or July they can be wrong for a second time, and wrong again in September, October, November and December.
I wonder what, if any, effect the Infected Blood Scandal will have. Clearly neither party has clean hands, although Andy Burnham is doing his best to distance himself from blame, and Kenneth Clarke seems to be digging a hole for himself. Doing a good job on the compensation scheme might be seen to be to Sunak’s credit, of course.
Political spokespeople I have heard so far have all taken a similar line. Everyone and everything political is to blame by all parties; let's not further itemise this; and all politics is equally sorry about everything. All the campaigners (sotto voce: that we ignored for 50 years) are wonderful. It's the future that counts. Rome was not built in a day......
Did Venice really think that charging €5 to get into the old city at the weekend in the summer, was going to put much of a dent in the numbers visiting?
Scotland, like other parts of the UK, is suffering the consequences of a very long period of inept government with politicians who are peculiarly uninterested in actually governing. They are much more interested in gestures, trivialities and positions which they think will help them win the next election.
So, inevitably, our health service is in crisis, education is not performing well, our infrastructure is inadequate, criminal justice is on its knees, social care is becoming unaffordable resulting in never ending paring to stretch what is available to cover unmet needs and our housing stock is not meeting demand, at least where people actually want to live. The cumulative consequence of these failures is an economy that is feeble and does not provide the tax base to fix the problems.
Swinney is not innocent of these failures as he has been an incompetent minister in various departments over the years, just as his predecessor was, but even I can feel a bit sorry for him given the size and complexity of the intray.
We desperately, urgently need to find ways to improve public services without throwing money we don’t have at them. There are no easy solutions to this. Simply blaming the current crop of politicians is simplistic and irrelevant. But they do need to at least start to address real issues rather than hand waving.
We're spending the right money on the wrong things. Cut costs in school and hospital budgets, create a staffing and resources crisis which you have to throw even more money at in short-term emergency fixes.
The solution in the short term is to spend more money - fix the crumbling infrastructure, hire the staff, create an environment where things actually work. Then you don't need temp staff and emergency measures which cost so much more.
Plan the work, work the plan. Problem is that we have a revolving door of ministers in both governments with a need for very short term political fixes. So we spend £lots on stupid, make the problem worse, and then as always blame the users.
Your 'short term' would be at least five years and probably more than ten years.
Assuming it worked, which is doubtful.
And that 'events' do not intervene.
More than a parliamentary term? Oh My God!!!!
What is the alternative? You say it is "doubtful" that spending money on permanent staff (cheaper) would work vs the current crisis spending on temps and moving from crisis to crisis (more expensive). Your proposal is?
Short-termism is a disease which has done serious damage to both our economy and our political system. We have weaponised the stock exchange so that businesses operate on a quarterly basis, focused on keeping the speculators happy in the immediate term rather than focusing on long term value.
Same in pur politics. We need services - education, healthcare, transport, utilities, defence etc - planned on a longer cycle than the next election. Is that not self-evident? Again, what is your alternative?
Short term or long term it doesn't matter if the money is spent inefficiently.
And the assumption that spending more money will somehow be spent more efficiently than what is currently being spent is more than optimistic.
The law of diminishing returns almost always applies to government spending.
Still if you're able to convince the public sector workforce to forego pay rises for the next five years so that extra money can be found to resolve long term problems then go for it.
But you don't have to because Wes Streeting will be having a go at his long term reforms later this year.
And immediately running into the opposition of all the vested interests.
We aren't going to be spending more money. We're going to be spending less money. Full time permanent staff in a properly resourced department cost less than a department in endless crisis full of agency staff.
We're back to people being able to add some beans by the look of it...
I'd be interested to know how common this is across the public sector. In the government programme where I'm working at the moment, only about 20-25% of the staff are permanent Civil Servants, because the salaries are too low to be able to recruit anyone. So instead of paying (say) £80k per year for somebody like me, they end up paying my employer £1xxx per day. So instead of an actual annual cost of £120k or so they end up paying £350k.
This is normal for all government IT projects that I know of.
Sure, a few of the project team are better resourced as specialist external consultants, but shall we say on my programme of about 100 at least 50 ought to be staff not contractors? That's £11m a year wasted right there, simply by not paying market rates. In one small programme, in one small cog of the national machine. In an organisation where there is no money to do anything not viewed as critical, and needs massive investment just to catch up.
Is this a problem because it's IT in London, or more widespread?
It’s widespread.
As usual, the public sector hasn’t caught up. In the private sector, we used have “Can’t promote to senior level - mere techies. Can’t pay a junior more than his boss. Answer=contractors”
The smart outfits have realised that having the same people permanent is cheaper. So the dam broke in the end - with a bit of a push from IR35. So I get job offers of “Director” - with no one to direct! But with the money..
Also, with permanent staff, the knowledge of your systems is in house and under your control. The smart outfits (again) keep people on for this - expanding teams with contractors when building out new systems.
My own view is that all Public Sector bodies should be given a budget for a purpose and be allowed to recruit at salary levels as they see fit within that. Why a supposedly free market believing government doesn't do the same is a mystery to me.
What a bunch of shysters OpenAI are. They ask her permission she refuses, so they just get someone (allegedly) to 'copy' her voice.
Don't expect them to treat you, your data, or your privacy, any differently.
I suspect the current tech stock boom is driven by fear as much as greed. Either own OpenAI via Alphabet, or be owned by it
Has anyone found any viable use for this yet? When I have tried using it for work it's full of so many errors that it's quicker to do the research and writing myself. It can be useful for getting ideas, but most of the stuff it churns out (for proposals etc) is derivative and obvious. I'm interested but as yet far from converted.
Get well soon. We need you fighting fit when Sunak calls the election tomorrow.
I was told confidently by someone who considers themselves to be well informed that the election will be in July. I told them equally confidently that this was nonsense, but there's clearly a view out there that an election is indeed imminent.
Who exactly has made this Delphic utterance?
Answer 'Moon Rabbit' and you can go straight to ConHome.
No this was IRL, someone in the London investor community
Did Venice really think that charging €5 to get into the old city at the weekend in the summer, was going to put much of a dent in the numbers visiting?
After eight incredible years at The Times, including four years having the time of my life on Times Radio, I’m slightly stunned to be joining the amazing team at BBC Radio 5Live to launch a brand new daily politics show in the autumn.
It’s exactly 20 years since this Somerset boy arrived in London with his three A levels, 100 words per minute shorthand, vast collection of Elton John records and a dream. But I could never have dreamt that one day I’d make it to the actual BBC, and in a huge general election year too.
It's not the defection that will worry The Times or Times Radio but his clear declaration that the BBC is the summit.
Among other things, Matt Chorley hosts Times Radio's superb Exit Interviews series of interviews with MPs who are standing down at the general election. It is an excellent concept because retiring MPs can speak freely, and very well done, and I wonder what part this played in landing the BBC job. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGeQKoGUstRAofJvqrsVtIqT--snAp3F2
Are they going to keep this up after a change of government, or are they going to out themselves as highly partisan vexatious litigants?
Why stop? The business model works.
I don't understand. What is their business model?
1) Create outrage about something 2) Raise money on the internet 3) Go to court 4) Lose 5) Create outrage about losing. Go to 2)
Winning is not required. Or especially wanted.
It’s a bit like fracking in the U.K.
It doesn’t get you natural gas. But it gets you the funds to run your drilling company at a nice profit. Or did, until the government shut it all down.
Did Venice really think that charging €5 to get into the old city at the weekend in the summer, was going to put much of a dent in the numbers visiting?
Scotland, like other parts of the UK, is suffering the consequences of a very long period of inept government with politicians who are peculiarly uninterested in actually governing. They are much more interested in gestures, trivialities and positions which they think will help them win the next election.
So, inevitably, our health service is in crisis, education is not performing well, our infrastructure is inadequate, criminal justice is on its knees, social care is becoming unaffordable resulting in never ending paring to stretch what is available to cover unmet needs and our housing stock is not meeting demand, at least where people actually want to live. The cumulative consequence of these failures is an economy that is feeble and does not provide the tax base to fix the problems.
Swinney is not innocent of these failures as he has been an incompetent minister in various departments over the years, just as his predecessor was, but even I can feel a bit sorry for him given the size and complexity of the intray.
We desperately, urgently need to find ways to improve public services without throwing money we don’t have at them. There are no easy solutions to this. Simply blaming the current crop of politicians is simplistic and irrelevant. But they do need to at least start to address real issues rather than hand waving.
We're spending the right money on the wrong things. Cut costs in school and hospital budgets, create a staffing and resources crisis which you have to throw even more money at in short-term emergency fixes.
The solution in the short term is to spend more money - fix the crumbling infrastructure, hire the staff, create an environment where things actually work. Then you don't need temp staff and emergency measures which cost so much more.
Plan the work, work the plan. Problem is that we have a revolving door of ministers in both governments with a need for very short term political fixes. So we spend £lots on stupid, make the problem worse, and then as always blame the users.
When the solution is to spend more money, further analysis is needed. We already are borrowing £150 billion pa, and our current debt, deficit and interest payments are heading towards crippling levels. Taxes are highish, and, according to PB/media generally, nothing works and everything is broken.
