Posts by LucreLout 3039 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Jun 2014
@Tony S
I'm betting that it will happen sooner than that. Probably on motorways first, but then in the centres of the bigger cities. Anyone else care to wager if it will start within the next 10 years?
I'll take that bet Sir! £50 to a charity of your choice if humans are banned from driving on any existing classification of road anywhere in the UK in the next 10 years. I'll nominate Scottys Little Soldiers as my charity when I win, because I don't buy your 10 year timeframe.
How does a driverless car some the ethical dilemma of either breaking but still hitting the pedestrian or swerving and crashing into the other car?
In most situations of that sort, if the on coming car is also automated then it applies its brakes and moves over as far as it can. That creates more space for 'your' automated car to swerve into and brake. Serious accident avoided, and in all probability there's no actual collision - the computers can play as a team in situations where people can't.
At 30mph even a ten year old car will stop well inside its own length under heavy braking, provided it is properly maintained with effective tyres. This is a fact. Communication and processing time between the vehicles will be near instant.
Otherwise the software makes the same decisions its owner would - if my kids are in the car I'm not swerving into the path of a head on crash, sorry, their safety comes first for me and I'm making the decisions when I'm driving. If I'm alone in the vehicle and a child runs out I might decide to take one for the team - nobody truly knows how they'd react until the moment is upon them.
That doesn't really play out very well for the insurance industry...
Theoretically, and I am aware of how daft this sounds, but if these cars ever reached the stage of not having contributory negligence crashes, then there would be no motor insurance industry. If the car can't have an at fault accident then it doesn't need insurance against it.
If they can't be made to not crash then they can't be made to not kill people, and the argument for banning manual driving would fail.
@Yugguy
Although I do know that for many driving is simply a chore.
I love driving. Cars are pretty much my main hobby. But driving can certainly be a chore - Anyone used the A1 North on a Friday afternoon? Drove into London at, well, any time on any day? Those aren't fun trips.
Even on our crowded roads you can still get the odd moment of enjoyment from the sheer physical act of driving.
For the next 100 years there will be vehicles available without computer guidance. I base this on the continued existence of classic cars. After that people will continue making their own (See Colin Chapmans book).
People won't stop driving for fun. It couldn't be effectively policed without consuming vast resources. No reg plates requires a physical stop, which requires actual traffic police, of which we have very few. And good luck with the motorbikes.
Speeding is illegal and almost everyone does that. An MOT failure rate of nearly 50% shows that people don't regard the contruction and use regs in high esteem, and that generally speaking, most drivers are comfortabe with a certain level of law breaking (ignorance being no defence).
We could elminate most road fatalities by removing the least capable drivers from the road. Automated driving will abolish any perceived barriers to having a properly hard driving test. We could even regulate manual driving to the top 1% of drivers in any given year.
As a petrolhead, I welcome automated driving for the masses: they're no good at it and have little interest in it, so they won't be a loss.
@Simon11
the actual wage paid by the firm to workers with similar skills and qualifications.
How they work around that is they value degrees from American colleges at whatever rate, and degrees from the rest of the world at zip.
I'm not suggesting it is right or wrong, only that it is legal and it does happen (I have a friend & colleague moved to NY on H1B and this is exactly the reason he gets paid less than the prevailing rate among the merkins).
You != most people.
I obey the law (speeding aside). I work hard. I pay taxes. I am moderately well educated. I own a home with a mortgage. I'm married, with kids. I'd say that is a fair description of most adults, perhaps not the married part, but the rest of it is.
Taxes are falling for the first time in a generation. The economy is growing. Unemployment is the lowest its been in a very long time. Things are getting better.
No you haven't, you absolutely haven't. You posted some flawed figures that completely depended on external factors that only exist in your worldview.
There were no flaws.
One last time for the hard of learning.
2 people working a full time 40 hour week, gives a pre-tax joint salary of £27,040. Using a mortgage multiple of just 3.5 times joint, we get to a mortgage of £94,640. A 10% deposit, which can be saved by working overtime, gives us a total of £104,104.
Now, last time out nobody, absolutely nobody, could find a postcode in any large town or city that I could not find a starter property within a 40 mile commute at that price.
