Unfortunately for Downing Street, exactly 37 minutes after their line was published Guido went to pixel with evidence that Starmer paid tribute to the Queen on the day of her death from the very same ‘one-off’ penthouse. Gone were the family photos – replaced with some dark urns and books including an Obama biography…
This is going to become untenable for Keir Starmer. The revelations about Lord Alli’s apartment have only just started…
Cavaet emptor....recent record on scalps is very poor, and he was giving the big 'un during the GE about a scandal that was nothing.
It's what you do. It's called FILM MAKING. You don't let a film crew into your house unless you are demented. Houses are not designed to shoot in so you recreate them. I really cant believe the morons they're letting onto this site anymore.. I know Livermore hasn't got a brain but I thought you would be more clued up.
Huh, are you having a problem reading. My comment is buyer beware, have heard it all before, not convinced at all. However, this is a political betting website, its sort of relevant that somebody is claiming they have big dirt coming.
Then why repeat such an absurd story? You wouldn't shoot anything in someones house. You either use a studio with a set designer with a brief 'recreate Starmer's home' or you get a location finder to find somewhere that would be suitable.In other words you build the set on location.
Typically it would be several times the size of someone's house to acomodate a crew of abut 12 and equipment that would take up more space than the crew.
You expect this ignorance from Guido and his super-dim readers but not on PB.
Its a good job Downing Street didn't lie about its usage then... They told the Guardian "it was a ‘one-off’ use of the place.
Unfortunately for Downing Street, exactly 37 minutes after their line was published Guido went to pixel with evidence that Starmer paid tribute to the Queen on the day of her death from the very same ‘one-off’ penthouse. Gone were the family photos – replaced with some dark urns and books including an Obama biography…
This is going to become untenable for Keir Starmer. The revelations about Lord Alli’s apartment have only just started…
Cavaet emptor....recent record on scalps is very poor, and he was giving the big 'un during the GE about a scandal that was nothing.
It's what you do. It's called FILM MAKING. You don't let a film crew into your house unless you are demented. Houses are not designed to shoot in so you recreate them. I really cant believe the morons they're letting onto this site anymore.. I know Livermore hasn't got a brain but I thought you would be more clued up.
Huh, are you having a problem reading. My comment is buyer beware, have heard it all before, not convinced at all. However, this is a political betting website, its sort of relevant that somebody is claiming they have big dirt coming.
Then why repeat such an absurd story? You wouldn't shoot anything in someones house. You either use a studio with a set designer with a brief 'recreate Starmer's home' or you get a location finder to find somewhere that would be suitable.In other words you build the set on location.
Typically it would be several times the size of someone's house to acomodate a crew of abut 12 and equipment that would take up more space than the crew.
You expect this ignorance from Guido and his super-dim readers but not on PB.
You must despair of good governance if you live in Scotland.
On the other hand you could point the Scots at Wales and emphasis how there is no real opposition there unlike Scotland which has Labour and the SNP...
The contemporary problem is that all governments are disliked, SNP, Labour, Tory, Macron, Biden, Trumpist, Treudeau etc. It's very hard to find a popular government in any democratic country in the world, and not much evidence that undemocratic countries governments are popular either.
It seems to be less about who is in charge than that people have far higher expectations than can be delivered. There's very little optimism, positivity or vision about anywhere in the world.
Also I think voters really don't like governments who presided over economic upheavals, regardless of how much blame might fairly be attributed to the politicians. Being in power during the post covid inflation period is not good for your popularity, just as being in power during the global financial crisis and its aftermath was not good for popularity. The voters don't give much credit for handling it comparatively well versus badly, I think. (e.g. I think Biden could reasonably claim to have brought the US out of the inflation period in better shape than many other economies, but if the Dems do pull out a victory in November next year it won't be on the back of positive economic sentiment.)
November *this* year, I mean. I have no opinion on the outcome of the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections...
Unfortunately for Downing Street, exactly 37 minutes after their line was published Guido went to pixel with evidence that Starmer paid tribute to the Queen on the day of her death from the very same ‘one-off’ penthouse. Gone were the family photos – replaced with some dark urns and books including an Obama biography…
This is going to become untenable for Keir Starmer. The revelations about Lord Alli’s apartment have only just started…
Cavaet emptor....recent record on scalps is very poor, and he was giving the big 'un during the GE about a scandal that was nothing.
It's what you do. It's called FILM MAKING. You don't let a film crew into your house unless you are demented. Houses are not designed to shoot in so you recreate them. I really cant believe the morons they're letting onto this site anymore.. I know Livermore hasn't got a brain but I thought you would be more clued up.
Huh, are you having a problem reading. My comment is buyer beware, have heard it all before, not convinced at all. However, this is a political betting website, its sort of relevant that somebody is claiming they have big dirt coming.
Then why repeat such an absurd story? You wouldn't shoot anything in someones house. You either use a studio with a set designer with a brief 'recreate Starmer's home' or you get a location finder to find somewhere that would be suitable.In other words you build the set on location.
Typically it would be several times the size of someone's house to acomodate a crew of abut 12 and equipment that would take up more space than the crew.
You expect this ignorance from Guido and his super-dim readers but not on PB.
I look at this story as SKS going - I need to film something that needs to look like home, let's ask someone who works in TV(Lord Alli) for their advice.
And Lord Alli going - I know the perfect place and it won't require any real work as it's big enough for a camera crew...
It's so much a none story that I can't see the fuss - the one thing it shows me is that 24 hour news channels with their desperation for cheap easy to report "news" is not a good idea..
Mr. F, and yet, somehow still less stupid than the greatest smith in Middle-Earth needing to be taught what an alloy is.
The biggest problem is that the series was obviously written, in part, by people who had read everything Tolkien wrote and.... listened. If that is the right word.
Then a bunch of other writers came in and put bad soap opera on top.
So we get Sauron considering repentance. But ending up doing evil, again, because his repentance isn't truly in his soul. Straight out of Tolkien. The origin of orcs and their moral value. etc
Also, Peter Jackson described how, when making the films, he would get random and utterly insane "suggestions" from the studio execs. Which he binned. The tenor of those suggestions matches what is wrong with the series.
Unfortunately for Downing Street, exactly 37 minutes after their line was published Guido went to pixel with evidence that Starmer paid tribute to the Queen on the day of her death from the very same ‘one-off’ penthouse. Gone were the family photos – replaced with some dark urns and books including an Obama biography…
This is going to become untenable for Keir Starmer. The revelations about Lord Alli’s apartment have only just started…
Cavaet emptor....recent record on scalps is very poor, and he was giving the big 'un during the GE about a scandal that was nothing.
It's what you do. It's called FILM MAKING. You don't let a film crew into your house unless you are demented. Houses are not designed to shoot in so you recreate them. I really cant believe the morons they're letting onto this site anymore.. I know Livermore hasn't got a brain but I thought you would be more clued up.
Huh, are you having a problem reading. My comment is buyer beware, have heard it all before, not convinced at all. However, this is a political betting website, its sort of relevant that somebody is claiming they have big dirt coming.
Then why repeat such an absurd story? You wouldn't shoot anything in someones house. You either use a studio with a set designer with a brief 'recreate Starmer's home' or you get a location finder to find somewhere that would be suitable.In other words you build the set on location.
Typically it would be several times the size of someone's house to acomodate a crew of abut 12 and equipment that would take up more space than the crew.
You expect this ignorance from Guido and his super-dim readers but not on PB.
I believe the famous "Maitlis Interview" was shot in the interviewee's house.
I have to say, the US wouldn't the first place I would be looking at for prison reform ideas, but maybe they have good ideas.
Perhaps we can give all prisoners the equivalent of a Nectar card for their stay and they can earn points and redeem them for some luxuries.
And perhaps we could learn lessons from, you know, European countries that have functioning prison systems, lower prison populations, lower crime rates and much lower reoffending rates rather than…er…Texas state penitentiaries.
Always pointing in Sweden seems to have gone out of fashion these days among lefties.....
Interestingly on Sweden, the people who constantly harped on about Scandinavian models as their inspiraction were Cameron and Osborne, and iirc Val Policella when talking about education.
Unfortunately for Downing Street, exactly 37 minutes after their line was published Guido went to pixel with evidence that Starmer paid tribute to the Queen on the day of her death from the very same ‘one-off’ penthouse. Gone were the family photos – replaced with some dark urns and books including an Obama biography…
This is going to become untenable for Keir Starmer. The revelations about Lord Alli’s apartment have only just started…
Cavaet emptor....recent record on scalps is very poor, and he was giving the big 'un during the GE about a scandal that was nothing.
It's what you do. It's called FILM MAKING. You don't let a film crew into your house unless you are demented. Houses are not designed to shoot in so you recreate them. I really cant believe the morons they're letting onto this site anymore.. I know Livermore hasn't got a brain but I thought you would be more clued up.
Huh, are you having a problem reading. My comment is buyer beware, have heard it all before, not convinced at all. However, this is a political betting website, its sort of relevant that somebody is claiming they have big dirt coming.
Then why repeat such an absurd story? You wouldn't shoot anything in someones house. You either use a studio with a set designer with a brief 'recreate Starmer's home' or you get a location finder to find somewhere that would be suitable.In other words you build the set on location.
Typically it would be several times the size of someone's house to acomodate a crew of abut 12 and equipment that would take up more space than the crew.
You expect this ignorance from Guido and his super-dim readers but not on PB.
I look at this story as SKS going - I need to film something that needs to look like home, let's ask someone who works in TV(Lord Alli) for their advice.
And Lord Alli going - I know the perfect place and it won't require any real work as it's big enough for a camera crew...
And the rest of the world going: that just sounds weird.
Unfortunately for Downing Street, exactly 37 minutes after their line was published Guido went to pixel with evidence that Starmer paid tribute to the Queen on the day of her death from the very same ‘one-off’ penthouse. Gone were the family photos – replaced with some dark urns and books including an Obama biography…
This is going to become untenable for Keir Starmer. The revelations about Lord Alli’s apartment have only just started…
Cavaet emptor....recent record on scalps is very poor, and he was giving the big 'un during the GE about a scandal that was nothing.
It's what you do. It's called FILM MAKING. You don't let a film crew into your house unless you are demented. Houses are not designed to shoot in so you recreate them. I really cant believe the morons they're letting onto this site anymore.. I know Livermore hasn't got a brain but I thought you would be more clued up.
Huh, are you having a problem reading. My comment is buyer beware, have heard it all before, not convinced at all. However, this is a political betting website, its sort of relevant that somebody is claiming they have big dirt coming.
Then why repeat such an absurd story? You wouldn't shoot anything in someones house. You either use a studio with a set designer with a brief 'recreate Starmer's home' or you get a location finder to find somewhere that would be suitable.In other words you build the set on location.
