"Staycations could cost £100 more if holiday tax introduced The price of a holiday in England could rise if the government pushes ahead with plans to introduce a holiday tax, hospitality and leisure bosses have warned.
In a letter, the heads of the leading UK accommodation firms - including Butlin's, Hilton and Travelodge - told Rachel Reeves that "holidays are for relaxing, not taxing" and urged her to scrap plans for a visitor levy in England."
A staycation won't cost more, as that means staying at home and going on day trips.
The majority of companies have a tourist tax, it recognises that tourists use local services but don't pay into them. It doesn't seem too unjust to me.
There's a few different ways you could implement the tax, though. It could be as a percentage on the cost of the room/rental. Or it could be as a holiday poll tax, per person, per night.
In my part of the world it’s a flat 20dhm (£4) per room per night. Even for a fancy £400 room.
I would favour a fixed percentage of the bill, but with exemptions for small businesses, such as people with a couple of B&B rooms in their own home or 5 pitch caravan and motorhome pitches in a farmer’s field. I would not exclude AirB&B type properties, though.
There’s already a fixed 20% of the bill in tax on UK hotel rooms.
Any business that goes under because non-profit related expenses or taxation increased is a zombie business that deserved to die.
After SpaceX deactivated the Russian Starlink terminals, the Ukrainian spooks set up a fake registration page for Russians to register their terminals with IDs and locations, and got more than 2,400 Russian army locations to pass to the UA army.
Vladyslav Heraskevych has announced that he intends to take the IOC to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, after his disqualification from the skeleton earlier today.
Meanwhile Zelenskyy has awarded him the equivalent of a knighthood, and a Ukrainian bank has given him 1m hyrivnas, around £23,000. He also intends to auction off his controversial helmet.
Oh, and it’s going to be *THE* story today from every broadcaster who’s at the Games in Italy.
Is it wrong of me to laugh at the term ‘controversial helmet’
Well the IOC thought it was controversial. No-one else did.
Vladyslav Heraskevych has announced that he intends to take the IOC to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, after his disqualification from the skeleton earlier today.
Meanwhile Zelenskyy has awarded him the equivalent of a knighthood, and a Ukrainian bank has given him 1m hyrivnas, around £23,000. He also intends to auction off his controversial helmet.
Oh, and it’s going to be *THE* story today from every broadcaster who’s at the Games in Italy.
Is it wrong of me to laugh at the term ‘controversial helmet’
Vladyslav Heraskevych has announced that he intends to take the IOC to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, after his disqualification from the skeleton earlier today.
Meanwhile Zelenskyy has awarded him the equivalent of a knighthood, and a Ukrainian bank has given him 1m hyrivnas, around £23,000. He also intends to auction off his controversial helmet.
Oh, and it’s going to be *THE* story today from every broadcaster who’s at the Games in Italy.
Is it wrong of me to laugh at the term ‘controversial helmet’
‘ BREAKING: Russia is considering moving back to the US Dollar as part of a wide-ranging economic partnership with President Trump, per Bloomberg.
In the end, the Russian elite crave acceptance as part of the West, and want to rub shoulders with people like Mandelson and Epstein rather than their Chinese equivalents.
‘ BREAKING: Russia is considering moving back to the US Dollar as part of a wide-ranging economic partnership with President Trump, per Bloomberg.
In the end, the Russian elite crave acceptance as part of the West, and want to rub shoulders with people like Mandelson and Epstein rather than their Chinese equivalents.
Any deal which includes "windfalls for US companies" clearly contains great potential for exploitation by the Trump crimes organisation. So it's a great deal for Trump, and a great deal for Putin.
"Staycations could cost £100 more if holiday tax introduced The price of a holiday in England could rise if the government pushes ahead with plans to introduce a holiday tax, hospitality and leisure bosses have warned.
In a letter, the heads of the leading UK accommodation firms - including Butlin's, Hilton and Travelodge - told Rachel Reeves that "holidays are for relaxing, not taxing" and urged her to scrap plans for a visitor levy in England."
A staycation won't cost more, as that means staying at home and going on day trips.
The majority of companies have a tourist tax, it recognises that tourists use local services but don't pay into them. It doesn't seem too unjust to me.
What about a surcharge on anyone who uses "staycation" to refer to going on holiday in the UK? Might earn a few bob.
(apparently, it really is ignoramuses: see wiktionary. It's derived from the Latin "ignoro" and the conjugation goes as follows:
ignōrō - I do not know ignōrās - you do not know ignōrat - he/she/it does not know ignōrāmus - we do not know ignōrātis - you do not know ignōrant - they do not know
Any deal which includes "windfalls for US companies" clearly contains great potential for exploitation by the Trump crimes organisation. So it's a great deal for Trump, and a great deal for Putin.
Shouldn’t that be the Trump Crimes Disorganisation?
Wouldn’t want to libel the Mafia, Yakuza etc by association…
"Staycations could cost £100 more if holiday tax introduced The price of a holiday in England could rise if the government pushes ahead with plans to introduce a holiday tax, hospitality and leisure bosses have warned.
In a letter, the heads of the leading UK accommodation firms - including Butlin's, Hilton and Travelodge - told Rachel Reeves that "holidays are for relaxing, not taxing" and urged her to scrap plans for a visitor levy in England."
A staycation won't cost more, as that means staying at home and going on day trips.
The majority of companies have a tourist tax, it recognises that tourists use local services but don't pay into them. It doesn't seem too unjust to me.
There's a few different ways you could implement the tax, though. It could be as a percentage on the cost of the room/rental. Or it could be as a holiday poll tax, per person, per night.
In my part of the world it’s a flat 20dhm (£4) per room per night. Even for a fancy £400 room.
I would favour a fixed percentage of the bill, but with exemptions for small businesses, such as people with a couple of B&B rooms in their own home or 5 pitch caravan and motorhome pitches in a farmer’s field. I would not exclude AirB&B type properties, though.
Some local authorities planning to introduce have already said to fixed caravan parks (the Haven type) and motorhome/caravan parks people drive to that they won’t be excluded.
Depending how this cash grab it pitched it can be a very regressive tax penalising cheaper holidays and the less well off far more than the wealthier.
After SpaceX deactivated the Russian Starlink terminals, the Ukrainian spooks set up a fake registration page for Russians to register their terminals with IDs and locations, and got more than 2,400 Russian army locations to pass to the UA army.
Thats why every day something new, something enhanced is being announced
Dont believe the paralysis lies from bare faced lying opponents
Considering the PM had to be dragged into giving a truthful answer about what he knew about Mandleson.. your response is a tad rich. All politicians lie, its in their make up. Just so happens your lot are mired in doodoo right now and will be for some time.
"Staycations could cost £100 more if holiday tax introduced The price of a holiday in England could rise if the government pushes ahead with plans to introduce a holiday tax, hospitality and leisure bosses have warned.
In a letter, the heads of the leading UK accommodation firms - including Butlin's, Hilton and Travelodge - told Rachel Reeves that "holidays are for relaxing, not taxing" and urged her to scrap plans for a visitor levy in England."
A staycation won't cost more, as that means staying at home and going on day trips.
The majority of companies have a tourist tax, it recognises that tourists use local services but don't pay into them. It doesn't seem too unjust to me.
There's a few different ways you could implement the tax, though. It could be as a percentage on the cost of the room/rental. Or it could be as a holiday poll tax, per person, per night.
In my part of the world it’s a flat 20dhm (£4) per room per night. Even for a fancy £400 room.
I would favour a fixed percentage of the bill, but with exemptions for small businesses, such as people with a couple of B&B rooms in their own home or 5 pitch caravan and motorhome pitches in a farmer’s field. I would not exclude AirB&B type properties, though.
There’s already a fixed 20% of the bill in tax on UK hotel rooms.
No 10 claims it still has cabinet secretary - but won't say who it is, and won't comment on reports Chris Wormald being sacked The Downing Street lobby briefing has just finished but, on the issue of the fate of Chris Wormald (see 10.07am), reporters emerged no wiser than when they went in.
The PM’s spokesperson refused to say what is happening to Wormald and refused to say whether or not he is still cabinet secretary.
At one point the spokesperson said that the Cabinet Office was '“still being supervised by the cabinet secretary” – implying that someone is actually doing the job. But, when reporters asked who this mysterious individual was, the spokeperson refused to say.
Guardian live blog
Just incredible. Chaos.
My cabinet secretary goes to another school etc etc etc Unacceptable and shows government has ceased functioning.
There was an urgent question this morning re the release of the information from the cabinet office saying the cabinet secretary shouldn’t be changed before all the information is released to the Intelligence Committee
No response from government
Utter shambles
Given it could take months to release everything and specifically because the Metropolitan Police and CPS will dictate many of the timescales then no job can be on limbo to soothe the obsession of right wing media and hawks.