Things get even better for todays minimum wage couple, because in four or five years they'll be earning at least £37,440 joint, giving them a new grand total of £144,144. (2 people x 40 hours x 52 weeks x £9 x 3.5 x 1.1 to add on the 10% deposit)
Hence, the real problem with property is one of expectations.
You claiming a fait accompli based on that post is hilarious.
No nearly so funny as you claiming I'm wrong but still not being able to find one single post code... not one. The numbers are facts. You refusing to accept them doesn't diminish their being facts.
the Nasty Party
YAWN!
Yes, they hate the poor so much they want to make them rich. Labour, the real nasty party, simply don't care how much suffering their followers must endure, so long as they get to hurt "the rich" - a phrase that turns out to simply mean "Anyone who works".
Watching the nasty, hate filled, swivel eyed invective of the left turning in on itself is quite a spectacle to behold. I've always found it distasteful... concealing it was something Blair did well.
the government always gets the blame for what's happening in the trade cycle
They do, but that isn't why labour governments get elected. They get elected because kids who are too young to have lived through their last term in power get to vote. When those kids grow up a little and realise what they've actually voted for, they stop voting and the Conservatives return to office to fix up the mess. And so it goes.
Having been one of "the stupid", Labour will always have a place in my heart as the first party I voted for, a bit like a first love, but this time around they'll have to convince me they've learned their economic lessons and can be trusted with the economy. That Corbyn is so popular shows they haven't. Come the 2025 I'll probably be sick of the Conservatives, but highly suspicious of a Labour government.
Recessions are normal and to be expected, but every labour government ends in depression, for that is how the "great recession" will be viewed historically. If they'd only stop doing it, we could really achieve something as a nation, and many many more people would be willing to vote for them. Their main priority for their next time in power must be this: To leave office with the economy stronger than it was when they took power. Then they'd really be an electoral force to be reckoned with.
The Guardian are a Labour paper. They think Corbyn will knacker the party they support.
Terrifying isn't it? The Guardian might actually have gotten something right for the first timein its modern history.
remember the vitriol is not one way. The number of Corbyn's supporters who've been screaming that anyone inside Labour who disagrees with them is an evil Tory is unpleasantly large.
Yes, the left have always been good at emotive polemic, vitriol, and hate. Not so much with economics, business, finance, etc.
This is the civil war I've warned of previously. Its already started and they haven't even elected a leader yet. Come 2020, when Corbyn gets hammered, that's when the fireworks will really begin.
It's looking uncomfortably close to splitting the main opposition, and leaving us with an effective one party state - until we get a new opposition sorted out.
Yup, and that'll be good for nobody. Which is why, at this point, I think the best thing Labour can do for the country is to dissolve the party and allow new opposition parties to emerge. They won't, of course, because they've always been the party of self interest and greed. As a former chief exec once said to me, there's no greed like unionised greed.
The voters are to get ONE choice... for continuation of an absolute corporate/banking hegemony & coup of all democratic process. Thats the plan and the 3 main parties are all for it.
An amusing turn of phrase for sure.
The reason there isn't great economic ground between the main parties is the inescapable fact that most people have never had it so good. And things are going to keep getting better still as we become a lower tax, lower welfare, higher wage, and high employment economy.
who see ZERO hope for their children.
If you see no hope for your children then I pity them. I see not only hope for mine, but vast potential to do far better than I. The future is uncertain, but then the future always has been. It's why each generation continues to find it fascinating.
Which is why they are desperate not to solve the housing problem
Sorry, what housing problem?
I didn't step over any homeless on my way to work today. Didn't even see any, and I've travelled through a couple of counties to be here. I've previously demonstrated how a minimum wage couple can buy a starter home within a shorter commute than I have, so affordability isn't a problem. Perhaps then, the "housing problem" is simply one of inflated expectations?
People who live in houses and who own them don't care because we have to live somewhere
Not accurate in the least little bit.
People that have bought homes require the ability to sell it an buy another. That requires they not be in negative equity. And that, you guessed it, requires that prices not fall faster than their mortgage repayment. There's always people who just bought their first place in the run up to a dip.
Prices in London might turn down for a while - they seem overheated. That doesn't equate to a crash. The kind of crash that would take prices back to even 2008 levels simply isn't coming.
