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
And the Labour and LibDem votes are increasingly sensibly distributed for maximising their seat haul, with the Greens less so but only threatening to take Labour inner city seats rather than deliver that many to the right. Whereas the Tory and Reform votes are still nicely correlated.
I've been thinking (I know, risky!) about the overall big picture fptp landscape (since we can assume the system won't change for the next GE):
The fact is that the LDs and the Cons together in their heartlands which they still have (the former expanded last time at the expense of the latter) will get at least 180 seats.
That leaves 470 seats of which approx 360 are in England. So assuming PC and SNP perform to par in their own spaces, Labour or Reform have to be winning around 300 of those 360 seats to be in with a chance of an overall majority.
Reform can't do that, no way, and neither can Labour unless Reform fall away. But if Reform fall away the benefit to Labour will be limited by the resulting boost to the Cons. Their joint tally with the LDs will be more like 250 say. So Labour still can't get a majority.
Then there's the Greens. They will win some seats, every one of which comes off the total for the other parties, pushing that overall majority even further into out-of-reach territory.
Conclusion: it's hardcoded for NOM and the available 1.7 looks like value.
On current polling, Reform absolutely can do that.
You're absolutely right that Labour can't, though. So 50%; must do better.
I'm not just baxtering current polls. I'm doing value added.
Last time I looked up 'wishcasting' in the dictionary, it didn't describe it as value add.
I have my betting hat on. I'm not so denuded of romance and excitement that a hung parliament features in my dreams.
Murrell purchased 7 kettles between Aug 2020 and Nov 2020. Including purchasing 2 on the same day.
I think the guy might have some weird shopping issue, like the rich celebs that have been caught shoplifting. Again, did Nicola never wonder why she couldn't move for the 3 coffee machines and 7 kettles clogging up the kitchen?
How many did she see? Are we sure he doesn't have a self-storage unit where most of this stuff is hidden?
If it's compulsive shopping behaviour then he will likely feel a degree of shame about it and seek to hide it.
Lots of items have been spotted in and around their house during COVID, media puff pieces and them out and about.
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....
1. Most entrepreneurs I know don't earn much, so a 30% flat rate would penalise them, not incentivise them.
2. 30% flat rate is hardly going to incentivise those not in work to seek work.
3. "Those with the broadest shoulders" made me chuckle. Paying say £400k in tax out of an income of £1m pa does not imply 'broad shoulders'; it implies someone who has £600k to spend every year. The people with broad shoulders are those working their arses off in low paid jobs to make ends meet and facing rents, food and energy bills that can only be met by relying on UC to supplement their income.
Other than that, a 30% flat rate is still a crap idea.
It is as simple as this, we have too many people not paying into the system but taking a lot out of it. And the vote is equal despite that.
It is, in short, why welfarist democracy is doomed to fail. I'd rather overthrow the welfare reliance, than overthrow the democracy. Perhaps we should return to a pre WW2 size state. The next crash might be just the impetus required to do so....
Surely the people doing best out of 'the system' are the wealthy.
The wealthy have this fantasy they can dismantle the welfare state without being murdered in their beds. They can try but I don't fancy their chances.
The enlightened self-interest argument.
I think at the heart of the right wing mindset is the conflation of wealth creation with the wealthy. And of a person's tax paid with their net contribution to society.
I just don't see it like that. I think that’s very reductive and mainly serves as cod justification for high levels of inequality. IMO if you broaden opportunity (which trickledown is the opposite of) you'll get more people exploiting more of their potential, and more wealth will be both created and better distributed.
Biden's soundbite: build from the bottom up and the middle out, not from the top down. Very good, that, as soundbites go.
Agreed. Also: a quick reminder that what people refer to as 'wealth creation' is usually nothing of the sort but is in fact generally wealth accumulation.
Was in Korea this week for business and learned from colleagues about this wild trend: young Koreans in their 20s and 30s are aggressively taking out loans, especially margin loans from brokerages and credit loans from banks to invest in the surging stock market.. https://x.com/rtodi/status/2059619186704331261
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....
1. Most entrepreneurs I know don't earn much, so a 30% flat rate would penalise them, not incentivise them.
2. 30% flat rate is hardly going to incentivise those not in work to seek work.
3. "Those with the broadest shoulders" made me chuckle. Paying say £400k in tax out of an income of £1m pa does not imply 'broad shoulders'; it implies someone who has £600k to spend every year. The people with broad shoulders are those working their arses off in low paid jobs to make ends meet and facing rents, food and energy bills that can only be met by relying on UC to supplement their income.
Other than that, a 30% flat rate is still a crap idea.
It is as simple as this, we have too many people not paying into the system but taking a lot out of it. And the vote is equal despite that.
It is, in short, why welfarist democracy is doomed to fail. I'd rather overthrow the welfare reliance, than overthrow the democracy. Perhaps we should return to a pre WW2 size state. The next crash might be just the impetus required to do so....
Surely the people doing best out of 'the system' are the wealthy.
The wealthy have this fantasy they can dismantle the welfare state without being murdered in their beds. They can try but I don't fancy their chances.
The fools have this fantasy that wealth won't leave the shores if it is continually stolen by the state. They can keep dreaming, but I don't fancy their chances.
Many of my successful late 30s cohort without family are looking at moving elsewhere. Those with family are looking at the USA....
I find it hard to believe that many in the UK are currently looking at the US. I know many in the US looking at coming to the UK because of Trump.
I've seen people warning about a mass exodus of the rich for years... and it's never happened.
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....
1. Most entrepreneurs I know don't earn much, so a 30% flat rate would penalise them, not incentivise them.
2. 30% flat rate is hardly going to incentivise those not in work to seek work.
3. "Those with the broadest shoulders" made me chuckle. Paying say £400k in tax out of an income of £1m pa does not imply 'broad shoulders'; it implies someone who has £600k to spend every year. The people with broad shoulders are those working their arses off in low paid jobs to make ends meet and facing rents, food and energy bills that can only be met by relying on UC to supplement their income.
Other than that, a 30% flat rate is still a crap idea.
It is as simple as this, we have too many people not paying into the system but taking a lot out of it. And the vote is equal despite that.
It is, in short, why welfarist democracy is doomed to fail. I'd rather overthrow the welfare reliance, than overthrow the democracy. Perhaps we should return to a pre WW2 size state. The next crash might be just the impetus required to do so....
Surely the people doing best out of 'the system' are the wealthy.
The wealthy have this fantasy they can dismantle the welfare state without being murdered in their beds. They can try but I don't fancy their chances.
The fools have this fantasy that wealth won't leave the shores if it is continually stolen by the state. They can keep dreaming, but I don't fancy their chances.
Many of my successful late 30s cohort without family are looking at moving elsewhere. Those with family are looking at the USA....
I find it hard to believe that many in the UK are currently looking at the US. I know many in the US looking at coming to the UK because of Trump.
I've seen people warning about a mass exodus of the rich for years... and it's never happened.
I'm looking very hard at the US.
But with disbelief, not with the intent of emigrating.
Peter Mandelson’s associations with senior figures in China, Russia and Israel were among the concerns raised by the UK’s vetting agency when it concluded he should be denied clearance, multiple sources have told the Guardian.
