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Post by Rafwan on May 19, 2023 8:04:31 GMT
Well done, you Irons …!!! You an iron too? We’ve just booked flights to Prague via Vienna - won’t get tickets for the game I’m sure but who cares. Partaayyyyyy as a mate of mine would put it 🙂⚒ Sounds like a great outing. Envy, envy! Good luck with tickets. Yep, definitely an iron. I live just off Green Street, so it is in the blood. Sadly, I can’t get there often these days, but I followed them to Wembley in ‘75 and also had a season ticket for last season at Upton Park (in the old lower south bank - terrific), so saw the brilliant final match agains Man U under floods. |
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Post by Deleted on May 19, 2023 8:05:11 GMT
Starmer says he will build houses on Green Belt.
Sunak says he won't.
The Fabian Society/YouGov find that 63% of under 25's support building affordable homes on Green Belt.
Starmer wins.
If the under 25's vote in the GE.
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pjw1961
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Post by pjw1961 on May 19, 2023 8:13:33 GMT
The Sunday Times Rich List has just been published and (quote from the Guardian): 'for the first time in 14 years, the number of billionaires on the list has fallen, by six to 171.
That’s the first top drop since the 2007-08 financial crisis, after heavy falls in international markets last year. However, those whose wealth clocked in at at least 8-digits have grown even richer. The amount of wealth shared by UK billionaires climbed to £683.8bn, which is almost £31bn more than last year. But, with inflation in double digits, that 4.5% rise represents a fall in real terms. The Sunday Times, which has been weighing the wallets of the wealthy for many years, reports that the boomtime is over:
"The Rich List has laid bare a golden era for Britain’s most minted for more than a decade. Each year the billionaire count rose. Each year their fortunes soared ever higher. The question was not whether the boom would end, but when — and what it would mean for the rest of us. That time has come. The party is over and it’s time to sober up. “Years of cheap, cheap money ramped up the value of our companies and made it easier to expand,” said one anonymous billionaire retailer who has seen his wealth clipped in this year’s Rich List. “A lot of us did very well out of it. The recession never turned up and I don’t think it will. Time for everyone to get back to work, get their heads down and frankly be a bit more sensible.”'
Clearly for most of us the recession did turn up in that period - three times over. It is interesting to contrast the experience of that billionaire with my own. I didn't create a sub-prime crisis in the US, or vote for the growth-destroying policies of Osborne's austerity and Brexit but I certainly paid for them. For a period of 6 years from 2008 I received no increase in pay - some years the pay rise was literally 0%, sometimes 1% when inflation exceeded that. In 2014 I was made redundant from my local government role as a result of the Council I worked for losing 50% of its income from austerity cuts. I swiftly got another job with the NHS, but on around a 40% cut in pay (still a lot better than being unemployed). By moving around and getting higher paid roles I recovered most of that reduction in around 5 years, but the net result was that in the 10 years 2008-18 I had no increase in income, while costs never stopped rising. Having no debts, I didn't benefit from low interest rates, but the interest I used to earn on my savings vanished almost entirely. It is only with the recent pay increase wrung out of the government under threat of strike action by the unions that my salary is finally significantly higher than it was in 2014, 9 years ago.
It seems to me that we have lived through the longest sustained period we have ever seen of policy designed to help the super-rich get richer while getting the workers to pay for it through falling living standards. What mystifies me is why more people aren't angry about it. A testament, I suppose, to the power of distractions like Brexit, immigration debates and culture wars.
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 19, 2023 8:14:50 GMT
to point out it was in fact a hatchet not an axe , it's this sort of grammatical confusion that can undermine your entire day. Surely if there is a small thing called a hatch-et, then there should be a larger 'hatch'? |
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Post by Deleted on May 19, 2023 8:16:42 GMT
“The British government has been proud to lead global support for Ukrainian culture, sports and arts since the invasion,”
"we will be assisting the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine to share their music as they tour the UK this year”.
Lucy Frazer, Culture Secretary
"In fact the orchestra has been told that, if it wants to come here, all 90 musicians will need to make a bus journey from Kyiv to Warsaw and back (12 hours each way) to get UK work visas. Why? Because apparently we don’t have anyone in Kyiv who can issue the visas there."
The Times
All too familiar a tale.