Only three ways apply to spending more until the promised growth arrives: borrowing more, taxing more or cutting (massively) elsewhere.
Do let us know the plan.
We can always find money to spend in a crisis - wasteful but sometimes you can't afford not to spend money. We need to redirect money from the high cost short term to the low cost long term. That means pain now to save long term. And we're already in pain. Better to be in pain for a good reason than in pain because we have a Tory government burning money on nonsense like Rwanda or handing it to Teesport developers. You can find money for that...
Okay some pain now for long term benefits.
1) Higher taxes for the rich and property owners
2) Higher productivity and retirement age extension for workers
3) Lower spending on oldies and poor
A bit of pain all round, we're all in this together right, and if you're a rich, property owning oldie more than a bit.
And if any public sector worker is unable to increase output then its a pay freeze while the great long term investment and reform is done.
I'm fine with this - I'll pay a bit more tax, I'll delay my retirement for three months beyond what I expected, I'll receive six months less state pension.
But you go and get the rest of the country to accept their share of the pain.
No exceptions.
You do understand that *we're already doing what you are warning me not to do*
Surely.
I see you're better at the 'short term pain for long term gain' pronouncements than at getting everyone else to suffer that short term pain.
And that's a problem that Wes Streeting is going to experience next year.
Did Venice really think that charging €5 to get into the old city at the weekend in the summer, was going to put much of a dent in the numbers visiting?
I suspect their price is out by a factor of at least ten.
The problem in the future will be developing a system which doesn't simply exclude everyone apart from the wealthy. Maybe a lottery is the answer.
A lottery is one of the options they’re now discussing.
They’ve managed to not achieve their goal while upsetting almost everyone - it’s not raised much money beyond the cost of running the scheme, the locals don’t like having to show ID themselves, and they have to fill out a permission form if friends or family want to visit.
I suspect that, when another American cruise ship turns up in port, even €50 isn’t going to persuade many of them to stay on the boat!
Did Venice really think that charging €5 to get into the old city at the weekend in the summer, was going to put much of a dent in the numbers visiting?
I suspect their price is out by a factor of at least ten.
The problem in the future will be developing a system which doesn't simply exclude everyone apart from the wealthy. Maybe a lottery is the answer.
A lottery is one of the options they’re now discussing.
They’ve managed to not achieve their goal while upsetting almost everyone - it’s not raised much money beyond the cost of running the scheme, the locals don’t like having to show ID themselves, and they have to fill out a permission form if friends or family want to visit.
I suspect that, when another American cruise ship turns up in port, even €50 isn’t going to persuade many of them to stay on the boat!
Now they can and should push up the price - and local businesses in Venice will stop bleating when the government gives them some of the cash
I reckon Venice would still see millions of visitors even if they charged €100 a day. Its a super-premium product
Do the maths. Venice gets 20m visitors a year. Maybe 18m of them are day trippers (the ones Venice dislikes)
Charge them €100 each and they’ll still come in numbers, but less so. Maybe that total would reduce to 10m
10m x €100 = €1bn. A massive sum. The Venetian council can give 500 small shops and cafes €1m each, annually. And spend the rest on urban improvement. Everyone wins - so it’s bound to happen
Indeed it gets better, some of those trippers will baulk at the €100 and say “well I might as well stay overnight” - they become the visitors Venice likes. They buy dinner and go to the opera etc
So hotels can also ramp up prices. More profit for Venice. They should just get on and do it
No-one has yet mentioned, let alone derided, the fact that the SNP have had a chance to appoint their best chance of renewal as leader and have blown it in appointing Yousaf (52/48) and blown it again in appointing (by coronation) a steady as you go, at least he hasn't been arrested, really decent old timer who failed to deal with the hard questions at referendum time.
As a consequence of which, when K Forbes does become leader, which she will unless she joins the Tories first, it will be of a party in a position of coming second and with absolutely zero chance of independence within decades.
Betting post: I suggest she will be next leader of the SNP (60% probability). The main risks are as above, or that she will decide being a mother is more fun.
(On religion, PBers and politics anoraks generally forget that among the ordinary mainstream population, they don't go to church and don't sing unaccompanied psalms to tuneless drones, but they admire and respect those who do).
I disagree.
Right-wing parties make up a small minority of voters in Scotland according to the latest polls. There are no votes there. Kate Forbes might win Moray, some Aberdeenshire seats and errrr...
And while Labour now have a lead in Scotland, it's not like the SNP have crashed. What's even more impressive is that a SNP to Labour or Green switch is quite an easy one, ideologically speaking, yet the SNP have managed to cling onto most of their supporters.
The SNP have, quite sensibly, recognised they have lost the next couple of elections and gone for a sedate cruise into the political wilderness. They need to ruffle as few feathers as possible to retain what donations, legacies and short money they can. From there they can rebuild.
I remind you that this is the party of the motorhome, currently polling on 29% in a crowded left field!
You may be right - we shall find out. But two points arise. Your account doesn't really explain K Forbes's 48% vote against Yousaf; nor does it take account of the fact that vote switchers are wanting competence more than policy (see Starmer) and also are fond of personality, charisma and leadership (see Boris, though not now).
Betting post: I think Forbes will be next SNP leader. What do you think? I don't think there is a market on this at the moment. Perhaps there should be.
Scotland, like other parts of the UK, is suffering the consequences of a very long period of inept government with politicians who are peculiarly uninterested in actually governing. They are much more interested in gestures, trivialities and positions which they think will help them win the next election.
So, inevitably, our health service is in crisis, education is not performing well, our infrastructure is inadequate, criminal justice is on its knees, social care is becoming unaffordable resulting in never ending paring to stretch what is available to cover unmet needs and our housing stock is not meeting demand, at least where people actually want to live. The cumulative consequence of these failures is an economy that is feeble and does not provide the tax base to fix the problems.
Swinney is not innocent of these failures as he has been an incompetent minister in various departments over the years, just as his predecessor was, but even I can feel a bit sorry for him given the size and complexity of the intray.
We desperately, urgently need to find ways to improve public services without throwing money we don’t have at them. There are no easy solutions to this. Simply blaming the current crop of politicians is simplistic and irrelevant. But they do need to at least start to address real issues rather than hand waving.
We're spending the right money on the wrong things. Cut costs in school and hospital budgets, create a staffing and resources crisis which you have to throw even more money at in short-term emergency fixes.
The solution in the short term is to spend more money - fix the crumbling infrastructure, hire the staff, create an environment where things actually work. Then you don't need temp staff and emergency measures which cost so much more.
Plan the work, work the plan. Problem is that we have a revolving door of ministers in both governments with a need for very short term political fixes. So we spend £lots on stupid, make the problem worse, and then as always blame the users.
When the solution is to spend more money, further analysis is needed. We already are borrowing £150 billion pa, and our current debt, deficit and interest payments are heading towards crippling levels. Taxes are highish, and, according to PB/media generally, nothing works and everything is broken.
Only three ways apply to spending more until the promised growth arrives: borrowing more, taxing more or cutting (massively) elsewhere.
Do let us know the plan.
We can always find money to spend in a crisis - wasteful but sometimes you can't afford not to spend money. We need to redirect money from the high cost short term to the low cost long term. That means pain now to save long term. And we're already in pain. Better to be in pain for a good reason than in pain because we have a Tory government burning money on nonsense like Rwanda or handing it to Teesport developers. You can find money for that...
Okay some pain now for long term benefits.
1) Higher taxes for the rich and property owners
2) Higher productivity and retirement age extension for workers
3) Lower spending on oldies and poor
A bit of pain all round, we're all in this together right, and if you're a rich, property owning oldie more than a bit.
And if any public sector worker is unable to increase output then its a pay freeze while the great long term investment and reform is done.
I'm fine with this - I'll pay a bit more tax, I'll delay my retirement for three months beyond what I expected, I'll receive six months less state pension.
But you go and get the rest of the country to accept their share of the pain.
No exceptions.
You do understand that *we're already doing what you are warning me not to do*
Surely.
I see you're better at the 'short term pain for long term gain' pronouncements than at getting everyone else to suffer that short term pain.
And that's a problem that Wes Streeting is going to experience next year.
lol. *we already have short term pain*. We need to stop spending money on the stupid things and spend it on long term. We've spaffed half a bill on Rwanda so far and another half a bill clearing Teesport for two private investors benefits. Thats a billion quid just on two items.
You speak like every pound we spend now absolutely critically must be spent on those things and nothing else. With no variation possible. But variation can be found for Rwanda stupidity or election bribes etc etc etc. It can be done, you just don't want to because politics.
Did Venice really think that charging €5 to get into the old city at the weekend in the summer, was going to put much of a dent in the numbers visiting?
I suspect their price is out by a factor of at least ten.
The problem in the future will be developing a system which doesn't simply exclude everyone apart from the wealthy. Maybe a lottery is the answer.
A lottery is one of the options they’re now discussing.
They’ve managed to not achieve their goal while upsetting almost everyone - it’s not raised much money beyond the cost of running the scheme, the locals don’t like having to show ID themselves, and they have to fill out a permission form if friends or family want to visit.