Was in Korea this week for business and learned from colleagues about this wild trend: young Koreans in their 20s and 30s are aggressively taking out loans, especially margin loans from brokerages and credit loans from banks to invest in the surging stock market.. https://x.com/rtodi/status/2059619186704331261
That will end well...
It will also end quickly.
Forgot to add, it is up 270% in 13 months, so this is going to be the least surprising correction ever. All this market disintermediation, especially in emerging markets has removed a lot of circuit breakers that existed when brokers had a strong interest in not blowing up their own market. Since market intermediaries were squeezed out, activity in emerging markets fallen by a massive quantum- so, brilliantly efficient markets that very few real investors trade on and nobody makes money in. Korea may not meet the EM definition, but it might as well do.
A charity run by the Green Party’s Makerfield by-election candidate called on Britain’s farming sector to be “decolonised” and shared guidance suggesting perfectionism and a sense of urgency were examples of “white supremacy culture”
Was in Korea this week for business and learned from colleagues about this wild trend: young Koreans in their 20s and 30s are aggressively taking out loans, especially margin loans from brokerages and credit loans from banks to invest in the surging stock market.. https://x.com/rtodi/status/2059619186704331261
That will end well...
It will also end quickly.
Forgot to add, it is up 270% in 13 months, so this is going to be the least surprising correction ever. All this market disintermediation, especially in emerging markets has removed a lot of circuit breakers that existed when brokers had a strong interest in not blowing up their own market. Since market intermediaries were squeezed out, activity in emerging markets fallen by a massive quantum- so, brilliantly efficient markets that very few real investors trade on and nobody makes money in. Korea may not meet the EM definition, but it might as well do.
A really good point that I hadn't thought of before. In South Korea's particular case it is really surprising that the Trump disaster in the Straits has not had more of an impact. I know that SK has far more than normal in the form of reserves but they remain finite and 70% of their oil comes from the ME.
Peter Mandelson’s associations with senior figures in China, Russia and Israel were among the concerns raised by the UK’s vetting agency when it concluded he should be denied clearance, multiple sources have told the Guardian.
On the other hand you could argue that someone who knows lots of people in high places is well placed to serve as ambassador.
Another concern identified by the vetting agency, the sources said, was a £1m loan Mandelson received to invest in an Israeli startup. And UKSV noted separately, the sources added, that he appeared naive about the risk that historical relationships with other individuals could be exploited
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....
1. Most entrepreneurs I know don't earn much, so a 30% flat rate would penalise them, not incentivise them.
2. 30% flat rate is hardly going to incentivise those not in work to seek work.
3. "Those with the broadest shoulders" made me chuckle. Paying say £400k in tax out of an income of £1m pa does not imply 'broad shoulders'; it implies someone who has £600k to spend every year. The people with broad shoulders are those working their arses off in low paid jobs to make ends meet and facing rents, food and energy bills that can only be met by relying on UC to supplement their income.
Other than that, a 30% flat rate is still a crap idea.
It is as simple as this, we have too many people not paying into the system but taking a lot out of it. And the vote is equal despite that.
It is, in short, why welfarist democracy is doomed to fail. I'd rather overthrow the welfare reliance, than overthrow the democracy. Perhaps we should return to a pre WW2 size state. The next crash might be just the impetus required to do so....
Surely the people doing best out of 'the system' are the wealthy.
The wealthy have this fantasy they can dismantle the welfare state without being murdered in their beds. They can try but I don't fancy their chances.
The fools have this fantasy that wealth won't leave the shores if it is continually stolen by the state. They can keep dreaming, but I don't fancy their chances.
Many of my successful late 30s cohort without family are looking at moving elsewhere. Those with family are looking at the USA....
I find it hard to believe that many in the UK are currently looking at the US. I know many in the US looking at coming to the UK because of Trump.
I've seen people warning about a mass exodus of the rich for years... and it's never happened.
I'm looking very hard at the US.
But with disbelief, not with the intent of emigrating.
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....
1. Most entrepreneurs I know don't earn much, so a 30% flat rate would penalise them, not incentivise them.
2. 30% flat rate is hardly going to incentivise those not in work to seek work.
3. "Those with the broadest shoulders" made me chuckle. Paying say £400k in tax out of an income of £1m pa does not imply 'broad shoulders'; it implies someone who has £600k to spend every year. The people with broad shoulders are those working their arses off in low paid jobs to make ends meet and facing rents, food and energy bills that can only be met by relying on UC to supplement their income.
Other than that, a 30% flat rate is still a crap idea.
It is as simple as this, we have too many people not paying into the system but taking a lot out of it. And the vote is equal despite that.
It is, in short, why welfarist democracy is doomed to fail. I'd rather overthrow the welfare reliance, than overthrow the democracy. Perhaps we should return to a pre WW2 size state. The next crash might be just the impetus required to do so....
Surely the people doing best out of 'the system' are the wealthy.
The wealthy have this fantasy they can dismantle the welfare state without being murdered in their beds. They can try but I don't fancy their chances.
The fools have this fantasy that wealth won't leave the shores if it is continually stolen by the state. They can keep dreaming, but I don't fancy their chances.
Many of my successful late 30s cohort without family are looking at moving elsewhere. Those with family are looking at the USA....
I find it hard to believe that many in the UK are currently looking at the US. I know many in the US looking at coming to the UK because of Trump.
I've seen people warning about a mass exodus of the rich for years... and it's never happened.
I'm looking very hard at the US.
But with disbelief, not with the intent of emigrating.
I just spent 3 and half weeks over there and I didn't hear Trump's name mentioned once. It was as if he wasn't president.
Apart from the fraud, there is something very odd about his spending. It is simultaneously excessive, tasteless and pathetically banal.
It's some sort of compulsive behaviour, I think ? That wouldn't excuse the criminality, but explains the bizarre nature of the purchases.
The "manic" phase of a bipolar condition?
There was a line in the story about the Shetland necklace (that Nicola didn't know anything about, it was only around her neck, no idea how it got there etc) where he was quoted as saying, "I am the man with the money. I need to buy something."
The word "need" rang an alarm bell with me at the time the story came out. It did hint of compulsive behaviour.
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....
1. Most entrepreneurs I know don't earn much, so a 30% flat rate would penalise them, not incentivise them.
2. 30% flat rate is hardly going to incentivise those not in work to seek work.
3. "Those with the broadest shoulders" made me chuckle. Paying say £400k in tax out of an income of £1m pa does not imply 'broad shoulders'; it implies someone who has £600k to spend every year. The people with broad shoulders are those working their arses off in low paid jobs to make ends meet and facing rents, food and energy bills that can only be met by relying on UC to supplement their income.
Other than that, a 30% flat rate is still a crap idea.
It is as simple as this, we have too many people not paying into the system but taking a lot out of it. And the vote is equal despite that.
It is, in short, why welfarist democracy is doomed to fail. I'd rather overthrow the welfare reliance, than overthrow the democracy. Perhaps we should return to a pre WW2 size state. The next crash might be just the impetus required to do so....
Surely the people doing best out of 'the system' are the wealthy.
The wealthy have this fantasy they can dismantle the welfare state without being murdered in their beds. They can try but I don't fancy their chances.
