Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer - or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation - to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.
The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics - tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.
This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.
If simultaneously these countries and the EU also reduced tariffs on trade between themselves - to facilitate less trade friction in an economic area significantly greater than that of the US - the potential damage to American domiciled companies and interests would be even more significant.
The world would then divide between a newly thriving economic area of pretty much all developed democracies apart from the US - the G7 minus one, as it were - and a protectionist and potentially sclerotic America.
Obviously this would look like the mother of all trade wars. Markets might in the short term take serious fright.
But the current response to Trump - each nation or trading region seeking individually to buy or warn Trump off - is massively sub optimal. It allows Trump to divide and rule.
The best chance of him backing down would come if the combined voice of American businesses and banks were a howl of pain at being locked out of the world’s richest economies.
In Trump’s re-ordered multi-polar world where might is right, nations like the UK and even huge economies like the EU’s single market lack the clout individually to face him down.
As I said on ITV’s News at Ten last night, bullies don’t give up once they’ve taken one kid’s dinner money. They surrender when that kid makes common cause with the rest of the school.
Trump is now saying, as are others in the US and some financial commentators, that these are the starting point for a negotiation to get rebalanced global trade
Given the US, and the west in general, helped that by seeking low cost country sourcing, they’re trying to solve a problem they caused.
Problem is, even if they get a deal, how do they know this lunatic will stick to it.
A bigger question is what would the deal look like. Reality is most Americans aren't going to be happy paying the market price for items manufactured in the USA rather than imported from China.
MAGA have a simple answer - just go back to 1955. America rules the world. No gays. No latinos. Jim Crow. Always sunny and a BBQ on in the garden where the manly men cook American steaks for their neighbours whilst their women concentrate on looking pretty.
Didn't more latinos than ever vote Republican though?
So? They’re not American enough for so many MAGA people. They want to deport many millions of Latinos, including citizens. That’s a pretty fine line to try and draw - we want to deport Latino America citizens, but don’t worry Latino American citizen, we like you, please feel safe
Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer - or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation - to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.
The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics - tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.
This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.
If simultaneously these countries and the EU also reduced tariffs on trade between themselves - to facilitate less trade friction in an economic area significantly greater than that of the US - the potential damage to American domiciled companies and interests would be even more significant.
The world would then divide between a newly thriving economic area of pretty much all developed democracies apart from the US - the G7 minus one, as it were - and a protectionist and potentially sclerotic America.
Obviously this would look like the mother of all trade wars. Markets might in the short term take serious fright.
But the current response to Trump - each nation or trading region seeking individually to buy or warn Trump off - is massively sub optimal. It allows Trump to divide and rule.
The best chance of him backing down would come if the combined voice of American businesses and banks were a howl of pain at being locked out of the world’s richest economies.
In Trump’s re-ordered multi-polar world where might is right, nations like the UK and even huge economies like the EU’s single market lack the clout individually to face him down.
As I said on ITV’s News at Ten last night, bullies don’t give up once they’ve taken one kid’s dinner money. They surrender when that kid makes common cause with the rest of the school.
Trump is now saying, as are others in the US and some financial commentators, that these are the starting point for a negotiation to get rebalanced global trade
Given the US, and the west in general, helped that by seeking low cost country sourcing, they’re trying to solve a problem they caused.
Problem is, even if they get a deal, how do they know this lunatic will stick to it.
A bigger question is what would the deal look like. Reality is most Americans aren't going to be happy paying the market price for items manufactured in the USA rather than imported from China.
MAGA have a simple answer - just go back to 1955. America rules the world. No gays. No latinos. Jim Crow. Always sunny and a BBQ on in the garden where the manly men cook American steaks for their neighbours whilst their women concentrate on looking pretty.
America used to build everything and it can do again. What’s more, once the might of America is brought then these foreigners will pay for it by means of compensation for ripping off America all this time.
I know, it’s laughable. But You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons.
The most memorable thing Rex Tillerson (Trump's first Secretary of State) said was "Trump is a moron". Though I am loath to say that kind of thing, I think it has found plenty of echos here
The main way to read all of these messaging attempts from Fox et al is that they know that Trump is in the process of crashing the economy and they are desperate to find the One Weird Trick bit of messaging that will salvage his (already deteriorating) position with the public.
Most of the west is in denial and especially in the UK where people still are taxed less than most of Europe .
It’s simply unsustainable to continue on this path where the workers to retirees ratio continues to shrink.
The pension age will need to rise or people will have to pay more tax . Reeves obsession with her fiscal rules is delusional.
She’ll either have to make more cuts or increase taxes to meet that especially as the lunatic across the pond causes global turmoil with tariffs .
Even if Starmer finally gets some tariff relief the UK can’t avoid the indirect economic impacts.
One reform that is perhaps needed is to restrict the ability of non-UK citizens to claim the state pension.
If you’ve paid your taxes then you should be able to claim some pension . Many though wouldn’t qualify for the full pension as they wouldn’t have enough qualifying years .
They could pay the top up and then get the full amount.
The top up is only available for a minimum. Of years after you've worked them. Eg I can't top up my missed years from university time.
Oh, there's a surprise (not) Virgina Giuffre/Roberts isn't going to be dead in less than four days...
I thought it seemed a bit strange that someone with four days to live would be posting selfies on Instagram 😂
I’m sad to announce that I too have been given days to live (if I stop eating and drinking anything).
It's a bit like that episode on Only Fools And Horses where Rodney tricks Del into going hand-gliding and Del finishes up crashing into a TV transmitter Ariel and a "very unsuspecting courting couple"
Del Boy claims he may never walk again but Rodders quickly realizes it's all a scam as hospitals generally don't send paralyzed people home by bus! 😂
Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer - or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation - to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.
The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics - tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.
This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.
If simultaneously these countries and the EU also reduced tariffs on trade between themselves - to facilitate less trade friction in an economic area significantly greater than that of the US - the potential damage to American domiciled companies and interests would be even more significant.
The world would then divide between a newly thriving economic area of pretty much all developed democracies apart from the US - the G7 minus one, as it were - and a protectionist and potentially sclerotic America.
Obviously this would look like the mother of all trade wars. Markets might in the short term take serious fright.
But the current response to Trump - each nation or trading region seeking individually to buy or warn Trump off - is massively sub optimal. It allows Trump to divide and rule.
The best chance of him backing down would come if the combined voice of American businesses and banks were a howl of pain at being locked out of the world’s richest economies.
In Trump’s re-ordered multi-polar world where might is right, nations like the UK and even huge economies like the EU’s single market lack the clout individually to face him down.
As I said on ITV’s News at Ten last night, bullies don’t give up once they’ve taken one kid’s dinner money. They surrender when that kid makes common cause with the rest of the school.
But it won’t be Starmer championing this - at least not yet. His focus is still on trying to mitigate the fallout and try and maintain good relations with Trump. In time, that may change. I understand why he’s doing it, but I think it increasingly looks like folly.
It's perfectly possible to be plotting 2 different things at once, planning how to deal with Trump while trying your hardest to be excluded from it.
Bringing to mind the excellent plotting from Blackadder III :
Modern life. In the last two years: (1) I am now always asked if I have allergies before I say a order a single thing, and (2) I'm also told abusive behaviour will not be tolerated.
Weird.
When did this happen?
The allergies thing is, I think, a reaction to modernity. Asking the question wards off the evil eye and litigation simultaneously. The abusive behaviour thing is like those reminders at stations that you shouldn't sexually assault women and girls while you are there. I suppose it's just in case you have forgotten. When you are my age things slip your mind.
(WaPo) - Members of President Donald Trump’s National Security Council, including .. Michael Waltz, have conducted government business over personal Gmail accounts, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post and interviews w/ three U.S. officials.
(WaPo) - Members of President Donald Trump’s National Security Council, including .. Michael Waltz, have conducted government business over personal Gmail accounts, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post and interviews w/ three U.S. officials.
(WaPo) - Members of President Donald Trump’s National Security Council, including .. Michael Waltz, have conducted government business over personal Gmail accounts, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post and interviews w/ three U.S. officials.