Any replacement would be under strict Job guidelines and protocols.
This is just puerile nonsense
If Wormold is being sacked
Sack him
The speaker again warned the government this morning not to use the police as an excuse as the information has to be sent to the Intelligence Committee who will decide not the cabinet office
Even the speaker is losing patience
Starmer’s likely has more control of his stuffed and rigged Intelligence Committee than his whips have over the backbenches right now. 😆
You notice how the Speaker keeps giving us the second line of his sentences first, and first line second? He is going to have to stand down and make way for a Conservative Speaker very soon.
She’s right there should be a proper process for these things, it’s not what conservatives done themselves in power though.
In fact how was Sir Humphrey appointed, was there ever an interview process for these sorts of promotions?
Kemi is the most aggressive attack dog LOTO. Is there anything she has agreed with Starmer and supported the government on, or is everything fair game? I don’t think if you are doing LOTO properly, everything to twist a knife and crank up the blood pressure in number 10 is fair game. I view it as LOTO and government front bench are a team for the national interest, first and foremost.
Spot on
She's like an 11 year old having first experience of debating
Totally aggressive Out of her depth Showboating
Well, maybe.
But the brutal truth in politics is that a successful opposition grinds down its opponent. Day in, day out. New Labour, when in opposition, were the kings of this. No point being in a LOTO team if you're not prepared to do that. Nice guys come last in this world.
If there's one thing Kemi is showing, it's that she does have an aptitude for doing this stuff. Of course, it's not the only attribute required, but it is one.
I don't disagree.
However when it's the only trick it can wear very thin very quickly
Any deal which includes "windfalls for US companies" clearly contains great potential for exploitation by the Trump crimes organisation. So it's a great deal for Trump, and a great deal for Putin.
Shouldn’t that be the Trump Crimes Disorganisation?
Wouldn’t want to libel the Mafia, Yakuza etc by association…
Judging by monetary results, they are pretty efficient at the whole corruption thing. That the externalities for everyone else might be orders of magnitude more costly is neither here nor there.
I don't entirely agree. There's a bit of me that thinks that Starmer has no political sense and so isn't up to the job of being PM, but there's also a bit of me that thinks that even though he's gotten into a right old mess there is an element of hysteria and opportunism in the criticism of Starmer. Over-all I'd say I'm a bit more sympathetic to him than I was. I think if he learns a lesson from this debacle he might improve his performance.
Right now even taking Starmer's weaknesses into account I can't see any better alternative PM from the Labour or opposition ranks. So if he's the best we've got I want him to do well as he can.
I don't entirely agree. There's a bit of me that thinks that Starmer has no political sense and so isn't up to the job of being PM, but there's also a bit of me that thinks that even though he's gotten into a right old mess there is an element of hysteria and opportunism in the criticism of Starmer. Over-all I'd say I'm a bit more sympathetic to him than I was. I think if he learns a lesson from this debacle he might improve his performance.
Right now even taking Starmer's weaknesses into account I can't see any better alternative PM from the Labour or opposition ranks. So if he's the best we've got I want him to do well as he can.
"Staycations could cost £100 more if holiday tax introduced The price of a holiday in England could rise if the government pushes ahead with plans to introduce a holiday tax, hospitality and leisure bosses have warned.
In a letter, the heads of the leading UK accommodation firms - including Butlin's, Hilton and Travelodge - told Rachel Reeves that "holidays are for relaxing, not taxing" and urged her to scrap plans for a visitor levy in England."
A staycation won't cost more, as that means staying at home and going on day trips.
The majority of companies have a tourist tax, it recognises that tourists use local services but don't pay into them. It doesn't seem too unjust to me.
The original use of staycation was just that - stay at home and have trips out. It then became 'holidaying in the UK' which is frankly ridiculous. If I holiday in Devon, or Inverness I'm just as much going on holiday as if I fly to Normandy.
When I am elected Fuhrer for the UK that's the number one thing I'm cracking down on. A staycation is NOT a holiday in the UK.
I suppose it's too much to hope that the deal is conditional on Russia pulling it's troops out of Ukraine?
Someone’s planted a story with Bloomberg. Russia’s been leading the global effort at de-dollarisation for years now, and there’s precisely no US/Russia agreement that gets past Europe without a total withdrawal of Russia from Ukraine, back to the 1991 borders.
I want a specific date. If in the agreement, under which America, Russia – specifically Putin – I as President of Ukraine, and Europe sign, there is no date, then Russia will do everything to block the process. And not even with its own hands, but through certain European representatives.
We have witnessed similar situations: when clusters are not opened. Problems arose with candidacy. There was an entire wave of challenges, and our struggle. But nonetheless, we achieved candidacy. With the clusters, it is more complicated.
For us, the EU means specifics, because this is about security guarantees for Ukraine. These are specific details, with a specific date. And my signature today, on the 20-point plan, the plan to end the war, guarantees Ukrainians that there will be a specific date for our accession.
I want a specific date. If in the agreement, under which America, Russia – specifically Putin – I as President of Ukraine, and Europe sign, there is no date, then Russia will do everything to block the process. And not even with its own hands, but through certain European representatives.
We have witnessed similar situations: when clusters are not opened. Problems arose with candidacy. There was an entire wave of challenges, and our struggle. But nonetheless, we achieved candidacy. With the clusters, it is more complicated.
For us, the EU means specifics, because this is about security guarantees for Ukraine. These are specific details, with a specific date. And my signature today, on the 20-point plan, the plan to end the war, guarantees Ukrainians that there will be a specific date for our accession.
Which is not to suggest any deal is close.
We have not received any response from the Russians regarding the energy ceasefire. If anything, one could say the opposite – we received responses in the form of drones and missile attacks. This indicates that, for now, they are not ready for the energy ceasefire proposed by the U.S. side in Abu Dhabi.
As for the meeting in Miami or Abu Dhabi. Why “or”? Because the U.S. side proposed holding it next week – a meeting in America, in Miami – and we immediately confirmed. We were waiting for a response from the Russians. So far, as I understand it, Russia is hesitating. This will once again be a proposal for the Middle East or for America – we are ready. It doesn’t matter to us whether the meeting takes place in Miami or Abu Dhabi. The main thing is that there is a result. https://x.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/2021679402413879615
"Staycations could cost £100 more if holiday tax introduced The price of a holiday in England could rise if the government pushes ahead with plans to introduce a holiday tax, hospitality and leisure bosses have warned.
In a letter, the heads of the leading UK accommodation firms - including Butlin's, Hilton and Travelodge - told Rachel Reeves that "holidays are for relaxing, not taxing" and urged her to scrap plans for a visitor levy in England."
A staycation won't cost more, as that means staying at home and going on day trips.
The majority of companies have a tourist tax, it recognises that tourists use local services but don't pay into them. It doesn't seem too unjust to me.
There's a few different ways you could implement the tax, though. It could be as a percentage on the cost of the room/rental. Or it could be as a holiday poll tax, per person, per night.
In my part of the world it’s a flat 20dhm (£4) per room per night. Even for a fancy £400 room.
I would favour a fixed percentage of the bill, but with exemptions for small businesses, such as people with a couple of B&B rooms in their own home or 5 pitch caravan and motorhome pitches in a farmer’s field. I would not exclude AirB&B type properties, though.
There’s already a fixed 20% of the bill in tax on UK hotel rooms.
Let's repeat the Health Warning
This is not enforced by Government
Very much a local decision
It really is up to the relevant authorities to communicate and interact with local SMEs not global or even big National brands
In some places it may have a tangible benefit.
As an example St Ives Cornwall will still be crammed with people if they implement it so why not but use proceeds to improve Penzance and Falmouth
Salcombe sililarlyvwill be crammed so help some of the places like Slapton and Torcross where road has vanished.
I suppose it's too much to hope that the deal is conditional on Russia pulling it's troops out of Ukraine?
Someone’s planted a story with Bloomberg. Russia’s been leading the global effort at de-dollarisation for years now, and there’s precisely no US/Russia agreement that gets past Europe without a total withdrawal of Russia from Ukraine, back to the 1991 borders.
I can't find a credible primary source, let alone Bloomberg
(apparently, it really is ignoramuses: see wiktionary. It's derived from the Latin "ignoro" and the conjugation goes as follows:
ignōrō - I do not know ignōrās - you do not know ignōrat - he/she/it does not know ignōrāmus - we do not know ignōrātis - you do not know ignōrant - they do not know
I still don’t understand why we are all talking like life is just going to continue as it is
It’s utterly farcical. It’s like talking about the upcoming cricket season in February 2020
I assume this is related to AI..?
Or aliens.
AI Aliens.
I've been using LLMs for a while and agentic dev patterns in earnest since late last year. We're not about to be enslaved by our AI overlords. Change is coming and my fear is not the AI, but rather our government's complete inability to respond effectively
Any deal which includes "windfalls for US companies" clearly contains great potential for exploitation by the Trump crimes organisation. So it's a great deal for Trump, and a great deal for Putin.