The fools have this fantasy that wealth won't leave the shores if it is continually stolen by the state. They can keep dreaming, but I don't fancy their chances.
Many of my successful late 30s cohort without family are looking at moving elsewhere. Those with family are looking at the USA....
I find it hard to believe that many in the UK are currently looking at the US. I know many in the US looking at coming to the UK because of Trump.
I've seen people warning about a mass exodus of the rich for years... and it's never happened.
I'm looking very hard at the US.
But with disbelief, not with the intent of emigrating.
I just spent 3 and half weeks over there and I didn't hear Trump's name mentioned once. It was as if he wasn't president.
I am on my second extended trip this year. The key is to not watch CNN...
Canada, now Trumps name / anti-Americanism comes up e.g. venues making a big deal out of boycotting American products.
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....
1. Most entrepreneurs I know don't earn much, so a 30% flat rate would penalise them, not incentivise them.
2. 30% flat rate is hardly going to incentivise those not in work to seek work.
3. "Those with the broadest shoulders" made me chuckle. Paying say £400k in tax out of an income of £1m pa does not imply 'broad shoulders'; it implies someone who has £600k to spend every year. The people with broad shoulders are those working their arses off in low paid jobs to make ends meet and facing rents, food and energy bills that can only be met by relying on UC to supplement their income.
Other than that, a 30% flat rate is still a crap idea.
It is as simple as this, we have too many people not paying into the system but taking a lot out of it. And the vote is equal despite that.
It is, in short, why welfarist democracy is doomed to fail. I'd rather overthrow the welfare reliance, than overthrow the democracy. Perhaps we should return to a pre WW2 size state. The next crash might be just the impetus required to do so....
Surely the people doing best out of 'the system' are the wealthy.
The wealthy have this fantasy they can dismantle the welfare state without being murdered in their beds. They can try but I don't fancy their chances.
The fools have this fantasy that wealth won't leave the shores if it is continually stolen by the state. They can keep dreaming, but I don't fancy their chances.
Many of my successful late 30s cohort without family are looking at moving elsewhere. Those with family are looking at the USA....
I find it hard to believe that many in the UK are currently looking at the US. I know many in the US looking at coming to the UK because of Trump.
I've seen people warning about a mass exodus of the rich for years... and it's never happened.
U.S. experienced negative net migration in 2025 for first time in 90 years as more citizens drawn to more affordable life overseas with less political turbulence
Junior doctors will strike again in June from the 15th to the 19th – their 16th round of industrial action – after the BMA rejected a pay deal following talks with new Health Secretary James Murray.
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....
1. Most entrepreneurs I know don't earn much, so a 30% flat rate would penalise them, not incentivise them.
2. 30% flat rate is hardly going to incentivise those not in work to seek work.
3. "Those with the broadest shoulders" made me chuckle. Paying say £400k in tax out of an income of £1m pa does not imply 'broad shoulders'; it implies someone who has £600k to spend every year. The people with broad shoulders are those working their arses off in low paid jobs to make ends meet and facing rents, food and energy bills that can only be met by relying on UC to supplement their income.
Other than that, a 30% flat rate is still a crap idea.
It is as simple as this, we have too many people not paying into the system but taking a lot out of it. And the vote is equal despite that.
It is, in short, why welfarist democracy is doomed to fail. I'd rather overthrow the welfare reliance, than overthrow the democracy. Perhaps we should return to a pre WW2 size state. The next crash might be just the impetus required to do so....
Surely the people doing best out of 'the system' are the wealthy.
The wealthy have this fantasy they can dismantle the welfare state without being murdered in their beds. They can try but I don't fancy their chances.
The fools have this fantasy that wealth won't leave the shores if it is continually stolen by the state. They can keep dreaming, but I don't fancy their chances.
Many of my successful late 30s cohort without family are looking at moving elsewhere. Those with family are looking at the USA....
I find it hard to believe that many in the UK are currently looking at the US. I know many in the US looking at coming to the UK because of Trump.
I've seen people warning about a mass exodus of the rich for years... and it's never happened.
For good reason it hasn't. If you run a successful business, or exploit an uncommon talent freelance, or build a big career in a high pay sector, you have all the right in the world to enjoy a great standard of living and still have lots of money in the bank. Such is the situation here in the UK.
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....
1. Most entrepreneurs I know don't earn much, so a 30% flat rate would penalise them, not incentivise them.
2. 30% flat rate is hardly going to incentivise those not in work to seek work.
3. "Those with the broadest shoulders" made me chuckle. Paying say £400k in tax out of an income of £1m pa does not imply 'broad shoulders'; it implies someone who has £600k to spend every year. The people with broad shoulders are those working their arses off in low paid jobs to make ends meet and facing rents, food and energy bills that can only be met by relying on UC to supplement their income.
Other than that, a 30% flat rate is still a crap idea.
It is as simple as this, we have too many people not paying into the system but taking a lot out of it. And the vote is equal despite that.
It is, in short, why welfarist democracy is doomed to fail. I'd rather overthrow the welfare reliance, than overthrow the democracy. Perhaps we should return to a pre WW2 size state. The next crash might be just the impetus required to do so....
Surely the people doing best out of 'the system' are the wealthy.
The wealthy have this fantasy they can dismantle the welfare state without being murdered in their beds. They can try but I don't fancy their chances.
The fools have this fantasy that wealth won't leave the shores if it is continually stolen by the state. They can keep dreaming, but I don't fancy their chances.
Many of my successful late 30s cohort without family are looking at moving elsewhere. Those with family are looking at the USA....
I find it hard to believe that many in the UK are currently looking at the US. I know many in the US looking at coming to the UK because of Trump.
I've seen people warning about a mass exodus of the rich for years... and it's never happened.
I'm looking very hard at the US.
But with disbelief, not with the intent of emigrating.
I just spent 3 and half weeks over there and I didn't hear Trump's name mentioned once. It was as if he wasn't president.
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....
1. Most entrepreneurs I know don't earn much, so a 30% flat rate would penalise them, not incentivise them.
2. 30% flat rate is hardly going to incentivise those not in work to seek work.
3. "Those with the broadest shoulders" made me chuckle. Paying say £400k in tax out of an income of £1m pa does not imply 'broad shoulders'; it implies someone who has £600k to spend every year. The people with broad shoulders are those working their arses off in low paid jobs to make ends meet and facing rents, food and energy bills that can only be met by relying on UC to supplement their income.
Other than that, a 30% flat rate is still a crap idea.
It is as simple as this, we have too many people not paying into the system but taking a lot out of it. And the vote is equal despite that.
It is, in short, why welfarist democracy is doomed to fail. I'd rather overthrow the welfare reliance, than overthrow the democracy. Perhaps we should return to a pre WW2 size state. The next crash might be just the impetus required to do so....
Surely the people doing best out of 'the system' are the wealthy.
The wealthy have this fantasy they can dismantle the welfare state without being murdered in their beds. They can try but I don't fancy their chances.
The fools have this fantasy that wealth won't leave the shores if it is continually stolen by the state. They can keep dreaming, but I don't fancy their chances.
Many of my successful late 30s cohort without family are looking at moving elsewhere. Those with family are looking at the USA....
I find it hard to believe that many in the UK are currently looking at the US. I know many in the US looking at coming to the UK because of Trump.