Most of the west is in denial and especially in the UK where people still are taxed less than most of Europe .
It’s simply unsustainable to continue on this path where the workers to retirees ratio continues to shrink.
The pension age will need to rise or people will have to pay more tax . Reeves obsession with her fiscal rules is delusional.
She’ll either have to make more cuts or increase taxes to meet that especially as the lunatic across the pond causes global turmoil with tariffs .
Even if Starmer finally gets some tariff relief the UK can’t avoid the indirect economic impacts.
As a nation we: Don’t save enough for retirement Don’t pay remotely adequate social security cover for illness and unemployment and maternity Don’t have sufficient cash to spend to keep the economy viable in many towns up and down the land Don’t receive fit for purpose services like health and education or infrastructure provision
I’m not sure that people can pay more tax. Every pound extra taken in tax is another pound taken out of the economy which means more businesses closed and more job losses and less tax receipts.
We need to borrow. Invest. Gain a return on the investment. Imagine what Britain would have been like post war had todays “we can’t afford it” mentality prevailed…
Returns can be negative on investment.
If people had better skillsets there would be more scope for all that extra saving, spending and taxing.
Why is the tall pointy thing leaning towards the red cave?
It's a combination of perspective and the lens. The perspective makes vertical parallel lines appear to lean towards a central point, and the lens make things further away appear curved. Hence the leany.
Modern life. In the last two years: (1) I am now always asked if I have allergies before I say a order a single thing, and (2) I'm also told abusive behaviour will not be tolerated.
Weird.
When did this happen?
I think number 2 is because people are more likely to insult or call people names, you know what I mean?
(WaPo) - Members of President Donald Trump’s National Security Council, including .. Michael Waltz, have conducted government business over personal Gmail accounts, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post and interviews w/ three U.S. officials.
Most of the west is in denial and especially in the UK where people still are taxed less than most of Europe .
It’s simply unsustainable to continue on this path where the workers to retirees ratio continues to shrink.
The pension age will need to rise or people will have to pay more tax . Reeves obsession with her fiscal rules is delusional.
She’ll either have to make more cuts or increase taxes to meet that especially as the lunatic across the pond causes global turmoil with tariffs .
Even if Starmer finally gets some tariff relief the UK can’t avoid the indirect economic impacts.
As a nation we: Don’t save enough for retirement Don’t pay remotely adequate social security cover for illness and unemployment and maternity Don’t have sufficient cash to spend to keep the economy viable in many towns up and down the land Don’t receive fit for purpose services like health and education or infrastructure provision
I’m not sure that people can pay more tax. Every pound extra taken in tax is another pound taken out of the economy which means more businesses closed and more job losses and less tax receipts.
We need to borrow. Invest. Gain a return on the investment. Imagine what Britain would have been like post war had todays “we can’t afford it” mentality prevailed…
Returns can be negative on investment.
If people had better skillsets there would be more scope for all that extra saving, spending and taxing.
Most of the west is in denial and especially in the UK where people still are taxed less than most of Europe .
It’s simply unsustainable to continue on this path where the workers to retirees ratio continues to shrink.
The pension age will need to rise or people will have to pay more tax . Reeves obsession with her fiscal rules is delusional.
She’ll either have to make more cuts or increase taxes to meet that especially as the lunatic across the pond causes global turmoil with tariffs .
Even if Starmer finally gets some tariff relief the UK can’t avoid the indirect economic impacts.
As a nation we: Don’t save enough for retirement Don’t pay remotely adequate social security cover for illness and unemployment and maternity Don’t have sufficient cash to spend to keep the economy viable in many towns up and down the land Don’t receive fit for purpose services like health and education or infrastructure provision
I’m not sure that people can pay more tax. Every pound extra taken in tax is another pound taken out of the economy which means more businesses closed and more job losses and less tax receipts.
We need to borrow. Invest. Gain a return on the investment. Imagine what Britain would have been like post war had todays “we can’t afford it” mentality prevailed…
Returns can be negative on investment.
If people had better skillsets there would be more scope for all that extra saving, spending and taxing.
Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer - or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation - to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.
The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics - tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.
This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.
If simultaneously these countries and the EU also reduced tariffs on trade between themselves - to facilitate less trade friction in an economic area significantly greater than that of the US - the potential damage to American domiciled companies and interests would be even more significant.
The world would then divide between a newly thriving economic area of pretty much all developed democracies apart from the US - the G7 minus one, as it were - and a protectionist and potentially sclerotic America.
Obviously this would look like the mother of all trade wars. Markets might in the short term take serious fright.
But the current response to Trump - each nation or trading region seeking individually to buy or warn Trump off - is massively sub optimal. It allows Trump to divide and rule.
The best chance of him backing down would come if the combined voice of American businesses and banks were a howl of pain at being locked out of the world’s richest economies.
In Trump’s re-ordered multi-polar world where might is right, nations like the UK and even huge economies like the EU’s single market lack the clout individually to face him down.
As I said on ITV’s News at Ten last night, bullies don’t give up once they’ve taken one kid’s dinner money. They surrender when that kid makes common cause with the rest of the school.
Trump is now saying, as are others in the US and some financial commentators, that these are the starting point for a negotiation to get rebalanced global trade
Given the US, and the west in general, helped that by seeking low cost country sourcing, they’re trying to solve a problem they caused.
Problem is, even if they get a deal, how do they know this lunatic will stick to it.
A bigger question is what would the deal look like. Reality is most Americans aren't going to be happy paying the market price for items manufactured in the USA rather than imported from China.
MAGA have a simple answer - just go back to 1955. America rules the world. No gays. No latinos. Jim Crow. Always sunny and a BBQ on in the garden where the manly men cook American steaks for their neighbours whilst their women concentrate on looking pretty.
America used to build everything and it can do again. What’s more, once the might of America is brought then these foreigners will pay for it by means of compensation for ripping off America all this time.
I know, it’s laughable. But You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, has claimed that President Trump’s tariffs will restore a “golden age of America” during a news briefing today.
“We are focused on restoring the golden age of America, and making America a manufacturing superpower”
Oh, there's a surprise (not) Virgina Giuffre/Roberts isn't going to be dead in less than four days...
I thought it seemed a bit strange that someone with four days to live would be posting selfies on Instagram 😂
I’m sad to announce that I too have been given days to live (if I stop eating and drinking anything).
It's a bit like that episode on Only Fools And Horses where Rodney tricks Del into going hand-gliding and Del finishes up crashing into a TV transmitter Ariel and a "very unsuspecting courting couple"
Del Boy claims he may never walk again but Rodders quickly realizes it's all a scam as hospitals generally don't send paralyzed people home by bus! 😂
Whatever happened to that glorious expression/euphemism 'courting couples'. Whatever happened to all those old fashioned murders where the bodies were found in 'a lovers lane frequented by courting couples'?
I suppose this gorgeous bit of Larkin will need footnotes:
Before them, the wind Is ruining their courting-places
That are still courting-places (But the lovers are all in school), And their children, so intent on Finding more unripe acorns, Expect to be taken home. Their beauty has thickened. Something is pushing them To the side of their own lives.
Joe Weisenthal @TheStalwart · 5h People don't talk much about the Dallas Fed Services Activity Index. Not exactly a top-shelf datapoint to most people in the market. But whew, just look through all of these comments about the state of the economy.
Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer - or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation - to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.
The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics - tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.
This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.
If simultaneously these countries and the EU also reduced tariffs on trade between themselves - to facilitate less trade friction in an economic area significantly greater than that of the US - the potential damage to American domiciled companies and interests would be even more significant.
The world would then divide between a newly thriving economic area of pretty much all developed democracies apart from the US - the G7 minus one, as it were - and a protectionist and potentially sclerotic America.
Obviously this would look like the mother of all trade wars. Markets might in the short term take serious fright.
But the current response to Trump - each nation or trading region seeking individually to buy or warn Trump off - is massively sub optimal. It allows Trump to divide and rule.
The best chance of him backing down would come if the combined voice of American businesses and banks were a howl of pain at being locked out of the world’s richest economies.
In Trump’s re-ordered multi-polar world where might is right, nations like the UK and even huge economies like the EU’s single market lack the clout individually to face him down.