Typically it would be several times the size of someone's house to acomodate a crew of abut 12 and equipment that would take up more space than the crew.
You expect this ignorance from Guido and his super-dim readers but not on PB.
I look at this story as SKS going - I need to film something that needs to look like home, let's ask someone who works in TV(Lord Alli) for their advice.
And Lord Alli going - I know the perfect place and it won't require any real work as it's big enough for a camera crew...
If they had just briefed that, that would been that part of the story done and dusted in a couple of hours. Instead they lied and caused it to run more.
3 in a day. It can't be the money, apparently median dev salary is $1m a year.
They are on far more than $1m a year...
Beyond that it's hard to say what's going on with OpenAi and those people will have knowledge about the situation that no one else has..
If I was on millions a year, within a year I'd have millions of pounds. So would retire.
Which I suppose is why I'm not on millions a year.
In my experience with these tech companies they have two types of people for are in early and stay on, the ones where no money ever is enough, they want the money, the power, etc. Zuckerberg is still very involved in Facebook, doesn't need to be.
Then the others, who for them it is the interesting work and the money doesn't actually matter that much to them. They know they will never go without a well paid job and so its doing things that are super intellectually stimulating.
I've worked for a couple of tech startups in the past (*), and it can be absolutely brilliant. Hard work, long hours, but you get to have your fingers in every pie. Writing code, testing, documentation, working in the lab, meeting customers, hiring... it's great fun. As the companies grow and form, the job becomes stale very rapidly.
An acquaintance only ever works for startups; he is known as a bit of a startup king. He'll join a new company, work with them for a year or two, then get bored and move on. He is in demand and he is very much an all-rounder who is willing to do the 'little' work that many 'geniuses' decry.
(*) One so new that me and a friend had to drive to the other side of Cambridge to pick up our PCs on our first day, and we had about five phone lines for the entire company...
I worked for a start-up donkeys years ago where the tech platform needed a special laptop that was supposed ruggedized so it could be taken out into the field. The one arrived with the rest another month or so from delivery.
The owner excited decided he wanted to test just how good the ruggedization was, specs said will survive a drop from some big height, so he proceeded to gather everybody around and throw it out the second floor window......well, not much dev work was done for the next month.
We had a manager who pulled out a card from a running machine in order to demonstrate its full redundancy. Just about the only non-redundant part, as it turned out.
LOL. We’ve all made similar mistakes once. The sensible IT people have only ever done it once.
The only people pulling drives from running systems should be the salesman on his own demo environment.
That's the whole point of chaos monkey testing - find out where you are missing redundancy and ensure it's created..
Thankfully that isn't the massive problem it used to be but I suspect a lot of firms would have a nightmare if the queuing systems of the main clouds went properly down..
Unfortunately for Downing Street, exactly 37 minutes after their line was published Guido went to pixel with evidence that Starmer paid tribute to the Queen on the day of her death from the very same ‘one-off’ penthouse. Gone were the family photos – replaced with some dark urns and books including an Obama biography…
This is going to become untenable for Keir Starmer. The revelations about Lord Alli’s apartment have only just started…
Cavaet emptor....recent record on scalps is very poor, and he was giving the big 'un during the GE about a scandal that was nothing.
It's what you do. It's called FILM MAKING. You don't let a film crew into your house unless you are demented. Houses are not designed to shoot in so you recreate them. I really cant believe the morons they're letting onto this site anymore.. I know Livermore hasn't got a brain but I thought you would be more clued up.
Huh, are you having a problem reading. My comment is buyer beware, have heard it all before, not convinced at all. However, this is a political betting website, its sort of relevant that somebody is claiming they have big dirt coming.
Then why repeat such an absurd story? You wouldn't shoot anything in someones house. You either use a studio with a set designer with a brief 'recreate Starmer's home' or you get a location finder to find somewhere that would be suitable.In other words you build the set on location.
Typically it would be several times the size of someone's house to acomodate a crew of abut 12 and equipment that would take up more space than the crew.
You expect this ignorance from Guido and his super-dim readers but not on PB.
I believe the famous "Maitlis Interview" was shot in the interviewee's house.
The Prince Andrew one? That was at Buck House I believe.
The Tories really do need to think about how they managed to lose to this mob. How they managed to be even worse, and make them look superficially attractive to many.
Unfortunately for Downing Street, exactly 37 minutes after their line was published Guido went to pixel with evidence that Starmer paid tribute to the Queen on the day of her death from the very same ‘one-off’ penthouse. Gone were the family photos – replaced with some dark urns and books including an Obama biography…
This is going to become untenable for Keir Starmer. The revelations about Lord Alli’s apartment have only just started…
Cavaet emptor....recent record on scalps is very poor, and he was giving the big 'un during the GE about a scandal that was nothing.
It's what you do. It's called FILM MAKING. You don't let a film crew into your house unless you are demented. Houses are not designed to shoot in so you recreate them. I really cant believe the morons they're letting onto this site anymore.. I know Livermore hasn't got a brain but I thought you would be more clued up.
Huh, are you having a problem reading. My comment is buyer beware, have heard it all before, not convinced at all. However, this is a political betting website, its sort of relevant that somebody is claiming they have big dirt coming.
Then why repeat such an absurd story? You wouldn't shoot anything in someones house. You either use a studio with a set designer with a brief 'recreate Starmer's home' or you get a location finder to find somewhere that would be suitable.In other words you build the set on location.
Typically it would be several times the size of someone's house to acomodate a crew of abut 12 and equipment that would take up more space than the crew.
You expect this ignorance from Guido and his super-dim readers but not on PB.
I look at this story as SKS going - I need to film something that needs to look like home, let's ask someone who works in TV(Lord Alli) for their advice.
And Lord Alli going - I know the perfect place and it won't require any real work as it's big enough for a camera crew...
It's so much a none story that I can't see the fuss - the one thing it shows me is that 24 hour news channels with their desperation for cheap easy to report "news" is not a good idea..
Of all the stories of 'gifts' that have come out in the past month or so, this one strikes me as the least interesting. This is basically a Labour figure helping with the filming of a Labour PPC. Personally that particular Labour PPC made me want to reach into the telly and slap Starmer pretty much more than anything else he's ever said or done. Covid Starmer was Starmer at his absolute worst. But it doesn't smell to me like there was any impropriety in filming it. It didn't occur to me at the time that it's not his house, but it's not particularly surprising. He reeks of inauthenticity and insincerity.
Unfortunately for Downing Street, exactly 37 minutes after their line was published Guido went to pixel with evidence that Starmer paid tribute to the Queen on the day of her death from the very same ‘one-off’ penthouse. Gone were the family photos – replaced with some dark urns and books including an Obama biography…
This is going to become untenable for Keir Starmer. The revelations about Lord Alli’s apartment have only just started…
Cavaet emptor....recent record on scalps is very poor, and he was giving the big 'un during the GE about a scandal that was nothing.
It's what you do. It's called FILM MAKING. You don't let a film crew into your house unless you are demented. Houses are not designed to shoot in so you recreate them. I really cant believe the morons they're letting onto this site anymore.. I know Livermore hasn't got a brain but I thought you would be more clued up.
Huh, are you having a problem reading. My comment is buyer beware, have heard it all before, not convinced at all. However, this is a political betting website, its sort of relevant that somebody is claiming they have big dirt coming.
Then why repeat such an absurd story? You wouldn't shoot anything in someones house. You either use a studio with a set designer with a brief 'recreate Starmer's home' or you get a location finder to find somewhere that would be suitable.In other words you build the set on location.
Typically it would be several times the size of someone's house to acomodate a crew of abut 12 and equipment that would take up more space than the crew.
You expect this ignorance from Guido and his super-dim readers but not on PB.
I look at this story as SKS going - I need to film something that needs to look like home, let's ask someone who works in TV(Lord Alli) for their advice.
And Lord Alli going - I know the perfect place and it won't require any real work as it's big enough for a camera crew...
If they had just briefed that, that would been that part of the story done and dusted in a couple of hours. Instead they lied and caused it to run more.
Mr. F, and yet, somehow still less stupid than the greatest smith in Middle-Earth needing to be taught what an alloy is.
The biggest problem is that the series was obviously written, in part, by people who had read everything Tolkien wrote and.... listened. If that is the right word.
Then a bunch of other writers came in and put bad soap opera on top.
So we get Sauron considering repentance. But ending up doing evil, again, because his repentance isn't truly in his soul. Straight out of Tolkien. The origin of orcs and their moral value. etc
Also, Peter Jackson described how, when making the films, he would get random and utterly insane "suggestions" from the studio execs. Which he binned. The tenor of those suggestions matches what is wrong with the series.
They seem to think that if it’s fantasy, nothing has to make sense.
Whereas if you want people to accept magic and the supernatural, you have to make the rest (and peoples’ motivations) believable.
Old soldier that he was, Tolkien paid a lot of attention to logistics, operations, and tactics, in LOTR.
Starmer did the unthinkable and filmed a video in a donors flat . I mean the horror , this is much worse than Bozo partying whilst grannie was being carted off to the funeral home . It’s much worse than billions of pounds of government contracts for mates .
The Tories really do need to think about how they managed to lose to this mob. How they managed to be even worse, and make them look superficially attractive to many.
By getting less than a quarter of the national vote. This mob got barely more than a third.
In Herman Kahn's On Thermonuclear War, he points out the stupidity of such declared rules.
A lot of people, when discussing the Kremlin nuclear posture of the week, forget that we say very little and we definitely don’t commit to no first strike. As you say, not announcing your red lines is how you maximise deterrence. Doing so is silly.
Unfortunately for Downing Street, exactly 37 minutes after their line was published Guido went to pixel with evidence that Starmer paid tribute to the Queen on the day of her death from the very same ‘one-off’ penthouse. Gone were the family photos – replaced with some dark urns and books including an Obama biography…
This is going to become untenable for Keir Starmer. The revelations about Lord Alli’s apartment have only just started…
Cavaet emptor....recent record on scalps is very poor, and he was giving the big 'un during the GE about a scandal that was nothing.
It's what you do. It's called FILM MAKING. You don't let a film crew into your house unless you are demented. Houses are not designed to shoot in so you recreate them. I really cant believe the morons they're letting onto this site anymore.. I know Livermore hasn't got a brain but I thought you would be more clued up.
Huh, are you having a problem reading. My comment is buyer beware, have heard it all before, not convinced at all. However, this is a political betting website, its sort of relevant that somebody is claiming they have big dirt coming.
Then why repeat such an absurd story? You wouldn't shoot anything in someones house. You either use a studio with a set designer with a brief 'recreate Starmer's home' or you get a location finder to find somewhere that would be suitable.In other words you build the set on location.
