Since when have the Catholic Church been the Grown Ups when it comes to science and technology?
If you're talking science and technology as themselves, not so great.
If you're talking the interaction between fast-changing technology and slow-changing people, then religious traditions have an awful lot to say, some of it pretty wise. No institution survives that long without applying some insight into the human condition.
You don't have to agree with all of this, but there are some good points clearly made in this official summary;
@ShippersUnbound Further to Blair. Literally every honest sensible person in all the main parties privately agrees with all these propositions:
- welfare spending is too high and is throwing good people on the scrapheap - defence spending is too low - the triple lock is unsustainable - without cheap energy we cannot exploit the AI revolution - we should be investing in EVERY form of energy: renewables, nuclear and the North Sea - migration needs to be controlled to boost social cohesion and because the boats look like a huge failure of the state - any new relationship with the EU will be imposed on us until we are stronger and cannot involve the closeness some desire without freedom of movement - we are deeply embedded with America in ways which the public does not understand and cannot be told and however joyous it makes us feel to hate Trump, disengagement at the deep state level is not only wholly unrealistic but also undesirable - Whitehall needs a total overhaul so specific project expertise and political appointees can be brought in quickly
Blair basically says all that.
The one thing he doesn’t say and which the same group of people agree on is this and it’s something Blair left behind:
I have not posted much recently, probably because there is so much division and discourse I just cannot see a solution
However, Blair reminds me why I voted for him twice and everything he highlights is spot on
Instead of engaging with his thoughts we have labour going into a tailspin over Irag and Blair's millions/billions whilst seeking to drift to the left that will result in simply more failure
Blair at least has opened a debate that is long overdue and maybe listen to the message rather than deflect by raising Blair's failures as an excuse to dismiss his opinions
The problem with the boats is that although they are highly visible it restricts the number who arrive here and apply for asylum.
Attach that to the fact that most (well over 50%) of those applying will get asylum and every other option is worse because while it would remove the visible boats it will increase the total number of people arriving with valid claims.
So there is no fix without changing global asylum rules and while most of Europe agree the practical side is rather difficult
Somebody made the point yesterday (I think) that we've not had figures (guesstimates?) for illegal crossings for some time. Of course, it's ben a bit breezy (here anyway) so that might have put people off.
And that's the political problem that any government will have.
There's a hysteresis in public understanding of the issue- when the boats were utterly out of control, it was (rightly) a story. Long runs of days when nobody arrives on boats is not a story. So people reasonably assume that nothing has changed.
On some of the key points in the Blair Essay as mentioned by Shipman.
welfare spending is too high and is throwing good people on the scrapheap- I don't understand.
defence spending is too low - I don't agree. I think the "threat" from Russia is being overstated to create a climate in which increased defence spending (especially simultaenous with cuts in welfare) can be sold. Yes, we can move a little higher but whan I see 5% of GDP being mentioned, no, not sustainable.
the triple lock is unsustainable yes but as we all know pensioners vote and turkeys rarely vote for Christmas. It can be sold within the context of a general belt tightening.
without cheap energy we cannot exploit the AI revolution - we can do a lot with cheap energy but from where is that cheap energy coming? I'd argue if we could get back to the kind of energy pricing we enjoyed in the early 2000s we'd see economic growth resume. I'd also question the amount of energy wr use to store all the data we are creating and look at data de-carbonisation.
we should be investing in EVERY form of energy: renewables, nuclear and the North Sea - quite right.
migration needs to be controlled to boost social cohesion and because the boats look like a huge failure of the state - like everyone else, he has no answer to the "small boats" but at least he isn't talking about wide scale deportation.
any new relationship with the EU will be imposed on us until we are stronger and cannot involve the closeness some desire without freedom of movement - I'm afraid those who want us to Rejoin miss this point. FoM and the Single Currency have never been popular and until they become so we will be outside the EU.
Major is the model of an ex PM. IMO his reputation has grown since defeat.
Blair could learn from him.
Oddly enough, and I take your point, the criticism of Major is strongest from the Conservative side. Do they blame him personally for 1997? It's hard to think of any other leader at that time who would have done demonstrably better against Blair.
I presume it's all about Maastricht and the marginalisation of those who would eventually come totake over the party such as IDS and others. Remembering the seaside picture of Tony Marlow, Theresa Gorman and those who stood with Redwood in 1995.
The critique of Blair seems strongest from the Labour side but also from the Conservative side. He will never be forgiven for Iraq by many and I suppose the counterfactual is had that never happened, he'd have won another huge victory in 2005 and perhaps, pace Thatcher, decided to "go on and on".
We can perhaps agree both Major and Blair did sterling work in Northern Ireland and that should be recognised.
A fair bit of it is personal blame for 1990. It doesn't entirely make sense, but people have never been required to make sense.
I can't help wondering if letting Maggie lose in 1992- defeat nature's way, rather than the artificial party process that happened- would have saved us all quite a bit of psychodrama in the following decades.
Would have had the high tax disaster of a Kinnock premiership though
'High tax disaster' as in taxes still lower than most Scandanavian countries, Germany, France etc...
Yes, I can see from the shocking state of those countries what a terrible disaster that would have been.
Kinnock's tax rises would have taken us well ahead of Kohl's Germany and maybe even Mitterand's France and Norway too in terms of tax taken. Plenty of wealthy Brits would have decamped to much lower taxed Switzerland.
The City of London may well have lost its place as the financial centre of Europe to Frankfurt and would have fallen well behind New York, Singapore, Tokyo etc.
Major is the model of an ex PM. IMO his reputation has grown since defeat.
Blair could learn from him.
Oddly enough, and I take your point, the criticism of Major is strongest from the Conservative side. Do they blame him personally for 1997? It's hard to think of any other leader at that time who would have done demonstrably better against Blair.
I presume it's all about Maastricht and the marginalisation of those who would eventually come totake over the party such as IDS and others. Remembering the seaside picture of Tony Marlow, Theresa Gorman and those who stood with Redwood in 1995.
The critique of Blair seems strongest from the Labour side but also from the Conservative side. He will never be forgiven for Iraq by many and I suppose the counterfactual is had that never happened, he'd have won another huge victory in 2005 and perhaps, pace Thatcher, decided to "go on and on".
We can perhaps agree both Major and Blair did sterling work in Northern Ireland and that should be recognised.
I find the Maggie-fixation an interesting phenomenon, especially after nearly 5 decades.
I don't see that those who rhetoricise about "Maggie" actually want to do what she said and did, and she is more of a marketing symbol for whatever they want to do of their own bat.
There are things that she was fairly clearly mistaken about, and the world has changed in ways that make some of it obsolete.
Were there people in the 1930s/1940s still dreaming of how they imagined Viscount Curzon dealt with India in the 1890s?
Wasn’t that Churchill himself?
I actually do not know. I have not read very much Churchill - speeches, yes, written history not so much.
The other one that was in my mind was the French attempts to maintain their empire in Indo-China (and subsequently Algeria) after WW2.
The Blair Essay is a lot better than the headlines about it would suggest.
For example, the headlines say, "Blair tells Labour to ditch net zero and drill in the North Sea," but what the essay actually says is, "We must prioritise cheaper energy and electrification over net zero and use what is left of our North Sea oil and gas resources."
"Electrification" is the process of replacing fossil fuels with renewable electricity. It's the principle means by which net zero is delivered. The continued technological development of renewables makes them the cheap energy option in an age of geopolitical instability and fossil fuel supply disruption.
I wouldn't see this as abandoning net zero, but choosing a carrot-led approach - of concentrating on better technology to replace fossil fuels - rather than a stick-reliant approach - of restricting fossil fuel use to force adoption of other technologies. This is a long way from Trump's ideological opposition to renewables, for example.
I think Blair's Essay is weakest on Trump. He is in denial of Trump's weakness in relation to, and adulation of, Putin, Xi and other dictators, and the stark consequences this has for democracies. But I think that, as a starting point for a serious discussion about Britain's future it has a lot of merit, and is a more useful contribution than anything that has emerged from Labour's leadership wrangling, the Tories, or the Lib Dems.
The problem is that if every country decides to use what is left of their fossil fuel reserves, the world is doomed. How can we avoid this?
Not if we are substituting imports for domestic production while transitioning to clean power. 🤦♂️
We need to transition and stop burning oil and gas not stop producing it. If every country does that, then the likes of Saudi Arabia will be left with fossil fuels they don't use as they have no customers for it.
On some of the key points in the Blair Essay as mentioned by Shipman.
welfare spending is too high and is throwing good people on the scrapheap- I don't understand.
Lots of these are worth discussing, but I'll just pick out the first.
In order to qualify for disability benefits you have to emphasize what you cannot do, and so the system encourages people to minimise their capabilities and become dependent on government handouts.
The system will then tend to penalise people for trying to stretch their capabilities - they have to stay within the disabled box to continue to qualify for help.
I'd characterise it as a very binary system with a high barrier to qualification, but generous support once you're on the inside. But a lot of people exist in the grey in between, and categorising them as either black or white either penalises them or infantilises them.
On some of the key points in the Blair Essay as mentioned by Shipman.
welfare spending is too high and is throwing good people on the scrapheap- I don't understand.
defence spending is too low - I don't agree. I think the "threat" from Russia is being overstated to create a climate in which increased defence spending (especially simultaenous with cuts in welfare) can be sold. Yes, we can move a little higher but whan I see 5% of GDP being mentioned, no, not sustainable.
the triple lock is unsustainable yes but as we all know pensioners vote and turkeys rarely vote for Christmas. It can be sold within the context of a general belt tightening.
without cheap energy we cannot exploit the AI revolution - we can do a lot with cheap energy but from where is that cheap energy coming? I'd argue if we could get back to the kind of energy pricing we enjoyed in the early 2000s we'd see economic growth resume. I'd also question the amount of energy wr use to store all the data we are creating and look at data de-carbonisation.
we should be investing in EVERY form of energy: renewables, nuclear and the North Sea - quite right.
migration needs to be controlled to boost social cohesion and because the boats look like a huge failure of the state - like everyone else, he has no answer to the "small boats" but at least he isn't talking about wide scale deportation.
any new relationship with the EU will be imposed on us until we are stronger and cannot involve the closeness some desire without freedom of movement - I'm afraid those who want us to Rejoin miss this point. FoM and the Single Currency have never been popular and until they become so we will be outside the EU.
Current polling shows strong support for FoM.
Citation required. I rather suspect you will not see "strong support for FoM" in Makerfield.
Unless the "movement" is "fuck off back where you came from".
@ShippersUnbound Further to Blair. Literally every honest sensible person in all the main parties privately agrees with all these propositions:
- welfare spending is too high and is throwing good people on the scrapheap - defence spending is too low - the triple lock is unsustainable - without cheap energy we cannot exploit the AI revolution - we should be investing in EVERY form of energy: renewables, nuclear and the North Sea - migration needs to be controlled to boost social cohesion and because the boats look like a huge failure of the state - any new relationship with the EU will be imposed on us until we are stronger and cannot involve the closeness some desire without freedom of movement - we are deeply embedded with America in ways which the public does not understand and cannot be told and however joyous it makes us feel to hate Trump, disengagement at the deep state level is not only wholly unrealistic but also undesirable - Whitehall needs a total overhaul so specific project expertise and political appointees can be brought in quickly
Blair basically says all that.
The one thing he doesn’t say and which the same group of people agree on is this and it’s something Blair left behind:
I have not posted much recently, probably because there is so much division and discourse I just cannot see a solution
However, Blair reminds me why I voted for him twice and everything he highlights is spot on
Instead of engaging with his thoughts we have labour going into a tailspin over Irag and Blair's millions/billions whilst seeking to drift to the left that will result in simply more failure
Blair at least has opened a debate that is long overdue and maybe listen to the message rather than deflect by raising Blair's failures as an excuse to dismiss his opinions
The problem with the boats is that although they are highly visible it restricts the number who arrive here and apply for asylum.
Attach that to the fact that most (well over 50%) of those applying will get asylum and every other option is worse because while it would remove the visible boats it will increase the total number of people arriving with valid claims.
So there is no fix without changing global asylum rules and while most of Europe agree the practical side is rather difficult
Somebody made the point yesterday (I think) that we've not had figures (guesstimates?) for illegal crossings for some time. Of course, it's ben a bit breezy (here anyway) so that might have put people off.
And that's the political problem that any government will have.
There's a hysteresis in public understanding of the issue- when the boats were utterly out of control, it was (rightly) a story. Long runs of days when nobody arrives on boats is not a story. So people reasonably assume that nothing has changed.
I don't know what anyone could do about that.
The problem is there is nothing any Government can do - all other options remove the boats but will result in more asylum seekers arriving with valid claims.
As I said yesterday the fix is to publicly appoint Farage to be in charge of the issue give him a £1bn a year and watch him fail
The Blair Essay is a lot better than the headlines about it would suggest.
For example, the headlines say, "Blair tells Labour to ditch net zero and drill in the North Sea," but what the essay actually says is, "We must prioritise cheaper energy and electrification over net zero and use what is left of our North Sea oil and gas resources."
"Electrification" is the process of replacing fossil fuels with renewable electricity. It's the principle means by which net zero is delivered. The continued technological development of renewables makes them the cheap energy option in an age of geopolitical instability and fossil fuel supply disruption.