The run-of-the-mill civils pay into their pension, it is contributory
Yes, it is, but their contribution only covers about 10% of their pension costs - the rest of it is topped up by the tax payer. Once you add in spousal payouts etc the cost of public sector pension provision, were you to buy it privately, is just slightly more than 50% of salary. Rather more than any state worker contributes to their scheme, yes.
Thanks to the miracle of economics, the private sector tax payer is actually funding it all anyway, because public sector workers consume tax revenue, they don't generate it.
The trains and the utilities are not "pretty much everything".
The trains and utilities are just the start.
There is a case to be made for at least part nationalising the railways.
Not as compelling a case, unfortunately, for not nationalising any part of them, but instead doing the privatisation properly rather than the botched mess Major made of it. It IS better than BR, much better, but it could be better still - and I'd be amazed if you find any rail commuter old enough to have used BR daily that would disagree with that.
The difficulty of getting private industry to invest in electricity generation without subsidies shows that there is a similar case for utilities.
Private industry invests where the best returns are available. It's how markets work. Capping rises or otherwise interfereing with the normal market function is what distorts the market leading to a perceived requirement for state intervention. To actually be advocating nationalising energy generation you must have been too young to have really lived through the miners strikes and the rolling brownouts that were a normal part of life. Those of us who lived it definately will not allow you to drag us back to that farce.
That means someone is paying you. Will this continue if you go abroad?
That's generally considered to be how capitalism works. Yes, someone would continue to pay me abroad, just probably as a contractor for tax efficiency.
If your work goes to India that is a net cash outflow, but will it be as much as your current income?
I can see where you're going with this and can already see why you've got it wrong.
The net outflow of cash from the economy may seem small to you, but where it ticks up a lot is that my assets and the income produced from them would be relocating off shore with me, so no taxes paid to the UK on that either.
The next thing you're missing, is that I don't work for a British bank. I work for a subsidiary of a foreign owned bank. Once my role goes to India, the capital to fund it goes home. 100% of my tax contribution to the UK economy is lost forever. And that means those public sector workers I fund are shit out of luck.
How can you be so confident that the hose will simply stop pouring money into wherever you live and start pouring it into Bangalore?
It is what has happened to the last 6 roles people have vacated in my team and what my bosses have indicated will occur. Bet against it if you choose, just don't say you weren't warned and don't try to shirk responsibility for the mess. The left are rather too keen on that for their own good.
Once the nationalisations start, assuming they could be financed, companies will become nervous. The first time less than full compensation is paid to the business owners, the corporate flight from the UK will be so fast and thunderous that it will make you dizzy.
In short, there's a lot of rather simplistic exaggeration in your posts.
I kept it simple so you;d understand. Apparantly I underestimated your desire not to do so. There is no exaggeration, there is no hyperbole. Its just a fact. That you aren't comfortable with the outcome should be informing your thoughts on the process of getting there, no?
Nobody would miss them. Or you. Not that this is an argument in favour of Corbyn, it's just an argument against silly posturing
Perhaps not, but the two public sector workers my taxes support would certainly miss their jobs. It is directly connected, even if they, and you, refuse to see it. There is no magic money tree: Every single pound spent in the public sector has come directly out of private sector workers pockets - government borrowing only delays that. When I leave the job it goes to India.... not sure they'll want to pay for the NHS.
Far from being posturing, it's a sensible insurance plan. Corbyn wants the state to own, well, pretty much everything. And he has not one bean to pay for that. So whatever money he uses will, as ever, come out of private individuals pockets - just because he doesn't announce a wealth haircut doesn't mean that isn't what he is doing, and by the time he does announce it, it will be too late to flee. I pay far too much for the state as it is - I'm certainly not hanging around for them to come back for another bite of the minority share they left me with in previous years.
So where to go? America, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Switzerland, etc etc There's a whole world out there. Even if I was desperately daft enough to wish to live under socialism, I'd be better of going to France where the weather and the wine are better.
This assumption you have, that because you wouldn't move nobody else will, is one the country cannot afford. Literally, it cannot afford it.
@Doctor Syntax
Eventually there are sufficient voters who can't remember enough of the last Labour govt, fall for the populist hype and elect Labour who then start the whole thing off again.
