This opens up a political division, no?
Around 70% of Labour, Lib Dem and Green voters think future PM should open talks on rejoining EU, poll suggests
Even, a bit of a line in the sand?
Oh Dear, what a pity, eh?
Monica Harding, the Liberal Democrats’ international development spokesperson, said even existing cuts to aid had resulted in a loss of UK influence
Everybody has to pay taxes so that foreigners look at Monica with respect, eh?
A Labour party spokesperson…. risks Britain losing influence and seats at the table
Think of the conferences apparatchiki won’t be able to go to. They’re all held in nice warm places during the Northern Hemisphere winter as well.
Zia Yusuf, Reform’s head of policy….The Conservatives spent £230bn in real terms on foreign aid
Hell of a figure, ain’t it?
Plans by Reform UK to slash the aid budget by 90%
An excellent idea.
Gideon Rabinowitz, the director of policy at Bond, the umbrella group for development NGOs
When we’ve a bureaucracy for the bureaucracy of the aid leeches it is about time we swinged with an axe, no?
We’ll get right on that, shall we?
Keir Starmer’s government has been told a closer EU trade deal is a “strategic necessity” for companies in Britain as growing numbers of exporters find it tougher to do business under the UK’s post-Brexit agreement
Of course, any such deal must be made in isolation – no going around changing the terms of trade with non-EU in order to get something from the EU.
Which the EU isn’t going to do so there’s the end of that, eh?
Money Making Idea!
Is there a music AI yet?
Are full musical scores available in digital format? Mozart, Beethoven etc? Led Zep?
Does that music AI grasp different sorts of ensembles? Brass band, big band, jazz trio, Mozart size orchestra, Bruckner size?
So, feed the digital scores into the different ensemble models, create the Pastoral by jazz trio (more likely, brass band, but why not kazoo orchestra?) and, maybe – different because still copyright – run Led Zep on different sizes of orchestra.
Flood Spotify and live off the proceeds.
So, what’s wrong with this idea? If the creation is cheap enough – as in, a few keystrokes for each piece per style – then the pitiful streaming payments still add up.
Anyone?
Fuck me this is stupid
1) What do I mean by “surplus income or wealth”?
I am not using a moral or abstract definition when using this language.
A surplus exists where:
spending power is not required for a decent standard of living, and
where additional income or wealth is primarily saved, speculated with, or used to extract rents rather than meet needs.
In practice, this is observable. Indicators include:High savings rates.
Ownership of multiple assets.
Low marginal propensity to consume, and
The ability to absorb shocks without cutting essential spending.
That is why taxes on higher incomes, accumulated wealth, land, monopoly profits, and excess corporate margins can reduce inflationary pressure far more effectively than taxing wages close to subsistence. The test is behavioural and macroeconomic: does taxing here reduce demand without causing hardship?
If we tax what isn’t being spent – that surplus – then this will reduce the inflationary pressure of spending.
This is just abject stupidity.
Sigh
No, we know this one:
In real-world housing markets, and in particular, in the UK’s highly supply-constrained one, landlords often pass costs on through rents. Without rent controls, strong tenant protections and major planning reform, LVT risks falling on occupiers rather than owners. At that point, it stops functioning as a wealth tax and becomes another charge on living somewhere, disproportionately affecting renters and lower-income households.
Back when development zones were made free of business rates. Rents rose to match the reduction in rates. Rates are thus incident upon landlords as would LVT be.
This is the usual Spud. Never actually checking whether anyone else already knows the answer.
Spudoggic
“This is the chart of the latest United Nations Human Development Indicator” etc etc and the UK is, as he says, in hte top 20. Then:
My point in posting this, however, is simple. If you are at the top of the pile, there is no excuse for poverty in your country. The resources to prevent it, by definition, exist. In that case, if it is prevalent, as it is in the UK, it is by choice, and not by accident or chance. And in that case, we could eliminate it.
But the poverty measure being used inside the UK is not the same as the one used in the UN.
So, no.
Can we be bothered to snigger at this?
Keir Starmer has no coherent strategy to tackle entrenched inequalities harming the life chances of millions of people, the government’s social mobility commissioner has said.
“I am a bureaucrat. No one is paying enough attention to the thing I am a bureaucrat of. This must change.”
We expected different views from this source, did we?
The new head of the equalities watchdog has attacked those who describe migration as a risk to Britain.