I suspect that, when another American cruise ship turns up in port, even €50 isn’t going to persuade many of them to stay on the boat!
Now they can and should push up the price - and local businesses in Venice will stop bleating when the government gives them some of the cash
I reckon Venice would still see millions of visitors even if they charged €100 a day. Its a super-premium product
Do the maths. Venice gets 20m visitors a year. Maybe 18m of them are day trippers (the ones Venice dislikes)
Charge them €100 each and they’ll still come in numbers, but less so. Maybe that total would reduce to 10m
10m x €100 = €1bn. A massive sum. The Venetian council can give 500 small shops and cafes €1m each, annually. And spend the rest on urban improvement. Everyone wins - so it’s bound to happen
Indeed it gets better, some of those trippers will baulk at the €100 and say “well I might as well stay overnight” - they become the visitors Venice likes. They buy dinner and go to the opera etc
So hotels can also ramp up prices. More profit for Venice. They should just get on and do it
That would be roughly Disneyland pricing, which seems more than reasonable.
Did Venice really think that charging €5 to get into the old city at the weekend in the summer, was going to put much of a dent in the numbers visiting?
I suspect their price is out by a factor of at least ten.
The problem in the future will be developing a system which doesn't simply exclude everyone apart from the wealthy. Maybe a lottery is the answer.
I hate Venice with a passion. The whole place is a monument to wealth and greed - all the best churches are fuck off statements by the merchant family sponsoring them and all the frescos have been incompetently restored and fucked up. Harry's bar is a ripoff though a masterpiece of understatement. I think making the place exclusive to the wealthy paying 100 euro a day, and under 30s with student travel cards, is the way forward
Are they going to keep this up after a change of government, or are they going to out themselves as highly partisan vexatious litigants?
Why stop? The business model works.
I don't understand. What is their business model?
1) Create outrage about something 2) Raise money on the internet 3) Go to court 4) Lose 5) Create outrage about losing. Go to 2)
Winning is not required. Or especially wanted.
It’s a bit like fracking in the U.K.
It doesn’t get you natural gas. But it gets you the funds to run your drilling company at a nice profit. Or did, until the government shut it all down.
The outrage is usually about things like corrupt VIP lanes for ruling party cronies, water companies dumping raw sewage in rivers, duty of care being denied to child asylum seekers. On the whole Good Law Project are tapping into outrage rather than creating it.
I agree with the rest of your points. GLP don't win often in court. I guess these are political issues that need to be resolved in the government and parliament, not in the courts.
Did Venice really think that charging €5 to get into the old city at the weekend in the summer, was going to put much of a dent in the numbers visiting?
I suspect their price is out by a factor of at least ten.
The problem in the future will be developing a system which doesn't simply exclude everyone apart from the wealthy. Maybe a lottery is the answer.
A lottery is one of the options they’re now discussing.
They’ve managed to not achieve their goal while upsetting almost everyone - it’s not raised much money beyond the cost of running the scheme, the locals don’t like having to show ID themselves, and they have to fill out a permission form if friends or family want to visit.
I suspect that, when another American cruise ship turns up in port, even €50 isn’t going to persuade many of them to stay on the boat!
Now they can and should push up the price - and local businesses in Venice will stop bleating when the government gives them some of the cash
I reckon Venice would still see millions of visitors even if they charged €100 a day. Its a super-premium product
Do the maths. Venice gets 20m visitors a year. Maybe 18m of them are day trippers (the ones Venice dislikes)
Charge them €100 each and they’ll still come in numbers, but less so. Maybe that total would reduce to 10m
10m x €100 = €1bn. A massive sum. The Venetian council can give 500 small shops and cafes €1m each, annually. And spend the rest on urban improvement. Everyone wins - so it’s bound to happen
Indeed it gets better, some of those trippers will baulk at the €100 and say “well I might as well stay overnight” - they become the visitors Venice likes. They buy dinner and go to the opera etc
So hotels can also ramp up prices. More profit for Venice. They should just get on and do it
That would be roughly Disneyland pricing, which seems more than reasonable.
Exactly. They have to realise that simply being in Venice is a tremendous experience - and it is. So you’ll have to pay for it, and pay a lot
Switch it around and imagine the insane crowds if you could just walk into Disneyland - or Glasto
This will soon be tried in other places. Capri. St Tropez. Florence. Barcelona - and many more
Did Venice really think that charging €5 to get into the old city at the weekend in the summer, was going to put much of a dent in the numbers visiting?
I suspect their price is out by a factor of at least ten.
The problem in the future will be developing a system which doesn't simply exclude everyone apart from the wealthy. Maybe a lottery is the answer.
A lottery is one of the options they’re now discussing.
They’ve managed to not achieve their goal while upsetting almost everyone - it’s not raised much money beyond the cost of running the scheme, the locals don’t like having to show ID themselves, and they have to fill out a permission form if friends or family want to visit.
I suspect that, when another American cruise ship turns up in port, even €50 isn’t going to persuade many of them to stay on the boat!
Now they can and should push up the price - and local businesses in Venice will stop bleating when the government gives them some of the cash
I reckon Venice would still see millions of visitors even if they charged €100 a day. Its a super-premium product
Do the maths. Venice gets 20m visitors a year. Maybe 18m of them are day trippers (the ones Venice dislikes)
Charge them €100 each and they’ll still come in numbers, but less so. Maybe that total would reduce to 10m
10m x €100 = €1bn. A massive sum. The Venetian council can give 500 small shops and cafes €1m each, annually. And spend the rest on urban improvement. Everyone wins - so it’s bound to happen
Indeed it gets better, some of those trippers will baulk at the €100 and say “well I might as well stay overnight” - they become the visitors Venice likes. They buy dinner and go to the opera etc
So hotels can also ramp up prices. More profit for Venice. They should just get on and do it
That would be roughly Disneyland pricing, which seems more than reasonable.
Extremely good point. I took my children to Euro Disney in January 2003. It was even worse than Venice.
Did Venice really think that charging €5 to get into the old city at the weekend in the summer, was going to put much of a dent in the numbers visiting?
I suspect their price is out by a factor of at least ten.
The problem in the future will be developing a system which doesn't simply exclude everyone apart from the wealthy. Maybe a lottery is the answer.
A lottery is one of the options they’re now discussing.
They’ve managed to not achieve their goal while upsetting almost everyone - it’s not raised much money beyond the cost of running the scheme, the locals don’t like having to show ID themselves, and they have to fill out a permission form if friends or family want to visit.
I suspect that, when another American cruise ship turns up in port, even €50 isn’t going to persuade many of them to stay on the boat!
Now they can and should push up the price - and local businesses in Venice will stop bleating when the government gives them some of the cash
I reckon Venice would still see millions of visitors even if they charged €100 a day. Its a super-premium product
Do the maths. Venice gets 20m visitors a year. Maybe 18m of them are day trippers (the ones Venice dislikes)
Charge them €100 each and they’ll still come in numbers, but less so. Maybe that total would reduce to 10m
10m x €100 = €1bn. A massive sum. The Venetian council can give 500 small shops and cafes €1m each, annually. And spend the rest on urban improvement. Everyone wins - so it’s bound to happen
Indeed it gets better, some of those trippers will baulk at the €100 and say “well I might as well stay overnight” - they become the visitors Venice likes. They buy dinner and go to the opera etc
So hotels can also ramp up prices. More profit for Venice. They should just get on and do it
Though when looking for Noom, on the whole it is found anywhere but where all the people go. Noom is cheaper, less bother and less crowded. And gives you exclusivity bragging rights to share with others. But take sandwiches and a flask of coffee.
Did Venice really think that charging €5 to get into the old city at the weekend in the summer, was going to put much of a dent in the numbers visiting?
I suspect their price is out by a factor of at least ten.
The problem in the future will be developing a system which doesn't simply exclude everyone apart from the wealthy. Maybe a lottery is the answer.
I hate Venice with a passion. The whole place is a monument to wealth and greed - all the best churches are fuck off statements by the merchant family sponsoring them and all the frescos have been incompetently restored and fucked up. Harry's bar is a ripoff though a masterpiece of understatement. I think making the place exclusive to the wealthy paying 100 euro a day, and under 30s with student travel cards, is the way forward
Venice is the most beautiful city on earth - by a distance. It’s a dreamscape. I adore it
But it has become insufferable in summer: the crush is horrific. Pricing is the only way out
Have you ever been in winter? It’s magical then. I recommend early December or late January. The crowds have largely gone and you can actually be alone in some distant corners
And the sense of melancholy decaying beauty is overwhelming. The most wonderfully tragic place on earth. I give it a very very rare noom factor 9. Almost off the dial
Did Venice really think that charging €5 to get into the old city at the weekend in the summer, was going to put much of a dent in the numbers visiting?
I suspect their price is out by a factor of at least ten.
The problem in the future will be developing a system which doesn't simply exclude everyone apart from the wealthy. Maybe a lottery is the answer.
A lottery is one of the options they’re now discussing.
They’ve managed to not achieve their goal while upsetting almost everyone - it’s not raised much money beyond the cost of running the scheme, the locals don’t like having to show ID themselves, and they have to fill out a permission form if friends or family want to visit.