I wouldn't see this as abandoning net zero, but choosing a carrot-led approach - of concentrating on better technology to replace fossil fuels - rather than a stick-reliant approach - of restricting fossil fuel use to force adoption of other technologies. This is a long way from Trump's ideological opposition to renewables, for example.
I think Blair's Essay is weakest on Trump. He is in denial of Trump's weakness in relation to, and adulation of, Putin, Xi and other dictators, and the stark consequences this has for democracies. But I think that, as a starting point for a serious discussion about Britain's future it has a lot of merit, and is a more useful contribution than anything that has emerged from Labour's leadership wrangling, the Tories, or the Lib Dems.
Blair has to continue arguing for sticking close to the Americans regardless of how idiotic or egregious they become, as his lifetime quest to try and escape from the prison of his own tragic misjudgement.
Always guesswork reading a person's psyche - inc one's own - but I think this is probably right. It's otherwise impossible to explain why he'd completely lose his analysis/judgment chops when it comes to Donald Trump. His stuff on AI and the economy and public services, agree or not, is cogent. You can understand where he's coming from. But his take on the US under Trump2 is utterly ludicrous. Nobody with his brain could seriously think it. Ergo he doesn't. He should have left all that out. It would have made for a better product.
On some of the key points in the Blair Essay as mentioned by Shipman.
welfare spending is too high and is throwing good people on the scrapheap- I don't understand.
defence spending is too low - I don't agree. I think the "threat" from Russia is being overstated to create a climate in which increased defence spending (especially simultaenous with cuts in welfare) can be sold. Yes, we can move a little higher but whan I see 5% of GDP being mentioned, no, not sustainable.
the triple lock is unsustainable yes but as we all know pensioners vote and turkeys rarely vote for Christmas. It can be sold within the context of a general belt tightening.
without cheap energy we cannot exploit the AI revolution - we can do a lot with cheap energy but from where is that cheap energy coming? I'd argue if we could get back to the kind of energy pricing we enjoyed in the early 2000s we'd see economic growth resume. I'd also question the amount of energy wr use to store all the data we are creating and look at data de-carbonisation.
we should be investing in EVERY form of energy: renewables, nuclear and the North Sea - quite right.
migration needs to be controlled to boost social cohesion and because the boats look like a huge failure of the state - like everyone else, he has no answer to the "small boats" but at least he isn't talking about wide scale deportation.
any new relationship with the EU will be imposed on us until we are stronger and cannot involve the closeness some desire without freedom of movement - I'm afraid those who want us to Rejoin miss this point. FoM and the Single Currency have never been popular and until they become so we will be outside the EU.
Current polling shows strong support for FoM.
Citation required. I rather suspect you will not see "strong support for FoM" in Makerfield.
Unless the "movement" is "fuck off back where you came from".
There are two sorts of FoM, though. One is concerned with 'brown people coming here and taking British jobs'. The other is 'giving people, especially young ones, the chance to spread their wings in Europe."
On some of the key points in the Blair Essay as mentioned by Shipman.
welfare spending is too high and is throwing good people on the scrapheap- I don't understand.
defence spending is too low - I don't agree. I think the "threat" from Russia is being overstated to create a climate in which increased defence spending (especially simultaenous with cuts in welfare) can be sold. Yes, we can move a little higher but whan I see 5% of GDP being mentioned, no, not sustainable.
the triple lock is unsustainable yes but as we all know pensioners vote and turkeys rarely vote for Christmas. It can be sold within the context of a general belt tightening.
without cheap energy we cannot exploit the AI revolution - we can do a lot with cheap energy but from where is that cheap energy coming? I'd argue if we could get back to the kind of energy pricing we enjoyed in the early 2000s we'd see economic growth resume. I'd also question the amount of energy wr use to store all the data we are creating and look at data de-carbonisation.
we should be investing in EVERY form of energy: renewables, nuclear and the North Sea - quite right.
migration needs to be controlled to boost social cohesion and because the boats look like a huge failure of the state - like everyone else, he has no answer to the "small boats" but at least he isn't talking about wide scale deportation.
any new relationship with the EU will be imposed on us until we are stronger and cannot involve the closeness some desire without freedom of movement - I'm afraid those who want us to Rejoin miss this point. FoM and the Single Currency have never been popular and until they become so we will be outside the EU.
I’m at a loss as to why we need to host AI here - data centers don’t create many jobs, use stupid amounts of energy and there is something called the internet which means I can use minimax in China from my desk at home
My viewpoint is that hosting data centers for AI is a fools game unless you have sovereignty over the AI company (and we currently don’t).
Countries want AI hosting because:
* compute capacity is becoming strategic infrastructure, * AI companies cluster around compute availability, * energy availability attracts investment, * low-latency domestic hosting matters for some industries, * sovereignty matters for defence, finance, healthcare and government workloads, * and whoever controls the infrastructure tends to capture more of the value chain.
Governments, banks, defence contractors and regulated industries are not going to happily pipe sensitive workloads through random overseas infrastructure indefinitely. Data sovereignty, regulation, sanctions risk, resilience, espionage concerns, latency and legal jurisdiction all matter.
Major is the model of an ex PM. IMO his reputation has grown since defeat.
Blair could learn from him.
Oddly enough, and I take your point, the criticism of Major is strongest from the Conservative side. Do they blame him personally for 1997? It's hard to think of any other leader at that time who would have done demonstrably better against Blair.
I presume it's all about Maastricht and the marginalisation of those who would eventually come totake over the party such as IDS and others. Remembering the seaside picture of Tony Marlow, Theresa Gorman and those who stood with Redwood in 1995.
The critique of Blair seems strongest from the Labour side but also from the Conservative side. He will never be forgiven for Iraq by many and I suppose the counterfactual is had that never happened, he'd have won another huge victory in 2005 and perhaps, pace Thatcher, decided to "go on and on".
We can perhaps agree both Major and Blair did sterling work in Northern Ireland and that should be recognised.
A fair bit of it is personal blame for 1990. It doesn't entirely make sense, but people have never been required to make sense.
I can't help wondering if letting Maggie lose in 1992- defeat nature's way, rather than the artificial party process that happened- would have saved us all quite a bit of psychodrama in the following decades.
Would have had the high tax disaster of a Kinnock premiership though
'High tax disaster' as in taxes still lower than most Scandanavian countries, Germany, France etc...
Yes, I can see from the shocking state of those countries what a terrible disaster that would have been.
Kinnock's tax rises would have taken us well ahead of Kohl's Germany and maybe even Mitterand's France and Norway too in terms of tax taken. Plenty of wealthy Brits would have decamped to much lower taxed Switzerland.
The City of London may well have lost its place as the financial centre of Europe to Frankfurt and would have fallen well behind New York, Singapore, Tokyo etc.
That is quite unlikely. A single Kinnock term (it's hard to see him getting re-elected) wouldn't have undone all of Thatcher's financial market reforms, or anything close.
Whether it would have shone more - or less - of a spotlight on her mistakes is hard to say. And what a new Conservative government following Kinnock's term might have then done is even less predictable
The Blair Essay is a lot better than the headlines about it would suggest.
For example, the headlines say, "Blair tells Labour to ditch net zero and drill in the North Sea," but what the essay actually says is, "We must prioritise cheaper energy and electrification over net zero and use what is left of our North Sea oil and gas resources."
"Electrification" is the process of replacing fossil fuels with renewable electricity. It's the principle means by which net zero is delivered. The continued technological development of renewables makes them the cheap energy option in an age of geopolitical instability and fossil fuel supply disruption.
I wouldn't see this as abandoning net zero, but choosing a carrot-led approach - of concentrating on better technology to replace fossil fuels - rather than a stick-reliant approach - of restricting fossil fuel use to force adoption of other technologies. This is a long way from Trump's ideological opposition to renewables, for example.
I think Blair's Essay is weakest on Trump. He is in denial of Trump's weakness in relation to, and adulation of, Putin, Xi and other dictators, and the stark consequences this has for democracies. But I think that, as a starting point for a serious discussion about Britain's future it has a lot of merit, and is a more useful contribution than anything that has emerged from Labour's leadership wrangling, the Tories, or the Lib Dems.
The problem is that if every country decides to use what is left of their fossil fuel reserves, the world is doomed. How can we avoid this?
Not if we are substituting imports for domestic production while transitioning to clean power. 🤦♂️
We need to transition and stop burning oil and gas not stop producing it. If every country does that, then the likes of Saudi Arabia will be left with fossil fuels they don't use as they have no customers for it.
As I understand it, most of the North Sea oil isn't refined domestically but is exported. So increasing North Sea oil production does very little to reduce imports. While North Sea oil production may be good from an economic point of view, it is disingenuous to suggest that it makes environmental sense.
On some of the key points in the Blair Essay as mentioned by Shipman.
welfare spending is too high and is throwing good people on the scrapheap- I don't understand.
Lots of these are worth discussing, but I'll just pick out the first.
In order to qualify for disability benefits you have to emphasize what you cannot do, and so the system encourages people to minimise their capabilities and become dependent on government handouts.
The system will then tend to penalise people for trying to stretch their capabilities - they have to stay within the disabled box to continue to qualify for help.
I'd characterise it as a very binary system with a high barrier to qualification, but generous support once you're on the inside. But a lot of people exist in the grey in between, and categorising them as either black or white either penalises them or infantilises them.
I'm not an expert, but I wonder how far those on the inside would characterise the support as generous. Compared with what you get on the outside, for sure.
It feels like there's a bit of a mirror image of the asylum boats question. In both cases, the problem might be what we're trying to optimise.
For the boats, I don't think anyone would argue that the current situation, where the only way to claim asylum in the UK for most is a Hunger Games of paying a criminal a lot of money to have the chance of risking your life on crossing the Channel in an inflatable, is a grisly mess. But it's probably a pretty effective way of keeping the numbers down. Any better system, or any system that sees the UK taking a fair share of the global burden, would see us taking responsibility for more people. And we like that idea even less than the boat crossings.
For disability benefits, it would be morally and economically better to have a model which was more about enabling ability. But a shiny sixpence says that that would involve turning the wall into a ramp, giving a bit less money to a lot more people. Crude means/ability testing creates peverse outcomes, but it does seem to save money- in the short term, at least.
The fortified Visconti Bridge, originally conceived in the 1300s as a cunning plan to dam and divert the river so that the lakes and moats surrounding downstream Mantova would dry out leaving it defenceless, the plan went the way of Baldrick’s and it became a bridge; the metal span (from about 1900) was bombed by the Americans in 1944, but they missed it. DFS. And its f****** hot again and only 10 o’clock.
Serious q: I'm interested how a doglet is OK in these weather conditions?
Around here when it gets very hot (which probably means high 20s), the dog walkers shift to 6am or mid-late evening.
I’m suffering as much as he is! We’re not doing anything particularly energetic - I’m now sitting in a bar having a coffee and cold water and he’s sheltering under the table. We get out early, shelter during the heat of the day (today I feel a long lunch coming on) and then reemerge for the evening. Italy in May isn’t, however, usually this hot - unlike the UK, the July-like temperatures are forecast to continue for the next week or more, but with some rain forecast for the evenings, maybe even a temporale. After a few days sweltering on the plain, we’re next headed back to the mountains where altitude offers some respite.
Thank-you. Have a fantastic holiday.
A further thought for a component of your alternative career - I think there may be a (possibly easier to manage logistically than something on the continental) niche for lead-walks on lesser known longish (several days to a week) UK routes. There are long distance paths everywhere. I think here we have a more intricate and interesting historical landscape than almost anywhere else. In Derbyshire one could be created around the well dressing calendar.
I can even imagine something interesting "long distance walk with your dog" as an added value, Though that could queer visits to local attractions (National Trust< English Heritage.
I constantly get adverts for such through, for example, Ramblers, National Trust, Cycling UK and other periodicals.
One thing I am itching to do as I get older is what in cycling we call "source to the sea" routes. Yes, I'd love to cycle the Rhine, but the Derwent will be just as good and is only a couple of days.
Musings.
Having always lived in London or the South East, the continent is just too close and I have tended to neglect Scotland and the North for holidays, not least because driving up the M1/A1/M6 is neither as enjoyable nor interesting as driving in Europe. Last year I realised I hadn’t had a proper holiday in Scotland - discounting work trips to Edinburgh and conferences in Glasgow - for over thirty years, and the spring trip I made to Skye and the Trossachs was magnificent, partly because it coincided with a marvellous spell of spring weather, as sunny as this year but not nearly so hot. I am already thinking of Mull for next spring; it’s just that the UK motorway driving and having to stop over in Doncaster or suchlike doesn’t really stack up to the first evening dining in France.
Since it is universally agreed that AI is here, is here to stay, and the issues are how to use and regulate and avert disaster, the subject is bound to come up.
MAJOR COMPANIES ARE STARTING TO CUT BACK ON AI USE AS COSTS IN SOME CASES ARE NOW HIGHER THAN HUMAN WORKERS.
Ai has for years been sold at below cost to encourage people to use it.
Add the additional issue that as models have increased in size the number of tokens used also increases and it’s getting to the point that a human being is cheaper than AI for the same task.