I've seen people warning about a mass exodus of the rich for years... and it's never happened.
U.S. experienced negative net migration in 2025 for first time in 90 years as more citizens drawn to more affordable life overseas with less political turbulence
If you read the details, the negative net migration figure is nothing to do with Americans moving, no official figures at kept for that. The number quoted is inward migration vs foreigners leaving via deportation / self deportation. Inward migration is down by half.
Mexico City has become very popular for young Americans who work remotely. Mexicians not that happy about it.
Anyway, I'm feeling buzzed and happy. One of my favourite annual events has just occurred. I've renewed my BBC licence for another year for £180. Yes, you heard that right. Not £180 per month, like a gym or a golf club, but £180 for the whole year. Incredible.
Anyway, I'm feeling buzzed and happy. One of my favourite annual events has just occurred. I've renewed my BBC licence for another year for £180. Yes, you heard that right. Not £180 per month, like a gym or a golf club, but £180 for the whole year. Incredible.
My gym is £28. What kind of poncey places are you going?
A charity run by the Green Party’s Makerfield by-election candidate called on Britain’s farming sector to be “decolonised” and shared guidance suggesting perfectionism and a sense of urgency were examples of “white supremacy culture”
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....
1. Most entrepreneurs I know don't earn much, so a 30% flat rate would penalise them, not incentivise them.
2. 30% flat rate is hardly going to incentivise those not in work to seek work.
3. "Those with the broadest shoulders" made me chuckle. Paying say £400k in tax out of an income of £1m pa does not imply 'broad shoulders'; it implies someone who has £600k to spend every year. The people with broad shoulders are those working their arses off in low paid jobs to make ends meet and facing rents, food and energy bills that can only be met by relying on UC to supplement their income.
Other than that, a 30% flat rate is still a crap idea.
It is as simple as this, we have too many people not paying into the system but taking a lot out of it. And the vote is equal despite that.
It is, in short, why welfarist democracy is doomed to fail. I'd rather overthrow the welfare reliance, than overthrow the democracy. Perhaps we should return to a pre WW2 size state. The next crash might be just the impetus required to do so....
Maybe. In 2026 money the state in 1931/2 (mostly local authorities) spent about 12 billion on health services (£189 million). It's going to be a struggle.
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.
Note I said $/token for a given model size.
You can absolutely run a tiny model that vastly underperforms the leading edge models on commodity hardware. If you want to run something that matches the mainstream models, or even approaches their performance, on your own hardware you’ll be spending a fortune on a multi GPU system with enough VRAM to hold the model. Or a smaller fortune on enough RAM to hold the model & a tolerance for very, very slow inference.
If you want a fair comparison on pricing, look at the cost per token of an equivalently sized model.
The maths is inexorable: Running LLM inference requires that it pass the entire model (or at least the entire sub-model in an Mixture of Experts system) from VRAM to the processing units. The multiplier in the hardware can do something like 200 multiplies in the time it takes to do a single memory read. This imbalance means a hyperscalar can serve many client queries simultaneously with each pass over the LLM matrixes, whereas a local model only gets to run one (usually). They get economies of scale that you don’t, unless you can run many simultaneous queries yourself.
Anyway, I'm feeling buzzed and happy. One of my favourite annual events has just occurred. I've renewed my BBC licence for another year for £180. Yes, you heard that right. Not £180 per month, like a gym or a golf club, but £180 for the whole year. Incredible.
My gym is £28. What kind of poncey places are you going?
Yes, mine is a bit poncey. But it's central London and it's also a pool, sauna, ice rooms, hot tub, cafe, grounds, classes etc as well as a gym.
I don't in fact use the gym or most of all that. I use only the pool, the hot tub, and the grounds (to sit in). But I do go regularly.
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....
1. Most entrepreneurs I know don't earn much, so a 30% flat rate would penalise them, not incentivise them.
2. 30% flat rate is hardly going to incentivise those not in work to seek work.
3. "Those with the broadest shoulders" made me chuckle. Paying say £400k in tax out of an income of £1m pa does not imply 'broad shoulders'; it implies someone who has £600k to spend every year. The people with broad shoulders are those working their arses off in low paid jobs to make ends meet and facing rents, food and energy bills that can only be met by relying on UC to supplement their income.
Other than that, a 30% flat rate is still a crap idea.
Also too high a rate, if enforced it would probably be a significantly higher rate than the current average.
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....
1. Most entrepreneurs I know don't earn much, so a 30% flat rate would penalise them, not incentivise them.
2. 30% flat rate is hardly going to incentivise those not in work to seek work.
3. "Those with the broadest shoulders" made me chuckle. Paying say £400k in tax out of an income of £1m pa does not imply 'broad shoulders'; it implies someone who has £600k to spend every year. The people with broad shoulders are those working their arses off in low paid jobs to make ends meet and facing rents, food and energy bills that can only be met by relying on UC to supplement their income.
Other than that, a 30% flat rate is still a crap idea.
It is as simple as this, we have too many people not paying into the system but taking a lot out of it. And the vote is equal despite that.
It is, in short, why welfarist democracy is doomed to fail. I'd rather overthrow the welfare reliance, than overthrow the democracy. Perhaps we should return to a pre WW2 size state. The next crash might be just the impetus required to do so....
Yes we all look back with nostalgia at the halcyon days of the great depression, when the poor would die for lack of proper healthcare. From my own family history I know how the life chances of people born in the interwar period were marred by poverty - talented people denied the chance of continuing school because their parents simply couldn't afford it. I doubt many people want to return to that golden era of "wealth creation".
Apart from the fraud, there is something very odd about his spending. It is simultaneously excessive, tasteless and pathetically banal.
It's some sort of compulsive behaviour, I think ? That wouldn't excuse the criminality, but explains the bizarre nature of the purchases.
The "manic" phase of a bipolar condition?
There was a line in the story about the Shetland necklace (that Nicola didn't know anything about, it was only around her neck, no idea how it got there etc) where he was quoted as saying, "I am the man with the money. I need to buy something."
The word "need" rang an alarm bell with me at the time the story came out. It did hint of compulsive behaviour.
As punters, we should be relieved that at least Murrell has not played the gambling addict card.
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....
1. Most entrepreneurs I know don't earn much, so a 30% flat rate would penalise them, not incentivise them.
2. 30% flat rate is hardly going to incentivise those not in work to seek work.
3. "Those with the broadest shoulders" made me chuckle. Paying say £400k in tax out of an income of £1m pa does not imply 'broad shoulders'; it implies someone who has £600k to spend every year. The people with broad shoulders are those working their arses off in low paid jobs to make ends meet and facing rents, food and energy bills that can only be met by relying on UC to supplement their income.
Other than that, a 30% flat rate is still a crap idea.
It is as simple as this, we have too many people not paying into the system but taking a lot out of it. And the vote is equal despite that.
It is, in short, why welfarist democracy is doomed to fail. I'd rather overthrow the welfare reliance, than overthrow the democracy. Perhaps we should return to a pre WW2 size state. The next crash might be just the impetus required to do so....
Surely the people doing best out of 'the system' are the wealthy.
The wealthy have this fantasy they can dismantle the welfare state without being murdered in their beds. They can try but I don't fancy their chances.