I suspect that, when another American cruise ship turns up in port, even €50 isn’t going to persuade many of them to stay on the boat!
Now they can and should push up the price - and local businesses in Venice will stop bleating when the government gives them some of the cash
I reckon Venice would still see millions of visitors even if they charged €100 a day. Its a super-premium product
Do the maths. Venice gets 20m visitors a year. Maybe 18m of them are day trippers (the ones Venice dislikes)
Charge them €100 each and they’ll still come in numbers, but less so. Maybe that total would reduce to 10m
10m x €100 = €1bn. A massive sum. The Venetian council can give 500 small shops and cafes €1m each, annually. And spend the rest on urban improvement. Everyone wins - so it’s bound to happen
Indeed it gets better, some of those trippers will baulk at the €100 and say “well I might as well stay overnight” - they become the visitors Venice likes. They buy dinner and go to the opera etc
So hotels can also ramp up prices. More profit for Venice. They should just get on and do it
Though when looking for Noom, on the whole it is found anywhere but where all the people go. Noom is cheaper, less bother and less crowded. And gives you exclusivity bragging rights to share with others. But take sandwiches and a flask of coffee.
Oddly, Noom is usually free.
I found some noom yesterday. I’ll post a photo later
They couldn't even get the tense right. Should have been "fell". Fieldwork 8th-14th May. There have already been 9 more GB polls published with more recent fieldwork than that IPSOS poll.
Mont St Michel is another place which MUST begin charging - and soon. The crush when I went on a weekday in April (!!) was horrifying. Queues for everything. Queues for queues. 3000 people all trying to see the same small chapel all at once
The Normandy government needs to charge €50 just to cross the causeway
Did Venice really think that charging €5 to get into the old city at the weekend in the summer, was going to put much of a dent in the numbers visiting?
I suspect their price is out by a factor of at least ten.
The problem in the future will be developing a system which doesn't simply exclude everyone apart from the wealthy. Maybe a lottery is the answer.
I hate Venice with a passion. The whole place is a monument to wealth and greed - all the best churches are fuck off statements by the merchant family sponsoring them and all the frescos have been incompetently restored and fucked up. Harry's bar is a ripoff though a masterpiece of understatement. I think making the place exclusive to the wealthy paying 100 euro a day, and under 30s with student travel cards, is the way forward
Venice is the most beautiful city on earth - by a distance. It’s a dreamscape. I adore it
But it has become insufferable in summer: the crush is horrific. Pricing is the only way out
Have you ever been in winter? It’s magical then. I recommend early December or late January. The crowds have largely gone and you can actually be alone in some distant corners
And the sense of melancholy decaying beauty is overwhelming. The most wonderfully tragic place on earth. I give it a very very rare noom factor 9. Almost off the dial
Been early March
You have to go once because of Death in Venice and Don't look Now and Byron and Hemingway and Pound and Brideshead revisited and and and. But once is enough
Are they going to keep this up after a change of government, or are they going to out themselves as highly partisan vexatious litigants?
Why stop? The business model works.
I don't understand. What is their business model?
1) Create outrage about something 2) Raise money on the internet 3) Go to court 4) Lose 5) Create outrage about losing. Go to 2)
Winning is not required. Or especially wanted.
It’s a bit like fracking in the U.K.
It doesn’t get you natural gas. But it gets you the funds to run your drilling company at a nice profit. Or did, until the government shut it all down.
The outrage is usually about things like corrupt VIP lanes for ruling party cronies, water companies dumping raw sewage in rivers, duty of care being denied to child asylum seekers. On the whole Good Law Project are tapping into outrage rather than creating it.
I agree with the rest of your points. GLP don't win often in court. I guess these are political issues that need to be resolved in the government and parliament, not in the courts.
The idea behind the GLP is to try and push the courts into legislating, American style. The U.K. Supreme Court has specifically pushed back on this.
Did Venice really think that charging €5 to get into the old city at the weekend in the summer, was going to put much of a dent in the numbers visiting?
I suspect their price is out by a factor of at least ten.
The problem in the future will be developing a system which doesn't simply exclude everyone apart from the wealthy. Maybe a lottery is the answer.
A lottery is one of the options they’re now discussing.
They’ve managed to not achieve their goal while upsetting almost everyone - it’s not raised much money beyond the cost of running the scheme, the locals don’t like having to show ID themselves, and they have to fill out a permission form if friends or family want to visit.
I suspect that, when another American cruise ship turns up in port, even €50 isn’t going to persuade many of them to stay on the boat!
Now they can and should push up the price - and local businesses in Venice will stop bleating when the government gives them some of the cash
I reckon Venice would still see millions of visitors even if they charged €100 a day. Its a super-premium product
Do the maths. Venice gets 20m visitors a year. Maybe 18m of them are day trippers (the ones Venice dislikes)
Charge them €100 each and they’ll still come in numbers, but less so. Maybe that total would reduce to 10m
10m x €100 = €1bn. A massive sum. The Venetian council can give 500 small shops and cafes €1m each, annually. And spend the rest on urban improvement. Everyone wins - so it’s bound to happen
Indeed it gets better, some of those trippers will baulk at the €100 and say “well I might as well stay overnight” - they become the visitors Venice likes. They buy dinner and go to the opera etc
So hotels can also ramp up prices. More profit for Venice. They should just get on and do it
Did Venice really think that charging €5 to get into the old city at the weekend in the summer, was going to put much of a dent in the numbers visiting?
I suspect their price is out by a factor of at least ten.
The problem in the future will be developing a system which doesn't simply exclude everyone apart from the wealthy. Maybe a lottery is the answer.
I hate Venice with a passion. The whole place is a monument to wealth and greed - all the best churches are fuck off statements by the merchant family sponsoring them and all the frescos have been incompetently restored and fucked up. Harry's bar is a ripoff though a masterpiece of understatement. I think making the place exclusive to the wealthy paying 100 euro a day, and under 30s with student travel cards, is the way forward
Venice is the most beautiful city on earth - by a distance. It’s a dreamscape. I adore it
But it has become insufferable in summer: the crush is horrific. Pricing is the only way out
Have you ever been in winter? It’s magical then. I recommend early December or late January. The crowds have largely gone and you can actually be alone in some distant corners
And the sense of melancholy decaying beauty is overwhelming. The most wonderfully tragic place on earth. I give it a very very rare noom factor 9. Almost off the dial
Been early March
You have to go once because of Death in Venice and Don't look Now and Byron and Hemingway and Pound and Brideshead revisited and and and. But once is enough
I disagree. It takes several visits to really appreciate it
It was probably my sixth visit (early December) when I truly understood its uniquely mournful beauty. The grey veils of drizzle over the Doge’s palace. The few tourists scurrying across tiny bridges under umbrellas like geishas in a sad Japanese painting
Did Venice really think that charging €5 to get into the old city at the weekend in the summer, was going to put much of a dent in the numbers visiting?
I suspect their price is out by a factor of at least ten.
The problem in the future will be developing a system which doesn't simply exclude everyone apart from the wealthy. Maybe a lottery is the answer.
A lottery is one of the options they’re now discussing.
They’ve managed to not achieve their goal while upsetting almost everyone - it’s not raised much money beyond the cost of running the scheme, the locals don’t like having to show ID themselves, and they have to fill out a permission form if friends or family want to visit.
I suspect that, when another American cruise ship turns up in port, even €50 isn’t going to persuade many of them to stay on the boat!
Now they can and should push up the price - and local businesses in Venice will stop bleating when the government gives them some of the cash
I reckon Venice would still see millions of visitors even if they charged €100 a day. Its a super-premium product
Do the maths. Venice gets 20m visitors a year. Maybe 18m of them are day trippers (the ones Venice dislikes)
Charge them €100 each and they’ll still come in numbers, but less so. Maybe that total would reduce to 10m
10m x €100 = €1bn. A massive sum. The Venetian council can give 500 small shops and cafes €1m each, annually. And spend the rest on urban improvement. Everyone wins - so it’s bound to happen
Indeed it gets better, some of those trippers will baulk at the €100 and say “well I might as well stay overnight” - they become the visitors Venice likes. They buy dinner and go to the opera etc
So hotels can also ramp up prices. More profit for Venice. They should just get on and do it
Did Venice really think that charging €5 to get into the old city at the weekend in the summer, was going to put much of a dent in the numbers visiting?
I suspect their price is out by a factor of at least ten.
The problem in the future will be developing a system which doesn't simply exclude everyone apart from the wealthy. Maybe a lottery is the answer.
I hate Venice with a passion. The whole place is a monument to wealth and greed - all the best churches are fuck off statements by the merchant family sponsoring them and all the frescos have been incompetently restored and fucked up. Harry's bar is a ripoff though a masterpiece of understatement. I think making the place exclusive to the wealthy paying 100 euro a day, and under 30s with student travel cards, is the way forward
Venice is the most beautiful city on earth - by a distance. It’s a dreamscape. I adore it
But it has become insufferable in summer: the crush is horrific. Pricing is the only way out
Have you ever been in winter? It’s magical then. I recommend early December or late January. The crowds have largely gone and you can actually be alone in some distant corners
And the sense of melancholy decaying beauty is overwhelming. The most wonderfully tragic place on earth. I give it a very very rare noom factor 9. Almost off the dial
Yes I'd go in winter and try for some of that Don't Look Now atmosphere. Not this coming winter though. Tenerife beckons again. Same hotel and maybe 10 nights this time.
