Why things can get worse for the Tories – politicalbetting.com

DavidL said:

eek said:

Pulpstar said:

Nigelb said:

another_richard said:

Sandpit said:

another_richard said:

Taz said:

Merging council pensions schemes could unlock a pot of cash to invest in infrastructure/give to middlemen and administrators.

It’s going to happen, isn’t it. Pensions seen by both parties as pots of cash to use. The govt are so good at spending money and investing. Nothing could go wrong.

https://www.cityam.com/merge-council-pension-schemes-to-unlock-40bn-investment-bonanza-reeves-told/

“A single LGPS with a sophisticated, long-term investment strategy might put up to £40bn into vital infrastructure,” said Tracy Blackwell, chief executive of the PIC. “That could make a big difference to the UK’s economic prospects.”

Consolidating LGPS schemes into a single fund would give Britain “a real sovereign wealth fund” that could be “run and managed to the same professional standards as world-leading schemes like Canada’s,” Blackwell added.

The phrase 'world leading' should ring alarm bells:

The largest shareholder as of July 2023 is the Canadian pension fund Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (Omers) — about 32 per cent.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/who-owns-thames-water-company-renationalisation-b1091014.html

Why on Earth would a state pension fund invest in 32% of a FTSE100 company, rather than investing in global stock markets in general with a small side of picked stocks?

Well they’re likely to lose several billion, which is not good if you’re a municipal employee in Ontario.

You can be sure that there are people in the Canadian government, UK foreign office and City all telling Reeves that a full bailout must be made or Britain wont be seen as a safe place to invest anymore.

I think she has more sense than that.
It will be a test.

Just seems bonkers that a municipal pension fund would so apparently undiversified as this Canadian one is.

The response to the threat is that the pension fund should have been more thorough in checking out the finances of Thames Water when they bought it fully loaded in debt...

One of the problems with very large pension funds, and a combined Local Authority Pension fund would fall into that category, is that it becomes very difficult to make a meaningful difference to their fund. If you invest £5m in X and X doubles in value that gain is a rounding error in the fund as a whole. There is less incentive to look for such opportunities and a stronger tendency to follow the indices.

Smaller pension funds are more nimble and can pay more attention to their individual investments. The "efficiency" of having the funds administered as one can easily be lost elsewhere. Really not sure that is a good idea.

JosiasJessop said:

boulay said:

Carnyx said:

kle4 said:

Eabhal said:

The bear thing is an interesting and effective way for women to express how they feel around men.

In response, we have a bunch of middle aged men: "But very few women spend time with bears..." "WELL ACTUALLY, Grizzly bears primarily eat berries and salmon, so it would only be POLAR bears...."

Its a dumb way to express how they feel - we have no shortage of ways to express it - which provoked a dumb reaction, which makes the whole thing absurd and diminishes the very real point about why women feel that way.

So it's not effective in the least, the dumb reaction is part of why it is not effective.

Still, some of the men spotted the logic behind the original response.

The original use of the bear analogy to show how unsafe women could be with strange men was a good shorthand - it’s when people seem to think that it’s actually a genuinely scientific or statistical argument that it’s problematic.

A few years back I was chatting to a female friend about running. I said I often went running early in the morning, before dawn. She said that she dare not do that, and she felt the local roads were unsafe in the dark. I've heard similar comments from another local woman. We do not live in a particularly 'bad' area.

I've never felt that way, and I think it's sad that so many women do feel that way.

Leon said:

Taz said:

Leon said:

Taz said:

Leon said:

Where is Crazy Joe?

A weird video of Kamala Harris talking to a recor- sorry having a phone call with the POTTY POTUS

https://x.com/disclosetv/status/1815519738631790956?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

The TwiX rumours are superbly wild. Some claim he’s already dead

Some in the MSM are literally wetting their knickers with excitement about Harris.

There’s a video of her dancing, badly, with children which has got many very very excited. Slightly embarrassing.

It is quite strange that we haven’t seen Biden at all

PBers will know that I am deeply averse to hyperbole and hate conspiracy theories, but I don’t think it’s too far fetched to believe that he was *pressured* to quit

I would think that’s a cast iron certainty.

I am also sure, 36 hours before Biden stood down endorsing Harris, the photo op of her grinning with two kids at tan ice cream stall was staged with this in mind.

Indeed, they have admitted it. Pelosi apparently had to dislodge him “the hard way”

I wonder if it was actually done against his will - like seizing the car keys out of your grandpa’s angry
hands. And he’s still fuming. Which is why he’s not been seen

Leon said:

Taz said:

Leon said:

Taz said:

Leon said:

Where is Crazy Joe?

A weird video of Kamala Harris talking to a recor- sorry having a phone call with the POTTY POTUS

https://x.com/disclosetv/status/1815519738631790956?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

The TwiX rumours are superbly wild. Some claim he’s already dead

Some in the MSM are literally wetting their knickers with excitement about Harris.

There’s a video of her dancing, badly, with children which has got many very very excited. Slightly embarrassing.

It is quite strange that we haven’t seen Biden at all

PBers will know that I am deeply averse to hyperbole and hate conspiracy theories, but I don’t think it’s too far fetched to believe that he was *pressured* to quit

I would think that’s a cast iron certainty.

I am also sure, 36 hours before Biden stood down endorsing Harris, the photo op of her grinning with two kids at tan ice cream stall was staged with this in mind.

Indeed, they have admitted it. Pelosi apparently had to dislodge him “the hard way”

I wonder if it was actually done against his will - like seizing the car keys out of your grandpa’s angry
hands. And he’s still fuming. Which is why he’s not been seen

MattW said:

Dethreaded due to my own neglect.

I think this is worth an FPT:

ohnotnow said:

NickPalmer said:

WillG said:

What a twat JD Vance is:

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick, said in 2021 that Vice President Kamala Harris is one of the “childless cat ladies” who is “miserable” with her life and has no direct stake in America because she is not a mom, the HuffPost reports.

The Repulican lady interviewed on R4 this evening was derisive about that - said she was a single cat lady too.

"To lose one cat-lady vote, Mr. Carlson, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness"

I posted a stat on that.

Single cat ladies as % of the vote in US cities.

9.9% Portland, Oregon
9.3% Seattle, Washington
8.7% Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
8.4% Kansas City, Missouri
8.3% Denver, Colorado
8.2% Albuquerque, New Mexico
7.7% Minneapolis, Minnesota
7.7% Harrisburg, Virginia
7.5% Tampa, Florida
7.5% Columbus, Ohio
https://wkfr.com/columbus-single-cat-ladies/

In numbers it is a big survey, but I don't think they are in the BPC.

