Good god, GOP shills are now resorting to "at least she wasn't eight".
Megyn Kelly: "I know somebody very close to this case…Jeffrey Epstein, in this person's view, was not a pedophile…He was into the barely legal type, like he liked 15 year old girls…He wasn't into like 8 year olds…There's a difference between a 15 year old and a 5 year old." https://x.com/AccountableGOP/status/1989014083274952746
She’s trying really hard to tread the line between the Ben Shapiro / Charlie Kirk conservatives, and the Tucker Carlson / Candace Owens conservatives, with the latter group getting increasingly crazy and conspiracy theorist.
She is however correct that there’s a difference between paedophiles and pederasts, even though both are illegal and obviously wrong.
Ok, righties debating which levels of paedophilia are okayish is pretty funny. Perhaps an 'edgy' stage act can do a riff on it.
Also digging up arcane terminology. I haven't heard the expression 'paed****t' since I last read a book on everyday life in ancient Athens.
The more one reads about life in Athens, and classical Greece generally, the more it appears an utter horror show, of rape, child sexual abuse, infanticide, kinslaying, human trafficking etc.
Whilst debating deep philosophy. Always beware philosophers, for they can find a justification for anything.
Increasingly, I’m of the view that the Persians were the slightly better side.
P{S: also the way they treated women, or at least the 'respectable' family kind.
The Persians, of course, were indistinguishable, in their human rights record.
Obv. Ref. The modern version of this is the people who die in a ditch for the claim that American slavery was worse* than slavery in a range of other countries.
*their arguments are very similar to those that claim that American slavery was better than other kinds of slavery.
We should just take for granted that for most chattel slaves, in any era, including our own, life is appalling. Hence, the high rates of suicide among slaves.
Take a look at Rio Tinto. The Romans used it as a way to dispose of problematic low value slaves for hundreds of years.
Estimates for the death toll range from a 200K to 1.5 million.
I doubt it is any better for the slave miners of today.
Disappointing news if it is confirmed Starmer and Reeves have backed away from income tax rises in the Budget.
The obvious conclusions from this are a) the onus will be more on spending cuts to try to reverse the deficit which will please many on here and b) it's very likely we'll be back here having the same discussion in twelve months when borrowing remaind stubbornly high.
Clearly, the argument tax rises would choke off any signs of returning business and consumer confidence has won the day and I get that but the idea now must be to try to slow the borrowing train and unless Reeves does something radical on property taxation (the signs aren't encouraging), it will be as much an admission economically the country is unmanageable since the economic decisions can't be taken for political reasons (though if your party is polling around or below 20%, there's another question).
@isam, who, it's fair to say, is no friend of Starmer, Reeves or the Labour Government, makes the compelling point big victories should allow incoming Governments to be radical but that's not the case, more often than not. The Attlee example isn't valid because of the unique circumstances of 1945 - Thatcher's Government saved its real radicalism for the second term and Blair did little or nothing with his 1997 landslide and any thoughts of radicalism in the second term were disrupted by events elsewhere.
You could perhaps argue Boris Johnson might have been a radical Prime Minister had it not been for the pandemic but talking radical and doing radical are very different things.
Counter intuitively, it's often Governments with small majorities, who know time isn't on their side, who are often the most radical and the most united.
Your last paragraph reinforces my belief that changing PM without a GE should be a much more difficult thing to do. If it wasn’t an option, parties would have to stick together and perhaps be encouraged to remember what they wanted to do with power.
Changing PM without a GE is a bit like defectors not holding a by election really. Don’t like it myself
Should it be the case for ALL elected officials right down to Town and Parish councils that if you cease to be a member of the party for whom you were elected, you are forced to resign and a new election is called?
There's nothing, I'm sure you'd agree, stopping the former councillor/MP from standing under their new colours in any subsequent by-election (I wouldn't go as far as to disqualify them) but, as you say, it would encourage internal party discipline and that should or was in my day at any rate a key part of the political process.
My only thought is, if a PM dies in office, are we saying there would have to be a General Election or simply a by-election in their seat?
Political parties should be banned entirely for Parish/Town Councils. They have no bearing on their job and it just encourages cliques that exclude other councillors. I had the distinction of being the only non Tory councillor on my Town Council and it was a miserable experience.
That is surely for the voters to decide? Most rural village Parish councillors are all independent anyway, in Town Councils round here Tory councillors often stood as LDs or Greens did and Reform are now also starting to stand at Town Council level to build a base
Our Parish Council is technically non-political. A few years ago it was largely composed (to the best of my knowledge, anyway) of Labour Party members. However none of them put their names forward at the next election and nomination papers were handed out in the bar of the local Conservative Club. AFAIK now there's no such arrangement, although I think one member is a card-carrying Liberal Democrat. Our District Councillors are members of the Green & Independent Group.
Megyn Kelly in 2018: " There's no consenting for a 14 or even a 17 year old."
Megyn Kelly today: "Jeffrey Epstein…was not a pedophile…He was into the barely legal type, like he liked 15 year old girls…There's a difference between a 15 year old and a 5 year old."
Good god, GOP shills are now resorting to "at least she wasn't eight".
Megyn Kelly: "I know somebody very close to this case…Jeffrey Epstein, in this person's view, was not a pedophile…He was into the barely legal type, like he liked 15 year old girls…He wasn't into like 8 year olds…There's a difference between a 15 year old and a 5 year old." https://x.com/AccountableGOP/status/1989014083274952746
She’s trying really hard to tread the line between the Ben Shapiro / Charlie Kirk conservatives, and the Tucker Carlson / Candace Owens conservatives, with the latter group getting increasingly crazy and conspiracy theorist.
She is however correct that there’s a difference between paedophiles and pederasts, even though both are illegal and obviously wrong.
Ok, righties debating which levels of paedophilia are okayish is pretty funny. Perhaps an 'edgy' stage act can do a riff on it.
Strange though that these issues of agency and age are only raised as mitigation in the context of rich white men. Raise the same issues about other trafficking rings and expect a very different reaction.
There is a certainly a trend of enthusiastically prosecuting Rap stars for sexual offences, in the US
I think there's a better chance of the Greens finishing ahead of Labour in terms of seats than the odds indicate.
One of the main impediments to the Greens has been the argument that a vote for the Greens is a wasted vote, and I think we may discover just how much of Labour's vote is a vote against the Tories, rather than a vote for something. Were Labour to fall to fifth in the opinion polling, which is not that much of a stretch from their current position, then this argument would be turned on its head. A vote for Labour would be a wasted vote, and with precious little ideological attachment to the party in preference to either the Greens or the Lib Dems, we could see Labour's position deteriorate much further once past that tipping point. Then it's not hard to see the Greens win more seats than Labour.
Oddly enough, Labour really could do with Your Party having a reasonably successful launch, in order to split the left-of-Labour vote and avoid this scenario coming about.
There is some talk of a seat-sharing deal between the Greens and Your Party, because they have largely different strong areas and no obvious deal-blocking policies. Depending how the Your Party conference goes, and resolution of the dispute with Zarah one way or another, it's possible to see this becoming quite significant. Like lots of leftish Labour supporters (I'm still CLP chair), I wouldn't dream of voting LibDem, as they lack a consistent left-wing approach - might as well carry on with Labour, in that case. I think that right-of-centre commenters on this thread don't really appreciate that and mistakenly imagine that the LibDems would be natural heirs to a further Labour slump.
It's also possible to imagine a failed, squabbling Your Party conference (the absence of any clear leadership is certainly a snag), a dismissal of Green leadership as fanciful, and a gradual Labour recovery. I think the next few months will provide som,e clarity.
If I was an adviser to Polansky I would suggest they kept their distance. It's possible that Zack could be a unique political talent. Corbyn and by association Sultana is a three times loser who almost single handedly destroyed one of the UK's most important political parties. I can't see him bringing anything at all to the party except to make the Greens look jaded
In two and a half minutes, Jimmy Carr tells an American audience why capitalism is better than communism, and the difference between socialist and woke. ETA nsfw language. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/zMmjKRettxA
I wonder if he will lose his Channel 4 gigs now.
C4 is one of those curious institutions, capitalist but not capitalist. Not quite as elegant as in the early days, but still pretty neat.
I don’t really watch it, don’t really like its output but I don’t have to pay a license fee for it so I have no beef with it.
You do need (if that is the right word) a television licence to watch Channel 4 as it is broadcast.
If you use channel4.com as a catch-up service to stream later, then no licence is needed. Basically, for any channel, if you watch it as it is broadcast, you need a licence, but if you only stream it on a non-live catch-up basis, you do not. The exception is you need a licence for BBC iplayer at all times, whether live or catch-up. The anomaly for iplayer was introduced by the Conservative government in its time off from running referenda.
Well, yes, what I meant was it was not funded via a license fee. I need a tv license to watch the darts live on Sky on my IPad.
I note that the Motorists for Themselves Party is in the Government coalition in Czechia.
The new Czech government is a coalition led by Prime Minister-elect Andrej Babiš. The coalition is formed with two rightwing fringe parties: the pro-Russian far-right SPD party and the Motorists for Themselves party.
(Quite far right - I have not looked in detail, climate-change denial, populist, the big party needed a makeweight.)
Megyn Kelly in 2018: " There's no consenting for a 14 or even a 17 year old."
Megyn Kelly today: "Jeffrey Epstein…was not a pedophile…He was into the barely legal type, like he liked 15 year old girls…There's a difference between a 15 year old and a 5 year old."
Re Labour’s ‘Ming Vase’ strategy; it worked up to a point, they won a huge majority, but it didn’t get them any new votes. Amidst the relief that Starmer and the grown ups were back in charge, too many people glossed over the fact that they actually lost votes. LOST VOTES when the previous government had completely disgraced itself, morally with partygate, and economically with the Truss mini budget.
Of course, a critic of Starmer couldn’t have been taken seriously if they criticised him for not winning a huge majority well enough, but the huge majority was a kind of illusion; they didn’t really win by much.
Was there any need for the ming vase strategy? They had an open goal anyway, they could have done what they wanted. As it is, the victory margins were often so shallow that it’s left the govt too scared to do anything, despite being gifted an amount of power far in excess of what the underlying numbers say they deserved
I’d compare it a football team winning the league with 60 points. Most seasons that would be failure, but if all the other sides fail worse, you’re left as Champions and in the UCL. The right thing to do is surely to acknowledge your luck, then double down by absolutely going for it in the transfer window with the money you’ve gained. Instead, Starmer has decided it wasn’t luck, that they were popular, and the triangulation should continue
All true, but two quibbles: 1) Theresa May had an open goal in 2017 and thought she'd - laudably, in my view - use it to come up with a solution to funding adult social care, and look where that got her. Meanwhile, it was a strategy nit so very removed from Ming Vase which led to the 1997 landslide. While I agree with your point I can understand Labour's reticence. 2) One of my many, many gripes with football is the way you can just buy someone else's players. That's not sport, surely? "We won the league!" "What do you put that down to?" "We bought all the other clubs' best players." It's not really 'we', then, is it? People in football seem so firmly embedded in this culture that they don't appear to see the absurdity of this. When Nottingham Forest won the league, they may have aquired a handful, but half the team were those who'd been playing in Division 2 the previous year. I appreciate this is incidental to your point.
In 1997 the country was booming. The Tories were being evicted not because the economy was in the toilet but because everyone was thoroughly sick of them and rather fancied spending a bit of money on schools and hospitals, thanks. So sticking to the Tories economic plans was the right thing to do, and not really a ming vase.
In 2024 we needed a government to do 1979, not 1997.
Labour MPs won't even let Reeves make some minor welfare cuts let alone the spending cuts Thatcher and Howe did post 1979. Howe also cut the top rate of income tax even while making some tax rises elsewhere
Back before it became uniparty consensus that the bottom must benefit and the top must suffer at every budget. Built the wonderful world we live in where managerial roles pay pennies more than minimum wage and the whole country is rightly responding to the incentives and giving in.
True. This thread Dan Neidle highlighted shows the problem.
If you were someone who believed in institutional racism, this question to Eberechi Eze would raise an eyebrow. I thought the commentary at the time seemed odd. He scores a worldie, but all the commentators focus on a five yard pass from the white guy
Megyn Kelly in 2018: " There's no consenting for a 14 or even a 17 year old."
Megyn Kelly today: "Jeffrey Epstein…was not a pedophile…He was into the barely legal type, like he liked 15 year old girls…There's a difference between a 15 year old and a 5 year old."
"Here’s an extraordinarily cynical take: did the government talk up the likelihood of a manifesto-breaking income tax rise in the knowledge that it would push down gilt yields in the window the OBR will use for its forecasts?"
Everything Is Possible, the critically acclaimed feature-length documentary telling the extraordinary story of Simple Minds, will air on @BBCTwo this Saturday, followed by a broadcast of the band’s 2016 concert at Hackney Empire.
Russia has no tanks left. It has very few IFVs. Its aircraft lob glide bombs in from distance. Even that option ends when Ukraine get long-range missiles (200km+) meshed into their systems. The navy just sits in ever more distant ports, waiting for the latest iteration of the sea drones to find them. All Russia has are huge numbers of bullet-catchers, sent to their doom by officers making money buying and selling them. Whatever Russia has been doing is not sustainable.
Russia is in a bad way, yes.
But, for example, they also have now developed sea drones, which have conducted attacks on port infrastructure in Odesa. They have prioritised drone production so that they have an advantage in drones in front-line battles. They have demonstrated an amazing ability to get help from other countries - most of their artillery ammunition is now imported from North Korea. North Korean workers are manufacturing Shaheds inside Russia. Africans and Cubans are fighting and dying for Russia in Donetsk.
Ukraine have a desperate manpower shortage which is hindering their ability to rotate units out of the front and to do the training that would build a force capable of retaking occupied territory. It is possible that the Ukrainian ability to resist will break before the Russian ability to keep fighting does so - particularly if China is willing to act as a backstop to prevent a Russian collapse.