If things were only that bad we'd have half a chance of change.
You forgot to mention the ever burgeoning Labour client state. Welfare families who've never worked. Never will. The public sector workers who simply don't give a fig where the money to pay their wages comes from - they're entitled to an annual increment, inflation busting payrise, and a solid gold pension to boot you know.
Magic money trees all round!
They were astounded that the self-employed and small partnerships were considering incorporating in order to take advantage of changes to Corporation Tax that had been introduced by Gordon Brown. Surely no-one would change their legal status simply to reduce their tax bill?
Given the ease with which a company can be setup in foreign jurisdictions, they'd be positively horrified had they thought the matter through. The competition for corporate taxes is now a global one and that won't change for several lifetimes. You either win that game or you lose it - not playing just means you lose.
The most important assets for bad times are family, friends and community, and a little bit of arable land near fresh water doesn't hurt either.
If things ever got that bad then you'd need firearms and a large group of friends more than anything else. Setting up your little collective and farming the land is nice, until the gangs arrive and use your women for entertainment while you load your produce into their transport.
Community in the lefty sense simply wouldn't exist. If your neighbour has food and your kids are hungry... As soon as there isn't enough food for everyone, everyone prioritises their own at the expense of others.
If I think Corbyn has a chance in Hades I would try to leap out of any cash or income sources into something worthwhile hoarding.
Corbyn will get at most one shot at winning an election. 2020. The odds of him winning are miniscule, but should he prevail, I'd seek to leave the country. Corbyns adviser may like to believe that won't happen, but I can promise him, promise him, that it would.
It will already take the UK until about 2050 to pay the tab left by the last Labour government. The prospect of another labour government, even more barking than Gordons, would in my view make the UK unrepairable without default. The poor and the retired will bear the greatest cost for that. So if the left wish to persue it, then they can do so without my aid. The bottom line? If you want to live under socialism, go live in France.
Who cares? Just some asshat on the internet? Yup. The bit where it matters is I'm one of the better educated, higher earning asshats that have built up a small but significant amount of earned wealth. Last time around we called this a brain drain. In the internet age, it will be an exodus.
@Nigel
It's really all about the segregation, imv.
Well, yes. And I think it does the developers a great disservice to pretend otherwise. Lets just be honest about it - nobody is going to pay full market rent for a flat to live next to someone paying a little over half that.
Its decidedly unPC/lefty to say it, but segregation is the only way to keep the nice parts nice - the social part always gets vandalised by bored and ill-disciplined kids or knackered by people that just don't care. I'm not saying that covers everyone in social housing (it certainly isn't true of my folks), but it only takes one rogue family to break the whole development, and social tennants are a bugger to shift. Private ones get their marching orders quickly if things get broken.
@Nigel
We see this sort of argument in London too, where somehow "not being treated as badly as I am" gets turned into "they're being unfairly subsidised", followed by demands to either a) punish people for not being ripped off (like the 'spare room subsidy'....
The Spare Room Subsidy applies only to subsidised housing. Social housing must be subsidised by law, with rental rates capped at a maximum of 80% of the market rate, and a minimum of 60% of it.
I have no issue with social housing being allocated based on current and temporary need, but lets face it, people like Bob Crow were millionaires - any perceived need they had was long since past. And thus we get to the root of the problem - who should be subsidised, for how long, and to what extent. And what are the 2nd and 3rd order consequences of that?
I can't afford to live in London (no really, I can't) so where is the fairness in my subsidising others to do so though the tax system? My public transport isn't even tax deductible as a compromise. To ask me to pay for someone to live closer to work than I can afford to myself, you'd need to make a really compelling case, and that is not being made today.
he said it seemed to lead to less ghettoization.
I assume then your friend wasn't living in Aarhus. Certainly not near the outer ring.... Denmark has ghettos to rival those of London. It's a great place to live, but it isn't the promised land or paradise.
As an aside, things like mortgage interest are tax deductible in Denmark, so while the tax bands seem initially high, they net out very close to our rates of tax. Things like Jante law have a far greater impact upon Scandinavian societal cohesion than rent control and income distributions.
@JohnAaronRose
I would like to ask a simple questions: how many $millions does one person need / be entitled to have?
To which my answer would be this:
1) How many potential millions are there?