Typically it would be several times the size of someone's house to acomodate a crew of abut 12 and equipment that would take up more space than the crew.
You expect this ignorance from Guido and his super-dim readers but not on PB.
I believe the famous "Maitlis Interview" was shot in the interviewee's house.
The Prince Andrew one? That was at Buck House I believe.
Yes, his relative's house .... but .
This assumes a full film crew.
Helped a friend who was doing some documentary (for teaching) filming at Vaux-le-Vicomte. The actual filming was by a couple of experts from the uni, I was fetching and carrying for them.
Small rooms, mostly, terrible light. You can't move furniture (much).
It was remarkable what you can do with a Canon full frame, some good lenses, a tripod/carry rig, one lighting guy....
Unfortunately for Downing Street, exactly 37 minutes after their line was published Guido went to pixel with evidence that Starmer paid tribute to the Queen on the day of her death from the very same ‘one-off’ penthouse. Gone were the family photos – replaced with some dark urns and books including an Obama biography…
This is going to become untenable for Keir Starmer. The revelations about Lord Alli’s apartment have only just started…
Cavaet emptor....recent record on scalps is very poor, and he was giving the big 'un during the GE about a scandal that was nothing.
It's what you do. It's called FILM MAKING. You don't let a film crew into your house unless you are demented. Houses are not designed to shoot in so you recreate them. I really cant believe the morons they're letting onto this site anymore.. I know Livermore hasn't got a brain but I thought you would be more clued up.
Huh, are you having a problem reading. My comment is buyer beware, have heard it all before, not convinced at all. However, this is a political betting website, its sort of relevant that somebody is claiming they have big dirt coming.
Then why repeat such an absurd story? You wouldn't shoot anything in someones house. You either use a studio with a set designer with a brief 'recreate Starmer's home' or you get a location finder to find somewhere that would be suitable.In other words you build the set on location.
Typically it would be several times the size of someone's house to acomodate a crew of abut 12 and equipment that would take up more space than the crew.
You expect this ignorance from Guido and his super-dim readers but not on PB.
I look at this story as SKS going - I need to film something that needs to look like home, let's ask someone who works in TV(Lord Alli) for their advice.
And Lord Alli going - I know the perfect place and it won't require any real work as it's big enough for a camera crew...
If they had just briefed that, that would been that part of the story done and dusted in a couple of hours. Instead they lied and caused it to run more.
A very good link discussing the Freebies from Lord Santa Alli I posted last night -10 minutes. The take of Campbell and Stewart is that presentation has been mucked up (different Ministers with different excuses), that the media are being given opportunities to denigrate, there is not enough strategic messaging around a focussed vision (cf Cameron's 'Compassionate Conservatism for example), and that policy presentation is not enough and not first.
A very interesting conversation (10 minutes) on the Rest is Politics podcast, around 'Labour’s freebie fiasco'.
Unfortunately for Downing Street, exactly 37 minutes after their line was published Guido went to pixel with evidence that Starmer paid tribute to the Queen on the day of her death from the very same ‘one-off’ penthouse. Gone were the family photos – replaced with some dark urns and books including an Obama biography…
This is going to become untenable for Keir Starmer. The revelations about Lord Alli’s apartment have only just started…
Cavaet emptor....recent record on scalps is very poor, and he was giving the big 'un during the GE about a scandal that was nothing.
It's what you do. It's called FILM MAKING. You don't let a film crew into your house unless you are demented. Houses are not designed to shoot in so you recreate them. I really cant believe the morons they're letting onto this site anymore.. I know Livermore hasn't got a brain but I thought you would be more clued up.
Huh, are you having a problem reading. My comment is buyer beware, have heard it all before, not convinced at all. However, this is a political betting website, its sort of relevant that somebody is claiming they have big dirt coming.
Then why repeat such an absurd story? You wouldn't shoot anything in someones house. You either use a studio with a set designer with a brief 'recreate Starmer's home' or you get a location finder to find somewhere that would be suitable.In other words you build the set on location.
Typically it would be several times the size of someone's house to acomodate a crew of abut 12 and equipment that would take up more space than the crew.
You expect this ignorance from Guido and his super-dim readers but not on PB.
I believe the famous "Maitlis Interview" was shot in the interviewee's house.
The Prince Andrew one? That was at Buck House I believe.
3 in a day. It can't be the money, apparently median dev salary is $1m a year.
They are on far more than $1m a year...
Beyond that it's hard to say what's going on with OpenAi and those people will have knowledge about the situation that no one else has..
If I was on millions a year, within a year I'd have millions of pounds. So would retire.
Which I suppose is why I'm not on millions a year.
They do exist. Friend knows a guy who made partner in Deloitte aged 34 and then retired at 42, no kids, and he now basically plays squash all day.
The bastard.
After 2008, the BBC were interviewing people leaving Lehmans.
One chap turned out to be a trader, Dutch. He described, calmly, how he had invested every bonus in buying property. So, he was going home to tell his wife that he would be spending much more time with the family. And that they might have to cut back on the most extravagant holidays. But that he and the family would be fine - his thoughts were with the people who hadn't got such investments.
The Tories really do need to think about how they managed to lose to this mob. How they managed to be even worse, and make them look superficially attractive to many.
They didn't look superficially or profoundly attractive to anyone. 17.5% of adults voted for them and they did this mainly because they weren't the Tories. Who had been in power for too long. But yes, the point does stand to an extent, the Cons must be super-useless to get to that position.
Unfortunately for Downing Street, exactly 37 minutes after their line was published Guido went to pixel with evidence that Starmer paid tribute to the Queen on the day of her death from the very same ‘one-off’ penthouse. Gone were the family photos – replaced with some dark urns and books including an Obama biography…
This is going to become untenable for Keir Starmer. The revelations about Lord Alli’s apartment have only just started…
Cavaet emptor....recent record on scalps is very poor, and he was giving the big 'un during the GE about a scandal that was nothing.
It's what you do. It's called FILM MAKING. You don't let a film crew into your house unless you are demented. Houses are not designed to shoot in so you recreate them. I really cant believe the morons they're letting onto this site anymore.. I know Livermore hasn't got a brain but I thought you would be more clued up.
Huh, are you having a problem reading. My comment is buyer beware, have heard it all before, not convinced at all. However, this is a political betting website, its sort of relevant that somebody is claiming they have big dirt coming.
Then why repeat such an absurd story? You wouldn't shoot anything in someones house. You either use a studio with a set designer with a brief 'recreate Starmer's home' or you get a location finder to find somewhere that would be suitable.In other words you build the set on location.
Typically it would be several times the size of someone's house to acomodate a crew of abut 12 and equipment that would take up more space than the crew.
You expect this ignorance from Guido and his super-dim readers but not on PB.
I believe the famous "Maitlis Interview" was shot in the interviewee's house.
The Prince Andrew one? That was at Buck House I believe.
Yes, his relative's house .... but .
I believe it's a family affair.
What's the lighting like, in Pizza Express in Windsor? Is there enough space for the crew?
Unfortunately for Downing Street, exactly 37 minutes after their line was published Guido went to pixel with evidence that Starmer paid tribute to the Queen on the day of her death from the very same ‘one-off’ penthouse. Gone were the family photos – replaced with some dark urns and books including an Obama biography…
This is going to become untenable for Keir Starmer. The revelations about Lord Alli’s apartment have only just started…
Cavaet emptor....recent record on scalps is very poor, and he was giving the big 'un during the GE about a scandal that was nothing.
It's what you do. It's called FILM MAKING. You don't let a film crew into your house unless you are demented. Houses are not designed to shoot in so you recreate them. I really cant believe the morons they're letting onto this site anymore.. I know Livermore hasn't got a brain but I thought you would be more clued up.
Huh, are you having a problem reading. My comment is buyer beware, have heard it all before, not convinced at all. However, this is a political betting website, its sort of relevant that somebody is claiming they have big dirt coming.
Then why repeat such an absurd story? You wouldn't shoot anything in someones house. You either use a studio with a set designer with a brief 'recreate Starmer's home' or you get a location finder to find somewhere that would be suitable.In other words you build the set on location.
Typically it would be several times the size of someone's house to acomodate a crew of abut 12 and equipment that would take up more space than the crew.
You expect this ignorance from Guido and his super-dim readers but not on PB.
I look at this story as SKS going - I need to film something that needs to look like home, let's ask someone who works in TV(Lord Alli) for their advice.
And Lord Alli going - I know the perfect place and it won't require any real work as it's big enough for a camera crew...
If they had just briefed that, that would been that part of the story done and dusted in a couple of hours. Instead they lied and caused it to run more.
A very good link discussing the Freebies from Lord Santa Alli I posted last night -10 minutes. The take of Campbell and Stewart is that presentation has been mucked up (different Ministers with different excuses), that the media are being given opportunities to denigrate, there is not enough strategic messaging around a focussed vision (cf Cameron's 'Compassionate Conservatism for example), and that policy presentation is not enough and not first.
A very interesting conversation (10 minutes) on the Rest is Politics podcast, around 'Labour’s freebie fiasco'.
Which was the whole point behind message grids. Create a coherent story. Push it to the media. Use it to take up space in the national conversation, pushing the anti stuff into a corner.
And this can work in the age of social media - given that social media "reporters" often have no money to spend on stories, giving them stories wrapped with a bow works well.
Dr. Foxy, a large part of the lack of optimism is that a combination of the financial crisis and pandemic in relatively quick succession has caused widespread economic weakness. This is not the case in the USA, which has substituted low economic growth for high, and made up for it by having a crazy level of political polarisation.
Also a crazy amount of printed money, which they’ve got away with to some extent thanks to the US$ being seen as a global reserve currency.
The pound is at a recent high vs the dollar at the moment, and the Chinese are starting to agree with the Saudis to buy some oil priced in Yuan, so the dollar could be about to take something of a devaluation, unprecedented in living memory.
Does this not depend on whether or not the USD remains the global reserve currency and its fall from this status has been forecast for a while now.
The US Treasury still seems to be getting its bond auctions away okay at reasonable rates so there is demand at the moment.
The US yield curve has been utterly manipulated over the last year, in part by the Treasury breaking their own guidelines on the tenor of bonds they issue.
This month finally, finally saw crossover in the 2yr-10yr split after a near record long period of inversion. That is to say, a 10yr bond now pays a higher yield than a 2yr.
You’ll know the brown stuff is really about to fly when the 3mth yield falls below the 10yr yield. Early 2025 seems a good bet. The powers that be have kept the entire machine pumped headed into 5th Nov at all cost.
But will either of the winning candidates do what they need to in order to deal with it and deal with the burgeoning debt.