Europeans have consistently provided only just enough support to Ukraine to keep them fighting. European leaders are still wedded to the idea that a ceasefire on current lines is possible, and they are spending an inordinate amount of time on peace plans and fantasy plans for a post-ceasefire reassurance force, when there is zero sign that Russia or Putin are willing to settle. If Ukraine is to win this war with European support then there needs to be a strategy based on achieving victory, and doing what is necessary to achieve victory.
In principal the frozen Russian assets provide an opportunity to fund such a strategy, but it now seems as though they will be used only to maintain current levels of support for the next few years, a short-term measure to relieve European budget pressures, rather than pushing for victory.
Russia must lose and must be seen to lose. But even nearly four years on most European political leaders do not get this.
If you were someone who believed in institutional racism, this question to Eberechi Eze would raise an eyebrow. I thought the commentary at the time seemed odd. He scores a worldie, but all the commentators focus on a five yard pass from the white guy
I think there's a better chance of the Greens finishing ahead of Labour in terms of seats than the odds indicate.
One of the main impediments to the Greens has been the argument that a vote for the Greens is a wasted vote, and I think we may discover just how much of Labour's vote is a vote against the Tories, rather than a vote for something. Were Labour to fall to fifth in the opinion polling, which is not that much of a stretch from their current position, then this argument would be turned on its head. A vote for Labour would be a wasted vote, and with precious little ideological attachment to the party in preference to either the Greens or the Lib Dems, we could see Labour's position deteriorate much further once past that tipping point. Then it's not hard to see the Greens win more seats than Labour.
Oddly enough, Labour really could do with Your Party having a reasonably successful launch, in order to split the left-of-Labour vote and avoid this scenario coming about.
There is some talk of a seat-sharing deal between the Greens and Your Party, because they have largely different strong areas and no obvious deal-blocking policies. Depending how the Your Party conference goes, and resolution of the dispute with Zarah one way or another, it's possible to see this becoming quite significant. Like lots of leftish Labour supporters (I'm still CLP chair), I wouldn't dream of voting LibDem, as they lack a consistent left-wing approach - might as well carry on with Labour, in that case. I think that right-of-centre commenters on this thread don't really appreciate that and mistakenly imagine that the LibDems would be natural heirs to a further Labour slump.
It's also possible to imagine a failed, squabbling Your Party conference (the absence of any clear leadership is certainly a snag), a dismissal of Green leadership as fanciful, and a gradual Labour recovery. I think the next few months will provide som,e clarity.
If I was an adviser to Polansky I would suggest they kept their distance. It's possible that Zack could be a unique political talent. Corbyn and by association Sultana is a three times loser who almost single handedly destroyed one of the UK's most important political parties. I can't see him bringing anything at all to the party except to make the Greens look jaded
"no obvious deal-blocking policies."
Except there may well be. It seems to be barely noted but a key chunk of the actual MPs for YourParty are not cuddly hairshirt wearing old school lefties who keep Marx close by but Gaza Indies who as far as I can see represent a strand of cultural thinking that is basically appalled by trans rights.
The latter is a massive issue for the New Greens who have literally thrown dozens of long standing activists out of the party over the issue.
I don't see how trans rights doesn't blow up the fledgling YourParty at some point.
Well that's a bad start to the day. The 50 year taboo on increasing the basic rate of income tax is IMO perverse and damaging. When I heard it was finally going to be broken I was cock-a-hoop. I even got a bottle in for the big day - a nice Chilean red that is at its best after two weeks in the larder. Now we find it's not happening and the news is somehow worse for hopes having been raised. If they weren't up for it they should never have hinted it was coming. All it's done is left enthusiasts like me deflated. Lessons learnt anyway. I'm giving up on this one. A hike is never ever going to happen. The 50 years will become 150. Clearly the way to view it is not as a fiscal variable to be adjusted in accordance with financial circumstances but as a numerical constant embedded in the laws of nature. Pi = 3.14159, C = 186,000 mps, the basic rate of income tax in the UK = 20p.
Well that's a bad start to the day. The 50 year taboo on increasing the basic rate of income tax is IMO perverse and damaging. When I heard it was finally going to be broken I was cock-a-hoop. I even got a bottle in for the big day - a nice Chilean red that is at its best after two weeks in the larder. Now we find it's not happening and the news is somehow worse for hopes having been raised. If they weren't up for it they should never have hinted it was coming. All it's done is left enthusiasts like me deflated. Lessons learnt anyway. I'm giving up on this one. A hike is never ever going to happen. The 50 years will become 150. Clearly the way to view it is not as a fiscal variable to be adjusted in accordance with financial circumstances but as a numerical constant embedded in the laws of nature. Pi = 3.14159, C = 186,000 mps, the basic rate of income tax in the UK = 20p.
I think there's a better chance of the Greens finishing ahead of Labour in terms of seats than the odds indicate.
One of the main impediments to the Greens has been the argument that a vote for the Greens is a wasted vote, and I think we may discover just how much of Labour's vote is a vote against the Tories, rather than a vote for something. Were Labour to fall to fifth in the opinion polling, which is not that much of a stretch from their current position, then this argument would be turned on its head. A vote for Labour would be a wasted vote, and with precious little ideological attachment to the party in preference to either the Greens or the Lib Dems, we could see Labour's position deteriorate much further once past that tipping point. Then it's not hard to see the Greens win more seats than Labour.
Oddly enough, Labour really could do with Your Party having a reasonably successful launch, in order to split the left-of-Labour vote and avoid this scenario coming about.
There is some talk of a seat-sharing deal between the Greens and Your Party, because they have largely different strong areas and no obvious deal-blocking policies. Depending how the Your Party conference goes, and resolution of the dispute with Zarah one way or another, it's possible to see this becoming quite significant. Like lots of leftish Labour supporters (I'm still CLP chair), I wouldn't dream of voting LibDem, as they lack a consistent left-wing approach - might as well carry on with Labour, in that case. I think that right-of-centre commenters on this thread don't really appreciate that and mistakenly imagine that the LibDems would be natural heirs to a further Labour slump.
It's also possible to imagine a failed, squabbling Your Party conference (the absence of any clear leadership is certainly a snag), a dismissal of Green leadership as fanciful, and a gradual Labour recovery. I think the next few months will provide som,e clarity.
If I was an adviser to Polansky I would suggest they kept their distance. It's possible that Zack could be a unique political talent. Corbyn and by association Sultana is a three times loser who almost single handedly destroyed one of the UK's most important political parties. I can't see him bringing anything at all to the party except to make the Greens look jaded
"no obvious deal-blocking policies."
Except there may well be. It seems to be barely noted but a key chunk of the actual MPs for YourParty are not cuddly hairshirt wearing old school lefties who keep Marx close by but Gaza Indies who as far as I can see represent a strand of cultural thinking that is basically appalled by trans rights.
The latter is a massive issue for the New Greens who have literally thrown dozens of long standing activists out of the party over the issue.
I don't see how trans rights doesn't blow up the fledgling YourParty at some point.
NB, for all those claiming that leaving the EU has had no impact on the UK because we’ve done about as well in economic growth terms over the last five years or so, a new paper published this month by the NBER estimates the total net impact of Brexit at 6-8% of lost GDP!
The paper takes an interesting approach - they use detailed economic data to construct a synthetic control UK economy built out of parts of other economies from countries that stayed in the EU, combined with known macro & investment data. That synthetic economy has ~7% higher GDP today.
Tom Forth (who runs https://thedatacity.com/ ) had one of their research fellowships try to recreate the same model from scratch this summer (presumably inspired by a pre-print) and was surprised to reach the same conclusion - he’d personally estimated the Brexit impact as being much smaller than that.
Obviously this a speculative paper - we can’t actually know the counterfactual GDP we would have today if the UK had not Brexited, but the finding that the impact has been this large is significant, I think. Sadly, Labour seem determined to completely ignore the possibility of making any changes to our relationship with the EU, regarding it as some kind of political third rail that cannot be touched.
Well that's a bad start to the day. The 50 year taboo on increasing the basic rate of income tax is IMO perverse and damaging. When I heard it was finally going to be broken I was cock-a-hoop. I even got a bottle in for the big day - a nice Chilean red that is at its best after two weeks in the larder. Now we find it's not happening and the news is somehow worse for hopes having been raised. If they weren't up for it they should never have hinted it was coming. All it's done is left enthusiasts like me deflated. Lessons learnt anyway. I'm giving up on this one. A hike is never ever going to happen. The 50 years will become 150. Clearly the way to view it is not as a fiscal variable to be adjusted in accordance with financial circumstances but as a numerical constant embedded in the laws of nature. Pi = 3.14159, C = 186,000 mps, the basic rate of income tax in the UK = 20p.
Well that's a bad start to the day. The 50 year taboo on increasing the basic rate of income tax is IMO perverse and damaging. When I heard it was finally going to be broken I was cock-a-hoop. I even got a bottle in for the big day - a nice Chilean red that is at its best after two weeks in the larder. Now we find it's not happening and the news is somehow worse for hopes having been raised. If they weren't up for it they should never have hinted it was coming. All it's done is left enthusiasts like me deflated. Lessons learnt anyway. I'm giving up on this one. A hike is never ever going to happen. The 50 years will become 150. Clearly the way to view it is not as a fiscal variable to be adjusted in accordance with financial circumstances but as a numerical constant embedded in the laws of nature. Pi = 3.14159, C = 186,000 mps, the basic rate of income tax in the UK = 20p.
You have a larder?
Just a modest one, yes. A little room off the kitchen with various long-term edibles.
Russia has no tanks left. It has very few IFVs. Its aircraft lob glide bombs in from distance. Even that option ends when Ukraine get long-range missiles (200km+) meshed into their systems. The navy just sits in ever more distant ports, waiting for the latest iteration of the sea drones to find them. All Russia has are huge numbers of bullet-catchers, sent to their doom by officers making money buying and selling them. Whatever Russia has been doing is not sustainable.
Russia is in a bad way, yes.
But, for example, they also have now developed sea drones, which have conducted attacks on port infrastructure in Odesa. They have prioritised drone production so that they have an advantage in drones in front-line battles. They have demonstrated an amazing ability to get help from other countries - most of their artillery ammunition is now imported from North Korea. North Korean workers are manufacturing Shaheds inside Russia. Africans and Cubans are fighting and dying for Russia in Donetsk.
Ukraine have a desperate manpower shortage which is hindering their ability to rotate units out of the front and to do the training that would build a force capable of retaking occupied territory. It is possible that the Ukrainian ability to resist will break before the Russian ability to keep fighting does so - particularly if China is willing to act as a backstop to prevent a Russian collapse.
Europeans have consistently provided only just enough support to Ukraine to keep them fighting. European leaders are still wedded to the idea that a ceasefire on current lines is possible, and they are spending an inordinate amount of time on peace plans and fantasy plans for a post-ceasefire reassurance force, when there is zero sign that Russia or Putin are willing to settle. If Ukraine is to win this war with European support then there needs to be a strategy based on achieving victory, and doing what is necessary to achieve victory.
In principal the frozen Russian assets provide an opportunity to fund such a strategy, but it now seems as though they will be used only to maintain current levels of support for the next few years, a short-term measure to relieve European budget pressures, rather than pushing for victory.
Russia must lose and must be seen to lose. But even nearly four years on most European political leaders do not get this.
If Putin thinks he is going to lose and be forced from Ukraine completely, he may well use a tactical nuclear weapon. Russia has more nukes than any other nation on earth. The best that can happen at the moment, which even Zelensky agrees now, is a ceasefire on current lines
I think there's a better chance of the Greens finishing ahead of Labour in terms of seats than the odds indicate.
One of the main impediments to the Greens has been the argument that a vote for the Greens is a wasted vote, and I think we may discover just how much of Labour's vote is a vote against the Tories, rather than a vote for something. Were Labour to fall to fifth in the opinion polling, which is not that much of a stretch from their current position, then this argument would be turned on its head. A vote for Labour would be a wasted vote, and with precious little ideological attachment to the party in preference to either the Greens or the Lib Dems, we could see Labour's position deteriorate much further once past that tipping point. Then it's not hard to see the Greens win more seats than Labour.
Oddly enough, Labour really could do with Your Party having a reasonably successful launch, in order to split the left-of-Labour vote and avoid this scenario coming about.
There is some talk of a seat-sharing deal between the Greens and Your Party, because they have largely different strong areas and no obvious deal-blocking policies. Depending how the Your Party conference goes, and resolution of the dispute with Zarah one way or another, it's possible to see this becoming quite significant. Like lots of leftish Labour supporters (I'm still CLP chair), I wouldn't dream of voting LibDem, as they lack a consistent left-wing approach - might as well carry on with Labour, in that case. I think that right-of-centre commenters on this thread don't really appreciate that and mistakenly imagine that the LibDems would be natural heirs to a further Labour slump.
It's also possible to imagine a failed, squabbling Your Party conference (the absence of any clear leadership is certainly a snag), a dismissal of Green leadership as fanciful, and a gradual Labour recovery. I think the next few months will provide som,e clarity.
If I was an adviser to Polansky I would suggest they kept their distance. It's possible that Zack could be a unique political talent. Corbyn and by association Sultana is a three times loser who almost single handedly destroyed one of the UK's most important political parties. I can't see him bringing anything at all to the party except to make the Greens look jaded
"no obvious deal-blocking policies."
Except there may well be. It seems to be barely noted but a key chunk of the actual MPs for YourParty are not cuddly hairshirt wearing old school lefties who keep Marx close by but Gaza Indies who as far as I can see represent a strand of cultural thinking that is basically appalled by trans rights.
The latter is a massive issue for the New Greens who have literally thrown dozens of long standing activists out of the party over the issue.
I don't see how trans rights doesn't blow up the fledgling YourParty at some point.
There's no way you can have Zarah Sultana in the same party as the Gaza Independents and have it make sense. Meanwhile Jeremy Corbyn is staring bemused and wibbling pointlessly (again), whilst being called a Zionist by younger activists who have no memory nor sense. Six MPs and three distinct wings. Lord above, what can you do with such people...