2) Who doesn't want to be a millionaire?
It'll not be popular in these shires, but the fact remains that most people in the west have more than they need. My house is bigger than it strictly has to be, my car faster, and I have more than a few months cash at bank.
I'll probably not feel secure until I reach the following situation:
A) Mortgage free property large enough for my family within good schhol catchment areas.
B) Enough income to live comfortably after taxes are paid, without working (I'll get sick, then I'll get old, and I can't work forever).
Ok, so will I stop building wealth when I'm secure? Nope. Sorry. I'd probably continue while I could to help set my children up with housing deposits or uni fees, that sort of thing. After all that.... well, I'd really love to own a Ferrari.
The list of things that consume money is realistically endless. So how much of it do I feel entitled to? None/nothing. But I have and will continue to earn my way, probably beyond any strict sense of need. Life is about more than need.
The CO2 in our food comes from the atmosphere -- we, "as animals" are like all other animals carbon neutral.
Oh, I see. You're an idiot. I get it now.
If what you suggest was remotely accurate, in the faintest possible sense, then all we'd have to do to cut emissions was produce food and not eat it. You mistakenly assume people are carbon neutral, when self evidently they aren't, and miss the face that while the population of earth has soared the past 20 years, as have emissions, there has been zero degrees warming. None. Zip. Nada.
At best we can esitmate what we emit in terms of emissions. What we can't claim, idocy aside, is that we fully understand the carbon cycle such that we can not only correlate our emissions with global warming, but can state them to be causal. Its BS.
You've conveniently rules out any natural increase in emissions and prescribed it all to humans, which is self evidently wrong unless every natural process is a constant. Given a small child could grasp that they are in flux, the prevailing CO2 level will increase and decrease due to NATURE.
Trains are still powered by coal
Mine aren't. Mine are nuclear powered.
So there's no coal fired power stations in France? Quack quack oops. Seriously, even basic research and logic are beyond you. I give up..... you won't learn a thing because you don't want to. Carry on with your religion if you must, but don't ever claim it to be science on this forum again.
@DougS
I can't believe anyone could suggest with a straight face that the UK would refuse to extradite Assange to the US.
Of course we wouldn't. We wouldn't have before he allegedly raped a number of women. We wouldn't have before he jumped bail. And we won't when he eventually gets his fat arse off the couch.
Sweden has nothing to do with that. The sole reason he is hiding in the embassy is because he wants to deny the women he allegedly sexually assaults their day in court.
Not this gender bullshit again.. man up? why, because all women are cowards? or because penises shrink and fall off unless fed a constant diet of bravery?
I was going to say "Bollocks", but instead shall settle for yelling "Ovaries" at you until you give the PC bullshit a rest.
All men know that women are braver then men. If men gave birth there would have been exactly two generations of humans and no more.
@AC
No, that ego-stroking myth has already been thoroughly discredited.
Exactly. I always ask Assange supporters the same simple question and they uniformly fail to provide an answer:
Please take a moment to explain why extradition to the US wasn't more of a risk in the UK than it is in Sweden?
The way I see it the risks were at best identical, and at worst manifestly more likely to be extradited from the UK to the US. And he was bumming about here for years before he fled the rape charges.
Talking to the Telegraph, Per Samuelson, Assange's lawyer, said: "He was quite worried when I spoke to him today. It's not a moment of happiness for him."
It is a moment of your own doing. You will now always be an alleged sex offender, absent persuading the women, who you've denied their day in court, to withdraw their allegations.
Samuelson added: "He will be very unhappy if the conclusion is that he is the winning party here, he doesn’t see it like that at all: he wants to clear his name."
No you don't. You could have cleared your name at any time in the past 5 years. You could even have served any jail time required should you have been found guilty. And you could have been back home with your family, on your own couch years ago.
Guilty people run Julian... guilty people run.
@AC
For me asking questions, about the development of the DWP database in India and 'had they redacted the information before sending a copy outside of Safe Harbour', was enough to get me moved quietly onto another project - what does that tell you about the culture of these places?
Safe Harbour regs are all but worthless. All the big companies that have a presence in India et al simply have those people dial into virts held within the EU. The data never leaves, it just gets exposed.
