And Your Party backs @zarahsultana’s preferred option to allow members also to be members of other left wing parties and groups - subject to the agreement of the party executive.
I see Your Party have agreed that neither Corbyn nor Sultana will be party leader but instead it will be led by a panel of members. So if Your Party won the next general election would we then be led by a panel of Prime Ministers?
More likely, we would have a nominal (one might also say Constitutional) Prime Minister, but they would be required to defer to the leadership panel for any actual decision-making.
Like Benn's model for early 80s Labour, only far worse.
They could get a people carrier to take them to the Palace
I would have thought something like this would be more ecologically responsible;
(Actually, The Goodies would be a pretty appropriately self-righteous name for a political party. Instead, the nitiwts seem to have gone with Your Party.)
And AMD were founded in 1969, so they’re not a new entrant and run against Malmesbury’s hypothesis.
That's debatable, AMD in its current from only dates to 2009. They started design work on the Zen architecture, which saved them, in 2012.
If you take an established company, spin-off almost all of it, sack most of the staff and bring in new management you have something that's not too far away from a start-up. They have no baggage and not much left to lose.
That's not quite true: there's a fair amount of old AMD/ATI DNA in there, if you don't mind the pun
Getting a bit pedantic, but AFAIK the team that worked on the Zen architecture was almost completely new, recruited from outside by Jim Keller when he started at AMD. You'd be hard pressed to find more than a handful of people at AMD on the CPU/platform side who worked there before 2009.
ATI, yes, agreed, there's more of the old school there because ATI were (and to some degree still are) geographically separate. That possibly explains why the graphics side of AMD is always the problem child.
But the point I'm making is, AMD had no market left to protect, no viable products and no bureaucracy left to get in the way. Same environment as a start-up, but with a recognisable, if rather tarnished, brand.
"hundreds of thousands of children lifted out of poverty" very Brownian spreadsheet thinking and talking
Though that is money that gets recycled quickly in our economy.
Much of our economy is driven by consumer spending. If consumers are skint then there is no growth.
There’s a large amount of money tied up in savings. Try freeing that up.
Saving money does free it up, unless saved in an old sock in notes and coins. Few would be able to buy a house but for the savings of others. All investment - new buildings, machinery, fleets of vehicles - comes from money not used for some other purpose. The general term for such money is 'savings'.
Britain's savings rate is the highest it’s been for decades. Household and corporate debt are historically very low. Yes, we are saving too much and spending too little.
We have real life stats to show the power of spending on economic growth. Not only UK historical GDP but also country comparisons: the USA at one extreme and Japan at the other.
We do need investment. Massively more of it. Not surplus rainy day saving in low yielding assets. But investment is spending. Every pound you spend on that new extension or your child’s university fees is investment, as is every pound your employer spends on training or automation.
A country which runs a continuous trade deficit is not under consuming.
Falling household debt (does that include student debt BTW ?) has been matched by increased government debt and household debt is still way above the levels of the 1980s and 1990s:
UK household debt peaked in 2008 - do you remember what happened to the economy that year ? It should be a warning about the dangers of excessive household debt.
Three points here.
1. You make my point for me on government debt. See also Japan (our ghost of Christmas yet to come in so many ways). The less companies and consumers spend, the more government spends and the more debt it racks up. Especially in a country where VAT is a big revenue source.
2. 2008 is both a straw man (spending and borrowing more doesn’t mean spending and borrowing to excess) and only a partial analogue. Despite protestations to the contrary across politics - but generally not by economists - the cause of 2008 was not over-extended British consumers, it was overextended financial institutions exposed to a group of overextended US consumers, triggering a systemic crisis. But banks are now under extended and sweating their assets too much.
3. Our corporate savings are even more woefully high than our household savings. And corporates not spending is an even bigger problem. We have pretty much the lowest business investment rates in the developed world. Then people wonder why productivity doesn’t rise as quickly as in France or the US. The bean counters rule the roost. It’s not necessarily a problem primarily of policy: I think it’s cultural. We are a nation of asset sweaters.
Bring back boom and bust.
A more basic problem is that the conveyer belt of growing, profitable new business is barely a trickle.
The big firms that the government love to cuddle can sustain the system - to an extent.
But for growth and innovation you need new entrants.
Consider the Riddle of Steel
To make green steel is possible. In the Goode Olde Days, someone would have set up a new company, built a new steelworks for their new process.
Why doesn’t that happen?
What’s your evidence that growth depends on new entrants rather than existing companies (of various sizes) doing more? Do you have some economic analysis that shows this?
Look at the big companies, around the world, over the time period from 1800, onward.
Notice something?
Innovation rarely comes from big, existing companies. Due to socio-economic resistance to change.
That depends what you mean by big existing company. This one is two decades old, and still funding scores of new business plans every year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_Combinator
There are plenty older ones doing something similar. A number of the larger US corporations also have their Vcap subsidiaries, or invest externally via Vcap.
I think Starmer/Reeves probably know they've walked into a trap over the child benefit cap, but they have a parliamentary party of over 400 MPs to manage - many of whom are very left-wing - just to stay in office.
Good morning
Badenoch unequivocally said this morning she will reinstate the 2 child cap - 'we have to draw the line somewhere'
She is right but the savings should be put into increasing child benefit for most parents which is a better use of taxpayer funds than ending the child benefit cap for parents on university credit
What is the justification for redirecting funding from children living in poverty to those not living in poverty, which is the effect of Kemi's proposal?
Problem with this is it's a particularly poor "when did you stop beating your wife" question.
If we were actually concerned with children in poverty, we'd almost certainly get way more bang for our £3bn bucks by sending it as overseas aid to places that are genuinely poor.
Instead we're borrowing £3bn we haven't got to dole it out to the feckless parents of kids who are pretty well off in global terms - and doing it in a way that doesn't improve the kids life chances.
The IFS did a (very balanced) podcast a month or so ago on the two child limit, and the really striking thing was that their study found *no* effect in the school readiness survey from imposing the two child limit. So we can reduce *child poverty* via scrapping the two child limit, but without actually improving outcomes for children.
That's quite remarkable (I was expecting at least some measurable effort), and tells you that the problems for these kids are not really related to household income.
My sister did a load of education stats for one of the devolved governments. Her comment to me was that the *only* "inputs" which influence educational outputs are those which function as proxies for parent interest in their kids. Everything else was just noise.
So poor parents who care - their kids do fine. Poor parents who don't care - their kids outcomes are unfortunately poor, and no amount of government largesse will fix them because it's not really a money problem.
Would eugenics solve the problem? Asking for a freund.
It will never not amuse me that the British Green party somehow manages to be against our only highspeed rail project, most of our actual offshore wind projects and most of our large scale solar projects. https://x.com/stuarthammond14/status/1994798606948471105
It's interesting Your Party have gone for collective leadership just as the Greens have reverted back to a single leader approach.
There are upsides. It's appropriate for a collectivist party to have an overtly collective leadership. It also guards against any sort of cult of personality developing since a committee can't be expected to have a personality. A further advantage, esp if they were to win power and disappoint, is it denies the media and the public a 'face' to pour their bile onto. There'd be no "lettuce" or "wanker" or any of that dispiriting abuse. People could criticise, of course, but it would have to take the form of a reasoned critique of policy.
I think Starmer/Reeves probably know they've walked into a trap over the child benefit cap, but they have a parliamentary party of over 400 MPs to manage - many of whom are very left-wing - just to stay in office.
Good morning
Badenoch unequivocally said this morning she will reinstate the 2 child cap - 'we have to draw the line somewhere'
She is right but the savings should be put into increasing child benefit for most parents which is a better use of taxpayer funds than ending the child benefit cap for parents on university credit
What is the justification for redirecting funding from children living in poverty to those not living in poverty, which is the effect of Kemi's proposal?
Problem with this is it's a particularly poor "when did you stop beating your wife" question.
If we were actually concerned with children in poverty, we'd almost certainly get way more bang for our £3bn bucks by sending it as overseas aid to places that are genuinely poor.
Instead we're borrowing £3bn we haven't got to dole it out to the feckless parents of kids who are pretty well off in global terms - and doing it in a way that doesn't improve the kids life chances.
The IFS did a (very balanced) podcast a month or so ago on the two child limit, and the really striking thing was that their study found *no* effect in the school readiness survey from imposing the two child limit. So we can reduce *child poverty* via scrapping the two child limit, but without actually improving outcomes for children.
That's quite remarkable (I was expecting at least some measurable effort), and tells you that the problems for these kids are not really related to household income.
My sister did a load of education stats for one of the devolved governments. Her comment to me was that the *only* "inputs" which influence educational outputs are those which function as proxies for parent interest in their kids. Everything else was just noise.
So poor parents who care - their kids do fine. Poor parents who don't care - their kids outcomes are unfortunately poor, and no amount of government largesse will fix them because it's not really a money problem.
Would eugenics solve the problem? Asking for a freund.
And yet: why are certain groups so keen to kill the lifting of the two child cap so keen to allow the spending of lots of private money (and, via academization, lots of state money) on their own children, to improve their life chances? Something is odd somewhere. And the IFS isn't thought of as very right wing by the standards of such things, is it?
It's interesting Your Party have gone for collective leadership just as the Greens have reverted back to a single leader approach.
It also guards against any sort of cult of personality developing since a committee can't be expected to have a personality.
Best be wary of whomever becomes the general secretary of the committee.
Somehow I doubt such leadership would prevent a face for the pouring of bile though. Some person or persons on it would inevitably become more prominent and known - as anyone who's ever sat on a committee knows, not all participants will be of equal ability/drive/influence.
People would just get angry at the leadership, even if they were unlikely to remember everyone who was a part of it. That's one reason people voted for Corbyn when he ran for the leadership surely - most people won't have known much about the various candidates, but they knew who was an outsider to the old leadership and who was not.
Plus I expect the factions vying to get people onto the ruling committee would make it known who to blame for things.
It's interesting Your Party have gone for collective leadership just as the Greens have reverted back to a single leader approach.
There are upsides. It's appropriate for a collectivist party to have an overtly collective leadership. It also guards against any sort of cult of personality developing since a committee can't be expected to have a personality. A further advantage, esp if they were to win power and disappoint, is it denies the media and the public a 'face' to pour their bile onto. There'd be no "lettuce" or "wanker" or any of that dispiriting abuse. People could criticise, of course, but it would have to take the form of a reasoned critique of policy.
There would have to be a leader of course. But because the leader won't be a leader as such then any criticism of the leader would be untenable as it would be a criticism of the party. The party is arranged in such a way that it represents all and thus any criticism isn't really terribly valid.
It will never not amuse me that the British Green party somehow manages to be against our only highspeed rail project, most of our actual offshore wind projects and most of our large scale solar projects. https://x.com/stuarthammond14/status/1994798606948471105
Also nuclear.
As the ultimate NIMBY party I am astonished the Greens do not already have a solid working majority in the Commons.
I think Starmer/Reeves probably know they've walked into a trap over the child benefit cap, but they have a parliamentary party of over 400 MPs to manage - many of whom are very left-wing - just to stay in office.
Good morning
Badenoch unequivocally said this morning she will reinstate the 2 child cap - 'we have to draw the line somewhere'
She is right but the savings should be put into increasing child benefit for most parents which is a better use of taxpayer funds than ending the child benefit cap for parents on university credit
What is the justification for redirecting funding from children living in poverty to those not living in poverty, which is the effect of Kemi's proposal?
Problem with this is it's a particularly poor "when did you stop beating your wife" question.
If we were actually concerned with children in poverty, we'd almost certainly get way more bang for our £3bn bucks by sending it as overseas aid to places that are genuinely poor.