As I said on ITV’s News at Ten last night, bullies don’t give up once they’ve taken one kid’s dinner money. They surrender when that kid makes common cause with the rest of the school.
Trump is now saying, as are others in the US and some financial commentators, that these are the starting point for a negotiation to get rebalanced global trade
Given the US, and the west in general, helped that by seeking low cost country sourcing, they’re trying to solve a problem they caused.
Problem is, even if they get a deal, how do they know this lunatic will stick to it.
A bigger question is what would the deal look like. Reality is most Americans aren't going to be happy paying the market price for items manufactured in the USA rather than imported from China.
MAGA have a simple answer - just go back to 1955. America rules the world. No gays. No latinos. Jim Crow. Always sunny and a BBQ on in the garden where the manly men cook American steaks for their neighbours whilst their women concentrate on looking pretty.
America used to build everything and it can do again. What’s more, once the might of America is brought then these foreigners will pay for it by means of compensation for ripping off America all this time.
I know, it’s laughable. But You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, has claimed that President Trump’s tariffs will restore a “golden age of America” during a news briefing today.
“We are focused on restoring the golden age of America, and making America a manufacturing superpower”
The most memorable thing Rex Tillerson (Trump's first Secretary of State) said was "Trump is a moron". Though I am loath to say that kind of thing, I think it has found plenty of echos here
I used to feel quite annoyed at the people around Trump not standing up to him between 2017 to 2021, why didn't people like Tillerson do more?
Now having seen what an unfettered Trump is capable of I realise that we all owe them a debt of gratitude, they must have been working round the clock to thwart Trump's stupid instincts.
I can't watch the Whitehouse Press Secretary. The level of stupid is so bad it hurts
I find it hard watching too. But because I sense that she is a nice girl, and far far too young to have sold her soul for the sake of a bunch of the creepiest politicians imaginable. I must be old fashioned. I just think she is worth better.
Well, to the literally no one who is awaiting this update I picked up the Model Y Performance today that's theoretically Mrs Dumbo's (although probably me driving it mostly). It shifts. When I started out overtaking a convoy of 3 vehicle at 40mph and ended at 120mph on my way back I knew I'd done the right thing. I don't regret it no matter how Nazi Musk gets.
Speaking of Tesla admirers, @RochdalePioneers I really enjoy your videos. EXCEPT the first 2 seconds. Stop doing that weird hello thing. When I was at school you would rightly get bullied for that.
Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer - or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation - to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.
The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics - tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.
This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.
If simultaneously these countries and the EU also reduced tariffs on trade between themselves - to facilitate less trade friction in an economic area significantly greater than that of the US - the potential damage to American domiciled companies and interests would be even more significant.
The world would then divide between a newly thriving economic area of pretty much all developed democracies apart from the US - the G7 minus one, as it were - and a protectionist and potentially sclerotic America.
Obviously this would look like the mother of all trade wars. Markets might in the short term take serious fright.
But the current response to Trump - each nation or trading region seeking individually to buy or warn Trump off - is massively sub optimal. It allows Trump to divide and rule.
The best chance of him backing down would come if the combined voice of American businesses and banks were a howl of pain at being locked out of the world’s richest economies.
In Trump’s re-ordered multi-polar world where might is right, nations like the UK and even huge economies like the EU’s single market lack the clout individually to face him down.
As I said on ITV’s News at Ten last night, bullies don’t give up once they’ve taken one kid’s dinner money. They surrender when that kid makes common cause with the rest of the school.
Trump is now saying, as are others in the US and some financial commentators, that these are the starting point for a negotiation to get rebalanced global trade
Given the US, and the west in general, helped that by seeking low cost country sourcing, they’re trying to solve a problem they caused.
Problem is, even if they get a deal, how do they know this lunatic will stick to it.
A bigger question is what would the deal look like. Reality is most Americans aren't going to be happy paying the market price for items manufactured in the USA rather than imported from China.
MAGA have a simple answer - just go back to 1955. America rules the world. No gays. No latinos. Jim Crow. Always sunny and a BBQ on in the garden where the manly men cook American steaks for their neighbours whilst their women concentrate on looking pretty.
America used to build everything and it can do again. What’s more, once the might of America is brought then these foreigners will pay for it by means of compensation for ripping off America all this time.
I know, it’s laughable. But You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons.
The most memorable thing Rex Tillerson (Trump's first Secretary of State) said was "Trump is a moron". Though I am loath to say that kind of thing, I think it has found plenty of echos here
I don't quite agree that Trump is a moron. Nor do I think he's a genius.
He's a man of fairly average intelligence - the "average voter" that Winston Churchill said was the worst advertisement for democracy. He has many of the (bad) opinions and prejudices of his age (now almost 80).
What he does have to extreme excess is confidence in his own abilities, so he never listens to experts, as well as aggression, a very low attention span, relentless drive and poor impulse control.
Basically about the last person you'd want to be in charge of the world's largest economy and military superpower.
Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer - or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation - to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.
The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics - tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.
This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.
If simultaneously these countries and the EU also reduced tariffs on trade between themselves - to facilitate less trade friction in an economic area significantly greater than that of the US - the potential damage to American domiciled companies and interests would be even more significant.
The world would then divide between a newly thriving economic area of pretty much all developed democracies apart from the US - the G7 minus one, as it were - and a protectionist and potentially sclerotic America.
Obviously this would look like the mother of all trade wars. Markets might in the short term take serious fright.
But the current response to Trump - each nation or trading region seeking individually to buy or warn Trump off - is massively sub optimal. It allows Trump to divide and rule.
The best chance of him backing down would come if the combined voice of American businesses and banks were a howl of pain at being locked out of the world’s richest economies.
In Trump’s re-ordered multi-polar world where might is right, nations like the UK and even huge economies like the EU’s single market lack the clout individually to face him down.
As I said on ITV’s News at Ten last night, bullies don’t give up once they’ve taken one kid’s dinner money. They surrender when that kid makes common cause with the rest of the school.
Trump is now saying, as are others in the US and some financial commentators, that these are the starting point for a negotiation to get rebalanced global trade
Given the US, and the west in general, helped that by seeking low cost country sourcing, they’re trying to solve a problem they caused.
Problem is, even if they get a deal, how do they know this lunatic will stick to it.
A bigger question is what would the deal look like. Reality is most Americans aren't going to be happy paying the market price for items manufactured in the USA rather than imported from China.
MAGA have a simple answer - just go back to 1955. America rules the world. No gays. No latinos. Jim Crow. Always sunny and a BBQ on in the garden where the manly men cook American steaks for their neighbours whilst their women concentrate on looking pretty.
Didn't more latinos than ever vote Republican though?
So? They’re not American enough for so many MAGA people. They want to deport many millions of Latinos, including citizens. That’s a pretty fine line to try and draw - we want to deport Latino America citizens, but don’t worry Latino American citizen, we like you, please feel safe
Well, to the literally no one who is awaiting this update I picked up the Model Y Performance today that's theoretically Mrs Dumbo's (although probably me driving it mostly). It shifts. When I started out overtaking a convoy of 3 vehicle at 40mph and ended at 120mph on my way back I knew I'd done the right thing. I don't regret it no matter how Nazi Musk gets.
Speaking of Tesla admirers, @RochdalePioneers I really enjoy your videos. EXCEPT the first 2 seconds. Stop doing that weird hello thing. When I was at school you would rightly get bullied for that.
Approves of children being bullied at school, buys a Tesla. Makes sense.
Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer - or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation - to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.
The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics - tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.
This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.
If simultaneously these countries and the EU also reduced tariffs on trade between themselves - to facilitate less trade friction in an economic area significantly greater than that of the US - the potential damage to American domiciled companies and interests would be even more significant.
The world would then divide between a newly thriving economic area of pretty much all developed democracies apart from the US - the G7 minus one, as it were - and a protectionist and potentially sclerotic America.
Obviously this would look like the mother of all trade wars. Markets might in the short term take serious fright.
But the current response to Trump - each nation or trading region seeking individually to buy or warn Trump off - is massively sub optimal. It allows Trump to divide and rule.