Well that's a bad start to the day. The 50 year taboo on increasing the basic rate of income tax is IMO perverse and damaging. When I heard it was finally going to be broken I was cock-a-hoop. I even got a bottle in for the big day - a nice Chilean red that is at its best after two weeks in the larder. Now we find it's not happening and the news is somehow worse for hopes having been raised. If they weren't up for it they should never have hinted it was coming. All it's done is left enthusiasts like me deflated. Lessons learnt anyway. I'm giving up on this one. A hike is never ever going to happen. The 50 years will become 150. Clearly the way to view it is not as a fiscal variable to be adjusted in accordance with financial circumstances but as a numerical constant embedded in the laws of nature. Pi = 3.14159, C = 186,000 mps, the basic rate of income tax in the UK = 20p.
If this story is actually true Reeves / Starmer really are f*#king useless aren’t they?
Burnt a ton of political capital trailing this income tax rise over the last six months & then bottle it at the last possible moment. Instead we’re going to get vastly more complexity in the tax system, all to raise a few £billion that’s going to get eaten almost immediately because Labour is apparently incapable of doing the things that raise GDP.
So supposedly the income tax reversal is because there is £10bn of headroom.
Sorry but that’s utterly insane - take the money (and the pain now) because I don’t trust that forecast and suspect you will need to do it next year because the forecast will be wrong
NB, for all those claiming that leaving the EU has had no impact on the UK because we’ve done about as well in economic growth terms over the last five years or so, a new paper published this month by the NBER estimates the total net impact of Brexit at 6-8% of lost GDP!
The paper takes an interesting approach - they use detailed economic data to construct a synthetic control UK economy built out of parts of other economies from countries that stayed in the EU, combined with known macro & investment data. That synthetic economy has ~7% higher GDP today.
Tom Forth (who runs https://thedatacity.com/ ) had one of their research fellowships try to recreate the same model from scratch this summer (presumably inspired by a pre-print) and was surprised to reach the same conclusion - he’d personally estimated the Brexit impact as being much smaller than that.
Obviously this a speculative paper - we can’t actually know the counterfactual GDP we would have today if the UK had not Brexited, but the finding that the impact has been this large is significant, I think. Sadly, Labour seem determined to completely ignore the possibility of making any changes to our relationship with the EU, regarding it as some kind of political third rail that cannot be touched.
Just look at the state of the country now compared to a decade ago. It is manifestly obvious that Brexit has not done what its exponents promised.
Though it looks like the next government will be led by the same snake oil salesman that sold us Brexit.
I am just absolutely staggered. Reeves is just so out of her depth it is painful now.
How can you call a press conference and basically announce income tax will rise and then a week later decide not to do it?
Just breathtaking.
I'm thinking about what they might do instead. There's that technical wheeze whereby the BoE/Treasury stop paying multi billions per annum to commercial banks under the QE/QT arrangements. Maybe that?
NB, for all those claiming that leaving the EU has had no impact on the UK because we’ve done about as well in economic growth terms over the last five years or so, a new paper published this month by the NBER estimates the total net impact of Brexit at 6-8% of lost GDP!
The paper takes an interesting approach - they use detailed economic data to construct a synthetic control UK economy built out of parts of other economies from countries that stayed in the EU, combined with known macro & investment data. That synthetic economy has ~7% higher GDP today.
Tom Forth (who runs https://thedatacity.com/ ) had one of their research fellowships try to recreate the same model from scratch this summer (presumably inspired by a pre-print) and was surprised to reach the same conclusion - he’d personally estimated the Brexit impact as being much smaller than that.
Obviously this a speculative paper - we can’t actually know the counterfactual GDP we would have today if the UK had not Brexited, but the finding that the impact has been this large is significant, I think. Sadly, Labour seem determined to completely ignore the possibility of making any changes to our relationship with the EU, regarding it as some kind of political third rail that cannot be touched.
It's pretty damn obvious that it's had quite a large effect, and will continue to do so. No doubt a few diehard leavers will be along to argue otherwise.
So supposedly the income tax reversal is because there is £10bn of headroom.
Sorry but that’s utterly insane - take the money (and the pain now) because I don’t trust that forecast and suspect you will need to do it next year because the forecast will be wrong
Also politically, do it now and build up some headroom for some sweeties whether spending or tax cuts by 2029. Don't plan to do the whole term on a shoestring and end up surprised no-one wants more of that.
I am just absolutely staggered. Reeves is just so out of her depth it is painful now.
How can you call a press conference and basically announce income tax will rise and then a week later decide not to do it?
Just breathtaking.
I'm thinking about what they might do instead. There's that technical wheeze whereby the BoE/Treasury stop paying multi billions per annum to commercial banks under the QE/QT arrangements. Maybe that?
And/or something serious on property?
Its very likely to be pensions. The ending of higher rate tax relief and a substantial drop in what can be taken as a tax free lump sum. Add in a few bits and pieces at the edge, such as increasing fuel duty, and freezing of IT thresholds and they are nearly there.
Well that's a bad start to the day. The 50 year taboo on increasing the basic rate of income tax is IMO perverse and damaging. When I heard it was finally going to be broken I was cock-a-hoop. I even got a bottle in for the big day - a nice Chilean red that is at its best after two weeks in the larder. Now we find it's not happening and the news is somehow worse for hopes having been raised. If they weren't up for it they should never have hinted it was coming. All it's done is left enthusiasts like me deflated. Lessons learnt anyway. I'm giving up on this one. A hike is never ever going to happen. The 50 years will become 150. Clearly the way to view it is not as a fiscal variable to be adjusted in accordance with financial circumstances but as a numerical constant embedded in the laws of nature. Pi = 3.14159, C = 186,000 mps, the basic rate of income tax in the UK = 20p.
If the British budget ever gets close to balance you can be certain that the basic rate of income tax will be cut the next day. I don't think the future is so bad for Britain that it won't happen in the next 100 years.
I am just absolutely staggered. Reeves is just so out of her depth it is painful now.
How can you call a press conference and basically announce income tax will rise and then a week later decide not to do it?
Just breathtaking.
I'm thinking about what they might do instead. There's that technical wheeze whereby the BoE/Treasury stop paying multi billions per annum to commercial banks under the QE/QT arrangements. Maybe that?
NB, for all those claiming that leaving the EU has had no impact on the UK because we’ve done about as well in economic growth terms over the last five years or so, a new paper published this month by the NBER estimates the total net impact of Brexit at 6-8% of lost GDP!
The paper takes an interesting approach - they use detailed economic data to construct a synthetic control UK economy built out of parts of other economies from countries that stayed in the EU, combined with known macro & investment data. That synthetic economy has ~7% higher GDP today.
Tom Forth (who runs https://thedatacity.com/ ) had one of their research fellowships try to recreate the same model from scratch this summer (presumably inspired by a pre-print) and was surprised to reach the same conclusion - he’d personally estimated the Brexit impact as being much smaller than that.
Obviously this a speculative paper - we can’t actually know the counterfactual GDP we would have today if the UK had not Brexited, but the finding that the impact has been this large is significant, I think. Sadly, Labour seem determined to completely ignore the possibility of making any changes to our relationship with the EU, regarding it as some kind of political third rail that cannot be touched.
Tom Forth is very good on quite a few things.
Here, for example, is a thread where he gives an example how government could very easily, and at very low cost, make far better use of its data for public benefit.
https://x.com/thomasforth/status/1986795159162704089 About 9months ago I had a really frustrating call with people in the UK government following years of frustrating meetings with people in the UK government. An archive of the UK's bus open data, the location of every bus in real time, was going to be too hard to release,...
system architects and data architects, and the cost would be enormous to host all the data online and make it available for download, but a team would look at it for a few years and write a business case,...
So we just started collecting the data every 30s ourselves and put it on the web. It's a 1TB archive now. It costs us basically nothing. It's on my £41/month home broadband, on a £100 old computer I had lying around running Linux, put a £500 SSD in, and it just works...
So supposedly the income tax reversal is because there is £10bn of headroom.
Sorry but that’s utterly insane - take the money (and the pain now) because I don’t trust that forecast and suspect you will need to do it next year because the forecast will be wrong
I guess we'll find out (and it's all speculation atm) but things aren't quite adding up for me. I thought the plan was to create a bigger buffer this time. Message to the markets. You can trust us. We owe a lot but we're good for it.
Well that's a bad start to the day. The 50 year taboo on increasing the basic rate of income tax is IMO perverse and damaging. When I heard it was finally going to be broken I was cock-a-hoop. I even got a bottle in for the big day - a nice Chilean red that is at its best after two weeks in the larder. Now we find it's not happening and the news is somehow worse for hopes having been raised. If they weren't up for it they should never have hinted it was coming. All it's done is left enthusiasts like me deflated. Lessons learnt anyway. I'm giving up on this one. A hike is never ever going to happen. The 50 years will become 150. Clearly the way to view it is not as a fiscal variable to be adjusted in accordance with financial circumstances but as a numerical constant embedded in the laws of nature. Pi = 3.14159, C = 186,000 mps, the basic rate of income tax in the UK = 20p.
If you want an easier way to remember the speed of light, it's about 300,000 kilometers per second
The ISS is 250-ish miles up, the circumference of the Earth is 25,000-ish miles, geostationary orbit is 25,000-ish miles up, the orbit of the Moon is 250,000-ish miles up. All those numbers are very approx, but it makes it easier to remember and are good enough unless you actually are a rocket scientist.
NB, for all those claiming that leaving the EU has had no impact on the UK because we’ve done about as well in economic growth terms over the last five years or so, a new paper published this month by the NBER estimates the total net impact of Brexit at 6-8% of lost GDP!
The paper takes an interesting approach - they use detailed economic data to construct a synthetic control UK economy built out of parts of other economies from countries that stayed in the EU, combined with known macro & investment data. That synthetic economy has ~7% higher GDP today.
Tom Forth (who runs https://thedatacity.com/ ) had one of their research fellowships try to recreate the same model from scratch this summer (presumably inspired by a pre-print) and was surprised to reach the same conclusion - he’d personally estimated the Brexit impact as being much smaller than that.
Obviously this a speculative paper - we can’t actually know the counterfactual GDP we would have today if the UK had not Brexited, but the finding that the impact has been this large is significant, I think. Sadly, Labour seem determined to completely ignore the possibility of making any changes to our relationship with the EU, regarding it as some kind of political third rail that cannot be touched.
Tom Forth is very good on quite a few things.
Here, for example, is a thread where he gives an example how government could very easily, and at very low cost, make far better use of its data for public benefit.
https://x.com/thomasforth/status/1986795159162704089 About 9months ago I had a really frustrating call with people in the UK government following years of frustrating meetings with people in the UK government. An archive of the UK's bus open data, the location of every bus in real time, was going to be too hard to release,...
system architects and data architects, and the cost would be enormous to host all the data online and make it available for download, but a team would look at it for a few years and write a business case,...
So we just started collecting the data every 30s ourselves and put it on the web. It's a 1TB archive now. It costs us basically nothing. It's on my £41/month home broadband, on a £100 old computer I had lying around running Linux, put a £500 SSD in, and it just works...
Interesting, although I wonder what use I would have of the current location of every bus in the UK. The one I want to catch is enough for me.
Ok, in quite interesting* but off topic posting, I had Dzus fasteners on my 748 but just thought it was a made up brand name. Turns out there was a Mr Dzus, he was Ukrainian and he revolutionised aircraft maintenance.
Russia has no tanks left. It has very few IFVs. Its aircraft lob glide bombs in from distance. Even that option ends when Ukraine get long-range missiles (200km+) meshed into their systems. The navy just sits in ever more distant ports, waiting for the latest iteration of the sea drones to find them. All Russia has are huge numbers of bullet-catchers, sent to their doom by officers making money buying and selling them. Whatever Russia has been doing is not sustainable.
Russia is in a bad way, yes.
But, for example, they also have now developed sea drones, which have conducted attacks on port infrastructure in Odesa. They have prioritised drone production so that they have an advantage in drones in front-line battles. They have demonstrated an amazing ability to get help from other countries - most of their artillery ammunition is now imported from North Korea. North Korean workers are manufacturing Shaheds inside Russia. Africans and Cubans are fighting and dying for Russia in Donetsk.
Ukraine have a desperate manpower shortage which is hindering their ability to rotate units out of the front and to do the training that would build a force capable of retaking occupied territory. It is possible that the Ukrainian ability to resist will break before the Russian ability to keep fighting does so - particularly if China is willing to act as a backstop to prevent a Russian collapse.
Europeans have consistently provided only just enough support to Ukraine to keep them fighting. European leaders are still wedded to the idea that a ceasefire on current lines is possible, and they are spending an inordinate amount of time on peace plans and fantasy plans for a post-ceasefire reassurance force, when there is zero sign that Russia or Putin are willing to settle. If Ukraine is to win this war with European support then there needs to be a strategy based on achieving victory, and doing what is necessary to achieve victory.
In principal the frozen Russian assets provide an opportunity to fund such a strategy, but it now seems as though they will be used only to maintain current levels of support for the next few years, a short-term measure to relieve European budget pressures, rather than pushing for victory.
Russia must lose and must be seen to lose. But even nearly four years on most European political leaders do not get this.
If Putin thinks he is going to lose and be forced from Ukraine completely, he may well use a tactical nuclear weapon. Russia has more nukes than any other nation on earth. The best that can happen at the moment, which even Zelensky agrees now, is a ceasefire on current lines
If Putin ever believes that he will lose then he can simply offer a ceasefire on current lines, and the Europeans would force the Ukrainians to agree.
Russia did not use a nuclear weapon when they lost territory in Kharkiv, or in Kherson, in the autumn of 2022. We know that is an empty threat now. But the attitude of the Europeans means that he can run the risk of pushing Russia to the point of collapse, and still settle for a ceasefire on the lines at that point. The policy of the Europeans encourages Putin to keep fighting for as long as possible. It does nothing to pressure him into a ceasefire. If he knew that he was risking outright defeat then he might make more realistic efforts towards an earlier peace.