Instead we're borrowing £3bn we haven't got to dole it out to the feckless parents of kids who are pretty well off in global terms - and doing it in a way that doesn't improve the kids life chances.
The IFS did a (very balanced) podcast a month or so ago on the two child limit, and the really striking thing was that their study found *no* effect in the school readiness survey from imposing the two child limit. So we can reduce *child poverty* via scrapping the two child limit, but without actually improving outcomes for children.
That's quite remarkable (I was expecting at least some measurable effort), and tells you that the problems for these kids are not really related to household income.
My sister did a load of education stats for one of the devolved governments. Her comment to me was that the *only* "inputs" which influence educational outputs are those which function as proxies for parent interest in their kids. Everything else was just noise.
So poor parents who care - their kids do fine. Poor parents who don't care - their kids outcomes are unfortunately poor, and no amount of government largesse will fix them because it's not really a money problem.
Would eugenics solve the problem? Asking for a freund.
If you dig, there is a hilarious story of how the Nazis tried to eliminate dysfunctional families.
We’re talking drinking, drugs, child abuse, criminality of the especially stupid kind - all the stuff modern social workers would recognise.
The Nazis started with social work. Then moving them to special concrete built houses (fire proof, damage resistant). Then put barbed wire round the outside… they still couldn’t fix the problem…
In the end, the war came. The policy became to break the families up. The women were sometimes sterilised. The men conscripted. Being chaotic they ended up in the punishment battalions. Quite a few ended up in the Dirlewanger Brigade.
After the war, there was still no shortage of this kind of “anti-social” behaviour.
Where’s the hilarity, you ask? Well, every time someone says they can eliminate this stuff…
I think Starmer/Reeves probably know they've walked into a trap over the child benefit cap, but they have a parliamentary party of over 400 MPs to manage - many of whom are very left-wing - just to stay in office.
Good morning
Badenoch unequivocally said this morning she will reinstate the 2 child cap - 'we have to draw the line somewhere'
She is right but the savings should be put into increasing child benefit for most parents which is a better use of taxpayer funds than ending the child benefit cap for parents on university credit
What is the justification for redirecting funding from children living in poverty to those not living in poverty, which is the effect of Kemi's proposal?
Problem with this is it's a particularly poor "when did you stop beating your wife" question.
If we were actually concerned with children in poverty, we'd almost certainly get way more bang for our £3bn bucks by sending it as overseas aid to places that are genuinely poor.
Instead we're borrowing £3bn we haven't got to dole it out to the feckless parents of kids who are pretty well off in global terms - and doing it in a way that doesn't improve the kids life chances.
The IFS did a (very balanced) podcast a month or so ago on the two child limit, and the really striking thing was that their study found *no* effect in the school readiness survey from imposing the two child limit. So we can reduce *child poverty* via scrapping the two child limit, but without actually improving outcomes for children.
That's quite remarkable (I was expecting at least some measurable effort), and tells you that the problems for these kids are not really related to household income.
My sister did a load of education stats for one of the devolved governments. Her comment to me was that the *only* "inputs" which influence educational outputs are those which function as proxies for parent interest in their kids. Everything else was just noise.
So poor parents who care - their kids do fine. Poor parents who don't care - their kids outcomes are unfortunately poor, and no amount of government largesse will fix them because it's not really a money problem.
Would eugenics solve the problem? Asking for a freund.
Yes, but you'd have to find someone to adopt the kids after euthanasing the parents... <\sarcasm>
It's interesting Your Party have gone for collective leadership just as the Greens have reverted back to a single leader approach.
There are upsides. It's appropriate for a collectivist party to have an overtly collective leadership. It also guards against any sort of cult of personality developing since a committee can't be expected to have a personality. A further advantage, esp if they were to win power and disappoint, is it denies the media and the public a 'face' to pour their bile onto. There'd be no "lettuce" or "wanker" or any of that dispiriting abuse. People could criticise, of course, but it would have to take the form of a reasoned critique of policy.
There would have to be a leader of course. But because the leader won't be a leader as such then any criticism of the leader would be untenable as it would be a criticism of the party. The party is arranged in such a way that it represents all and thus any criticism isn't really terribly valid.
Yes, they'll presumably have to say who would be PM. We don't have a presidential system but people want to know that when they're voting.
It will never not amuse me that the British Green party somehow manages to be against our only highspeed rail project, most of our actual offshore wind projects and most of our large scale solar projects. https://x.com/stuarthammond14/status/1994798606948471105
Also nuclear.
Sensible Green and Activist Green are very different philosophies.
It's interesting Your Party have gone for collective leadership just as the Greens have reverted back to a single leader approach.
There are upsides. It's appropriate for a collectivist party to have an overtly collective leadership. It also guards against any sort of cult of personality developing since a committee can't be expected to have a personality. A further advantage, esp if they were to win power and disappoint, is it denies the media and the public a 'face' to pour their bile onto. There'd be no "lettuce" or "wanker" or any of that dispiriting abuse. People could criticise, of course, but it would have to take the form of a reasoned critique of policy.
There would have to be a leader of course. But because the leader won't be a leader as such then any criticism of the leader would be untenable as it would be a criticism of the party. The party is arranged in such a way that it represents all and thus any criticism isn't really terribly valid.
Yes, they'll presumably have to say who would be PM. We don't have a presidential system but people want to know that when they're voting.
Well. It's nice as a joke. But a little all too real in reality.
It's interesting Your Party have gone for collective leadership just as the Greens have reverted back to a single leader approach.
It also guards against any sort of cult of personality developing since a committee can't be expected to have a personality.
Best be wary of whomever becomes the general secretary of the committee.
Somehow I doubt such leadership would prevent a face for the pouring of bile though. Some person or persons on it would inevitably become more prominent and known - as anyone who's ever sat on a committee knows, not all participants will be of equal ability/drive/influence.
People would just get angry at the leadership, even if they were unlikely to remember everyone who was a part of it. That's one reason people voted for Corbyn when he ran for the leadership surely - most people won't have known much about the various candidates, but they knew who was an outsider to the old leadership and who was not.
Plus I expect the factions vying to get people onto the ruling committee would make it known who to blame for things.
You're probably right. Although judging by how things are going so far it's all pretty much the definition of hypothetical. What a shambles. Polanski (for better or worse and imo worse) seems far more attuned to the times.
I think Starmer/Reeves probably know they've walked into a trap over the child benefit cap, but they have a parliamentary party of over 400 MPs to manage - many of whom are very left-wing - just to stay in office.
Good morning
Badenoch unequivocally said this morning she will reinstate the 2 child cap - 'we have to draw the line somewhere'
She is right but the savings should be put into increasing child benefit for most parents which is a better use of taxpayer funds than ending the child benefit cap for parents on university credit
What is the justification for redirecting funding from children living in poverty to those not living in poverty, which is the effect of Kemi's proposal?
Problem with this is it's a particularly poor "when did you stop beating your wife" question.
If we were actually concerned with children in poverty, we'd almost certainly get way more bang for our £3bn bucks by sending it as overseas aid to places that are genuinely poor.
Instead we're borrowing £3bn we haven't got to dole it out to the feckless parents of kids who are pretty well off in global terms - and doing it in a way that doesn't improve the kids life chances.
The IFS did a (very balanced) podcast a month or so ago on the two child limit, and the really striking thing was that their study found *no* effect in the school readiness survey from imposing the two child limit. So we can reduce *child poverty* via scrapping the two child limit, but without actually improving outcomes for children.
That's quite remarkable (I was expecting at least some measurable effort), and tells you that the problems for these kids are not really related to household income.
My sister did a load of education stats for one of the devolved governments. Her comment to me was that the *only* "inputs" which influence educational outputs are those which function as proxies for parent interest in their kids. Everything else was just noise.
So poor parents who care - their kids do fine. Poor parents who don't care - their kids outcomes are unfortunately poor, and no amount of government largesse will fix them because it's not really a money problem.
Would eugenics solve the problem? Asking for a freund.
Yes, but you'd have to find someone to adopt the kids after euthanasing the parents... <\sarcasm>
It was a cheap shot but such is the state of politics these days, people search for easy answers within a TikTok timeframe. Serious politics takes both time and consensus. Perhaps FPTP which generates a two party system is not appropriate for today's society.
And on a personal note, I recognise some of the stuff you are doing in your business. Chapeau.
I think Starmer/Reeves probably know they've walked into a trap over the child benefit cap, but they have a parliamentary party of over 400 MPs to manage - many of whom are very left-wing - just to stay in office.
Good morning
Badenoch unequivocally said this morning she will reinstate the 2 child cap - 'we have to draw the line somewhere'
She is right but the savings should be put into increasing child benefit for most parents which is a better use of taxpayer funds than ending the child benefit cap for parents on university credit
What is the justification for redirecting funding from children living in poverty to those not living in poverty, which is the effect of Kemi's proposal?
Problem with this is it's a particularly poor "when did you stop beating your wife" question.
If we were actually concerned with children in poverty, we'd almost certainly get way more bang for our £3bn bucks by sending it as overseas aid to places that are genuinely poor.
Instead we're borrowing £3bn we haven't got to dole it out to the feckless parents of kids who are pretty well off in global terms - and doing it in a way that doesn't improve the kids life chances.
The IFS did a (very balanced) podcast a month or so ago on the two child limit, and the really striking thing was that their study found *no* effect in the school readiness survey from imposing the two child limit. So we can reduce *child poverty* via scrapping the two child limit, but without actually improving outcomes for children.
That's quite remarkable (I was expecting at least some measurable effort), and tells you that the problems for these kids are not really related to household income.
My sister did a load of education stats for one of the devolved governments. Her comment to me was that the *only* "inputs" which influence educational outputs are those which function as proxies for parent interest in their kids. Everything else was just noise.
So poor parents who care - their kids do fine. Poor parents who don't care - their kids outcomes are unfortunately poor, and no amount of government largesse will fix them because it's not really a money problem.
Would eugenics solve the problem? Asking for a freund.
And yet: why are certain groups so keen to kill the lifting of the two child cap so keen to allow the spending of lots of private money (and, via academization, lots of state money) on their own children, to improve their life chances? Something is odd somewhere. And the IFS isn't thought of as very right wing by the standards of such things, is it?
I think because private money aligns with the parental interest factor - state money doesn't, which is why it achieves very little.
I'm not sure that academies have anything to do with the cash question - the point of them was to break the power of LEAs and teaching unions, and thus some of the worst elements of producer capture in the state school system. I don't think they get any more cash than Lea run schools, just more freedom in how it is spent. The massive improvement in England's standing in the international league tables (especially compared to Wales) suggests that this has actually worked, even if some of those involved were demonstrably idiots.
It's interesting Your Party have gone for collective leadership just as the Greens have reverted back to a single leader approach.
It also guards against any sort of cult of personality developing since a committee can't be expected to have a personality.
Best be wary of whomever becomes the general secretary of the committee.
Somehow I doubt such leadership would prevent a face for the pouring of bile though. Some person or persons on it would inevitably become more prominent and known - as anyone who's ever sat on a committee knows, not all participants will be of equal ability/drive/influence.
People would just get angry at the leadership, even if they were unlikely to remember everyone who was a part of it. That's one reason people voted for Corbyn when he ran for the leadership surely - most people won't have known much about the various candidates, but they knew who was an outsider to the old leadership and who was not.
Plus I expect the factions vying to get people onto the ruling committee would make it known who to blame for things.
You're probably right. Although judging by how things are going so far it's all pretty much the definition of hypothetical. What a shambles. Polanski (for better or worse and imo worse) seems far more attuned to the times.