That isn’t to say that AI is a dead end but it’s going to be a niche product that doesn’t justify the current optimistic valuations
This has been happening for months. JP Morgan started this last year.
What will happen is
1) die back as cost/benefit becomes an issue. 2) cost reduction and analysis of benefits. 3) a slower growth pattern.
The same pattern has always been seen in the booms caused by technology spikes. See the Railway Mania.
Some models can run usefully on a Mac mini. Even if the cost of training it is vast, the marginal cost of usage is low enough.
On some of the key points in the Blair Essay as mentioned by Shipman.
welfare spending is too high and is throwing good people on the scrapheap- I don't understand.
defence spending is too low - I don't agree. I think the "threat" from Russia is being overstated to create a climate in which increased defence spending (especially simultaenous with cuts in welfare) can be sold. Yes, we can move a little higher but whan I see 5% of GDP being mentioned, no, not sustainable.
the triple lock is unsustainable yes but as we all know pensioners vote and turkeys rarely vote for Christmas. It can be sold within the context of a general belt tightening.
without cheap energy we cannot exploit the AI revolution - we can do a lot with cheap energy but from where is that cheap energy coming? I'd argue if we could get back to the kind of energy pricing we enjoyed in the early 2000s we'd see economic growth resume. I'd also question the amount of energy wr use to store all the data we are creating and look at data de-carbonisation.
we should be investing in EVERY form of energy: renewables, nuclear and the North Sea - quite right.
migration needs to be controlled to boost social cohesion and because the boats look like a huge failure of the state - like everyone else, he has no answer to the "small boats" but at least he isn't talking about wide scale deportation.
any new relationship with the EU will be imposed on us until we are stronger and cannot involve the closeness some desire without freedom of movement - I'm afraid those who want us to Rejoin miss this point. FoM and the Single Currency have never been popular and until they become so we will be outside the EU.
Current polling shows strong support for FoM.
Citation required. I rather suspect you will not see "strong support for FoM" in Makerfield.
Unless the "movement" is "fuck off back where you came from".
There are two sorts of FoM, though. One is concerned with 'brown people coming here and taking British jobs'. The other is 'giving people, especially young ones, the chance to spread their wings in Europe."
The second one is rather more 'giving European young people, especially young ones, the chance to spread their wings in Britain'.
The lack of language skills among British people always makes the movement predominantly one way.
And as Leon discovered when he visited Paris, there are no shortage of brown people in Europe now.
The fortified Visconti Bridge, originally conceived in the 1300s as a cunning plan to dam and divert the river so that the lakes and moats surrounding downstream Mantova would dry out leaving it defenceless, the plan went the way of Baldrick’s and it became a bridge; the metal span (from about 1900) was bombed by the Americans in 1944, but they missed it. DFS. And its f****** hot again and only 10 o’clock.
Serious q: I'm interested how a doglet is OK in these weather conditions?
Around here when it gets very hot (which probably means high 20s), the dog walkers shift to 6am or mid-late evening.
I’m suffering as much as he is! We’re not doing anything particularly energetic - I’m now sitting in a bar having a coffee and cold water and he’s sheltering under the table. We get out early, shelter during the heat of the day (today I feel a long lunch coming on) and then reemerge for the evening. Italy in May isn’t, however, usually this hot - unlike the UK, the July-like temperatures are forecast to continue for the next week or more, but with some rain forecast for the evenings, maybe even a temporale. After a few days sweltering on the plain, we’re next headed back to the mountains where altitude offers some respite.
Thank-you. Have a fantastic holiday.
A further thought for a component of your alternative career - I think there may be a (possibly easier to manage logistically than something on the continental) niche for lead-walks on lesser known longish (several days to a week) UK routes. There are long distance paths everywhere. I think here we have a more intricate and interesting historical landscape than almost anywhere else. In Derbyshire one could be created around the well dressing calendar.
I can even imagine something interesting "long distance walk with your dog" as an added value, Though that could queer visits to local attractions (National Trust< English Heritage.
I constantly get adverts for such through, for example, Ramblers, National Trust, Cycling UK and other periodicals.
One thing I am itching to do as I get older is what in cycling we call "source to the sea" routes. Yes, I'd love to cycle the Rhine, but the Derwent will be just as good and is only a couple of days.
Musings.
Having always lived in London or the South East, the continent is just too close and I have tended to neglect Scotland and the North for holidays, not least because driving up the M1/A1/M6 is neither as enjoyable nor interesting as driving in Europe. Last year I realised I hadn’t had a proper holiday in Scotland - discounting work trips to Edinburgh and conferences in Glasgow - for over thirty years, and the spring trip I made to Skye and the Trossachs was magnificent, partly because it coincided with a marvellous spell of spring weather, as sunny as this year but not nearly so hot. I am already thinking of Mull for next spring; it’s just that the UK motorway driving and having to stop over in Doncaster or suchlike doesn’t really stack up to the first evening dining in France.
You can be in Northumberland in what, 5 hours from London?
On some of the key points in the Blair Essay as mentioned by Shipman.
welfare spending is too high and is throwing good people on the scrapheap- I don't understand.
defence spending is too low - I don't agree. I think the "threat" from Russia is being overstated to create a climate in which increased defence spending (especially simultaenous with cuts in welfare) can be sold. Yes, we can move a little higher but whan I see 5% of GDP being mentioned, no, not sustainable.
the triple lock is unsustainable yes but as we all know pensioners vote and turkeys rarely vote for Christmas. It can be sold within the context of a general belt tightening.
without cheap energy we cannot exploit the AI revolution - we can do a lot with cheap energy but from where is that cheap energy coming? I'd argue if we could get back to the kind of energy pricing we enjoyed in the early 2000s we'd see economic growth resume. I'd also question the amount of energy wr use to store all the data we are creating and look at data de-carbonisation.
we should be investing in EVERY form of energy: renewables, nuclear and the North Sea - quite right.
migration needs to be controlled to boost social cohesion and because the boats look like a huge failure of the state - like everyone else, he has no answer to the "small boats" but at least he isn't talking about wide scale deportation.
any new relationship with the EU will be imposed on us until we are stronger and cannot involve the closeness some desire without freedom of movement - I'm afraid those who want us to Rejoin miss this point. FoM and the Single Currency have never been popular and until they become so we will be outside the EU.
I’m at a loss as to why we need to host AI here - data centers don’t create many jobs, use stupid amounts of energy and there is something called the internet which means I can use minimax in China from my desk at home
My viewpoint is that hosting data centers for AI is a fools game unless you have sovereignty over the AI company (and we currently don’t).
Having the data centre is a piece in the sovereignty puzzle.
Like having a factory that assembles cars from foreign sourced parts. It’s a start.
When someone says that we can’t build computers in the West, because all the screws come from China - start with what you *can* do. Then build on it.
On some of the key points in the Blair Essay as mentioned by Shipman.
welfare spending is too high and is throwing good people on the scrapheap- I don't understand.
Lots of these are worth discussing, but I'll just pick out the first.
In order to qualify for disability benefits you have to emphasize what you cannot do, and so the system encourages people to minimise their capabilities and become dependent on government handouts.
The system will then tend to penalise people for trying to stretch their capabilities - they have to stay within the disabled box to continue to qualify for help.
I'd characterise it as a very binary system with a high barrier to qualification, but generous support once you're on the inside. But a lot of people exist in the grey in between, and categorising them as either black or white either penalises them or infantilises them.
Major is the model of an ex PM. IMO his reputation has grown since defeat.
Blair could learn from him.
Oddly enough, and I take your point, the criticism of Major is strongest from the Conservative side. Do they blame him personally for 1997? It's hard to think of any other leader at that time who would have done demonstrably better against Blair.
I presume it's all about Maastricht and the marginalisation of those who would eventually come totake over the party such as IDS and others. Remembering the seaside picture of Tony Marlow, Theresa Gorman and those who stood with Redwood in 1995.
The critique of Blair seems strongest from the Labour side but also from the Conservative side. He will never be forgiven for Iraq by many and I suppose the counterfactual is had that never happened, he'd have won another huge victory in 2005 and perhaps, pace Thatcher, decided to "go on and on".
We can perhaps agree both Major and Blair did sterling work in Northern Ireland and that should be recognised.
I find the Maggie-fixation an interesting phenomenon, especially after nearly 5 decades.
I don't see that those who rhetoricise about "Maggie" actually want to do what she said and did, and she is more of a marketing symbol for whatever they want to do of their own bat.
There are things that she was fairly clearly mistaken about, and the world has changed in ways that make some of it obsolete.
Were there people in the 1930s/1940s still dreaming of how they imagined Viscount Curzon dealt with India in the 1890s?
Wasn’t that Churchill himself?
I actually do not know. I have not read very much Churchill - speeches, yes, written history not so much.
The other one that was in my mind was the French attempts to maintain their empire in Indo-China (and subsequently Algeria) after WW2.
His politics about the colonies, and particularly India, were seen as decades past their time back then, he was seen as an aging dinosaur with unfashionable views, which probably contributed somewhat to his not being taken seriously during the early days of Tory appeasement. Today they’d be calling it HDS - Hitler Derangement Syndrome.
On some of the key points in the Blair Essay as mentioned by Shipman.
welfare spending is too high and is throwing good people on the scrapheap- I don't understand.
defence spending is too low - I don't agree. I think the "threat" from Russia is being overstated to create a climate in which increased defence spending (especially simultaenous with cuts in welfare) can be sold. Yes, we can move a little higher but whan I see 5% of GDP being mentioned, no, not sustainable.
the triple lock is unsustainable yes but as we all know pensioners vote and turkeys rarely vote for Christmas. It can be sold within the context of a general belt tightening.
without cheap energy we cannot exploit the AI revolution - we can do a lot with cheap energy but from where is that cheap energy coming? I'd argue if we could get back to the kind of energy pricing we enjoyed in the early 2000s we'd see economic growth resume. I'd also question the amount of energy wr use to store all the data we are creating and look at data de-carbonisation.
we should be investing in EVERY form of energy: renewables, nuclear and the North Sea - quite right.
migration needs to be controlled to boost social cohesion and because the boats look like a huge failure of the state - like everyone else, he has no answer to the "small boats" but at least he isn't talking about wide scale deportation.
any new relationship with the EU will be imposed on us until we are stronger and cannot involve the closeness some desire without freedom of movement - I'm afraid those who want us to Rejoin miss this point. FoM and the Single Currency have never been popular and until they become so we will be outside the EU.
We are paying large numbers of people to be economically inactive. And penalising them when they try to become (more) active.
Then we are upset when we find that we have large numbers of economically inactive people.
I blame the Trans Gay Illegal Immigrant Alien AIs.
On some of the key points in the Blair Essay as mentioned by Shipman.
welfare spending is too high and is throwing good people on the scrapheap- I don't understand.
Lots of these are worth discussing, but I'll just pick out the first.
In order to qualify for disability benefits you have to emphasize what you cannot do, and so the system encourages people to minimise their capabilities and become dependent on government handouts.
The system will then tend to penalise people for trying to stretch their capabilities - they have to stay within the disabled box to continue to qualify for help.
I'd characterise it as a very binary system with a high barrier to qualification, but generous support once you're on the inside. But a lot of people exist in the grey in between, and categorising them as either black or white either penalises them or infantilises them.
It became too easy, especially during and after the pandemic, to get these benefits, and once someone is receiving them it was always going to be a devils own job taking them away. Which remains the case.
On some of the key points in the Blair Essay as mentioned by Shipman.
welfare spending is too high and is throwing good people on the scrapheap- I don't understand.
defence spending is too low - I don't agree. I think the "threat" from Russia is being overstated to create a climate in which increased defence spending (especially simultaenous with cuts in welfare) can be sold. Yes, we can move a little higher but whan I see 5% of GDP being mentioned, no, not sustainable.
the triple lock is unsustainable yes but as we all know pensioners vote and turkeys rarely vote for Christmas. It can be sold within the context of a general belt tightening.
without cheap energy we cannot exploit the AI revolution - we can do a lot with cheap energy but from where is that cheap energy coming? I'd argue if we could get back to the kind of energy pricing we enjoyed in the early 2000s we'd see economic growth resume. I'd also question the amount of energy wr use to store all the data we are creating and look at data de-carbonisation.
we should be investing in EVERY form of energy: renewables, nuclear and the North Sea - quite right.
migration needs to be controlled to boost social cohesion and because the boats look like a huge failure of the state - like everyone else, he has no answer to the "small boats" but at least he isn't talking about wide scale deportation.
any new relationship with the EU will be imposed on us until we are stronger and cannot involve the closeness some desire without freedom of movement - I'm afraid those who want us to Rejoin miss this point. FoM and the Single Currency have never been popular and until they become so we will be outside the EU.
I’m at a loss as to why we need to host AI here - data centers don’t create many jobs, use stupid amounts of energy and there is something called the internet which means I can use minimax in China from my desk at home
My viewpoint is that hosting data centers for AI is a fools game unless you have sovereignty over the AI company (and we currently don’t).
If everything kicks off then you get sovereignty over the company, or failing that you feed the GPUs what you want to feed them not what the company wants to feed them.