Mont St Michel is another place which MUST begin charging - and soon. The crush when I went on a weekday in April (!!) was horrifying. Queues for everything. Queues for queues. 3000 people all trying to see the same small chapel all at once
The Normandy government needs to charge €50 just to cross the causeway
Put a troll by the causeway and tell it many Billy goats gruff are a comin' Sorted.
Are they going to keep this up after a change of government, or are they going to out themselves as highly partisan vexatious litigants?
Why stop? The business model works.
I don't understand. What is their business model?
1) Create outrage about something 2) Raise money on the internet 3) Go to court 4) Lose 5) Create outrage about losing. Go to 2)
Winning is not required. Or especially wanted.
It’s a bit like fracking in the U.K.
It doesn’t get you natural gas. But it gets you the funds to run your drilling company at a nice profit. Or did, until the government shut it all down.
The outrage is usually about things like corrupt VIP lanes for ruling party cronies, water companies dumping raw sewage in rivers, duty of care being denied to child asylum seekers. On the whole Good Law Project are tapping into outrage rather than creating it.
I agree with the rest of your points. GLP don't win often in court. I guess these are political issues that need to be resolved in the government and parliament, not in the courts.
The idea behind the GLP is to try and push the courts into legislating, American style. The U.K. Supreme Court has specifically pushed back on this.
Yes that is an issue and is presumably why GLP loses a high percentage of its cases. But as long as there's no effective remedy for corruption, Met Police mishandling of complaints, sewage dumping etc, people will lose trust in the system. GLP's main achievement is in exposing that loss of remedy and trust, but they haven't revealed any solution for it.
IMF relatively positive for the UK today with room for up to 3 rate cuts this year and reasonable growth projection against our partners. Getting to the point now that this is much more helpful to an incoming government than Sunaks electoral prospects, but it may help stymie their losses a bit
I see that Sunak has announced that the next government after his will pay "whatever it costs" to settle the infected blood scandal, and the BBC are reporting that £10bn will be set aside.
Set aside from what? From a £46bn budget black hole to turn it into £56bn, in the very unlikely event that he hangs around?
Mont St Michel is another place which MUST begin charging - and soon. The crush when I went on a weekday in April (!!) was horrifying. Queues for everything. Queues for queues. 3000 people all trying to see the same small chapel all at once
The Normandy government needs to charge €50 just to cross the causeway
Put a troll by the causeway and tell it many Billy goats gruff are a comin' Sorted.
If only we could find a troll to offer the job to... Hold on, there might be one along on Saturday.
Did Venice really think that charging €5 to get into the old city at the weekend in the summer, was going to put much of a dent in the numbers visiting?
I suspect their price is out by a factor of at least ten.
The problem in the future will be developing a system which doesn't simply exclude everyone apart from the wealthy. Maybe a lottery is the answer.
A lottery is one of the options they’re now discussing.
They’ve managed to not achieve their goal while upsetting almost everyone - it’s not raised much money beyond the cost of running the scheme, the locals don’t like having to show ID themselves, and they have to fill out a permission form if friends or family want to visit.
I suspect that, when another American cruise ship turns up in port, even €50 isn’t going to persuade many of them to stay on the boat!
Now they can and should push up the price - and local businesses in Venice will stop bleating when the government gives them some of the cash
I reckon Venice would still see millions of visitors even if they charged €100 a day. Its a super-premium product
Do the maths. Venice gets 20m visitors a year. Maybe 18m of them are day trippers (the ones Venice dislikes)
Charge them €100 each and they’ll still come in numbers, but less so. Maybe that total would reduce to 10m
10m x €100 = €1bn. A massive sum. The Venetian council can give 500 small shops and cafes €1m each, annually. And spend the rest on urban improvement. Everyone wins - so it’s bound to happen
Indeed it gets better, some of those trippers will baulk at the €100 and say “well I might as well stay overnight” - they become the visitors Venice likes. They buy dinner and go to the opera etc
So hotels can also ramp up prices. More profit for Venice. They should just get on and do it
easyVenice
Well - yes. Adjust price according to demand
Indeed. I was making a serious point in a humorous manner.
I see that Sunak has announced that the next government after his will pay "whatever it costs" to settle the infected blood scandal, and the BBC are reporting that £10bn will be set aside.
Set aside from what? From a £46bn budget black hole to turn it into £56bn, in the very unlikely event that he hangs around?
There is a sense that some Conservative announcements, perhaps not on blood scandal compensation but probably on NI reduction, defence and others, are aimed mainly at tying up the Labour Party. Not only will there be no money left, there will be a string of IOUs and promissory notes as well. Perhaps CCHQ remembers the old GOP maxim: starve the beast.
Are they going to keep this up after a change of government, or are they going to out themselves as highly partisan vexatious litigants?
Why stop? The business model works.
I don't understand. What is their business model?
1) Create outrage about something 2) Raise money on the internet 3) Go to court 4) Lose 5) Create outrage about losing. Go to 2)
Winning is not required. Or especially wanted.
It’s a bit like fracking in the U.K.
It doesn’t get you natural gas. But it gets you the funds to run your drilling company at a nice profit. Or did, until the government shut it all down.
The outrage is usually about things like corrupt VIP lanes for ruling party cronies, water companies dumping raw sewage in rivers, duty of care being denied to child asylum seekers. On the whole Good Law Project are tapping into outrage rather than creating it.
I agree with the rest of your points. GLP don't win often in court. I guess these are political issues that need to be resolved in the government and parliament, not in the courts.
The idea behind the GLP is to try and push the courts into legislating, American style. The U.K. Supreme Court has specifically pushed back on this.
Yes that is an issue and is presumably why GLP loses a high percentage of its cases. But as long as there's no effective remedy for corruption, Met Police mishandling of complaints, sewage dumping etc, people will lose trust in the system. GLP's main achievement is in exposing that loss of remedy and trust, but they haven't revealed any solution for it.
People have already lost trust, hence the deplorable ratings of the Scottish as well as British government. There are any number of issues about which something must be done but no-one in power seems interested in tackling any of them.
No-one has yet mentioned, let alone derided, the fact that the SNP have had a chance to appoint their best chance of renewal as leader and have blown it in appointing Yousaf (52/48) and blown it again in appointing (by coronation) a steady as you go, at least he hasn't been arrested, really decent old timer who failed to deal with the hard questions at referendum time.
As a consequence of which, when K Forbes does become leader, which she will unless she joins the Tories first, it will be of a party in a position of coming second and with absolutely zero chance of independence within decades.
Betting post: I suggest she will be next leader of the SNP (60% probability). The main risks are as above, or that she will decide being a mother is more fun.
(On religion, PBers and politics anoraks generally forget that among the ordinary mainstream population, they don't go to church and don't sing unaccompanied psalms to tuneless drones, but they admire and respect those who do).
I disagree.
Right-wing parties make up a small minority of voters in Scotland according to the latest polls. There are no votes there. Kate Forbes might win Moray, some Aberdeenshire seats and errrr...
And while Labour now have a lead in Scotland, it's not like the SNP have crashed. What's even more impressive is that a SNP to Labour or Green switch is quite an easy one, ideologically speaking, yet the SNP have managed to cling onto most of their supporters.
The SNP have, quite sensibly, recognised they have lost the next couple of elections and gone for a sedate cruise into the political wilderness. They need to ruffle as few feathers as possible to retain what donations, legacies and short money they can. From there they can rebuild.
I remind you that this is the party of the motorhome, currently polling on 29% in a crowded left field!
Good morning everyone. I believe that the appointment of Swinney and Forbes will be good for the SNP, and therefore for independence in the long term. A prosperous, business friendly Scotland is essential, and they will help in that respect. However, the poll maybe indicates that the young, left wing metropolitans that joined the SNP after 2014 are going back to Labour or joining the Greens, as left wing “progressive” policies matter to them more than independence.
In economic terms yes, in political terms however voting SNP for a Thatcherite Scottish alternative to a UK social democratic Labour government is not really viable
I see that Sunak has announced that the next government after his will pay "whatever it costs" to settle the infected blood scandal, and the BBC are reporting that £10bn will be set aside.
Set aside from what? From a £46bn budget black hole to turn it into £56bn, in the very unlikely event that he hangs around?
There is a sense that some Conservative announcements, perhaps not on blood scandal compensation but probably on NI reduction, defence and others, are aimed mainly at tying up the Labour Party. Not only will there be no money left, there will be a string of IOUs and promissory notes as well. Perhaps CCHQ remembers the old GOP maxim: starve the beast.
A small government Conservative party would be a welcome change, though given that we have the highest tax burden in decades the beast doesn't seem in any imminent danger of starvation - indeed it's hardly even on the mildest of diets.
What a bunch of shysters OpenAI are. They ask her permission she refuses, so they just get someone (allegedly) to 'copy' her voice.
Don't expect them to treat you, your data, or your privacy, any differently.