The fools have this fantasy that wealth won't leave the shores if it is continually stolen by the state. They can keep dreaming, but I don't fancy their chances.
Many of my successful late 30s cohort without family are looking at moving elsewhere. Those with family are looking at the USA....
I find it hard to believe that many in the UK are currently looking at the US. I know many in the US looking at coming to the UK because of Trump.
I've seen people warning about a mass exodus of the rich for years... and it's never happened.
I'm looking very hard at the US.
But with disbelief, not with the intent of emigrating.
I just spent 3 and half weeks over there and I didn't hear Trump's name mentioned once. It was as if he wasn't president.
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.
Note I said $/token for a given model size.
You can absolutely run a tiny model that vastly underperforms the leading edge models on commodity hardware. If you want to run something that matches the mainstream models, or even approaches their performance, on your own hardware you’ll be spending a fortune on a multi GPU system with enough VRAM to hold the model. Or a smaller fortune on enough RAM to hold the model & a tolerance for very, very slow inference.
If you want a fair comparison on pricing, look at the cost per token of an equivalently sized model.
The maths is inexorable: Running LLM inference requires that it pass the entire model (or at least the entire sub-model in an Mixture of Experts system) from VRAM to the processing units. The multiplier in the hardware can do something like 200 multiplies in the time it takes to do a single memory read. This imbalance means a hyperscalar can serve many client queries simultaneously with each pass over the LLM matrixes, whereas a local model only gets to run one (usually). They get economies of scale that you don’t, unless you can run many simultaneous queries yourself.
Question is- how much AI is enough?
If you can get sufficient intelligence from a small model that runs cheaply on commodity hardware, the economics of buying, selling and feeding AI are very different to needing massive data centres.
The exuberant funding of AI needs it to become ubiquitous to use but siloed to provide. That combination seems possible but not inevitable.
Anyway, I'm feeling buzzed and happy. One of my favourite annual events has just occurred. I've renewed my BBC licence for another year for £180. Yes, you heard that right. Not £180 per month, like a gym or a golf club, but £180 for the whole year. Incredible.
This week I’m on the road to hear directly from people who have lost faith in Labour, why and what we need to do to earn back their trust.
Today, I’m visiting a farm with Joe Morris MP in Hexham to hear from some of Britain’s farmers
So you're saying that Wes Streeting's career has gone to a farm?
It’s like he’s realised huge self-belief, greasy pole climbing and selfies with ‘my friend Peter’ have their limitations and he has a lot of ground to make up. Bit late Wes old chap.
Apart from the fraud, there is something very odd about his spending. It is simultaneously excessive, tasteless and pathetically banal.
It's some sort of compulsive behaviour, I think ? That wouldn't excuse the criminality, but explains the bizarre nature of the purchases.
The "manic" phase of a bipolar condition?
There was a line in the story about the Shetland necklace (that Nicola didn't know anything about, it was only around her neck, no idea how it got there etc) where he was quoted as saying, "I am the man with the money. I need to buy something."
The word "need" rang an alarm bell with me at the time the story came out. It did hint of compulsive behaviour.
As punters, we should be relieved that at least Murrell has not played the gambling addict card.
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.
If I was paying for raw API token cost on one of my subscriptions I am using $5-6k of tokens a month on just that one account....and that is still not a profitable cost for the provider when they factor in training and inference.
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.
Note I said $/token for a given model size.
You can absolutely run a tiny model that vastly underperforms the leading edge models on commodity hardware. If you want to run something that matches the mainstream models, or even approaches their performance, on your own hardware you’ll be spending a fortune on a multi GPU system with enough VRAM to hold the model. Or a smaller fortune on enough RAM to hold the model & a tolerance for very, very slow inference.
If you want a fair comparison on pricing, look at the cost per token of an equivalently sized model.
The maths is inexorable: Running LLM inference requires that it pass the entire model (or at least the entire sub-model in an Mixture of Experts system) from VRAM to the processing units. The multiplier in the hardware can do something like 200 multiplies in the time it takes to do a single memory read. This imbalance means a hyperscalar can serve many client queries simultaneously with each pass over the LLM matrixes, whereas a local model only gets to run one (usually). They get economies of scale that you don’t, unless you can run many simultaneous queries yourself.
Question is- how much AI is enough?
If you can get sufficient intelligence from a small model that runs cheaply on commodity hardware, the economics of buying, selling and feeding AI are very different to needing massive data centres.
The exuberant funding of AI needs it to become ubiquitous to use but siloed to provide. That combination seems possible but not inevitable.
Indeed, but this efficiency dynamic is precisely what’s driving RAM prices through the roof - AI hyperscalars can make much better use of the RAM than a single user can, from a $ earned / byte perspective.
AI hyperscalars get the same economies of scale for small models as they do for large ones.
Apart from the fraud, there is something very odd about his spending. It is simultaneously excessive, tasteless and pathetically banal.
It's some sort of compulsive behaviour, I think ? That wouldn't excuse the criminality, but explains the bizarre nature of the purchases.
The "manic" phase of a bipolar condition?
There was a line in the story about the Shetland necklace (that Nicola didn't know anything about, it was only around her neck, no idea how it got there etc) where he was quoted as saying, "I am the man with the money. I need to buy something."
The word "need" rang an alarm bell with me at the time the story came out. It did hint of compulsive behaviour.
As punters, we should be relieved that at least Murrell has not played the gambling addict card.
I wonder how much he’s bet on Restore winning the Makerfield by election.
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.
If I was paying for raw API token cost on one of my subscriptions I am using $5-6k of tokens a month on just that one account....and that is still not a profitable cost for the provider when they factor in training and inference.
Enterprise customers are being charged the API rate & by all accounts it’s starting to hurt. I’d expect the current token glut for us ordinary users to get choked off sometime this year - it’s too costly for the big AI companies to maintain indefinitely & the marketing work has been done.
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.
Note I said $/token for a given model size.
You can absolutely run a tiny model that vastly underperforms the leading edge models on commodity hardware. If you want to run something that matches the mainstream models, or even approaches their performance, on your own hardware you’ll be spending a fortune on a multi GPU system with enough VRAM to hold the model. Or a smaller fortune on enough RAM to hold the model & a tolerance for very, very slow inference.
If you want a fair comparison on pricing, look at the cost per token of an equivalently sized model.
The maths is inexorable: Running LLM inference requires that it pass the entire model (or at least the entire sub-model in an Mixture of Experts system) from VRAM to the processing units. The multiplier in the hardware can do something like 200 multiplies in the time it takes to do a single memory read. This imbalance means a hyperscalar can serve many client queries simultaneously with each pass over the LLM matrixes, whereas a local model only gets to run one (usually). They get economies of scale that you don’t, unless you can run many simultaneous queries yourself.
Question is- how much AI is enough?
If you can get sufficient intelligence from a small model that runs cheaply on commodity hardware, the economics of buying, selling and feeding AI are very different to needing massive data centres.
The exuberant funding of AI needs it to become ubiquitous to use but siloed to provide. That combination seems possible but not inevitable.