That sort of gaming the system is endemic, and absolutely requires that legislators up their game significantly.
@Henry
Whistleblowers almost always have violated corporate security, ignored company NDAs and confidentiality clauses, and often times broken laws that prohibit leaking out proprietary corporate information, when they whistleblow against companies.
Agreed, mostly. You need to consider to whom the whistle gets blown.
Take a whistleblower in say, Goldman Sachs. They find wrong doing, and they go to management. That doesn't work, they go to the regulator. They don't go to JP Morgan with the data.
Should Snowden have blown the whistle? Sure, he was acting in good faith. But maybe he should have sent the data to the Senate and Congress, rather than the Guardian? If that doesn't yield results, then go public. Who knows, maybe he did. Sadly the whole affair is short on facts and so very long on opinion.
@My-Handle
what Edward Snowden did is unquestioningly against the law. He wouldn't stand a chance in a US trial because of that simple fact.
Agreed. And I think a lot of those rushing into the debate are doing so with far too much emotion and nowhere near enough reason. Snowden broke the law, for which there are a well advertised range of penalties. He did so knowing what those penalties would be.
The real question here is whether what he did was right
It is important to understand that the law is not concerned with right and wrong. It is not concerned with the provision of justice. The law is only concerned with itself - what is legal and what is not. Sad, but true.
Snowden is guilty. There is pretty much zero doubt about it, because he has more or less said as much himself. The real question then, is to what extent he should be punished, and after that punishment ends, how can he be protected from retribution.
Snowden acted in good faith. I believe he considered what he was doing to be the morally correct course of action, and he seems not to have attempted to leverage that into a higher standard of living for himself. The counterpoint is that there is no doubt he has caused his country a great deal of embarrasment and fiscal loss or expense.
We, the normal folk in the world, simply don't have enough evidentiary standard information to determine how much benefit or harm his actions have brought to society, to us, and so we're not in a position to weigh where on the punishment scale is appropriate to his actions. I think Ed is a good man, but he's no hero to me. He did what he thought was right, knowing he could never go home. Big balls, and worthy of respect. But there's no pardon coming, and I'm pretty sure he would never have expected there would be. Stay safe Mr Snowden, stay in Russia.
@AC
Of course it isn't accurate. Polls only reflect the opinions of those dumb enough to answer.
Yes, sort of like the pre-election polling Britain. If you employ people to phone others and ask questions during working hours, those who answer the phone will mostly be people that don't work. Hence the predictions for a Labour win when what happened in reality was rather different.
I have to say though, 26% of Americans answering the home phone in daylight hours want Snowden pardonned. I'm genuinely surprised it's that high, and while I may be the only one, I'm quite encouraged by that.
Were I Ed, I'd be staying in Russia, even after a pardon; It'd only take a single "patriot" to hold a grudge, and there's really no way, absent witness protection, that they could ever hope to keep him safe. Presidents have been shot.
What is it about these countries that means they can run successful state-owned railway companies but we can't?
Progressive unions that don't strike, and an understanding amongst their employees that the reason the train set exists is to provide the public with transport NOT the worker with an income and lifestyle far beyond what they're worth?
British unions strike at the drop of a hat - it's how they open negotiations, and its where the European term "The British Disease" comes from. Even the French used to laugh at how many strikes our unions called. The French. Just let that sink in for a moment.
Tube drivers push a button to open and close doors. That's basically all they do. And that's £50k+ for a 30 hour week with nearly three months holiday. It's not sustainable, is it? Salaries in the real world get paid at replacement level and no higher. Why should commuters pay double pay just to get to work?
Well the railways is fairly easy
Its easy only if you forget all about BR.
BR was a disaster, chiefly because one uppity union rep could shut down the whole network. The only way the state can run the trains is if they lock out the unions, or bar them from striking. That won't sit well with the left.
And, of course he could borrow more.... evidenced by the fact that Osborne has borrowed more than Brown
Only because brown borrowed during the boom to hire a million more public sector staff than we need. The recession brought an end to that game. The current borrowing is short term while the economy is rebalanced away from the public sector to the private sector. You can't do that with nationalisations, and the bond markets would nuke you from orbit for trying.