Mary-Ann Stephenson, the chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), used her first major intervention since taking the job at the beginning of December to warn against the demonisation of immigrants.
Dr Stephenson, who was chosen by Sir Keir Starmer’s administration to succeed Baroness Falkner of Margravine, also said that leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) – the treaty that has been blamed by critics for blocking migrant deportations – would be a mistake.
Double barrelled names, eh?
One of the great joys of Christmas for me has been being able to share my love of The Nutcracker with my son. Last year, I took him to see a child-friendly version by the Let’s All Dance ballet company. The look of wonderment and recognition on his face when the music started up is a memory that I’ll treasure for ever.
I’ll confess that the idea of taking a then two-year-old to a ballet had struck me as faintly ridiculous, one of those painfully middle-class-coded things I find myself doing as a parent (see also Mini Mozart). That kind of thinking, though, is in itself elitist, because who says ballet, or classical music, should be only for rarefied audiences?
Still, at least Rhiannon knows her audience. Wholly, entirely, haute bourgeois who have to be assured that they’re not – you know, Guardian readers.
You can see why The Guardian is complaining
Kimchi from China sells to restaurants for about 1,700 won ($1.15) per kilogram, while Korean-made versions average about 3,600 won ($2.45), more than double the price.
In the first 10 months of this year, South Korea imported $159m worth of kimchi, almost entirely from China, while exporting $137m.
…
There are more than 150 recognised types, made with radish, cucumber, spring onions and other vegetables, seasoned with blends of chilli powder, garlic, ginger and fermented seafood paste, shaped by local climates and tastes.The fermentation process produces beneficial lactic acid bacteria that contribute to kimchi’s reputation as a health food.
Families traditionally prepared large quantities together during kimjang, the annual winter preparation ritual recognised by Unesco as intangible cultural heritage.
OK, stuff changes. How good/bad according to taste.
Market forces mean that price, rather than origin or method, are now the decisive factor.
That’s why The Guardian is pissed. Imagine allowing something as common as trade to determine culture!
OK, so, bad then
In 2011, when the NSU outed itself in a video in which it claimed responsibility for the murders and several nailbomb attacks, it also exposed profound structural failures in the German state’s approach to rightwing terrorism.
Subsequent inquiries revealed that security agencies had informants in close proximity to the perpetrators, overlooked relevant intelligence, and in some cases destroyed files after the group was uncovered. As a result, the NSU case has come to be understood not only as a sequence of racist murders but as an indictment of the state’s inability – or unwillingness – to adequately recognise and confront far-right violence.
Now, in ongoing proceedings surrounding the NSU, Beate Zschäpe – sentenced to life in 2018 for her role within the NSU core cell responsible for 10 murders – recently appeared in court as a witness in a related trial. But this time, Zschäpe took on a markedly different tone than she had before – one of remorse, or at least something that resembled it. She spoke of shame, of reconsideration, of recognition of her own guilt, which she claims only started during her own trial, ending in 2018.
And the varied leftie murderers of slightly earlier times. Baader Meinhof and so on. They’ve all fessed up and begged have they? Or is that different because they were against The Man?
Another of those signs
A Catholic pro-life campaigner has become the first person in Britain to be charged with the new offence of breaching an abortion clinic buffer zone.
Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, 48, a charity worker, was arrested earlier this year after she was seen silently praying outside a facility in Birmingham.
A national “buffer zones” law was passed in October 2024, prohibiting “influence” within 150m of every abortion facility in England and Wales.
Such a free country where you may not pray, silently, in public.
We do seem to have reached an interesting argument here. We’ve one group claiming that you can try to break the back of someone with a seldgehammer because you’re doing it for a good thing. But you cannot pray silently in public because that is to be against a good thing – even, against the most sacred sacrament of feminism. It also seems to be largely the same people saying both things.
No wonder they’re having to delay elections, eh?
It’s one of those signs, eh?
Last week it emerged that local elections next year are set to be cancelled for millions of voters. Of 63 councils involved, 26 are Labour-run, 12 are Conservative and 10 are Liberal Democrat. One local authority is run by independents, while no party is in overall control in the remaining 14.
Cancelling elections because reasons…..
Last year, county council elections due in 2025 were postponed for a year in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Hampshire and West Sussex, but the announcement means they could now be delayed for a further year.
And the reasons tend to get renewed.