The best chance of him backing down would come if the combined voice of American businesses and banks were a howl of pain at being locked out of the world’s richest economies.
In Trump’s re-ordered multi-polar world where might is right, nations like the UK and even huge economies like the EU’s single market lack the clout individually to face him down.
As I said on ITV’s News at Ten last night, bullies don’t give up once they’ve taken one kid’s dinner money. They surrender when that kid makes common cause with the rest of the school.
Trump is now saying, as are others in the US and some financial commentators, that these are the starting point for a negotiation to get rebalanced global trade
Given the US, and the west in general, helped that by seeking low cost country sourcing, they’re trying to solve a problem they caused.
Problem is, even if they get a deal, how do they know this lunatic will stick to it.
A bigger question is what would the deal look like. Reality is most Americans aren't going to be happy paying the market price for items manufactured in the USA rather than imported from China.
MAGA have a simple answer - just go back to 1955. America rules the world. No gays. No latinos. Jim Crow. Always sunny and a BBQ on in the garden where the manly men cook American steaks for their neighbours whilst their women concentrate on looking pretty.
America used to build everything and it can do again. What’s more, once the might of America is brought then these foreigners will pay for it by means of compensation for ripping off America all this time.
I know, it’s laughable. But You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons.
The most memorable thing Rex Tillerson (Trump's first Secretary of State) said was "Trump is a moron". Though I am loath to say that kind of thing, I think it has found plenty of echos here
I don't quite agree that Trump is a moron. Nor do I think he's a genius.
He's a man of fairly average intelligence - the "average voter" that Winston Churchill said was the worst advertisement for democracy. He has many of the (bad) opinions and prejudices of his age (now almost 80).
What he does have to extreme excess is confidence in his own abilities, so he never listens to experts, as well as aggression, a very low attention span, relentless drive and poor impulse control.
Basically about the last person you'd want to be in charge of the world's largest economy and military superpower.
Modern life. In the last two years: (1) I am now always asked if I have allergies before I say a order a single thing, and (2) I'm also told abusive behaviour will not be tolerated.
Weird.
When did this happen?
Car Rental Agent: [cheerfully] Welcome to Marathon, may I help you?
Neal [played by Steve Martin]: Yes.
Car Rental Agent: How may I help you?
Neal: You can start by wiping that fucking dumb-ass smile off your rosy fucking cheeks! Then you can give me a fucking automobile! A fucking Datsun, a fucking Toyota, a fucking Mustang, a fucking Buick! Four fucking wheels and a seat!
Car Rental Agent: I really don't care for the way you're speaking to me.
Neal: And I really don't care for the way your company left me in the middle of fucking nowhere with fucking keys to a fucking car that isn't fucking there. And I really didn't care to fucking walk down a fucking highway and across a fucking runway to get back here to have you smile in my fucking face. I want a fucking car... right... fucking... now.
[pause]
Car Rental Agent: May I see your rental agreement?
Neal: I threw it away.
Car Rental Agent: Oh, boy.
Neal: Oh, boy, what?
Car Rental Agent: [narrows her eyes] You're fucked!
Well, to the literally no one who is awaiting this update I picked up the Model Y Performance today that's theoretically Mrs Dumbo's (although probably me driving it mostly). It shifts. When I started out overtaking a convoy of 3 vehicle at 40mph and ended at 120mph on my way back I knew I'd done the right thing. I don't regret it no matter how Nazi Musk gets.
Speaking of Tesla admirers, @RochdalePioneers I really enjoy your videos. EXCEPT the first 2 seconds. Stop doing that weird hello thing. When I was at school you would rightly get bullied for that.
Approves of children being bullied at school, buys a Tesla. Makes sense.
Murphy: "Newsflash: These guys are incompetent. They don't know what they're doing. We hired a weekend Fox News host with no diplomatic or management experience with a checkered personal history of abuse and alcoholism to be our chief national security official. And it's going very badly."
I can't watch the Whitehouse Press Secretary. The level of stupid is so bad it hurts
I find it hard watching too. But because I sense that she is a nice girl, and far far too young to have sold her soul for the sake of a bunch of the creepiest politicians imaginable. I must be old fashioned. I just think she is worth better.
Some small county is missing its TV weather person?
Before we get too smug about the self-defeating nature of Trumps likely tariffs, there is a sting in the tail worth keeping an eye on.
Yes on their own higher future will simply increase vista for US industry and consumers, and if they do move manufacturing it’s unlikely to bring either high value jobs or significant profit, because US businesses (and European / Asian multinationals) have tended to put cost-sensitive manufacturing in low cost locations, whilst high end products that involve sophisticated manufacturing are generally less processed elastic.
However, the more worrying issue is the cash corporation tax works. If you move manufacturing because of tariffs, then for any IP owned outside the US you need to set up a royalty. And that is subject to the US BEAT (a tax on outbound payments for things like IP). So the logical next step is to move the IP to the US, or share it, to eliminate BEATable payments. Which does shift taxable profit. And may shift related roles too. Not so good.
That’s before the raft of punitive measures the GOO are planning in international tax to “retaliate” against countries with digital services and the UTPR (an aspect of the global minimum tax).
We have to hope that the investment-repellent effects of other aspects of Trump’s America, notably non reliance on the rule of law, chasing away of independent academia and emshittification of federal services, outweigh these tax effects.
Modern life. In the last two years: (1) I am now always asked if I have allergies before I say a order a single thing, and (2) I'm also told abusive behaviour will not be tolerated.
Weird.
When did this happen?
This may have to with liability and the number of people killed unintentionally by allergies which can cause anaphylactic shock.
I can't watch the Whitehouse Press Secretary. The level of stupid is so bad it hurts
I find it hard watching too. But because I sense that she is a nice girl, and far far too young to have sold her soul for the sake of a bunch of the creepiest politicians imaginable. I must be old fashioned. I just think she is worth better.
Some small county is missing its TV weather person?
California Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Salinas): "there are currently more kids with measles in Texas than there are transgender athletes in the NCAA. That's the epidemic we should all be worried about."
Before we get too smug about the self-defeating nature of Trumps likely tariffs, there is a sting in the tail worth keeping an eye on.
Yes on their own higher future will simply increase vista for US industry and consumers, and if they do move manufacturing it’s unlikely to bring either high value jobs or significant profit, because US businesses (and European / Asian multinationals) have tended to put cost-sensitive manufacturing in low cost locations, whilst high end products that involve sophisticated manufacturing are generally less processed elastic.
However, the more worrying issue is the cash corporation tax works. If you move manufacturing because of tariffs, then for any IP owned outside the US you need to set up a royalty. And that is subject to the US BEAT (a tax on outbound payments for things like IP). So the logical next step is to move the IP to the US, or share it, to eliminate BEATable payments. Which does shift taxable profit. And may shift related roles too. Not so good.
That’s before the raft of punitive measures the GOO are planning in international tax to “retaliate” against countries with digital services and the UTPR (an aspect of the global minimum tax).
We have to hope that the investment-repellent effects of other aspects of Trump’s America, notably non reliance on the rule of law, chasing away of independent academia and emshittification of federal services, outweigh these tax effects.
Oh dear. Autocorrect doing its thing and too late to edit.
- Simply increase costs - Price elastic - The way corporation tax works - GOP - Enshittification
Pizza whhels are useless - scissors are gay - knives are clumsy - what you need is a proper pizza cutter (i cant remember the correct name) - a two handled curved blade that you push down from one end to the other.
I called that a "herb chopper" when I mentioned it earlier to explain why everybody else were being sbowflakes.
Breaking: Cory Booker, the Democratic senator from New Jersey, has now spoken for 21 hours on the Senate floor in opposition to the Trump administration.
Booker has used his speaking slot to decry the Trump administration’s spending cuts, its attempt to abolish the Department of Education, the president’s attempts to bypass the judicial system and the removal of people from the US who speak out against the administration.
He began his speech at 7pm ET on Monday night and will pass the 21-hour mark at 4pm on Tuesday. Booker has had help from Democratic colleagues, who have been asking him questions that have allowed him to have a break without yielding the floor.