Taz said:

Amusing take on a young Kamala. Or it amused me.

https://x.com/twlldun/status/1815670441698042320?s=61

eek said:

Pulpstar said:

Nigelb said:

another_richard said:

Sandpit said:

another_richard said:

Taz said:

Merging council pensions schemes could unlock a pot of cash to invest in infrastructure/give to middlemen and administrators.

It’s going to happen, isn’t it. Pensions seen by both parties as pots of cash to use. The govt are so good at spending money and investing. Nothing could go wrong.

https://www.cityam.com/merge-council-pension-schemes-to-unlock-40bn-investment-bonanza-reeves-told/

“A single LGPS with a sophisticated, long-term investment strategy might put up to £40bn into vital infrastructure,” said Tracy Blackwell, chief executive of the PIC. “That could make a big difference to the UK’s economic prospects.”

Consolidating LGPS schemes into a single fund would give Britain “a real sovereign wealth fund” that could be “run and managed to the same professional standards as world-leading schemes like Canada’s,” Blackwell added.

The phrase 'world leading' should ring alarm bells:

The largest shareholder as of July 2023 is the Canadian pension fund Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (Omers) — about 32 per cent.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/who-owns-thames-water-company-renationalisation-b1091014.html

Why on Earth would a state pension fund invest in 32% of a FTSE100 company, rather than investing in global stock markets in general with a small side of picked stocks?

Well they’re likely to lose several billion, which is not good if you’re a municipal employee in Ontario.

You can be sure that there are people in the Canadian government, UK foreign office and City all telling Reeves that a full bailout must be made or Britain wont be seen as a safe place to invest anymore.

I think she has more sense than that.
It will be a test.

Just seems bonkers that a municipal pension fund would so apparently undiversified as this Canadian one is.

The response to the threat is that the pension fund should have been more thorough in checking out the finances of Thames Water when they bought it fully loaded in debt...

Taz said:

Amusing take on a young Kamala. Or it amused me.

https://x.com/twlldun/status/1815670441698042320?s=61

TheScreamingEagles said:

Leon said:

Taz said:

Leon said:

Taz said:

Leon said:

Where is Crazy Joe?

A weird video of Kamala Harris talking to a recor- sorry having a phone call with the POTTY POTUS

https://x.com/disclosetv/status/1815519738631790956?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

The TwiX rumours are superbly wild. Some claim he’s already dead

Some in the MSM are literally wetting their knickers with excitement about Harris.

There’s a video of her dancing, badly, with children which has got many very very excited. Slightly embarrassing.

It is quite strange that we haven’t seen Biden at all

PBers will know that I am deeply averse to hyperbole and hate conspiracy theories, but I don’t think it’s too far fetched to believe that he was *pressured* to quit

I would think that’s a cast iron certainty.

I am also sure, 36 hours before Biden stood down endorsing Harris, the photo op of her grinning with two kids at tan ice cream stall was staged with this in mind.

Indeed, they have admitted it. Pelosi apparently had to dislodge him “the hard way”

I wonder if it was actually done against his will - like seizing the car keys out of your grandpa’s angry
hands. And he’s still fuming. Which is why he’s not been seen

For someone who bores PB with claims about his intelligence you are incredibly dense.

Perhaps the reason you haven’t seen Biden is that he is still self isolating with Covid.

Selebian said:

MattW said:

Dethreaded due to my own neglect.

I think this is worth an FPT:

ohnotnow said:

NickPalmer said:

WillG said:

What a twat JD Vance is:

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick, said in 2021 that Vice President Kamala Harris is one of the “childless cat ladies” who is “miserable” with her life and has no direct stake in America because she is not a mom, the HuffPost reports.

The Repulican lady interviewed on R4 this evening was derisive about that - said she was a single cat lady too.

"To lose one cat-lady vote, Mr. Carlson, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness"

I posted a stat on that.

Single cat ladies as % of the vote in US cities.

9.9% Portland, Oregon
9.3% Seattle, Washington
8.7% Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
8.4% Kansas City, Missouri
8.3% Denver, Colorado
8.2% Albuquerque, New Mexico
7.7% Minneapolis, Minnesota
7.7% Harrisburg, Virginia
7.5% Tampa, Florida
7.5% Columbus, Ohio
https://wkfr.com/columbus-single-cat-ladies/

In numbers it is a big survey, but I don't think they are in the BPC.

What are the figures for ladies with multiple cats?

JosiasJessop said:

Taz said:

Amusing take on a young Kamala. Or it amused me.

https://x.com/twlldun/status/1815670441698042320?s=61

Without going full @Leon, she looks *very* hot in that picture. Just my sort. She's fairly good-looking now as well; especially given the competition. I'd even say she's more attractive now than Melania Trump.

(And with this comment, I shall withdraw in shame.)

Wulfrun_Phil said:

MattW said:

Dethreaded due to my own neglect.

I think this is worth an FPT:

ohnotnow said:

NickPalmer said:

WillG said:

What a twat JD Vance is:

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick, said in 2021 that Vice President Kamala Harris is one of the “childless cat ladies” who is “miserable” with her life and has no direct stake in America because she is not a mom, the HuffPost reports.

The Repulican lady interviewed on R4 this evening was derisive about that - said she was a single cat lady too.

"To lose one cat-lady vote, Mr. Carlson, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness"

I posted a stat on that.

Single cat ladies as % of the vote in US cities.

9.9% Portland, Oregon
9.3% Seattle, Washington
8.7% Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
8.4% Kansas City, Missouri
8.3% Denver, Colorado
8.2% Albuquerque, New Mexico
7.7% Minneapolis, Minnesota
7.7% Harrisburg, Virginia
7.5% Tampa, Florida
7.5% Columbus, Ohio
https://wkfr.com/columbus-single-cat-ladies/

In numbers it is a big survey, but I don't think they are in the BPC.

Vance didn't just insult single women who look after cats. He also insulted women who are childless. There are quite a few of the latter too.

Theuniondivvie said:

JosiasJessop said:

Taz said:

Amusing take on a young Kamala. Or it amused me.

https://x.com/twlldun/status/1815670441698042320?s=61

Without going full @Leon, she looks *very* hot in that picture. Just my sort. She's fairly good-looking now as well; especially given the competition. I'd even say she's more attractive now than Melania Trump.