We're not there yet but where we're heading is that possessing the GPUs will represent *the ability for your country to conduct independent thinking* at a level advanced enough to be meaningful. If there's any capacity you need to have locally rather than relying on foreigners, it's that.
On some of the key points in the Blair Essay as mentioned by Shipman.
welfare spending is too high and is throwing good people on the scrapheap- I don't understand.
defence spending is too low - I don't agree. I think the "threat" from Russia is being overstated to create a climate in which increased defence spending (especially simultaenous with cuts in welfare) can be sold. Yes, we can move a little higher but whan I see 5% of GDP being mentioned, no, not sustainable.
the triple lock is unsustainable yes but as we all know pensioners vote and turkeys rarely vote for Christmas. It can be sold within the context of a general belt tightening.
without cheap energy we cannot exploit the AI revolution - we can do a lot with cheap energy but from where is that cheap energy coming? I'd argue if we could get back to the kind of energy pricing we enjoyed in the early 2000s we'd see economic growth resume. I'd also question the amount of energy wr use to store all the data we are creating and look at data de-carbonisation.
we should be investing in EVERY form of energy: renewables, nuclear and the North Sea - quite right.
migration needs to be controlled to boost social cohesion and because the boats look like a huge failure of the state - like everyone else, he has no answer to the "small boats" but at least he isn't talking about wide scale deportation.
any new relationship with the EU will be imposed on us until we are stronger and cannot involve the closeness some desire without freedom of movement - I'm afraid those who want us to Rejoin miss this point. FoM and the Single Currency have never been popular and until they become so we will be outside the EU.
Current polling shows strong support for FoM.
Citation required. I rather suspect you will not see "strong support for FoM" in Makerfield.
Unless the "movement" is "fuck off back where you came from".
There are two sorts of FoM, though. One is concerned with 'brown people coming here and taking British jobs'. The other is 'giving people, especially young ones, the chance to spread their wings in Europe."
How many young ones from Makerfield get to spread their wings in Europe though? Not exactly going to be parity with 'brown people coming here and taking British jobs I suspect.
The Blair Essay is a lot better than the headlines about it would suggest.
For example, the headlines say, "Blair tells Labour to ditch net zero and drill in the North Sea," but what the essay actually says is, "We must prioritise cheaper energy and electrification over net zero and use what is left of our North Sea oil and gas resources."
"Electrification" is the process of replacing fossil fuels with renewable electricity. It's the principle means by which net zero is delivered. The continued technological development of renewables makes them the cheap energy option in an age of geopolitical instability and fossil fuel supply disruption.
I wouldn't see this as abandoning net zero, but choosing a carrot-led approach - of concentrating on better technology to replace fossil fuels - rather than a stick-reliant approach - of restricting fossil fuel use to force adoption of other technologies. This is a long way from Trump's ideological opposition to renewables, for example.
I think Blair's Essay is weakest on Trump. He is in denial of Trump's weakness in relation to, and adulation of, Putin, Xi and other dictators, and the stark consequences this has for democracies. But I think that, as a starting point for a serious discussion about Britain's future it has a lot of merit, and is a more useful contribution than anything that has emerged from Labour's leadership wrangling, the Tories, or the Lib Dems.
Blair has to continue arguing for sticking close to the Americans regardless of how idiotic or egregious they become, as his lifetime quest to try and escape from the prison of his own tragic misjudgement.
Always guesswork reading a person's psyche - inc one's own - but I think this is probably right. It's otherwise impossible to explain why he'd completely lose his analysis/judgment chops when it comes to Donald Trump. His stuff on AI and the economy and public services, agree or not, is cogent. You can understand where he's coming from. But his take on the US under Trump2 is utterly ludicrous. Nobody with his brain could seriously think it. Ergo he doesn't. He should have left all that out. It would have made for a better product.
Arguably it made more sense back then, when the US remained firmly committed to NATO regardless of Republican or Democrat, and Europe could self-interestedly spend its peace dividend on happier things than bullets and guns, knowing that the US has us covered. Today, when the US has unreliable and capricious foreign policy, Blair’s position is potentially suicidal.
The fortified Visconti Bridge, originally conceived in the 1300s as a cunning plan to dam and divert the river so that the lakes and moats surrounding downstream Mantova would dry out leaving it defenceless, the plan went the way of Baldrick’s and it became a bridge; the metal span (from about 1900) was bombed by the Americans in 1944, but they missed it. DFS. And its f****** hot again and only 10 o’clock.
Serious q: I'm interested how a doglet is OK in these weather conditions?
Around here when it gets very hot (which probably means high 20s), the dog walkers shift to 6am or mid-late evening.
I’m suffering as much as he is! We’re not doing anything particularly energetic - I’m now sitting in a bar having a coffee and cold water and he’s sheltering under the table. We get out early, shelter during the heat of the day (today I feel a long lunch coming on) and then reemerge for the evening. Italy in May isn’t, however, usually this hot - unlike the UK, the July-like temperatures are forecast to continue for the next week or more, but with some rain forecast for the evenings, maybe even a temporale. After a few days sweltering on the plain, we’re next headed back to the mountains where altitude offers some respite.
Thank-you. Have a fantastic holiday.
A further thought for a component of your alternative career - I think there may be a (possibly easier to manage logistically than something on the continental) niche for lead-walks on lesser known longish (several days to a week) UK routes. There are long distance paths everywhere. I think here we have a more intricate and interesting historical landscape than almost anywhere else. In Derbyshire one could be created around the well dressing calendar.
I can even imagine something interesting "long distance walk with your dog" as an added value, Though that could queer visits to local attractions (National Trust< English Heritage.
I constantly get adverts for such through, for example, Ramblers, National Trust, Cycling UK and other periodicals.
One thing I am itching to do as I get older is what in cycling we call "source to the sea" routes. Yes, I'd love to cycle the Rhine, but the Derwent will be just as good and is only a couple of days.
Musings.
Having always lived in London or the South East, the continent is just too close and I have tended to neglect Scotland and the North for holidays, not least because driving up the M1/A1/M6 is neither as enjoyable nor interesting as driving in Europe. Last year I realised I hadn’t had a proper holiday in Scotland - discounting work trips to Edinburgh and conferences in Glasgow - for over thirty years, and the spring trip I made to Skye and the Trossachs was magnificent, partly because it coincided with a marvellous spell of spring weather, as sunny as this year but not nearly so hot. I am already thinking of Mull for next spring; it’s just that the UK motorway driving and having to stop over in Doncaster or suchlike doesn’t really stack up to the first evening dining in France.
You can be in Northumberland in what, 5 hours from London?
With the dog, five hours is my yardstick for stopping for the afternoon, and with the ferry to get to north island I’d be pushing it to get to Northumberland in that time. Last year I stopped over in Doncaster going up, simply because I’d never been there, and coming back I found a quite decent place near the forest of bowland, where I had also never been. The dog and I had a nice climb up a small hill from where you could see the coastline and Blackpool tower in the far distance, which I strongly suspect is the best way to see it.
Is this based on businesses in Wigan? If so, then it’s the same problem as the rest of the country in that profits are booked elsewhere due to headquarters. If people who live in Wigan have good jobs in Central Manchester, for example, is that a problem?
Does BAe Systems contribute to the GDP of Barrow in Furness in similar data? Their HQ is in London and they don’t appear to have an entity headquartered in Barrow, so probably not but happy to be corrected.
The analysis rather misses the point (though as the article is paywalled, I haven't read it in full). Without Manchester's success, the whole region would look much worse.
The question is what can be done to revive regional towns. Transport infrastructure is surely part of that, and that might also make the task of remodelling town centres for living in (a significant part of Manchester's success) a slightly less Herculean task.
It’s a question Burnhamism has failed to answer, merely made worse.
Major is the model of an ex PM. IMO his reputation has grown since defeat.
Blair could learn from him.
Oddly enough, and I take your point, the criticism of Major is strongest from the Conservative side. Do they blame him personally for 1997? It's hard to think of any other leader at that time who would have done demonstrably better against Blair.
I presume it's all about Maastricht and the marginalisation of those who would eventually come totake over the party such as IDS and others. Remembering the seaside picture of Tony Marlow, Theresa Gorman and those who stood with Redwood in 1995.
The critique of Blair seems strongest from the Labour side but also from the Conservative side. He will never be forgiven for Iraq by many and I suppose the counterfactual is had that never happened, he'd have won another huge victory in 2005 and perhaps, pace Thatcher, decided to "go on and on".
We can perhaps agree both Major and Blair did sterling work in Northern Ireland and that should be recognised.
A fair bit of it is personal blame for 1990. It doesn't entirely make sense, but people have never been required to make sense.
I can't help wondering if letting Maggie lose in 1992- defeat nature's way, rather than the artificial party process that happened- would have saved us all quite a bit of psychodrama in the following decades.
Would have had the high tax disaster of a Kinnock premiership though
'High tax disaster' as in taxes still lower than most Scandanavian countries, Germany, France etc...
Yes, I can see from the shocking state of those countries what a terrible disaster that would have been.
Kinnock's tax rises would have taken us well ahead of Kohl's Germany and maybe even Mitterand's France and Norway too in terms of tax taken. Plenty of wealthy Brits would have decamped to much lower taxed Switzerland.
The City of London may well have lost its place as the financial centre of Europe to Frankfurt and would have fallen well behind New York, Singapore, Tokyo etc.
That is quite unlikely. A single Kinnock term (it's hard to see him getting re-elected) wouldn't have undone all of Thatcher's financial market reforms, or anything close.
Whether it would have shone more - or less - of a spotlight on her mistakes is hard to say. And what a new Conservative government following Kinnock's term might have then done is even less predictable
It may not have undone all of them, it would certainly have imposed big tax rises and weakened the City of London and seen many high earners go abroad
Since it is universally agreed that AI is here, is here to stay, and the issues are how to use and regulate and avert disaster, the subject is bound to come up.
MAJOR COMPANIES ARE STARTING TO CUT BACK ON AI USE AS COSTS IN SOME CASES ARE NOW HIGHER THAN HUMAN WORKERS.
Ai has for years been sold at below cost to encourage people to use it.
Add the additional issue that as models have increased in size the number of tokens used also increases and it’s getting to the point that a human being is cheaper than AI for the same task.
That isn’t to say that AI is a dead end but it’s going to be a niche product that doesn’t justify the current optimistic valuations
This has been happening for months. JP Morgan started this last year.
What will happen is
1) die back as cost/benefit becomes an issue. 2) cost reduction and analysis of benefits. 3) a slower growth pattern.
The same pattern has always been seen in the booms caused by technology spikes. See the Railway Mania.
Some models can run usefully on a Mac mini. Even if the cost of training it is vast, the marginal cost of usage is low enough.
I think people are still conflating the current AI investment bubble with the long-term value of the technology itself.
Yes, there’s obviously hype, overinvestment and some completely unhinged valuations around AI at the moment. There always are when a technology looks potentially transformative. Railways, telecoms, the internet, cloud computing. The pattern is usually the same: investors lose their minds for a few years, money gets sprayed everywhere, reality eventually reasserts itself, weaker players die off, then the technology settles into becoming part of normal infrastructure anyway.
What I find slightly unconvincing is the jump from “there’s a bubble” to “therefore AI ends up niche”.
I work in software/platform engineering and AI tools are already useful now in very boring, practical ways. Not “replace all humans” useful. That stuff is mostly marketing departments inhaling their own fumes. But useful enough that one experienced engineer can get through substantially more work than before. Coding assistance, incident analysis, documentation, search, repetitive transformation work, support triage, operational glue tasks, all the tedious things that eat half the day.
That’s the real economic question to me. Not “can AI replace a senior engineer?”, because mostly it can’t. The question is whether one decent engineer using AI can do the work that previously needed several people. Increasingly the answer is yes.
People are also muddling up training cost with inference cost. The fact frontier models cost insane amounts to train does not mean all AI usage remains permanently uneconomic. Costs come down, models get smaller and more specialised, hardware improves, inference improves. Computing history is basically one long story of expensive things becoming commodity infrastructure over time.
And on the “why host AI here when the internet exists?” point, that feels very short-term. Governments are not suddenly obsessed with compute because they think data centres are giant job creators. They care because compute capacity is becoming strategic infrastructure. If your finance sector, defence sector, healthcare systems and government services all depend entirely on foreign AI platforms and foreign infrastructure, that eventually becomes a sovereignty issue whether people like it or not.
None of this means every AI valuation is sane. Quite a few clearly aren’t. There’ll be a correction because there always is.
But “some models can run on a Mac Mini” does not really get you to “hyperscale AI infrastructure is irrelevant”. That feels a bit like saying cloud computing was over because you could host a website on a home server.