"hundreds of thousands of children lifted out of poverty" very Brownian spreadsheet thinking and talking
Though that is money that gets recycled quickly in our economy.
Much of our economy is driven by consumer spending. If consumers are skint then there is no growth.
There’s a large amount of money tied up in savings. Try freeing that up.
Saving money does free it up, unless saved in an old sock in notes and coins. Few would be able to buy a house but for the savings of others. All investment - new buildings, machinery, fleets of vehicles - comes from money not used for some other purpose. The general term for such money is 'savings'.
Yeh, I know how it works but thanks anyway 👍
Point being many consumers aren’t skint and choose not to spend.
Couple of factors there, I reckon.
The easy one is that everyone who can is squirrelling away more rainy day money than is collectively helpful. The feeling that the welfare state will only help in the most grudging sense if things go wrong (means testing, 2 child limit) doesn't help.
The harder one to solve is that the more you have, the harder it is to justify spending more on other stuff. Partly needs shading into wants, but also Sam Vimes's boots. Once you can spend more upfront, it's cheaper over a lifetime. Good for the individual, less good for the economy.
What I found so difficult to get into my head when I retired was the mindset that I am no longer a saver. I’m, effectively, asking myself for permission to spend what I’ve put aside. It’s an incredibly hard mindset to get out of and I should spend more.
I’m still saving, and annoyed with myself that I’m not saving as much as when I was working. When I first retired, I spent much more, doing all the things I didn’t have time for when I was working. Now I’m spending less, because of worrying what will happen to my SIPP if there is another 2008 crash, coupled with the knowledge that if I invest more cautiously, it won’t grow as fast over the longer term. The children have their own homes, and don’t really need an inheritance. I am trying desperately to convince myself to spend more, but it goes against the grain.
I’ve found giving it away solves that problem - it’s not really “spending” but you can find a local cause that you like and put something back into the community
My extended families need a fair amount of support which happily I'm in a position to supply. I may not spend much myself but everything I give away goes straight into the economy immediately. What makes me feel badly is the nest egg which I look on as there for maintaining the house and funding my latter years. It's small by many standards, but huge by others, and I wonder if it's really right to hang on to it.
"hundreds of thousands of children lifted out of poverty" very Brownian spreadsheet thinking and talking
Though that is money that gets recycled quickly in our economy.
Much of our economy is driven by consumer spending. If consumers are skint then there is no growth.
There’s a large amount of money tied up in savings. Try freeing that up.
Saving money does free it up, unless saved in an old sock in notes and coins. Few would be able to buy a house but for the savings of others. All investment - new buildings, machinery, fleets of vehicles - comes from money not used for some other purpose. The general term for such money is 'savings'.
Yeh, I know how it works but thanks anyway 👍
Point being many consumers aren’t skint and choose not to spend.
Couple of factors there, I reckon.
The easy one is that everyone who can is squirrelling away more rainy day money than is collectively helpful. The feeling that the welfare state will only help in the most grudging sense if things go wrong (means testing, 2 child limit) doesn't help.
The harder one to solve is that the more you have, the harder it is to justify spending more on other stuff. Partly needs shading into wants, but also Sam Vimes's boots. Once you can spend more upfront, it's cheaper over a lifetime. Good for the individual, less good for the economy.
What I found so difficult to get into my head when I retired was the mindset that I am no longer a saver. I’m, effectively, asking myself for permission to spend what I’ve put aside. It’s an incredibly hard mindset to get out of and I should spend more.
I’m still saving, and annoyed with myself that I’m not saving as much as when I was working. When I first retired, I spent much more, doing all the things I didn’t have time for when I was working. Now I’m spending less, because of worrying what will happen to my SIPP if there is another 2008 crash, coupled with the knowledge that if I invest more cautiously, it won’t grow as fast over the longer term. The children have their own homes, and don’t really need an inheritance. I am trying desperately to convince myself to spend more, but it goes against the grain.
I’ve found giving it away solves that problem - it’s not really “spending” but you can find a local cause that you like and put something back into the community
My extended families need a fair amount of support which happily I'm in a position to supply. I may not spend much myself but everything I give away goes straight into the economy immediately. What makes me feel badly is the nest egg which I look on as there for maintaining the house and funding my latter years. It's small by many standards, but huge by others, and I wonder if it's really right to hang on to it.
You don't know till you need it - and by then it's too late to change your mind. I wouldn't be too guilty. Even a few thousand here and there and now and then can make a huge difference.
It's interesting Your Party have gone for collective leadership just as the Greens have reverted back to a single leader approach.
It also guards against any sort of cult of personality developing since a committee can't be expected to have a personality.
Best be wary of whomever becomes the general secretary of the committee.
Somehow I doubt such leadership would prevent a face for the pouring of bile though. Some person or persons on it would inevitably become more prominent and known - as anyone who's ever sat on a committee knows, not all participants will be of equal ability/drive/influence.
People would just get angry at the leadership, even if they were unlikely to remember everyone who was a part of it. That's one reason people voted for Corbyn when he ran for the leadership surely - most people won't have known much about the various candidates, but they knew who was an outsider to the old leadership and who was not.
Plus I expect the factions vying to get people onto the ruling committee would make it known who to blame for things.
You're probably right. Although judging by how things are going so far it's all pretty much the definition of hypothetical. What a shambles. Polanski (for better or worse and imo worse) seems far more attuned to the times.
Hang on K - you're not actually serious are you?
(Edit: seeing the below I realise not)
That Polanski is more of a 'today' politician than either Corbyn or Sultana? Yes I meant that seriously.
It's interesting Your Party have gone for collective leadership just as the Greens have reverted back to a single leader approach.
It also guards against any sort of cult of personality developing since a committee can't be expected to have a personality.
Best be wary of whomever becomes the general secretary of the committee.
Somehow I doubt such leadership would prevent a face for the pouring of bile though. Some person or persons on it would inevitably become more prominent and known - as anyone who's ever sat on a committee knows, not all participants will be of equal ability/drive/influence.
People would just get angry at the leadership, even if they were unlikely to remember everyone who was a part of it. That's one reason people voted for Corbyn when he ran for the leadership surely - most people won't have known much about the various candidates, but they knew who was an outsider to the old leadership and who was not.
Plus I expect the factions vying to get people onto the ruling committee would make it known who to blame for things.
You're probably right. Although judging by how things are going so far it's all pretty much the definition of hypothetical. What a shambles. Polanski (for better or worse and imo worse) seems far more attuned to the times.
Hang on K - you're not actually serious are you?
(Edit: seeing the below I realise not)
That Polanski is more of a 'today' politician than either Corbyn or Sultana? Yes I meant that seriously.
How very unwise!
No doubt you've entertained the unwisdom of it so there's no need for me to tell you so though.
I do look forwards to what you might say next though. Highly odd!
It's interesting Your Party have gone for collective leadership just as the Greens have reverted back to a single leader approach.
It also guards against any sort of cult of personality developing since a committee can't be expected to have a personality.
Best be wary of whomever becomes the general secretary of the committee.
Somehow I doubt such leadership would prevent a face for the pouring of bile though. Some person or persons on it would inevitably become more prominent and known - as anyone who's ever sat on a committee knows, not all participants will be of equal ability/drive/influence.
People would just get angry at the leadership, even if they were unlikely to remember everyone who was a part of it. That's one reason people voted for Corbyn when he ran for the leadership surely - most people won't have known much about the various candidates, but they knew who was an outsider to the old leadership and who was not.
Plus I expect the factions vying to get people onto the ruling committee would make it known who to blame for things.
You're probably right. Although judging by how things are going so far it's all pretty much the definition of hypothetical. What a shambles. Polanski (for better or worse and imo worse) seems far more attuned to the times.
Hang on K - you're not actually serious are you?
(Edit: seeing the below I realise not)
That Polanski is more of a 'today' politician than either Corbyn or Sultana? Yes I meant that seriously.
How very unwise!
No doubt you've entertained the unwisdom of it so there's no need for me to tell you so though.
I do look forwards to what you might say next though. Highly odd!
Well thank you, O, and here it is:
Polanski. Zack. This opinion might be harsh, and I'm prepared to revise it as more evidence accumulates, but he strikes me as a chancer with the gift of the gab.
Look at the big companies, around the world, over the time period from 1800, onward.
Notice something?
Innovation rarely comes from big, existing companies. Due to socio-economic resistance to change.
Innovation eats into existing companies profit margins.
The World's largest manufacturer of steam shovels declined to pursue small cheap hydraulic backhoes...
Are NVIDIA, Apple and Pfizer not innovating?
Can't comment on Pfizer, but Nvidia and Apple get most of their revenue from putting out new products that are very slight improvements on last year's model. They haven't done anything that would disrupt their business model, not for many years.
Companies innovate when they have nothing to lose and much to gain. Since we're taking the tech industry, a case in point is AMD. A relatively small player, driven to the edge of bankruptcy by a much larger competitor, Intel. So they decided there was nothing left but to take risks, throw every new innovation they could drag up into one product that might save them.
Eight years later AMD is now worth almost twice as much as Intel, still benefiting from the fruit of that desperation.
Pfizer (and most big pharma) doesn’t have the risk appetite for R&D so they buy in successful biotechs instead
A model that suggests you need both new entrants and established companies. The new entrants can innovate, but they can’t get to market, so they sell up to Pfizer.
Increasingly biotechs launch themselves in the US before selling and partner ex US (because of the complexity). They only sell when Pharma pays more (due to a lower cost of capital / return expectations from their investors)
Pharma faces a significant regulatory burden, but now the UK has left the EU, the market you gain going through the UK system is rather limited. It's more attractive to go through the US or EU systems.
No one else felt the need to bring brexit into a discussion about innovation in the US pharmaceutical market
"hundreds of thousands of children lifted out of poverty" very Brownian spreadsheet thinking and talking
Though that is money that gets recycled quickly in our economy.
Much of our economy is driven by consumer spending. If consumers are skint then there is no growth.
There’s a large amount of money tied up in savings. Try freeing that up.
Saving money does free it up, unless saved in an old sock in notes and coins. Few would be able to buy a house but for the savings of others. All investment - new buildings, machinery, fleets of vehicles - comes from money not used for some other purpose. The general term for such money is 'savings'.
Yeh, I know how it works but thanks anyway 👍
Point being many consumers aren’t skint and choose not to spend.
Couple of factors there, I reckon.
The easy one is that everyone who can is squirrelling away more rainy day money than is collectively helpful. The feeling that the welfare state will only help in the most grudging sense if things go wrong (means testing, 2 child limit) doesn't help.
The harder one to solve is that the more you have, the harder it is to justify spending more on other stuff. Partly needs shading into wants, but also Sam Vimes's boots. Once you can spend more upfront, it's cheaper over a lifetime. Good for the individual, less good for the economy.
What I found so difficult to get into my head when I retired was the mindset that I am no longer a saver. I’m, effectively, asking myself for permission to spend what I’ve put aside. It’s an incredibly hard mindset to get out of and I should spend more.
I’m still saving, and annoyed with myself that I’m not saving as much as when I was working. When I first retired, I spent much more, doing all the things I didn’t have time for when I was working. Now I’m spending less, because of worrying what will happen to my SIPP if there is another 2008 crash, coupled with the knowledge that if I invest more cautiously, it won’t grow as fast over the longer term. The children have their own homes, and don’t really need an inheritance. I am trying desperately to convince myself to spend more, but it goes against the grain.
I’ve found giving it away solves that problem - it’s not really “spending” but you can find a local cause that you like and put something back into the community
My extended families need a fair amount of support which happily I'm in a position to supply. I may not spend much myself but everything I give away goes straight into the economy immediately. What makes me feel badly is the nest egg which I look on as there for maintaining the house and funding my latter years. It's small by many standards, but huge by others, and I wonder if it's really right to hang on to it.