I suspect the current tech stock boom is driven by fear as much as greed. Either own OpenAI via Alphabet, or be owned by it
Has anyone found any viable use for this yet? When I have tried using it for work it's full of so many errors that it's quicker to do the research and writing myself. It can be useful for getting ideas, but most of the stuff it churns out (for proposals etc) is derivative and obvious. I'm interested but as yet far from converted.
I have not usefully interacted with it first hand, no. But there was some author writing in the spectator the other day saying it offers human level editing services. If that's right then low level human facing roles like call centres and hotel reception should be a doddle fairly soon.
“AI” has the detailed accuracy of a slightly drunk Golden Retriever.
Good for hammering out post-lagershed grade opinion articles.
Writing software that runs, not so much.
I called a pub (where we are staying in the summer) recently and was answered by an AI barmaid. Utterly useless – I tried everything to get 'her' off the phone. Then got the voicemail. What value is that adding? Just makes it harder for the customer.
How long is this awful situation going to go on for? Israel seems determined to alienate all its allies and for what? They're less safe now than they were before they started this war.
Don't know is my answer. It used to be the case that it was much easier to take away medals and Orders and Knighthoods than peerages. Is it still?
I posted earlier that It looked as though he could be the fall guy.
A theory I have is the current govt's obvious incompetence means people are much less likely to give the benefit of the doubt... and so scandals like this get more traction. Will be interesting if this scepticism is a permanent shift or if a future Lab govt can recover credibility with the public.
No-one has yet mentioned, let alone derided, the fact that the SNP have had a chance to appoint their best chance of renewal as leader and have blown it in appointing Yousaf (52/48) and blown it again in appointing (by coronation) a steady as you go, at least he hasn't been arrested, really decent old timer who failed to deal with the hard questions at referendum time.
As a consequence of which, when K Forbes does become leader, which she will unless she joins the Tories first, it will be of a party in a position of coming second and with absolutely zero chance of independence within decades.
Betting post: I suggest she will be next leader of the SNP (60% probability). The main risks are as above, or that she will decide being a mother is more fun.
(On religion, PBers and politics anoraks generally forget that among the ordinary mainstream population, they don't go to church and don't sing unaccompanied psalms to tuneless drones, but they admire and respect those who do).
I disagree.
Right-wing parties make up a small minority of voters in Scotland according to the latest polls. There are no votes there. Kate Forbes might win Moray, some Aberdeenshire seats and errrr...
And while Labour now have a lead in Scotland, it's not like the SNP have crashed. What's even more impressive is that a SNP to Labour or Green switch is quite an easy one, ideologically speaking, yet the SNP have managed to cling onto most of their supporters.
The SNP have, quite sensibly, recognised they have lost the next couple of elections and gone for a sedate cruise into the political wilderness. They need to ruffle as few feathers as possible to retain what donations, legacies and short money they can. From there they can rebuild.
I remind you that this is the party of the motorhome, currently polling on 29% in a crowded left field!
When I (briefly) lived in Scotland, my impression was that the political centre was probably a bit further left than in England - but what really struck me was how short the distance from one edge of the mainstream to the other was.
Forbes seems well outside of that mainstream to me - and, far from prompting "renewal", I can't see how selecting her as leader whilst in government would have done anything other than shake the SNP apart.
Can Scotland really have shifted so far rightwards in the past fifteen years?
Did Venice really think that charging €5 to get into the old city at the weekend in the summer, was going to put much of a dent in the numbers visiting?
I suspect their price is out by a factor of at least ten.
The problem in the future will be developing a system which doesn't simply exclude everyone apart from the wealthy. Maybe a lottery is the answer.
I hate Venice with a passion. The whole place is a monument to wealth and greed - all the best churches are fuck off statements by the merchant family sponsoring them and all the frescos have been incompetently restored and fucked up. Harry's bar is a ripoff though a masterpiece of understatement. I think making the place exclusive to the wealthy paying 100 euro a day, and under 30s with student travel cards, is the way forward
Venice is the most beautiful city on earth - by a distance. It’s a dreamscape. I adore it
But it has become insufferable in summer: the crush is horrific. Pricing is the only way out
Have you ever been in winter? It’s magical then. I recommend early December or late January. The crowds have largely gone and you can actually be alone in some distant corners
And the sense of melancholy decaying beauty is overwhelming. The most wonderfully tragic place on earth. I give it a very very rare noom factor 9. Almost off the dial
Yes I'd go in winter and try for some of that Don't Look Now atmosphere. Not this coming winter though. Tenerife beckons again. Same hotel and maybe 10 nights this time.
I've been to Venice twice. Once was in about 2005, in, let's say, September. Got there about 2pm, left about 10pm. It was a bit of a queue to get in, but nothing overwhelming. And you instantly got an impression of crowds - but as soon as you are out of St. Mark's Square, it felt like we had the place to ourselves. Down an alleyway, through a square, over a little bridge, past a forgotten church - it felt like being in a fairytale. So few people about, and beauty everywhere you look. And then down another alleyway, and gosh! there's every tourist in Italy all in one place. And then dive back into the warren again. The second was in about 2012, in June, with two kids under four in tow, in weather ranging from heavy drizzle to absolutely biblical downpour. A bit of a challenge doing it all with buggies! But again, magical, and not really overcrowded once away from St. Mark's Square. I happily concede it may have got busier in the intervening period. But I'd agree it's possibly the most amazing place I've ever been. And noomy, yes. You look across the lagoon and you can almost hear the approaching visigoths or the shout of fourteenth century traders. It's entirely there for the tourists nowadays, of course. But that must have been true for at least a century, possibly much longer, and tourist traps of that venerability somehow eschew inauthenticity.
"In fact, progressivism is in political retreat not only in Scotland but throughout much of the West. In former social democracies such as Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, parties of the right are the strongest groupings. In Germany, the hard-right AfD has become the party most favoured by people under 30. Even in the woke Anglosphere, the tide is turning. Largely ignored by the British media, the New Zealand coalition government, elected in October 2023 and led by the conservative National Party, is dismantling the country constructed by Jacinda Ardern."
IMF relatively positive for the UK today with room for up to 3 rate cuts this year and reasonable growth projection against our partners. Getting to the point now that this is much more helpful to an incoming government than Sunaks electoral prospects, but it may help stymie their losses a bit
Good afternoon
I think the economy will really perform well to the next election but not because of Sunak so much, but investors seeing a 5 year period, at least, of stability under Starmer
How much it effects the polls I have no idea but it will not prevent a Starmer government with a good majority especially in view of the likely collapse of the SNP
Suggestions of “dozens” injured on that Singapore flight which got caught in turbulence. 30 ambulances met the plane as it landed in Bangkok. Sounds utterly horrific for passengers and crew. Plane was a 777-300ER, 219 pax and 18 crew on board. (2/3 full).
Wow, Singapore Airlines flight SQ321 dropped about 6000 feet due to an air pocket. One person dead. Must have been incredibly scary #singaporeairlines #sq321[Video FlightRadar24]
Did Venice really think that charging €5 to get into the old city at the weekend in the summer, was going to put much of a dent in the numbers visiting?
I suspect their price is out by a factor of at least ten.
The problem in the future will be developing a system which doesn't simply exclude everyone apart from the wealthy. Maybe a lottery is the answer.
I hate Venice with a passion. The whole place is a monument to wealth and greed - all the best churches are fuck off statements by the merchant family sponsoring them and all the frescos have been incompetently restored and fucked up. Harry's bar is a ripoff though a masterpiece of understatement. I think making the place exclusive to the wealthy paying 100 euro a day, and under 30s with student travel cards, is the way forward
Venice is the most beautiful city on earth - by a distance. It’s a dreamscape. I adore it
But it has become insufferable in summer: the crush is horrific. Pricing is the only way out
Have you ever been in winter? It’s magical then. I recommend early December or late January. The crowds have largely gone and you can actually be alone in some distant corners
And the sense of melancholy decaying beauty is overwhelming. The most wonderfully tragic place on earth. I give it a very very rare noom factor 9. Almost off the dial
Yes I'd go in winter and try for some of that Don't Look Now atmosphere. Not this coming winter though. Tenerife beckons again. Same hotel and maybe 10 nights this time.
I've been to Venice twice. Once was in about 2005, in, let's say, September. Got there about 2pm, left about 10pm. It was a bit of a queue to get in, but nothing overwhelming. And you instantly got an impression of crowds - but as soon as you are out of St. Mark's Square, it felt like we had the place to ourselves. Down an alleyway, through a square, over a little bridge, past a forgotten church - it felt like being in a fairytale. So few people about, and beauty everywhere you look. And then down another alleyway, and gosh! there's every tourist in Italy all in one place. And then dive back into the warren again. The second was in about 2012, in June, with two kids under four in tow, in weather ranging from heavy drizzle to absolutely biblical downpour. A bit of a challenge doing it all with buggies! But again, magical, and not really overcrowded once away from St. Mark's Square. I happily concede it may have got busier in the intervening period. But I'd agree it's possibly the most amazing place I've ever been. And noomy, yes. You look across the lagoon and you can almost hear the approaching visigoths or the shout of fourteenth century traders. It's entirely there for the tourists nowadays, of course. But that must have been true for at least a century, possibly much longer, and tourist traps of that venerability somehow eschew inauthenticity.