NB, for all those claiming that leaving the EU has had no impact on the UK because we’ve done about as well in economic growth terms over the last five years or so, a new paper published this month by the NBER estimates the total net impact of Brexit at 6-8% of lost GDP!
The paper takes an interesting approach - they use detailed economic data to construct a synthetic control UK economy built out of parts of other economies from countries that stayed in the EU, combined with known macro & investment data. That synthetic economy has ~7% higher GDP today.
Tom Forth (who runs https://thedatacity.com/ ) had one of their research fellowships try to recreate the same model from scratch this summer (presumably inspired by a pre-print) and was surprised to reach the same conclusion - he’d personally estimated the Brexit impact as being much smaller than that.
Obviously this a speculative paper - we can’t actually know the counterfactual GDP we would have today if the UK had not Brexited, but the finding that the impact has been this large is significant, I think. Sadly, Labour seem determined to completely ignore the possibility of making any changes to our relationship with the EU, regarding it as some kind of political third rail that cannot be touched.
Obvious to all but the true believers, who are surely dwindling in number now. How long are my kids going to have to be poorer because of this stupidity? Please someone make it stop.
Well that's a bad start to the day. The 50 year taboo on increasing the basic rate of income tax is IMO perverse and damaging. When I heard it was finally going to be broken I was cock-a-hoop. I even got a bottle in for the big day - a nice Chilean red that is at its best after two weeks in the larder. Now we find it's not happening and the news is somehow worse for hopes having been raised. If they weren't up for it they should never have hinted it was coming. All it's done is left enthusiasts like me deflated. Lessons learnt anyway. I'm giving up on this one. A hike is never ever going to happen. The 50 years will become 150. Clearly the way to view it is not as a fiscal variable to be adjusted in accordance with financial circumstances but as a numerical constant embedded in the laws of nature. Pi = 3.14159, C = 186,000 mps, the basic rate of income tax in the UK = 20p.
If the British budget ever gets close to balance you can be certain that the basic rate of income tax will be cut the next day. I don't think the future is so bad for Britain that it won't happen in the next 100 years.
True. A cut is one day possible. It's a rise that's seemingly illegal.
Russia has no tanks left. It has very few IFVs. Its aircraft lob glide bombs in from distance. Even that option ends when Ukraine get long-range missiles (200km+) meshed into their systems. The navy just sits in ever more distant ports, waiting for the latest iteration of the sea drones to find them. All Russia has are huge numbers of bullet-catchers, sent to their doom by officers making money buying and selling them. Whatever Russia has been doing is not sustainable.
Russia is in a bad way, yes.
But, for example, they also have now developed sea drones, which have conducted attacks on port infrastructure in Odesa. They have prioritised drone production so that they have an advantage in drones in front-line battles. They have demonstrated an amazing ability to get help from other countries - most of their artillery ammunition is now imported from North Korea. North Korean workers are manufacturing Shaheds inside Russia. Africans and Cubans are fighting and dying for Russia in Donetsk.
Ukraine have a desperate manpower shortage which is hindering their ability to rotate units out of the front and to do the training that would build a force capable of retaking occupied territory. It is possible that the Ukrainian ability to resist will break before the Russian ability to keep fighting does so - particularly if China is willing to act as a backstop to prevent a Russian collapse.
Europeans have consistently provided only just enough support to Ukraine to keep them fighting. European leaders are still wedded to the idea that a ceasefire on current lines is possible, and they are spending an inordinate amount of time on peace plans and fantasy plans for a post-ceasefire reassurance force, when there is zero sign that Russia or Putin are willing to settle. If Ukraine is to win this war with European support then there needs to be a strategy based on achieving victory, and doing what is necessary to achieve victory.
In principal the frozen Russian assets provide an opportunity to fund such a strategy, but it now seems as though they will be used only to maintain current levels of support for the next few years, a short-term measure to relieve European budget pressures, rather than pushing for victory.
Russia must lose and must be seen to lose. But even nearly four years on most European political leaders do not get this.
If Putin thinks he is going to lose and be forced from Ukraine completely, he may well use a tactical nuclear weapon. Russia has more nukes than any other nation on earth. The best that can happen at the moment, which even Zelensky agrees now, is a ceasefire on current lines
Putin doesn’t want to agree that so Ukraine has no choice other than to fight on.
NB, for all those claiming that leaving the EU has had no impact on the UK because we’ve done about as well in economic growth terms over the last five years or so, a new paper published this month by the NBER estimates the total net impact of Brexit at 6-8% of lost GDP!
The paper takes an interesting approach - they use detailed economic data to construct a synthetic control UK economy built out of parts of other economies from countries that stayed in the EU, combined with known macro & investment data. That synthetic economy has ~7% higher GDP today.
Tom Forth (who runs https://thedatacity.com/ ) had one of their research fellowships try to recreate the same model from scratch this summer (presumably inspired by a pre-print) and was surprised to reach the same conclusion - he’d personally estimated the Brexit impact as being much smaller than that.
Obviously this a speculative paper - we can’t actually know the counterfactual GDP we would have today if the UK had not Brexited, but the finding that the impact has been this large is significant, I think. Sadly, Labour seem determined to completely ignore the possibility of making any changes to our relationship with the EU, regarding it as some kind of political third rail that cannot be touched.
Tom Forth is very good on quite a few things.
Here, for example, is a thread where he gives an example how government could very easily, and at very low cost, make far better use of its data for public benefit.
https://x.com/thomasforth/status/1986795159162704089 About 9months ago I had a really frustrating call with people in the UK government following years of frustrating meetings with people in the UK government. An archive of the UK's bus open data, the location of every bus in real time, was going to be too hard to release,...
system architects and data architects, and the cost would be enormous to host all the data online and make it available for download, but a team would look at it for a few years and write a business case,...
So we just started collecting the data every 30s ourselves and put it on the web. It's a 1TB archive now. It costs us basically nothing. It's on my £41/month home broadband, on a £100 old computer I had lying around running Linux, put a £500 SSD in, and it just works...
Interesting, although I wonder what use I would have of the current location of every bus in the UK. The one I want to catch is enough for me.
So supposedly the income tax reversal is because there is £10bn of headroom.
Sorry but that’s utterly insane - take the money (and the pain now) because I don’t trust that forecast and suspect you will need to do it next year because the forecast will be wrong
But the pain of breaking the pledge not to raise IT will follow them to the next eletion and beyond.
If a hypothetical Labour Chancellor, at the start of this government had done the following -
1) Announce merging income tax and employee NI over the parliament - 5 tranches of reduce NI, increase IT. 2) Remove the various cliff edges in the new rates. While at it, tax rates go up slightly. Together with the extra income from NI, that would be substantial revenue increase. 3) Initially, hold the tax rate for pensioners on the basic rate the same (special rate for pensioners). This would mean that pensioners under 50K a year would not be affected - political compromise that can be dealt with later. 4) All old age benefits (apart from the pension) go in a blender, and come out as a taxable*, single system. 5) Pension and the tax allowance locked together (the quadruple lock). Tax allowance withdrawal removed, as part of the new tax rates. 6) Legislation to remove the use of layering and zero hours contracts to insulate companies from the consequences of illegal employment - undocumented, deliberate payment below minimum wage. There's no point to minimum wage, if it isn't protected.
*Where possible use taxation instead of means testing.
NB, for all those claiming that leaving the EU has had no impact on the UK because we’ve done about as well in economic growth terms over the last five years or so, a new paper published this month by the NBER estimates the total net impact of Brexit at 6-8% of lost GDP!
The paper takes an interesting approach - they use detailed economic data to construct a synthetic control UK economy built out of parts of other economies from countries that stayed in the EU, combined with known macro & investment data. That synthetic economy has ~7% higher GDP today.
Tom Forth (who runs https://thedatacity.com/ ) had one of their research fellowships try to recreate the same model from scratch this summer (presumably inspired by a pre-print) and was surprised to reach the same conclusion - he’d personally estimated the Brexit impact as being much smaller than that.
Obviously this a speculative paper - we can’t actually know the counterfactual GDP we would have today if the UK had not Brexited, but the finding that the impact has been this large is significant, I think. Sadly, Labour seem determined to completely ignore the possibility of making any changes to our relationship with the EU, regarding it as some kind of political third rail that cannot be touched.
Tom Forth is very good on quite a few things.
Here, for example, is a thread where he gives an example how government could very easily, and at very low cost, make far better use of its data for public benefit.
https://x.com/thomasforth/status/1986795159162704089 About 9months ago I had a really frustrating call with people in the UK government following years of frustrating meetings with people in the UK government. An archive of the UK's bus open data, the location of every bus in real time, was going to be too hard to release,...
system architects and data architects, and the cost would be enormous to host all the data online and make it available for download, but a team would look at it for a few years and write a business case,...
So we just started collecting the data every 30s ourselves and put it on the web. It's a 1TB archive now. It costs us basically nothing. It's on my £41/month home broadband, on a £100 old computer I had lying around running Linux, put a £500 SSD in, and it just works...
Interesting, although I wonder what use I would have of the current location of every bus in the UK. The one I want to catch is enough for me.
You could, for instance, use it to analyse trends in traffic flow down a particular street over time.
It will be interesting to see, if here in Newham, we see any kind of electoral "co-operation" between the Greens, Newham Independents and Your Party.
If they all stand against each other, Labour will be laughing all the way to another big majority but if, for example, the Newham Independents fight the Muslim Wards, the Greens stay in Stratford and a few other places and Your Party fight the rest, it could get very difficult for Newham Labour.
Throw in Reform (16% in a Muslim Ward in a by-election) and it's going to be the most interesting local election here in decades.
NB, for all those claiming that leaving the EU has had no impact on the UK because we’ve done about as well in economic growth terms over the last five years or so, a new paper published this month by the NBER estimates the total net impact of Brexit at 6-8% of lost GDP!
The paper takes an interesting approach - they use detailed economic data to construct a synthetic control UK economy built out of parts of other economies from countries that stayed in the EU, combined with known macro & investment data. That synthetic economy has ~7% higher GDP today.
Tom Forth (who runs https://thedatacity.com/ ) had one of their research fellowships try to recreate the same model from scratch this summer (presumably inspired by a pre-print) and was surprised to reach the same conclusion - he’d personally estimated the Brexit impact as being much smaller than that.
Obviously this a speculative paper - we can’t actually know the counterfactual GDP we would have today if the UK had not Brexited, but the finding that the impact has been this large is significant, I think. Sadly, Labour seem determined to completely ignore the possibility of making any changes to our relationship with the EU, regarding it as some kind of political third rail that cannot be touched.
Clarification - I think Tom Forth has confused the NBER paper with a different publication this summer (at least it’s by different authors!) that used the ”synthetic UK” methodology. The NBER paper is looking at concrete UK data, in particular drilling down into the Decision Maker Panel data to tease out investment changes that were the result of Brexit. It does discuss (briefly) John Springford’s published research that uses a ”synthetic UK” to try and measure the impact of Brexit as part of that report - https://consoc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/The-Economic-Impact-of-Brexit.pdf
It’s striking that different methodologies come to much the same conclusion though: The NBER paper states ”We estimate that by 2025, the Brexit process had reduced UK GDP by 6% to 8%, investment by 12% to 18%, employment by 3% to 4%, and productivity by 3% to 4%”. The ”synthetic UK” research papers by John Springford reach very similar numbers.
One of the reasons for these high numbers appears to be that the models are suggesting that the gap is widening over time, not remaining constant. Control sub-economises are continuing to grow, whilst the UK remains mired in a 0-growth swamp, so what was measured as a ”mere” 5% deficit three years ago is now a 7-8% deficit.
NB, for all those claiming that leaving the EU has had no impact on the UK because we’ve done about as well in economic growth terms over the last five years or so, a new paper published this month by the NBER estimates the total net impact of Brexit at 6-8% of lost GDP!
The paper takes an interesting approach - they use detailed economic data to construct a synthetic control UK economy built out of parts of other economies from countries that stayed in the EU, combined with known macro & investment data. That synthetic economy has ~7% higher GDP today.
Tom Forth (who runs https://thedatacity.com/ ) had one of their research fellowships try to recreate the same model from scratch this summer (presumably inspired by a pre-print) and was surprised to reach the same conclusion - he’d personally estimated the Brexit impact as being much smaller than that.
Obviously this a speculative paper - we can’t actually know the counterfactual GDP we would have today if the UK had not Brexited, but the finding that the impact has been this large is significant, I think. Sadly, Labour seem determined to completely ignore the possibility of making any changes to our relationship with the EU, regarding it as some kind of political third rail that cannot be touched.
Tom Forth is very good on quite a few things.
Here, for example, is a thread where he gives an example how government could very easily, and at very low cost, make far better use of its data for public benefit.
https://x.com/thomasforth/status/1986795159162704089 About 9months ago I had a really frustrating call with people in the UK government following years of frustrating meetings with people in the UK government. An archive of the UK's bus open data, the location of every bus in real time, was going to be too hard to release,...
system architects and data architects, and the cost would be enormous to host all the data online and make it available for download, but a team would look at it for a few years and write a business case,...
So we just started collecting the data every 30s ourselves and put it on the web. It's a 1TB archive now. It costs us basically nothing. It's on my £41/month home broadband, on a £100 old computer I had lying around running Linux, put a £500 SSD in, and it just works...
Interesting, although I wonder what use I would have of the current location of every bus in the UK. The one I want to catch is enough for me.
If you have an archive of the locations of all the buses on each route then you can do some analysis on how that compares to the timetable, and see where the buses regularly fall behind the timetable, and so which pinch points in the route could be addressed to improve reliability, or how you might modify the timetable to be more realistic.
If you were someone who believed in institutional racism, this question to Eberechi Eze would raise an eyebrow. I thought the commentary at the time seemed odd. He scores a worldie, but all the commentators focus on a five yard pass from the white guy
NB, for all those claiming that leaving the EU has had no impact on the UK because we’ve done about as well in economic growth terms over the last five years or so, a new paper published this month by the NBER estimates the total net impact of Brexit at 6-8% of lost GDP!