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 19, 2023 8:21:11 GMT
The 'rich' aren't the only shareholders. I understand that pension funds for instance are among the highest investors in these sort of businesses. This benefits everyone with a workplace or private pension which is most people these days. Time was most pension funds were mutual charitable organisations whose profits accumulated to members. Again, thatcher created legislation to abolish them. Now they are more and more simply investment banks. Profits therefore go to shareholders, or fund investors. They use other people's pension money to make money for themselves. |
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Post by Deleted on May 19, 2023 8:29:38 GMT
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Post by Deleted on May 19, 2023 8:43:37 GMT
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 19, 2023 8:44:33 GMT
So, @danny, when did you take up eugenics? There are a whole swathe of people from the terminally ill, the chronically ill, those with addctions, the otherwise immunocompromised, the disabled and others whose life expectancy may be shorter than the average. Government, however, does not and should not condemn them to an early grave. Well of course it does! How long anyone lives depends upon the care they receive. For anyone with extra diffiulties beyond the averag norm for a healthy person, how long they live will depend on how good care they get. Do you think its an accident the royal family die in their nineties? Go visit your local council and see how they ration social care, thats cutting poples life expectancy right there. Its a deliberate choice to spend the money on potholes, or education, or defence, or cutting taxes. Oh my goodness! Sure, that may be your view and it likely accorded with the founders of the labour party, which took off spectacularly politically speaking eventually consigning the libs to a bad third place. But since then labour has become a middle class party, rather more akin to the libs it displaced. Conservatives survived because they were the party of the rich, and they still are. Lab has moved towards them a very long way. Arguably government's first duty is to defend the integrity of the state from outside attack, on the grounds this protects everyone's interests. Obviously this includes defending the right of the rich to oppress the poor. But at least it wont be foreign rich oppressing our poor. After that...it was always defending the interests of the ruling class. The ruling class in the UK is no longer an anachronistic hereditary aristocracy but a more nebulous group certainly still with inherited wealth and therefore power, but also almost a club of people who like ruling and together make up the two political parties who choose who will rule the UK. Voters in theory have some say in who gets to play with the levers of power, but in reality they really dont. The political class pay just enough attention to their wishes to stop any serious political challenger party arising whch represents something different. Heading this off is one reason con adopted Brexit, a policy on the whole they must have hated. Individual human lives are prety irrelevant to good governance of a state. No one should believe otherwise if they support having an army, whose members are expected to die furthering political interests. otherwise its about economics whether its cost effective to pay to keep people healthy. And its not about eugenics, which is about deliberately killing people off to benefit the race. Its simply these deaths do not matter. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 19, 2023 8:50:20 GMT
What the Lib Dems did in 2010 is beyond forgiveness Do you mean laying the ground for Brexit to take place? i agree thats pretty bad, though the irony is they are probably the most pro eu party, and they expedited it because their actions assisted con rather than staying a political force themselves. However, the coalition government was a model of good management compared to the lot we have now. |
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Post by wb61 on May 19, 2023 8:51:10 GMT
Simon Jenkins in today's Guardian: "I once pondered a career in politics but an elder statesman strongly advised me against it. I asked why. Because, he said, you are too interested in politics. Stick to journalism. A political career was not about politics, but about loyalty." I think I am too interested in politics too  |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 19, 2023 8:56:29 GMT
Personally i am no more inclined to forgive LDs for the 2010 Coalition than Von Papen and Hugenburg for entering Coalition in January 1933. So basically you never even considered either one needed forgiving for anything? |
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pjw1961
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Post by pjw1961 on May 19, 2023 8:58:34 GMT
Starmer says he will build houses on Green Belt. Sunak says he won't. The Fabian Society/YouGov find that 63% of under 25's support building affordable homes on Green Belt. Starmer wins. If the under 25's vote in the GE. The Economist had an interesting take on that recently. The polling they had done suggested that in 'leafy' constituencies 37% of people support more housing being built and 39% oppose it. The magazine's argument was that if Labour go into an election promising to build houses and the Conservative, Lib Dems and Greens oppose that, then Labour get the 37% as a block but the 39% splinters between the Nimby parties - result a win for Labour. The parallel they draw is with how the Conservatives concentrated the pro-Brexit vote in 2019, while the pro-Remain vote splintered. I'm not sure I entirely buy that idea - people's votes are obviously determined by more factors than housing - but it is an interesting notion. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 19, 2023 9:03:57 GMT
As an update, the Times had a bit more about it. And apparently Jansen did suggest something the AI is going to do. “ Technologies such as digital assistants would allow customers to “interact with us in a more seamless way”” So there you go. Digital Assistants, apparently. Except that the original statement says AI will replace exsiting IT systems. The phone system is of course run by software these days, not by people sitting in exchanges connecting calls and not by little clicks made by your phone as the dial turns, operating electromechanical relays. So it could well mean an AI will control call routing throughout the UK. It sounded to me though that much of the staff saving is planned to be firing all the gangs of men digging up streets and laying fibre optic cables, because they will have finished the system upgrade from copper to glass. |
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c-a-r-f-r-e-w
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A step on the way toward the demise of the liberal elite? Or just a blip…
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on May 19, 2023 9:08:39 GMT