It has got vastly worse in the last decade. Why? China
500 million Chinese have got quite rich in recent times, certainly rich enough to travel, and they have passports. They also have a pent-up desire to see the world after a century of poverty and imprisonment
China is now the world's largest "source" of tourists. And of course they all want to go the same places: Venice, Paris, London, Bangkok, New York; or Provence, Tuscany, the Alps, Mount Fuji, etc
What's more, another 500 million Indian tourists are coming down the line, as India follows the Chinese economic trajectory. And they too want to see Venice
Venice cannot handle this amount of people. Rationing by price or lottery is the only answer, and price makes the most sense as it can reimburse the businesses who lose out on custom as numbers are forced down
This was all predicted in the Spectator eight years ago
"By the end of my autumnal travels, it occurred to me that there is one solution: the Bhutanese example. You ration travel, by time and money: you start to make people pay simply to get into cities, regions, nations."
Suggestions of “dozens” injured on that Singapore flight which got caught in turbulence. 30 ambulances met the plane as it landed in Bangkok. Sounds utterly horrific for passengers and crew. Plane was a 777-300ER, 219 pax and 18 crew on board. (2/3 full).
Jesus Christ
To make it worse that must have been totally unexpected, otherwise everyone woukd have been strapped in, anticipating turbulence. That many injuries - even deaths - suggests there was no warning at all. Kinell
Wow, Singapore Airlines flight SQ321 dropped about 6000 feet due to an air pocket. One person dead. Must have been incredibly scary #singaporeairlines #sq321[Video FlightRadar24]
Oh sh!t, these excursions are usually a couple of hundred feet at most, even though it seems worse in the cabin. If they dropped that far, they likely went over speed as well, plane could be a right mess. Well done to all the crew, and to Boeing for building a damn strong aeroplane.
Did Venice really think that charging €5 to get into the old city at the weekend in the summer, was going to put much of a dent in the numbers visiting?
I suspect their price is out by a factor of at least ten.
The problem in the future will be developing a system which doesn't simply exclude everyone apart from the wealthy. Maybe a lottery is the answer.
I hate Venice with a passion. The whole place is a monument to wealth and greed - all the best churches are fuck off statements by the merchant family sponsoring them and all the frescos have been incompetently restored and fucked up. Harry's bar is a ripoff though a masterpiece of understatement. I think making the place exclusive to the wealthy paying 100 euro a day, and under 30s with student travel cards, is the way forward
Venice is the most beautiful city on earth - by a distance. It’s a dreamscape. I adore it
But it has become insufferable in summer: the crush is horrific. Pricing is the only way out
Have you ever been in winter? It’s magical then. I recommend early December or late January. The crowds have largely gone and you can actually be alone in some distant corners
And the sense of melancholy decaying beauty is overwhelming. The most wonderfully tragic place on earth. I give it a very very rare noom factor 9. Almost off the dial
Yes I'd go in winter and try for some of that Don't Look Now atmosphere. Not this coming winter though. Tenerife beckons again. Same hotel and maybe 10 nights this time.
I've been to Venice twice. Once was in about 2005, in, let's say, September. Got there about 2pm, left about 10pm. It was a bit of a queue to get in, but nothing overwhelming. And you instantly got an impression of crowds - but as soon as you are out of St. Mark's Square, it felt like we had the place to ourselves. Down an alleyway, through a square, over a little bridge, past a forgotten church - it felt like being in a fairytale. So few people about, and beauty everywhere you look. And then down another alleyway, and gosh! there's every tourist in Italy all in one place. And then dive back into the warren again. The second was in about 2012, in June, with two kids under four in tow, in weather ranging from heavy drizzle to absolutely biblical downpour. A bit of a challenge doing it all with buggies! But again, magical, and not really overcrowded once away from St. Mark's Square. I happily concede it may have got busier in the intervening period. But I'd agree it's possibly the most amazing place I've ever been. And noomy, yes. You look across the lagoon and you can almost hear the approaching visigoths or the shout of fourteenth century traders. It's entirely there for the tourists nowadays, of course. But that must have been true for at least a century, possibly much longer, and tourist traps of that venerability somehow eschew inauthenticity.
Giudecca has some interesting stuff and seems to be nearly always empty.
There's something rather touching and naive about Venice charging only 5 Euros for entry when they could be charging at least 50, as others have said.
I reckon they made it so small so they could establish the principle, without ruffling too many feathers. It's like that "would you sleep with me for a million quid" riff, if you say yes we have established you are a prostitute, then it's all about price
Venice has founded the idea of paying to get into Venice; presumably they will make people pay more, over time
Suggestions of “dozens” injured on that Singapore flight which got caught in turbulence. 30 ambulances met the plane as it landed in Bangkok. Sounds utterly horrific for passengers and crew. Plane was a 777-300ER, 219 pax and 18 crew on board. (2/3 full).
Jesus Christ
To make it worse that must have been totally unexpected, otherwise everyone woukd have been strapped in, anticipating turbulence. That many injuries - even deaths - suggests there was no warning at all. Kinell
The real concern would be for the cabin crew who may not have been strapped in
I see that Matt Goodwin corrected the error in his poll from the other day that had SNP on 0%. Now 3%. It brings the Labour figure down to 46%, from 47%, because the base it's calculated from is now larger.
Graph on Wikipedia hasn't yet been updated with the correct figures.
"Re latest poll. The figure for SNP was mistakenly deleted as a result of a technical error in the raw data. This resulted in the obviously false reading that the SNP is on 0%. They are not. Other national figures from poll Qs remain unchanged. Revised tables here http://matthewjgoodwin.org/poll-archive.html"
I'll chalk that up as a victory for British Polling Council rules on publishing data tables.
Suggestions of “dozens” injured on that Singapore flight which got caught in turbulence. 30 ambulances met the plane as it landed in Bangkok. Sounds utterly horrific for passengers and crew. Plane was a 777-300ER, 219 pax and 18 crew on board. (2/3 full).
Jesus Christ
To make it worse that must have been totally unexpected, otherwise everyone woukd have been strapped in, anticipating turbulence. That many injuries - even deaths - suggests there was no warning at all. Kinell
The real concern would be for the cabin crew who may not have been strapped in
Dreadful for everyone on board
Yes, good point. They might have been in mid service: those serving trolleys have killed people by themselves in wild turbulence - they are big and heavy and can crush
Suggestions of “dozens” injured on that Singapore flight which got caught in turbulence. 30 ambulances met the plane as it landed in Bangkok. Sounds utterly horrific for passengers and crew. Plane was a 777-300ER, 219 pax and 18 crew on board. (2/3 full).
Jesus Christ
To make it worse that must have been totally unexpected, otherwise everyone woukd have been strapped in, anticipating turbulence. That many injuries - even deaths - suggests there was no warning at all. Kinell
Phenomenon known as clear air turbulence, literally just a pocket of funny air in the middle of the sky, usually on the line of a weather front where two air masses meet. But there’s no obvious storm, and no warning of it except from other aircraft in the vicinity.
Good read thank you, although (as ever) Gray overwrites. Two points
i) FREE SPEECH Gray says SNP did "silencing opposition to the radical changes in language and behaviour they plan to enforce on society", which is fair. But as I keep pointing out, suppression of speech is entirely accepted in the UK for specific cases . A recent example of this is in Fairliered's post below. So it's #PBfreespeech time again
ii) GREENS IN A VACUUM Gray decries Hyper-liberal ideology but i think he misses the point when he says "...some are turning to the Liberal Democrats for a purer version of the progressive faith...". I think they're should be, but they're actually going to the Greens.
Some thought provoking articles in Holyrood Magazine this morning about mental health, bullying and abuse of politicians. Not just relevant to Scotland. Worth a read.
Comments
Were they actively misled or was the puropse hidden in the small print and passed off as being used for another purpose?
If the voice actors were not informed or actively misinformed that they were training AI machines and their voice appears in public/online, this would be a very clear breach of the strict data protection laws in Germany. If a voice actor recorded their voice in Germany or was a German company, it would be relatively easy to prosecute. I fear in the UK it would be much harder to sucessfully prosecute.
However the UK still is the 3rd best nation for entrepreneurs according to CEO World after the US and Germany, South Korea is only 16th
https://ceoworld.biz/2024/04/05/worlds-most-entrepreneurial-countries-2024/
What is the betting nothing will happen on this.
Doing a good job on the compensation scheme might be seen to be to Sunak’s credit, of course.
As usual, the public sector hasn’t caught up. In the private sector, we used have “Can’t promote to senior level - mere techies. Can’t pay a junior more than his boss. Answer=contractors”
The smart outfits have realised that having the same people permanent is cheaper. So the dam broke in the end - with a bit of a push from IR35. So I get job offers of “Director” - with no one to direct! But with the money..
Also, with permanent staff, the knowledge of your systems is in house and under your control. The smart outfits (again) keep people on for this - expanding teams with contractors when building out new systems.
High Court refuses permission to apply for JR, because the GLP's grounds are "unarguable" AND the claimant lacks standing. GLP to pay HMG's costs. 🔥
So, another £60K down the toilet.
https://x.com/Wonkypolicywonk/status/1792834237043036368
“Lessons will be learned.”