Spending like drunken sailors on a night out.
I have been following the 2yr/10yr inversion as I had seen it discussed on some CNBC videos on Youtube.
I was not aware of the 3 month/10 yr crossover so will read up on that and the implications of it.
The corporation I work for is preparing for a recession next year and everything we are doing is based on that. Run down inventories, push out payment terms etc etc.
3 in a day. It can't be the money, apparently median dev salary is $1m a year.
They are on far more than $1m a year...
Beyond that it's hard to say what's going on with OpenAi and those people will have knowledge about the situation that no one else has..
If I was on millions a year, within a year I'd have millions of pounds. So would retire.
Which I suppose is why I'm not on millions a year.
In my experience with these tech companies they have two types of people for are in early and stay on, the ones where no money ever is enough, they want the money, the power, etc. Zuckerberg is still very involved in Facebook, doesn't need to be.
Then the others, who for them it is the interesting work and the money doesn't actually matter that much to them. They know they will never go without a well paid job and so its doing things that are super intellectually stimulating.
I've worked for a couple of tech startups in the past (*), and it can be absolutely brilliant. Hard work, long hours, but you get to have your fingers in every pie. Writing code, testing, documentation, working in the lab, meeting customers, hiring... it's great fun. As the companies grow and form, the job becomes stale very rapidly.
An acquaintance only ever works for startups; he is known as a bit of a startup king. He'll join a new company, work with them for a year or two, then get bored and move on. He is in demand and he is very much an all-rounder who is willing to do the 'little' work that many 'geniuses' decry.
(*) One so new that me and a friend had to drive to the other side of Cambridge to pick up our PCs on our first day, and we had about five phone lines for the entire company...
I worked for a start-up donkeys years ago where the tech platform needed a special laptop that was supposed ruggedized so it could be taken out into the field. The one arrived with the rest another month or so from delivery.
The owner excited decided he wanted to test just how good the ruggedization was, specs said will survive a drop from some big height, so he proceeded to gather everybody around and throw it out the second floor window......well, not much dev work was done for the next month.
Better to find that out before any work started, though.
All these problems facing Labour are utterly unforced, and of their own making.
How will they react when real events come and bash them in the face?
Got to agree there - Sue Gray may be solving issues on the civil service / delivery side of things.
But their need someone to quickly get control of the media / presentation side of things because it's running away from them...
I'm not sure that one person can dictate their way to a reform of the Civil Service. They are more likely to generate a tidal wave of hostility in the system. Which is what we have seen.
Mr. F, and yet, somehow still less stupid than the greatest smith in Middle-Earth needing to be taught what an alloy is.
The biggest problem is that the series was obviously written, in part, by people who had read everything Tolkien wrote and.... listened. If that is the right word.
Then a bunch of other writers came in and put bad soap opera on top.
So we get Sauron considering repentance. But ending up doing evil, again, because his repentance isn't truly in his soul. Straight out of Tolkien. The origin of orcs and their moral value. etc
How was this framed, and at what point in the story? It sounds like Gollum's conversation with himself whilst Frodo and Sam were asleep.
In more obscure Tolkien, he did repent. And then unrepented.
I'm not even sure if it's in the Silmarillion. Real rabbithole stuff.
Sauron never truly repented, and those few who may have believed him would do well to remember just how long and easily he enacted methods of deception. It is said in *Of The Rings of Power and the Third Age* that Sauron did the bare minimum to avoid punishment after the War of Wrath:
“When Thangorodrim was broken and Morgoth overthrown, Sauron put on his fair hue again and did obeisance to Eonwe, the herald of Manwe, and abjured all his evil deeds. And some hold that this was not at first falsely done, but that Sauron in truth repented, if only out of fear, being dismayed by the fall of Morgoth and the great wrath of the Lords of the West.”
That isn’t Sauron becoming good, that’s Sauron quailing before the might of the mightiest army ever to set foot in Middle-earth, saying whatever he had to say, however he had to say it.
The text goes on to say that Eonwe, not having the power to forgive one of his own order, tells him to head west to be judged by the Valar, and that Sauron immediately flees east. Again, that isn’t him becoming good at all; remember that he’s called the Deceiver by Amandil for a reason. Sauron says whatever he has to in order to further his own wants. And that is all he did; his words and hue were fair, but his actions were always entirely self-serving from the very moment he escaped the consequences of his actions. https://tolkienlegendarium.quora.com/Why-does-Sauron-become-evil-again-after-repenting-for-a-while-when-Morgoth-fell-Whats-his-endgame-He-was-at-the-begin
3 in a day. It can't be the money, apparently median dev salary is $1m a year.
They are on far more than $1m a year...
Beyond that it's hard to say what's going on with OpenAi and those people will have knowledge about the situation that no one else has..
If I was on millions a year, within a year I'd have millions of pounds. So would retire.
Which I suppose is why I'm not on millions a year.
They do exist. Friend knows a guy who made partner in Deloitte aged 34 and then retired at 42, no kids, and he now basically plays squash all day.
The bastard.
I know that were I not married with Children I would be happily retired. Instead I rather enjoy periods of time off between contracts (really should start looking for one to cover at least the winter).
3 in a day. It can't be the money, apparently median dev salary is $1m a year.
They are on far more than $1m a year...
Beyond that it's hard to say what's going on with OpenAi and those people will have knowledge about the situation that no one else has..
If I was on millions a year, within a year I'd have millions of pounds. So would retire.
Which I suppose is why I'm not on millions a year.
In my experience with these tech companies they have two types of people for are in early and stay on, the ones where no money ever is enough, they want the money, the power, etc. Zuckerberg is still very involved in Facebook, doesn't need to be.
Then the others, who for them it is the interesting work and the money doesn't actually matter that much to them. They know they will never go without a well paid job and so its doing things that are super intellectually stimulating.
I work on a different level (of course - poorly paid academic ) but I - and several others I know - will work on interesting projects for free, that is we squeeze them into our work time but don't actually have a budget for it. Sometimes they're little things that then lead on to grant applications in their own right and they also help with networking and getting on to other projects, but the main motivation is that this is an interesting thing (and needs doing). I've got a couple of at the moment, both of which may lead on to grant applications, but it's more that they don't need a great deal of my time and I can see the interest and importance more than with some of my funded grants.
WRT Scotland, once it is firmed up in the voters' minds that Scottish independence is not going to happen so far as can be seen ahead - there just isn't the consistent 55-60% support for it in polling which would place it on a serious agenda - then Scottish voting becomes more an issue of competence to govern.
If Labour continue to do sub-optimally in that department, then (see the polling in the article) the formula which is not spectacularly unpopular + is really a bit different + hasn't been tried and failed yet, is our old friend Kate Forbes as leader of SNP. Prediction: the SNP will get there in the end, and the result will be interesting.
Mr. F, and yet, somehow still less stupid than the greatest smith in Middle-Earth needing to be taught what an alloy is.
The biggest problem is that the series was obviously written, in part, by people who had read everything Tolkien wrote and.... listened. If that is the right word.
Then a bunch of other writers came in and put bad soap opera on top.
So we get Sauron considering repentance. But ending up doing evil, again, because his repentance isn't truly in his soul. Straight out of Tolkien. The origin of orcs and their moral value. etc
Also, Peter Jackson described how, when making the films, he would get random and utterly insane "suggestions" from the studio execs. Which he binned. The tenor of those suggestions matches what is wrong with the series.
They seem to think that if it’s fantasy, nothing has to make sense.
Whereas if you want people to accept magic and the supernatural, you have to make the rest (and peoples’ motivations) believable.
Old soldier that he was, Tolkien paid a lot of attention to logistics, operations, and tactics, in LOTR.
Yes, people who like fantasy - as opposed to people who produce fantasy, at least at the more half-arsed end of the spectrum - set a very, very high value on internal consistency. Things don't have to obey our rules, but they have to obey some rules. How-the-world-works is at least as much fun as the story itself.
3 in a day. It can't be the money, apparently median dev salary is $1m a year.
They are on far more than $1m a year...
Beyond that it's hard to say what's going on with OpenAi and those people will have knowledge about the situation that no one else has..
If I was on millions a year, within a year I'd have millions of pounds. So would retire.
Which I suppose is why I'm not on millions a year.
They do exist. Friend knows a guy who made partner in Deloitte aged 34 and then retired at 42, no kids, and he now basically plays squash all day.
The bastard.
But does it make him happy?
Yes. Yes, it probably does….
I can't compute how someone working as a big-4 partner for a mere 8 years can accumulate anywhere near enough to retire and play squash all day, unless they have a very well paid spouse. Even with no children. Perhaps they only had a very small mortgage to pay off.
You must despair of good governance if you live in Scotland.
On the other hand you could point the Scots at Wales and emphasis how there is no real opposition there unlike Scotland which has Labour and the SNP...
The contemporary problem is that all governments are disliked, SNP, Labour, Tory, Macron, Biden, Trumpist, Treudeau etc. It's very hard to find a popular government in any democratic country in the world, and not much evidence that undemocratic countries governments are popular either.
It seems to be less about who is in charge than that people have far higher expectations than can be delivered. There's very little optimism, positivity or vision about anywhere in the world.
Meloni in Italy is probably the most popular leader in the western world at the moment. Zelensky is also pretty popular for obvious reasons
Mr. F, and yet, somehow still less stupid than the greatest smith in Middle-Earth needing to be taught what an alloy is.
The biggest problem is that the series was obviously written, in part, by people who had read everything Tolkien wrote and.... listened. If that is the right word.
Then a bunch of other writers came in and put bad soap opera on top.
So we get Sauron considering repentance. But ending up doing evil, again, because his repentance isn't truly in his soul. Straight out of Tolkien. The origin of orcs and their moral value. etc
How was this framed, and at what point in the story? It sounds like Gollum's conversation with himself whilst Frodo and Sam were asleep.
In more obscure Tolkien, he did repent. And then unrepented.
I'm even sure if it's in the Silmarillion. Real rabbithole stuff.
Sauron never truly repented, and those few who may have believed him would do well to remember just how long and easily he enacted methods of deception. It is said in *Of The Rings of Power and the Third Age* that Sauron did the bare minimum to avoid punishment after the War of Wrath:
“When Thangorodrim was broken and Morgoth overthrown, Sauron put on his fair hue again and did obeisance to Eonwe, the herald of Manwe, and abjured all his evil deeds. And some hold that this was not at first falsely done, but that Sauron in truth repented, if only out of fear, being dismayed by the fall of Morgoth and the great wrath of the Lords of the West.”
That isn’t Sauron becoming good, that’s Sauron quailing before the might of the mightiest army ever to set foot in Middle-earth, saying whatever he had to say, however he had to say it.