Shouldn’t that be the Trump Crimes Disorganisation?
Wouldn’t want to libel the Mafia, Yakuza etc by association…
Judging by monetary results, they are pretty efficient at the whole corruption thing. That the externalities for everyone else might be orders of magnitude more costly is neither here nor there.
Compared to that South Korean President, who made it to retirement, before they found half a billion dollars resting in his accounts.
Much smaller economy, years back. The equivalent today, for Trump would be a hundred billion plus. Extracted quietly.
"Staycations could cost £100 more if holiday tax introduced The price of a holiday in England could rise if the government pushes ahead with plans to introduce a holiday tax, hospitality and leisure bosses have warned.
In a letter, the heads of the leading UK accommodation firms - including Butlin's, Hilton and Travelodge - told Rachel Reeves that "holidays are for relaxing, not taxing" and urged her to scrap plans for a visitor levy in England."
A staycation won't cost more, as that means staying at home and going on day trips.
The majority of companies have a tourist tax, it recognises that tourists use local services but don't pay into them. It doesn't seem too unjust to me.
The original use of staycation was just that - stay at home and have trips out. It then became 'holidaying in the UK' which is frankly ridiculous. If I holiday in Devon, or Inverness I'm just as much going on holiday as if I fly to Normandy.
When I am elected Fuhrer for the UK that's the number one thing I'm cracking down on. A staycation is NOT a holiday in the UK.
#languageshouldneverchange
In one respect though - our balance of payments - it is very different.
It's a US word, originally coined in the US in the 1940s, so it's not ridiculous to have a separate UK nuance, given how much more frequent overseas holidays are for Brits.
(apparently, it really is ignoramuses: see wiktionary. It's derived from the Latin "ignoro" and the conjugation goes as follows:
ignōrō - I do not know ignōrās - you do not know ignōrat - he/she/it does not know ignōrāmus - we do not know ignōrātis - you do not know ignōrant - they do not know
Well, as we know, there are those who know about AI and those that can't talk about it....
I'm reminded sometimes of the old adage you know you're doing a good job when people don't think you're doing anything at all.
The delusion of activity - I mean, why, what's the point?
As for holidays at home, yes, well, why not, we have a beautiful country with a huge amount to see and places to go well beyond the usual. I'm a sucker for the Scottish Borders - Jedburgh, Melrose, Selkirk etc and for the Marches (that's the ones between England and Wales not the ones in Ulster in July and August).
I've got a couple of trips planned for the summer before the schools empty to places I've not so far visited and I'm looking forward.
I suppose it's too much to hope that the deal is conditional on Russia pulling it's troops out of Ukraine?
Someone’s planted a story with Bloomberg. Russia’s been leading the global effort at de-dollarisation for years now, and there’s precisely no US/Russia agreement that gets past Europe without a total withdrawal of Russia from Ukraine, back to the 1991 borders.
I can't find a credible primary source, let alone Bloomberg
"Staycations could cost £100 more if holiday tax introduced The price of a holiday in England could rise if the government pushes ahead with plans to introduce a holiday tax, hospitality and leisure bosses have warned.
In a letter, the heads of the leading UK accommodation firms - including Butlin's, Hilton and Travelodge - told Rachel Reeves that "holidays are for relaxing, not taxing" and urged her to scrap plans for a visitor levy in England."
A staycation won't cost more, as that means staying at home and going on day trips.
The majority of companies have a tourist tax, it recognises that tourists use local services but don't pay into them. It doesn't seem too unjust to me.
The original use of staycation was just that - stay at home and have trips out. It then became 'holidaying in the UK' which is frankly ridiculous. If I holiday in Devon, or Inverness I'm just as much going on holiday as if I fly to Normandy.
When I am elected Fuhrer for the UK that's the number one thing I'm cracking down on. A staycation is NOT a holiday in the UK.
#languageshouldneverchange
In one respect though - our balance of payments - it is very different.
It's a US word, originally coined in the US in the 1940s, so it's not ridiculous to have a separate UK nuance, given how much more frequent overseas holidays are for Brits.
It's not as frequent as you think - only about 50% of people each year? And the number of trips is highly weighted towards the richest. It's why air passenger duty is one of the most equitable carbon taxes.
"Staycations could cost £100 more if holiday tax introduced The price of a holiday in England could rise if the government pushes ahead with plans to introduce a holiday tax, hospitality and leisure bosses have warned.
In a letter, the heads of the leading UK accommodation firms - including Butlin's, Hilton and Travelodge - told Rachel Reeves that "holidays are for relaxing, not taxing" and urged her to scrap plans for a visitor levy in England."
A staycation won't cost more, as that means staying at home and going on day trips.
The majority of companies have a tourist tax, it recognises that tourists use local services but don't pay into them. It doesn't seem too unjust to me.
The original use of staycation was just that - stay at home and have trips out. It then became 'holidaying in the UK' which is frankly ridiculous. If I holiday in Devon, or Inverness I'm just as much going on holiday as if I fly to Normandy.
When I am elected Fuhrer for the UK that's the number one thing I'm cracking down on. A staycation is NOT a holiday in the UK.
#languageshouldneverchange
In one respect though - our balance of payments - it is very different.
It's a US word, originally coined in the US in the 1940s, so it's not ridiculous to have a separate UK nuance, given how much more frequent overseas holidays are for Brits.
It's not as frequent as you think - only about 50% of people each year? And the number of trips is highly weighted towards the richest. It's why air passenger duty is one of the most equitable carbon taxes.
APD as currently structured, is a massive bung to KLM and Lufthansa at the expense of BA.
Correction: A previous version of this post misidentified the South Caucasus as belonging to Russia. The region, made up of territory in Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, is not part of Russia. We deleted the previous tweet.
I suppose it's too much to hope that the deal is conditional on Russia pulling it's troops out of Ukraine?
Someone’s planted a story with Bloomberg. Russia’s been leading the global effort at de-dollarisation for years now, and there’s precisely no US/Russia agreement that gets past Europe without a total withdrawal of Russia from Ukraine, back to the 1991 borders.
I agree, but isn't the US, under Trump, likely to put making money well ahead of any worries about Europe?
Correction: A previous version of this post misidentified the South Caucasus as belonging to Russia. The region, made up of territory in Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, is not part of Russia. We deleted the previous tweet.
Correction: A previous version of this post misidentified the South Caucasus as belonging to Russia. The region, made up of territory in Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, is not part of Russia. We deleted the previous tweet.
Correction: A previous version of this post misidentified the South Caucasus as belonging to Russia. The region, made up of territory in Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, is not part of Russia. We deleted the previous tweet.
Correction: A previous version of this post misidentified the South Caucasus as belonging to Russia. The region, made up of territory in Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, is not part of Russia. We deleted the previous tweet.
*None* of the D.C. grand jurors who heard the Trump admin's pitch on why they should indict the Democratic lawmakers who recorded that illegal orders video believed the Justice Department had met the low threshold of probable cause, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News. https://x.com/kylegriffin1/status/2021703491392045466
This is ...unusual. For comparison, in 2016, the Justice Department investigated more than 151,000 suspects, and grand juries returned six “no bills".
Angela Rayner is currently making some huge attacks on Rachel Reeves over business rates, energy bills and hospitality VAT.
Speaking at the nighttime economy summit in Liverpool, Rayner also appears to be doing some major pro-business positioning ahead of the inevitable leadership contest.
She says: "Confidence in politics matters. Businesses need to believe they will be treated fairly. That the rules won't shift without warning. That the long-standing structural issues will finally be addressed, not deferred again."
She says the government needs to drop ideology and be pragmatic to help businesses 👀
She is right though and sensible take on business
Meh. It's words. Does anyone seriously think Rayner's political instincts, or the interest groups she intends to serve, are pro-business ?
She pioneered the so-called workers rights bill at the behest of the Unions. A few token watering down of a couple of its elements doesn’t change that.
People might be missing the point. The most important part of what Rayner said is about stability: That the rules won't shift without warning. By and large, businesses (and people) can cope with or manage around policies they don't like, but they can't handle repeated, arbitrary lurches.
Labour politics-wise, this might be a repeat of the prawn cocktail offensive but more likely she has been talking to Andy Burnham.
She's more beholden to left wing ideology and has more populist instincts than Reeves (or Starmer, to the extent one can detect any coherent political philosophy or instincts in him at all). That is a recipe for more tax on business and more arbitrary changes, not less.
I like her, I'd want her fighting my corner if I was in her client group, but I'm not.
The focus on energy prices is an interesting one. Those are pretty much back at their 2021 prices in real terms this year, and the Govt will meet their manifesto reduction pledge.
If Starmer gets his f*cking comms sorted out (a very big if), it is potentially a winning issue.