#NU10K
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/05/20/venice-entrance-fee-failure-increase-visitors-italy/
I suspect their price is out by a factor of at least ten.
"Labour lead over Tories falls as economy recovers
Narrowing polling gap between the parties accompanies sharp uptick in economic optimism"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/05/20/labour-poll-lead-falls-tories-general-election/
Among other things, Matt Chorley hosts Times Radio's superb Exit Interviews series of interviews with MPs who are standing down at the general election. It is an excellent concept because retiring MPs can speak freely, and very well done, and I wonder what part this played in landing the BBC job.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGeQKoGUstRAofJvqrsVtIqT--snAp3F2
2) Raise money on the internet
3) Go to court
4) Lose
5) Create outrage about losing. Go to 2)
Winning is not required. Or especially wanted.
It’s a bit like fracking in the U.K.
It doesn’t get you natural gas. But it gets you the funds to run your drilling company at a nice profit. Or did, until the government shut it all down.
And that's a problem that Wes Streeting is going to experience next year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXDjbqiThuk (3mins)
They’ve managed to not achieve their goal while upsetting almost everyone - it’s not raised much money beyond the cost of running the scheme, the locals don’t like having to show ID themselves, and they have to fill out a permission form if friends or family want to visit.
I suspect that, when another American cruise ship turns up in port, even €50 isn’t going to persuade many of them to stay on the boat!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPqsy2PDJ2I
Registered?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-69041493
I reckon Venice would still see millions of visitors even if they charged €100 a day. Its a super-premium product
Do the maths. Venice gets 20m visitors a year. Maybe 18m of them are day trippers (the ones Venice dislikes)
Charge them €100 each and they’ll still come in numbers, but less so. Maybe that total would reduce to 10m
10m x €100 = €1bn. A massive sum. The Venetian council can give 500 small shops and cafes €1m each, annually. And spend the rest on urban improvement. Everyone wins - so it’s bound to happen
Indeed it gets better, some of those trippers will baulk at the €100 and say “well I might as well stay overnight” - they become the visitors Venice likes. They buy dinner and go to the opera etc
So hotels can also ramp up prices. More profit for Venice. They should just get on and do it
Betting post: I think Forbes will be next SNP leader. What do you think? I don't think there is a market on this at the moment. Perhaps there should be.
You speak like every pound we spend now absolutely critically must be spent on those things and nothing else. With no variation possible. But variation can be found for Rwanda stupidity or election bribes etc etc etc. It can be done, you just don't want to because politics.
I agree with the rest of your points. GLP don't win often in court. I guess these are political issues that need to be resolved in the government and parliament, not in the courts.
Switch it around and imagine the insane crowds if you could just walk into Disneyland - or Glasto
This will soon be tried in other places. Capri. St Tropez. Florence. Barcelona - and many more
Oddly, Noom is usually free.
But it has become insufferable in summer: the crush is horrific. Pricing is the only way out
Have you ever been in winter? It’s magical then. I recommend early December or late January. The crowds have largely gone and you can actually be alone in some distant corners
And the sense of melancholy decaying beauty is overwhelming. The most wonderfully tragic place on earth. I give it a very very rare noom factor 9. Almost off the dial
Keeping an unregistered XL bully or failing to follow the restrictions would be illegal.
They should just shoot all of them
The Normandy government needs to charge €50 just to cross the causeway
You have to go once because of Death in Venice and Don't look Now and Byron and Hemingway and Pound and Brideshead revisited and and and. But once is enough
It was probably my sixth visit (early December) when I truly understood its uniquely mournful beauty. The grey veils of drizzle over the Doge’s palace. The few tourists scurrying across tiny bridges under umbrellas like geishas in a sad Japanese painting
It’s giving me noomy tingles just REMEMBERING it
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8889d7x8j4o
Sorted.
Getting to the point now that this is much more helpful to an incoming government than Sunaks electoral prospects, but it may help stymie their losses a bit
Set aside from what? From a £46bn budget black hole to turn it into £56bn, in the very unlikely event that he hangs around?
Don't know is my answer. It used to be the case that it was much easier to take away medals and Orders and Knighthoods than peerages. Is it still?
Scotland’s hegemonic progressive regime was a chimera. Labour should take note.
By John Gray"
https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2024/05/how-the-snp-lost-itself-in-hyper-liberalism
How long is this awful situation going to go on for? Israel seems determined to alienate all its allies and for what? They're less safe now than they were before they started this war.
Forbes seems well outside of that mainstream to me - and, far from prompting "renewal", I can't see how selecting her as leader whilst in government would have done anything other than shake the SNP apart.
Can Scotland really have shifted so far rightwards in the past fifteen years?
Once was in about 2005, in, let's say, September. Got there about 2pm, left about 10pm. It was a bit of a queue to get in, but nothing overwhelming. And you instantly got an impression of crowds - but as soon as you are out of St. Mark's Square, it felt like we had the place to ourselves. Down an alleyway, through a square, over a little bridge, past a forgotten church - it felt like being in a fairytale. So few people about, and beauty everywhere you look. And then down another alleyway, and gosh! there's every tourist in Italy all in one place. And then dive back into the warren again.
The second was in about 2012, in June, with two kids under four in tow, in weather ranging from heavy drizzle to absolutely biblical downpour. A bit of a challenge doing it all with buggies! But again, magical, and not really overcrowded once away from St. Mark's Square.
I happily concede it may have got busier in the intervening period. But I'd agree it's possibly the most amazing place I've ever been. And noomy, yes. You look across the lagoon and you can almost hear the approaching visigoths or the shout of fourteenth century traders. It's entirely there for the tourists nowadays, of course. But that must have been true for at least a century, possibly much longer, and tourist traps of that venerability somehow eschew inauthenticity.
"In fact, progressivism is in political retreat not only in Scotland but throughout much of the West. In former social democracies such as Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, parties of the right are the strongest groupings. In Germany, the hard-right AfD has become the party most favoured by people under 30. Even in the woke Anglosphere, the tide is turning. Largely ignored by the British media, the New Zealand coalition government, elected in October 2023 and led by the conservative National Party, is dismantling the country constructed by Jacinda Ardern."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8889d7x8j4o
I think the economy will really perform well to the next election but not because of Sunak so much, but investors seeing a 5 year period, at least, of stability under Starmer
How much it effects the polls I have no idea but it will not prevent a Starmer government with a good majority especially in view of the likely collapse of the SNP
https://x.com/readd1/status/1792867027880706156
500 million Chinese have got quite rich in recent times, certainly rich enough to travel, and they have passports. They also have a pent-up desire to see the world after a century of poverty and imprisonment
China is now the world's largest "source" of tourists. And of course they all want to go the same places: Venice, Paris, London, Bangkok, New York; or Provence, Tuscany, the Alps, Mount Fuji, etc
What's more, another 500 million Indian tourists are coming down the line, as India follows the Chinese economic trajectory. And they too want to see Venice
Venice cannot handle this amount of people. Rationing by price or lottery is the only answer, and price makes the most sense as it can reimburse the businesses who lose out on custom as numbers are forced down
This was all predicted in the Spectator eight years ago
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/caught-in-the-tourist-trap/
Prescient quote:
"By the end of my autumnal travels, it occurred to me that there is one solution: the Bhutanese example. You ration travel, by time and money: you start to make people pay simply to get into cities, regions, nations."
https://www.cityam.com/londoners-the-cleverest-people-in-the-world-latest-oxford-economics-study/
It's there in the paper: it must be the truth.
To make it worse that must have been totally unexpected, otherwise everyone woukd have been strapped in, anticipating turbulence. That many injuries - even deaths - suggests there was no warning at all. Kinell
Oh sh!t, these excursions are usually a couple of hundred feet at most, even though it seems worse in the cabin. If they dropped that far, they likely went over speed as well, plane could be a right mess. Well done to all the crew, and to Boeing for building a damn strong aeroplane.
Venice has founded the idea of paying to get into Venice; presumably they will make people pay more, over time
Dreadful for everyone on board
Graph on Wikipedia hasn't yet been updated with the correct figures.
"Re latest poll. The figure for SNP was mistakenly deleted as a result of a technical error in the raw data. This resulted in the obviously false reading that the SNP is on 0%. They are not. Other national figures from poll Qs remain unchanged. Revised tables here
http://matthewjgoodwin.org/poll-archive.html"
I'll chalk that up as a victory for British Polling Council rules on publishing data tables.
Hideous! Always strap yourself in, always
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear-air_turbulence
Good read thank you, although (as ever) Gray overwrites. Two points
i) FREE SPEECH
Gray says SNP did "silencing opposition to the radical changes in language and behaviour they plan to enforce on society", which is fair. But as I keep pointing out, suppression of speech is entirely accepted in the UK for specific cases . A recent example of this is in Fairliered's post below. So it's #PBfreespeech time again
ii) GREENS IN A VACUUM
Gray decries Hyper-liberal ideology but i think he misses the point when he says "...some are turning to the Liberal Democrats for a purer version of the progressive faith...". I think they're should be, but they're actually going to the Greens.
NOTES
Fairlied's point FPT