The paper takes an interesting approach - they use detailed economic data to construct a synthetic control UK economy built out of parts of other economies from countries that stayed in the EU, combined with known macro & investment data. That synthetic economy has ~7% higher GDP today.
Tom Forth (who runs https://thedatacity.com/ ) had one of their research fellowships try to recreate the same model from scratch this summer (presumably inspired by a pre-print) and was surprised to reach the same conclusion - he’d personally estimated the Brexit impact as being much smaller than that.
Obviously this a speculative paper - we can’t actually know the counterfactual GDP we would have today if the UK had not Brexited, but the finding that the impact has been this large is significant, I think. Sadly, Labour seem determined to completely ignore the possibility of making any changes to our relationship with the EU, regarding it as some kind of political third rail that cannot be touched.
Tom Forth is very good on quite a few things.
Here, for example, is a thread where he gives an example how government could very easily, and at very low cost, make far better use of its data for public benefit.
https://x.com/thomasforth/status/1986795159162704089 About 9months ago I had a really frustrating call with people in the UK government following years of frustrating meetings with people in the UK government. An archive of the UK's bus open data, the location of every bus in real time, was going to be too hard to release,...
system architects and data architects, and the cost would be enormous to host all the data online and make it available for download, but a team would look at it for a few years and write a business case,...
So we just started collecting the data every 30s ourselves and put it on the web. It's a 1TB archive now. It costs us basically nothing. It's on my £41/month home broadband, on a £100 old computer I had lying around running Linux, put a £500 SSD in, and it just works...
Interesting, although I wonder what use I would have of the current location of every bus in the UK. The one I want to catch is enough for me.
This is exactly the kind of information that the COVID Dashboard Team was disbanded over.
After COVID, it was mooted that similar dashboards should be created across government. For those who don't know, the dashboard data was extremely easy to access - they deliberately designed it so that you could request data from their database, directly. Many people started researching it themselves - the number of PhDs based on it....
In every department, this was met with horror. Controlling the narrative of government is hard enough, without the facts being freely available.
NB, for all those claiming that leaving the EU has had no impact on the UK because we’ve done about as well in economic growth terms over the last five years or so, a new paper published this month by the NBER estimates the total net impact of Brexit at 6-8% of lost GDP!
The paper takes an interesting approach - they use detailed economic data to construct a synthetic control UK economy built out of parts of other economies from countries that stayed in the EU, combined with known macro & investment data. That synthetic economy has ~7% higher GDP today.
Tom Forth (who runs https://thedatacity.com/ ) had one of their research fellowships try to recreate the same model from scratch this summer (presumably inspired by a pre-print) and was surprised to reach the same conclusion - he’d personally estimated the Brexit impact as being much smaller than that.
Obviously this a speculative paper - we can’t actually know the counterfactual GDP we would have today if the UK had not Brexited, but the finding that the impact has been this large is significant, I think. Sadly, Labour seem determined to completely ignore the possibility of making any changes to our relationship with the EU, regarding it as some kind of political third rail that cannot be touched.
Tom Forth is very good on quite a few things.
Here, for example, is a thread where he gives an example how government could very easily, and at very low cost, make far better use of its data for public benefit.
https://x.com/thomasforth/status/1986795159162704089 About 9months ago I had a really frustrating call with people in the UK government following years of frustrating meetings with people in the UK government. An archive of the UK's bus open data, the location of every bus in real time, was going to be too hard to release,...
system architects and data architects, and the cost would be enormous to host all the data online and make it available for download, but a team would look at it for a few years and write a business case,...
So we just started collecting the data every 30s ourselves and put it on the web. It's a 1TB archive now. It costs us basically nothing. It's on my £41/month home broadband, on a £100 old computer I had lying around running Linux, put a £500 SSD in, and it just works...
Interesting, although I wonder what use I would have of the current location of every bus in the UK. The one I want to catch is enough for me.
If you have an archive of the locations of all the buses on each route then you can do some analysis on how that compares to the timetable, and see where the buses regularly fall behind the timetable, and so which pinch points in the route could be addressed to improve reliability, or how you might modify the timetable to be more realistic.
The operating companies surely do this already with their own data. Not sure why it all has to be centralised to achieve that.
Ok, in quite interesting* but off topic posting, I had Dzus fasteners on my 748 but just thought it was a made up brand name. Turns out there was a Mr Dzus, he was Ukrainian and he revolutionised aircraft maintenance.
NB, for all those claiming that leaving the EU has had no impact on the UK because we’ve done about as well in economic growth terms over the last five years or so, a new paper published this month by the NBER estimates the total net impact of Brexit at 6-8% of lost GDP!
The paper takes an interesting approach - they use detailed economic data to construct a synthetic control UK economy built out of parts of other economies from countries that stayed in the EU, combined with known macro & investment data. That synthetic economy has ~7% higher GDP today.
Tom Forth (who runs https://thedatacity.com/ ) had one of their research fellowships try to recreate the same model from scratch this summer (presumably inspired by a pre-print) and was surprised to reach the same conclusion - he’d personally estimated the Brexit impact as being much smaller than that.
Obviously this a speculative paper - we can’t actually know the counterfactual GDP we would have today if the UK had not Brexited, but the finding that the impact has been this large is significant, I think. Sadly, Labour seem determined to completely ignore the possibility of making any changes to our relationship with the EU, regarding it as some kind of political third rail that cannot be touched.
Tom Forth is very good on quite a few things.
Here, for example, is a thread where he gives an example how government could very easily, and at very low cost, make far better use of its data for public benefit.
https://x.com/thomasforth/status/1986795159162704089 About 9months ago I had a really frustrating call with people in the UK government following years of frustrating meetings with people in the UK government. An archive of the UK's bus open data, the location of every bus in real time, was going to be too hard to release,...
system architects and data architects, and the cost would be enormous to host all the data online and make it available for download, but a team would look at it for a few years and write a business case,...
So we just started collecting the data every 30s ourselves and put it on the web. It's a 1TB archive now. It costs us basically nothing. It's on my £41/month home broadband, on a £100 old computer I had lying around running Linux, put a £500 SSD in, and it just works...
Interesting, although I wonder what use I would have of the current location of every bus in the UK. The one I want to catch is enough for me.
If you have an archive of the locations of all the buses on each route then you can do some analysis on how that compares to the timetable, and see where the buses regularly fall behind the timetable, and so which pinch points in the route could be addressed to improve reliability, or how you might modify the timetable to be more realistic.
For example - buses in London often become nearly useless, because of the removal of bus lanes to create cycle routes. This means that when traffic snarls up, the buses make it worse, rather than sailing past.
As a result, more and more people are taking the Tube - longer routes, often.
Russia has no tanks left. It has very few IFVs. Its aircraft lob glide bombs in from distance. Even that option ends when Ukraine get long-range missiles (200km+) meshed into their systems. The navy just sits in ever more distant ports, waiting for the latest iteration of the sea drones to find them. All Russia has are huge numbers of bullet-catchers, sent to their doom by officers making money buying and selling them. Whatever Russia has been doing is not sustainable.
Russia is in a bad way, yes.
But, for example, they also have now developed sea drones, which have conducted attacks on port infrastructure in Odesa. They have prioritised drone production so that they have an advantage in drones in front-line battles. They have demonstrated an amazing ability to get help from other countries - most of their artillery ammunition is now imported from North Korea. North Korean workers are manufacturing Shaheds inside Russia. Africans and Cubans are fighting and dying for Russia in Donetsk.
Ukraine have a desperate manpower shortage which is hindering their ability to rotate units out of the front and to do the training that would build a force capable of retaking occupied territory. It is possible that the Ukrainian ability to resist will break before the Russian ability to keep fighting does so - particularly if China is willing to act as a backstop to prevent a Russian collapse.
Europeans have consistently provided only just enough support to Ukraine to keep them fighting. European leaders are still wedded to the idea that a ceasefire on current lines is possible, and they are spending an inordinate amount of time on peace plans and fantasy plans for a post-ceasefire reassurance force, when there is zero sign that Russia or Putin are willing to settle. If Ukraine is to win this war with European support then there needs to be a strategy based on achieving victory, and doing what is necessary to achieve victory.
In principal the frozen Russian assets provide an opportunity to fund such a strategy, but it now seems as though they will be used only to maintain current levels of support for the next few years, a short-term measure to relieve European budget pressures, rather than pushing for victory.
Russia must lose and must be seen to lose. But even nearly four years on most European political leaders do not get this.
I think this is a really good piece, that I mostly agree with.
As far as Russia on the battlefield goes, they are winning. But they are winning incredibly slowly; glacially even. They take a mile here, or a mile there, and they still control less of Ukraine than they did a month into the invasion. The Russian government lives in this dreamworld where, at some point, they burst through Ukrainian lines, the Ukrainian government collapses, and they can dictate terms. I just don't see that happening. But Putin has to believe it, because a ceasefile on current terms, with Zelenskky in power is a death knell for him, because of just how many Russians have died.
On the other hand, the Ukrainian shortages of men are very serious. The only thing in their favour is that defending is a hell of a lot easier than attacking, and the they are losing people at maybe a 1:4 ratio compared to the Russians. Manpower shortages mean that Ukraine has very limited ability to go on the offensive. They are basically sitting back and taking the blows, and hoping that Russia gives up. Which, so far, they've shown no signs of doing.
With that said, the attacks in Russia are (potentially) a game changer. The Russian economy was incredibly reslient the first three years of the war, because higher energy price worldwide (due to the war) meant that Russia could sell oil and gas to China and India and earn more money than they used to.
The attacks on energy infrastructure in Russia mean that the civilian population is feeling the pinch for the very first time. Energy prices for consumers and businesses have gone through the roof, and that's going to be painful.
At the same time, the Russian government is now borrowing like a drunken sailor to make up for lost energy revenue.
If Ukraine can keep reducing the amount of Russian oil available for export (while increasing the price of petrol and diesel in Russia), then life becomes very hard for Russia. Those Africans and North Koreans don't work (and die) for nothing. Russia needs money to pay them.
NB, for all those claiming that leaving the EU has had no impact on the UK because we’ve done about as well in economic growth terms over the last five years or so, a new paper published this month by the NBER estimates the total net impact of Brexit at 6-8% of lost GDP!
The paper takes an interesting approach - they use detailed economic data to construct a synthetic control UK economy built out of parts of other economies from countries that stayed in the EU, combined with known macro & investment data. That synthetic economy has ~7% higher GDP today.
Tom Forth (who runs https://thedatacity.com/ ) had one of their research fellowships try to recreate the same model from scratch this summer (presumably inspired by a pre-print) and was surprised to reach the same conclusion - he’d personally estimated the Brexit impact as being much smaller than that.
Obviously this a speculative paper - we can’t actually know the counterfactual GDP we would have today if the UK had not Brexited, but the finding that the impact has been this large is significant, I think. Sadly, Labour seem determined to completely ignore the possibility of making any changes to our relationship with the EU, regarding it as some kind of political third rail that cannot be touched.
Tom Forth is very good on quite a few things.
Here, for example, is a thread where he gives an example how government could very easily, and at very low cost, make far better use of its data for public benefit.
https://x.com/thomasforth/status/1986795159162704089 About 9months ago I had a really frustrating call with people in the UK government following years of frustrating meetings with people in the UK government. An archive of the UK's bus open data, the location of every bus in real time, was going to be too hard to release,...
system architects and data architects, and the cost would be enormous to host all the data online and make it available for download, but a team would look at it for a few years and write a business case,...
So we just started collecting the data every 30s ourselves and put it on the web. It's a 1TB archive now. It costs us basically nothing. It's on my £41/month home broadband, on a £100 old computer I had lying around running Linux, put a £500 SSD in, and it just works...
Interesting, although I wonder what use I would have of the current location of every bus in the UK. The one I want to catch is enough for me.
Turns out you can use that data for interesting economic studies!
IIRC the company used that data (plus other traffic data) to demonstrate that the ”commutable distance” for the north of England was much lower than in comparable cities in, say, France or Germany. Resulting in those cities being broken up into smaller economic units that fail to attain the economies of scale that cities usually achieve by conglomeration.
A city usually gains in GDP per head in proportion to it’s size & the gain usually follows a power law. For UK cities that power matches the best of the rest of the world only in London - every other city in the country lags behind the increased GDP / head it ”ought” to gain from conglomeration by a significant margin.
Tom Forth’s company’s research strongly suggests this is because the transport networks everywhere except London are far less effective than in competitor cities, leading to a net loss of efficiency across the entire economy.
If the Greens have any sense they will try to kill off Your Party and become the main party of the hard left as that is where Zack wants to position it.
Learn from the errors of the Alliance.
The Greens are making all the running and Your Party is struggling to organise the pissup in the brewery.
Russia has no tanks left. It has very few IFVs. Its aircraft lob glide bombs in from distance. Even that option ends when Ukraine get long-range missiles (200km+) meshed into their systems. The navy just sits in ever more distant ports, waiting for the latest iteration of the sea drones to find them. All Russia has are huge numbers of bullet-catchers, sent to their doom by officers making money buying and selling them. Whatever Russia has been doing is not sustainable.
Russia is in a bad way, yes.
But, for example, they also have now developed sea drones, which have conducted attacks on port infrastructure in Odesa. They have prioritised drone production so that they have an advantage in drones in front-line battles. They have demonstrated an amazing ability to get help from other countries - most of their artillery ammunition is now imported from North Korea. North Korean workers are manufacturing Shaheds inside Russia. Africans and Cubans are fighting and dying for Russia in Donetsk.
Ukraine have a desperate manpower shortage which is hindering their ability to rotate units out of the front and to do the training that would build a force capable of retaking occupied territory. It is possible that the Ukrainian ability to resist will break before the Russian ability to keep fighting does so - particularly if China is willing to act as a backstop to prevent a Russian collapse.