(Forecast is 2026, not 2025. I looked over the numbers.)
Petrol is cheaper in cash terms, never mind real terms, than in 2012.
AEP of Telegraph reckons further to go as there is a global glut.
In my part of the world petrol is now cheaper than at any time offer the pandemic. 49p/litre for Super 98.
AEP might actually be right for a change.
I think he's almost certainly right: it's a combination of investment in oil and gas post Ukraine invasion, and continued roll out of renewables.
Things I would not want to be spending money on now: new nuclear plants.
I still don’t understand why we are all talking like life is just going to continue as it is
It’s utterly farcical. It’s like talking about the upcoming cricket season in February 2020
I assume this is related to AI..?
Or aliens.
AI Aliens.
I've been using LLMs for a while and agentic dev patterns in earnest since late last year. We're not about to be enslaved by our AI overlords. Change is coming and my fear is not the AI, but rather our government's complete inability to respond effectively
I think our erstwhile reporter from the front of Reddit believes two things. (1) AGI has been achieved and LLM's are conscious and (2) we are about to see hundreds of thousands or millions of white collar jobs vanish in a very short time.
In think (1) is wrong but there is something in (2) for sure. Maybe we are finally approaching the future of Tomorrow's World where no one has to work, and its just leisure all the time...
Angela Rayner is currently making some huge attacks on Rachel Reeves over business rates, energy bills and hospitality VAT.
Speaking at the nighttime economy summit in Liverpool, Rayner also appears to be doing some major pro-business positioning ahead of the inevitable leadership contest.
She says: "Confidence in politics matters. Businesses need to believe they will be treated fairly. That the rules won't shift without warning. That the long-standing structural issues will finally be addressed, not deferred again."
She says the government needs to drop ideology and be pragmatic to help businesses 👀
She is right though and sensible take on business
Meh. It's words. Does anyone seriously think Rayner's political instincts, or the interest groups she intends to serve, are pro-business ?
She pioneered the so-called workers rights bill at the behest of the Unions. A few token watering down of a couple of its elements doesn’t change that.
People might be missing the point. The most important part of what Rayner said is about stability: That the rules won't shift without warning. By and large, businesses (and people) can cope with or manage around policies they don't like, but they can't handle repeated, arbitrary lurches.
Labour politics-wise, this might be a repeat of the prawn cocktail offensive but more likely she has been talking to Andy Burnham.
She's more beholden to left wing ideology and has more populist instincts than Reeves (or Starmer, to the extent one can detect any coherent political philosophy or instincts in him at all). That is a recipe for more tax on business and more arbitrary changes, not less.
I like her, I'd want her fighting my corner if I was in her client group, but I'm not.
The focus on energy prices is an interesting one. Those are pretty much back at their 2021 prices in real terms this year, and the Govt will meet their manifesto reduction pledge.
If Starmer gets his f*cking comms sorted out (a very big if), it is potentially a winning issue.
(Forecast is 2026, not 2025. I looked over the numbers.)
Petrol is cheaper in cash terms, never mind real terms, than in 2012.
AEP of Telegraph reckons further to go as there is a global glut.
In my part of the world petrol is now cheaper than at any time offer the pandemic. 49p/litre for Super 98.
AEP might actually be right for a change.
I think he's almost certainly right: it's a combination of investment in oil and gas post Ukraine invasion, and continued roll out of renewables.
Things I would not want to be spending money on now: new nuclear plants.
If there’s a glut of oil that’s not great for some petrol states who need it to stay at a relatively high level.
Well, as we know, there are those who know about AI and those that can't talk about it....
I'm reminded sometimes of the old adage you know you're doing a good job when people don't think you're doing anything at all.
The delusion of activity - I mean, why, what's the point?
As for holidays at home, yes, well, why not, we have a beautiful country with a huge amount to see and places to go well beyond the usual. I'm a sucker for the Scottish Borders - Jedburgh, Melrose, Selkirk etc and for the Marches (that's the ones between England and Wales not the ones in Ulster in July and August).
I've got a couple of trips planned for the summer before the schools empty to places I've not so far visited and I'm looking forward.
When I was a teenager in the 50s I and my friends canoed the Tweed from it's source to Berwick and floated past those beautiful towns and wonderful border region
It took us 5 days camping each night on the river bank
I still don’t understand why we are all talking like life is just going to continue as it is
It’s utterly farcical. It’s like talking about the upcoming cricket season in February 2020
I assume this is related to AI..?
Or aliens.
AI Aliens.
I've been using LLMs for a while and agentic dev patterns in earnest since late last year. We're not about to be enslaved by our AI overlords. Change is coming and my fear is not the AI, but rather our government's complete inability to respond effectively
I think our erstwhile reporter from the front of Reddit believes two things. (1) AGI has been achieved and LLM's are conscious and (2) we are about to see hundreds of thousands or millions of white collar jobs vanish in a very short time.
In think (1) is wrong but there is something in (2) for sure. Maybe we are finally approaching the future of Tomorrow's World where no one has to work, and its just leisure all the time...
1 is wrong, absolutely nothing in it at all. That's not to say that LLM are improving seemingly exponentially, but they are nothing like AGI and not showing anything like consciousness. 2 is massively overblown
I still don’t understand why we are all talking like life is just going to continue as it is
It’s utterly farcical. It’s like talking about the upcoming cricket season in February 2020
I assume this is related to AI..?
Or aliens.
AI Aliens.
I've been using LLMs for a while and agentic dev patterns in earnest since late last year. We're not about to be enslaved by our AI overlords. Change is coming and my fear is not the AI, but rather our government's complete inability to respond effectively
I think our erstwhile reporter from the front of Reddit believes two things. (1) AGI has been achieved and LLM's are conscious and (2) we are about to see hundreds of thousands or millions of white collar jobs vanish in a very short time.
In think (1) is wrong but there is something in (2) for sure. Maybe we are finally approaching the future of Tomorrow's World where no one has to work, and its just leisure all the time...
1 is wrong, absolutely nothing in it at all. That's not to say that LLM are improving seemingly exponentially, but they are nothing like AGI and not showing anything like consciousness. 2 is massively overblown
He is a believer in (1). I think we are seeing jobs taken by AI - call centres, translators etc. Time will tell
Correction: A previous version of this post misidentified the South Caucasus as belonging to Russia. The region, made up of territory in Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, is not part of Russia. We deleted the previous tweet.
Journalism dies in darkness.
Bezos has gutted the Post, so it's barely worth the time to critique it anyway.
I still don’t understand why we are all talking like life is just going to continue as it is
It’s utterly farcical. It’s like talking about the upcoming cricket season in February 2020
I assume this is related to AI..?
Or aliens.
AI Aliens.
I've been using LLMs for a while and agentic dev patterns in earnest since late last year. We're not about to be enslaved by our AI overlords. Change is coming and my fear is not the AI, but rather our government's complete inability to respond effectively
I think our erstwhile reporter from the front of Reddit believes two things. (1) AGI has been achieved and LLM's are conscious and (2) we are about to see hundreds of thousands or millions of white collar jobs vanish in a very short time.
In think (1) is wrong but there is something in (2) for sure. Maybe we are finally approaching the future of Tomorrow's World where no one has to work, and its just leisure all the time...
1 is wrong, absolutely nothing in it at all. That's not to say that LLM are improving seemingly exponentially, but they are nothing like AGI and not showing anything like consciousness. 2 is massively overblown
He is a believer in (1). I think we are seeing jobs taken by AI - call centres, translators etc. Time will tell
In most white-collar jobs, people won’t vanish overnight. They’ll just be expected to do the work of one-and-a-half people because “the AI helps, doesn’t it?”. Lawyers will draft faster. Accountants will reconcile quicker. Devs will scaffold half a service before their tea’s gone cold. And management will quietly recalibrate what “normal productivity” means.
SMEs won’t sit there building foundation models. They’ll just wake up one Tuesday and their accounting software can summarise cash flow, chase invoices, and write polite emails to Dave who still hasn’t paid. Fewer admin hires. Fewer grads being paid to move numbers between spreadsheets. No drama, just less friction.
Public sector? There’ll be committees. Strategy decks. A few pilots. Eventually someone will realise automating document processing saves millions and we’ll call it innovation. Slowly. Carefully. With three layers of governance and a procurement portal from 2009.
The UK’s in an odd but decent position. We’re a services economy. AI mostly boosts services. That’s helpful. What we’re not brilliant at is decisive execution. So the upside is there — if we don’t regulate it into interpretive dance.
The real shift isn’t technical wizardry. It’s judgement. If your job is copying information from A to B and making it look tidy, I’d start learning something awkward. If you can think clearly, define problems properly, and sanity-check what the machine spits out, you’ll do fine.
It’s not the end of work. It’s the end of a certain kind of comfortable inefficiency.