(And with this comment, I shall withdraw in shame.)

She's no Kimberly Guilfoyle.

Malmesbury said:

Wulfrun_Phil said:

MattW said:

Dethreaded due to my own neglect.

I think this is worth an FPT:

ohnotnow said:

NickPalmer said:

WillG said:

What a twat JD Vance is:

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick, said in 2021 that Vice President Kamala Harris is one of the “childless cat ladies” who is “miserable” with her life and has no direct stake in America because she is not a mom, the HuffPost reports.

The Repulican lady interviewed on R4 this evening was derisive about that - said she was a single cat lady too.

"To lose one cat-lady vote, Mr. Carlson, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness"

I posted a stat on that.

Single cat ladies as % of the vote in US cities.

9.9% Portland, Oregon
9.3% Seattle, Washington
8.7% Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
8.4% Kansas City, Missouri
8.3% Denver, Colorado
8.2% Albuquerque, New Mexico
7.7% Minneapolis, Minnesota
7.7% Harrisburg, Virginia
7.5% Tampa, Florida
7.5% Columbus, Ohio
https://wkfr.com/columbus-single-cat-ladies/

In numbers it is a big survey, but I don't think they are in the BPC.

Vance didn't just insult single women who look after cats. He also insulted women who are childless. There are quite a few of the latter too.

And insulted lots of women with children. Many mothers take a protective/kindly view of childless women - “they missed out on our blessings”.

Eabhal said:

Leon said:

williamglenn said:

https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/joe-biden-age-condition-before-election-drop-out-c9fc46ef

The Dems want all this to go away quickly now. The way they just did away with Biden, who is now in a coma in a secure bunker in Montana, with a deepfake making his “phone calls”

Trouble is I’m not sure it will go away. Indeed now that Biden has retired for undisclosed and presumably sudden “health reasons” that they won’t explain, it could get worse, once they get over the Kamalagasm

It's a bit like sending Edward VIII to France.

The truth will be that he's super depressed about getting old/ill and losing the Presidency. We should invite him to Balmoral/Sandringham for holibobs.

Leon said:

Malmesbury said:

Wulfrun_Phil said:

MattW said:

Dethreaded due to my own neglect.

I think this is worth an FPT:

ohnotnow said:

NickPalmer said:

WillG said:

What a twat JD Vance is:

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick, said in 2021 that Vice President Kamala Harris is one of the “childless cat ladies” who is “miserable” with her life and has no direct stake in America because she is not a mom, the HuffPost reports.

The Repulican lady interviewed on R4 this evening was derisive about that - said she was a single cat lady too.

"To lose one cat-lady vote, Mr. Carlson, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness"

I posted a stat on that.

Single cat ladies as % of the vote in US cities.

9.9% Portland, Oregon
9.3% Seattle, Washington
8.7% Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
8.4% Kansas City, Missouri
8.3% Denver, Colorado
8.2% Albuquerque, New Mexico
7.7% Minneapolis, Minnesota
7.7% Harrisburg, Virginia
7.5% Tampa, Florida
7.5% Columbus, Ohio
https://wkfr.com/columbus-single-cat-ladies/

In numbers it is a big survey, but I don't think they are in the BPC.

Vance didn't just insult single women who look after cats. He also insulted women who are childless. There are quite a few of the latter too.

And insulted lots of women with children. Many mothers take a protective/kindly view of childless women - “they missed out on our blessings”.

For a very smart guy (and Vance is that) it’s an incredibly dumb thing to say

Pulpstar said:

Taz said:

Amusing take on a young Kamala. Or it amused me.

https://x.com/twlldun/status/1815670441698042320?s=61

The constant references to her "youth" are a bit odd, if/when she becomes president she'll be what was the UK state pension age prior to 2010.

bobbob said:

I looked into this and made a post during the election

Thekey date seems to be 1997

If the first election you could vote was 1997 then you are far less likely to vote Conservative

if you look at the data this has shift been true for many years but is now only visible as you got older

Leon said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

Malmesbury said:

Wulfrun_Phil said:

MattW said:

Dethreaded due to my own neglect.

I think this is worth an FPT:

ohnotnow said:

NickPalmer said:

WillG said:

What a twat JD Vance is:

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick, said in 2021 that Vice President Kamala Harris is one of the “childless cat ladies” who is “miserable” with her life and has no direct stake in America because she is not a mom, the HuffPost reports.

The Repulican lady interviewed on R4 this evening was derisive about that - said she was a single cat lady too.

"To lose one cat-lady vote, Mr. Carlson, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness"

I posted a stat on that.

Single cat ladies as % of the vote in US cities.

9.9% Portland, Oregon
9.3% Seattle, Washington
8.7% Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
8.4% Kansas City, Missouri
8.3% Denver, Colorado
8.2% Albuquerque, New Mexico
7.7% Minneapolis, Minnesota
7.7% Harrisburg, Virginia
7.5% Tampa, Florida
7.5% Columbus, Ohio
https://wkfr.com/columbus-single-cat-ladies/

In numbers it is a big survey, but I don't think they are in the BPC.

Vance didn't just insult single women who look after cats. He also insulted women who are childless. There are quite a few of the latter too.

And insulted lots of women with children. Many mothers take a protective/kindly view of childless women - “they missed out on our blessings”.

For a very smart guy (and Vance is that) it’s an incredibly dumb thing to say

Dont that lot believe in *not* helping childless women to have babies, even married women? All the more sensitive therefore. (Not sure what Mr Vance himself says, but if he runs with that lot ...)

If I was Vance I’d come out and claim they deepfaked it and he didn’t say it

Malmesbury said:

eek said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

eek said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Good morning

The thread is quite relevant to me personally as with my health issues I would be delighted to be able to cast my vote in GE29

However, I think it is fair to say the change to renters, rather than home owners, is laying the foundation for very difficult problems as these renters retire with rent still to pay unlike most retiring mortgage free home owners

I do not know the solution and even if the conservative party of the next GE will be unrecognisable to many of us, but there will be a party of the centre right in some form or other

It’s worth emphasising the size of the problem - when you own a house and retire your mortgage is likely paid off so you outgoings relative to when you were previously working will be lower.

That isn’t the case if you are still renting your home. You still need to find the £700-2000 a month to pay the rent. It’s going to be a truly massive problem in 2 decades or so time.

Indeed and of course little inheritance for their families

That isn’t the problem - the question is who is going to be paying that £2000 in rent because I suspect it will very quickly become the state’s problem..