The text goes on to say that Eonwe, not having the power to forgive one of his own order, tells him to head west to be judged by the Valar, and that Sauron immediately flees east. Again, that isn’t him becoming good at all; remember that he’s called the Deceiver by Amandil for a reason. Sauron says whatever he has to in order to further his own wants. And that is all he did; his words and hue were fair, but his actions were always entirely self-serving from the very moment he escaped the consequences of his actions. https://tolkienlegendarium.quora.com/Why-does-Sauron-become-evil-again-after-repenting-for-a-while-when-Morgoth-fell-Whats-his-endgame-He-was-at-the-begin
In the series, Sauron seems to toy with the idea (in the first season) of not being full on Dark Lord. Except that it is made clear that he would actually go back to Dark Lording, because that's what he likes and rolls with. His motivation is what *he* sees as positive - creating a world perfectly ordered. Ordered exactly as Sauron wants.
That's in line with what Tolkien wrote, I think.
There was a line written by Tolkien, about what would have happened if Gandalf had taken the One Ring - He would have made Good evil and hateful, by his methods.
3 in a day. It can't be the money, apparently median dev salary is $1m a year.
They are on far more than $1m a year...
Beyond that it's hard to say what's going on with OpenAi and those people will have knowledge about the situation that no one else has..
If I was on millions a year, within a year I'd have millions of pounds. So would retire.
Which I suppose is why I'm not on millions a year.
They do exist. Friend knows a guy who made partner in Deloitte aged 34 and then retired at 42, no kids, and he now basically plays squash all day.
The bastard.
But does it make him happy?
Yes. Yes, it probably does….
I can't compute how someone working as a big-4 partner for a mere 8 years can accumulate anywhere near enough to retire and play squash all day, unless they have a very well paid spouse. Even with no children. Perhaps they only had a very small mortgage to pay off.
Headline “ PwC UK partners suffer £44,000 pay cut. Reduced payday comes as ‘big four’ accounting firms trim costs”
Second paragraph “Average partner pay sank by 4.9pc from £906,000 to £862,000 in the year to June, as total profits fell 14pc to £1.14bn, the firm announced on Wednesday.”
Doesn’t take many years of earning £900k to be financially secure for life.
I have to say, the US wouldn't the first place I would be looking at for prison reform ideas, but maybe they have good ideas.
Perhaps we can give all prisoners the equivalent of a Nectar card for their stay and they can earn points and redeem them for some luxuries.
And perhaps we could learn lessons from, you know, European countries that have functioning prison systems, lower prison populations, lower crime rates and much lower reoffending rates rather than…er…Texas state penitentiaries.
Always pointing in Sweden seems to have gone out of fashion these days among lefties.....
To be fair one time a government decided to copy something Swedish it was Gove with his ill fated free schools.
Almost every other European country would be an improvement on the British prison system, let alone the US one. But our governments live so immersed in the Anglo Saxon world that they will only take case studies from English speaking countries. Witness their obsession with the Australian approach to tax administration.
At the moment Norway probably has the lowest reconviction rate but some US states like Oregon and North Carolina also have reconviction rates lower than many European nations "A systematic review of criminal recidivism rates worldwide: 3-year update - PMC" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6743246/
Abstract conclusion, emphasis mine: Although some countries have made efforts to improve reporting, recidivism rates are not comparable between countries. Criminal justice agencies should consider using reporting guidelines described here to update their data.
3 in a day. It can't be the money, apparently median dev salary is $1m a year.
They are on far more than $1m a year...
Beyond that it's hard to say what's going on with OpenAi and those people will have knowledge about the situation that no one else has..
If I was on millions a year, within a year I'd have millions of pounds. So would retire.
Which I suppose is why I'm not on millions a year.
They do exist. Friend knows a guy who made partner in Deloitte aged 34 and then retired at 42, no kids, and he now basically plays squash all day.
The bastard.
But does it make him happy?
Yes. Yes, it probably does….
I can't compute how someone working as a big-4 partner for a mere 8 years can accumulate anywhere near enough to retire and play squash all day, unless they have a very well paid spouse. Even with no children. Perhaps they only had a very small mortgage to pay off.
I've know a couple of people who kept their first flat, as they moved up the corporate thing. Living a £50k lifestyle on a 6 figure salary. If yo extend that to a 7 figure salary....
Mr. F, and yet, somehow still less stupid than the greatest smith in Middle-Earth needing to be taught what an alloy is.
The biggest problem is that the series was obviously written, in part, by people who had read everything Tolkien wrote and.... listened. If that is the right word.
Then a bunch of other writers came in and put bad soap opera on top.
So we get Sauron considering repentance. But ending up doing evil, again, because his repentance isn't truly in his soul. Straight out of Tolkien. The origin of orcs and their moral value. etc
How was this framed, and at what point in the story? It sounds like Gollum's conversation with himself whilst Frodo and Sam were asleep.
In more obscure Tolkien, he did repent. And then unrepented.
I'm even sure if it's in the Silmarillion. Real rabbithole stuff.
Sauron never truly repented, and those few who may have believed him would do well to remember just how long and easily he enacted methods of deception. It is said in *Of The Rings of Power and the Third Age* that Sauron did the bare minimum to avoid punishment after the War of Wrath:
“When Thangorodrim was broken and Morgoth overthrown, Sauron put on his fair hue again and did obeisance to Eonwe, the herald of Manwe, and abjured all his evil deeds. And some hold that this was not at first falsely done, but that Sauron in truth repented, if only out of fear, being dismayed by the fall of Morgoth and the great wrath of the Lords of the West.”
That isn’t Sauron becoming good, that’s Sauron quailing before the might of the mightiest army ever to set foot in Middle-earth, saying whatever he had to say, however he had to say it.
The text goes on to say that Eonwe, not having the power to forgive one of his own order, tells him to head west to be judged by the Valar, and that Sauron immediately flees east. Again, that isn’t him becoming good at all; remember that he’s called the Deceiver by Amandil for a reason. Sauron says whatever he has to in order to further his own wants. And that is all he did; his words and hue were fair, but his actions were always entirely self-serving from the very moment he escaped the consequences of his actions. https://tolkienlegendarium.quora.com/Why-does-Sauron-become-evil-again-after-repenting-for-a-while-when-Morgoth-fell-Whats-his-endgame-He-was-at-the-begin
In the series, Sauron seems to toy with the idea (in the first season) of not being full on Dark Lord. Except that it is made clear that he would actually go back to Dark Lording, because that's what he likes and rolls with. His motivation is what *he* sees as positive - creating a world perfectly ordered. Ordered exactly as Sauron wants.
That's in line with what Tolkien wrote, I think.
There was a line written by Tolkien, about what would have happened if Gandalf had taken the One Ring - He would have made Good evil and hateful, by his methods.
Or some such.
Yes - the conversation with Frodo where Gandalf throws he Ring in the fire to test the existence of the writing.
There's also Frodo offering it to Galadriel - "You would set up a Queen; all will love me and despair". She sounds cut out for Instagram.
3 in a day. It can't be the money, apparently median dev salary is $1m a year.
They are on far more than $1m a year...
Beyond that it's hard to say what's going on with OpenAi and those people will have knowledge about the situation that no one else has..
If I was on millions a year, within a year I'd have millions of pounds. So would retire.
Which I suppose is why I'm not on millions a year.
They do exist. Friend knows a guy who made partner in Deloitte aged 34 and then retired at 42, no kids, and he now basically plays squash all day.
The bastard.
But does it make him happy?
Yes. Yes, it probably does….
I can't compute how someone working as a big-4 partner for a mere 8 years can accumulate anywhere near enough to retire and play squash all day, unless they have a very well paid spouse. Even with no children. Perhaps they only had a very small mortgage to pay off.
Headline “ PwC UK partners suffer £44,000 pay cut. Reduced payday comes as ‘big four’ accounting firms trim costs”
Second paragraph “Average partner pay sank by 4.9pc from £906,000 to £862,000 in the year to June, as total profits fell 14pc to £1.14bn, the firm announced on Wednesday.”
Doesn’t take many years of earning £900k to be financially secure for life.
The first few years as partner they will be on lockstep and won't be getting anything close to that. Most partners aspire to achieve the average by the end of their career.
I suppose it also depends on what country and therefore what effective tax rate. If this were a partner in the UAE or somewhere it would be a different story.
Mr. F, and yet, somehow still less stupid than the greatest smith in Middle-Earth needing to be taught what an alloy is.
The biggest problem is that the series was obviously written, in part, by people who had read everything Tolkien wrote and.... listened. If that is the right word.
Then a bunch of other writers came in and put bad soap opera on top.
So we get Sauron considering repentance. But ending up doing evil, again, because his repentance isn't truly in his soul. Straight out of Tolkien. The origin of orcs and their moral value. etc
Also, Peter Jackson described how, when making the films, he would get random and utterly insane "suggestions" from the studio execs. Which he binned. The tenor of those suggestions matches what is wrong with the series.
They seem to think that if it’s fantasy, nothing has to make sense.
Whereas if you want people to accept magic and the supernatural, you have to make the rest (and peoples’ motivations) believable.
Old soldier that he was, Tolkien paid a lot of attention to logistics, operations, and tactics, in LOTR.
Yes, people who like fantasy - as opposed to people who produce fantasy, at least at the more half-arsed end of the spectrum - set a very, very high value on internal consistency. Things don't have to obey our rules, but they have to obey some rules. How-the-world-works is at least as much fun as the story itself.
IIRC Tolkien himself write some things on the importance of internal consistency in a story.
3 in a day. It can't be the money, apparently median dev salary is $1m a year.
They are on far more than $1m a year...
Beyond that it's hard to say what's going on with OpenAi and those people will have knowledge about the situation that no one else has..
If I was on millions a year, within a year I'd have millions of pounds. So would retire.
Which I suppose is why I'm not on millions a year.
They do exist. Friend knows a guy who made partner in Deloitte aged 34 and then retired at 42, no kids, and he now basically plays squash all day.
The bastard.
But does it make him happy?
Yes. Yes, it probably does….
I can't compute how someone working as a big-4 partner for a mere 8 years can accumulate anywhere near enough to retire and play squash all day, unless they have a very well paid spouse. Even with no children. Perhaps they only had a very small mortgage to pay off.
Headline “ PwC UK partners suffer £44,000 pay cut. Reduced payday comes as ‘big four’ accounting firms trim costs”
Second paragraph “Average partner pay sank by 4.9pc from £906,000 to £862,000 in the year to June, as total profits fell 14pc to £1.14bn, the firm announced on Wednesday.”
Doesn’t take many years of earning £900k to be financially secure for life.