And if, like me, you’ve survived 30 years in tech already, this is just another tool that overpromises, under-delivers for a bit, and then quietly becomes essential while everyone pretends they saw it coming.
Well, as we know, there are those who know about AI and those that can't talk about it....
I'm reminded sometimes of the old adage you know you're doing a good job when people don't think you're doing anything at all.
The delusion of activity - I mean, why, what's the point?
As for holidays at home, yes, well, why not, we have a beautiful country with a huge amount to see and places to go well beyond the usual. I'm a sucker for the Scottish Borders - Jedburgh, Melrose, Selkirk etc and for the Marches (that's the ones between England and Wales not the ones in Ulster in July and August).
I've got a couple of trips planned for the summer before the schools empty to places I've not so far visited and I'm looking forward.
When I was a teenager in the 50s I and my friends canoed the Tweed from it's source to Berwick and floated past those beautiful towns and wonderful border region
It took us 5 days camping each night on the river bank
Such happy memories
Did quite a lot of long-distance cycling and also hitch-hiked. All in England & Wales. Youth Hostelled mainly.
I still don’t understand why we are all talking like life is just going to continue as it is
It’s utterly farcical. It’s like talking about the upcoming cricket season in February 2020
I assume this is related to AI..?
Or aliens.
AI Aliens.
I've been using LLMs for a while and agentic dev patterns in earnest since late last year. We're not about to be enslaved by our AI overlords. Change is coming and my fear is not the AI, but rather our government's complete inability to respond effectively
I think our erstwhile reporter from the front of Reddit believes two things. (1) AGI has been achieved and LLM's are conscious and (2) we are about to see hundreds of thousands or millions of white collar jobs vanish in a very short time.
In think (1) is wrong but there is something in (2) for sure. Maybe we are finally approaching the future of Tomorrow's World where no one has to work, and its just leisure all the time...
Another possibility is the rise in value of manufacturing, compared with the value of providing services. (You're seeing the start of that already in computing.)
And the UK is not well placed for that eventuality.
I still don’t understand why we are all talking like life is just going to continue as it is
It’s utterly farcical. It’s like talking about the upcoming cricket season in February 2020
I assume this is related to AI..?
Or aliens.
AI Aliens.
I've been using LLMs for a while and agentic dev patterns in earnest since late last year. We're not about to be enslaved by our AI overlords. Change is coming and my fear is not the AI, but rather our government's complete inability to respond effectively
I think our erstwhile reporter from the front of Reddit believes two things. (1) AGI has been achieved and LLM's are conscious and (2) we are about to see hundreds of thousands or millions of white collar jobs vanish in a very short time.
In think (1) is wrong but there is something in (2) for sure. Maybe we are finally approaching the future of Tomorrow's World where no one has to work, and its just leisure all the time...
1 is wrong, absolutely nothing in it at all. That's not to say that LLM are improving seemingly exponentially, but they are nothing like AGI and not showing anything like consciousness. 2 is massively overblown
He is a believer in (1). I think we are seeing jobs taken by AI - call centres, translators etc. Time will tell
In most white-collar jobs, people won’t vanish overnight. They’ll just be expected to do the work of one-and-a-half people because “the AI helps, doesn’t it?”. Lawyers will draft faster. Accountants will reconcile quicker. Devs will scaffold half a service before their tea’s gone cold. And management will quietly recalibrate what “normal productivity” means.
SMEs won’t sit there building foundation models. They’ll just wake up one Tuesday and their accounting software can summarise cash flow, chase invoices, and write polite emails to Dave who still hasn’t paid. Fewer admin hires. Fewer grads being paid to move numbers between spreadsheets. No drama, just less friction.
Public sector? There’ll be committees. Strategy decks. A few pilots. Eventually someone will realise automating document processing saves millions and we’ll call it innovation. Slowly. Carefully. With three layers of governance and a procurement portal from 2009.
The UK’s in an odd but decent position. We’re a services economy. AI mostly boosts services. That’s helpful. What we’re not brilliant at is decisive execution. So the upside is there — if we don’t regulate it into interpretive dance.
The real shift isn’t technical wizardry. It’s judgement. If your job is copying information from A to B and making it look tidy, I’d start learning something awkward. If you can think clearly, define problems properly, and sanity-check what the machine spits out, you’ll do fine.
It’s not the end of work. It’s the end of a certain kind of comfortable inefficiency.
And if, like me, you’ve survived 30 years in tech already, this is just another tool that overpromises, under-delivers for a bit, and then quietly becomes essential while everyone pretends they saw it coming.
I still don’t understand why we are all talking like life is just going to continue as it is
It’s utterly farcical. It’s like talking about the upcoming cricket season in February 2020
I assume this is related to AI..?
Or aliens.
AI Aliens.
I've been using LLMs for a while and agentic dev patterns in earnest since late last year. We're not about to be enslaved by our AI overlords. Change is coming and my fear is not the AI, but rather our government's complete inability to respond effectively
I think our erstwhile reporter from the front of Reddit believes two things. (1) AGI has been achieved and LLM's are conscious and (2) we are about to see hundreds of thousands or millions of white collar jobs vanish in a very short time.
In think (1) is wrong but there is something in (2) for sure. Maybe we are finally approaching the future of Tomorrow's World where no one has to work, and its just leisure all the time...
Another possibility is the rise in value of manufacturing, compared with the value of providing services. (You're seeing the start of that already in computing.)
And the UK is not well placed for that eventuality.
I still don’t understand why we are all talking like life is just going to continue as it is
It’s utterly farcical. It’s like talking about the upcoming cricket season in February 2020
I assume this is related to AI..?
Or aliens.
AI Aliens.
I've been using LLMs for a while and agentic dev patterns in earnest since late last year. We're not about to be enslaved by our AI overlords. Change is coming and my fear is not the AI, but rather our government's complete inability to respond effectively
I think our erstwhile reporter from the front of Reddit believes two things. (1) AGI has been achieved and LLM's are conscious and (2) we are about to see hundreds of thousands or millions of white collar jobs vanish in a very short time.
In think (1) is wrong but there is something in (2) for sure. Maybe we are finally approaching the future of Tomorrow's World where no one has to work, and its just leisure all the time...
1 is wrong, absolutely nothing in it at all. That's not to say that LLM are improving seemingly exponentially, but they are nothing like AGI and not showing anything like consciousness. 2 is massively overblown
He is a believer in (1). I think we are seeing jobs taken by AI - call centres, translators etc. Time will tell
In most white-collar jobs, people won’t vanish overnight. They’ll just be expected to do the work of one-and-a-half people because “the AI helps, doesn’t it?”. Lawyers will draft faster. Accountants will reconcile quicker. Devs will scaffold half a service before their tea’s gone cold. And management will quietly recalibrate what “normal productivity” means.
SMEs won’t sit there building foundation models. They’ll just wake up one Tuesday and their accounting software can summarise cash flow, chase invoices, and write polite emails to Dave who still hasn’t paid. Fewer admin hires. Fewer grads being paid to move numbers between spreadsheets. No drama, just less friction.
Public sector? There’ll be committees. Strategy decks. A few pilots. Eventually someone will realise automating document processing saves millions and we’ll call it innovation. Slowly. Carefully. With three layers of governance and a procurement portal from 2009.
The UK’s in an odd but decent position. We’re a services economy. AI mostly boosts services. That’s helpful. What we’re not brilliant at is decisive execution. So the upside is there — if we don’t regulate it into interpretive dance.
The real shift isn’t technical wizardry. It’s judgement. If your job is copying information from A to B and making it look tidy, I’d start learning something awkward. If you can think clearly, define problems properly, and sanity-check what the machine spits out, you’ll do fine.
It’s not the end of work. It’s the end of a certain kind of comfortable inefficiency.
And if, like me, you’ve survived 30 years in tech already, this is just another tool that overpromises, under-delivers for a bit, and then quietly becomes essential while everyone pretends they saw it coming.
Same circus. New clown.
How many ostlers turned into motor-mechanics?
Not many perhaps, but lots of carriage and wagon makers moved into automobile manufacture.
I still don’t understand why we are all talking like life is just going to continue as it is
It’s utterly farcical. It’s like talking about the upcoming cricket season in February 2020
I assume this is related to AI..?
Or aliens.
AI Aliens.
I've been using LLMs for a while and agentic dev patterns in earnest since late last year. We're not about to be enslaved by our AI overlords. Change is coming and my fear is not the AI, but rather our government's complete inability to respond effectively
I think our erstwhile reporter from the front of Reddit believes two things. (1) AGI has been achieved and LLM's are conscious and (2) we are about to see hundreds of thousands or millions of white collar jobs vanish in a very short time.
In think (1) is wrong but there is something in (2) for sure. Maybe we are finally approaching the future of Tomorrow's World where no one has to work, and its just leisure all the time...