Europeans have consistently provided only just enough support to Ukraine to keep them fighting. European leaders are still wedded to the idea that a ceasefire on current lines is possible, and they are spending an inordinate amount of time on peace plans and fantasy plans for a post-ceasefire reassurance force, when there is zero sign that Russia or Putin are willing to settle. If Ukraine is to win this war with European support then there needs to be a strategy based on achieving victory, and doing what is necessary to achieve victory.
In principal the frozen Russian assets provide an opportunity to fund such a strategy, but it now seems as though they will be used only to maintain current levels of support for the next few years, a short-term measure to relieve European budget pressures, rather than pushing for victory.
Russia must lose and must be seen to lose. But even nearly four years on most European political leaders do not get this.
I think this is a really good piece, that I mostly agree with.
As far as Russia on the battlefield goes, they are winning. But they are winning incredibly slowly; glacially even. They take a mile here, or a mile there, and they still control less of Ukraine than they did a month into the invasion. The Russian government lives in this dreamworld where, at some point, they burst through Ukrainian lines, the Ukrainian government collapses, and they can dictate terms. I just don't see that happening. But Putin has to believe it, because a ceasefile on current terms, with Zelenskky in power is a death knell for him, because of just how many Russians have died.
On the other hand, the Ukrainian shortages of men are very serious. The only thing in their favour is that defending is a hell of a lot easier than attacking, and the they are losing people at maybe a 1:4 ratio compared to the Russians. Manpower shortages mean that Ukraine has very limited ability to go on the offensive. They are basically sitting back and taking the blows, and hoping that Russia gives up. Which, so far, they've shown no signs of doing.
With that said, the attacks in Russia are (potentially) a game changer. The Russian economy was incredibly reslient the first three years of the war, because higher energy price worldwide (due to the war) meant that Russia could sell oil and gas to China and India and earn more money than they used to.
The attacks on energy infrastructure in Russia mean that the civilian population is feeling the pinch for the very first time. Energy prices for consumers and businesses have gone through the roof, and that's going to be painful.
At the same time, the Russian government is now borrowing like a drunken sailor to make up for lost energy revenue.
If Ukraine can keep reducing the amount of Russian oil available for export (while increasing the price of petrol and diesel in Russia), then life becomes very hard for Russia. Those Africans and North Koreans don't work (and die) for nothing. Russia needs money to pay them.
Weirdly, according to the articles I’ve read, the Ukranian manpower shortage is not to do with a failure of recruitment (although obviously that is an issue, just as it is for the Russians) but the main chokepoint is training - the Ukranians are trapped in a cycle of not having enough men at the front, so they can’t spare any to train up new recruits in the modern way of war, leading to them not having enough men at the front etc etc.
NB, for all those claiming that leaving the EU has had no impact on the UK because we’ve done about as well in economic growth terms over the last five years or so, a new paper published this month by the NBER estimates the total net impact of Brexit at 6-8% of lost GDP!
The paper takes an interesting approach - they use detailed economic data to construct a synthetic control UK economy built out of parts of other economies from countries that stayed in the EU, combined with known macro & investment data. That synthetic economy has ~7% higher GDP today.
Tom Forth (who runs https://thedatacity.com/ ) had one of their research fellowships try to recreate the same model from scratch this summer (presumably inspired by a pre-print) and was surprised to reach the same conclusion - he’d personally estimated the Brexit impact as being much smaller than that.
Obviously this a speculative paper - we can’t actually know the counterfactual GDP we would have today if the UK had not Brexited, but the finding that the impact has been this large is significant, I think. Sadly, Labour seem determined to completely ignore the possibility of making any changes to our relationship with the EU, regarding it as some kind of political third rail that cannot be touched.
Tom Forth is very good on quite a few things.
Here, for example, is a thread where he gives an example how government could very easily, and at very low cost, make far better use of its data for public benefit.
https://x.com/thomasforth/status/1986795159162704089 About 9months ago I had a really frustrating call with people in the UK government following years of frustrating meetings with people in the UK government. An archive of the UK's bus open data, the location of every bus in real time, was going to be too hard to release,...
system architects and data architects, and the cost would be enormous to host all the data online and make it available for download, but a team would look at it for a few years and write a business case,...
So we just started collecting the data every 30s ourselves and put it on the web. It's a 1TB archive now. It costs us basically nothing. It's on my £41/month home broadband, on a £100 old computer I had lying around running Linux, put a £500 SSD in, and it just works...
Interesting, although I wonder what use I would have of the current location of every bus in the UK. The one I want to catch is enough for me.
This is exactly the kind of information that the COVID Dashboard Team was disbanded over.
After COVID, it was mooted that similar dashboards should be created across government. For those who don't know, the dashboard data was extremely easy to access - they deliberately designed it so that you could request data from their database, directly. Many people started researching it themselves - the number of PhDs based on it....
In every department, this was met with horror. Controlling the narrative of government is hard enough, without the facts being freely available.
The COVID Dashboard team was disbanded forthwith.
I heard that Covid was designed by a bunch of data scientists who just wanted more statistics to analyse.
NB, for all those claiming that leaving the EU has had no impact on the UK because we’ve done about as well in economic growth terms over the last five years or so, a new paper published this month by the NBER estimates the total net impact of Brexit at 6-8% of lost GDP!
The paper takes an interesting approach - they use detailed economic data to construct a synthetic control UK economy built out of parts of other economies from countries that stayed in the EU, combined with known macro & investment data. That synthetic economy has ~7% higher GDP today.
Tom Forth (who runs https://thedatacity.com/ ) had one of their research fellowships try to recreate the same model from scratch this summer (presumably inspired by a pre-print) and was surprised to reach the same conclusion - he’d personally estimated the Brexit impact as being much smaller than that.
Obviously this a speculative paper - we can’t actually know the counterfactual GDP we would have today if the UK had not Brexited, but the finding that the impact has been this large is significant, I think. Sadly, Labour seem determined to completely ignore the possibility of making any changes to our relationship with the EU, regarding it as some kind of political third rail that cannot be touched.
Tom Forth is very good on quite a few things.
Here, for example, is a thread where he gives an example how government could very easily, and at very low cost, make far better use of its data for public benefit.
https://x.com/thomasforth/status/1986795159162704089 About 9months ago I had a really frustrating call with people in the UK government following years of frustrating meetings with people in the UK government. An archive of the UK's bus open data, the location of every bus in real time, was going to be too hard to release,...
system architects and data architects, and the cost would be enormous to host all the data online and make it available for download, but a team would look at it for a few years and write a business case,...
So we just started collecting the data every 30s ourselves and put it on the web. It's a 1TB archive now. It costs us basically nothing. It's on my £41/month home broadband, on a £100 old computer I had lying around running Linux, put a £500 SSD in, and it just works...
Interesting, although I wonder what use I would have of the current location of every bus in the UK. The one I want to catch is enough for me.
If you have an archive of the locations of all the buses on each route then you can do some analysis on how that compares to the timetable, and see where the buses regularly fall behind the timetable, and so which pinch points in the route could be addressed to improve reliability, or how you might modify the timetable to be more realistic.
The operating companies surely do this already with their own data. Not sure why it all has to be centralised to achieve that.
You'd hope that the operating companies would be doing that, but I'm not so confident. If the data is open and available to all then interested nerds will do the work and be able to push for improvements publicly, through the democratic system.
NB, for all those claiming that leaving the EU has had no impact on the UK because we’ve done about as well in economic growth terms over the last five years or so, a new paper published this month by the NBER estimates the total net impact of Brexit at 6-8% of lost GDP!
The paper takes an interesting approach - they use detailed economic data to construct a synthetic control UK economy built out of parts of other economies from countries that stayed in the EU, combined with known macro & investment data. That synthetic economy has ~7% higher GDP today.
Tom Forth (who runs https://thedatacity.com/ ) had one of their research fellowships try to recreate the same model from scratch this summer (presumably inspired by a pre-print) and was surprised to reach the same conclusion - he’d personally estimated the Brexit impact as being much smaller than that.
Obviously this a speculative paper - we can’t actually know the counterfactual GDP we would have today if the UK had not Brexited, but the finding that the impact has been this large is significant, I think. Sadly, Labour seem determined to completely ignore the possibility of making any changes to our relationship with the EU, regarding it as some kind of political third rail that cannot be touched.
Tom Forth is very good on quite a few things.
Here, for example, is a thread where he gives an example how government could very easily, and at very low cost, make far better use of its data for public benefit.
https://x.com/thomasforth/status/1986795159162704089 About 9months ago I had a really frustrating call with people in the UK government following years of frustrating meetings with people in the UK government. An archive of the UK's bus open data, the location of every bus in real time, was going to be too hard to release,...
system architects and data architects, and the cost would be enormous to host all the data online and make it available for download, but a team would look at it for a few years and write a business case,...
So we just started collecting the data every 30s ourselves and put it on the web. It's a 1TB archive now. It costs us basically nothing. It's on my £41/month home broadband, on a £100 old computer I had lying around running Linux, put a £500 SSD in, and it just works...
Interesting, although I wonder what use I would have of the current location of every bus in the UK. The one I want to catch is enough for me.
If you have an archive of the locations of all the buses on each route then you can do some analysis on how that compares to the timetable, and see where the buses regularly fall behind the timetable, and so which pinch points in the route could be addressed to improve reliability, or how you might modify the timetable to be more realistic.
For example - buses in London often become nearly useless, because of the removal of bus lanes to create cycle routes. This means that when traffic snarls up, the buses make it worse, rather than sailing past.
As a result, more and more people are taking the Tube - longer routes, often.
Bus lanes should always come before cycle lanes & I’m saying that as a dedicated cyclist. Buses move more people longer distances & move those who cannot cycle as well. Cycling is great & we should be supporting is as much as possible, but not at the expense of an effective bus network.
NB, for all those claiming that leaving the EU has had no impact on the UK because we’ve done about as well in economic growth terms over the last five years or so, a new paper published this month by the NBER estimates the total net impact of Brexit at 6-8% of lost GDP!
The paper takes an interesting approach - they use detailed economic data to construct a synthetic control UK economy built out of parts of other economies from countries that stayed in the EU, combined with known macro & investment data. That synthetic economy has ~7% higher GDP today.
Tom Forth (who runs https://thedatacity.com/ ) had one of their research fellowships try to recreate the same model from scratch this summer (presumably inspired by a pre-print) and was surprised to reach the same conclusion - he’d personally estimated the Brexit impact as being much smaller than that.
Obviously this a speculative paper - we can’t actually know the counterfactual GDP we would have today if the UK had not Brexited, but the finding that the impact has been this large is significant, I think. Sadly, Labour seem determined to completely ignore the possibility of making any changes to our relationship with the EU, regarding it as some kind of political third rail that cannot be touched.
Tom Forth is very good on quite a few things.
Here, for example, is a thread where he gives an example how government could very easily, and at very low cost, make far better use of its data for public benefit.
https://x.com/thomasforth/status/1986795159162704089 About 9months ago I had a really frustrating call with people in the UK government following years of frustrating meetings with people in the UK government. An archive of the UK's bus open data, the location of every bus in real time, was going to be too hard to release,...
system architects and data architects, and the cost would be enormous to host all the data online and make it available for download, but a team would look at it for a few years and write a business case,...
So we just started collecting the data every 30s ourselves and put it on the web. It's a 1TB archive now. It costs us basically nothing. It's on my £41/month home broadband, on a £100 old computer I had lying around running Linux, put a £500 SSD in, and it just works...
Interesting, although I wonder what use I would have of the current location of every bus in the UK. The one I want to catch is enough for me.
This is exactly the kind of information that the COVID Dashboard Team was disbanded over.
After COVID, it was mooted that similar dashboards should be created across government. For those who don't know, the dashboard data was extremely easy to access - they deliberately designed it so that you could request data from their database, directly. Many people started researching it themselves - the number of PhDs based on it....
In every department, this was met with horror. Controlling the narrative of government is hard enough, without the facts being freely available.
The COVID Dashboard team was disbanded forthwith.
I heard that Covid was designed by a bunch of data scientists who just wanted more statistics to analyse.
Ha! There's an element of truth in that - the pandemic created an opportunity for UK wide data collection.
It kinda accreted. And like many such data collection projects, the customers for it grew beyond anything that had been previously be considered.
NB, for all those claiming that leaving the EU has had no impact on the UK because we’ve done about as well in economic growth terms over the last five years or so, a new paper published this month by the NBER estimates the total net impact of Brexit at 6-8% of lost GDP!
The paper takes an interesting approach - they use detailed economic data to construct a synthetic control UK economy built out of parts of other economies from countries that stayed in the EU, combined with known macro & investment data. That synthetic economy has ~7% higher GDP today.
Tom Forth (who runs https://thedatacity.com/ ) had one of their research fellowships try to recreate the same model from scratch this summer (presumably inspired by a pre-print) and was surprised to reach the same conclusion - he’d personally estimated the Brexit impact as being much smaller than that.
Obviously this a speculative paper - we can’t actually know the counterfactual GDP we would have today if the UK had not Brexited, but the finding that the impact has been this large is significant, I think. Sadly, Labour seem determined to completely ignore the possibility of making any changes to our relationship with the EU, regarding it as some kind of political third rail that cannot be touched.
Tom Forth is very good on quite a few things.
Here, for example, is a thread where he gives an example how government could very easily, and at very low cost, make far better use of its data for public benefit.
https://x.com/thomasforth/status/1986795159162704089 About 9months ago I had a really frustrating call with people in the UK government following years of frustrating meetings with people in the UK government. An archive of the UK's bus open data, the location of every bus in real time, was going to be too hard to release,...
system architects and data architects, and the cost would be enormous to host all the data online and make it available for download, but a team would look at it for a few years and write a business case,...
So we just started collecting the data every 30s ourselves and put it on the web. It's a 1TB archive now. It costs us basically nothing. It's on my £41/month home broadband, on a £100 old computer I had lying around running Linux, put a £500 SSD in, and it just works...
Interesting, although I wonder what use I would have of the current location of every bus in the UK. The one I want to catch is enough for me.