Interestingly for @Casino_Royale that article says that demand in the MIddle East is up 26% year on year, driven by expanded construction industry in that region. Perhaps CR should also look to the Big Four, and the banks that finance them?
You must despair of good governance if you live in Scotland.
On the other hand you could point the Scots at Wales and emphasis how there is no real opposition there unlike Scotland which has Labour and the SNP...
The contemporary problem is that all governments are disliked, SNP, Labour, Tory, Macron, Biden, Trumpist, Treudeau etc. It's very hard to find a popular government in any democratic country in the world, and not much evidence that undemocratic countries governments are popular either.
It seems to be less about who is in charge than that people have far higher expectations than can be delivered. There's very little optimism, positivity or vision about anywhere in the world.
Meloni in Italy is probably the most popular leader in the western world at the moment. Zelensky is also pretty popular for obvious reasons
WRT Scotland, once it is firmed up in the voters' minds that Scottish independence is not going to happen so far as can be seen ahead - there just isn't the consistent 55-60% support for it in polling which would place it on a serious agenda - then Scottish voting becomes more an issue of competence to govern.
If Labour continue to do sub-optimally in that department, then (see the polling in the article) the formula which is not spectacularly unpopular + is really a bit different + hasn't been tried and failed yet, is our old friend Kate Forbes as leader of SNP. Prediction: the SNP will get there in the end, and the result will be interesting.
Forbes would also need Tory confidence and supply to govern on current Holyrood polls. Possible if she rules out indyref2 until an SNP majority as she is more Thatcherite and more of a social conservative than Sarwar certainly
3 in a day. It can't be the money, apparently median dev salary is $1m a year.
They are on far more than $1m a year...
Beyond that it's hard to say what's going on with OpenAi and those people will have knowledge about the situation that no one else has..
If I was on millions a year, within a year I'd have millions of pounds. So would retire.
Which I suppose is why I'm not on millions a year.
They do exist. Friend knows a guy who made partner in Deloitte aged 34 and then retired at 42, no kids, and he now basically plays squash all day.
The bastard.
Is this a good time to mention that I could retire today but have provisionally set my retirement when I hit 50 in 2028?
I am unlikely to retire then though, more like when I hit 55 to 60.
These days there's a lot of "retiring" of men in their 50s from a first career, in order to start a second career. And women in their 40s. You need to work out what your second career will be. Even 60 is too early to stop work completely.
3 in a day. It can't be the money, apparently median dev salary is $1m a year.
They are on far more than $1m a year...
Beyond that it's hard to say what's going on with OpenAi and those people will have knowledge about the situation that no one else has..
If I was on millions a year, within a year I'd have millions of pounds. So would retire.
Which I suppose is why I'm not on millions a year.
They do exist. Friend knows a guy who made partner in Deloitte aged 34 and then retired at 42, no kids, and he now basically plays squash all day.
The bastard.
But does it make him happy?
Yes. Yes, it probably does….
I can't compute how someone working as a big-4 partner for a mere 8 years can accumulate anywhere near enough to retire and play squash all day, unless they have a very well paid spouse. Even with no children. Perhaps they only had a very small mortgage to pay off.
Headline “ PwC UK partners suffer £44,000 pay cut. Reduced payday comes as ‘big four’ accounting firms trim costs”
Second paragraph “Average partner pay sank by 4.9pc from £906,000 to £862,000 in the year to June, as total profits fell 14pc to £1.14bn, the firm announced on Wednesday.”
Doesn’t take many years of earning £900k to be financially secure for life.
The first few years as partner they will be on lockstep and won't be getting anything close to that. Most partners aspire to achieve the average by the end of their career.
I suppose it also depends on what country and therefore what effective tax rate. If this were a partner in the UAE or somewhere it would be a different story.
Good point that in the UK the effective tax rate on that sort of salary is going to be pretty close to 45%, whereas those in the ME and Asia will be taking home a lot more than that, with the US somewhere in the middle.
Mr. F, and yet, somehow still less stupid than the greatest smith in Middle-Earth needing to be taught what an alloy is.
The biggest problem is that the series was obviously written, in part, by people who had read everything Tolkien wrote and.... listened. If that is the right word.
Then a bunch of other writers came in and put bad soap opera on top.
So we get Sauron considering repentance. But ending up doing evil, again, because his repentance isn't truly in his soul. Straight out of Tolkien. The origin of orcs and their moral value. etc
How was this framed, and at what point in the story? It sounds like Gollum's conversation with himself whilst Frodo and Sam were asleep.
In more obscure Tolkien, he did repent. And then unrepented.
I'm not even sure if it's in the Silmarillion. Real rabbithole stuff.
Sauron never truly repented, and those few who may have believed him would do well to remember just how long and easily he enacted methods of deception. It is said in *Of The Rings of Power and the Third Age* that Sauron did the bare minimum to avoid punishment after the War of Wrath:
“When Thangorodrim was broken and Morgoth overthrown, Sauron put on his fair hue again and did obeisance to Eonwe, the herald of Manwe, and abjured all his evil deeds. And some hold that this was not at first falsely done, but that Sauron in truth repented, if only out of fear, being dismayed by the fall of Morgoth and the great wrath of the Lords of the West.”
That isn’t Sauron becoming good, that’s Sauron quailing before the might of the mightiest army ever to set foot in Middle-earth, saying whatever he had to say, however he had to say it.
The text goes on to say that Eonwe, not having the power to forgive one of his own order, tells him to head west to be judged by the Valar, and that Sauron immediately flees east. Again, that isn’t him becoming good at all; remember that he’s called the Deceiver by Amandil for a reason. Sauron says whatever he has to in order to further his own wants. And that is all he did; his words and hue were fair, but his actions were always entirely self-serving from the very moment he escaped the consequences of his actions. https://tolkienlegendarium.quora.com/Why-does-Sauron-become-evil-again-after-repenting-for-a-while-when-Morgoth-fell-Whats-his-endgame-He-was-at-the-begin
I always liked the premise of the first three books of Glen Cook's Black Company series.
Which is, having to choose between rule by Sauron, and destruction by Morgoth.
The Dark Lord of the series (in this case a woman), is a brutal conqueror, who runs a police state. The rebels against her are initially presented as the good guys, but are, in reality, catspaws for the Morgoth figure, who simply relishes destruction for its own sake.
It may be a choice between evils, but in that case, you choose Sauron, who at least wants a functioning society, rather than Morgoth, who wants the world to burn.
All these problems facing Labour are utterly unforced, and of their own making.
How will they react when real events come and bash them in the face?
Got to agree there - Sue Gray may be solving issues on the civil service / delivery side of things.
But their need someone to quickly get control of the media / presentation side of things because it's running away from them...
I'm not sure that one person can dictate their way to a reform of the Civil Service. They are more likely to generate a tidal wave of hostility in the system. Which is what we have seen.
You need a broader and deeper change.
Especially if that person is already blamed for throwing civil servants under the Partygate bus.
All these problems facing Labour are utterly unforced, and of their own making.
How will they react when real events come and bash them in the face?
Got to agree there - Sue Gray may be solving issues on the civil service / delivery side of things.
But their need someone to quickly get control of the media / presentation side of things because it's running away from them...
I'm not sure that one person can dictate their way to a reform of the Civil Service. They are more likely to generate a tidal wave of hostility in the system. Which is what we have seen.
You need a broader and deeper change.
Especially if that person is already blamed for throwing civil servants under the Partygate bus.
The civil servants in question, threw themselves under a bus. They did very, very stupid things of their own volition.
But yes, that's not a good place to start from. Especially since many of their friends are probably still working in an around No.10. Some with.... dented? careers.
Zarah Sultana is right (although hasn't she had the whip suspended?). It was widely predicted that nepotism and cronyism would be resented by Labour's experienced MPs who hoped their time has come, as well as Labour's new MPs used to running things in their previous jobs and unhappy as lobby fodder.
3 in a day. It can't be the money, apparently median dev salary is $1m a year.
They are on far more than $1m a year...
Beyond that it's hard to say what's going on with OpenAi and those people will have knowledge about the situation that no one else has..
If I was on millions a year, within a year I'd have millions of pounds. So would retire.
Which I suppose is why I'm not on millions a year.
They do exist. Friend knows a guy who made partner in Deloitte aged 34 and then retired at 42, no kids, and he now basically plays squash all day.
The bastard.
Is this a good time to mention that I could retire today but have provisionally set my retirement when I hit 50 in 2028?
I am unlikely to retire then though, more like when I hit 55 to 60.
Playing squash all day sounds really boring. I've recently retired at 74, because private activities started to seem more interesting. So far it's proved a good move, but the changes in lifestyle are quite dramatic, and I'd advise against retiring just because you financially can.
Unfortunately for Downing Street, exactly 37 minutes after their line was published Guido went to pixel with evidence that Starmer paid tribute to the Queen on the day of her death from the very same ‘one-off’ penthouse. Gone were the family photos – replaced with some dark urns and books including an Obama biography…
This is going to become untenable for Keir Starmer. The revelations about Lord Alli’s apartment have only just started…
The Tories really do need to think about how they managed to lose to this mob. How they managed to be even worse, and make them look superficially attractive to many.
14 years in government. We're not a one party state.
Unfortunately for Downing Street, exactly 37 minutes after their line was published Guido went to pixel with evidence that Starmer paid tribute to the Queen on the day of her death from the very same ‘one-off’ penthouse. Gone were the family photos – replaced with some dark urns and books including an Obama biography…
This is going to become untenable for Keir Starmer. The revelations about Lord Alli’s apartment have only just started…
Cavaet emptor....recent record on scalps is very poor, and he was giving the big 'un during the GE about a scandal that was nothing.
It's what you do. It's called FILM MAKING. You don't let a film crew into your house unless you are demented. Houses are not designed to shoot in so you recreate them. I really cant believe the morons they're letting onto this site anymore.. I know Livermore hasn't got a brain but I thought you would be more clued up.
Huh, are you having a problem reading. My comment is buyer beware, have heard it all before, not convinced at all. However, this is a political betting website, its sort of relevant that somebody is claiming they have big dirt coming.
Then why repeat such an absurd story? You wouldn't shoot anything in someones house. You either use a studio with a set designer with a brief 'recreate Starmer's home' or you get a location finder to find somewhere that would be suitable.In other words you build the set on location.
Typically it would be several times the size of someone's house to acomodate a crew of abut 12 and equipment that would take up more space than the crew.
You expect this ignorance from Guido and his super-dim readers but not on PB.
Its a good job Downing Street didn't lie about its usage then... They told the Guardian "it was a ‘one-off’ use of the place.
They are getting themselves in a mess.
And the only period that has been declared for expenses purposes is the period almost covered by the exams. Surely, if SKS was complying with the Covid regulations that had to be his "home" at the time. Or his place of work, perhaps, if his journey there was strictly necessary.