After all, the Long Parliament worked out so well…..
Aha, aha, aha – No.
Inequality between countries has fallen sharply, a trend driven by hte end of colonialism and the rise of India and China.
No, colonialism ended 50 years back. Global inequality started dropping 30 years back.
When those newly independent places stopped listening to the idiot Fabians and started doing what the Washington Consensus said they should. Which is, as we all know, just a list of stupid things you shouldn’t do to an economy.
As ever, when it works it ain’t traditional any more
From herbalists in Africa gathering plants to use as poultices to acupuncturists in China using needles to cure migraines, or Indian yogis practising meditation, traditional remedies have increasingly being shown to work, and deserve more attention and research, according to a World Health Organization official.
A historical lack of evidence, which has seen traditional practices dismissed by many, could change with more investment and the use of modern technology, according to Dr Shyama Kuruvilla, who leads the WHO Global Traditional Medicine Centre.
It just becomes medicine – like quinine did. As soon as we get someone warbling on about different methods of knowing, different methods of proof, then we’re in Woo! territory.
Sure, sure, test it by our standard scientific methods. If it works by those then Woot!
But which of these – despite protestations – do you think it will end up as?
After all, we’ve already seen the madwives kill thousands with their traditional approaches…..
Oh Dear
Christmas is really weird, economically speaking, that is, because in a sense it breaks every one of our normal economic rules. We accept that fact without question, and that should make us think, because if we can break the rules of economics at Christmas, when else could we do so?
Apparently leisure is breaking the rules of economics.
Ho Hum.
Oh, very snigger worthy
I admit that this does not feel like a video idea to me: YouTube rewards excessive techniques with low views. But it did feel worth answering, so I have written two glossary entries on full reserve banking (which is currently technically Green Party economic policy) and on reserve requirements.
They are as follows, nd please note all the hyperlinks in this post are to glossary entries:
Full reserve banking
Full reserve banking is the proposal that banks should be required to hold reserves equal to 100 per cent of their customers’ demand deposits, preventing them from creating money through lending. Deposits would be fully backed by central bank-created money, and banks would only be able to lend money that already exists.
No, it isn’t.
Full reserve banking is:
Full-reserve banking is a system of banking where banks do not lend demand deposits and instead only lend from time deposits.
Which is a problem for Spud. Because of course he denies that banks do lend out deposits therefore he cannot use that definition of full reserve banking, can he? For to him – not lending out deposits – the current banking system already is full reserve…..
Eh?
David Walliams has been dropped by his publisher following an investigation by The Telegraph into inappropriate behaviour towards young women.
I grasp the idea of attraction to publishing totty. Publishing is where the posh totty goes and it’s entirely possible to have a taste for posh totty. Fine.
But a rich man, a famous man (the second probably of more importance) with a known ability to be witty at least at times. He’s up to his kneecaps in poon anyway. Why chase those who work – even if indirectly – for you?
Seriously, attend a publishers’ party, drink half a glass of warm white wine and take one’s pick of the bodyslam of clunge voluntarily on offer. Groupies are not just for rock bands after all.
Why?
(No, I am not rich or famous enough for this to be true of me. But sufficiently fringe to such events to know this)
I do wonder at times
India’s leading doctors have warned of the dangers of an unregulated boom in weight loss injections, and emphasised they are not a magic pill to solve the country’s growing epidemic of diabetes and obesity.
Demand for appetite-suppressing drugs such as Mounjaro, Wegovy and Ozempic has surged since they were introduced into the Indian market this year.
In the eight months since it was approved for sale, Mounjaro – a jab that regulates blood sugar and suppresses appetite to help with diabetes and obesity – is now India’s highest-selling drug, overtaking antibiotics.
How much of this opposition is to the word “unregulated”?
Mohit Bhandari, one of India’s leading bariatric surgeons, said he believed that the official numbers of people with diabetes and obesity in India were a “significant undercount due to poor data collection” and estimated they were more than 10% higher than government records.
However, Bhandari is among those urging caution at the widespread and unregulated use of weight loss drugs, which he said were already being abused and mis-prescribed with possible long-term consequences.
“The GLP-1 drugs already very important for India, they’re more than welcome,” he said. “However, there are very significant problems and caveats to this. These jabs should be properly controlled by the government.”
Bloke who makes his living from an alternative treatment demands government control of the alternative treatment to how he makes his living.
Hmm….