It is - generosity is a good thing but not at the cost of destitution
It's interesting Your Party have gone for collective leadership just as the Greens have reverted back to a single leader approach.
There are upsides. It's appropriate for a collectivist party to have an overtly collective leadership. It also guards against any sort of cult of personality developing since a committee can't be expected to have a personality. A further advantage, esp if they were to win power and disappoint, is it denies the media and the public a 'face' to pour their bile onto. There'd be no "lettuce" or "wanker" or any of that dispiriting abuse. People could criticise, of course, but it would have to take the form of a reasoned critique of policy.
There would have to be a leader of course. But because the leader won't be a leader as such then any criticism of the leader would be untenable as it would be a criticism of the party. The party is arranged in such a way that it represents all and thus any criticism isn't really terribly valid.
Why does a party have to have a "leader"? We live in a democracy (allegedly) why do political parties have to be led according to the Fuehrerprinzip?
At one time, the PM was regarded as a first among equals, implying that cabinet government was some sort of collective. When did it change?
I watched Kurosawa's 'Red Beard' last night. I'm pretty sure it was @Foxy that recommended it, and what a great recommendation!
I went to Nuremberg and would highly recommend it (not sure who dissed it on here). One very disturbing sequence in it which was really uncomfortable watching
Look at the big companies, around the world, over the time period from 1800, onward.
Notice something?
Innovation rarely comes from big, existing companies. Due to socio-economic resistance to change.
Innovation eats into existing companies profit margins.
The World's largest manufacturer of steam shovels declined to pursue small cheap hydraulic backhoes...
Are NVIDIA, Apple and Pfizer not innovating?
Can't comment on Pfizer, but Nvidia and Apple get most of their revenue from putting out new products that are very slight improvements on last year's model. They haven't done anything that would disrupt their business model, not for many years.
Companies innovate when they have nothing to lose and much to gain. Since we're taking the tech industry, a case in point is AMD. A relatively small player, driven to the edge of bankruptcy by a much larger competitor, Intel. So they decided there was nothing left but to take risks, throw every new innovation they could drag up into one product that might save them.
Eight years later AMD is now worth almost twice as much as Intel, still benefiting from the fruit of that desperation.
Pfizer (and most big pharma) doesn’t have the risk appetite for R&D so they buy in successful biotechs instead
A model that suggests you need both new entrants and established companies. The new entrants can innovate, but they can’t get to market, so they sell up to Pfizer.
Increasingly biotechs launch themselves in the US before selling and partner ex US (because of the complexity). They only sell when Pharma pays more (due to a lower cost of capital / return expectations from their investors)
Pharma faces a significant regulatory burden, but now the UK has left the EU, the market you gain going through the UK system is rather limited. It's more attractive to go through the US or EU systems.
No one else felt the need to bring brexit into a discussion about innovation in the US pharmaceutical market
Funding for innovation scales with the size of the directly addressable market. Brexit cut ours by around 85%.
It's interesting Your Party have gone for collective leadership just as the Greens have reverted back to a single leader approach.
It also guards against any sort of cult of personality developing since a committee can't be expected to have a personality.
Best be wary of whomever becomes the general secretary of the committee.
Somehow I doubt such leadership would prevent a face for the pouring of bile though. Some person or persons on it would inevitably become more prominent and known - as anyone who's ever sat on a committee knows, not all participants will be of equal ability/drive/influence.
People would just get angry at the leadership, even if they were unlikely to remember everyone who was a part of it. That's one reason people voted for Corbyn when he ran for the leadership surely - most people won't have known much about the various candidates, but they knew who was an outsider to the old leadership and who was not.
Plus I expect the factions vying to get people onto the ruling committee would make it known who to blame for things.
You're probably right. Although judging by how things are going so far it's all pretty much the definition of hypothetical. What a shambles. Polanski (for better or worse and imo worse) seems far more attuned to the times.
Hang on K - you're not actually serious are you?
(Edit: seeing the below I realise not)
That Polanski is more of a 'today' politician than either Corbyn or Sultana? Yes I meant that seriously.
How very unwise!
No doubt you've entertained the unwisdom of it so there's no need for me to tell you so though.
I do look forwards to what you might say next though. Highly odd!
Well thank you, O, and here it is:
Polanski. Zack. This opinion might be harsh, and I'm prepared to revise it as more evidence accumulates, but he strikes me as a chancer with the gift of the gab.
From what I have seen so far he understands social media comms better than anyone in politics except perhaps Farage.
Ash Sarkar @AyoCaesar · 1h (cont.) Basically - if, in order to make it onto the leadership committee, you're incentivised to reflect the preoccupations of a selectorate which isn't that reflective of the wider electoral coalition that you're trying to put together... that might not be so good.
It will never not amuse me that the British Green party somehow manages to be against our only highspeed rail project, most of our actual offshore wind projects and most of our large scale solar projects. https://x.com/stuarthammond14/status/1994798606948471105
Also nuclear.
It cannot be stated too often: a bunch of opportunist student leftists have arrogated the term "Green" , which is an immensely potent political brand, and are taking full advantage of the benefits therefrom. At some point the penny will drop when people realise the 'Greens" are more concerned about trans/Palestine etc than rising sea levels, but we may still have a long wait ahead of us.
Look at the big companies, around the world, over the time period from 1800, onward.
Notice something?
Innovation rarely comes from big, existing companies. Due to socio-economic resistance to change.
Innovation eats into existing companies profit margins.
The World's largest manufacturer of steam shovels declined to pursue small cheap hydraulic backhoes...
Are NVIDIA, Apple and Pfizer not innovating?
Can't comment on Pfizer, but Nvidia and Apple get most of their revenue from putting out new products that are very slight improvements on last year's model. They haven't done anything that would disrupt their business model, not for many years.
Companies innovate when they have nothing to lose and much to gain. Since we're taking the tech industry, a case in point is AMD. A relatively small player, driven to the edge of bankruptcy by a much larger competitor, Intel. So they decided there was nothing left but to take risks, throw every new innovation they could drag up into one product that might save them.
Eight years later AMD is now worth almost twice as much as Intel, still benefiting from the fruit of that desperation.
Pfizer (and most big pharma) doesn’t have the risk appetite for R&D so they buy in successful biotechs instead
A model that suggests you need both new entrants and established companies. The new entrants can innovate, but they can’t get to market, so they sell up to Pfizer.
Increasingly biotechs launch themselves in the US before selling and partner ex US (because of the complexity). They only sell when Pharma pays more (due to a lower cost of capital / return expectations from their investors)
Pharma faces a significant regulatory burden, but now the UK has left the EU, the market you gain going through the UK system is rather limited. It's more attractive to go through the US or EU systems.
No one else felt the need to bring brexit into a discussion about innovation in the US pharmaceutical market
Funding for innovation scales with the size of the directly addressable market. Brexit cut ours by around 85%.
It’s way more complicated than that (in any event the US was something like 50% of revenues and 70% of gross profit in the industry irrespective of Brexit).
But it was an interesting discussion on innovation between big companies and small companies. Nothing to do with Brexit or the UK.
Look at the big companies, around the world, over the time period from 1800, onward.
Notice something?
Innovation rarely comes from big, existing companies. Due to socio-economic resistance to change.
Innovation eats into existing companies profit margins.
The World's largest manufacturer of steam shovels declined to pursue small cheap hydraulic backhoes...
Are NVIDIA, Apple and Pfizer not innovating?
Can't comment on Pfizer, but Nvidia and Apple get most of their revenue from putting out new products that are very slight improvements on last year's model. They haven't done anything that would disrupt their business model, not for many years.
Companies innovate when they have nothing to lose and much to gain. Since we're taking the tech industry, a case in point is AMD. A relatively small player, driven to the edge of bankruptcy by a much larger competitor, Intel. So they decided there was nothing left but to take risks, throw every new innovation they could drag up into one product that might save them.
Eight years later AMD is now worth almost twice as much as Intel, still benefiting from the fruit of that desperation.
Pfizer (and most big pharma) doesn’t have the risk appetite for R&D so they buy in successful biotechs instead
A model that suggests you need both new entrants and established companies. The new entrants can innovate, but they can’t get to market, so they sell up to Pfizer.
Increasingly biotechs launch themselves in the US before selling and partner ex US (because of the complexity). They only sell when Pharma pays more (due to a lower cost of capital / return expectations from their investors)
Pharma faces a significant regulatory burden, but now the UK has left the EU, the market you gain going through the UK system is rather limited. It's more attractive to go through the US or EU systems.
No one else felt the need to bring brexit into a discussion about innovation in the US pharmaceutical market
Funding for innovation scales with the size of the directly addressable market. Brexit cut ours by around 85%.
It’s way more complicated than that (in any event the US was something like 50% of revenues and 70% of gross profit in the industry irrespective of Brexit).
But it was an interesting discussion on innovation between big companies and small companies. Nothing to do with Brexit or the UK.
Of course it's complicated; most stuff is. Brexit's effects are at the margin, but it's absurd to argue that it hasn't affected the pharma/biotech sector.
Ash Sarkar @AyoCaesar · 1h (cont.) Basically - if, in order to make it onto the leadership committee, you're incentivised to reflect the preoccupations of a selectorate which isn't that reflective of the wider electoral coalition that you're trying to put together... that might not be so good.
Looking at the Ash Sarkar/AyoCaesar threads, she may have hit on a good point, namely: why was it necessary to build a political party in the first place? A political group (after the European model) within Parliament was more than adequate, and enabled the MPs to hold disparate views without internecine conflict. A political party imposes a common view, enables a whip, creates more bureaucracy, and isn't suited to a heterogeneous group.
It's interesting Your Party have gone for collective leadership just as the Greens have reverted back to a single leader approach.
It also guards against any sort of cult of personality developing since a committee can't be expected to have a personality.
Best be wary of whomever becomes the general secretary of the committee.
Somehow I doubt such leadership would prevent a face for the pouring of bile though. Some person or persons on it would inevitably become more prominent and known - as anyone who's ever sat on a committee knows, not all participants will be of equal ability/drive/influence.
People would just get angry at the leadership, even if they were unlikely to remember everyone who was a part of it. That's one reason people voted for Corbyn when he ran for the leadership surely - most people won't have known much about the various candidates, but they knew who was an outsider to the old leadership and who was not.
Plus I expect the factions vying to get people onto the ruling committee would make it known who to blame for things.
You're probably right. Although judging by how things are going so far it's all pretty much the definition of hypothetical. What a shambles. Polanski (for better or worse and imo worse) seems far more attuned to the times.
Hang on K - you're not actually serious are you?
(Edit: seeing the below I realise not)
That Polanski is more of a 'today' politician than either Corbyn or Sultana? Yes I meant that seriously.
How very unwise!
No doubt you've entertained the unwisdom of it so there's no need for me to tell you so though.
I do look forwards to what you might say next though. Highly odd!
Well thank you, O, and here it is:
Polanski. Zack. This opinion might be harsh, and I'm prepared to revise it as more evidence accumulates, but he strikes me as a chancer with the gift of the gab.
From what I have seen so far he understands social media comms better than anyone in politics except perhaps Farage.
Clearly he's good at that, yes. But that's not the way to my heart.
The zebra crossings and road crossings outside all our houses are more risky, as both the unpredictable pedestrians and the unpredictable traffic create risk. The only one near me in recent years was someone at a place called Kings Mill, who pushed his bike across, without looking, wearing headphones.
I'm convinced zebra crossings are the most dangerous places on the road. Given the number of drivers who apparently don’t know what those white strips mean all they do is give pedestrians an illusion of safety.