Booker is getting close to the all-time Senate record. In 1957, Strom Thurmond spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes to filibuster the Civil Rights Act of the same year.
I can't watch the Whitehouse Press Secretary. The level of stupid is so bad it hurts
I find it hard watching too. But because I sense that she is a nice girl, and far far too young to have sold her soul for the sake of a bunch of the creepiest politicians imaginable. I must be old fashioned. I just think she is worth better.
Once you accept that Trump appointed people from the Mickey Mouse Club, it becomes understandable what is happening.
I can't watch the Whitehouse Press Secretary. The level of stupid is so bad it hurts
I find it hard watching too. But because I sense that she is a nice girl, and far far too young to have sold her soul for the sake of a bunch of the creepiest politicians imaginable. I must be old fashioned. I just think she is worth better.
Once you accept that Trump appointed people from the Mickey Mouse Club, it becomes understandable what is happening.
I have Mickey Mouse on the line, and he's *really* pissed off with you.
Well, to the literally no one who is awaiting this update I picked up the Model Y Performance today that's theoretically Mrs Dumbo's (although probably me driving it mostly). It shifts. When I started out overtaking a convoy of 3 vehicle at 40mph and ended at 120mph on my way back I knew I'd done the right thing. I don't regret it no matter how Nazi Musk gets.
Speaking of Tesla admirers, @RochdalePioneers I really enjoy your videos. EXCEPT the first 2 seconds. Stop doing that weird hello thing. When I was at school you would rightly get bullied for that.
I think he's subliminally signalling that his chosen genre of music is carwash.
I would like it to be more extravagant, then it could be the "please DO pass" handwave and bow I sometimes give to drivers who drive straight past me when I am starting to cross the road at the exit to a small traffic island, and the rules of the road instruct them to stop and wait on pain of several prize points for their portfolio.
I can't watch the Whitehouse Press Secretary. The level of stupid is so bad it hurts
I find it hard watching too. But because I sense that she is a nice girl, and far far too young to have sold her soul for the sake of a bunch of the creepiest politicians imaginable. I must be old fashioned. I just think she is worth better.
Once you accept that Trump appointed people from the Mickey Mouse Club, it becomes understandable what is happening.
I have Mickey Mouse on the line, and he's *really* pissed off with you.
Do I look bovvered? Mickey Mouse is now a mark - a Trade Mark.
Is there something else so obviously unsuited for its intended purpose that nevertheless continues to have widespread use?
Cotton buds perhaps.
I'd go for traditional brown teapots for leaf tea. Optimally designed to put the maximum amount of tea leaves in you cup, by having the spout exiting from the bottom.
Is there something else so obviously unsuited for its intended purpose that nevertheless continues to have widespread use?
Cotton buds perhaps.
I'd go for traditional brown teapots for leaf tea. Optimally designed to put the maximum amount of tea leaves in you cup, by having the spout exiting from the bottom.
Small milk jugs designed so that the contents will always spill down the front when poured.
Nat Con Squad commentary on the Le Pen incident. Commentary by a lady called " Ellen Fantini", who is the editor of a magazine called "European Conservative". They have quite a nice portentous sounding intro.
The podcast tends to be intelligent straight-down-the-line Trump justifiers, whatever he has done today, so can be useful for a take. One of the regular presenters is Amber Duke from the US edition of the Spectator.
Nat Con Squad commentary on the Le Pen incident. Commentary by a lady called " Ellen Fantini", who is the editor of a magazine called "European Conservative". They have quite a nice portentous sounding intro.
The podcast tends to be intelligent straight-down-the-line Trump justifiers, whatever he has done today, so can be useful for a take. One of the regular presenters is Amber Duke from the US edition of the Spectator.
Is there something else so obviously unsuited for its intended purpose that nevertheless continues to have widespread use?
Cotton buds perhaps.
I'd go for traditional brown teapots for leaf tea. Optimally designed to put the maximum amount of tea leaves in you cup, by having the spout exiting from the bottom.
Small milk jugs designed so that the contents will always spill down the front when poured.
Plasters. Trying to peel the backs off while gushing blood from a finger wound has always struck me as harder than it should be.
Breaking: Cory Booker, the Democratic senator from New Jersey, has now spoken for 21 hours on the Senate floor in opposition to the Trump administration.
Booker has used his speaking slot to decry the Trump administration’s spending cuts, its attempt to abolish the Department of Education, the president’s attempts to bypass the judicial system and the removal of people from the US who speak out against the administration.
He began his speech at 7pm ET on Monday night and will pass the 21-hour mark at 4pm on Tuesday. Booker has had help from Democratic colleagues, who have been asking him questions that have allowed him to have a break without yielding the floor.
Booker is getting close to the all-time Senate record. In 1957, Strom Thurmond spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes to filibuster the Civil Rights Act of the same year.
A Democratic at the time, as I remember. Swings and roundabouts.
Is there something else so obviously unsuited for its intended purpose that nevertheless continues to have widespread use?
Cotton buds perhaps.
I'd go for traditional brown teapots for leaf tea. Optimally designed to put the maximum amount of tea leaves in you cup, by having the spout exiting from the bottom.
Small milk jugs designed so that the contents will always spill down the front when poured.
Plasters. Trying to peel the backs off while gushing blood from a finger wound has always struck me as harder than it should be.
Plasters are getting worse, I swear. It feels like this should be a solved problem.
Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer - or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation - to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.
The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics - tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.
This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.
If simultaneously these countries and the EU also reduced tariffs on trade between themselves - to facilitate less trade friction in an economic area significantly greater than that of the US - the potential damage to American domiciled companies and interests would be even more significant.
The world would then divide between a newly thriving economic area of pretty much all developed democracies apart from the US - the G7 minus one, as it were - and a protectionist and potentially sclerotic America.
Obviously this would look like the mother of all trade wars. Markets might in the short term take serious fright.
But the current response to Trump - each nation or trading region seeking individually to buy or warn Trump off - is massively sub optimal. It allows Trump to divide and rule.
The best chance of him backing down would come if the combined voice of American businesses and banks were a howl of pain at being locked out of the world’s richest economies.
In Trump’s re-ordered multi-polar world where might is right, nations like the UK and even huge economies like the EU’s single market lack the clout individually to face him down.
As I said on ITV’s News at Ten last night, bullies don’t give up once they’ve taken one kid’s dinner money. They surrender when that kid makes common cause with the rest of the school.
Trump is now saying, as are others in the US and some financial commentators, that these are the starting point for a negotiation to get rebalanced global trade
Given the US, and the west in general, helped that by seeking low cost country sourcing, they’re trying to solve a problem they caused.
Problem is, even if they get a deal, how do they know this lunatic will stick to it.
A bigger question is what would the deal look like. Reality is most Americans aren't going to be happy paying the market price for items manufactured in the USA rather than imported from China.
That's even if they could find a non-immigrant workforce for the new low value added factories which would be required.
Highly paid, highly skilled manufacturing jobs are in demand. Low paid, low skilled ones less so.
Yes but that is exactly the attitude which led to Trump's win, Sanders making inroads in Democratic primaries, Brexit and Corbyn and Farage, the rise of Le Pen and Melenchon, the AfD etc especially in old industrial areas. Those areas used to have manufacturing jobs with reasonable pay and now don't due to cheap imports from the likes of China as much as advanced robotics replacing human labour. Across much of the developed world now the mood from voters, especially white working class voters, is protectionist, anti globalist and anti immigrant.
Even Biden and the EU imposed some tariffs on Chinese imports
Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer - or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation - to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.
The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics - tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.
This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.
If simultaneously these countries and the EU also reduced tariffs on trade between themselves - to facilitate less trade friction in an economic area significantly greater than that of the US - the potential damage to American domiciled companies and interests would be even more significant.
The world would then divide between a newly thriving economic area of pretty much all developed democracies apart from the US - the G7 minus one, as it were - and a protectionist and potentially sclerotic America.
Obviously this would look like the mother of all trade wars. Markets might in the short term take serious fright.
But the current response to Trump - each nation or trading region seeking individually to buy or warn Trump off - is massively sub optimal. It allows Trump to divide and rule.