I’ve been flagging this as the next disaster for quite a while.

Leon said:

Eabhal said:

Leon said:

williamglenn said:

https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/joe-biden-age-condition-before-election-drop-out-c9fc46ef

The Dems want all this to go away quickly now. The way they just did away with Biden, who is now in a coma in a secure bunker in Montana, with a deepfake making his “phone calls”

Trouble is I’m not sure it will go away. Indeed now that Biden has retired for undisclosed and presumably sudden “health reasons” that they won’t explain, it could get worse, once they get over the Kamalagasm

It's a bit like sending Edward VIII to France.

The truth will be that he's super depressed about getting old/ill and losing the Presidency. We should invite him to Balmoral/Sandringham for holibobs.

One of the unsettling things about NOW is that voice cloning technology has got so good that stagey phone call to Kamala really could have been a fake. I am not saying it is, I am saying we have passed the point where we can tell

We can no longer determine what is true from what we see and hear with our own senses. It’s quite a moment

ydoethur said:

Theuniondivvie said:

Leon said:

Theuniondivvie said:

JosiasJessop said:

Taz said:

Amusing take on a young Kamala. Or it amused me.

https://x.com/twlldun/status/1815670441698042320?s=61

Without going full @Leon, she looks *very* hot in that picture. Just my sort. She's fairly good-looking now as well; especially given the competition. I'd even say she's more attractive now than Melania Trump.

(And with this comment, I shall withdraw in shame.)

She's no Kimberly Guilfoyle.

Good god

Some snakes for hair and she'd be turning libtards and wokesters to stone.

Vance looks like Christopher Pike in The Cage. Only a bit more psychotic.

HYUFD said:

The quickest cure for a Tory revival amongst younger voters is an unpopular Labour government running a poor economy. For example the only time the Tories have won under 30s in the last 50 years were 1979, 1983 and 2010, 2 of which were elections where that applied and the other of which saw the SDP split the centre left vote

Nigelb said:

Theuniondivvie said:

JosiasJessop said:

Taz said:

Amusing take on a young Kamala. Or it amused me.

https://x.com/twlldun/status/1815670441698042320?s=61

Without going full @Leon, she looks *very* hot in that picture. Just my sort. She's fairly good-looking now as well; especially given the competition. I'd even say she's more attractive now than Melania Trump.

(And with this comment, I shall withdraw in shame.)

She's no Kimberly Guilfoyle.

Live action Thunderbirds remake ?

Burgessian said:

HYUFD said:

The quickest cure for a Tory revival amongst younger voters is an unpopular Labour government running a poor economy. For example the only time the Tories have won under 30s in the last 50 years were 1979, 1983 and 2010, 2 of which were elections where that applied and the other of which saw the SDP split the centre left vote

I remember, years ago, reading an analysis of polling data from the days when Ted Heath was Tory leader. Tory support among the young was negligible and the party seemed doomed in the longer-term.

Just saying.

Nigelb said:

Leon said:

Eabhal said:

Leon said:

williamglenn said:

https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/joe-biden-age-condition-before-election-drop-out-c9fc46ef

The Dems want all this to go away quickly now. The way they just did away with Biden, who is now in a coma in a secure bunker in Montana, with a deepfake making his “phone calls”

Trouble is I’m not sure it will go away. Indeed now that Biden has retired for undisclosed and presumably sudden “health reasons” that they won’t explain, it could get worse, once they get over the Kamalagasm

It's a bit like sending Edward VIII to France.

The truth will be that he's super depressed about getting old/ill and losing the Presidency. We should invite him to Balmoral/Sandringham for holibobs.

One of the unsettling things about NOW is that voice cloning technology has got so good that stagey phone call to Kamala really could have been a fake. I am not saying it is, I am saying we have passed the point where we can tell

We can no longer determine what is true from what we see and hear with our own senses. It’s quite a moment

Yes - for a one off event. But it's far more difficult to deepfake a continuing narrative with any consistency.

But it's also, probably, why (eg) stadium events aren't going away.
Hard to deepfake something tens of thousand of people witness.

Leon said:

Nigelb said:

Leon said:

Eabhal said:

Leon said:

williamglenn said:

https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/joe-biden-age-condition-before-election-drop-out-c9fc46ef

The Dems want all this to go away quickly now. The way they just did away with Biden, who is now in a coma in a secure bunker in Montana, with a deepfake making his “phone calls”

Trouble is I’m not sure it will go away. Indeed now that Biden has retired for undisclosed and presumably sudden “health reasons” that they won’t explain, it could get worse, once they get over the Kamalagasm

It's a bit like sending Edward VIII to France.

The truth will be that he's super depressed about getting old/ill and losing the Presidency. We should invite him to Balmoral/Sandringham for holibobs.

One of the unsettling things about NOW is that voice cloning technology has got so good that stagey phone call to Kamala really could have been a fake. I am not saying it is, I am saying we have passed the point where we can tell

We can no longer determine what is true from what we see and hear with our own senses. It’s quite a moment

Yes - for a one off event. But it's far more difficult to deepfake a continuing narrative with any consistency.

But it's also, probably, why (eg) stadium events aren't going away.
Hard to deepfake something tens of thousand of people witness.

In the end, everything will be fake-able, but it will be a particular and enormous problem with anything that is witnessed via a screen or a signal, which is about 99.3% of politics, the 0.7% is those stadium events, meet and greets, canvassing, etc

I am honestly not sure how politics as we know it can survive this; indeed, it cannot. Democracy might be finished

Cookie said:

viewcode said:

viewcode said:

Cookie said:

FPT, but actually more relevant to this one - in reply to @viewcode:

viewcode said:

Cookie said:

kle4 said:

nico679 said:

NickPalmer said:

WillG said:

What a twat JD Vance is:

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick, said in 2021 that Vice President Kamala Harris is one of the “childless cat ladies” who is “miserable” with her life and has no direct stake in America because she is not a mom, the HuffPost reports.

The Repulican lady interviewed on R4 this evening was derisive about that - said she was a single cat lady too.

That kind of comment is likely to go down badly . If Vance thinks trashing women who either choose not to have kids or can’t have them is a vote winner then he really is deluded .

Wasn't it female voters who won it for Biden last time? I know he increased the Democrat share among white men, which was likely important too, but I seem to recall the gender gap was pretty large still.