Another possibility is the rise in value of manufacturing, compared with the value of providing services. (You're seeing the start of that already in computing.)
And the UK is not well placed for that eventuality.
Most of the West is poorly positioned.
If we were positioned somewhere else, we wouldn't be the West, would we? We'd be the South, or the East, or the North, or the North-East by East or something.
Correction: A previous version of this post misidentified the South Caucasus as belonging to Russia. The region, made up of territory in Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, is not part of Russia. We deleted the previous tweet.
American Trump fan gets upset with his British daughter criticising Trump so decided to wave a loaded gun at her to show how guns can provide a sense of security. Gun goes off and kills her. Not a crime in the US of course, so no action taken, unlike driving a car at 3mph in the vicinity of secret police.
Correction: A previous version of this post misidentified the South Caucasus as belonging to Russia. The region, made up of territory in Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, is not part of Russia. We deleted the previous tweet.
Well, if their President can get Armenia and Albania confused, as Trump has...
I still don’t understand why we are all talking like life is just going to continue as it is
It’s utterly farcical. It’s like talking about the upcoming cricket season in February 2020
I assume this is related to AI..?
Or aliens.
AI Aliens.
I've been using LLMs for a while and agentic dev patterns in earnest since late last year. We're not about to be enslaved by our AI overlords. Change is coming and my fear is not the AI, but rather our government's complete inability to respond effectively
I think our erstwhile reporter from the front of Reddit believes two things. (1) AGI has been achieved and LLM's are conscious and (2) we are about to see hundreds of thousands or millions of white collar jobs vanish in a very short time.
In think (1) is wrong but there is something in (2) for sure. Maybe we are finally approaching the future of Tomorrow's World where no one has to work, and its just leisure all the time...
Kind of agree. We don't even have a viable pathway to AGI yet, and LLMs are most certainly not it. They will continue to get better, however, and will become more and more useful, at least for some tasks.
On jobs, sure some jobs will be eliminated by LLMs and video generators. I'm reminded of the 70s and 80s and the predictions of mass unemployment as computers became common. What business needed a typing pool when everyone had a computer and printer on their desk? No need to employ multiple people to sort through card indexes when one person with a computer and a database can do the same work more quickly.
But funny thing, ultimately employment went up during that time. All those people found other jobs.
I still don’t understand why we are all talking like life is just going to continue as it is
It’s utterly farcical. It’s like talking about the upcoming cricket season in February 2020
I assume this is related to AI..?
Or aliens.
AI Aliens.
I've been using LLMs for a while and agentic dev patterns in earnest since late last year. We're not about to be enslaved by our AI overlords. Change is coming and my fear is not the AI, but rather our government's complete inability to respond effectively
I think our erstwhile reporter from the front of Reddit believes two things. (1) AGI has been achieved and LLM's are conscious and (2) we are about to see hundreds of thousands or millions of white collar jobs vanish in a very short time.
In think (1) is wrong but there is something in (2) for sure. Maybe we are finally approaching the future of Tomorrow's World where no one has to work, and its just leisure all the time...
1 is wrong, absolutely nothing in it at all. That's not to say that LLM are improving seemingly exponentially, but they are nothing like AGI and not showing anything like consciousness. 2 is massively overblown
He is a believer in (1). I think we are seeing jobs taken by AI - call centres, translators etc. Time will tell
In most white-collar jobs, people won’t vanish overnight. They’ll just be expected to do the work of one-and-a-half people because “the AI helps, doesn’t it?”. Lawyers will draft faster. Accountants will reconcile quicker. Devs will scaffold half a service before their tea’s gone cold. And management will quietly recalibrate what “normal productivity” means.
SMEs won’t sit there building foundation models. They’ll just wake up one Tuesday and their accounting software can summarise cash flow, chase invoices, and write polite emails to Dave who still hasn’t paid. Fewer admin hires. Fewer grads being paid to move numbers between spreadsheets. No drama, just less friction.
Public sector? There’ll be committees. Strategy decks. A few pilots. Eventually someone will realise automating document processing saves millions and we’ll call it innovation. Slowly. Carefully. With three layers of governance and a procurement portal from 2009.
The UK’s in an odd but decent position. We’re a services economy. AI mostly boosts services. That’s helpful. What we’re not brilliant at is decisive execution. So the upside is there — if we don’t regulate it into interpretive dance.
The real shift isn’t technical wizardry. It’s judgement. If your job is copying information from A to B and making it look tidy, I’d start learning something awkward. If you can think clearly, define problems properly, and sanity-check what the machine spits out, you’ll do fine.
It’s not the end of work. It’s the end of a certain kind of comfortable inefficiency.
And if, like me, you’ve survived 30 years in tech already, this is just another tool that overpromises, under-delivers for a bit, and then quietly becomes essential while everyone pretends they saw it coming.
Same circus. New clown.
LLMs for coding has gone from nice autocomplete to basically auto code write in about 2-3 years. I write virtually no code now. If you are the one coming up with the ideas great, if you were the code monkey, you are going to become pretty irrevelant pretty quickly.
I still don’t understand why we are all talking like life is just going to continue as it is
It’s utterly farcical. It’s like talking about the upcoming cricket season in February 2020
I assume this is related to AI..?
Or aliens.
AI Aliens.
I've been using LLMs for a while and agentic dev patterns in earnest since late last year. We're not about to be enslaved by our AI overlords. Change is coming and my fear is not the AI, but rather our government's complete inability to respond effectively
I think our erstwhile reporter from the front of Reddit believes two things. (1) AGI has been achieved and LLM's are conscious and (2) we are about to see hundreds of thousands or millions of white collar jobs vanish in a very short time.
In think (1) is wrong but there is something in (2) for sure. Maybe we are finally approaching the future of Tomorrow's World where no one has to work, and its just leisure all the time...
1 is wrong, absolutely nothing in it at all. That's not to say that LLM are improving seemingly exponentially, but they are nothing like AGI and not showing anything like consciousness. 2 is massively overblown
He is a believer in (1). I think we are seeing jobs taken by AI - call centres, translators etc. Time will tell
In most white-collar jobs, people won’t vanish overnight. They’ll just be expected to do the work of one-and-a-half people because “the AI helps, doesn’t it?”. Lawyers will draft faster. Accountants will reconcile quicker. Devs will scaffold half a service before their tea’s gone cold. And management will quietly recalibrate what “normal productivity” means.
SMEs won’t sit there building foundation models. They’ll just wake up one Tuesday and their accounting software can summarise cash flow, chase invoices, and write polite emails to Dave who still hasn’t paid. Fewer admin hires. Fewer grads being paid to move numbers between spreadsheets. No drama, just less friction.
Public sector? There’ll be committees. Strategy decks. A few pilots. Eventually someone will realise automating document processing saves millions and we’ll call it innovation. Slowly. Carefully. With three layers of governance and a procurement portal from 2009.
The UK’s in an odd but decent position. We’re a services economy. AI mostly boosts services. That’s helpful. What we’re not brilliant at is decisive execution. So the upside is there — if we don’t regulate it into interpretive dance.
The real shift isn’t technical wizardry. It’s judgement. If your job is copying information from A to B and making it look tidy, I’d start learning something awkward. If you can think clearly, define problems properly, and sanity-check what the machine spits out, you’ll do fine.
It’s not the end of work. It’s the end of a certain kind of comfortable inefficiency.
And if, like me, you’ve survived 30 years in tech already, this is just another tool that overpromises, under-delivers for a bit, and then quietly becomes essential while everyone pretends they saw it coming.
Same circus. New clown.
How many ostlers turned into motor-mechanics?
Some did. Most didn’t. Some retired. Some moved sideways. Some got worse jobs. Some got better ones. Some were just unlucky.
Technological shifts don’t politely retrain everyone into the next shiny profession. They reshuffle the deck over a couple of decades. New industries emerge, productivity rises, entirely new roles appear that nobody could have named beforehand. But that doesn’t mean the transition is neat or evenly distributed.
I still don’t understand why we are all talking like life is just going to continue as it is
It’s utterly farcical. It’s like talking about the upcoming cricket season in February 2020
I assume this is related to AI..?
Or aliens.
AI Aliens.
I've been using LLMs for a while and agentic dev patterns in earnest since late last year. We're not about to be enslaved by our AI overlords. Change is coming and my fear is not the AI, but rather our government's complete inability to respond effectively
I think our erstwhile reporter from the front of Reddit believes two things. (1) AGI has been achieved and LLM's are conscious and (2) we are about to see hundreds of thousands or millions of white collar jobs vanish in a very short time.
In think (1) is wrong but there is something in (2) for sure. Maybe we are finally approaching the future of Tomorrow's World where no one has to work, and its just leisure all the time...