I don't go that far, though I think not starting till an imminent vehicle is clearly going to stop is wise. The biggest issue with Zebras is people blocking views with their vehicles on the zig-zags, and other drivers assuming they can just go steaming through when they cannot see.
The new "side road zebras" which are coming in (see Paris) will be a great move, following research in Manchester showing how effective they are.
It's interesting Your Party have gone for collective leadership just as the Greens have reverted back to a single leader approach.
It also guards against any sort of cult of personality developing since a committee can't be expected to have a personality.
Best be wary of whomever becomes the general secretary of the committee.
Somehow I doubt such leadership would prevent a face for the pouring of bile though. Some person or persons on it would inevitably become more prominent and known - as anyone who's ever sat on a committee knows, not all participants will be of equal ability/drive/influence.
People would just get angry at the leadership, even if they were unlikely to remember everyone who was a part of it. That's one reason people voted for Corbyn when he ran for the leadership surely - most people won't have known much about the various candidates, but they knew who was an outsider to the old leadership and who was not.
Plus I expect the factions vying to get people onto the ruling committee would make it known who to blame for things.
You're probably right. Although judging by how things are going so far it's all pretty much the definition of hypothetical. What a shambles. Polanski (for better or worse and imo worse) seems far more attuned to the times.
Hang on K - you're not actually serious are you?
(Edit: seeing the below I realise not)
That Polanski is more of a 'today' politician than either Corbyn or Sultana? Yes I meant that seriously.
How very unwise!
No doubt you've entertained the unwisdom of it so there's no need for me to tell you so though.
I do look forwards to what you might say next though. Highly odd!
Well thank you, O, and here it is:
Polanski. Zack. This opinion might be harsh, and I'm prepared to revise it as more evidence accumulates, but he strikes me as a chancer with the gift of the gab.
From what I have seen so far he understands social media comms better than anyone in politics except perhaps Farage.
But sod all understanding of how to grow an economy.
Look at the big companies, around the world, over the time period from 1800, onward.
Notice something?
Innovation rarely comes from big, existing companies. Due to socio-economic resistance to change.
Innovation eats into existing companies profit margins.
The World's largest manufacturer of steam shovels declined to pursue small cheap hydraulic backhoes...
Are NVIDIA, Apple and Pfizer not innovating?
Can't comment on Pfizer, but Nvidia and Apple get most of their revenue from putting out new products that are very slight improvements on last year's model. They haven't done anything that would disrupt their business model, not for many years.
Companies innovate when they have nothing to lose and much to gain. Since we're taking the tech industry, a case in point is AMD. A relatively small player, driven to the edge of bankruptcy by a much larger competitor, Intel. So they decided there was nothing left but to take risks, throw every new innovation they could drag up into one product that might save them.
Eight years later AMD is now worth almost twice as much as Intel, still benefiting from the fruit of that desperation.
Pfizer (and most big pharma) doesn’t have the risk appetite for R&D so they buy in successful biotechs instead
A model that suggests you need both new entrants and established companies. The new entrants can innovate, but they can’t get to market, so they sell up to Pfizer.
Increasingly biotechs launch themselves in the US before selling and partner ex US (because of the complexity). They only sell when Pharma pays more (due to a lower cost of capital / return expectations from their investors)
Pharma faces a significant regulatory burden, but now the UK has left the EU, the market you gain going through the UK system is rather limited. It's more attractive to go through the US or EU systems.
No one else felt the need to bring brexit into a discussion about innovation in the US pharmaceutical market
Funding for innovation scales with the size of the directly addressable market. Brexit cut ours by around 85%.
It’s way more complicated than that (in any event the US was something like 50% of revenues and 70% of gross profit in the industry irrespective of Brexit).
But it was an interesting discussion on innovation between big companies and small companies. Nothing to do with Brexit or the UK.
Of course it's complicated; most stuff is. Brexit's effects are at the margin, but it's absurd to argue that it hasn't affected the pharma/biotech sector.
No one did that.
The discussion was about whether big companies or small companies were more important for innovation. Someone mentioned Pfizer so it veered off into a discussion about biotech and big pharma.
It was literally nothing to do with Brexit.
But there are some people who are so f**king monomaniacal that you can’t have an interesting discussion without them dragging it into a tedious cul-de-sac
Look at the big companies, around the world, over the time period from 1800, onward.
Notice something?
Innovation rarely comes from big, existing companies. Due to socio-economic resistance to change.
Innovation eats into existing companies profit margins.
The World's largest manufacturer of steam shovels declined to pursue small cheap hydraulic backhoes...
Are NVIDIA, Apple and Pfizer not innovating?
Can't comment on Pfizer, but Nvidia and Apple get most of their revenue from putting out new products that are very slight improvements on last year's model. They haven't done anything that would disrupt their business model, not for many years.
Companies innovate when they have nothing to lose and much to gain. Since we're taking the tech industry, a case in point is AMD. A relatively small player, driven to the edge of bankruptcy by a much larger competitor, Intel. So they decided there was nothing left but to take risks, throw every new innovation they could drag up into one product that might save them.
Eight years later AMD is now worth almost twice as much as Intel, still benefiting from the fruit of that desperation.
Pfizer (and most big pharma) doesn’t have the risk appetite for R&D so they buy in successful biotechs instead
A model that suggests you need both new entrants and established companies. The new entrants can innovate, but they can’t get to market, so they sell up to Pfizer.
Increasingly biotechs launch themselves in the US before selling and partner ex US (because of the complexity). They only sell when Pharma pays more (due to a lower cost of capital / return expectations from their investors)
Pharma faces a significant regulatory burden, but now the UK has left the EU, the market you gain going through the UK system is rather limited. It's more attractive to go through the US or EU systems.
No one else felt the need to bring brexit into a discussion about innovation in the US pharmaceutical market
Funding for innovation scales with the size of the directly addressable market. Brexit cut ours by around 85%.
It’s way more complicated than that (in any event the US was something like 50% of revenues and 70% of gross profit in the industry irrespective of Brexit).
But it was an interesting discussion on innovation between big companies and small companies. Nothing to do with Brexit or the UK.
Of course it's complicated; most stuff is. Brexit's effects are at the margin, but it's absurd to argue that it hasn't affected the pharma/biotech sector.
No one did that.
The discussion was about whether big companies or small companies were more important for innovation. Someone mentioned Pfizer so it veered off into a discussion about biotech and big pharma.
It was literally nothing to do with Brexit.
But there are some people who are so f**king monomaniacal that you can’t have an interesting discussion without them dragging it into a tedious cul-de-sac
You need to speak to the elephant. Tell it to leave the room.
While you've been talking about God knows what, I've been doing some politics and had a chat a party leader this afternoon.
No, not Kemi, Ed or even Zack but Mehmood.
Yes, that Mehmood, Mehmood Mirza, leader of the Newham Independents who had a stall in the High Street outside Poundland this afternoon. While Mrs Stodge dived for cover in the charity shop, I introduced myself to Mr Mirza, We had an interesting discussion on crime, housing and how badly Newham Council is run (in both his view and mine).
Mirza is adamant the Newham Independents will run a full slate of candidates as well as a Mayoral candidate next year and he thinks they can take control from Labour. He loathes Labour but has some time for the Greens - I told him I could see an easy route to 15 Councillors and possibly 23 but after that it would be much tougher.
His line was to blame the Government and the incumbent Council and unfortunately most of his solutions began with "if we had more money". That may actually convince quite a few in Newham but not me.
While you've been talking about God knows what, I've been doing some politics and had a chat a party leader this afternoon.
No, not Kemi, Ed or even Zack but Mehmood.
Yes, that Mehmood, Mehmood Mirza, leader of the Newham Independents who had a stall in the High Street outside Poundland this afternoon. While Mrs Stodge dived for cover in the charity shop, I introduced myself to Mr Mirza, We had an interesting discussion on crime, housing and how badly Newham Council is run (in both his view and mine).
Mirza is adamant the Newham Independents will run a full slate of candidates as well as a Mayoral candidate next year and he thinks they can take control from Labour. He loathes Labour but has some time for the Greens - I told him I could see an easy route to 15 Councillors and possibly 23 but after that it would be much tougher.
His line was to blame the Government and the incumbent Council and unfortunately most of his solutions began with "if we had more money". That may actually convince quite a few in Newham but not me.
Did you not tell him to let the Greens have a clear run against Labour in at least a few key wards?
Look at the big companies, around the world, over the time period from 1800, onward.
Notice something?
Innovation rarely comes from big, existing companies. Due to socio-economic resistance to change.
Innovation eats into existing companies profit margins.
The World's largest manufacturer of steam shovels declined to pursue small cheap hydraulic backhoes...
Are NVIDIA, Apple and Pfizer not innovating?
Can't comment on Pfizer, but Nvidia and Apple get most of their revenue from putting out new products that are very slight improvements on last year's model. They haven't done anything that would disrupt their business model, not for many years.
Companies innovate when they have nothing to lose and much to gain. Since we're taking the tech industry, a case in point is AMD. A relatively small player, driven to the edge of bankruptcy by a much larger competitor, Intel. So they decided there was nothing left but to take risks, throw every new innovation they could drag up into one product that might save them.
Eight years later AMD is now worth almost twice as much as Intel, still benefiting from the fruit of that desperation.
Pfizer (and most big pharma) doesn’t have the risk appetite for R&D so they buy in successful biotechs instead
A model that suggests you need both new entrants and established companies. The new entrants can innovate, but they can’t get to market, so they sell up to Pfizer.
Increasingly biotechs launch themselves in the US before selling and partner ex US (because of the complexity). They only sell when Pharma pays more (due to a lower cost of capital / return expectations from their investors)
Pharma faces a significant regulatory burden, but now the UK has left the EU, the market you gain going through the UK system is rather limited. It's more attractive to go through the US or EU systems.
No one else felt the need to bring brexit into a discussion about innovation in the US pharmaceutical market
Funding for innovation scales with the size of the directly addressable market. Brexit cut ours by around 85%.
It’s way more complicated than that (in any event the US was something like 50% of revenues and 70% of gross profit in the industry irrespective of Brexit).
But it was an interesting discussion on innovation between big companies and small companies. Nothing to do with Brexit or the UK.
Of course it's complicated; most stuff is. Brexit's effects are at the margin, but it's absurd to argue that it hasn't affected the pharma/biotech sector.
No one did that.
The discussion was about whether big companies or small companies were more important for innovation. Someone mentioned Pfizer so it veered off into a discussion about biotech and big pharma.
It was literally nothing to do with Brexit.
But there are some people who are so f**king monomaniacal that you can’t have an interesting discussion without them dragging it into a tedious cul-de-sac
You've now posted three times complaining that Brexit was mentioned, in the process doing far more to derail the discussion. If I'd known you were such a snowflake around the word, I wouldn't've said anything!
It's interesting Your Party have gone for collective leadership just as the Greens have reverted back to a single leader approach.
It also guards against any sort of cult of personality developing since a committee can't be expected to have a personality.
Best be wary of whomever becomes the general secretary of the committee.
Somehow I doubt such leadership would prevent a face for the pouring of bile though. Some person or persons on it would inevitably become more prominent and known - as anyone who's ever sat on a committee knows, not all participants will be of equal ability/drive/influence.
People would just get angry at the leadership, even if they were unlikely to remember everyone who was a part of it. That's one reason people voted for Corbyn when he ran for the leadership surely - most people won't have known much about the various candidates, but they knew who was an outsider to the old leadership and who was not.
Plus I expect the factions vying to get people onto the ruling committee would make it known who to blame for things.