IIRC, the number of women now reaching the age of 45 without kids is about 25%. More pertinently, the number of these who have chosen not to have kids is about 3%.
That we have contrived to arrange society thus is one of history's biggest failures.

A rather horrible cooperation between the Conservative Party (stop paying poor people to have children!) and boomers (give me money, not my children!) led to an outcome neither side wanted. In fairness to them, the extended childhood ushered in by New Labour (everybody must go to University!) didn't help either.

I don't necessarily deny this (though I don't think we should be paying anyone to have children, we should be creating the economic and societal conditions where it is not prohibitively expensive to do so) - but this isn't just a British phenomenon; it appears to be common to the whole of the developed world (and also Russia).
It's a problem, but it's a very interesting problem.

That's fair, @Cookie. It is true that the Conservatives did not fix the problem (and arguably made it worse), but it is also true that they did not cause it. I'm going to split my answer into two parts. This is part 1: an AI summary of Zeihan's explanation.

Part 1: Zeihan on Demography: the basics
In this episode Peter Zeihan explains the importance of population structures in shaping economies and countries' success.

The traditional pyramid demographic model has a large young population at the bottom and few retirees at the top, leading to inflationary economic activity. However, due to decreased child mortality and increased lifespans, many countries now have a chimney-shaped demographic structure with a balanced distribution of age groups, resulting in controlled inflation and a balanced economy.

He also highlights the emerging trend of an inverted pyramid demographic model, where there are more people in older age groups than younger ones. This leads to a decline in consumption and a surplus of capital, requiring countries to focus on exports. This shift has been observed in Europe and Asia since 2000, impacting global trade relations.

He then categorizes countries based on their demographic structures, from pyramid-shaped (Arab world, sub-Saharan Africa) to chimney-shaped (India, United States) to inverted pyramid-shaped (Germany, Italy). He warns that countries with an aging population and declining birth rates will have problems in the coming decade, as the workforce moves into retirement with insufficient younger generations to support consumption and production.

To address this issue, countries can either increase their birth rates or implement large-scale immigration policies to bolster their populations. However, once a country's demographic structure has inverted, it's difficult to reverse the trend.

He ends by saying that to fix all this you should have started thirty years ago, and in the next episode he discusses Canada as a country that did exactly that through immigration policies.

This is part 2: me picking out the salient points

Part 2: Viewcode's tenpennyworth

• Urbanisation. People moved from the country to the cities. In the country you can have a farm and children are a boon because they can work. In the cities children are expensive furniture that break things
  
• Birth control. If you can control your reproductive cycle you can put off having children until it's convenient. But it never is...
  
• Juvenilization of adults. By continually pushing the age of agency up, people are now not starting families until their mid twenties or even thirties or forties. That's too late. This has been exacerbated in the UK by pensionerism as older people treat their grandchildren as children.
  
• Longer life spans. Old people use up resources and must be looked after, which reduces the amount of time and resources you have to make and look after babies.
  

Hat tip to you, @viewcode , for introducing something I hadn't particularly thought of: your fourth point. The other three are choices, and I recognise the truth of them, but if we truly wanted children we could overcome them. The fourth is an external factor, and is true whether you are taking care of old people at an individual level or at a state level: the more we spend on the old, the less we will have to spend on the young. Therefore more old people almost necessarily leads to fewer young people. We are necessarily being destroyed by the demographic miracle of a century ago.

This factor is why declining birth rates are common everywhere, regardless of local cultural or economic factors. (Perhaps - more research needed - the steepness of the decline is a factor of the steepness of the growth 50-100 years ago? I bet it is. I bet you could find a convincing correlation.)

How do we overcome this? I would suggest the only way to do it is by reclassifying 'old' upwards by however much we've increased the life expectancy by. Life expectancy now 85 rather than 75? Great, retire at 75 rather than 65. Retiring at 75 and dying at 85 is surely a better deal than retiring at 65 and dying at 75. And as a society we get much, much richer as a result. The counter to this is that people will not be fit to work in their 70s, but I don't fully buy that: the average 70 year old today is at least as hale and hearty as the average 60 year old two generations back. Those approaching 50 today (*cough*) are as healthy and fit as those a decade younger used to be. We were discussing yesterday - in the context of Kamala Harris and Kier Starmer - how much younger looking people are now. And I posted this, from 1975: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frUqq4Q8gsg
- this is what a 46 year old looked like in 1975:


It'll be politically difficult to do. There'll be an angry pensioner along to tell you how hard they worked for their 25-year long retirement. But as someone for whom retirement is no longer an unimaginably remote landmark on the horizon, I'm the generation who stands to lose out the most - yet it strikes me as the only equitable and affordable solution. The only alternatives are can-kicking ponzi schemes: either extracting people from the third world indefinitely or piling more and more costs onto future generations.
I won't be as lucky as my parents generation who in many cases will spend longer retired than they did working and who can spend healthy decades jetting around the world. But I will still undoubtedly be luckier than every single generation that preceded them.

BartholomewRoberts said:

Leon said:

williamglenn said:

https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/joe-biden-age-condition-before-election-drop-out-c9fc46ef

The Dems want all this to go away quickly now. The way they just did away with Biden, who is now in a coma in a secure bunker in Montana, with a deepfake making his “phone calls”

Trouble is I’m not sure it will go away. Indeed now that Biden has retired for undisclosed and presumably sudden “health reasons” that they won’t explain, it could get worse, once they get over the Kamalagasm

Give over, its over.

There's only one party now with a doddery, demented old fool on the ticket - and it's not the donkey.

Stocky said:

DavidL said:

eek said:

Pulpstar said:

Nigelb said:

another_richard said:

Sandpit said:

another_richard said:

Taz said:

Merging council pensions schemes could unlock a pot of cash to invest in infrastructure/give to middlemen and administrators.

It’s going to happen, isn’t it. Pensions seen by both parties as pots of cash to use. The govt are so good at spending money and investing. Nothing could go wrong.

https://www.cityam.com/merge-council-pension-schemes-to-unlock-40bn-investment-bonanza-reeves-told/

“A single LGPS with a sophisticated, long-term investment strategy might put up to £40bn into vital infrastructure,” said Tracy Blackwell, chief executive of the PIC. “That could make a big difference to the UK’s economic prospects.”

Consolidating LGPS schemes into a single fund would give Britain “a real sovereign wealth fund” that could be “run and managed to the same professional standards as world-leading schemes like Canada’s,” Blackwell added.