The only reason the current debt and deficit levels are tollerated is because the deficit is being reduced and the debt will follow right after it. Try asking to borrow hundreds of billions to nationalise the power companies and the base rate will soar to protect the pound against lira like levels of FX.
You can't get out of debt by borrowing more money to spend on wages. Infrastructure maybe, but never wages. You can't public sector your way to wealth because the public sector consumes wealth generated by the private sector. It cannot be otherwise.
If Labour immolate then the Tories will have no opposition
For 2020? No, they won't. But they already have no opposition for that with the Labour party.
Could labour win in 2025? Very unlikely at this point, whereas a new opposition could, assuming it was a centrist party with no union involvement.
Labour, assuming Corbyn wins, will struggle for unity. They will get obliterated in 2020, and then all out civil war will reign. That's 2025 knackered, at best. It's wholly possible that it's a civil war Labour won't survive.
What will the left understand from that rout? Will they understand that the world has moved on from socialism and 1970s unionised blackmail? I doubt it.
And so to the Blairites. After the 2025 debacle they will rightly be expecting the left of the party to die gracefully, and look towards a permanent move to the centre ground. Closing the book on the unions will by then be the only way they can convince us to trust them with the economy.
Labour will split because its one party with two ideologies, locked in a death spiral, with each side blaming the other for their misfortune. Blair brought the unions to heel, for just long enough to hold power until the Conservatives disintegrated, after which they went ballastic with the non-jobs and public sector pay rises again. Winning back voters trust on the economy means leaving Big Len in the history books.
If the party splits, there will be no opposition for many parliaments, because the unionised public sector party will have half the votes and the credible half of the party will have half the votes; neither will have enough votes to win seats.
You'd certainly not start a new party with the competing and irreconcilable differences within Labour, so why continue an old one? The fastest route to power seems to be a new centrist party, free of the past failures of unionism.
...how Corbyn plans to finance any of his nationalisations. The country, courtesy of his party, is bust. It will be bust for a generation. "Sorry. There is no money left" said Labour, and it is possibly the one fiscal concept they got right.
So how does he pay for the shares in utilities and transportation that he seeks to nationalise?
He can't steal the money from private pensions because that would obliterate the stock market and the economy right after it.
He can't nationalise bank deposits, because that would also destroy the economy (even a partial theft would cause unstoppable bank runs).
He can't raid big business, because they'll just decamp for fairer climes, leaving small busineses to pick up the tab, sending many to the wall and spiking unemployment.
He can't raise direct taxes, because tax payers are already at breaking point. The well is dry. A good whack of the higher rate payers are IT staff in London, and more and more of us are giving it up and going contracting, while the jobs go to cheaper locations or offshore.
He can't just print the money, because that would spike interest rates through the roof in order to stop the pound dropping through the floor. I know this is what he's currently suggesting, but he'd find out in short order that its not an option.
And he absolutely can't borrow any more - Gordon already borrowed and spent every pound there was to have.
On the face of it, it seems to be the Magic Money Tree all over again. So, Corbyn supporters, can you explain how he's actually going to pay for any of these bills? I've given it a lot of thought and I can't see how it can be financed.
Virtual pint because I come in peace....
@AC
Corbyn, whatever else you think about him, is not "all the same".
Oh, sure, he stands out from the crowd, but that's an easy trick to pull. I could come to work naked, and guarantee I'd not "be the same" as everyone else.... You'll have to take my word for it that this would not be a good thing - I've seen myself naked and can only admire my wifes fortitude.
The *increase* in Labour membership since the election is bigger than the total Tory membership.
I'll not fact check that and just accept it. How many do you think are signing up to vote for Corbyn because they know the only election he could ever win would be to labour leader? I genuinely know three people at work (investment banking) who signed up on this basis to vote for Corbyn, despite never having cast a red vote their whole family line.
Swing voters vote. Non-voters don't. As simple as that sounds, you're overlooking its significance. For everyone that doesn't vote who decides they'll vote for Corbyn, you'll lose 2 or 3 voters like me, making 2020 a coming collapse.
UKIPs main raison d'etre will be decided before then. Farrage is, like him or loathe him, also a conviction politician. UKIP might well embark on a new direction, possibly under a new name, and leave labour sitting in the ... liberal seats (for want of a better name). Funding and membership would collapse, and the unions would haul them so far left they'd be a protest vote for angry students and unreconstructed communists.