You're probably right. Although judging by how things are going so far it's all pretty much the definition of hypothetical. What a shambles. Polanski (for better or worse and imo worse) seems far more attuned to the times.
Hang on K - you're not actually serious are you?
(Edit: seeing the below I realise not)
That Polanski is more of a 'today' politician than either Corbyn or Sultana? Yes I meant that seriously.
How very unwise!
No doubt you've entertained the unwisdom of it so there's no need for me to tell you so though.
I do look forwards to what you might say next though. Highly odd!
Well thank you, O, and here it is:
Polanski. Zack. This opinion might be harsh, and I'm prepared to revise it as more evidence accumulates, but he strikes me as a chancer with the gift of the gab.
He might be. I just heard Owen Jones interview Jeremy Corbyn and earlier I heard Sultana making a speech about herself.
Of the three Sultana is much the worst. She's on an ego trip. I didn't find her engaging in any way.
I think Zack's charismatic and a gifted speaker. Bright and flexible enough to be a successful leader for a lefty Party with a twist of environmentalism.
But Corbyn was much the best. He struck me as genuine and someone who gives a damn. I don't know how far in the clouds he is but he's 100% sincere. I've always puzzled what Nick P sees in him but in that interview I understood. He's like the most well meaning great uncle you could wish for.
While you've been talking about God knows what, I've been doing some politics and had a chat a party leader this afternoon.
No, not Kemi, Ed or even Zack but Mehmood.
Yes, that Mehmood, Mehmood Mirza, leader of the Newham Independents who had a stall in the High Street outside Poundland this afternoon. While Mrs Stodge dived for cover in the charity shop, I introduced myself to Mr Mirza, We had an interesting discussion on crime, housing and how badly Newham Council is run (in both his view and mine).
Mirza is adamant the Newham Independents will run a full slate of candidates as well as a Mayoral candidate next year and he thinks they can take control from Labour. He loathes Labour but has some time for the Greens - I told him I could see an easy route to 15 Councillors and possibly 23 but after that it would be much tougher.
His line was to blame the Government and the incumbent Council and unfortunately most of his solutions began with "if we had more money". That may actually convince quite a few in Newham but not me.
Did you not tell him to let the Greens have a clear run against Labour in at least a few key wards?
He admitted they won't win Stratford and conceded the Greens may do well "in one or two other places" but no sign of an electoral deal and he was adamant they would stand a full slate of 66 candidates plus a Mayoral candidate (he denied when I asked if he would be the Mayoral candidate but I'd be surprised if he wasn't).
It's interesting Your Party have gone for collective leadership just as the Greens have reverted back to a single leader approach.
It also guards against any sort of cult of personality developing since a committee can't be expected to have a personality.
Best be wary of whomever becomes the general secretary of the committee.
Somehow I doubt such leadership would prevent a face for the pouring of bile though. Some person or persons on it would inevitably become more prominent and known - as anyone who's ever sat on a committee knows, not all participants will be of equal ability/drive/influence.
People would just get angry at the leadership, even if they were unlikely to remember everyone who was a part of it. That's one reason people voted for Corbyn when he ran for the leadership surely - most people won't have known much about the various candidates, but they knew who was an outsider to the old leadership and who was not.
Plus I expect the factions vying to get people onto the ruling committee would make it known who to blame for things.
You're probably right. Although judging by how things are going so far it's all pretty much the definition of hypothetical. What a shambles. Polanski (for better or worse and imo worse) seems far more attuned to the times.
Hang on K - you're not actually serious are you?
(Edit: seeing the below I realise not)
That Polanski is more of a 'today' politician than either Corbyn or Sultana? Yes I meant that seriously.
How very unwise!
No doubt you've entertained the unwisdom of it so there's no need for me to tell you so though.
I do look forwards to what you might say next though. Highly odd!
Well thank you, O, and here it is:
Polanski. Zack. This opinion might be harsh, and I'm prepared to revise it as more evidence accumulates, but he strikes me as a chancer with the gift of the gab.
From what I have seen so far he understands social media comms better than anyone in politics except perhaps Farage.
But sod all understanding of how to grow an economy.
Ash Sarkar @AyoCaesar · 1h (cont.) Basically - if, in order to make it onto the leadership committee, you're incentivised to reflect the preoccupations of a selectorate which isn't that reflective of the wider electoral coalition that you're trying to put together... that might not be so good.
Looking at the Ash Sarkar/AyoCaesar threads, she may have hit on a good point, namely: why was it necessary to build a political party in the first place? A political group (after the European model) within Parliament was more than adequate, and enabled the MPs to hold disparate views without internecine conflict. A political party imposes a common view, enables a whip, creates more bureaucracy, and isn't suited to a heterogeneous group.
Corbyn must be pissed off. He enjoys being venerated as a leading leftee, but has seemed reluctant to take the step of setting up a new party, waiting until the last possible moment to leave Labour (he couldn't stand for Parliament without doing so), and seemingly being bounced into the establishment of Your Party (many reports that he was unhappy with Sultana's initial announcement), then he goes to the effort of his people marshalling together with the Gaza bros against Sultana, and now he doesn't even get to be the named Leader.
Now, I don't think he cares about being the Leader for any concrete power benefits, he's happy in his rallies and protests etc, but he wouldn't have had all that manuvering if he did not want to get more of the limelight, and the new structure diminishes that somewhat.
But truth may just be his hold was slipping, a new generation more enamoured of Polanksi anyway.
It's interesting Your Party have gone for collective leadership just as the Greens have reverted back to a single leader approach.
It also guards against any sort of cult of personality developing since a committee can't be expected to have a personality.
Best be wary of whomever becomes the general secretary of the committee.
Somehow I doubt such leadership would prevent a face for the pouring of bile though. Some person or persons on it would inevitably become more prominent and known - as anyone who's ever sat on a committee knows, not all participants will be of equal ability/drive/influence.
People would just get angry at the leadership, even if they were unlikely to remember everyone who was a part of it. That's one reason people voted for Corbyn when he ran for the leadership surely - most people won't have known much about the various candidates, but they knew who was an outsider to the old leadership and who was not.
Plus I expect the factions vying to get people onto the ruling committee would make it known who to blame for things.
You're probably right. Although judging by how things are going so far it's all pretty much the definition of hypothetical. What a shambles. Polanski (for better or worse and imo worse) seems far more attuned to the times.
Hang on K - you're not actually serious are you?
(Edit: seeing the below I realise not)
That Polanski is more of a 'today' politician than either Corbyn or Sultana? Yes I meant that seriously.
How very unwise!
No doubt you've entertained the unwisdom of it so there's no need for me to tell you so though.
I do look forwards to what you might say next though. Highly odd!
Well thank you, O, and here it is:
Polanski. Zack. This opinion might be harsh, and I'm prepared to revise it as more evidence accumulates, but he strikes me as a chancer with the gift of the gab.
He might be. I just heard Owen Jones interview Jeremy Corbyn and earlier I heard Sultana making a speech about herself.
Of the three Sultana is much the worst. She's on an ego trip. I didn't find her engaging in any way.
I think Zack's charismatic and a gifted speaker. Bright and flexible enough to be a successful leader for a lefty Party with a twist of environmentalism.
But Corbyn was much the best. He struck me as genuine and someone who gives a damn. I don't know how far in the clouds he is but he's 100% sincere. I've always puzzled what Nick P sees in him but in that interview I understood. He's like the most well meaning great uncle you could wish for.
Yes, that's it. He combines quite radical politics with a reasonable manner and willingness to hear other points of view without letting ego get in the way - something you tend not to get in radical politicians (contrast with Scargill or indeed Sultana). I think he recognises that he's not going to lead the party into the next GE in 4 years' time, but he'll make a serious last effort to leave a mark.
It's interesting Your Party have gone for collective leadership just as the Greens have reverted back to a single leader approach.
There are upsides. It's appropriate for a collectivist party to have an overtly collective leadership. It also guards against any sort of cult of personality developing since a committee can't be expected to have a personality. A further advantage, esp if they were to win power and disappoint, is it denies the media and the public a 'face' to pour their bile onto. There'd be no "lettuce" or "wanker" or any of that dispiriting abuse. People could criticise, of course, but it would have to take the form of a reasoned critique of policy.
There would have to be a leader of course. But because the leader won't be a leader as such then any criticism of the leader would be untenable as it would be a criticism of the party. The party is arranged in such a way that it represents all and thus any criticism isn't really terribly valid.
Why does a party have to have a "leader"? We live in a democracy (allegedly) why do political parties have to be led according to the Fuehrerprinzip?
At one time, the PM was regarded as a first among equals, implying that cabinet government was some sort of collective. When did it change?
If the PM has the power of hire and fire of ministers s/he is not the first among equals.
His line was to blame the Government and the incumbent Council and unfortunately most of his solutions began with "if we had more money". That may actually convince quite a few in Newham but not me.
It is impressive the line usually works, since all parties use it, be they local independents or national parties - even when their own party is in power.
We are a charmingly naiive electorate, always willing to believe that this time the easy promises will work.
It's interesting Your Party have gone for collective leadership just as the Greens have reverted back to a single leader approach.
There are upsides. It's appropriate for a collectivist party to have an overtly collective leadership. It also guards against any sort of cult of personality developing since a committee can't be expected to have a personality. A further advantage, esp if they were to win power and disappoint, is it denies the media and the public a 'face' to pour their bile onto. There'd be no "lettuce" or "wanker" or any of that dispiriting abuse. People could criticise, of course, but it would have to take the form of a reasoned critique of policy.
There would have to be a leader of course. But because the leader won't be a leader as such then any criticism of the leader would be untenable as it would be a criticism of the party. The party is arranged in such a way that it represents all and thus any criticism isn't really terribly valid.
Why does a party have to have a "leader"? We live in a democracy (allegedly) why do political parties have to be led according to the Fuehrerprinzip?
At one time, the PM was regarded as a first among equals, implying that cabinet government was some sort of collective. When did it change?
If the PM has the power of hire and fire of ministers s/he is not the first among equals.
I think the benefit of a clear leader is political parties are inherently hierarchical, and if you don't have a clear formal leadership then you just obfuscate the internal power dynamics or push them off onto some less transparent processes.
Now, you could have co-leaders, or a committee, but as I noted earlier committees can easily become dominated by individuals in any case, so do you even really get the benefits?
A more collective style of leadership is to my mind preferable, but whether you get that with a single leader or collective leader system depends on the circumstances - we know PMs who were better at working with their ministers than others.
Indeed, one common criticism of Starmer is that he doesn't have enough of a grip on his ministers, ie he doesn't lead them enough.
This is the sort of thing the UK is going to have to think about. It's not just protection of air bases, Faslane etc, but power plants, switching stations, CNI. Bear in mind that most of the 600 Skyranger AAA being bought by Germany are for home defence. Completely new mindset. https://x.com/FTusa284/status/1995043694018531524
Germany also ordered 50 IRIS-T AA missile systems - which is half as many again as they fielded during the Cold War.
Europe is planning to spend a huge amount of money - partly it seems to prepare for the defeat of Ukraine, and the resulting greater threat from Russia. They'd be better off spending more now, to defeat the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In the meantime our own defence procurement is floundering.
This is the sort of thing the UK is going to have to think about. It's not just protection of air bases, Faslane etc, but power plants, switching stations, CNI. Bear in mind that most of the 600 Skyranger AAA being bought by Germany are for home defence. Completely new mindset. https://x.com/FTusa284/status/1995043694018531524
Germany also ordered 50 IRIS-T AA missile systems - which is half as many again as they fielded during the Cold War.