The phrase 'world leading' should ring alarm bells:

The largest shareholder as of July 2023 is the Canadian pension fund Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (Omers) — about 32 per cent.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/who-owns-thames-water-company-renationalisation-b1091014.html

Why on Earth would a state pension fund invest in 32% of a FTSE100 company, rather than investing in global stock markets in general with a small side of picked stocks?

Well they’re likely to lose several billion, which is not good if you’re a municipal employee in Ontario.

You can be sure that there are people in the Canadian government, UK foreign office and City all telling Reeves that a full bailout must be made or Britain wont be seen as a safe place to invest anymore.

I think she has more sense than that.
It will be a test.

Just seems bonkers that a municipal pension fund would so apparently undiversified as this Canadian one is.

The response to the threat is that the pension fund should have been more thorough in checking out the finances of Thames Water when they bought it fully loaded in debt...

One of the problems with very large pension funds, and a combined Local Authority Pension fund would fall into that category, is that it becomes very difficult to make a meaningful difference to their fund. If you invest £5m in X and X doubles in value that gain is a rounding error in the fund as a whole. There is less incentive to look for such opportunities and a stronger tendency to follow the indices.

Smaller pension funds are more nimble and can pay more attention to their individual investments. The "efficiency" of having the funds administered as one can easily be lost elsewhere. Really not sure that is a good idea.

Looking for opportunities (by which you mean stock-picking) means you have to pay managers to do this. Secondly, stock-picking is contrary to the efficient markets hypothesis, which I think is true (market prices reflect existing known information (except in the case if insider-dealing)). Index tracker funds cost pennies to invest in and so without the drag of management costs (and higher transactional costs through increased trading) usually outperform the mean.

Pulpstar said:

Martin Lewis has repeated a point I've banged on about for ages (Though him being him more people might listen)

Martin Lewis
3m ·
An important clarification - pls share.
There is NO two child cap on Child Benefit
I've had questions, as many media outlets write confusing statements or use 'child benefit' as shorthand. The two-child cap is not about Child Benefit, it is about benefits (eg Universal Credit or tax credit).
Child Benefit is separate and is increased for every child.

bobbob said:

Alanbrooke said:

Benpointer said:

Nigelb said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Good morning, everyone.

Sorry for going off-topic (although slightly related to the last thread discussion), but isn't a major problem simply that equality doesn't work well for romantic matches, hence rising singleness?

What I mean by this is that women have equality in the workplace. That's a good thing. Women also tend to want to marry up. The economic circumstances of a man matters way more to a woman than the economic circumstances of a woman do to a man.

But that's a problem because equality means roughly the same earning potential so lines drawn according to economic circumstance will average out to being horizontal between men and women. Hence, middle and lower income chaps find things very difficult, because the desire line of marrying up just cuts out a ton of men.

This tallies with what's been remarked upon here before, that overall frisky time is the same as ever, but guys at the top are having tons whereas men at the bottom are getting none. But on a societal level that's no way to reach a standard of stable families and most people being happily married with kids.

Anyway, that's some sleepy waffling psychological rambling, but it might have something to it.

The Taiwan article I posted in the last thread suggests a different paradigm.

https://alethios.substack.com/p/unexplored-unsaid
...Curiously, TSMC stands apart here. Their Taiwanese workforce accounts for a staggering 1.8% of births in Taiwan (and growing quickly, up from 1.4% in 2019), despite being just 0.3% of the population. After adjusting for demographic differences, I estimate10 that TSMC employees have 2.8x more children than the national average, giving a TFR of around 2.45 children per woman. This is especially noteworthy since every statistical indicator predicts lower-than-average fertility. Employees are overwhelmingly urban, highly educated, irreligious, work long hours, and have a 2:1 skew in gender ratio - all of which would predict lower fertility than the Taiwanese average...

What's TSMC?

Probably one of the most important companies youve never heard of.

They make all the most sophisticated semiconductors that run the world around you.

TSMC is an interesting company I only learnt recently it was created, owned and controlled by the Taiwanese state govt

RoC not exactly playing fair in the free market like US/UK do !!

US and eu are now spending billions trying to bring back some semiconductors for military security

Theuniondivvie said:

Dura_Ace said:

Leon said:

Theuniondivvie said:

JosiasJessop said:

Taz said:

Amusing take on a young Kamala. Or it amused me.

https://x.com/twlldun/status/1815670441698042320?s=61

Without going full @Leon, she looks *very* hot in that picture. Just my sort. She's fairly good-looking now as well; especially given the competition. I'd even say she's more attractive now than Melania Trump.

(And with this comment, I shall withdraw in shame.)

She's no Kimberly Guilfoyle.

Good god

You do have to wonder what's going on. DJTJ could be getting served **** on the reg by solid 9+s (NYC Over 30s Division) yet he's with Zelda out of Terrahawks not Zelda out of Legend of Zelda.

The twitter psychologists (I know) say Kimberly bears more than a passing resemblance to Melania, which is pretty fckd up in a wonderfully Trumpian way.

Leon said:

Cookie said:

viewcode said:

viewcode said:

Cookie said:

FPT, but actually more relevant to this one - in reply to @viewcode:

viewcode said:

Cookie said:

kle4 said:

nico679 said:

NickPalmer said:

WillG said:

What a twat JD Vance is:

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick, said in 2021 that Vice President Kamala Harris is one of the “childless cat ladies” who is “miserable” with her life and has no direct stake in America because she is not a mom, the HuffPost reports.

The Repulican lady interviewed on R4 this evening was derisive about that - said she was a single cat lady too.

That kind of comment is likely to go down badly . If Vance thinks trashing women who either choose not to have kids or can’t have them is a vote winner then he really is deluded .

Wasn't it female voters who won it for Biden last time? I know he increased the Democrat share among white men, which was likely important too, but I seem to recall the gender gap was pretty large still.

IIRC, the number of women now reaching the age of 45 without kids is about 25%. More pertinently, the number of these who have chosen not to have kids is about 3%.
That we have contrived to arrange society thus is one of history's biggest failures.

A rather horrible cooperation between the Conservative Party (stop paying poor people to have children!) and boomers (give me money, not my children!) led to an outcome neither side wanted. In fairness to them, the extended childhood ushered in by New Labour (everybody must go to University!) didn't help either.

I don't necessarily deny this (though I don't think we should be paying anyone to have children, we should be creating the economic and societal conditions where it is not prohibitively expensive to do so) - but this isn't just a British phenomenon; it appears to be common to the whole of the developed world (and also Russia).
It's a problem, but it's a very interesting problem.