If you have an archive of the locations of all the buses on each route then you can do some analysis on how that compares to the timetable, and see where the buses regularly fall behind the timetable, and so which pinch points in the route could be addressed to improve reliability, or how you might modify the timetable to be more realistic.
The operating companies surely do this already with their own data. Not sure why it all has to be centralised to achieve that.
You'd hope that the operating companies would be doing that, but I'm not so confident. If the data is open and available to all then interested nerds will do the work and be able to push for improvements publicly, through the democratic system.
The bus companies will also need to play politics with local government. Bob the tinkerer doesn't have quite the same need.
Well that's a bad start to the day. The 50 year taboo on increasing the basic rate of income tax is IMO perverse and damaging. When I heard it was finally going to be broken I was cock-a-hoop. I even got a bottle in for the big day - a nice Chilean red that is at its best after two weeks in the larder. Now we find it's not happening and the news is somehow worse for hopes having been raised. If they weren't up for it they should never have hinted it was coming. All it's done is left enthusiasts like me deflated. Lessons learnt anyway. I'm giving up on this one. A hike is never ever going to happen. The 50 years will become 150. Clearly the way to view it is not as a fiscal variable to be adjusted in accordance with financial circumstances but as a numerical constant embedded in the laws of nature. Pi = 3.14159, C = 186,000 mps, the basic rate of income tax in the UK = 20p.
If you want an easier way to remember the speed of light, it's about 300,000 kilometers per second
The ISS is 250-ish miles up, the circumference of the Earth is 25,000-ish miles, geostationary orbit is 25,000-ish miles up, the orbit of the Moon is 250,000-ish miles up. All those numbers are very approx, but it makes it easier to remember and are good enough unless you actually are a rocket scientist.
Rocket science is all very well but it's not exactly brain surgery is it?
It will be interesting to see, if here in Newham, we see any kind of electoral "co-operation" between the Greens, Newham Independents and Your Party.
If they all stand against each other, Labour will be laughing all the way to another big majority but if, for example, the Newham Independents fight the Muslim Wards, the Greens stay in Stratford and a few other places and Your Party fight the rest, it could get very difficult for Newham Labour.
Throw in Reform (16% in a Muslim Ward in a by-election) and it's going to be the most interesting local election here in decades.
This fascinating piece on Reform voters shows their sub-tribe of "Contrarian Youth" particularly strong in the East End.
David Algonquin @surplustakes If true, this is genius from Reeves. Talk up income tax rises until the OBR freezes its forecasts, allowing you to administratively bank the lower gilt rates, then cancel the tax hikes. Arguably market manipulation - but genius.
David Algonquin @surplustakes If true, this is genius from Reeves. Talk up income tax rises until the OBR freezes its forecasts, allowing you to administratively bank the lower gilt rates, then cancel the tax hikes. Arguably market manipulation - but genius.
The evidence to date suggests its unlikely to be genius.
Russia has no tanks left. It has very few IFVs. Its aircraft lob glide bombs in from distance. Even that option ends when Ukraine get long-range missiles (200km+) meshed into their systems. The navy just sits in ever more distant ports, waiting for the latest iteration of the sea drones to find them. All Russia has are huge numbers of bullet-catchers, sent to their doom by officers making money buying and selling them. Whatever Russia has been doing is not sustainable.
Russia is in a bad way, yes.
But, for example, they also have now developed sea drones, which have conducted attacks on port infrastructure in Odesa. They have prioritised drone production so that they have an advantage in drones in front-line battles. They have demonstrated an amazing ability to get help from other countries - most of their artillery ammunition is now imported from North Korea. North Korean workers are manufacturing Shaheds inside Russia. Africans and Cubans are fighting and dying for Russia in Donetsk.
Ukraine have a desperate manpower shortage which is hindering their ability to rotate units out of the front and to do the training that would build a force capable of retaking occupied territory. It is possible that the Ukrainian ability to resist will break before the Russian ability to keep fighting does so - particularly if China is willing to act as a backstop to prevent a Russian collapse.
Europeans have consistently provided only just enough support to Ukraine to keep them fighting. European leaders are still wedded to the idea that a ceasefire on current lines is possible, and they are spending an inordinate amount of time on peace plans and fantasy plans for a post-ceasefire reassurance force, when there is zero sign that Russia or Putin are willing to settle. If Ukraine is to win this war with European support then there needs to be a strategy based on achieving victory, and doing what is necessary to achieve victory.
In principal the frozen Russian assets provide an opportunity to fund such a strategy, but it now seems as though they will be used only to maintain current levels of support for the next few years, a short-term measure to relieve European budget pressures, rather than pushing for victory.
Russia must lose and must be seen to lose. But even nearly four years on most European political leaders do not get this.
I think this is a really good piece, that I mostly agree with.
As far as Russia on the battlefield goes, they are winning. But they are winning incredibly slowly; glacially even. They take a mile here, or a mile there, and they still control less of Ukraine than they did a month into the invasion. The Russian government lives in this dreamworld where, at some point, they burst through Ukrainian lines, the Ukrainian government collapses, and they can dictate terms. I just don't see that happening. But Putin has to believe it, because a ceasefile on current terms, with Zelenskky in power is a death knell for him, because of just how many Russians have died.
On the other hand, the Ukrainian shortages of men are very serious. The only thing in their favour is that defending is a hell of a lot easier than attacking, and the they are losing people at maybe a 1:4 ratio compared to the Russians. Manpower shortages mean that Ukraine has very limited ability to go on the offensive. They are basically sitting back and taking the blows, and hoping that Russia gives up. Which, so far, they've shown no signs of doing.
With that said, the attacks in Russia are (potentially) a game changer. The Russian economy was incredibly reslient the first three years of the war, because higher energy price worldwide (due to the war) meant that Russia could sell oil and gas to China and India and earn more money than they used to.
The attacks on energy infrastructure in Russia mean that the civilian population is feeling the pinch for the very first time. Energy prices for consumers and businesses have gone through the roof, and that's going to be painful.
At the same time, the Russian government is now borrowing like a drunken sailor to make up for lost energy revenue.
If Ukraine can keep reducing the amount of Russian oil available for export (while increasing the price of petrol and diesel in Russia), then life becomes very hard for Russia. Those Africans and North Koreans don't work (and die) for nothing. Russia needs money to pay them.
Weirdly, according to the articles I’ve read, the Ukranian manpower shortage is not to do with a failure of recruitment (although obviously that is an issue, just as it is for the Russians) but the main chokepoint is training - the Ukranians are trapped in a cycle of not having enough men at the front, so they can’t spare any to train up new recruits in the modern way of war, leading to them not having enough men at the front etc etc.
Isn’t that something that the West (not the USA obvs) could throw resource at without any bellowing about escalation? I realise this is being done already but presumably not enough.
Of course the real experts at this new form of warfare are at the front so a bit of Catch 22.
Re Labour’s ‘Ming Vase’ strategy; it worked up to a point, they won a huge majority, but it didn’t get them any new votes. Amidst the relief that Starmer and the grown ups were back in charge, too many people glossed over the fact that they actually lost votes. LOST VOTES when the previous government had completely disgraced itself, morally with partygate, and economically with the Truss mini budget.
Of course, a critic of Starmer couldn’t have been taken seriously if they criticised him for not winning a huge majority well enough, but the huge majority was a kind of illusion; they didn’t really win by much.
Was there any need for the ming vase strategy? They had an open goal anyway, they could have done what they wanted. As it is, the victory margins were often so shallow that it’s left the govt too scared to do anything, despite being gifted an amount of power far in excess of what the underlying numbers say they deserved
I’d compare it a football team winning the league with 60 points. Most seasons that would be failure, but if all the other sides fail worse, you’re left as Champions and in the UCL. The right thing to do is surely to acknowledge your luck, then double down by absolutely going for it in the transfer window with the money you’ve gained. Instead, Starmer has decided it wasn’t luck, that they were popular, and the triangulation should continue
All true, but two quibbles: 1) Theresa May had an open goal in 2017 and thought she'd - laudably, in my view - use it to come up with a solution to funding adult social care, and look where that got her. Meanwhile, it was a strategy nit so very removed from Ming Vase which led to the 1997 landslide. While I agree with your point I can understand Labour's reticence. 2) One of my many, many gripes with football is the way you can just buy someone else's players. That's not sport, surely? "We won the league!" "What do you put that down to?" "We bought all the other clubs' best players." It's not really 'we', then, is it? People in football seem so firmly embedded in this culture that they don't appear to see the absurdity of this. When Nottingham Forest won the league, they may have aquired a handful, but half the team were those who'd been playing in Division 2 the previous year. I appreciate this is incidental to your point.
Yeah, I agree on your second point. It bothers me when Arsenal sign a load of players as I want to win with those I’ve come to regard as ‘ours’. But I soon get over it to be fair
I can also see why Labour did what they did. If they’d been bolder and lost, people would have slaughtered them, but reality has shown that the grass isn’t always greener. Had they been bold and lost they’d have ruminated about how a large majority won by a ming vase approach would have given licence to radically change the country, but it’s not been the case
Labour, promising tax increases, would still have won 340-350 seats, I’m sure.
I know 'courageous' has become a synonym for out there policies but every successful politician needs a modicum of that quality. From breaking pre-GE promises then not even having the balls to own those broken promises to triumphantly whipping out a royal invite to Daddy Trump, from adopting Reform-lite rhetoric to refusing to grasp the tax nettle, the defining aspect of Starmerism is lack of courage. Their political epitaph will be 'Gutless'.
That's what Tony Blair was good at in the early years and he showed you could remain human and do it with charm. Still the best PM in my lifetime by a country mile.....
Kennedy was obviously flawed in many ways and no doubt employed good speechwriters, but he certainly recognised what made a good speech.
'We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.'
The amazing thing is that Americans got wholeheartedly behind the project, despite the cost.
Today there would be a bunch of moon deniers, and a whole load more who simply hated the idea because of who proposed it.
Actual polling at the time suggested the American people were lukewarm warm on the idea.
After Apollo 11 support dropped rapidly. Many people took the view "We beat the Soviets, why is this continuing?"
The reason that the later missions were cancelled was a combination of *NASA* pressure (the LEM in particular was very dangerous and they were terrified of losing a crew) and Congressional support fading.
The polling just after Kennedy’s assassination would have been massively in favour of defining his legacy.
After Apollo 11, there was less of an appetite to keep the programme running.
Apollo 13 was damn close to losing the crew.
But in fairness it inspired one of the best films of all time.
Having rolled the pitch for income tax rises, Chancellor Reeves has now bottled it, under pressure from 10 Downing Street, which fears Keir Starmer could not survive such a major manifesto breach.
But the debt markets are not keen on a smorgasbord of small tax rises, which never deliver the predicted revenues. So gilt yields are already surging across the curve at the market open, with the yield on the 30-year bond up 14 basis points. Yields on bonds of all maturities are up more than 10 basis points.
David Algonquin @surplustakes If true, this is genius from Reeves. Talk up income tax rises until the OBR freezes its forecasts, allowing you to administratively bank the lower gilt rates, then cancel the tax hikes. Arguably market manipulation - but genius.
I can see why people are playing this up, but no-one likes being manipulated, and if the markets decide that they can't trust the word of the Chancellor then that doesn't end well. Reeves would be the Chancellor who cried prudence, and the markets wouldn't trust her even when she was being prudent.
Blue Origin launched the New Glenn rocket and landed the first stage successfully whilst the second stage attained a proper orbit and deployed actual real payloads. This is as good as SpaceX's Falcon series and better than SpaceX's Starship series, at least to date.
Well that's a bad start to the day. The 50 year taboo on increasing the basic rate of income tax is IMO perverse and damaging. When I heard it was finally going to be broken I was cock-a-hoop. I even got a bottle in for the big day - a nice Chilean red that is at its best after two weeks in the larder. Now we find it's not happening and the news is somehow worse for hopes having been raised. If they weren't up for it they should never have hinted it was coming. All it's done is left enthusiasts like me deflated. Lessons learnt anyway. I'm giving up on this one. A hike is never ever going to happen. The 50 years will become 150. Clearly the way to view it is not as a fiscal variable to be adjusted in accordance with financial circumstances but as a numerical constant embedded in the laws of nature. Pi = 3.14159, C = 186,000 mps, the basic rate of income tax in the UK = 20p.
If you want an easier way to remember the speed of light, it's about 300,000 kilometers per second
The ISS is 250-ish miles up, the circumference of the Earth is 25,000-ish miles, geostationary orbit is 25,000-ish miles up, the orbit of the Moon is 250,000-ish miles up. All those numbers are very approx, but it makes it easier to remember and are good enough unless you actually are a rocket scientist.
Rocket science is all very well but it's not exactly brain surgery is it?
Well that's a bad start to the day. The 50 year taboo on increasing the basic rate of income tax is IMO perverse and damaging. When I heard it was finally going to be broken I was cock-a-hoop. I even got a bottle in for the big day - a nice Chilean red that is at its best after two weeks in the larder. Now we find it's not happening and the news is somehow worse for hopes having been raised. If they weren't up for it they should never have hinted it was coming. All it's done is left enthusiasts like me deflated. Lessons learnt anyway. I'm giving up on this one. A hike is never ever going to happen. The 50 years will become 150. Clearly the way to view it is not as a fiscal variable to be adjusted in accordance with financial circumstances but as a numerical constant embedded in the laws of nature. Pi = 3.14159, C = 186,000 mps, the basic rate of income tax in the UK = 20p.
If you want an easier way to remember the speed of light, it's about 300,000 kilometers per second
The ISS is 250-ish miles up, the circumference of the Earth is 25,000-ish miles, geostationary orbit is 25,000-ish miles up, the orbit of the Moon is 250,000-ish miles up. All those numbers are very approx, but it makes it easier to remember and are good enough unless you actually are a rocket scientist.
Rocket science is all very well but it's not exactly brain surgery is it?