On some of the key points in the Blair Essay as mentioned by Shipman.
welfare spending is too high and is throwing good people on the scrapheap- I don't understand.
defence spending is too low - I don't agree. I think the "threat" from Russia is being overstated to create a climate in which increased defence spending (especially simultaenous with cuts in welfare) can be sold. Yes, we can move a little higher but whan I see 5% of GDP being mentioned, no, not sustainable.
the triple lock is unsustainable yes but as we all know pensioners vote and turkeys rarely vote for Christmas. It can be sold within the context of a general belt tightening.
without cheap energy we cannot exploit the AI revolution - we can do a lot with cheap energy but from where is that cheap energy coming? I'd argue if we could get back to the kind of energy pricing we enjoyed in the early 2000s we'd see economic growth resume. I'd also question the amount of energy wr use to store all the data we are creating and look at data de-carbonisation.
we should be investing in EVERY form of energy: renewables, nuclear and the North Sea - quite right.
migration needs to be controlled to boost social cohesion and because the boats look like a huge failure of the state - like everyone else, he has no answer to the "small boats" but at least he isn't talking about wide scale deportation.
any new relationship with the EU will be imposed on us until we are stronger and cannot involve the closeness some desire without freedom of movement - I'm afraid those who want us to Rejoin miss this point. FoM and the Single Currency have never been popular and until they become so we will be outside the EU.
Current polling shows strong support for FoM.
Citation required. I rather suspect you will not see "strong support for FoM" in Makerfield.
Unless the "movement" is "fuck off back where you came from".
The fortified Visconti Bridge, originally conceived in the 1300s as a cunning plan to dam and divert the river so that the lakes and moats surrounding downstream Mantova would dry out leaving it defenceless, the plan went the way of Baldrick’s and it became a bridge; the metal span (from about 1900) was bombed by the Americans in 1944, but they missed it. DFS. And its f****** hot again and only 10 o’clock.
Serious q: I'm interested how a doglet is OK in these weather conditions?
Around here when it gets very hot (which probably means high 20s), the dog walkers shift to 6am or mid-late evening.
I’m suffering as much as he is! We’re not doing anything particularly energetic - I’m now sitting in a bar having a coffee and cold water and he’s sheltering under the table. We get out early, shelter during the heat of the day (today I feel a long lunch coming on) and then reemerge for the evening. Italy in May isn’t, however, usually this hot - unlike the UK, the July-like temperatures are forecast to continue for the next week or more, but with some rain forecast for the evenings, maybe even a temporale. After a few days sweltering on the plain, we’re next headed back to the mountains where altitude offers some respite.
Thank-you. Have a fantastic holiday.
A further thought for a component of your alternative career - I think there may be a (possibly easier to manage logistically than something on the continental) niche for lead-walks on lesser known longish (several days to a week) UK routes. There are long distance paths everywhere. I think here we have a more intricate and interesting historical landscape than almost anywhere else. In Derbyshire one could be created around the well dressing calendar.
I can even imagine something interesting "long distance walk with your dog" as an added value, Though that could queer visits to local attractions (National Trust< English Heritage.
I constantly get adverts for such through, for example, Ramblers, National Trust, Cycling UK and other periodicals.
One thing I am itching to do as I get older is what in cycling we call "source to the sea" routes. Yes, I'd love to cycle the Rhine, but the Derwent will be just as good and is only a couple of days.
Musings.
Having always lived in London or the South East, the continent is just too close and I have tended to neglect Scotland and the North for holidays, not least because driving up the M1/A1/M6 is neither as enjoyable nor interesting as driving in Europe. Last year I realised I hadn’t had a proper holiday in Scotland - discounting work trips to Edinburgh and conferences in Glasgow - for over thirty years, and the spring trip I made to Skye and the Trossachs was magnificent, partly because it coincided with a marvellous spell of spring weather, as sunny as this year but not nearly so hot. I am already thinking of Mull for next spring; it’s just that the UK motorway driving and having to stop over in Doncaster or suchlike doesn’t really stack up to the first evening dining in France.
You can be in Northumberland in what, 5 hours from London?
Kings Cross to Berwick by train is 3 hours 34 minutes
On some of the key points in the Blair Essay as mentioned by Shipman.
welfare spending is too high and is throwing good people on the scrapheap- I don't understand.
defence spending is too low - I don't agree. I think the "threat" from Russia is being overstated to create a climate in which increased defence spending (especially simultaenous with cuts in welfare) can be sold. Yes, we can move a little higher but whan I see 5% of GDP being mentioned, no, not sustainable.
the triple lock is unsustainable yes but as we all know pensioners vote and turkeys rarely vote for Christmas. It can be sold within the context of a general belt tightening.
without cheap energy we cannot exploit the AI revolution - we can do a lot with cheap energy but from where is that cheap energy coming? I'd argue if we could get back to the kind of energy pricing we enjoyed in the early 2000s we'd see economic growth resume. I'd also question the amount of energy wr use to store all the data we are creating and look at data de-carbonisation.
we should be investing in EVERY form of energy: renewables, nuclear and the North Sea - quite right.
migration needs to be controlled to boost social cohesion and because the boats look like a huge failure of the state - like everyone else, he has no answer to the "small boats" but at least he isn't talking about wide scale deportation.
any new relationship with the EU will be imposed on us until we are stronger and cannot involve the closeness some desire without freedom of movement - I'm afraid those who want us to Rejoin miss this point. FoM and the Single Currency have never been popular and until they become so we will be outside the EU.
Current polling shows strong support for FoM.
Citation required. I rather suspect you will not see "strong support for FoM" in Makerfield.
Unless the "movement" is "fuck off back where you came from".
Major is the model of an ex PM. IMO his reputation has grown since defeat.
Blair could learn from him.
Oddly enough, and I take your point, the criticism of Major is strongest from the Conservative side. Do they blame him personally for 1997? It's hard to think of any other leader at that time who would have done demonstrably better against Blair.
I presume it's all about Maastricht and the marginalisation of those who would eventually come totake over the party such as IDS and others. Remembering the seaside picture of Tony Marlow, Theresa Gorman and those who stood with Redwood in 1995.
The critique of Blair seems strongest from the Labour side but also from the Conservative side. He will never be forgiven for Iraq by many and I suppose the counterfactual is had that never happened, he'd have won another huge victory in 2005 and perhaps, pace Thatcher, decided to "go on and on".
We can perhaps agree both Major and Blair did sterling work in Northern Ireland and that should be recognised.
A fair bit of it is personal blame for 1990. It doesn't entirely make sense, but people have never been required to make sense.
I can't help wondering if letting Maggie lose in 1992- defeat nature's way, rather than the artificial party process that happened- would have saved us all quite a bit of psychodrama in the following decades.
Would have had the high tax disaster of a Kinnock premiership though
Major is the model of an ex PM. IMO his reputation has grown since defeat.
Blair could learn from him.
Oddly enough, and I take your point, the criticism of Major is strongest from the Conservative side. Do they blame him personally for 1997? It's hard to think of any other leader at that time who would have done demonstrably better against Blair.
I presume it's all about Maastricht and the marginalisation of those who would eventually come totake over the party such as IDS and others. Remembering the seaside picture of Tony Marlow, Theresa Gorman and those who stood with Redwood in 1995.
The critique of Blair seems strongest from the Labour side but also from the Conservative side. He will never be forgiven for Iraq by many and I suppose the counterfactual is had that never happened, he'd have won another huge victory in 2005 and perhaps, pace Thatcher, decided to "go on and on".
We can perhaps agree both Major and Blair did sterling work in Northern Ireland and that should be recognised.
I find the Maggie-fixation an interesting phenomenon, especially after nearly 5 decades.
I don't see that those who rhetoricise about "Maggie" actually want to do what she said and did, and she is more of a marketing symbol for whatever they want to do of their own bat.
There are things that she was fairly clearly mistaken about, and the world has changed in ways that make some of it obsolete.
Were there people in the 1930s/1940s still dreaming of how they imagined Viscount Curzon dealt with India in the 1890s?
Wasn’t that Churchill himself?
I actually do not know. I have not read very much Churchill - speeches, yes, written history not so much.
The other one that was in my mind was the French attempts to maintain their empire in Indo-China (and subsequently Algeria) after WW2.
His politics about the colonies, and particularly India, were seen as decades past their time back then, he was seen as an aging dinosaur with unfashionable views, which probably contributed somewhat to his not being taken seriously during the early days of Tory appeasement. Today they’d be calling it HDS - Hitler Derangement Syndrome.
Churchill pre WWII had a somewhat ambivalent attitude to Hitler and Mussolini, less so towards what he termed Jewish Bolshevism. An historical irony that he enlisted the aid of the latter to fight the former. I’d say his main objection to appeasing the ‘Narzis’ was the threat they posed to the Empire rather than a strictly moral one.
But “some models can run on a Mac Mini” does not really get you to “hyperscale AI infrastructure is irrelevant”. That feels a bit like saying cloud computing was over because you could host a website on a home server.
Local models will never match datacentre AI infrastructure in $/token for a given model size so long as the number of multiplies you can do between memory fetches on a GPU is measured in the 100s.
You can run small models on your own GPUs, but the $/token will always be much higher than paying a hyperscalar to do the inference for you.
The Blair Essay is a lot better than the headlines about it would suggest.
For example, the headlines say, "Blair tells Labour to ditch net zero and drill in the North Sea," but what the essay actually says is, "We must prioritise cheaper energy and electrification over net zero and use what is left of our North Sea oil and gas resources."
"Electrification" is the process of replacing fossil fuels with renewable electricity. It's the principle means by which net zero is delivered. The continued technological development of renewables makes them the cheap energy option in an age of geopolitical instability and fossil fuel supply disruption.
I wouldn't see this as abandoning net zero, but choosing a carrot-led approach - of concentrating on better technology to replace fossil fuels - rather than a stick-reliant approach - of restricting fossil fuel use to force adoption of other technologies. This is a long way from Trump's ideological opposition to renewables, for example.
I think Blair's Essay is weakest on Trump. He is in denial of Trump's weakness in relation to, and adulation of, Putin, Xi and other dictators, and the stark consequences this has for democracies. But I think that, as a starting point for a serious discussion about Britain's future it has a lot of merit, and is a more useful contribution than anything that has emerged from Labour's leadership wrangling, the Tories, or the Lib Dems.
Blair has to continue arguing for sticking close to the Americans regardless of how idiotic or egregious they become, as his lifetime quest to try and escape from the prison of his own tragic misjudgement.
Always guesswork reading a person's psyche - inc one's own - but I think this is probably right. It's otherwise impossible to explain why he'd completely lose his analysis/judgment chops when it comes to Donald Trump. His stuff on AI and the economy and public services, agree or not, is cogent. You can understand where he's coming from. But his take on the US under Trump2 is utterly ludicrous. Nobody with his brain could seriously think it. Ergo he doesn't. He should have left all that out. It would have made for a better product.
Arguably it made more sense back then, when the US remained firmly committed to NATO regardless of Republican or Democrat, and Europe could self-interestedly spend its peace dividend on happier things than bullets and guns, knowing that the US has us covered. Today, when the US has unreliable and capricious foreign policy, Blair’s position is potentially suicidal.
Yes, his overall desired projection is of an intensely future-facing individual yet on this he is quite the opposite. He's living in the past.
The Blair Essay is a lot better than the headlines about it would suggest.
For example, the headlines say, "Blair tells Labour to ditch net zero and drill in the North Sea," but what the essay actually says is, "We must prioritise cheaper energy and electrification over net zero and use what is left of our North Sea oil and gas resources."
"Electrification" is the process of replacing fossil fuels with renewable electricity. It's the principle means by which net zero is delivered. The continued technological development of renewables makes them the cheap energy option in an age of geopolitical instability and fossil fuel supply disruption.
I wouldn't see this as abandoning net zero, but choosing a carrot-led approach - of concentrating on better technology to replace fossil fuels - rather than a stick-reliant approach - of restricting fossil fuel use to force adoption of other technologies. This is a long way from Trump's ideological opposition to renewables, for example.
I think Blair's Essay is weakest on Trump. He is in denial of Trump's weakness in relation to, and adulation of, Putin, Xi and other dictators, and the stark consequences this has for democracies. But I think that, as a starting point for a serious discussion about Britain's future it has a lot of merit, and is a more useful contribution than anything that has emerged from Labour's leadership wrangling, the Tories, or the Lib Dems.
Blair has to continue arguing for sticking close to the Americans regardless of how idiotic or egregious they become, as his lifetime quest to try and escape from the prison of his own tragic misjudgement.
Always guesswork reading a person's psyche - inc one's own - but I think this is probably right. It's otherwise impossible to explain why he'd completely lose his analysis/judgment chops when it comes to Donald Trump. His stuff on AI and the economy and public services, agree or not, is cogent. You can understand where he's coming from. But his take on the US under Trump2 is utterly ludicrous. Nobody with his brain could seriously think it. Ergo he doesn't. He should have left all that out. It would have made for a better product.
Arguably it made more sense back then, when the US remained firmly committed to NATO regardless of Republican or Democrat, and Europe could self-interestedly spend its peace dividend on happier things than bullets and guns, knowing that the US has us covered. Today, when the US has unreliable and capricious foreign policy, Blair’s position is potentially suicidal.
This is just the standard Trump derangement syndrome. How is the US now more unreliable and capricious than it was in Blair's era when it had a European policy of 'punish France, ignore Germany and forgive Russia'?
Major is the model of an ex PM. IMO his reputation has grown since defeat.
Blair could learn from him.
Oddly enough, and I take your point, the criticism of Major is strongest from the Conservative side. Do they blame him personally for 1997? It's hard to think of any other leader at that time who would have done demonstrably better against Blair.