Model size is only one part of it. One problem is that for any sort of complex or prolonged task you need to use "thinking" mode i.e. it is basically feeding the output back into the input. This is incredibly inefficient in terms of tokens required. I am sure it will get better, but at the moment you can have to use 100,000s of tokens to complete quite simple tasks.
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.
If I was paying for raw API token cost on one of my subscriptions I am using $5-6k of tokens a month on just that one account....and that is still not a profitable cost for the provider when they factor in training and inference.
Enterprise customers are being charged the API rate & by all accounts it’s starting to hurt. I’d expect the current token glut for us ordinary users to get choked off sometime this year - it’s too costly for the big AI companies to maintain indefinitely & the marketing work has been done.
The play is hoping that token usage becomes much more efficient*.
Putting aside a lot of the BS about DeepSeek (they are 100% not a tiny outfit with a few pluky quants training a model in their bedroom in the evening and weekends), they have made some fantastic contributions to academic literature around increasing the efficiency of LLM models.
* problem is so far the evidence is a bit like building highways, more lanes = more traffic. More efficient models use of tokens, build extra functionality that uses more tokens.
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....
1. Most entrepreneurs I know don't earn much, so a 30% flat rate would penalise them, not incentivise them.
2. 30% flat rate is hardly going to incentivise those not in work to seek work.
3. "Those with the broadest shoulders" made me chuckle. Paying say £400k in tax out of an income of £1m pa does not imply 'broad shoulders'; it implies someone who has £600k to spend every year. The people with broad shoulders are those working their arses off in low paid jobs to make ends meet and facing rents, food and energy bills that can only be met by relying on UC to supplement their income.
Other than that, a 30% flat rate is still a crap idea.
It is as simple as this, we have too many people not paying into the system but taking a lot out of it. And the vote is equal despite that.
It is, in short, why welfarist democracy is doomed to fail. I'd rather overthrow the welfare reliance, than overthrow the democracy. Perhaps we should return to a pre WW2 size state. The next crash might be just the impetus required to do so....
Surely the people doing best out of 'the system' are the wealthy.
The wealthy have this fantasy they can dismantle the welfare state without being murdered in their beds. They can try but I don't fancy their chances.
The fools have this fantasy that wealth won't leave the shores if it is continually stolen by the state. They can keep dreaming, but I don't fancy their chances.
Many of my successful late 30s cohort without family are looking at moving elsewhere. Those with family are looking at the USA....
I find it hard to believe that many in the UK are currently looking at the US. I know many in the US looking at coming to the UK because of Trump.
I've seen people warning about a mass exodus of the rich for years... and it's never happened.
U.S. experienced negative net migration in 2025 for first time in 90 years as more citizens drawn to more affordable life overseas with less political turbulence
If you read the details, the negative net migration figure is nothing to do with Americans moving, no official figures at kept for that. The number quoted is inward migration vs foreigners leaving via deportation / self deportation. Inward migration is down by half.
Mexico City has become very popular for young Americans who work remotely. Mexicians not that happy about it.
There must be nicer places in Mexico? I've a former colleague who'd based out of Mexico when he's out of contract. He's not in Mexico city.
This week I’m on the road to hear directly from people who have lost faith in Labour, why and what we need to do to earn back their trust.
Today, I’m visiting a farm with Joe Morris MP in Hexham to hear from some of Britain’s farmers
So you're saying that Wes Streeting's career has gone to a farm?
It’s like he’s realised huge self-belief, greasy pole climbing and selfies with ‘my friend Peter’ have their limitations and he has a lot of ground to make up. Bit late Wes old chap.
I wonder what it is they have to do to win back the trust of farmers? Such a hard one, that.
This week I’m on the road to hear directly from people who have lost faith in Labour, why and what we need to do to earn back their trust.
Today, I’m visiting a farm with Joe Morris MP in Hexham to hear from some of Britain’s farmers
So you're saying that Wes Streeting's career has gone to a farm?
It’s like he’s realised huge self-belief, greasy pole climbing and selfies with ‘my friend Peter’ have their limitations and he has a lot of ground to make up. Bit late Wes old chap.
I wonder what it is they have to do to win back the trust of farmers? Such a hard one, that.
Or she might just rule out deals with the Greens but otherwise leave it up to Tory group leaders on local councils whether to go with Reform or Labour or the LDs or Independents
One of the sharper points is his noting Blair's advocacy of unconditional support for Trump, versus the conditional/transactional recommendation for how we deal with the EU. That's poor policy on it's own terms, but the you take into account the massive unpopularity of Trump in the UK (and especially with Labour voters), it's just cloud cuckoo land to expect any current UK government, let alone a Labour government, to adopt it.
He's entitled to point out that in Europe we've become far too reliant on the US. I could sort of see his point about hugging the US close if you believe we're in a new cold war with China. But then he doesn't think we should treat them like we did the Soviet Union either. So hitch ourselves to Trump because we're so vulnerable to Russia? He doesn't really spell that out though. And does he still not understand that you get leverage by making your support conditional?
Still these contributions to the political debate ought to be welcomed. But amid all the pleading for sensible centrists to get around the table and work things out it still feels like the work of someone too easily swayed by wealth and power.
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....
1. Most entrepreneurs I know don't earn much, so a 30% flat rate would penalise them, not incentivise them.
2. 30% flat rate is hardly going to incentivise those not in work to seek work.
3. "Those with the broadest shoulders" made me chuckle. Paying say £400k in tax out of an income of £1m pa does not imply 'broad shoulders'; it implies someone who has £600k to spend every year. The people with broad shoulders are those working their arses off in low paid jobs to make ends meet and facing rents, food and energy bills that can only be met by relying on UC to supplement their income.
Other than that, a 30% flat rate is still a crap idea.
It is as simple as this, we have too many people not paying into the system but taking a lot out of it. And the vote is equal despite that.
It is, in short, why welfarist democracy is doomed to fail. I'd rather overthrow the welfare reliance, than overthrow the democracy. Perhaps we should return to a pre WW2 size state. The next crash might be just the impetus required to do so....
Surely the people doing best out of 'the system' are the wealthy.
The wealthy have this fantasy they can dismantle the welfare state without being murdered in their beds. They can try but I don't fancy their chances.
The fools have this fantasy that wealth won't leave the shores if it is continually stolen by the state. They can keep dreaming, but I don't fancy their chances.
Many of my successful late 30s cohort without family are looking at moving elsewhere. Those with family are looking at the USA....
I find it hard to believe that many in the UK are currently looking at the US. I know many in the US looking at coming to the UK because of Trump.
I've seen people warning about a mass exodus of the rich for years... and it's never happened.
U.S. experienced negative net migration in 2025 for first time in 90 years as more citizens drawn to more affordable life overseas with less political turbulence
If you read the details, the negative net migration figure is nothing to do with Americans moving, no official figures at kept for that. The number quoted is inward migration vs foreigners leaving via deportation / self deportation. Inward migration is down by half.
Mexico City has become very popular for young Americans who work remotely. Mexicians not that happy about it.
There must be nicer places in Mexico? I've a former colleague who'd based out of Mexico when he's out of contract. He's not in Mexico city.
I have never been, but apparently parts of Mexico City have undergone some serious gentrification and are really nice for fraction of cost of a New York, SF or LA. And still very good connections back to US.