That's fair, @Cookie. It is true that the Conservatives did not fix the problem (and arguably made it worse), but it is also true that they did not cause it. I'm going to split my answer into two parts. This is part 1: an AI summary of Zeihan's explanation.

Part 1: Zeihan on Demography: the basics
In this episode Peter Zeihan explains the importance of population structures in shaping economies and countries' success.

The traditional pyramid demographic model has a large young population at the bottom and few retirees at the top, leading to inflationary economic activity. However, due to decreased child mortality and increased lifespans, many countries now have a chimney-shaped demographic structure with a balanced distribution of age groups, resulting in controlled inflation and a balanced economy.

He also highlights the emerging trend of an inverted pyramid demographic model, where there are more people in older age groups than younger ones. This leads to a decline in consumption and a surplus of capital, requiring countries to focus on exports. This shift has been observed in Europe and Asia since 2000, impacting global trade relations.

He then categorizes countries based on their demographic structures, from pyramid-shaped (Arab world, sub-Saharan Africa) to chimney-shaped (India, United States) to inverted pyramid-shaped (Germany, Italy). He warns that countries with an aging population and declining birth rates will have problems in the coming decade, as the workforce moves into retirement with insufficient younger generations to support consumption and production.

To address this issue, countries can either increase their birth rates or implement large-scale immigration policies to bolster their populations. However, once a country's demographic structure has inverted, it's difficult to reverse the trend.

He ends by saying that to fix all this you should have started thirty years ago, and in the next episode he discusses Canada as a country that did exactly that through immigration policies.

This is part 2: me picking out the salient points

Part 2: Viewcode's tenpennyworth

• Urbanisation. People moved from the country to the cities. In the country you can have a farm and children are a boon because they can work. In the cities children are expensive furniture that break things
  
• Birth control. If you can control your reproductive cycle you can put off having children until it's convenient. But it never is...
  
• Juvenilization of adults. By continually pushing the age of agency up, people are now not starting families until their mid twenties or even thirties or forties. That's too late. This has been exacerbated in the UK by pensionerism as older people treat their grandchildren as children.
  
• Longer life spans. Old people use up resources and must be looked after, which reduces the amount of time and resources you have to make and look after babies.
  

Hat tip to you, @viewcode , for introducing something I hadn't particularly thought of: your fourth point. The other three are choices, and I recognise the truth of them, but if we truly wanted children we could overcome them. The fourth is an external factor, and is true whether you are taking care of old people at an individual level or at a state level: the more we spend on the old, the less we will have to spend on the young. Therefore more old people almost necessarily leads to fewer young people. We are necessarily being destroyed by the demographic miracle of a century ago.

This factor is why declining birth rates are common everywhere, regardless of local cultural or economic factors. (Perhaps - more research needed - the steepness of the decline is a factor of the steepness of the growth 50-100 years ago? I bet it is. I bet you could find a convincing correlation.)

How do we overcome this? I would suggest the only way to do it is by reclassifying 'old' upwards by however much we've increased the life expectancy by. Life expectancy now 85 rather than 75? Great, retire at 75 rather than 65. Retiring at 75 and dying at 85 is surely a better deal than retiring at 65 and dying at 75. And as a society we get much, much richer as a result. The counter to this is that people will not be fit to work in their 70s, but I don't fully buy that: the average 70 year old today is at least as hale and hearty as the average 60 year old two generations back. Those approaching 50 today (*cough*) are as healthy and fit as those a decade younger used to be. We were discussing yesterday - in the context of Kamala Harris and Kier Starmer - how much younger looking people are now. And I posted this, from 1975: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frUqq4Q8gsg
- this is what a 46 year old looked like in 1975:


It'll be politically difficult to do. There'll be an angry pensioner along to tell you how hard they worked for their 25-year long retirement. But as someone for whom retirement is no longer an unimaginably remote landmark on the horizon, I'm the generation who stands to lose out the most - yet it strikes me as the only equitable and affordable solution. The only alternatives are can-kicking ponzi schemes: either extracting people from the third world indefinitely or piling more and more costs onto future generations.
I won't be as lucky as my parents generation who in many cases will spend longer retired than they did working and who can spend healthy decades jetting around the world. But I will still undoubtedly be luckier than every single generation that preceded them.

I looked about 28 into my early 50s. And then suddenly I didn’t

*quietly sobs in l’Aveyron*

BartholomewRoberts said:

Andy_JS said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Casino_Royale said:

JosiasJessop said:

"Online influencers like Andrew Tate are radicalising boys into extreme misogyny in a way that is "quite terrifying", police are warning."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cne4vw1x83po

I think Wokery, turbocharged by social media, is driving misogyny amongst boys and misandry amongst girls. Just look at that stupid poll on young women preferring to be with a bear than a man in a forest upthread.

Identity politics must end.

Its not remotely stupid that women feel safer with a bear than a strange man. Maybe you should stop moaning about identity politics and actually listen women and their concerns instead.

I heard this from my wife long before I heard it on this site, and she said bear too. The context given was that it was a stranger not a man you know in case that makes a difference to you.

A bear is likely to leave you alone. Far fewer women are attacked by bears than men. Instead of moaning about identity politics, how about we deal with the predators that make so many women feel unsafe - and those predators are not bears!

Even though a random bear is probably many thousands of times more likely to attack them than a random man?

Is it?

Most bears, like most men, leave people alone.

Another factor is that if a woman is attacked by a bear people are sympathetic and supportive. Nobody says the woman consented to the attack, or was asking for it, or made it up. Or in America gets threatened for filing a false report to the Police for reporting an attack that did happen. None of that happens with bears.

Cookie said:

viewcode said:

viewcode said:

Cookie said:

FPT, but actually more relevant to this one - in reply to @viewcode:

viewcode said:

Cookie said:

kle4 said:

nico679 said:

NickPalmer said:

WillG said:

What a twat JD Vance is:

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick, said in 2021 that Vice President Kamala Harris is one of the “childless cat ladies” who is “miserable” with her life and has no direct stake in America because she is not a mom, the HuffPost reports.

The Repulican lady interviewed on R4 this evening was derisive about that - said she was a single cat lady too.

That kind of comment is likely to go down badly . If Vance thinks trashing women who either choose not to have kids or can’t have them is a vote winner then he really is deluded .

Wasn't it female voters who won it for Biden last time? I know he increased the Democrat share among white men, which was likely important too, but I seem to recall the gender gap was pretty large still.