The best chance of him backing down would come if the combined voice of American businesses and banks were a howl of pain at being locked out of the world’s richest economies.
In Trump’s re-ordered multi-polar world where might is right, nations like the UK and even huge economies like the EU’s single market lack the clout individually to face him down.
As I said on ITV’s News at Ten last night, bullies don’t give up once they’ve taken one kid’s dinner money. They surrender when that kid makes common cause with the rest of the school.
Trump is now saying, as are others in the US and some financial commentators, that these are the starting point for a negotiation to get rebalanced global trade
Given the US, and the west in general, helped that by seeking low cost country sourcing, they’re trying to solve a problem they caused.
Problem is, even if they get a deal, how do they know this lunatic will stick to it.
A bigger question is what would the deal look like. Reality is most Americans aren't going to be happy paying the market price for items manufactured in the USA rather than imported from China.
That's even if they could find a non-immigrant workforce for the new low value added factories which would be required.
Highly paid, highly skilled manufacturing jobs are in demand. Low paid, low skilled ones less so.
Yes but that is exactly the attitude which led to Trump's win, Sanders making inroads in Democratic primaries, Brexit and Corbyn and Farage, the rise of Le Pen and Melenchon, the AfD etc especially in old industrial areas. Those areas used to have manufacturing jobs with reasonable pay and now don't due to cheap imports from the likes of China as much as advanced robotics replacing human labour. Across much of the developed world now the mood from voters, especially white working class voters, is protectionist, anti globalist and anti immigrant.
Even Biden and the EU imposed some tariffs on Chinese imports
In those areas you used to be able to leave school and get a reasonably paid job in a local factory without an engineering degree, now you can't. Instead as a non graduate who left school without higher education you often end up in a warehouse or as a delivery or taxi driver or on a building site if you aren't one of the lucky few who gets a job as a plumber or electrician and a declining industrial base also means fewer jobs in local shops, restaurants, pubs and hotels too outside of the wealthiest services led cities like financial services dominated London or tech heavy Cambridge
Well, to the literally no one who is awaiting this update I picked up the Model Y Performance today that's theoretically Mrs Dumbo's (although probably me driving it mostly). It shifts. When I started out overtaking a convoy of 3 vehicle at 40mph and ended at 120mph on my way back I knew I'd done the right thing. I don't regret it no matter how Nazi Musk gets.
Speaking of Tesla admirers, @RochdalePioneers I really enjoy your videos. EXCEPT the first 2 seconds. Stop doing that weird hello thing. When I was at school you would rightly get bullied for that.
I think he's subliminally signalling that his chosen genre of music is carwash.
I would like it to be more extravagant, then it could be the "please DO pass" handwave and bow I sometimes give to drivers who drive straight past me when I am starting to cross the road at the exit to a small traffic island, and the rules of the road instruct them to stop and wait on pain of several prize points for their portfolio.
More extravagance would be absolutely brilliant. It's the subtle-but-not-quite-subtle that grates
Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer - or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation - to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.
The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics - tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.
This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.
If simultaneously these countries and the EU also reduced tariffs on trade between themselves - to facilitate less trade friction in an economic area significantly greater than that of the US - the potential damage to American domiciled companies and interests would be even more significant.
The world would then divide between a newly thriving economic area of pretty much all developed democracies apart from the US - the G7 minus one, as it were - and a protectionist and potentially sclerotic America.
Obviously this would look like the mother of all trade wars. Markets might in the short term take serious fright.
But the current response to Trump - each nation or trading region seeking individually to buy or warn Trump off - is massively sub optimal. It allows Trump to divide and rule.
The best chance of him backing down would come if the combined voice of American businesses and banks were a howl of pain at being locked out of the world’s richest economies.
In Trump’s re-ordered multi-polar world where might is right, nations like the UK and even huge economies like the EU’s single market lack the clout individually to face him down.
As I said on ITV’s News at Ten last night, bullies don’t give up once they’ve taken one kid’s dinner money. They surrender when that kid makes common cause with the rest of the school.
Trump is now saying, as are others in the US and some financial commentators, that these are the starting point for a negotiation to get rebalanced global trade
Given the US, and the west in general, helped that by seeking low cost country sourcing, they’re trying to solve a problem they caused.
Problem is, even if they get a deal, how do they know this lunatic will stick to it.
A bigger question is what would the deal look like. Reality is most Americans aren't going to be happy paying the market price for items manufactured in the USA rather than imported from China.
That's even if they could find a non-immigrant workforce for the new low value added factories which would be required.
Highly paid, highly skilled manufacturing jobs are in demand. Low paid, low skilled ones less so.
Yes but that is exactly the attitude which led to Trump's win, Sanders making inroads in Democratic primaries, Brexit and Corbyn and Farage, the rise of Le Pen and Melenchon, the AfD etc especially in old industrial areas. Those areas used to have manufacturing jobs with reasonable pay and now don't due to cheap imports from the likes of China as much as advanced robotics replacing human labour. Across much of the developed world now the mood from voters, especially white working class voters, is protectionist, anti globalist and anti immigrant.
Even Biden and the EU imposed some tariffs on Chinese imports
In those areas you used to be able to leave school and get a reasonably paid job in a local factory without an engineering degree, now you can't. Instead as a non graduate who left school without higher education you often end up in a warehouse or as a delivery or taxi driver or on a building site if you aren't one of the lucky few who gets a job as a plumber or electrician and a declining industrial base also means fewer jobs in local shops, restaurants, pubs and hotels too outside of the wealthiest services led cities like financial services dominated London or tech heavy Cambridge
You're babbling about a fantasy world which never existed.
Those 'reasonably paid jobs' were in actuality low paid, hard work, often in dirty, dangerous conditions. And they did not give a standard of living anyone either then or now would aspire to.
Which is why people sought to develop their skills so that they could get better jobs and improve their lives.
Anyone who currently is unable to work successfully in a modern factory or warehouse or construction site would not have lasted a week in a factory of two generations ago.
Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer - or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation - to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.
The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics - tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.
This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.
If simultaneously these countries and the EU also reduced tariffs on trade between themselves - to facilitate less trade friction in an economic area significantly greater than that of the US - the potential damage to American domiciled companies and interests would be even more significant.
The world would then divide between a newly thriving economic area of pretty much all developed democracies apart from the US - the G7 minus one, as it were - and a protectionist and potentially sclerotic America.
Obviously this would look like the mother of all trade wars. Markets might in the short term take serious fright.
But the current response to Trump - each nation or trading region seeking individually to buy or warn Trump off - is massively sub optimal. It allows Trump to divide and rule.
The best chance of him backing down would come if the combined voice of American businesses and banks were a howl of pain at being locked out of the world’s richest economies.
In Trump’s re-ordered multi-polar world where might is right, nations like the UK and even huge economies like the EU’s single market lack the clout individually to face him down.
As I said on ITV’s News at Ten last night, bullies don’t give up once they’ve taken one kid’s dinner money. They surrender when that kid makes common cause with the rest of the school.
Trump is now saying, as are others in the US and some financial commentators, that these are the starting point for a negotiation to get rebalanced global trade
Given the US, and the west in general, helped that by seeking low cost country sourcing, they’re trying to solve a problem they caused.
Problem is, even if they get a deal, how do they know this lunatic will stick to it.
A bigger question is what would the deal look like. Reality is most Americans aren't going to be happy paying the market price for items manufactured in the USA rather than imported from China.
That's even if they could find a non-immigrant workforce for the new low value added factories which would be required.
Highly paid, highly skilled manufacturing jobs are in demand. Low paid, low skilled ones less so.
Yes but that is exactly the attitude which led to Trump's win, Sanders making inroads in Democratic primaries, Brexit and Corbyn and Farage, the rise of Le Pen and Melenchon, the AfD etc especially in old industrial areas. Those areas used to have manufacturing jobs with reasonable pay and now don't due to cheap imports from the likes of China as much as advanced robotics replacing human labour. Across much of the developed world now the mood from voters, especially white working class voters, is protectionist, anti globalist and anti immigrant.