Places like Costa Rica and Panama have also long been popular with Americans relocating. They have areas that are very modern with high quality accomodation, good internet, and Panama definitely accepts US health insurance coverage. I have been to both, now I am not sure I would want to live there, its a bit too mental for my liking, but I can see why so many Americans do so, they have 90% of what a US city has with lower cost and great beaches, rainforest etc.
In my experience with Latin America it is the gulf in standards (Southern US states can be similar but not quite as extreme). Panama City you can live in same kind of standard as Miami, just 30 miles out the city and you have people living in basic / undeveloped way in wooden shacks, kids with no shoes, no mains power / water.
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....
1. Most entrepreneurs I know don't earn much, so a 30% flat rate would penalise them, not incentivise them.
2. 30% flat rate is hardly going to incentivise those not in work to seek work.
3. "Those with the broadest shoulders" made me chuckle. Paying say £400k in tax out of an income of £1m pa does not imply 'broad shoulders'; it implies someone who has £600k to spend every year. The people with broad shoulders are those working their arses off in low paid jobs to make ends meet and facing rents, food and energy bills that can only be met by relying on UC to supplement their income.
Other than that, a 30% flat rate is still a crap idea.
Also too high a rate, if enforced it would probably be a significantly higher rate than the current average.
Was in Korea this week for business and learned from colleagues about this wild trend: young Koreans in their 20s and 30s are aggressively taking out loans, especially margin loans from brokerages and credit loans from banks to invest in the surging stock market.. https://x.com/rtodi/status/2059619186704331261
Or she might just rule out deals with the Greens but otherwise leave it up to Tory group leaders on local councils whether to go with Reform or Labour or the LDs or Independents
Yes, you can certainly argue local practice doesn't create national precedent.
IF the sole prerequisite is Conservatives will not align with Greens but will align with Labour, LDs, Reform etc, that's fair enough, no problem there and I wouldn't use that as a foundation for assessing post-General election strategy.
Conservatives were and clearly in some instances still are pragmatic at local level and while of course the party's own self-interest will be a consideration, aligning with others to remove a discredited administration isn't the worst idea and the spoon doesn't need to be that long for local interests to align and indeed it's often the case there's plenty of common ground at local level among local parties.
New health secretary says there are no 'grounds for more strike action' The newly-appointed health secretary has warned that resident doctors' decision to go on strike next month is based on "unrealistic, unaffordable and unsustainable" demands.
The British Medical Association (BMA) has said resident doctors in England will walk out for five days next week, in an ongoing dispute over pay and conditions.
The union has said they feel that James Murray has shown "the same unwillingness to move" as demonstrated by his predecessor, Wes Streeting, who quit two weeks ago.
But responding, the newly promoted cabinet minister said: "I met the BMA resident doctors committee officers today in the hope of starting a productive relationship and making progress on a deal to improve their members' pay, career prospects and working lives.
"I'm disappointed that the BMA have refused to consider further discussions about how to strengthen the deal on the table and have instead rushed once again to unnecessary and unreasonable strike action."
Was in Korea this week for business and learned from colleagues about this wild trend: young Koreans in their 20s and 30s are aggressively taking out loans, especially margin loans from brokerages and credit loans from banks to invest in the surging stock market.. https://x.com/rtodi/status/2059619186704331261
That will end well...
It will also end quickly.
Forgot to add, it is up 270% in 13 months, so this is going to be the least surprising correction ever. All this market disintermediation, especially in emerging markets has removed a lot of circuit breakers that existed when brokers had a strong interest in not blowing up their own market. Since market intermediaries were squeezed out, activity in emerging markets fallen by a massive quantum- so, brilliantly efficient markets that very few real investors trade on and nobody makes money in. Korea may not meet the EM definition, but it might as well do.
And yet the primary drivers of that remarkable run (Samsung and SK Hynix) are on forward P/E ratios in single figures. SK Hynix is making as much money as TSMC.
This is very different from the dotcom boom.
Similarly, Taiwan's stock market has overtaken India's in capitalisation.
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.
Note I said $/token for a given model size.
You can absolutely run a tiny model that vastly underperforms the leading edge models on commodity hardware. If you want to run something that matches the mainstream models, or even approaches their performance, on your own hardware you’ll be spending a fortune on a multi GPU system with enough VRAM to hold the model. Or a smaller fortune on enough RAM to hold the model & a tolerance for very, very slow inference.
If you want a fair comparison on pricing, look at the cost per token of an equivalently sized model.
The maths is inexorable: Running LLM inference requires that it pass the entire model (or at least the entire sub-model in an Mixture of Experts system) from VRAM to the processing units. The multiplier in the hardware can do something like 200 multiplies in the time it takes to do a single memory read. This imbalance means a hyperscalar can serve many client queries simultaneously with each pass over the LLM matrixes, whereas a local model only gets to run one (usually). They get economies of scale that you don’t, unless you can run many simultaneous queries yourself.
Hyperscalers get more efficiency from their GPUs, but their costs are also orders of magnitude higher than running a local model. Someone running a model on hardware in their office or bedroom does not have to build datacentres. They do not have to pay for land, grid connections, cooling, security, etc. They do not have to pay grossly inflated prices for NVidia GPU racks. And they do not have to make a profit margin.
It's too hot for me to want to sit and work out the numbers for an LLM, but I do have them for my most used diffusion model, Flux 2 from Black Forest Labs.
Running Flux2.dev locally costs me around $0.028 for a single 2kx2k image. This is on an elderly RTX 3090, a 5090 would cut that cost in half. Black Forest Labs charges $0.105 to do that via their API, which is using Flux2.Pro (in theory slightly more capable than Flux2.dev, but in practice almost identical in output).
If I'm generating 100 images per day (modest use day for me) that's $2.80 vs $10.50, or some $230 extra per month to use the API.
I will grant your point on equivalent quality for LLMs is a valid one, but the 80/20 rule is kicking in now and the gap is narrowing quickly. For example, the 85GB local version of Qwen3 Coder produces output not far behind the cloud version and the hardware to run it is by no means out of reach for even a small business or enthusiast. A pair of 30/40/5090 cards or an AMD Strix Halo based mini-PC will run that just fine, if a bit slower than the cloud version.
Toxic antisemitism surfaces as Restore Britain eyes decisive role in by-election
One supporter of Rupert Lowe's party tells Jewish presenter: 'I’m looking at you as a Jew and I’m telling you, you are foreign'
Nice to know you've discovered antisemitism.
That seems harsh, @FrankBooth I’ve often talked about anti-Semitism, among various political groupings. I’ve talked about my own background: as someone growing up in north London (my mum’s family are from Golders Green), I was raised atheist, but went to synagogues as often as churches for friends’ family events, be it weddings, bar mitzvahs or funerals. I mentioned celebrating Shavuot here, a few days ago. When people talk about anti-Semitism, these are issues that affect friends I know, and communities I know. I thus take anti-Semitism seriously and I don’t appreciate your drive-by comment suggesting I don’t.
Off topic but important: Nate Silver's May 5th Silver Bulletin has some numbers that many of you need to know:
1. Of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives, as of the 2024 election, 60, or 14 percent, are held by blacks. (That's slightly more than the percentage of blacks in the US population.) 2. Only 7 of those 60 represent districts that are more than 50 percent black. 3. Nine of the 60 represent districts that are 10 percent, or less, black.