Europe is planning to spend a huge amount of money - partly it seems to prepare for the defeat of Ukraine, and the resulting greater threat from Russia. They'd be better off spending more now, to defeat the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In the meantime our own defence procurement is floundering.
The European concern is that new weapons won’t be around in time for Ukraine to use them
Starmer and Rachel Reeves ‘misled cabinet to justify budget tax rises’
Ministers have accused Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves of misleading the cabinet by claiming there was a hole in the public finances to justify tax rises.
Robert Jenrick inciting hooligans to terrorise immigration judges out of their homes.
Living with an immigration judge was never supposed to be a high-octane affair. But the humdrum of tribunal life was interrupted a few months ago when the threats started.
“We had to leave our home – we had less than 24 hours to get out,” the partner of one judge said. They called the police, stayed with friends, and tried to make sense of how their lives had been upended.
“It completely removes your feeling of security in your home,” the partner said. “You worry that your children will somehow get caught up in this. It turns your life upside down and nothing feels secure afterwards.”
The ordeal started after Robert Jenrick began a campaign highlighting what the shadow justice secretary described as “activist judges”. After months of news reports and feverish online rhetoric about immigration tribunal decisions, in April the Tory frontbencher began naming judges on social media. Jenrick pledged that under his regime, “biased judges will be sacked automatically” and at the Conservative party conferencelast month he revealed that he had compiled a list of more than 30 judges who he claimed had links to “open border charities”. His posts have been circulated among far-right groups online.
An Observer investigation has established that at least six immigration judges have been subjected to threats since April. At least two immigration judges have been advised to move out of their homes. Some have had their home addresses published on social media by far-right activists. One judge received a threat saying: “We know which bus your child catches”.
The zebra crossings and road crossings outside all our houses are more risky, as both the unpredictable pedestrians and the unpredictable traffic create risk. The only one near me in recent years was someone at a place called Kings Mill, who pushed his bike across, without looking, wearing headphones.
I'm convinced zebra crossings are the most dangerous places on the road. Given the number of drivers who apparently don’t know what those white strips mean all they do is give pedestrians an illusion of safety.
I don't go that far, though I think not starting till an imminent vehicle is clearly going to stop is wise. The biggest issue with Zebras is people blocking views with their vehicles on the zig-zags, and other drivers assuming they can just go steaming through when they cannot see.
The new "side road zebras" which are coming in (see Paris) will be a great move, following research in Manchester showing how effective they are.
Last time I insisted Mrs C and I wait on the edge with our toes on till a dozy driver (elderly, male, FWIW) actually slowed down and stopped, he took it as an indication we were waving him through and accelerated straight through the middle ...
I'm always telling her, never rely on drivers to be alert and sensible.
Look at the big companies, around the world, over the time period from 1800, onward.
Notice something?
Innovation rarely comes from big, existing companies. Due to socio-economic resistance to change.
Innovation eats into existing companies profit margins.
The World's largest manufacturer of steam shovels declined to pursue small cheap hydraulic backhoes...
Are NVIDIA, Apple and Pfizer not innovating?
Can't comment on Pfizer, but Nvidia and Apple get most of their revenue from putting out new products that are very slight improvements on last year's model. They haven't done anything that would disrupt their business model, not for many years.
Companies innovate when they have nothing to lose and much to gain. Since we're taking the tech industry, a case in point is AMD. A relatively small player, driven to the edge of bankruptcy by a much larger competitor, Intel. So they decided there was nothing left but to take risks, throw every new innovation they could drag up into one product that might save them.
Eight years later AMD is now worth almost twice as much as Intel, still benefiting from the fruit of that desperation.
Pfizer (and most big pharma) doesn’t have the risk appetite for R&D so they buy in successful biotechs instead
A model that suggests you need both new entrants and established companies. The new entrants can innovate, but they can’t get to market, so they sell up to Pfizer.
Increasingly biotechs launch themselves in the US before selling and partner ex US (because of the complexity). They only sell when Pharma pays more (due to a lower cost of capital / return expectations from their investors)
Pharma faces a significant regulatory burden, but now the UK has left the EU, the market you gain going through the UK system is rather limited. It's more attractive to go through the US or EU systems.
No one else felt the need to bring brexit into a discussion about innovation in the US pharmaceutical market
Funding for innovation scales with the size of the directly addressable market. Brexit cut ours by around 85%.
It’s way more complicated than that (in any event the US was something like 50% of revenues and 70% of gross profit in the industry irrespective of Brexit).
But it was an interesting discussion on innovation between big companies and small companies. Nothing to do with Brexit or the UK.
Of course it's complicated; most stuff is. Brexit's effects are at the margin, but it's absurd to argue that it hasn't affected the pharma/biotech sector.
No one did that.
The discussion was about whether big companies or small companies were more important for innovation. Someone mentioned Pfizer so it veered off into a discussion about biotech and big pharma.
It was literally nothing to do with Brexit.
But there are some people who are so f**king monomaniacal that you can’t have an interesting discussion without them dragging it into a tedious cul-de-sac
You need to speak to the elephant. Tell it to leave the room.
Brexit has had zero impact of Pfizer’s inability to innovate its way out of a paper bag.
Look at the big companies, around the world, over the time period from 1800, onward.
Notice something?
Innovation rarely comes from big, existing companies. Due to socio-economic resistance to change.
Innovation eats into existing companies profit margins.
The World's largest manufacturer of steam shovels declined to pursue small cheap hydraulic backhoes...
Are NVIDIA, Apple and Pfizer not innovating?
Can't comment on Pfizer, but Nvidia and Apple get most of their revenue from putting out new products that are very slight improvements on last year's model. They haven't done anything that would disrupt their business model, not for many years.
Companies innovate when they have nothing to lose and much to gain. Since we're taking the tech industry, a case in point is AMD. A relatively small player, driven to the edge of bankruptcy by a much larger competitor, Intel. So they decided there was nothing left but to take risks, throw every new innovation they could drag up into one product that might save them.
Eight years later AMD is now worth almost twice as much as Intel, still benefiting from the fruit of that desperation.
Pfizer (and most big pharma) doesn’t have the risk appetite for R&D so they buy in successful biotechs instead
A model that suggests you need both new entrants and established companies. The new entrants can innovate, but they can’t get to market, so they sell up to Pfizer.
Increasingly biotechs launch themselves in the US before selling and partner ex US (because of the complexity). They only sell when Pharma pays more (due to a lower cost of capital / return expectations from their investors)
Pharma faces a significant regulatory burden, but now the UK has left the EU, the market you gain going through the UK system is rather limited. It's more attractive to go through the US or EU systems.
No one else felt the need to bring brexit into a discussion about innovation in the US pharmaceutical market
Funding for innovation scales with the size of the directly addressable market. Brexit cut ours by around 85%.
It’s way more complicated than that (in any event the US was something like 50% of revenues and 70% of gross profit in the industry irrespective of Brexit).
But it was an interesting discussion on innovation between big companies and small companies. Nothing to do with Brexit or the UK.
Of course it's complicated; most stuff is. Brexit's effects are at the margin, but it's absurd to argue that it hasn't affected the pharma/biotech sector.
No one did that.
The discussion was about whether big companies or small companies were more important for innovation. Someone mentioned Pfizer so it veered off into a discussion about biotech and big pharma.
It was literally nothing to do with Brexit.
But there are some people who are so f**king monomaniacal that you can’t have an interesting discussion without them dragging it into a tedious cul-de-sac
I've talked on PB about the pharma industry quite a lot in the past, and I have to say that I think you're wrong on all counts.
For a start, the distinction between pharma and biotech - certainly in the US - which is being drawn is to a great extent an artificial one.
There are plenty of small research oriented biotechs which have grown rapidly to the point of becoming a sizeable as some of the old pharma companies (for example, Regeneron)
There are also large pharmas which have remained highly research oriented, and taken huge decade long bets on very expensive research (see for example Eli Lilly in Alzheimer's; costly failure - and obesity; massive success).
At the opposite pole, pharmas which have in recent years largely bought in research, and small, single program research companies.
And the whole spectrum between.
The UK doesn't, and never has had that diversity or depth. We have a history of great research, a handful of big pharmas (really, two these days), and a small biotechs which occasionally hit on huge commercial successes (Cambridge Antibody) which someone else exploits.
The EU is somewhat closer to being a smaller version of the US than are we - but less so since we Brexited.
And the new, rapidly developing competitor with its own huge domestic market is China.
I don't think you'll find very many people in the industry who think Brexit was helpful for either us or for the EU in trying to stay competitive in research and development.
Anyone following the attacks on Russia's shadow fleet of oil tankers? I can see the logic of Ukraine doing it but the implications are obviously pretty serious.
It told Reeves on October 31 that she had a £4.2billion surplus ...
No she f###ing does not!
The Budget deficit is in the hundreds of billions. There is no surplus! WTAF!? 😡😡😡
I wonder which member of the Cabinet was that stupid? Both in not understanding the fiscal situation and in whinging to the papers.
Though to be totally balanced, the last lot were also working on the basis that fiscal headroom was there to be spent... just in a different way. I'm bored with making the "increased credit card limit doesn't equal a pay rise" point here.
It told Reeves on October 31 that she had a £4.2billion surplus ...
No she f###ing does not!
The Budget deficit is in the hundreds of billions. There is no surplus! WTAF!? 😡😡😡
Terminology.
It's (confusing and poor) shorthand for the forecast outcomes for current fiscal policies having improved by 4bn, rather than worsened by £17bn (or whatever the precise number was).
We don't have a single word to describe those moves, hence "surplus"'and "black hole". As many politicians are borderline innumerate, these things stick.
It's interesting Your Party have gone for collective leadership just as the Greens have reverted back to a single leader approach.
It also guards against any sort of cult of personality developing since a committee can't be expected to have a personality.
Best be wary of whomever becomes the general secretary of the committee.
Somehow I doubt such leadership would prevent a face for the pouring of bile though. Some person or persons on it would inevitably become more prominent and known - as anyone who's ever sat on a committee knows, not all participants will be of equal ability/drive/influence.
People would just get angry at the leadership, even if they were unlikely to remember everyone who was a part of it. That's one reason people voted for Corbyn when he ran for the leadership surely - most people won't have known much about the various candidates, but they knew who was an outsider to the old leadership and who was not.
Plus I expect the factions vying to get people onto the ruling committee would make it known who to blame for things.
You're probably right. Although judging by how things are going so far it's all pretty much the definition of hypothetical. What a shambles. Polanski (for better or worse and imo worse) seems far more attuned to the times.
Hang on K - you're not actually serious are you?
(Edit: seeing the below I realise not)
That Polanski is more of a 'today' politician than either Corbyn or Sultana? Yes I meant that seriously.
How very unwise!
No doubt you've entertained the unwisdom of it so there's no need for me to tell you so though.
I do look forwards to what you might say next though. Highly odd!
Well thank you, O, and here it is:
Polanski. Zack. This opinion might be harsh, and I'm prepared to revise it as more evidence accumulates, but he strikes me as a chancer with the gift of the gab.
From what I have seen so far he understands social media comms better than anyone in politics except perhaps Farage.
But sod all understanding of how to grow an economy.
Do the Greens want to grow the economy though?
A bold strategy when growth will be the battleground of the next election.
It told Reeves on October 31 that she had a £4.2billion surplus ...
No she f###ing does not!
The Budget deficit is in the hundreds of billions. There is no surplus! WTAF!? 😡😡😡
Terminology.
It's (confusing and poor) shorthand for the forecast outcomes for current fiscal policies having improved by 4bn, rather than worsened by £17bn (or whatever the precise number was).
We don't have a single word to describe those moves, hence "surplus"'and "black hole". As many politicians are borderline innumerate, these things stick.