1 is wrong, absolutely nothing in it at all. That's not to say that LLM are improving seemingly exponentially, but they are nothing like AGI and not showing anything like consciousness. 2 is massively overblown
He is a believer in (1). I think we are seeing jobs taken by AI - call centres, translators etc. Time will tell
In most white-collar jobs, people won’t vanish overnight. They’ll just be expected to do the work of one-and-a-half people because “the AI helps, doesn’t it?”. Lawyers will draft faster. Accountants will reconcile quicker. Devs will scaffold half a service before their tea’s gone cold. And management will quietly recalibrate what “normal productivity” means.
SMEs won’t sit there building foundation models. They’ll just wake up one Tuesday and their accounting software can summarise cash flow, chase invoices, and write polite emails to Dave who still hasn’t paid. Fewer admin hires. Fewer grads being paid to move numbers between spreadsheets. No drama, just less friction.
Public sector? There’ll be committees. Strategy decks. A few pilots. Eventually someone will realise automating document processing saves millions and we’ll call it innovation. Slowly. Carefully. With three layers of governance and a procurement portal from 2009.
The UK’s in an odd but decent position. We’re a services economy. AI mostly boosts services. That’s helpful. What we’re not brilliant at is decisive execution. So the upside is there — if we don’t regulate it into interpretive dance.
The real shift isn’t technical wizardry. It’s judgement. If your job is copying information from A to B and making it look tidy, I’d start learning something awkward. If you can think clearly, define problems properly, and sanity-check what the machine spits out, you’ll do fine.
It’s not the end of work. It’s the end of a certain kind of comfortable inefficiency.
And if, like me, you’ve survived 30 years in tech already, this is just another tool that overpromises, under-delivers for a bit, and then quietly becomes essential while everyone pretends they saw it coming.
Same circus. New clown.
LLMs for coding has gone from nice autocomplete to basically auto code write in about 2-3 years. I write virtually no code now. If you are the one coming up with the ideas great, if you were the code monkey, you are going to become pretty irrevelant pretty quickly.
There’s a grain of truth in that. The tooling leap has been real. Three years ago it was glorified autocomplete. Now it’ll scaffold a service, write tests, wire up DI, and argue with you about naming.
But “I write virtually no code now” isn’t the flex people think it is.
If you’re still responsible for what ships, you’re still doing engineering. You’re reviewing, shaping, constraining, spotting edge cases, thinking about data models, concurrency, failure modes, security. The typing was never the hard bit. It was just the visible bit.
The people who were purely “code monkeys” — i.e. implementing tickets with minimal understanding of the system — were already in a fragile position. AI just makes that fragility obvious. But that role was brittle long before LLMs showed up. It was vulnerable to offshoring, automation, better frameworks, you name it.
What’s changed is the leverage. A decent engineer with AI can now produce the output of a small team from 2015. That doesn’t make the engineer irrelevant. It makes them more powerful. It does, however, reduce the economic case for large numbers of low-context implementers.
The interesting question isn’t “will coders disappear?” It’s “how much understanding do you need to stay valuable?” If you can design systems, reason about trade-offs, debug when the AI produces something that looks right but subtly isn’t, you’re fine. If your contribution was mainly turning English into syntax, then yes, that part is being commoditised.
We’re not watching software engineering die. We’re watching the floor rise.
Anyone who says AI writes code for them is lying and does not work in software engineering.
I do and it does not. It has not improved at all in the last year, total stagnation.
Anyone doing serious work with these tools knows two things can be true at once: they’re astonishingly useful, and they still get things subtly wrong in ways that’ll bite you. But “no improvement at all” is just cope dressed up as confidence.
Correction: A previous version of this post misidentified the South Caucasus as belonging to Russia. The region, made up of territory in Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, is not part of Russia. We deleted the previous tweet.
Well, if their President can get Armenia and Albania confused, as Trump has...
Is that the standard to which they want to be held?
I still don’t understand why we are all talking like life is just going to continue as it is
It’s utterly farcical. It’s like talking about the upcoming cricket season in February 2020
I assume this is related to AI..?
Or aliens.
AI Aliens.
I've been using LLMs for a while and agentic dev patterns in earnest since late last year. We're not about to be enslaved by our AI overlords. Change is coming and my fear is not the AI, but rather our government's complete inability to respond effectively
I think our erstwhile reporter from the front of Reddit believes two things. (1) AGI has been achieved and LLM's are conscious and (2) we are about to see hundreds of thousands or millions of white collar jobs vanish in a very short time.
In think (1) is wrong but there is something in (2) for sure. Maybe we are finally approaching the future of Tomorrow's World where no one has to work, and its just leisure all the time...
1 is wrong, absolutely nothing in it at all. That's not to say that LLM are improving seemingly exponentially, but they are nothing like AGI and not showing anything like consciousness. 2 is massively overblown
He is a believer in (1). I think we are seeing jobs taken by AI - call centres, translators etc. Time will tell
In most white-collar jobs, people won’t vanish overnight. They’ll just be expected to do the work of one-and-a-half people because “the AI helps, doesn’t it?”. Lawyers will draft faster. Accountants will reconcile quicker. Devs will scaffold half a service before their tea’s gone cold. And management will quietly recalibrate what “normal productivity” means.
SMEs won’t sit there building foundation models. They’ll just wake up one Tuesday and their accounting software can summarise cash flow, chase invoices, and write polite emails to Dave who still hasn’t paid. Fewer admin hires. Fewer grads being paid to move numbers between spreadsheets. No drama, just less friction.
Public sector? There’ll be committees. Strategy decks. A few pilots. Eventually someone will realise automating document processing saves millions and we’ll call it innovation. Slowly. Carefully. With three layers of governance and a procurement portal from 2009.
The UK’s in an odd but decent position. We’re a services economy. AI mostly boosts services. That’s helpful. What we’re not brilliant at is decisive execution. So the upside is there — if we don’t regulate it into interpretive dance.
The real shift isn’t technical wizardry. It’s judgement. If your job is copying information from A to B and making it look tidy, I’d start learning something awkward. If you can think clearly, define problems properly, and sanity-check what the machine spits out, you’ll do fine.
It’s not the end of work. It’s the end of a certain kind of comfortable inefficiency.
And if, like me, you’ve survived 30 years in tech already, this is just another tool that overpromises, under-delivers for a bit, and then quietly becomes essential while everyone pretends they saw it coming.
Same circus. New clown.
How many ostlers turned into motor-mechanics?
Some did. Most didn’t. Some retired. Some moved sideways. Some got worse jobs. Some got better ones. Some were just unlucky.
Technological shifts don’t politely retrain everyone into the next shiny profession. They reshuffle the deck over a couple of decades. New industries emerge, productivity rises, entirely new roles appear that nobody could have named beforehand. But that doesn’t mean the transition is neat or evenly distributed.
Quite agree; the point is that new jobs arise as a result of technological change. And what people have to do is look for the opportunities which will arrive.
Anyone who says AI writes code for them is lying and does not work in software engineering.
I do and it does not. It has not improved at all in the last year, total stagnation.
I do, its does, it hasn't. Claude Code + Opus 4.5/4.6 + Super Max Sub has been a massive step forward. From Linus Torvard, Andrei Karpathy, top top people, the guy who wrote all the important code for Facebook algos says coding is cooked, he has a bit sad that it was a super power for him as he was so much better coder than 99% of the planet, but doesn't need to do it now.
Anyone who says AI writes code for them is lying and does not work in software engineering.
I do and it does not. It has not improved at all in the last year, total stagnation.
Anyone doing serious work with these tools knows two things can be true at once: they’re astonishingly useful, and they still get things subtly wrong in ways that’ll bite you. But “no improvement at all” is just cope dressed up as confidence.
I’m extremely confident that AI is going to be a complete nothing, after using it professionally.
It’s not cope, it’s from my own experience. It’s overhyped rubbish.
Comments
Didn’t you get the memo?
https://x.com/noelreports/status/2021916303355773357
https://x.com/ukikaski/status/2021916363040653405
After SpaceX deactivated the Russian Starlink terminals, the Ukrainian spooks set up a fake registration page for Russians to register their terminals with IDs and locations, and got more than 2,400 Russian army locations to pass to the UA army.
‘ BREAKING: Russia is considering moving back to the US Dollar as part of a wide-ranging economic partnership with President Trump, per Bloomberg.
The partnership would include:
1. US and Russia working together on fossil fuels
2. Joint investments in natural gas
3. Offshore oil and critical raw material partnerships
4. Windfalls for US companies
5. Russia’s return to the USD settlement system
If finalized, this deal would change the global economy.’
https://x.com/kobeissiletter/status/2021956993351553492?s=61
Any deal which includes "windfalls for US companies" clearly contains great potential for exploitation by the Trump crimes organisation.
So it's a great deal for Trump, and a great deal for Putin.