As an update, the Times had a bit more about it. And apparently Jansen did suggest something the AI is going to do. “ Technologies such as digital assistants would allow customers to “interact with us in a more seamless way”” So there you go. Digital Assistants, apparently. Except that the original statement says AI will replace exsiting IT systems. Well it might wind up being both. Martin Sorrell was in the Times the other day saying how AI would replace people in call centres and going on to talk about the impact in advertising… “ AI will help advertising businesses with hyper-personalisation, Sorrell said, so marketers could target work more effectively: “We’re seeing it have an impact on media planning and buying in the digital area — those decisions can be reduced to algorithms. It is a super tool for our people who are starting to use it to improve their productivity. Finally, we’re seeing a significant impact on reducing the time to produce copy and visuals.”” |
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c-a-r-f-r-e-w
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A step on the way toward the demise of the liberal elite? Or just a blip…
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on May 19, 2023 9:31:12 GMT
Speaking of Coventry, congrats to the Sky Blues on making the playoffs final. Despite not owning their own ground and despite the questionable pitches provided in the early part of the season by their former landlord. Commiserations to their former landlord, Wasps, who have in the last few hours lost their licence to play in the Championship. PUSB A footballing good news story and I share your sentiments about the club's incredible fortitude over their many years of hardships and misfortunes. One or two maybe self-inflicted, but the major ones visited upon them from outside forces, I think. While no one wants to see any sports club fall on hard times, you can be forgiven for a slight trace of schadenfreude creeping into your last commiserating sentence! Good luck against the Happy Hatters Well I didn’t mention that they look to have a place at the bottom tier next season - Counties 4 Midlands West - assuming that they can muster a coach, a ground and a team. In truth one hopes they pull through. As for Sky Blues, it’s a little bit of a shock to be contesting a place in the top flight given we were in the fourth tier a few seasons ago, but then we did move up the ranks quite quickly before under Jimmy Hill, so you never know. 🤞🤞🤞 PUSB |
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c-a-r-f-r-e-w
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A step on the way toward the demise of the liberal elite? Or just a blip…
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on May 19, 2023 9:38:19 GMT
In terms of overcoming difficulties in Football success seeing a playoff for access to the richest football league in the world between Luton Town and Coventry has to be up there. Luton were in the fifth league of football just 8 years ago remarkable success. Indeed we were in the fourth tier a few seasons ago but Luton have gone one better. (There’s a universe in which we both go up, but sadly not this one…) |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 19, 2023 9:38:40 GMT
Good to see that a once-sclerotic nationalised industry is moving with the times. i seem to recall from my youth watching open university programs, that the national phone company pre-privatisation (whatever it was called then) was actually a world leader in new telecommunication equipment design and installation. Oddly Thatcher didnt feature that in the justifications for selling it off so private owners would reap the profits. Its akin to how british rail used to have a train manufacture and design section. Wonder who ended up with that? |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 19, 2023 9:40:41 GMT
I see jib remains obsessed with the minority party in the coalition government of 13 years ago. Despite as far as I am aware no one who posts here actually voted for the minority party in the coalition government of thirteen years ago , thirteen years ago. Oh I might have done, though can't really remember now. |
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pjw1961
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Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
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Post by pjw1961 on May 19, 2023 9:40:43 GMT
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Post by wb61 on May 19, 2023 9:41:12 GMT
If, theoretically, AI is capable of replacing all work by human beings, there must come a point when the replacement of human labour means that capitalism will fail because of the reduction of those who could be customers for the goods and services produced because no-one has any income!
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 19, 2023 9:42:15 GMT
Are journalists above the law of libel? The question is whether they should be because its an essential part of democracy. if there are no checks on politicians lies, obviously they will lie more and more. Its a lot cheaper than implementing actual policies. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 19, 2023 9:43:44 GMT
In what sense was UKIP's success (I assume you mean Brexit) a revolution, the same government remained in power, the Queen kept all her houses and everyone went to work the next day. I seriously don't think in years to come historians will refer to 2016 as the year of the 'British Revolution'. Its likely to be seen as a turning point where the UK took another step down in world importance. Possibly as one of the root causes of the breakup of the UK. |
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Mr Poppy
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Post by Mr Poppy on May 19, 2023 9:53:35 GMT
I discussed GS view with c-a-r-f-r-e-w. Given gas futures prices have already dropped massively then the 'risk' is skewed to the upside (which you can see in option prices - not that I'm going to explain those in any length*). Futures prices which show the 'seasonality' (ie prices rise over Winter) but also show prices falling into middle of decade. www.barchart.com/futures/quotes/TGM23/futures-pricesFor VI then there is a high correlation of 'feel good/bad' factor so as inflation falls later this year then it would be reasonable (ceteris paribus) to expect CON VI to benefit from that - notably as LAB are trying to personally blame Rishi and CON for high inflation. What goes around, comes around... so I expect Rishi and CON will claim they are responsible for falling inflation, return to real wage growth etc, into 2024. Of course there might be other 'events' and the 'brand damage' of Boris and the Truss error will likely limit the upside for CON VI. * Simply put the prices are more likely to 'double' than to 'halve' (ie more likely to be >€100 this coming Winter than drop to <€30 from current low 50s) |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 19, 2023 9:54:39 GMT
And here is a study from Switzerland showing that covid transmission fell by 80% due to masking, with a near identical fall if air cleaners were deployed.