Comments
I've seen people warning about a mass exodus of the rich for years... and it's never happened.
But with disbelief, not with the intent of emigrating.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn9pejwj0xxo
Misselling incoming
The word "need" rang an alarm bell with me at the time the story came out. It did hint of compulsive behaviour.
Canada, now Trumps name / anti-Americanism comes up e.g. venues making a big deal out of boycotting American products.
Toxic antisemitism surfaces as Restore Britain eyes decisive role in by-election
One supporter of Rupert Lowe's party tells Jewish presenter: 'I’m looking at you as a Jew and I’m telling you, you are foreign'
A record number of Americans are moving overseas
U.S. experienced negative net migration in 2025 for first time in 90 years as more citizens drawn to more affordable life overseas with less political turbulence
Mexico City has become very popular for young Americans who work remotely. Mexicians not that happy about it.
This week I’m on the road to hear directly from people who have lost faith in Labour, why and what we need to do to earn back their trust.
Today, I’m visiting a farm with Joe Morris MP in Hexham to hear from some of Britain’s farmers
You can absolutely run a tiny model that vastly underperforms the leading edge models on commodity hardware. If you want to run something that matches the mainstream models, or even approaches their performance, on your own hardware you’ll be spending a fortune on a multi GPU system with enough VRAM to hold the model. Or a smaller fortune on enough RAM to hold the model & a tolerance for very, very slow inference.
If you want a fair comparison on pricing, look at the cost per token of an equivalently sized model.
The maths is inexorable: Running LLM inference requires that it pass the entire model (or at least the entire sub-model in an Mixture of Experts system) from VRAM to the processing units. The multiplier in the hardware can do something like 200 multiplies in the time it takes to do a single memory read. This imbalance means a hyperscalar can serve many client queries simultaneously with each pass over the LLM matrixes, whereas a local model only gets to run one (usually). They get economies of scale that you don’t, unless you can run many simultaneous queries yourself.
I don't in fact use the gym or most of all that. I use only the pool, the hot tub, and the grounds (to sit in). But I do go regularly.
If you can get sufficient intelligence from a small model that runs cheaply on commodity hardware, the economics of buying, selling and feeding AI are very different to needing massive data centres.
The exuberant funding of AI needs it to become ubiquitous to use but siloed to provide. That combination seems possible but not inevitable.
Bit late Wes old chap.
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/labour-clings-reform-makes-bid-34016899
AI hyperscalars get the same economies of scale for small models as they do for large ones.
bbc.com/news/articles/c1j221rgz7po
Putting aside a lot of the BS about DeepSeek (they are 100% not a tiny outfit with a few pluky quants training a model in their bedroom in the evening and weekends), they have made some fantastic contributions to academic literature around increasing the efficiency of LLM models.
* problem is so far the evidence is a bit like building highways, more lanes = more traffic. More efficient models use of tokens, build extra functionality that uses more tokens.
I've a former colleague who'd based out of Mexico when he's out of contract. He's not in Mexico city.
Still these contributions to the political debate ought to be welcomed. But amid all the pleading for sensible centrists to get around the table and work things out it still feels like the work of someone too easily swayed by wealth and power.
Places like Costa Rica and Panama have also long been popular with Americans relocating. They have areas that are very modern with high quality accomodation, good internet, and Panama definitely accepts US health insurance coverage. I have been to both, now I am not sure I would want to live there, its a bit too mental for my liking, but I can see why so many Americans do so, they have 90% of what a US city has with lower cost and great beaches, rainforest etc.
In my experience with Latin America it is the gulf in standards (Southern US states can be similar but not quite as extreme). Panama City you can live in same kind of standard as Miami, just 30 miles out the city and you have people living in basic / undeveloped way in wooden shacks, kids with no shoes, no mains power / water.
Reform's Makerfield candidate Robert Kenyon said in 2016 that Brexiteers "peddled nationalistic pish"
"We've shot our economy in the foot for the short term"
Andy Burnham
@AndyBurnhamGM
This requires a considered response. I will set one out tomorrow.
IF the sole prerequisite is Conservatives will not align with Greens but will align with Labour, LDs, Reform etc, that's fair enough, no problem there and I wouldn't use that as a foundation for assessing post-General election strategy.
Conservatives were and clearly in some instances still are pragmatic at local level and while of course the party's own self-interest will be a consideration, aligning with others to remove a discredited administration isn't the worst idea and the spoon doesn't need to be that long for local interests to align and indeed it's often the case there's plenty of common ground at local level among local parties.
The newly-appointed health secretary has warned that resident doctors' decision to go on strike next month is based on "unrealistic, unaffordable and unsustainable" demands.
The British Medical Association (BMA) has said resident doctors in England will walk out for five days next week, in an ongoing dispute over pay and conditions.
The union has said they feel that James Murray has shown "the same unwillingness to move" as demonstrated by his predecessor, Wes Streeting, who quit two weeks ago.
But responding, the newly promoted cabinet minister said: "I met the BMA resident doctors committee officers today in the hope of starting a productive relationship and making progress on a deal to improve their members' pay, career prospects and working lives.
"I'm disappointed that the BMA have refused to consider further discussions about how to strengthen the deal on the table and have instead rushed once again to unnecessary and unreasonable strike action."
..........................................................
It is time to outlaw doctor strikes just as with the police and a policy Kemi would endorse
Enough is enough
SK Hynix is making as much money as TSMC.
This is very different from the dotcom boom.
Similarly, Taiwan's stock market has overtaken India's in capitalisation.
Interesting times.
Irrelevant old man goes MAGA.
He always was a Tory.*
* To be honest, one or two elements of his vitriolic monologue aren't wrong.
NEW THREAD
It's too hot for me to want to sit and work out the numbers for an LLM, but I do have them for my most used diffusion model, Flux 2 from Black Forest Labs.
Running Flux2.dev locally costs me around $0.028 for a single 2kx2k image. This is on an elderly RTX 3090, a 5090 would cut that cost in half. Black Forest Labs charges $0.105 to do that via their API, which is using Flux2.Pro (in theory slightly more capable than Flux2.dev, but in practice almost identical in output).
If I'm generating 100 images per day (modest use day for me) that's $2.80 vs $10.50, or some $230 extra per month to use the API.
I will grant your point on equivalent quality for LLMs is a valid one, but the 80/20 rule is kicking in now and the gap is narrowing quickly. For example, the 85GB local version of Qwen3 Coder produces output not far behind the cloud version and the hardware to run it is by no means out of reach for even a small business or enthusiast. A pair of 30/40/5090 cards or an AMD Strix Halo based mini-PC will run that just fine, if a bit slower than the cloud version.
7 parents, families and friends grieving lost lives
https://news.sky.com/story/body-found-in-search-for-teenager-who-went-missing-in-cheshire-lake-during-hot-weather-13548412
1. Of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives, as of the 2024 election, 60, or 14 percent, are held by blacks. (That's slightly more than the percentage of blacks in the US population.)
2. Only 7 of those 60 represent districts that are more than 50 percent black.
3. Nine of the 60 represent districts that are 10 percent, or less, black.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Race_and_ethnicity