I presume it's all about Maastricht and the marginalisation of those who would eventually come totake over the party such as IDS and others. Remembering the seaside picture of Tony Marlow, Theresa Gorman and those who stood with Redwood in 1995.
The critique of Blair seems strongest from the Labour side but also from the Conservative side. He will never be forgiven for Iraq by many and I suppose the counterfactual is had that never happened, he'd have won another huge victory in 2005 and perhaps, pace Thatcher, decided to "go on and on".
We can perhaps agree both Major and Blair did sterling work in Northern Ireland and that should be recognised.
A fair bit of it is personal blame for 1990. It doesn't entirely make sense, but people have never been required to make sense.
I can't help wondering if letting Maggie lose in 1992- defeat nature's way, rather than the artificial party process that happened- would have saved us all quite a bit of psychodrama in the following decades.
Would have had the high tax disaster of a Kinnock premiership though
You mean the national debt would be lower?
Not given his higher spending and the weakened growth
'Robert Kenyon, the Reform UK candidate for the Makerfield by-election, has previously stated that Russia is entitled to take Crimea, comparing the invasion to Britain’s intervention in the Falklands'
Glasgow (which apparently matches the Manchester growth miracle) announces a big new 450 home housing development. The replies on FB shows the incoherent, low information morass that any level of government wades in - the flats are simultaneously bad because locals won’t be able to afford them and also they will all be ‘given’ to asylum seekers.
It is the triple lock that we must have to say Cameron made a truly appalling decision on.
And Labour not removing it is an abomination.
The combination of triple locking pensions and tripling student tuition fees was utterly malign.
I'm still staggered than Clegg and so many LibDems agreed to it.
So am I
On Triple Lock there was an interesting piece by Steve Webb in Telegraph a few days ago. He argued that now is not the time to ditch it because so many people now don't have anywhere near enough private pension savings since Final Salary has died a death. Lots of people have been auto-enrolled but at low rates and will take years to catch up and so in meantime need some form of Triple Lock seemed to be the argument.
Since it is universally agreed that AI is here, is here to stay, and the issues are how to use and regulate and avert disaster, the subject is bound to come up.
MAJOR COMPANIES ARE STARTING TO CUT BACK ON AI USE AS COSTS IN SOME CASES ARE NOW HIGHER THAN HUMAN WORKERS.
Ai has for years been sold at below cost to encourage people to use it.
Add the additional issue that as models have increased in size the number of tokens used also increases and it’s getting to the point that a human being is cheaper than AI for the same task.
That isn’t to say that AI is a dead end but it’s going to be a niche product that doesn’t justify the current optimistic valuations
That's far from clear. But a bubble does seem to be forming.
The race to be first has driven up margins on what was commodity hardware to unprecedented levels (Micron just became a trillion dollar company on the back of that), while manufacturers of the more advanced kit (TSMC, followed by Samsung and SK Hynix etc) are enjoying even higher gross margins on record volumes.
Chip manufacturing accounted for around 0.5% off global GDP at the beginning of the decades; it's now on the way to 2%.
That growth and those margins aren't sustainable for long, and a customer strike might pop the bubble in a similar manner to the previous internet one.
It's not a straight comparison, though, as unlike the first proliferation of overpriced dotcoms, these companies are generating large cash flows at the moment.
Shame the internet/.com bubble burst. The internet seemed a good idea. Is it still around?
Two things will be true of AI: There will be big losers and AI will happen.
It is the triple lock that we must have to say Cameron made a truly appalling decision on.
And Labour not removing it is an abomination.
The combination of triple locking pensions and tripling student tuition fees was utterly malign.
I'm still staggered than Clegg and so many LibDems agreed to it.
So am I
On Triple Lock there was an interesting piece by Steve Webb in Telegraph a few days ago. He argued that now is not the time to ditch it because so many people now don't have anywhere near enough private pension savings since Final Salary has died a death. Lots of people have been auto-enrolled but at low rates and will take years to catch up and so in meantime need some form of Triple Lock seemed to be the argument.
OK That's a reasonable argument. But it needs to be coupled with having NI on pensions (or merging NI with income tax) and taxing pension benefits such as WFA and free travel. That way poorer pensioners are protected but wealthier ones pay their way.
Since it is universally agreed that AI is here, is here to stay, and the issues are how to use and regulate and avert disaster, the subject is bound to come up.
MAJOR COMPANIES ARE STARTING TO CUT BACK ON AI USE AS COSTS IN SOME CASES ARE NOW HIGHER THAN HUMAN WORKERS.
Ai has for years been sold at below cost to encourage people to use it.
Add the additional issue that as models have increased in size the number of tokens used also increases and it’s getting to the point that a human being is cheaper than AI for the same task.
That isn’t to say that AI is a dead end but it’s going to be a niche product that doesn’t justify the current optimistic valuations
That's far from clear. But a bubble does seem to be forming.
The race to be first has driven up margins on what was commodity hardware to unprecedented levels (Micron just became a trillion dollar company on the back of that), while manufacturers of the more advanced kit (TSMC, followed by Samsung and SK Hynix etc) are enjoying even higher gross margins on record volumes.
Chip manufacturing accounted for around 0.5% off global GDP at the beginning of the decades; it's now on the way to 2%.
That growth and those margins aren't sustainable for long, and a customer strike might pop the bubble in a similar manner to the previous internet one.
It's not a straight comparison, though, as unlike the first proliferation of overpriced dotcoms, these companies are generating large cash flows at the moment.
Shame the internet/.com bubble burst. The internet seemed a good idea. Is it still around?
Two things will be true of AI: There will be big losers and AI will happen.
That was more or less my point. It's going to be bumpy ride, though.
The fortified Visconti Bridge, originally conceived in the 1300s as a cunning plan to dam and divert the river so that the lakes and moats surrounding downstream Mantova would dry out leaving it defenceless, the plan went the way of Baldrick’s and it became a bridge; the metal span (from about 1900) was bombed by the Americans in 1944, but they missed it. DFS. And its f****** hot again and only 10 o’clock.
Serious q: I'm interested how a doglet is OK in these weather conditions?
Around here when it gets very hot (which probably means high 20s), the dog walkers shift to 6am or mid-late evening.
I’m suffering as much as he is! We’re not doing anything particularly energetic - I’m now sitting in a bar having a coffee and cold water and he’s sheltering under the table. We get out early, shelter during the heat of the day (today I feel a long lunch coming on) and then reemerge for the evening. Italy in May isn’t, however, usually this hot - unlike the UK, the July-like temperatures are forecast to continue for the next week or more, but with some rain forecast for the evenings, maybe even a temporale. After a few days sweltering on the plain, we’re next headed back to the mountains where altitude offers some respite.
Thank-you. Have a fantastic holiday.
A further thought for a component of your alternative career - I think there may be a (possibly easier to manage logistically than something on the continental) niche for lead-walks on lesser known longish (several days to a week) UK routes. There are long distance paths everywhere. I think here we have a more intricate and interesting historical landscape than almost anywhere else. In Derbyshire one could be created around the well dressing calendar.
I can even imagine something interesting "long distance walk with your dog" as an added value, Though that could queer visits to local attractions (National Trust< English Heritage.
I constantly get adverts for such through, for example, Ramblers, National Trust, Cycling UK and other periodicals.
One thing I am itching to do as I get older is what in cycling we call "source to the sea" routes. Yes, I'd love to cycle the Rhine, but the Derwent will be just as good and is only a couple of days.
Musings.
Having always lived in London or the South East, the continent is just too close and I have tended to neglect Scotland and the North for holidays, not least because driving up the M1/A1/M6 is neither as enjoyable nor interesting as driving in Europe. Last year I realised I hadn’t had a proper holiday in Scotland - discounting work trips to Edinburgh and conferences in Glasgow - for over thirty years, and the spring trip I made to Skye and the Trossachs was magnificent, partly because it coincided with a marvellous spell of spring weather, as sunny as this year but not nearly so hot. I am already thinking of Mull for next spring; it’s just that the UK motorway driving and having to stop over in Doncaster or suchlike doesn’t really stack up to the first evening dining in France.
You can be in Northumberland in what, 5 hours from London?
Kings Cross to Berwick by train is 3 hours 34 minutes
Newcastle is technically Northumbria so 2 hours 30.
My favourite bit of the Tony Blair essay his views on how to help "the north of the country". A big improvement from his old "education, education, education" conviction. Education now comes second. Infrastructure is first. That is an important lesson learned. Good. https://x.com/thomasforth/status/2059546481694998910
The fortified Visconti Bridge, originally conceived in the 1300s as a cunning plan to dam and divert the river so that the lakes and moats surrounding downstream Mantova would dry out leaving it defenceless, the plan went the way of Baldrick’s and it became a bridge; the metal span (from about 1900) was bombed by the Americans in 1944, but they missed it. DFS. And its f****** hot again and only 10 o’clock.
Serious q: I'm interested how a doglet is OK in these weather conditions?
Around here when it gets very hot (which probably means high 20s), the dog walkers shift to 6am or mid-late evening.
I’m suffering as much as he is! We’re not doing anything particularly energetic - I’m now sitting in a bar having a coffee and cold water and he’s sheltering under the table. We get out early, shelter during the heat of the day (today I feel a long lunch coming on) and then reemerge for the evening. Italy in May isn’t, however, usually this hot - unlike the UK, the July-like temperatures are forecast to continue for the next week or more, but with some rain forecast for the evenings, maybe even a temporale. After a few days sweltering on the plain, we’re next headed back to the mountains where altitude offers some respite.
Thank-you. Have a fantastic holiday.
A further thought for a component of your alternative career - I think there may be a (possibly easier to manage logistically than something on the continental) niche for lead-walks on lesser known longish (several days to a week) UK routes. There are long distance paths everywhere. I think here we have a more intricate and interesting historical landscape than almost anywhere else. In Derbyshire one could be created around the well dressing calendar.
I can even imagine something interesting "long distance walk with your dog" as an added value, Though that could queer visits to local attractions (National Trust< English Heritage.
I constantly get adverts for such through, for example, Ramblers, National Trust, Cycling UK and other periodicals.
One thing I am itching to do as I get older is what in cycling we call "source to the sea" routes. Yes, I'd love to cycle the Rhine, but the Derwent will be just as good and is only a couple of days.
Musings.
Having always lived in London or the South East, the continent is just too close and I have tended to neglect Scotland and the North for holidays, not least because driving up the M1/A1/M6 is neither as enjoyable nor interesting as driving in Europe. Last year I realised I hadn’t had a proper holiday in Scotland - discounting work trips to Edinburgh and conferences in Glasgow - for over thirty years, and the spring trip I made to Skye and the Trossachs was magnificent, partly because it coincided with a marvellous spell of spring weather, as sunny as this year but not nearly so hot. I am already thinking of Mull for next spring; it’s just that the UK motorway driving and having to stop over in Doncaster or suchlike doesn’t really stack up to the first evening dining in France.
You can be in Northumberland in what, 5 hours from London?
Kings Cross to Berwick by train is 3 hours 34 minutes
Newcastle is technically Northumbria so 2 hours 30.
The fortified Visconti Bridge, originally conceived in the 1300s as a cunning plan to dam and divert the river so that the lakes and moats surrounding downstream Mantova would dry out leaving it defenceless, the plan went the way of Baldrick’s and it became a bridge; the metal span (from about 1900) was bombed by the Americans in 1944, but they missed it. DFS. And its f****** hot again and only 10 o’clock.
Serious q: I'm interested how a doglet is OK in these weather conditions?
Around here when it gets very hot (which probably means high 20s), the dog walkers shift to 6am or mid-late evening.
I’m suffering as much as he is! We’re not doing anything particularly energetic - I’m now sitting in a bar having a coffee and cold water and he’s sheltering under the table. We get out early, shelter during the heat of the day (today I feel a long lunch coming on) and then reemerge for the evening. Italy in May isn’t, however, usually this hot - unlike the UK, the July-like temperatures are forecast to continue for the next week or more, but with some rain forecast for the evenings, maybe even a temporale. After a few days sweltering on the plain, we’re next headed back to the mountains where altitude offers some respite.
Thank-you. Have a fantastic holiday.
A further thought for a component of your alternative career - I think there may be a (possibly easier to manage logistically than something on the continental) niche for lead-walks on lesser known longish (several days to a week) UK routes. There are long distance paths everywhere. I think here we have a more intricate and interesting historical landscape than almost anywhere else. In Derbyshire one could be created around the well dressing calendar.
I can even imagine something interesting "long distance walk with your dog" as an added value, Though that could queer visits to local attractions (National Trust< English Heritage.
I constantly get adverts for such through, for example, Ramblers, National Trust, Cycling UK and other periodicals.
One thing I am itching to do as I get older is what in cycling we call "source to the sea" routes. Yes, I'd love to cycle the Rhine, but the Derwent will be just as good and is only a couple of days.
Musings.
Having always lived in London or the South East, the continent is just too close and I have tended to neglect Scotland and the North for holidays, not least because driving up the M1/A1/M6 is neither as enjoyable nor interesting as driving in Europe. Last year I realised I hadn’t had a proper holiday in Scotland - discounting work trips to Edinburgh and conferences in Glasgow - for over thirty years, and the spring trip I made to Skye and the Trossachs was magnificent, partly because it coincided with a marvellous spell of spring weather, as sunny as this year but not nearly so hot. I am already thinking of Mull for next spring; it’s just that the UK motorway driving and having to stop over in Doncaster or suchlike doesn’t really stack up to the first evening dining in France.