Masks work folks. No debate left to be had. If transmission falls 80%, then is entirely possible the outbreak will take x5 longer before it ends. Kinda like we have seen? The risk to people sheltering continues all the time it is still going, and so the final result may have been to increase the risk of death. |
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c-a-r-f-r-e-w
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A step on the way toward the demise of the liberal elite? Or just a blip…
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on May 19, 2023 9:58:08 GMT
If, theoretically, AI is capable of replacing all work by human beings, there must come a point when the replacement of human labour means that capitalism will fail because of the reduction of those who could be customers for the goods and services produced because no-one has any income! The AI bots might be buying things instead… |
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Mr Poppy
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Teaching assistant and now your elected PM
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Post by Mr Poppy on May 19, 2023 9:58:56 GMT
Starmer says he will build houses on Green Belt. Sunak says he won't. The Fabian Society/YouGov find that 63% of under 25's support building affordable homes on Green Belt. Starmer wins. If the under 25's vote in the GE. Building the ' wrong houses (expensive 3bed+ brick semis/detached) in the wrong place (green belt) lost CON a lot of councillors in recent LEs. We need more housing but it needs to be the right houses (genuinely affordable) in the right places (not green belt). There is also the NIMBY factor. Folks want housing but not near them - which becomes a problem if your HMG and Local Council (but not if you can blame one/both of the HMG/LA - as LAB/LDEM can.. for now). Polling - worth clicking on the link and checking the age x-breaks, which are a bit surprising for 'das yoof' I have to say (plurality of 18-24s are DK) |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 19, 2023 10:00:51 GMT
The Sunday Times Rich List has just been published and (quote from the Guardian): 'for the first time in 14 years, the number of billionaires on the list has fallen, by six to 171. That’s the first top drop since the 2007-08 financial crisis, after heavy falls in international markets last year. [ Did Branson say lockdowns cost him £3bn? So its even fewer people controlling the world's wealth. A 10% tax on that would be a handy £68bn a year. except that history says boom and bust is cyclical, so for every bad time a new good time will come along soon. But there isnt any indication the fundamental policies behind this have changed. |
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Mr Poppy
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Post by Mr Poppy on May 19, 2023 10:06:59 GMT
Just out, I am surprised that the LD boost from the positive LA election results has virtually disappeared so quickly.Still if they settle at 1-2% above what national polls were recording in March and in double figures that is progress. Plus they have more activists as councillors and data to concentrate their resources. Hard to see them getting over 25 seats at the GE and more likely nearer 20 imo. '' @techneuk NEW POLL: Labour lead by 16: Lab 45% (nc) Con 29% (+1) LibDem 10% (-1) Reform 5% (nc) Green 4% (-1) SNP 3% (nc) 1,633 questioned on 17-18 May. +/- 10-11 May. Data - technetracker.co.uk pic.twitter.com/O3pDoslfJF 19/05/2023, 08:00'' Well I guess this year was just the last 6-7 years then. History does repeat after all.  LDEM backing LAB might cause some problems for LDEM winning 'leafy CON seats' WRT to Starmer saying he is going to build on greenbelt. Not sure many people paying much attention to Starmer's comments and given his near constant U-turns then he might 'evolve' his house building policy by GE'24 - although getting the ££ donations from big builders (who love to build lots of big expensive houses on acres of greenbelt) is possibly more appealing for LAB under Starmer management? |
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Post by leftieliberal on May 19, 2023 10:58:21 GMT
Well done, you Irons …!!! Pah, they only had to hold on to their lead from the first leg. Now the Owls coming back from a 4-0 deficit from the League 1 play-off semi-final first leg to equalise on aggregate and then win the penalty shootout 5-3; that really is an achievement. Come on you Owls! |
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