All these problems facing Labour are utterly unforced, and of their own making.
How will they react when real events come and bash them in the face?
Got to agree there - Sue Gray may be solving issues on the civil service / delivery side of things.
But their need someone to quickly get control of the media / presentation side of things because it's running away from them...
I'm not sure that one person can dictate their way to a reform of the Civil Service. They are more likely to generate a tidal wave of hostility in the system. Which is what we have seen.
You need a broader and deeper change.
Especially if that person is already blamed for throwing civil servants under the Partygate bus.
The civil servants in question, threw themselves under a bus. They did very, very stupid things of their own volition.
But yes, that's not a good place to start from. Especially since many of their friends are probably still working in an around No.10. Some with.... dented? careers.
You get the sense that Sue Gray's error was that she was the "safe pair of hands" chosen to conduct a traditional civil service highly mitigated inquiry, as a result some senior civil servants survived but have it in for her. If they'd had to go she'd be much better off.
Unfortunately for Downing Street, exactly 37 minutes after their line was published Guido went to pixel with evidence that Starmer paid tribute to the Queen on the day of her death from the very same ‘one-off’ penthouse. Gone were the family photos – replaced with some dark urns and books including an Obama biography…
This is going to become untenable for Keir Starmer. The revelations about Lord Alli’s apartment have only just started…
3 in a day. It can't be the money, apparently median dev salary is $1m a year.
They are on far more than $1m a year...
Beyond that it's hard to say what's going on with OpenAi and those people will have knowledge about the situation that no one else has..
If I was on millions a year, within a year I'd have millions of pounds. So would retire.
Which I suppose is why I'm not on millions a year.
They do exist. Friend knows a guy who made partner in Deloitte aged 34 and then retired at 42, no kids, and he now basically plays squash all day.
The bastard.
Is this a good time to mention that I could retire today but have provisionally set my retirement when I hit 50 in 2028?
I am unlikely to retire then though, more like when I hit 55 to 60.
These days there's a lot of "retiring" of men in their 50s from a first career, in order to start a second career. And women in their 40s. You need to work out what your second career will be. Even 60 is too early to stop work completely.
I am planning to retire in December at the age of 59.
I should be okay and I do plan to work again although a couple of days stacking shelves in Sainsburys would suit me. No pressure. Turn up. Stack shelves. Go home. Pocket around £800 a month and top up with pension.
Certainly pressurised demanding roles become less and less appealing as you get older I have found.
Unfortunately for Downing Street, exactly 37 minutes after their line was published Guido went to pixel with evidence that Starmer paid tribute to the Queen on the day of her death from the very same ‘one-off’ penthouse. Gone were the family photos – replaced with some dark urns and books including an Obama biography…
This is going to become untenable for Keir Starmer. The revelations about Lord Alli’s apartment have only just started…
3 in a day. It can't be the money, apparently median dev salary is $1m a year.
They are on far more than $1m a year...
Beyond that it's hard to say what's going on with OpenAi and those people will have knowledge about the situation that no one else has..
If I was on millions a year, within a year I'd have millions of pounds. So would retire.
Which I suppose is why I'm not on millions a year.
They do exist. Friend knows a guy who made partner in Deloitte aged 34 and then retired at 42, no kids, and he now basically plays squash all day.
The bastard.
Is this a good time to mention that I could retire today but have provisionally set my retirement when I hit 50 in 2028?
I am unlikely to retire then though, more like when I hit 55 to 60.
These days there's a lot of "retiring" of men in their 50s from a first career, in order to start a second career. And women in their 40s. You need to work out what your second career will be. Even 60 is too early to stop work completely.
That's not what people I know who have retired in their 50s tell me I guess it depends on whether you were enjoying work and whether you have fulfilling hobbies.
3 in a day. It can't be the money, apparently median dev salary is $1m a year.
They are on far more than $1m a year...
Beyond that it's hard to say what's going on with OpenAi and those people will have knowledge about the situation that no one else has..
If I was on millions a year, within a year I'd have millions of pounds. So would retire.
Which I suppose is why I'm not on millions a year.
They do exist. Friend knows a guy who made partner in Deloitte aged 34 and then retired at 42, no kids, and he now basically plays squash all day.
The bastard.
Is this a good time to mention that I could retire today but have provisionally set my retirement when I hit 50 in 2028?
I am unlikely to retire then though, more like when I hit 55 to 60.
These days there's a lot of "retiring" of men in their 50s from a first career, in order to start a second career. And women in their 40s. You need to work out what your second career will be. Even 60 is too early to stop work completely.
I am planning to retire in December at the age of 59.
I should be okay and I do plan to work again although a couple of days stacking shelves in Sainsburys would suit me. No pressure. Turn up. Stack shelves. Go home. Pocket around £800 a month and top up with pension.
Certainly pressurised demanding roles become less and less appealing as you get older I have found.
You'll be bored out of your mind.
I think the ideal is to find a way to lose the crap bits of the job and keep the fun bits. My friend and neighbour did that in the NHS. He retired from head of department and came back as a locum only doing clinics. No more pointless and tedious meetings, minimal paperwork, some intellectual stimulation. Perfect.
3 in a day. It can't be the money, apparently median dev salary is $1m a year.
They are on far more than $1m a year...
Beyond that it's hard to say what's going on with OpenAi and those people will have knowledge about the situation that no one else has..
If I was on millions a year, within a year I'd have millions of pounds. So would retire.
Which I suppose is why I'm not on millions a year.
They do exist. Friend knows a guy who made partner in Deloitte aged 34 and then retired at 42, no kids, and he now basically plays squash all day.
The bastard.
Is this a good time to mention that I could retire today but have provisionally set my retirement when I hit 50 in 2028?
I am unlikely to retire then though, more like when I hit 55 to 60.
These days there's a lot of "retiring" of men in their 50s from a first career, in order to start a second career. And women in their 40s. You need to work out what your second career will be. Even 60 is too early to stop work completely.
I am planning to retire in December at the age of 59.
I should be okay and I do plan to work again although a couple of days stacking shelves in Sainsburys would suit me. No pressure. Turn up. Stack shelves. Go home. Pocket around £800 a month and top up with pension.
Certainly pressurised demanding roles become less and less appealing as you get older I have found.
Congrats on your retirement. Make sure you keep active and see the world. Enjoy yourself.
Unfortunately for Downing Street, exactly 37 minutes after their line was published Guido went to pixel with evidence that Starmer paid tribute to the Queen on the day of her death from the very same ‘one-off’ penthouse. Gone were the family photos – replaced with some dark urns and books including an Obama biography…
This is going to become untenable for Keir Starmer. The revelations about Lord Alli’s apartment have only just started…
3 in a day. It can't be the money, apparently median dev salary is $1m a year.
They are on far more than $1m a year...
Beyond that it's hard to say what's going on with OpenAi and those people will have knowledge about the situation that no one else has..
If I was on millions a year, within a year I'd have millions of pounds. So would retire.
Which I suppose is why I'm not on millions a year.
They do exist. Friend knows a guy who made partner in Deloitte aged 34 and then retired at 42, no kids, and he now basically plays squash all day.
The bastard.
Is this a good time to mention that I could retire today but have provisionally set my retirement when I hit 50 in 2028?
I am unlikely to retire then though, more like when I hit 55 to 60.
Playing squash all day sounds really boring. I've recently retired at 74, because private activities started to seem more interesting. So far it's proved a good move, but the changes in lifestyle are quite dramatic, and I'd advise against retiring just because you financially can.
Playing squash all day will quickly become playing golf all day as you get older. Squash is about the worst sport for your body that doesn’t involve high speed accidents or being hit in the face. Hips, knees, ankles, shoulders, wrists all get totally screwed.
Starmer did the unthinkable and filmed a video in a donors flat . I mean the horror , this is much worse than Bozo partying whilst grannie was being carted off to the funeral home . It’s much worse than billions of pounds of government contracts for mates .
This latest media fixation is pathetic .
Oh, for the days when a chancellor had to re-write his budget because of a proposed tax on Cornish pasties.
Starmer did the unthinkable and filmed a video in a donors flat . I mean the horror , this is much worse than Bozo partying whilst grannie was being carted off to the funeral home . It’s much worse than billions of pounds of government contracts for mates .
This latest media fixation is pathetic .
Oh, for the days when a chancellor had to re-write his budget because of a proposed tax on Cornish pasties.
3 in a day. It can't be the money, apparently median dev salary is $1m a year.
They are on far more than $1m a year...
Beyond that it's hard to say what's going on with OpenAi and those people will have knowledge about the situation that no one else has..
If I was on millions a year, within a year I'd have millions of pounds. So would retire.
Which I suppose is why I'm not on millions a year.
They do exist. Friend knows a guy who made partner in Deloitte aged 34 and then retired at 42, no kids, and he now basically plays squash all day.
The bastard.
Is this a good time to mention that I could retire today but have provisionally set my retirement when I hit 50 in 2028?
I am unlikely to retire then though, more like when I hit 55 to 60.
These days there's a lot of "retiring" of men in their 50s from a first career, in order to start a second career. And women in their 40s. You need to work out what your second career will be. Even 60 is too early to stop work completely.
I am planning to retire in December at the age of 59.
I should be okay and I do plan to work again although a couple of days stacking shelves in Sainsburys would suit me. No pressure. Turn up. Stack shelves. Go home. Pocket around £800 a month and top up with pension.
Certainly pressurised demanding roles become less and less appealing as you get older I have found.
You'll be bored out of your mind.
I think the ideal is to find a way to lose the crap bits of the job and keep the fun bits. My friend and neighbour did that in the NHS. He retired from head of department and came back as a locum only doing clinics. No more pointless and tedious meetings, minimal paperwork, some intellectual stimulation. Perfect.
Bored out of his mind? I retired at 62 from a very demanding job and have never looked back. The only times I'm bored are when brushing my teeth and, I suppose, reading x, y and z's posts on this otherwise fabulous site - though the latter is optional, of course.
Truthfully: although retired, I wish there were more hours in the day. It's such fun not having the chains of paid work.
3 in a day. It can't be the money, apparently median dev salary is $1m a year.
They are on far more than $1m a year...
Beyond that it's hard to say what's going on with OpenAi and those people will have knowledge about the situation that no one else has..
If I was on millions a year, within a year I'd have millions of pounds. So would retire.
Which I suppose is why I'm not on millions a year.
They do exist. Friend knows a guy who made partner in Deloitte aged 34 and then retired at 42, no kids, and he now basically plays squash all day.
The bastard.
Is this a good time to mention that I could retire today but have provisionally set my retirement when I hit 50 in 2028?