You can be in Northumberland in what, 5 hours from London?
Kings Cross to Berwick by train is 3 hours 34 minutes
Newcastle is technically Northumbria so 2 hours 30.
It is the triple lock that we must have to say Cameron made a truly appalling decision on.
And Labour not removing it is an abomination.
The combination of triple locking pensions and tripling student tuition fees was utterly malign.
I'm still staggered than Clegg and so many LibDems agreed to it.
So am I
On Triple Lock there was an interesting piece by Steve Webb in Telegraph a few days ago. He argued that now is not the time to ditch it because so many people now don't have anywhere near enough private pension savings since Final Salary has died a death. Lots of people have been auto-enrolled but at low rates and will take years to catch up and so in meantime need some form of Triple Lock seemed to be the argument.
A riposte from one of the most thoughtful members of the government...
Blair putting on full display what is in many ways his special ability - to lay out a political argument grounded in his own view of global trends (globalisation in the 2000s, tech in the 2020s). But…
The whole thread is worth reading, but here's the conclusion:
In summary, this is in many ways an impressive attempt to engage with some of the big forces shaping our future. But, as Tony Blair would probably be the first to admit, governing requires a much grittier engagement with the world as it is, not as you might prefer it to be.
And a good bit of sketch writer knockabout:
My attitude to Tony Blair's opinions on AI is informed by my total conviction that he barely knows how to turn his own phone on.
Trump’s Official ‘Board of Peace’ Fund Is Empty – But Dollars Are Moving Beyond Public Oversight https://uk.news.yahoo.com/trump-official-board-peace-fund-104015110.html Trump’s much-hyped “Board of Peace” for Gaza reconstruction is reportedly yet to receive a single dollar into its official fund, despite billions in international pledges and repeated promises from the president that the initiative would reshape the region after the war.
Four months after Trump unveiled the body with considerable fanfare, four people familiar with the matter told the Financial Times on Wednesday that the World Bank-administered fund created for the project remains entirely unfunded...
Whatever you think of Blair, engage with what he’s saying not how he makes you feel. The bare minimum we should expect from any leader is that they have an analysis of the current situation and a plan to deal with it which is as coherent and realistic as his intervention. Pretty well every critique I’ve read so far has failed to meet this requirement.
Over to Andy and Keir and Kemi and Nigel and Zack and all the others
On some of the key points in the Blair Essay as mentioned by Shipman.
welfare spending is too high and is throwing good people on the scrapheap- I don't understand.
defence spending is too low - I don't agree. I think the "threat" from Russia is being overstated to create a climate in which increased defence spending (especially simultaenous with cuts in welfare) can be sold. Yes, we can move a little higher but whan I see 5% of GDP being mentioned, no, not sustainable.
the triple lock is unsustainable yes but as we all know pensioners vote and turkeys rarely vote for Christmas. It can be sold within the context of a general belt tightening.
without cheap energy we cannot exploit the AI revolution - we can do a lot with cheap energy but from where is that cheap energy coming? I'd argue if we could get back to the kind of energy pricing we enjoyed in the early 2000s we'd see economic growth resume. I'd also question the amount of energy wr use to store all the data we are creating and look at data de-carbonisation.
we should be investing in EVERY form of energy: renewables, nuclear and the North Sea - quite right.
migration needs to be controlled to boost social cohesion and because the boats look like a huge failure of the state - like everyone else, he has no answer to the "small boats" but at least he isn't talking about wide scale deportation.
any new relationship with the EU will be imposed on us until we are stronger and cannot involve the closeness some desire without freedom of movement - I'm afraid those who want us to Rejoin miss this point. FoM and the Single Currency have never been popular and until they become so we will be outside the EU.
Current polling shows strong support for FoM.
Citation required. I rather suspect you will not see "strong support for FoM" in Makerfield.
Unless the "movement" is "fuck off back where you came from".
There are two sorts of FoM, though. One is concerned with 'brown people coming here and taking British jobs'. The other is 'giving people, especially young ones, the chance to spread their wings in Europe."
How many young ones from Makerfield get to spread their wings in Europe though? Not exactly going to be parity with 'brown people coming here and taking British jobs I suspect.
A friend of mine originally from Bolton, not too far from Makerfield, has a niece who is making quite a life for herself along with a bunch of other Boltonians and Mancs. Their 90 day "visa" limit is long, long gone.
Trump’s Official ‘Board of Peace’ Fund Is Empty – But Dollars Are Moving Beyond Public Oversight https://uk.news.yahoo.com/trump-official-board-peace-fund-104015110.html Trump’s much-hyped “Board of Peace” for Gaza reconstruction is reportedly yet to receive a single dollar into its official fund, despite billions in international pledges and repeated promises from the president that the initiative would reshape the region after the war.
Four months after Trump unveiled the body with considerable fanfare, four people familiar with the matter told the Financial Times on Wednesday that the World Bank-administered fund created for the project remains entirely unfunded...
And Hamas was supposed to disarm as part of the deal. That hasn't happened in the slightest iirc.
It is the triple lock that we must have to say Cameron made a truly appalling decision on.
And Labour not removing it is an abomination.
The combination of triple locking pensions and tripling student tuition fees was utterly malign.
I'm still staggered than Clegg and so many LibDems agreed to it.
So am I
On Triple Lock there was an interesting piece by Steve Webb in Telegraph a few days ago. He argued that now is not the time to ditch it because so many people now don't have anywhere near enough private pension savings since Final Salary has died a death. Lots of people have been auto-enrolled but at low rates and will take years to catch up and so in meantime need some form of Triple Lock seemed to be the argument.
Then taxes must rise further. TINA
Sure; how about a flat 30% rate for all. Incentivises entreprenership. Those with the broadest shoulders are already paying far too much tax. Perhaps time for the many to start funding the state rather than taking from it....
The Blair Essay is a lot better than the headlines about it would suggest.
For example, the headlines say, "Blair tells Labour to ditch net zero and drill in the North Sea," but what the essay actually says is, "We must prioritise cheaper energy and electrification over net zero and use what is left of our North Sea oil and gas resources."
"Electrification" is the process of replacing fossil fuels with renewable electricity. It's the principle means by which net zero is delivered. The continued technological development of renewables makes them the cheap energy option in an age of geopolitical instability and fossil fuel supply disruption.
I wouldn't see this as abandoning net zero, but choosing a carrot-led approach - of concentrating on better technology to replace fossil fuels - rather than a stick-reliant approach - of restricting fossil fuel use to force adoption of other technologies. This is a long way from Trump's ideological opposition to renewables, for example.
I think Blair's Essay is weakest on Trump. He is in denial of Trump's weakness in relation to, and adulation of, Putin, Xi and other dictators, and the stark consequences this has for democracies. But I think that, as a starting point for a serious discussion about Britain's future it has a lot of merit, and is a more useful contribution than anything that has emerged from Labour's leadership wrangling, the Tories, or the Lib Dems.
The problem is that if every country decides to use what is left of their fossil fuel reserves, the world is doomed. How can we avoid this?
It is madness, we take maximum pain to no purpose while the rest of the world go gang busters. It is criminal to be importing gas and oil yet cancelling our own reserves whilst no one else gives a hoot. Typical of the clowns elected in this country, they could not run a bath.
You can run small models on your own GPUs, but the $/token will always be much higher than paying a hyperscalar to do the inference for you.
I make frequent use of local AIs running on basically a gaming PC, and at current token costs in the last year I would have spent considerably more on tokens than the entire cost of the PC. As some companies are finding out now per-token billing means you can end up with very spicy bills. The best attribute of locally hosted AI is not having to worry about that.
When the AI bubble pops, as it surely will, hyperscalers will be left with datacentres full of GPU racks bought at bubble prices and their costs will reflect that even as the hardware required to locally host tumbles in price.
Training is another matter, of course. I know someone who trains models in his bedroom on a quad-5090 setup, but that's commendably bonkers.
My favourite bit of the Tony Blair essay his views on how to help "the north of the country". A big improvement from his old "education, education, education" conviction. Education now comes second. Infrastructure is first. That is an important lesson learned. Good. https://x.com/thomasforth/status/2059546481694998910
You get the feeling that if Blair had started HS2 in 1997 it would have been up and running by the time he left Downing Street in 2007.He was good at making things happen.
It says a lot about the complete dearth of serious thinking in Westminster at the moment that an essay that argues “it’s good if a government has a plan; don’t torch your closest international alliances; try to grow the economy and utilise AI” is being treated as a work of great political philosophy.
Though Labour plus Greens plus LDs makes 47 and the 2 Burnham hypothetical polls have Labour then taking the lead. Fortunately for Burnham too Restore are fighting Reform more than him and the Tories are also putting up a candidate and the Reform candidate now turns out to have made some relatively pro Putin comments
@ShippersUnbound Further to Blair. Literally every honest sensible person in all the main parties privately agrees with all these propositions:
- welfare spending is too high and is throwing good people on the scrapheap - defence spending is too low - the triple lock is unsustainable - without cheap energy we cannot exploit the AI revolution - we should be investing in EVERY form of energy: renewables, nuclear and the North Sea - migration needs to be controlled to boost social cohesion and because the boats look like a huge failure of the state - any new relationship with the EU will be imposed on us until we are stronger and cannot involve the closeness some desire without freedom of movement - we are deeply embedded with America in ways which the public does not understand and cannot be told and however joyous it makes us feel to hate Trump, disengagement at the deep state level is not only wholly unrealistic but also undesirable - Whitehall needs a total overhaul so specific project expertise and political appointees can be brought in quickly
Blair basically says all that.
The one thing he doesn’t say and which the same group of people agree on is this and it’s something Blair left behind:
No-one's the slightest bit interested one iota in what he's actually said or whether it's accurate or not.
He looks a bit old and creepy and some Tories like a bit of what he's saying, so he's suspect, and should generally shut up and go back into retirement.
That's what passes for political debate in the UK today.
The Blair Essay is a lot better than the headlines about it would suggest.
For example, the headlines say, "Blair tells Labour to ditch net zero and drill in the North Sea," but what the essay actually says is, "We must prioritise cheaper energy and electrification over net zero and use what is left of our North Sea oil and gas resources."
"Electrification" is the process of replacing fossil fuels with renewable electricity. It's the principle means by which net zero is delivered. The continued technological development of renewables makes them the cheap energy option in an age of geopolitical instability and fossil fuel supply disruption.
I wouldn't see this as abandoning net zero, but choosing a carrot-led approach - of concentrating on better technology to replace fossil fuels - rather than a stick-reliant approach - of restricting fossil fuel use to force adoption of other technologies. This is a long way from Trump's ideological opposition to renewables, for example.
I think Blair's Essay is weakest on Trump. He is in denial of Trump's weakness in relation to, and adulation of, Putin, Xi and other dictators, and the stark consequences this has for democracies. But I think that, as a starting point for a serious discussion about Britain's future it has a lot of merit, and is a more useful contribution than anything that has emerged from Labour's leadership wrangling, the Tories, or the Lib Dems.
The problem is that if every country decides to use what is left of their fossil fuel reserves, the world is doomed. How can we avoid this?
It is madness, we take maximum pain to no purpose while the rest of the world go gang busters. It is criminal to be importing gas and oil yet cancelling our own reserves whilst no one else gives a hoot. Typical of the clowns elected in this country, they could not run a bath.
The real madness is that, as a species, we appear to be unable to stop ourselves from trashing our planet.
My favourite bit of the Tony Blair essay his views on how to help "the north of the country". A big improvement from his old "education, education, education" conviction. Education now comes second. Infrastructure is first. That is an important lesson learned. Good. https://x.com/thomasforth/status/2059546481694998910
You get the feeling that if Blair had started HS2 in 1997 it would have been up and running by the time he left Downing Street in 2007.He was good at making things happen.
You asked on a previous thread what op-ed stands for. It originally stood for "opposite the editorial" and referred to an opinion piece of text opposite the editorial page, written by a commentator instead of the editorial board. I think the term has now expanded to cover opinion pieces anywhere in the newspaper
The Blair Essay is a lot better than the headlines about it would suggest.
For example, the headlines say, "Blair tells Labour to ditch net zero and drill in the North Sea," but what the essay actually says is, "We must prioritise cheaper energy and electrification over net zero and use what is left of our North Sea oil and gas resources."
"Electrification" is the process of replacing fossil fuels with renewable electricity. It's the principle means by which net zero is delivered. The continued technological development of renewables makes them the cheap energy option in an age of geopolitical instability and fossil fuel supply disruption.
I wouldn't see this as abandoning net zero, but choosing a carrot-led approach - of concentrating on better technology to replace fossil fuels - rather than a stick-reliant approach - of restricting fossil fuel use to force adoption of other technologies. This is a long way from Trump's ideological opposition to renewables, for example.