(apparently, it really is ignoramuses: see wiktionary. It's derived from the Latin "ignoro" and the conjugation goes as follows:
ignōrō - I do not know
ignōrās - you do not know
ignōrat - he/she/it does not know
ignōrāmus - we do not know
ignōrātis - you do not know
ignōrant - they do not know
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ignoro#Latin
)
Wouldn’t want to libel the Mafia, Yakuza etc by association…
Depending how this cash grab it pitched it can be a very regressive tax penalising cheaper holidays and the less well off far more than the wealthier.
Needs a blockbuster movie
All politicians lie, its in their make up. Just so happens your lot are mired in doodoo right now and will be for some time.
However when it's the only trick it can wear very thin very quickly
That the externalities for everyone else might be orders of magnitude more costly is neither here nor there.
Right now even taking Starmer's weaknesses into account I can't see any better alternative PM from the Labour or opposition ranks. So if he's the best we've got I want him to do well as he can.
When I am elected Fuhrer for the UK that's the number one thing I'm cracking down on. A staycation is NOT a holiday in the UK.
#languageshouldneverchange
https://x.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/2021681006542295132
It is important that Ukraine will do everything to be technically ready for EU accession by 2027. At least the main steps we will accomplish.
I want a specific date. If in the agreement, under which America, Russia – specifically Putin – I as President of Ukraine, and Europe sign, there is no date, then Russia will do everything to block the process. And not even with its own hands, but through certain European representatives.
We have witnessed similar situations: when clusters are not opened. Problems arose with candidacy. There was an entire wave of challenges, and our struggle. But nonetheless, we achieved candidacy. With the clusters, it is more complicated.
For us, the EU means specifics, because this is about security guarantees for Ukraine. These are specific details, with a specific date. And my signature today, on the 20-point plan, the plan to end the war, guarantees Ukrainians that there will be a specific date for our accession.
We have not received any response from the Russians regarding the energy ceasefire. If anything, one could say the opposite – we received responses in the form of drones and missile attacks. This indicates that, for now, they are not ready for the energy ceasefire proposed by the U.S. side in Abu Dhabi.
As for the meeting in Miami or Abu Dhabi. Why “or”? Because the U.S. side proposed holding it next week – a meeting in America, in Miami – and we immediately confirmed. We were waiting for a response from the Russians. So far, as I understand it, Russia is hesitating. This will once again be a proposal for the Middle East or for America – we are ready. It doesn’t matter to us whether the meeting takes place in Miami or Abu Dhabi. The main thing is that there is a result.
https://x.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/2021679402413879615
This is not enforced by Government
Very much a local decision
It really is up to the relevant authorities to communicate and interact with local SMEs not global or even big National brands
In some places it may have a tangible benefit.
As an example St Ives Cornwall will still be crammed with people if they implement it so why not but use proceeds to improve Penzance and Falmouth
Salcombe sililarlyvwill be crammed so help some of the places like Slapton and Torcross where road has vanished.
It’s utterly farcical. It’s like talking about the upcoming cricket season in February 2020
https://x.com/i/status/2021965449563660553
I've been using LLMs for a while and agentic dev patterns in earnest since late last year.
We're not about to be enslaved by our AI overlords.
Change is coming and my fear is not the AI, but rather our government's complete inability to respond effectively
Much smaller economy, years back. The equivalent today, for Trump would be a hundred billion plus. Extracted quietly.
It's a US word, originally coined in the US in the 1940s, so it's not ridiculous to have a separate UK nuance, given how much more frequent overseas holidays are for Brits.
I'll be teaching on death and impermanence next month.
a party balloonaliens.Well, as we know, there are those who know about AI and those that can't talk about it....
I'm reminded sometimes of the old adage you know you're doing a good job when people don't think you're doing anything at all.
The delusion of activity - I mean, why, what's the point?
As for holidays at home, yes, well, why not, we have a beautiful country with a huge amount to see and places to go well beyond the usual. I'm a sucker for the Scottish Borders - Jedburgh, Melrose, Selkirk etc and for the Marches (that's the ones between England and Wales not the ones in Ulster in July and August).
I've got a couple of trips planned for the summer before the schools empty to places I've not so far visited and I'm looking forward.
Looks like another Russian wish list they’re trying to sell to the Americans.
https://x.com/washingtonpost/status/2021863467754352854
Correction: A previous version of this post misidentified the South Caucasus as belonging to Russia. The region, made up of territory in Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, is not part of Russia. We deleted the previous tweet.
I think Ratcliffe would be wise to miss the next home game on the 1st March
https://x.com/kylegriffin1/status/2021703491392045466
This is ...unusual.
For comparison, in 2016, the Justice Department investigated more than 151,000 suspects, and grand juries returned six “no bills".
Things I would not want to be spending money on now: new nuclear plants.
In think (1) is wrong but there is something in (2) for sure. Maybe we are finally approaching the future of Tomorrow's World where no one has to work, and its just leisure all the time...
It took us 5 days camping each night on the river bank
Such happy memories
2 is massively overblown
SMEs won’t sit there building foundation models. They’ll just wake up one Tuesday and their accounting software can summarise cash flow, chase invoices, and write polite emails to Dave who still hasn’t paid. Fewer admin hires. Fewer grads being paid to move numbers between spreadsheets. No drama, just less friction.
Public sector? There’ll be committees. Strategy decks. A few pilots. Eventually someone will realise automating document processing saves millions and we’ll call it innovation. Slowly. Carefully. With three layers of governance and a procurement portal from 2009.
The UK’s in an odd but decent position. We’re a services economy. AI mostly boosts services. That’s helpful. What we’re not brilliant at is decisive execution. So the upside is there — if we don’t regulate it into interpretive dance.
The real shift isn’t technical wizardry. It’s judgement. If your job is copying information from A to B and making it look tidy, I’d start learning something awkward. If you can think clearly, define problems properly, and sanity-check what the machine spits out, you’ll do fine.
It’s not the end of work. It’s the end of a certain kind of comfortable inefficiency.
And if, like me, you’ve survived 30 years in tech already, this is just another tool that overpromises, under-delivers for a bit, and then quietly becomes essential while everyone pretends they saw it coming.
Same circus. New clown.
(You're seeing the start of that already in computing.)
And the UK is not well placed for that eventuality.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyk917xy8no
American Trump fan gets upset with his British daughter criticising Trump so decided to wave a loaded gun at her to show how guns can provide a sense of security. Gun goes off and kills her. Not a crime in the US of course, so no action taken, unlike driving a car at 3mph in the vicinity of secret police.
On jobs, sure some jobs will be eliminated by LLMs and video generators. I'm reminded of the 70s and 80s and the predictions of mass unemployment as computers became common. What business needed a typing pool when everyone had a computer and printer on their desk? No need to employ multiple people to sort through card indexes when one person with a computer and a database can do the same work more quickly.
But funny thing, ultimately employment went up during that time. All those people found other jobs.
https://youtu.be/glqV17AQT2w?si=DtTgKbAlIwvLrQEI
This is an utter farce
In any company the CEO would have gone
Take responsibility Starmer as you would demand of others
Sir Chris Wormald has stood down with immediate effect as Cabinet Secretary after a year in office
There will be a pretty extraordinary payoff - said to be in the region of £250,000
He is the shortest-serving Cabinet Secretary in history
Technological shifts don’t politely retrain everyone into the next shiny profession. They reshuffle the deck over a couple of decades. New industries emerge, productivity rises, entirely new roles appear that nobody could have named beforehand. But that doesn’t mean the transition is neat or evenly distributed.
Just go man.
But “I write virtually no code now” isn’t the flex people think it is.
If you’re still responsible for what ships, you’re still doing engineering. You’re reviewing, shaping, constraining, spotting edge cases, thinking about data models, concurrency, failure modes, security. The typing was never the hard bit. It was just the visible bit.
The people who were purely “code monkeys” — i.e. implementing tickets with minimal understanding of the system — were already in a fragile position. AI just makes that fragility obvious. But that role was brittle long before LLMs showed up. It was vulnerable to offshoring, automation, better frameworks, you name it.
What’s changed is the leverage. A decent engineer with AI can now produce the output of a small team from 2015. That doesn’t make the engineer irrelevant. It makes them more powerful. It does, however, reduce the economic case for large numbers of low-context implementers.
The interesting question isn’t “will coders disappear?” It’s “how much understanding do you need to stay valuable?”
If you can design systems, reason about trade-offs, debug when the AI produces something that looks right but subtly isn’t, you’re fine. If your contribution was mainly turning English into syntax, then yes, that part is being commoditised.
We’re not watching software engineering die. We’re watching the floor rise.
I do and it does not. It has not improved at all in the last year, total stagnation.
But “no improvement at all” is just cope dressed up as confidence.
The amount of bugs that have come out of Claude that I have to deal with, goodness.
This really wasn't the case a year ago but things have changed an awful lot...
It’s not cope, it’s from my own experience. It’s overhyped rubbish.