Well that's a bad start to the day. The 50 year taboo on increasing the basic rate of income tax is IMO perverse and damaging. When I heard it was finally going to be broken I was cock-a-hoop. I even got a bottle in for the big day - a nice Chilean red that is at its best after two weeks in the larder. Now we find it's not happening and the news is somehow worse for hopes having been raised. If they weren't up for it they should never have hinted it was coming. All it's done is left enthusiasts like me deflated. Lessons learnt anyway. I'm giving up on this one. A hike is never ever going to happen. The 50 years will become 150. Clearly the way to view it is not as a fiscal variable to be adjusted in accordance with financial circumstances but as a numerical constant embedded in the laws of nature. Pi = 3.14159, C = 186,000 mps, the basic rate of income tax in the UK = 20p.
If this story is actually true Reeves / Starmer really are f*#king useless aren’t they?
Burnt a ton of political capital trailing this income tax rise over the last six months & then bottle it at the last possible moment. Instead we’re going to get vastly more complexity in the tax system, all to raise a few £billion that’s going to get eaten almost immediately because Labour is apparently incapable of doing the things that raise GDP.
Does seem odd. I liked the 'raise IT cut NI' idea. If they've dropped it I hope it's for something driven by similar principles - ie minimise hit to growth, paid by those who can afford it, straightforward to implement.
Whatever, 26/11 is shaping up to be massive in every way. So much on the line and real suspense (!) now too. Who needs Netflix or any of that made-up stuff when we have this.
Comments
Estimates for the death toll range from a 200K to 1.5 million.
I doubt it is any better for the slave miners of today.
The same billionaires being given huge tax handouts by Trump.
This can't hold.
At what point does the name change to the Trump files?
Teresa May said it best - prosecute everyone who we have evidence of committing this type of crime.
Note that officials in the Home Office have tried, repeatedly, to water that down.
The new Czech government is a coalition led by Prime Minister-elect Andrej Babiš. The coalition is formed with two rightwing fringe parties: the pro-Russian far-right SPD party and the Motorists for Themselves party.
(Quite far right - I have not looked in detail, climate-change denial, populist, the big party needed a makeweight.)
https://x.com/danneidle/status/1989276407218966547?s=61
Grifters work very hard, with a delineated plan, to con people out of their money. This often involves coordination and leadership in their groups.
I've seen none of that in the current government.
(Statewide results | >95% in)
✅Yes 64.4%
No 35.6%
(Yes +28.8)
https://x.com/PollTracker2024/status/1989158726532837569
Everything Is Possible, the critically acclaimed feature-length documentary telling the extraordinary story of Simple Minds, will air on @BBCTwo this Saturday, followed by a broadcast of the band’s 2016 concert at Hackney Empire.
Tune in at 10pm GMT or catch up on @BBCiPlayer.
https://x.com/simplemindscom/status/1989274090881122631?s=20
How can you call a press conference and basically announce income tax will rise and then a week later decide not to do it?
Just breathtaking.
But, for example, they also have now developed sea drones, which have conducted attacks on port infrastructure in Odesa. They have prioritised drone production so that they have an advantage in drones in front-line battles. They have demonstrated an amazing ability to get help from other countries - most of their artillery ammunition is now imported from North Korea. North Korean workers are manufacturing Shaheds inside Russia. Africans and Cubans are fighting and dying for Russia in Donetsk.
Ukraine have a desperate manpower shortage which is hindering their ability to rotate units out of the front and to do the training that would build a force capable of retaking occupied territory. It is possible that the Ukrainian ability to resist will break before the Russian ability to keep fighting does so - particularly if China is willing to act as a backstop to prevent a Russian collapse.
Europeans have consistently provided only just enough support to Ukraine to keep them fighting. European leaders are still wedded to the idea that a ceasefire on current lines is possible, and they are spending an inordinate amount of time on peace plans and fantasy plans for a post-ceasefire reassurance force, when there is zero sign that Russia or Putin are willing to settle. If Ukraine is to win this war with European support then there needs to be a strategy based on achieving victory, and doing what is necessary to achieve victory.
In principal the frozen Russian assets provide an opportunity to fund such a strategy, but it now seems as though they will be used only to maintain current levels of support for the next few years, a short-term measure to relieve European budget pressures, rather than pushing for victory.
Russia must lose and must be seen to lose. But even nearly four years on most European political leaders do not get this.
https://x.com/BBCMOTD/status/1987256464491356293
@BBCMOTD
Bukayo Saka scored his first league goal outside the capital in 19 months
Except there may well be. It seems to be barely noted but a key chunk of the actual MPs for YourParty are not cuddly hairshirt wearing old school lefties who keep Marx close by but Gaza Indies who as far as I can see represent a strand of cultural thinking that is basically appalled by trans rights.
The latter is a massive issue for the New Greens who have literally thrown dozens of long standing activists out of the party over the issue.
I don't see how trans rights doesn't blow up the fledgling YourParty at some point.
The cards will fall where they fall.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w34459
The paper takes an interesting approach - they use detailed economic data to construct a synthetic control UK economy built out of parts of other economies from countries that stayed in the EU, combined with known macro & investment data. That synthetic economy has ~7% higher GDP today.
Tom Forth (who runs https://thedatacity.com/ ) had one of their research fellowships try to recreate the same model from scratch this summer (presumably inspired by a pre-print) and was surprised to reach the same conclusion - he’d personally estimated the Brexit impact as being much smaller than that.
Obviously this a speculative paper - we can’t actually know the counterfactual GDP we would have today if the UK had not Brexited, but the finding that the impact has been this large is significant, I think. Sadly, Labour seem determined to completely ignore the possibility of making any changes to our relationship with the EU, regarding it as some kind of political third rail that cannot be touched.
https://tomharwood.substack.com/p/your-partys-identity-crisis
There's no way you can have Zarah Sultana in the same party as the Gaza Independents and have it make sense. Meanwhile Jeremy Corbyn is staring bemused and wibbling pointlessly (again), whilst being called a Zionist by younger activists who have no memory nor sense. Six MPs and three distinct wings. Lord above, what can you do with such people...
Buckle up renters. Many of you are going to be served.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8x1n9rv809o
Burnt a ton of political capital trailing this income tax rise over the last six months & then bottle it at the last possible moment. Instead we’re going to get vastly more complexity in the tax system, all to raise a few £billion that’s going to get eaten almost immediately because Labour is apparently incapable of doing the things that raise GDP.
Sorry but that’s utterly insane - take the money (and the pain now) because I don’t trust that forecast and suspect you will need to do it next year because the forecast will be wrong
Though it looks like the next government will be led by the same snake oil salesman that sold us Brexit.
And/or something serious on property?
No doubt a few diehard leavers will be along to argue otherwise.
Here, for example, is a thread where he gives an example how government could very easily, and at very low cost, make far better use of its data for public benefit.
https://x.com/thomasforth/status/1986795159162704089
About 9months ago I had a really frustrating call with people in the UK government following years of frustrating meetings with people in the UK government. An archive of the UK's bus open data, the location of every bus in real time, was going to be too hard to release,...
system architects and data architects, and the cost would be enormous to host all the data online and make it available for download, but a team would look at it for a few years and write a business case,...
So we just started collecting the data every 30s ourselves and put it on the web. It's a 1TB archive now. It costs us basically nothing. It's on my £41/month home broadband, on a £100 old computer I had lying around running Linux, put a £500 SSD in, and it just works...
The ISS is 250-ish miles up, the circumference of the Earth is 25,000-ish miles, geostationary orbit is 25,000-ish miles up, the orbit of the Moon is 250,000-ish miles up. All those numbers are very approx, but it makes it easier to remember and are good enough unless you actually are a rocket scientist.
https://fb.watch/DmMAhC7yvY/?
*I realise quite interesting is entirely subjective.
Russia did not use a nuclear weapon when they lost territory in Kharkiv, or in Kherson, in the autumn of 2022. We know that is an empty threat now. But the attitude of the Europeans means that he can run the risk of pushing Russia to the point of collapse, and still settle for a ceasefire on the lines at that point. The policy of the Europeans encourages Putin to keep fighting for as long as possible. It does nothing to pressure him into a ceasefire. If he knew that he was risking outright defeat then he might make more realistic efforts towards an earlier peace.
???? Throws them off the scent????
@PB Lefties
If a hypothetical Labour Chancellor, at the start of this government had done the following -
1) Announce merging income tax and employee NI over the parliament - 5 tranches of reduce NI, increase IT.
2) Remove the various cliff edges in the new rates. While at it, tax rates go up slightly. Together with the extra income from NI, that would be substantial revenue increase.
3) Initially, hold the tax rate for pensioners on the basic rate the same (special rate for pensioners). This would mean that pensioners under 50K a year would not be affected - political compromise that can be dealt with later.
4) All old age benefits (apart from the pension) go in a blender, and come out as a taxable*, single system.
5) Pension and the tax allowance locked together (the quadruple lock). Tax allowance withdrawal removed, as part of the new tax rates.
6) Legislation to remove the use of layering and zero hours contracts to insulate companies from the consequences of illegal employment - undocumented, deliberate payment below minimum wage. There's no point to minimum wage, if it isn't protected.
*Where possible use taxation instead of means testing.
Would you be happier?
If they all stand against each other, Labour will be laughing all the way to another big majority but if, for example, the Newham Independents fight the Muslim Wards, the Greens stay in Stratford and a few other places and Your Party fight the rest, it could get very difficult for Newham Labour.
Throw in Reform (16% in a Muslim Ward in a by-election) and it's going to be the most interesting local election here in decades.
It’s striking that different methodologies come to much the same conclusion though: The NBER paper states ”We estimate that by 2025, the Brexit process had reduced UK GDP by 6% to 8%, investment by 12% to 18%, employment by 3% to 4%, and productivity by 3% to 4%”. The ”synthetic UK” research papers by John Springford reach very similar numbers.
One of the reasons for these high numbers appears to be that the models are suggesting that the gap is widening over time, not remaining constant. Control sub-economises are continuing to grow, whilst the UK remains mired in a 0-growth swamp, so what was measured as a ”mere” 5% deficit three years ago is now a 7-8% deficit.
After COVID, it was mooted that similar dashboards should be created across government. For those who don't know, the dashboard data was extremely easy to access - they deliberately designed it so that you could request data from their database, directly. Many people started researching it themselves - the number of PhDs based on it....
In every department, this was met with horror. Controlling the narrative of government is hard enough, without the facts being freely available.
The COVID Dashboard team was disbanded forthwith.
As a result, more and more people are taking the Tube - longer routes, often.
As far as Russia on the battlefield goes, they are winning. But they are winning incredibly slowly; glacially even. They take a mile here, or a mile there, and they still control less of Ukraine than they did a month into the invasion. The Russian government lives in this dreamworld where, at some point, they burst through Ukrainian lines, the Ukrainian government collapses, and they can dictate terms. I just don't see that happening. But Putin has to believe it, because a ceasefile on current terms, with Zelenskky in power is a death knell for him, because of just how many Russians have died.
On the other hand, the Ukrainian shortages of men are very serious. The only thing in their favour is that defending is a hell of a lot easier than attacking, and the they are losing people at maybe a 1:4 ratio compared to the Russians. Manpower shortages mean that Ukraine has very limited ability to go on the offensive. They are basically sitting back and taking the blows, and hoping that Russia gives up. Which, so far, they've shown no signs of doing.
With that said, the attacks in Russia are (potentially) a game changer. The Russian economy was incredibly reslient the first three years of the war, because higher energy price worldwide (due to the war) meant that Russia could sell oil and gas to China and India and earn more money than they used to.
The attacks on energy infrastructure in Russia mean that the civilian population is feeling the pinch for the very first time. Energy prices for consumers and businesses have gone through the roof, and that's going to be painful.
At the same time, the Russian government is now borrowing like a drunken sailor to make up for lost energy revenue.
If Ukraine can keep reducing the amount of Russian oil available for export (while increasing the price of petrol and diesel in Russia), then life becomes very hard for Russia. Those Africans and North Koreans don't work (and die) for nothing. Russia needs money to pay them.
IIRC the company used that data (plus other traffic data) to demonstrate that the ”commutable distance” for the north of England was much lower than in comparable cities in, say, France or Germany. Resulting in those cities being broken up into smaller economic units that fail to attain the economies of scale that cities usually achieve by conglomeration.
A city usually gains in GDP per head in proportion to it’s size & the gain usually follows a power law. For UK cities that power matches the best of the rest of the world only in London - every other city in the country lags behind the increased GDP / head it ”ought” to gain from conglomeration by a significant margin.
Tom Forth’s company’s research strongly suggests this is because the transport networks everywhere except London are far less effective than in competitor cities, leading to a net loss of efficiency across the entire economy.
Learn from the errors of the Alliance.
The Greens are making all the running and Your Party is struggling to organise the pissup in the brewery.
It kinda accreted. And like many such data collection projects, the customers for it grew beyond anything that had been previously be considered.
https://x.com/grok/status/1989276236443779553
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/nov/13/who-votes-for-reform-and-why-charts-that-show-who-supports-farage-party?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Though also the least bothered by immigration.
David Algonquin
@surplustakes
If true, this is genius from Reeves. Talk up income tax rises until the OBR freezes its forecasts, allowing you to administratively bank the lower gilt rates, then cancel the tax hikes. Arguably market manipulation - but genius.
Of course the real experts at this new form of warfare are at the front so a bit of Catch 22.
@afneil
Having rolled the pitch for income tax rises, Chancellor Reeves has now bottled it, under pressure from 10 Downing Street, which fears Keir Starmer could not survive such a major manifesto breach.
But the debt markets are not keen on a smorgasbord of small tax rises, which never deliver the predicted revenues.
So gilt yields are already surging across the curve at the market open, with the yield on the 30-year bond up 14 basis points. Yields on bonds of all maturities are up more than 10 basis points.
It’s yet another shambles.
https://x.com/afneil/status/1989245785561612296
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/c5yd0zd6eddo
'Government must stand by it's manifesto and keep promises'
Whatever, 26/11 is shaping up to be massive in every way. So much on the line and real suspense (!) now too. Who needs Netflix or any of that made-up stuff when we have this.
https://x.com/LBC/status/1989267664598880359