We have many single words to describe second-order changes.
Improvement/deterioration work. Surplus/black hole do not.
The problem is not linguistics, the problem is trying to overegg the pudding, while attempting to live on the edge of a maxed out deficit treating the entire potential deficit as something to be spent.
Anyone following the attacks on Russia's shadow fleet of oil tankers? I can see the logic of Ukraine doing it but the implications are obviously pretty serious.
There's a long history of "war material" being transported by third party ships being legitimate targets of war. See the various blockades in WWI and WWII.
It told Reeves on October 31 that she had a £4.2billion surplus ...
No she f###ing does not!
The Budget deficit is in the hundreds of billions. There is no surplus! WTAF!? 😡😡😡
I wonder which member of the Cabinet was that stupid? Both in not understanding the fiscal situation and in whinging to the papers.
Though to be totally balanced, the last lot were also working on the basis that fiscal headroom was there to be spent... just in a different way. I'm bored with making the "increased credit card limit doesn't equal a pay rise" point here.
Three Ministers whinged to The Times according to that article
Comments
(Actually, The Goodies would be a pretty appropriately self-righteous name for a political party. Instead, the nitiwts seem to have gone with Your Party.)
ATI, yes, agreed, there's more of the old school there because ATI were (and to some degree still are) geographically separate. That possibly explains why the graphics side of AMD is always the problem child.
But the point I'm making is, AMD had no market left to protect, no viable products and no bureaucracy left to get in the way. Same environment as a start-up, but with a recognisable, if rather tarnished, brand.
Answered upthread.
This one is two decades old, and still funding scores of new business plans every year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_Combinator
There are plenty older ones doing something similar.
A number of the larger US corporations also have their Vcap subsidiaries, or invest externally via Vcap.
https://x.com/stuarthammond14/status/1994798606948471105
Also nuclear.
Somehow I doubt such leadership would prevent a face for the pouring of bile though. Some person or persons on it would inevitably become more prominent and known - as anyone who's ever sat on a committee knows, not all participants will be of equal ability/drive/influence.
People would just get angry at the leadership, even if they were unlikely to remember everyone who was a part of it. That's one reason people voted for Corbyn when he ran for the leadership surely - most people won't have known much about the various candidates, but they knew who was an outsider to the old leadership and who was not.
Plus I expect the factions vying to get people onto the ruling committee would make it known who to blame for things.
We’re talking drinking, drugs, child abuse, criminality of the especially stupid kind - all the stuff modern social workers would recognise.
The Nazis started with social work. Then moving them to special concrete built houses (fire proof, damage resistant). Then put barbed wire round the outside… they still couldn’t fix the problem…
In the end, the war came. The policy became to break the families up. The women were sometimes sterilised. The men conscripted. Being chaotic they ended up in the punishment battalions. Quite a few ended up in the Dirlewanger Brigade.
After the war, there was still no shortage of this kind of “anti-social” behaviour.
Where’s the hilarity, you ask? Well, every time someone says they can eliminate this stuff…
This is why being the person picking placeholder names/options is so important, people will so often go with that.
And on a personal note, I recognise some of the stuff you are doing in your business. Chapeau.
I'm not sure that academies have anything to do with the cash question - the point of them was to break the power of LEAs and teaching unions, and thus some of the worst elements of producer capture in the state school system. I don't think they get any more cash than Lea run schools, just more freedom in how it is spent. The massive improvement in England's standing in the international league tables (especially compared to Wales) suggests that this has actually worked, even if some of those involved were demonstrably idiots.
(Edit: seeing the below I realise not)
No doubt you've entertained the unwisdom of it so there's no need for me to tell you so though.
I do look forwards to what you might say next though. Highly odd!
Polanski. Zack. This opinion might be harsh, and I'm prepared to revise it as more evidence accumulates, but he strikes me as a chancer with the gift of the gab.
LOL.
At one time, the PM was regarded as a first among equals, implying that cabinet government was some sort of collective. When did it change?
Brexit cut ours by around 85%.
Ash Sarkar
@AyoCaesar
·
1h
(cont.) Basically - if, in order to make it onto the leadership committee, you're incentivised to reflect the preoccupations of a selectorate which isn't that reflective of the wider electoral coalition that you're trying to put together... that might not be so good.
https://x.com/AyoCaesar/status/1995189355842072984
At some point the penny will drop when people realise the 'Greens" are more concerned about trans/Palestine etc than rising sea levels, but we may still have a long wait ahead of us.
But it was an interesting discussion on innovation between big companies and small companies. Nothing to do with Brexit or the UK.
Brexit's effects are at the margin, but it's absurd to argue that it hasn't affected the pharma/biotech sector.
https://x.com/AyoCaesar/status/1995179442197426331#m
The new "side road zebras" which are coming in (see Paris) will be a great move, following research in Manchester showing how effective they are.
The discussion was about whether big companies or small companies were more important for innovation. Someone mentioned Pfizer so it veered off into a discussion about biotech and big pharma.
It was literally nothing to do with Brexit.
But there are some people who are so f**king monomaniacal that you can’t have an interesting discussion without them dragging it into a tedious cul-de-sac
While you've been talking about God knows what, I've been doing some politics and had a chat a party leader this afternoon.
No, not Kemi, Ed or even Zack but Mehmood.
Yes, that Mehmood, Mehmood Mirza, leader of the Newham Independents who had a stall in the High Street outside Poundland this afternoon. While Mrs Stodge dived for cover in the charity shop, I introduced myself to Mr Mirza, We had an interesting discussion on crime, housing and how badly Newham Council is run (in both his view and mine).
Mirza is adamant the Newham Independents will run a full slate of candidates as well as a Mayoral candidate next year and he thinks they can take control from Labour. He loathes Labour but has some time for the Greens - I told him I could see an easy route to 15 Councillors and possibly 23 but after that it would be much tougher.
His line was to blame the Government and the incumbent Council and unfortunately most of his solutions began with "if we had more money". That may actually convince quite a few in Newham but not me.
Of the three Sultana is much the worst. She's on an ego trip. I didn't find her engaging in any way.
I think Zack's charismatic and a gifted speaker. Bright and flexible enough to be a successful leader for a lefty Party with a twist of environmentalism.
But Corbyn was much the best. He struck me as genuine and someone who gives a damn. I don't know how far in the clouds he is but he's 100% sincere. I've always puzzled what Nick P sees in him but in that interview I understood. He's like the most well meaning great uncle you could wish for.
This one is Troy Nels, who is waiting to the end of his term. That is, the midterm elections.
Hmmmm. I don't think Mr Hegseth's killing of all the people in boats off Venezuela and other places is helping.
Now, I don't think he cares about being the Leader for any concrete power benefits, he's happy in his rallies and protests etc, but he wouldn't have had all that manuvering if he did not want to get more of the limelight, and the new structure diminishes that somewhat.
But truth may just be his hold was slipping, a new generation more enamoured of Polanksi anyway.
We are a charmingly naiive electorate, always willing to believe that this time the easy promises will work.
Now, you could have co-leaders, or a committee, but as I noted earlier committees can easily become dominated by individuals in any case, so do you even really get the benefits?
A more collective style of leadership is to my mind preferable, but whether you get that with a single leader or collective leader system depends on the circumstances - we know PMs who were better at working with their ministers than others.
Indeed, one common criticism of Starmer is that he doesn't have enough of a grip on his ministers, ie he doesn't lead them enough.
Real Madrid are 1-0 down at half time to Girona. DYOR.
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/en/football/spanish-la-liga/girona-v-real-madrid-betting-34942743
https://x.com/FTusa284/status/1995043694018531524
Germany also ordered 50 IRIS-T AA missile systems - which is half as many again as they fielded during the Cold War.
Europe is planning to spend a huge amount of money - partly it seems to prepare for the defeat of Ukraine, and the resulting greater threat from Russia.
They'd be better off spending more now, to defeat the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In the meantime our own defence procurement is floundering.
Starmer and Rachel Reeves ‘misled cabinet to justify budget tax rises’
Ministers have accused Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves of misleading the cabinet by claiming there was a hole in the public finances to justify tax rises.
https://www.thetimes.com/article/714550eb-ffff-4f79-a0fb-d2a742a77d4c?shareToken=834e4a99acf10f72f3b39d2148f1247c
Living with an immigration judge was never supposed to be a high-octane affair. But the humdrum of tribunal life was interrupted a few months ago when the threats started.
“We had to leave our home – we had less than 24 hours to get out,” the partner of one judge said. They called the police, stayed with friends, and tried to make sense of how their lives had been upended.
“It completely removes your feeling of security in your home,” the partner said. “You worry that your children will somehow get caught up in this. It turns your life upside down and nothing feels secure afterwards.”
The ordeal started after Robert Jenrick began a campaign highlighting what the shadow justice secretary described as “activist judges”. After months of news reports and feverish online rhetoric about immigration tribunal decisions, in April the Tory frontbencher began naming judges on social media. Jenrick pledged that under his regime, “biased judges will be sacked automatically” and at the Conservative party conferencelast month he revealed that he had compiled a list of more than 30 judges who he claimed had links to “open border charities”. His posts have been circulated among far-right groups online.
An Observer investigation has established that at least six immigration judges have been subjected to threats since April. At least two immigration judges have been advised to move out of their homes. Some have had their home addresses published on social media by far-right activists. One judge received a threat saying: “We know which bus your child catches”.
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/immigration-judges-targeted-by-far-right-groups
I'm always telling her, never rely on drivers to be alert and sensible.
Michael Walker
@michaeljswalker
·
9h
If anything, this weekend proves how much Corbynism relied on John McDonnell.
https://x.com/michaeljswalker/status/1995100749223649674
For a start, the distinction between pharma and biotech - certainly in the US - which is being drawn is to a great extent an artificial one.
There are plenty of small research oriented biotechs which have grown rapidly to the point of becoming a sizeable as some of the old pharma companies (for example, Regeneron)
There are also large pharmas which have remained highly research oriented, and taken huge decade long bets on very expensive research (see for example Eli Lilly in Alzheimer's; costly failure - and obesity; massive success).
At the opposite pole, pharmas which have in recent years largely bought in research, and small, single program research companies.
And the whole spectrum between.
The UK doesn't, and never has had that diversity or depth.
We have a history of great research, a handful of big pharmas (really, two these days), and a small biotechs which occasionally hit on huge commercial successes (Cambridge Antibody) which someone else exploits.
The EU is somewhat closer to being a smaller version of the US than are we - but less so since we Brexited.
And the new, rapidly developing competitor with its own huge domestic market is China.
I don't think you'll find very many people in the industry who think Brexit was helpful for either us or for the EU in trying to stay competitive in research and development.
https://x.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1995233439767798232
She's done. Be gone.
No she f###ing does not!
The Budget deficit is in the hundreds of billions. There is no surplus! WTAF!? 😡😡😡
Though to be totally balanced, the last lot were also working on the basis that fiscal headroom was there to be spent... just in a different way. I'm bored with making the "increased credit card limit doesn't equal a pay rise" point here.
It's (confusing and poor) shorthand for the forecast outcomes for current fiscal policies having improved by 4bn, rather than worsened by £17bn (or whatever the precise number was).
We don't have a single word to describe those moves, hence "surplus"'and "black hole". As many politicians are borderline innumerate, these things stick.
This supersedes the previous one of a man on trial for murdering his parents pleading for clemency on the grounds of being an orphan.
Improvement/deterioration work.
Surplus/black hole do not.
The problem is not linguistics, the problem is trying to overegg the pudding, while attempting to live on the edge of a maxed out deficit treating the entire potential deficit as something to be spent.