I am unlikely to retire then though, more like when I hit 55 to 60.
These days there's a lot of "retiring" of men in their 50s from a first career, in order to start a second career. And women in their 40s. You need to work out what your second career will be. Even 60 is too early to stop work completely.
I am planning to retire in December at the age of 59.
I should be okay and I do plan to work again although a couple of days stacking shelves in Sainsburys would suit me. No pressure. Turn up. Stack shelves. Go home. Pocket around £800 a month and top up with pension.
Certainly pressurised demanding roles become less and less appealing as you get older I have found.
Congrats on your retirement. Make sure you keep active and see the world. Enjoy yourself.
Thank you, we certainly plan to.
I also plan to do some volunteer work as well, I am great at home brew so I will also learn how to make chutnies and relishes.
The Tories really do need to think about how they managed to lose to this mob. How they managed to be even worse, and make them look superficially attractive to many.
14 years in government. We're not a one party state.
To be accurate the Conservatives had nine years alone in Government and five in Coalition with the LibDems. Those five are recognised as a period, while by no means of excellence, at least of stability. Yes, they got things wrong, tuition fees for one, NHS re-organisation for another, but at least they were coherent. And, while my memory may now be failing, I don't recall the same degree of harking back in either 1997 or 2010. What's more, I don't recall the same sense of ineptitude about any government in the first few months of the time in office. Apart, perhaps, from Johnson's in 2019.
Comments
They are getting themselves in a mess.
And Lord Alli going - I know the perfect place and it won't require any real work as it's big enough for a camera crew...
It's so much a none story that I can't see the fuss - the one thing it shows me is that 24 hour news channels with their desperation for cheap easy to report "news" is not a good idea..
Then a bunch of other writers came in and put bad soap opera on top.
So we get Sauron considering repentance. But ending up doing evil, again, because his repentance isn't truly in his soul. Straight out of Tolkien. The origin of orcs and their moral value. etc
Also, Peter Jackson described how, when making the films, he would get random and utterly insane "suggestions" from the studio execs. Which he binned. The tenor of those suggestions matches what is wrong with the series.
The standard of writing for the last two Seasons of Game of Thrones simply fell off a cliff.
Is there a market on how many Labour MPs will lose the whip in this Parliament?
"Putin proposes new rules for Russia using nuclear weapons - BBC News" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yjej0rvw0o
Thankfully that isn't the massive problem it used to be but I suspect a lot of firms would have a nightmare if the queuing systems of the main clouds went properly down..
Yes, his relative's house .... but
Personally that particular Labour PPC made me want to reach into the telly and slap Starmer pretty much more than anything else he's ever said or done. Covid Starmer was Starmer at his absolute worst. But it doesn't smell to me like there was any impropriety in filming it.
It didn't occur to me at the time that it's not his house, but it's not particularly surprising. He reeks of inauthenticity and insincerity.
Whereas if you want people to accept magic and the supernatural, you have to make the rest (and peoples’ motivations) believable.
Old soldier that he was, Tolkien paid a lot of attention to logistics, operations, and tactics, in LOTR.
Starmer did the unthinkable and filmed a video in a donors flat . I mean the horror , this is much worse than Bozo partying whilst grannie was being carted off to the funeral home . It’s much worse than billions of pounds of government contracts for mates .
This latest media fixation is pathetic .
https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1838995916952363358?t=DmkxloTYUUl35MPxmTAJCQ&s=19
This mob got barely more than a third.
https://x.com/mattcartoonist/status/1838615549397361031?s=12
The bastard.
Helped a friend who was doing some documentary (for teaching) filming at Vaux-le-Vicomte. The actual filming was by a couple of experts from the uni, I was fetching and carrying for them.
Small rooms, mostly, terrible light. You can't move furniture (much).
It was remarkable what you can do with a Canon full frame, some good lenses, a tripod/carry rig, one lighting guy....
How will they react when real events come and bash them in the face?
A very interesting conversation (10 minutes) on the Rest is Politics podcast, around 'Labour’s freebie fiasco'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8n_Gh173C8&t=1436s
Yes. Yes, it probably does….
I somehow think she will not be the labour candidate in 2029.
One chap turned out to be a trader, Dutch. He described, calmly, how he had invested every bonus in buying property. So, he was going home to tell his wife that he would be spending much more time with the family. And that they might have to cut back on the most extravagant holidays. But that he and the family would be fine - his thoughts were with the people who hadn't got such investments.
The BBC reporter seemed kind of stunned.
"Trump says Ukraine is ‘demolished’ and dismisses its defense against Russia’s invasion"
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-ukraine-putin-zelenskyy-0f4d539aa73a943474d779716e5fe42a
Which was the whole point behind message grids. Create a coherent story. Push it to the media. Use it to take up space in the national conversation, pushing the anti stuff into a corner.
And this can work in the age of social media - given that social media "reporters" often have no money to spend on stories, giving them stories wrapped with a bow works well.
But their need someone to quickly get control of the media / presentation side of things because it's running away from them...
Spending like drunken sailors on a night out.
I have been following the 2yr/10yr inversion as I had seen it discussed on some CNBC videos on Youtube.
I was not aware of the 3 month/10 yr crossover so will read up on that and the implications of it.
The corporation I work for is preparing for a recession next year and everything we are doing is based on that. Run down inventories, push out payment terms etc etc.
Our current daily order intake is abysmal too.
Good morning, everyone.
You need a broader and deeper change.
In more obscure Tolkien, he did repent. And then unrepented.
I'm not even sure if it's in the Silmarillion. Real rabbithole stuff.
Sauron never truly repented, and those few who may have believed him would do well to remember just how long and easily he enacted methods of deception. It is said in *Of The Rings of Power and the Third Age* that Sauron did the bare minimum to avoid punishment after the War of Wrath:
“When Thangorodrim was broken and Morgoth overthrown, Sauron put on his fair hue again and did obeisance to Eonwe, the herald of Manwe, and abjured all his evil deeds. And some hold that this was not at first falsely done, but that Sauron in truth repented, if only out of fear, being dismayed by the fall of Morgoth and the great wrath of the Lords of the West.”
That isn’t Sauron becoming good, that’s Sauron quailing before the might of the mightiest army ever to set foot in Middle-earth, saying whatever he had to say, however he had to say it.
The text goes on to say that Eonwe, not having the power to forgive one of his own order, tells him to head west to be judged by the Valar, and that Sauron immediately flees east. Again, that isn’t him becoming good at all; remember that he’s called the Deceiver by Amandil for a reason. Sauron says whatever he has to in order to further his own wants. And that is all he did; his words and hue were fair, but his actions were always entirely self-serving from the very moment he escaped the consequences of his actions.
https://tolkienlegendarium.quora.com/Why-does-Sauron-become-evil-again-after-repenting-for-a-while-when-Morgoth-fell-Whats-his-endgame-He-was-at-the-begin
If Labour continue to do sub-optimally in that department, then (see the polling in the article) the formula which is not spectacularly unpopular + is really a bit different + hasn't been tried and failed yet, is our old friend Kate Forbes as leader of SNP. Prediction: the SNP will get there in the end, and the result will be interesting.
Though he plays Masters water polo, on a team which won the World Aquatics Masters Championships 60+ category last year.
But the Floridians should escape fairly lightly again as it looks like coming ashore a long way North of Tampa Bay.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1454383/approval-rate-of-giorgia-meloni-in-italy/
That's in line with what Tolkien wrote, I think.
There was a line written by Tolkien, about what would have happened if Gandalf had taken the One Ring - He would have made Good evil and hateful, by his methods.
Or some such.
Headline “ PwC UK partners suffer £44,000 pay cut. Reduced payday comes as ‘big four’ accounting firms trim costs”
Second paragraph “Average partner pay sank by 4.9pc from £906,000 to £862,000 in the year to June, as total profits fell 14pc to £1.14bn, the firm announced on Wednesday.”
Doesn’t take many years of earning £900k to be financially secure for life.
There's also Frodo offering it to Galadriel - "You would set up a Queen; all will love me and despair". She sounds cut out for Instagram.
I suppose it also depends on what country and therefore what effective tax rate. If this were a partner in the UAE or somewhere it would be a different story.
I am unlikely to retire then though, more like when I hit 55 to 60.
Who knew.
Currently her party has a comfortable 7% lead in the polls when most incumbents parties are polling behind the opposition now
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_Italian_general_election
Which is, having to choose between rule by Sauron, and destruction by Morgoth.
The Dark Lord of the series (in this case a woman), is a brutal conqueror, who runs a police state. The rebels against her are initially presented as the good guys, but are, in reality, catspaws for the Morgoth figure, who simply relishes destruction for its own sake.
It may be a choice between evils, but in that case, you choose Sauron, who at least wants a functioning society, rather than Morgoth, who wants the world to burn.
But yes, that's not a good place to start from. Especially since many of their friends are probably still working in an around No.10. Some with.... dented? careers.
Let's put a 500% tariff on all cheap Trump merchandise that comes from China as a test run, see what it does to prices.
https://x.com/TheRealThelmaJ1/status/1838969246417588472
"China will pay..."
And agree entirely on the Morgoth/Sauron difference. Sauron's all about control. Morgoth just wants to bugger everything up.
"How Al Fayed built a corrupt system of enablers to carry out his sexual abuse"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp8ejd9l00lo
Guido is a regulation clown. A sort of below stairs Matty Goodwin without the suit.
He has proposed 60% certainly and 10% for the ROW.
No one is going to do any such thing to Trump.
Why is this more shocking than the accounts of how Rotherham happened because of institutional coverup and protection of the offenders?
I should be okay and I do plan to work again although a couple of days stacking shelves in Sainsburys would suit me. No pressure. Turn up. Stack shelves. Go home. Pocket around £800 a month and top up with pension.
Certainly pressurised demanding roles become less and less appealing as you get older I have found.
I’d love to see Kay and Beth’s register of gifts and expenses. Would be a sight to behold!
I guess it depends on whether you were enjoying work and whether you have fulfilling hobbies.
I think the ideal is to find a way to lose the crap bits of the job and keep the fun bits. My friend and neighbour did that in the NHS. He retired from head of department and came back as a locum only doing clinics. No more pointless and tedious meetings, minimal paperwork, some intellectual stimulation. Perfect.
Truthfully: although retired, I wish there were more hours in the day. It's such fun not having the chains of paid work.
I also plan to do some volunteer work as well, I am great at home brew so I will also learn how to make chutnies and relishes.
I do not want to sit and vegetate at home.
And, while my memory may now be failing, I don't recall the same degree of harking back in either 1997 or 2010. What's more, I don't recall the same sense of ineptitude about any government in the first few months of the time in office. Apart, perhaps, from Johnson's in 2019.