IIRC, the number of women now reaching the age of 45 without kids is about 25%. More pertinently, the number of these who have chosen not to have kids is about 3%.
That we have contrived to arrange society thus is one of history's biggest failures.

A rather horrible cooperation between the Conservative Party (stop paying poor people to have children!) and boomers (give me money, not my children!) led to an outcome neither side wanted. In fairness to them, the extended childhood ushered in by New Labour (everybody must go to University!) didn't help either.

I don't necessarily deny this (though I don't think we should be paying anyone to have children, we should be creating the economic and societal conditions where it is not prohibitively expensive to do so) - but this isn't just a British phenomenon; it appears to be common to the whole of the developed world (and also Russia).
It's a problem, but it's a very interesting problem.

That's fair, @Cookie. It is true that the Conservatives did not fix the problem (and arguably made it worse), but it is also true that they did not cause it. I'm going to split my answer into two parts. This is part 1: an AI summary of Zeihan's explanation.

Part 1: Zeihan on Demography: the basics
In this episode Peter Zeihan explains the importance of population structures in shaping economies and countries' success.

The traditional pyramid demographic model has a large young population at the bottom and few retirees at the top, leading to inflationary economic activity. However, due to decreased child mortality and increased lifespans, many countries now have a chimney-shaped demographic structure with a balanced distribution of age groups, resulting in controlled inflation and a balanced economy.

He also highlights the emerging trend of an inverted pyramid demographic model, where there are more people in older age groups than younger ones. This leads to a decline in consumption and a surplus of capital, requiring countries to focus on exports. This shift has been observed in Europe and Asia since 2000, impacting global trade relations.

He then categorizes countries based on their demographic structures, from pyramid-shaped (Arab world, sub-Saharan Africa) to chimney-shaped (India, United States) to inverted pyramid-shaped (Germany, Italy). He warns that countries with an aging population and declining birth rates will have problems in the coming decade, as the workforce moves into retirement with insufficient younger generations to support consumption and production.

To address this issue, countries can either increase their birth rates or implement large-scale immigration policies to bolster their populations. However, once a country's demographic structure has inverted, it's difficult to reverse the trend.

He ends by saying that to fix all this you should have started thirty years ago, and in the next episode he discusses Canada as a country that did exactly that through immigration policies.

This is part 2: me picking out the salient points

Part 2: Viewcode's tenpennyworth

• Urbanisation. People moved from the country to the cities. In the country you can have a farm and children are a boon because they can work. In the cities children are expensive furniture that break things
  
• Birth control. If you can control your reproductive cycle you can put off having children until it's convenient. But it never is...
  
• Juvenilization of adults. By continually pushing the age of agency up, people are now not starting families until their mid twenties or even thirties or forties. That's too late. This has been exacerbated in the UK by pensionerism as older people treat their grandchildren as children.
  
• Longer life spans. Old people use up resources and must be looked after, which reduces the amount of time and resources you have to make and look after babies.
  

Hat tip to you, @viewcode , for introducing something I hadn't particularly thought of: your fourth point. The other three are choices, and I recognise the truth of them, but if we truly wanted children we could overcome them. The fourth is an external factor, and is true whether you are taking care of old people at an individual level or at a state level: the more we spend on the old, the less we will have to spend on the young. Therefore more old people almost necessarily leads to fewer young people. We are necessarily being destroyed by the demographic miracle of a century ago.

This factor is why declining birth rates are common everywhere, regardless of local cultural or economic factors. (Perhaps - more research needed - the steepness of the decline is a factor of the steepness of the growth 50-100 years ago? I bet it is. I bet you could find a convincing correlation.)

How do we overcome this? I would suggest the only way to do it is by reclassifying 'old' upwards by however much we've increased the life expectancy by. Life expectancy now 85 rather than 75? Great, retire at 75 rather than 65. Retiring at 75 and dying at 85 is surely a better deal than retiring at 65 and dying at 75. And as a society we get much, much richer as a result. The counter to this is that people will not be fit to work in their 70s, but I don't fully buy that: the average 70 year old today is at least as hale and hearty as the average 60 year old two generations back. Those approaching 50 today (*cough*) are as healthy and fit as those a decade younger used to be. We were discussing yesterday - in the context of Kamala Harris and Kier Starmer - how much younger looking people are now. And I posted this, from 1975: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frUqq4Q8gsg
- this is what a 46 year old looked like in 1975:


It'll be politically difficult to do. There'll be an angry pensioner along to tell you how hard they worked for their 25-year long retirement. But as someone for whom retirement is no longer an unimaginably remote landmark on the horizon, I'm the generation who stands to lose out the most - yet it strikes me as the only equitable and affordable solution. The only alternatives are can-kicking ponzi schemes: either extracting people from the third world indefinitely or piling more and more costs onto future generations.
I won't be as lucky as my parents generation who in many cases will spend longer retired than they did working and who can spend healthy decades jetting around the world. But I will still undoubtedly be luckier than every single generation that preceded them.

BartholomewRoberts said:

Dumbosaurus said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Andy_JS said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Casino_Royale said:

JosiasJessop said:

"Online influencers like Andrew Tate are radicalising boys into extreme misogyny in a way that is "quite terrifying", police are warning."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cne4vw1x83po

I think Wokery, turbocharged by social media, is driving misogyny amongst boys and misandry amongst girls. Just look at that stupid poll on young women preferring to be with a bear than a man in a forest upthread.

Identity politics must end.

Its not remotely stupid that women feel safer with a bear than a strange man. Maybe you should stop moaning about identity politics and actually listen women and their concerns instead.

I heard this from my wife long before I heard it on this site, and she said bear too. The context given was that it was a stranger not a man you know in case that makes a difference to you.

A bear is likely to leave you alone. Far fewer women are attacked by bears than men. Instead of moaning about identity politics, how about we deal with the predators that make so many women feel unsafe - and those predators are not bears!

Even though a random bear is probably many thousands of times more likely to attack them than a random man?

Is it?

Most bears, like most men, leave people alone.

Another factor is that if a woman is attacked by a bear people are sympathetic and supportive. Nobody says the woman consented to the attack, or was asking for it, or made it up. Or in America gets threatened for filing a false report to the Police for reporting an attack that did happen. None of that happens with bears.

The question is very poorly phrased. A bear a few yards away is probably not going to leave you alone if it's being forced to stay with you. A bear in the same forest of course will.

The original question is would you rather be in the same forest . . .