Even Biden and the EU imposed some tariffs on Chinese imports
In those areas you used to be able to leave school and get a reasonably paid job in a local factory without an engineering degree, now you can't. Instead as a non graduate who left school without higher education you often end up in a warehouse or as a delivery or taxi driver or on a building site if you aren't one of the lucky few who gets a job as a plumber or electrician and a declining industrial base also means fewer jobs in local shops, restaurants, pubs and hotels too outside of the wealthiest services led cities like financial services dominated London or tech heavy Cambridge
You're babbling about a fantasy world which never existed.
Those 'reasonably paid jobs' were in actuality low paid, hard work, often in dirty, dangerous conditions. And they did not give a standard of living anyone either then or now would aspire to.
Which is why people sought to develop their skills so that they could get better jobs and improve their lives.
Anyone who currently is unable to work successfully in a modern factory or warehouse or construction site would not have lasted a week in a factory of two generations ago.
Actually most factory work for those with few educational qualifications paid rather better than what they have now, certainly compared to a warehouse or construction site (as you previously said most factory work now is at highly skilled level only).
You talk about people who developed their skills to get better jobs but they are mainly the graduates who voted Remain, voted for Harris, for Macron, for Starmer, for the SPD etc.
They are not the white working class who voted for Brexit, Farage, Trump, Le Pen, the AfD etc
Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer - or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation - to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.
The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics - tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.
This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.
If simultaneously these countries and the EU also reduced tariffs on trade between themselves - to facilitate less trade friction in an economic area significantly greater than that of the US - the potential damage to American domiciled companies and interests would be even more significant.
The world would then divide between a newly thriving economic area of pretty much all developed democracies apart from the US - the G7 minus one, as it were - and a protectionist and potentially sclerotic America.
Obviously this would look like the mother of all trade wars. Markets might in the short term take serious fright.
But the current response to Trump - each nation or trading region seeking individually to buy or warn Trump off - is massively sub optimal. It allows Trump to divide and rule.
The best chance of him backing down would come if the combined voice of American businesses and banks were a howl of pain at being locked out of the world’s richest economies.
In Trump’s re-ordered multi-polar world where might is right, nations like the UK and even huge economies like the EU’s single market lack the clout individually to face him down.
As I said on ITV’s News at Ten last night, bullies don’t give up once they’ve taken one kid’s dinner money. They surrender when that kid makes common cause with the rest of the school.
Trump is now saying, as are others in the US and some financial commentators, that these are the starting point for a negotiation to get rebalanced global trade
Given the US, and the west in general, helped that by seeking low cost country sourcing, they’re trying to solve a problem they caused.
Problem is, even if they get a deal, how do they know this lunatic will stick to it.
A bigger question is what would the deal look like. Reality is most Americans aren't going to be happy paying the market price for items manufactured in the USA rather than imported from China.
That's even if they could find a non-immigrant workforce for the new low value added factories which would be required.
Highly paid, highly skilled manufacturing jobs are in demand. Low paid, low skilled ones less so.
Yes but that is exactly the attitude which led to Trump's win, Sanders making inroads in Democratic primaries, Brexit and Corbyn and Farage, the rise of Le Pen and Melenchon, the AfD etc especially in old industrial areas. Those areas used to have manufacturing jobs with reasonable pay and now don't due to cheap imports from the likes of China as much as advanced robotics replacing human labour. Across much of the developed world now the mood from voters, especially white working class voters, is protectionist, anti globalist and anti immigrant.
Even Biden and the EU imposed some tariffs on Chinese imports
In those areas you used to be able to leave school and get a reasonably paid job in a local factory without an engineering degree, now you can't. Instead as a non graduate who left school without higher education you often end up in a warehouse or as a delivery or taxi driver or on a building site if you aren't one of the lucky few who gets a job as a plumber or electrician and a declining industrial base also means fewer jobs in local shops, restaurants, pubs and hotels too outside of the wealthiest services led cities like financial services dominated London or tech heavy Cambridge
You're babbling about a fantasy world which never existed.
Those 'reasonably paid jobs' were in actuality low paid, hard work, often in dirty, dangerous conditions. And they did not give a standard of living anyone either then or now would aspire to.
Which is why people sought to develop their skills so that they could get better jobs and improve their lives.
Anyone who currently is unable to work successfully in a modern factory or warehouse or construction site would not have lasted a week in a factory of two generations ago.
Actually most factory work for those with few educational qualifications paid rather better than what they have now, certainly compared to a warehouse or construction site (as you previously said most factory work now is at highly skilled level only).
You talk about people who developed their skills to get better jobs but they are mainly the graduates who voted Remain, voted for Harris, for Macron, for Starmer, for the SPD etc.
They are not the white working class who voted for Brexit, Farage, Trump, Le Pen, the AfD etc
Low skilled jobs have never paid well and the standard of living for the low skilled was crap.
What led to higher living standards over the generations was an increase in skill levels.
And that still applies today.
There is great demand for people with skills - plumber, electrician, welder and numerous other trades.
But those skills need to be learnt through some hard work.
And anyone not prepared to do that would not have lasted long in a factory of two generations ago.
Because back then low skilled factory work was really not something you would have wanted to do.
Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer - or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation - to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.
The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics - tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.
This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.
If simultaneously these countries and the EU also reduced tariffs on trade between themselves - to facilitate less trade friction in an economic area significantly greater than that of the US - the potential damage to American domiciled companies and interests would be even more significant.
The world would then divide between a newly thriving economic area of pretty much all developed democracies apart from the US - the G7 minus one, as it were - and a protectionist and potentially sclerotic America.
Obviously this would look like the mother of all trade wars. Markets might in the short term take serious fright.
But the current response to Trump - each nation or trading region seeking individually to buy or warn Trump off - is massively sub optimal. It allows Trump to divide and rule.
The best chance of him backing down would come if the combined voice of American businesses and banks were a howl of pain at being locked out of the world’s richest economies.
In Trump’s re-ordered multi-polar world where might is right, nations like the UK and even huge economies like the EU’s single market lack the clout individually to face him down.
As I said on ITV’s News at Ten last night, bullies don’t give up once they’ve taken one kid’s dinner money. They surrender when that kid makes common cause with the rest of the school.
Trump is now saying, as are others in the US and some financial commentators, that these are the starting point for a negotiation to get rebalanced global trade
Given the US, and the west in general, helped that by seeking low cost country sourcing, they’re trying to solve a problem they caused.
Problem is, even if they get a deal, how do they know this lunatic will stick to it.
A bigger question is what would the deal look like. Reality is most Americans aren't going to be happy paying the market price for items manufactured in the USA rather than imported from China.
MAGA have a simple answer - just go back to 1955. America rules the world. No gays. No latinos. Jim Crow. Always sunny and a BBQ on in the garden where the manly men cook American steaks for their neighbours whilst their women concentrate on looking pretty.
America used to build everything and it can do again. What’s more, once the might of America is brought then these foreigners will pay for it by means of compensation for ripping off America all this time.
I know, it’s laughable. But You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons.
The good things about 1955 without the bad things about 1955 sounds okay to me. Is that possible?
We've had two Florida Congressional Special elections, which both went Republican as expected, albeit by dramatically smaller margins than in the 2024 Presidential election. Both districts, the 1st and the 6th, were won by 33-34 points back in November. This time around, the gaps were much smaller: 15 and 14 points respectively. (Margins that suggest that, had Elise Stefanik stepped down, then the race there would have been very close indeed.)
Also up is the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, where Elon has spent an insane amount of money trying to ensure that conservative Brad Schimel beats out liberal Susan Crawford. With 6% in, it's 50:50. My gut (and it's just a gut) is that Susan Crawford wins fairly comfortably.
Comments
The main way to read all of these messaging attempts from Fox et al is that they know that Trump is in the process of crashing the economy and they are desperate to find the One Weird Trick bit of messaging that will salvage his (already deteriorating) position with the public.
https://bsky.app/profile/gilmored85.bsky.social/post/3llrea5fcfs2i
Hmm.