I think Blair's Essay is weakest on Trump. He is in denial of Trump's weakness in relation to, and adulation of, Putin, Xi and other dictators, and the stark consequences this has for democracies. But I think that, as a starting point for a serious discussion about Britain's future it has a lot of merit, and is a more useful contribution than anything that has emerged from Labour's leadership wrangling, the Tories, or the Lib Dems.
On some of the key points in the Blair Essay as mentioned by Shipman.
welfare spending is too high and is throwing good people on the scrapheap- I don't understand.
defence spending is too low - I don't agree. I think the "threat" from Russia is being overstated to create a climate in which increased defence spending (especially simultaenous with cuts in welfare) can be sold. Yes, we can move a little higher but whan I see 5% of GDP being mentioned, no, not sustainable.
the triple lock is unsustainable yes but as we all know pensioners vote and turkeys rarely vote for Christmas. It can be sold within the context of a general belt tightening.
without cheap energy we cannot exploit the AI revolution - we can do a lot with cheap energy but from where is that cheap energy coming? I'd argue if we could get back to the kind of energy pricing we enjoyed in the early 2000s we'd see economic growth resume. I'd also question the amount of energy wr use to store all the data we are creating and look at data de-carbonisation.
we should be investing in EVERY form of energy: renewables, nuclear and the North Sea - quite right.
migration needs to be controlled to boost social cohesion and because the boats look like a huge failure of the state - like everyone else, he has no answer to the "small boats" but at least he isn't talking about wide scale deportation.
any new relationship with the EU will be imposed on us until we are stronger and cannot involve the closeness some desire without freedom of movement - I'm afraid those who want us to Rejoin miss this point. FoM and the Single Currency have never been popular and until they become so we will be outside the EU.
Current polling shows strong support for FoM.
Citation required. I rather suspect you will not see "strong support for FoM" in Makerfield.
Unless the "movement" is "fuck off back where you came from".
Comments
https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/curriculum-collections/cosmic-horizons-book/georges-lemaitre-big-bang
There's a hysteresis in public understanding of the issue- when the boats were utterly out of control, it was (rightly) a story. Long runs of days when nobody arrives on boats is not a story. So people reasonably assume that nothing has changed.
I don't know what anyone could do about that.
The City of London may well have lost its place as the financial centre of Europe to Frankfurt and would have fallen well behind New York, Singapore, Tokyo etc.
The other one that was in my mind was the French attempts to maintain their empire in Indo-China (and subsequently Algeria) after WW2.
We need to transition and stop burning oil and gas not stop producing it. If every country does that, then the likes of Saudi Arabia will be left with fossil fuels they don't use as they have no customers for it.
In order to qualify for disability benefits you have to emphasize what you cannot do, and so the system encourages people to minimise their capabilities and become dependent on government handouts.
The system will then tend to penalise people for trying to stretch their capabilities - they have to stay within the disabled box to continue to qualify for help.
I'd characterise it as a very binary system with a high barrier to qualification, but generous support once you're on the inside. But a lot of people exist in the grey in between, and categorising them as either black or white either penalises them or infantilises them.
Unless the "movement" is "fuck off back where you came from".
As I said yesterday the fix is to publicly appoint Farage to be in charge of the issue give him a £1bn a year and watch him fail
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/doj-shelves-biden-autopen-probe-rcna261810
* compute capacity is becoming strategic infrastructure,
* AI companies cluster around compute availability,
* energy availability attracts investment,
* low-latency domestic hosting matters for some industries,
* sovereignty matters for defence, finance, healthcare and government workloads,
* and whoever controls the infrastructure tends to capture more of the value chain.
Governments, banks, defence contractors and regulated industries are not going to happily pipe sensitive workloads through random overseas infrastructure indefinitely. Data sovereignty, regulation, sanctions risk, resilience, espionage concerns, latency and legal jurisdiction all matter.
And Labour not removing it is an abomination.
A single Kinnock term (it's hard to see him getting re-elected) wouldn't have undone all of Thatcher's financial market reforms, or anything close.
Whether it would have shone more - or less - of a spotlight on her mistakes is hard to say. And what a new Conservative government following Kinnock's term might have then done is even less predictable
It feels like there's a bit of a mirror image of the asylum boats question. In both cases, the problem might be what we're trying to optimise.
For the boats, I don't think anyone would argue that the current situation, where the only way to claim asylum in the UK for most is a Hunger Games of paying a criminal a lot of money to have the chance of risking your life on crossing the Channel in an inflatable, is a grisly mess. But it's probably a pretty effective way of keeping the numbers down. Any better system, or any system that sees the UK taking a fair share of the global burden, would see us taking responsibility for more people. And we like that idea even less than the boat crossings.
For disability benefits, it would be morally and economically better to have a model which was more about enabling ability. But a shiny sixpence says that that would involve turning the wall into a ramp, giving a bit less money to a lot more people. Crude means/ability testing creates peverse outcomes, but it does seem to save money- in the short term, at least.
What will happen is
1) die back as cost/benefit becomes an issue.
2) cost reduction and analysis of benefits.
3) a slower growth pattern.
The same pattern has always been seen in the booms caused by technology spikes. See the Railway Mania.
Some models can run usefully on a Mac mini. Even if the cost of training it is vast, the marginal cost of usage is low enough.
The lack of language skills among British people always makes the movement predominantly one way.
And as Leon discovered when he visited Paris, there are no shortage of brown people in Europe now.
I'm still staggered than Clegg and so many LibDems agreed to it.
Like having a factory that assembles cars from foreign sourced parts. It’s a start.
When someone says that we can’t build computers in the West, because all the screws come from China - start with what you *can* do. Then build on it.
Then we are upset when we find that we have large numbers of economically inactive people.
I blame the Trans Gay Illegal Immigrant Alien AIs.
We're not there yet but where we're heading is that possessing the GPUs will represent *the ability for your country to conduct independent thinking* at a level advanced enough to be meaningful. If there's any capacity you need to have locally rather than relying on foreigners, it's that.
Yes, there’s obviously hype, overinvestment and some completely unhinged valuations around AI at the moment. There always are when a technology looks potentially transformative. Railways, telecoms, the internet, cloud computing. The pattern is usually the same: investors lose their minds for a few years, money gets sprayed everywhere, reality eventually reasserts itself, weaker players die off, then the technology settles into becoming part of normal infrastructure anyway.
What I find slightly unconvincing is the jump from “there’s a bubble” to “therefore AI ends up niche”.
I work in software/platform engineering and AI tools are already useful now in very boring, practical ways. Not “replace all humans” useful. That stuff is mostly marketing departments inhaling their own fumes. But useful enough that one experienced engineer can get through substantially more work than before. Coding assistance, incident analysis, documentation, search, repetitive transformation work, support triage, operational glue tasks, all the tedious things that eat half the day.
That’s the real economic question to me. Not “can AI replace a senior engineer?”, because mostly it can’t. The question is whether one decent engineer using AI can do the work that previously needed several people. Increasingly the answer is yes.
People are also muddling up training cost with inference cost. The fact frontier models cost insane amounts to train does not mean all AI usage remains permanently uneconomic. Costs come down, models get smaller and more specialised, hardware improves, inference improves. Computing history is basically one long story of expensive things becoming commodity infrastructure over time.
And on the “why host AI here when the internet exists?” point, that feels very short-term. Governments are not suddenly obsessed with compute because they think data centres are giant job creators. They care because compute capacity is becoming strategic infrastructure. If your finance sector, defence sector, healthcare systems and government services all depend entirely on foreign AI platforms and foreign infrastructure, that eventually becomes a sovereignty issue whether people like it or not.
None of this means every AI valuation is sane. Quite a few clearly aren’t. There’ll be a correction because there always is.
But “some models can run on a Mac Mini” does not really get you to “hyperscale AI infrastructure is irrelevant”. That feels a bit like saying cloud computing was over because you could host a website on a home server.
https://www.whatukthinks.org/eu/questions/if-the-uk-could-regain-special-access-to-the-european-market-would-you-or-would-you-not-be-willing-to-allow-eu-citizens-to-travel-live-and-work-in-the-uk-and-uk-citizens-to-do-the-same-thr/
I’d say his main objection to appeasing the ‘Narzis’ was the threat they posed to the Empire rather than a strictly moral one.
You can run small models on your own GPUs, but the $/token will always be much higher than paying a hyperscalar to do the inference for you.
CON: 19% (+1)
LAB: 17% (=)
GRN: 16% (+1)
LDM: 14% (=)
RES: 3% (-1)
SNP: 3% (=)
Via
@YouGov
, 25-26 May.
https://x.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/2059568253513425254?s=20
CON: 19% (+1)
LAB: 17% (=)
GRN: 16% (+1)
LDM: 14% (=)
RES: 3% (-1)
SNP: 3% (=)
Via
@YouGov
, 25-26 May.
https://x.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/2059568253513425254?s=20
https://x.com/GBPolitcs/status/2059570449248334204?s=20
100 firefighters tackle large blaze at Jewish supermarket in north-west London
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/golders-green-fire-kosher-kingdom-b1283748.html
https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/26132364.huge-plan-hundreds-east-end-homes-gets-approved/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwZnRzaASDpTVleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZA8xNzM4NDc2NDI2NzAzNzAAAR4DPZ-YLhM6bDPdzAkk9QoiFotDlnjU-Zw_qEoU5z_6_5p_qSfbEo24K4ZdlQ_aem_jN53su_Ea-4CD2HjT3eXIQ#Echobox=1779687408-1
Oh hang on....
Two things will be true of AI: There will be big losers and AI will happen.
That way poorer pensioners are protected but wealthier ones pay their way.
It's going to be bumpy ride, though.
My favourite bit of the Tony Blair essay his views on how to help "the north of the country". A big improvement from his old "education, education, education" conviction. Education now comes second. Infrastructure is first. That is an important lesson learned. Good.
https://x.com/thomasforth/status/2059546481694998910
https://x.com/rupertlowe10/status/2059574043888533810
A lot of Ukrainian flags around Makerfield.
Blair putting on full display what is in many ways his special ability - to lay out a political argument grounded in his own view of global trends (globalisation in the 2000s, tech in the 2020s). But…
https://bsky.app/profile/torstenbell.bsky.social/post/3mmtbwunx5c2d
The whole thread is worth reading, but here's the conclusion:
In summary, this is in many ways an impressive attempt to engage with some of the big forces shaping our future. But, as Tony Blair would probably be the first to admit, governing requires a much grittier engagement with the world as it is, not as you might prefer it to be.
And a good bit of sketch writer knockabout:
My attitude to Tony Blair's opinions on AI is informed by my total conviction that he barely knows how to turn his own phone on.
https://bsky.app/profile/roberthutton.co.uk/post/3mmtc4ccesk23
Trump’s Official ‘Board of Peace’ Fund Is Empty – But Dollars Are Moving Beyond Public Oversight
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/trump-official-board-peace-fund-104015110.html
Trump’s much-hyped “Board of Peace” for Gaza reconstruction is reportedly yet to receive a single dollar into its official fund, despite billions in international pledges and repeated promises from the president that the initiative would reshape the region after the war.
Four months after Trump unveiled the body with considerable fanfare, four people familiar with the matter told the Financial Times on Wednesday that the World Bank-administered fund created for the project remains entirely unfunded...
Whatever you think of Blair, engage with what he’s saying not how he makes you feel. The bare minimum we should expect from any leader is that they have an analysis of the current situation and a plan to deal with it which is as coherent and realistic as his intervention. Pretty well every critique I’ve read so far has failed to meet this requirement.
Over to Andy and Keir and Kemi and Nigel and Zack and all the others
https://x.com/ShippersUnbound/status/2059540987995705567
Don't forget Mancs like a holiday too.
https://bsky.app/profile/torstenbell.bsky.social/post/3mmtbwunx5c2d
When the AI bubble pops, as it surely will, hyperscalers will be left with datacentres full of GPU racks bought at bubble prices and their costs will reflect that even as the hardware required to locally host tumbles in price.
Training is another matter, of course. I know someone who trains models in his bedroom on a quad-5090 setup, but that's commendably bonkers.
Ben Kentish
@BenKentish
It says a lot about the complete dearth of serious thinking in Westminster at the moment that an essay that argues “it’s good if a government has a plan; don’t torch your closest international alliances; try to grow the economy and utilise AI” is being treated as a work of great political philosophy.
https://x.com/BenKentish/status/2059560741934358773
He looks a bit old and creepy and some Tories like a bit of what he's saying, so he's suspect, and should generally shut up and go back into retirement.
That's what passes for political debate in the UK today.
Is that a unit of time used regularly round your way?
He is looking at how the Encyclical addresses questions beyond the technical and the functional, into the moral, the societal and the philosophical.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBqfhWD1n-0&t=2712s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op-ed
So much fun.
https://x.com/tseofpb/status/2059378681466724755?s=46
And
https://x.com/rt_gale99/status/2059028535113642426?s=46
https://manchestermill.co.uk/independent-and-clearly-very-troublesome/?ref=the-mill-newsletter
BBC News: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqkOXWm2Rig
Times Radio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id32iVXyQ_k
Murrell purchased 7 kettles between Aug 2020 and Nov 2020. Including purchasing 2 on the same day. Fascinatingly odd.
https://x.com/crit_gen/status/2059402341170679904?s=61&t=c6bcp0cjChLfQN5Tc8A_6g