Del Boy claims he may never walk again but Rodders quickly realizes it's all a scam as hospitals generally don't send paralyzed people home by bus! 😂
@carlquintanilla.bsky.social
(WaPo) - Members of President Donald Trump’s National Security Council, including .. Michael Waltz, have conducted government business over personal Gmail accounts, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post and interviews w/ three U.S. officials.
https://bsky.app/profile/carlquintanilla.bsky.social/post/3llrmdjt5xk2g
N.B. I thought WaPo had gone MAGA
The ever publicity shy Paddy Power are offering 100-1 against an Everton win at Anfield tomorrow.
New accounts only unfortunately.
Siri.
Give me an example of a value loser.
I suppose this gorgeous bit of Larkin will need footnotes:
Before them, the wind
Is ruining their courting-places
That are still courting-places
(But the lovers are all in school),
And their children, so intent on
Finding more unripe acorns,
Expect to be taken home.
Their beauty has thickened.
Something is pushing them
To the side of their own lives.
Joe Weisenthal
@TheStalwart
·
5h
People don't talk much about the Dallas Fed Services Activity Index. Not exactly a top-shelf datapoint to most people in the market. But whew, just look through all of these comments about the state of the economy.
https://x.com/TheStalwart/status/1907088316891042150
Champions Leverkusen currently losing 2-1 to 3rd division Arminia Bielefeld in the semifinal of the cup.
Now having seen what an unfettered Trump is capable of I realise that we all owe them a debt of gratitude, they must have been working round the clock to thwart Trump's stupid instincts.
Speaking of Tesla admirers, @RochdalePioneers I really enjoy your videos. EXCEPT the first 2 seconds. Stop doing that weird hello thing. When I was at school you would rightly get bullied for that.
I am culturally offended by that...
He's a man of fairly average intelligence - the "average voter" that Winston Churchill said was the worst advertisement for democracy. He has many of the (bad) opinions and prejudices of his age (now almost 80).
What he does have to extreme excess is confidence in his own abilities, so he never listens to experts, as well as aggression, a very low attention span, relentless drive and poor impulse control.
Basically about the last person you'd want to be in charge of the world's largest economy and military superpower.
He picked the very last as his running mate.
Car Rental Agent: [cheerfully] Welcome to Marathon, may I help you?
Neal [played by Steve Martin]: Yes.
Car Rental Agent: How may I help you?
Neal: You can start by wiping that fucking dumb-ass smile off your rosy fucking cheeks! Then you can give me a fucking automobile! A fucking Datsun, a fucking Toyota, a fucking Mustang, a fucking Buick! Four fucking wheels and a seat!
Car Rental Agent: I really don't care for the way you're speaking to me.
Neal: And I really don't care for the way your company left me in the middle of fucking nowhere with fucking keys to a fucking car that isn't fucking there. And I really didn't care to fucking walk down a fucking highway and across a fucking runway to get back here to have you smile in my fucking face. I want a fucking car... right... fucking... now.
[pause]
Car Rental Agent: May I see your rental agreement?
Neal: I threw it away.
Car Rental Agent: Oh, boy.
Neal: Oh, boy, what?
Car Rental Agent: [narrows her eyes] You're fucked!
Murphy: "Newsflash: These guys are incompetent. They don't know what they're doing. We hired a weekend Fox News host with no diplomatic or management experience with a checkered personal history of abuse and alcoholism to be our chief national security official. And it's going very badly."
https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3llrpy57occ2e
Yes on their own higher future will simply increase vista for US industry and consumers, and if they do move manufacturing it’s unlikely to bring either high value jobs or significant profit, because US businesses (and European / Asian multinationals) have tended to put cost-sensitive manufacturing in low cost locations, whilst high end products that involve sophisticated manufacturing are generally less processed elastic.
However, the more worrying issue is the cash corporation tax works. If you move manufacturing because of tariffs, then for any IP owned outside the US you need to set up a royalty. And that is subject to the US BEAT (a tax on outbound payments for things like IP). So the logical next step is to move the IP to the US, or share it, to eliminate BEATable payments. Which does shift taxable profit. And may shift related roles too. Not so good.
That’s before the raft of punitive measures the GOO are planning in international tax to “retaliate” against countries with digital services and the UTPR (an aspect of the global minimum tax).
We have to hope that the investment-repellent effects of other aspects of Trump’s America, notably non reliance on the rule of law, chasing away of independent academia and emshittification of federal services, outweigh these tax effects.
Nigel Farage MP
@Nigel_Farage
·
9h
Just got my first tattoo! 🔥
https://x.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1907024118089724029
Allergies have increased over time:
https://business.itn.co.uk/why-are-allergies-on-the-rise/
On the abusive behaviour, perhaps they have experience.
California Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Salinas): "there are currently more kids with measles in Texas than there are transgender athletes in the NCAA. That's the epidemic we should all be worried about."
https://bsky.app/profile/aridrennen.bsky.social/post/3llrlhr75ss2s
- Simply increase costs
- Price elastic
- The way corporation tax works
- GOP
- Enshittification
Booker has used his speaking slot to decry the Trump administration’s spending cuts, its attempt to abolish the Department of Education, the president’s attempts to bypass the judicial system and the removal of people from the US who speak out against the administration.
He began his speech at 7pm ET on Monday night and will pass the 21-hour mark at 4pm on Tuesday. Booker has had help from Democratic colleagues, who have been asking him questions that have allowed him to have a break without yielding the floor.
Booker is getting close to the all-time Senate record. In 1957, Strom Thurmond spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes to filibuster the Civil Rights Act of the same year.
I would like it to be more extravagant, then it could be the "please DO pass" handwave and bow I sometimes give to drivers who drive straight past me when I am starting to cross the road at the exit to a small traffic island, and the rules of the road instruct them to stop and wait on pain of several prize points for their portfolio.
Surely all PBers know the Mickey Mouse Club?
https://youtu.be/APxsAsxfa4w?list=PLL3ChQT5pENZANDliG7_xxd_Dulh2X1i-&t=25
Nat Con Squad commentary on the Le Pen incident. Commentary by a lady called " Ellen Fantini", who is the editor of a magazine called "European Conservative". They have quite a nice portentous sounding intro.
The podcast tends to be intelligent straight-down-the-line Trump justifiers, whatever he has done today, so can be useful for a take. One of the regular presenters is Amber Duke from the US edition of the Spectator.
"Judges Kill Democracy in France"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iubhJs8kUXg&t=87s
https://bsky.app/profile/jayforeman.bsky.social/post/3llrg4vnfh223
Good though that they are now so keen on wiping the slate clean fro convicts.
Even Biden and the EU imposed some tariffs on Chinese imports
Those 'reasonably paid jobs' were in actuality low paid, hard work, often in dirty, dangerous conditions. And they did not give a standard of living anyone either then or now would aspire to.
Which is why people sought to develop their skills so that they could get better jobs and improve their lives.
Anyone who currently is unable to work successfully in a modern factory or warehouse or construction site would not have lasted a week in a factory of two generations ago.
Big vanilla changes, and (as always) they didn't tell us in advance
You talk about people who developed their skills to get better jobs but they are mainly the graduates who voted Remain, voted for Harris, for Macron, for Starmer, for the SPD etc.
They are not the white working class who voted for Brexit, Farage, Trump, Le Pen, the AfD etc
What led to higher living standards over the generations was an increase in skill levels.
And that still applies today.
There is great demand for people with skills - plumber, electrician, welder and numerous other trades.
But those skills need to be learnt through some hard work.
And anyone not prepared to do that would not have lasted long in a factory of two generations ago.
Because back then low skilled factory work was really not something you would have wanted to do.
We've had two Florida Congressional Special elections, which both went Republican as expected, albeit by dramatically smaller margins than in the 2024 Presidential election. Both districts, the 1st and the 6th, were won by 33-34 points back in November. This time around, the gaps were much smaller: 15 and 14 points respectively. (Margins that suggest that, had Elise Stefanik stepped down, then the race there would have been very close indeed.)
Also up is the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, where Elon has spent an insane amount of money trying to ensure that conservative Brad Schimel beats out liberal Susan Crawford. With 6% in, it's 50:50. My gut (and it's just a gut) is that Susan Crawford wins fairly comfortably.