The primary goal of an effective opposition are to look like a government in waiting at all times. Corbyn is not PM material. Labour look like a tired & confused shambles, with only pipe dreams for comfort, no real ideas. Opposition is a time for learning from past mistakes, yet none has been done. It is a time for unity, yet there is none. It is a time to refresh your party, yet they do not refresh it - Diane Abbot, Harriet Harman, Blears, Johnston, Yvette Cooper-Balls, Burnham, and so many more besides need to be deselected and put out to pasture.
Britain deserves an effective government, and that requires an effective opposition. Labour are not that. They will not be that under Corbyn. Only Kendall can hold them together long enough for a leader to emerge, for there are none there now. A situation, I may add, that afflicts the Conservatives alike, but to a lesser degree.
He's only winning because the Unions want him. The vast majority of general election voters won't.
And that, ultimately, is the root of Corbyns problem. He simply isn't electable to the public. He may say all the things lefties love to hear - big state, high taxes, lavish welfare, but the wider electorate know that socialism doesn't work and they won't vote for it.
Labour, if it is to ever win power again, must elect a leader who appeals to people like me (Floating voters who have previously ticked red boxes and now tick blue). To do that, it will have to give up socialism, trade unionism, and high taxes. Blair knew that, so he lied. He lied while labour quietly returned to form (around '99) and carried on lying until the money started to run out, at which point he left Gordon holding the baby.
Labour need to back things like the reforms to strike laws, the welfare bill etc, and start taking ownership of their weakest areas (the economy, immigration, etc) instead of blaming everyone else for them. Ultimately, the poor suffer more than the rich for a broken economy, so its in labours own interest to start learning from their mistakes instead of repeating them adfinitum.
@Chris Miller
In a word, they're stuffed. Labour is dead, but they haven't quite realised it yet.
Pretty much, yes. They still haven't realised the fastest way to get the Tories out of power is to disband labour. They can never be trusted with the economy: It's what, three times in a row now they've left the economy utterly destroyed. There's always an excuse, but its transparantly inevitable - all labour governments end in economic depression and fiscal ruin. Disbanding Labour would allow new opposition to form in Scotland seperate from a new opposition in England.
If labour must continue, then instead of labour supporters making excuses for wrecking the economy (It wuz the bankaaaahs), tell me where labour went wrong, what they have learned from it, and how they can ensure the next time they leave power the country is not on its knees. No? I didn't think so, and that is why they'll never win back trust.
2020 is already over. 2025 would be very ambitious. 2030... well, depending on EVEL, the referendum, and Scottish Independence, it could all be over for Labour by then. The labour party doesn't know what it stands for, doesn't know where it wants to go, and doesn't even know why it still exists.
As the only way to maintain a well functioning government is to have a well functioning opposition, this farce is a detriment to us all. We need a credible opposition, with credible plans, and a clear reason to be.... It'll be decades before anyone can seriously claim that the labour party are credible. Decades. And that will be good for nobody.
@Potty
I absolutely do expect companies - especially large ones - to make security the primary priority. Ahead of new features. Ahead of release dates. Ahead of any other priority in their software.
The primary priority of companies is profit. It will always be so, because as soon as it isn't, your competitor eats your lunch and you go home empty handed. I can understand why you, and many Reg readers don't like that view. I don't like it either. But that is how the world is, and it'll not be changing for a very long time.
You speak of Oracle... Less than half its dot come peak price, and only now regaining its stock price of 16 years ago. Oracle is a company in trouble. MariaDB is eating its bottom end and Hadoop/MongoDB are coming for its top end. Java needs billions pouring into it annually over the next decade to fend off Microsofts open sourcing of dot net and its porting to linux. Its very easy to say the shareholders need to get less, but investors are not emotional about stocks - they stack up as the best investment, or they don't.
Corporate profit should not come before information security
Perhaps, but it always will. There is a balance to be struck, where data breaches cost revenue, and so profit, but that must come from consumers, not regulators or legislators.
The way to engender change is to own what you can own, and change what you can change. Encourage others to see the error of their ways, sure, but you've used words like "expect". You need to adjust your expectations, because they're not realistic, which is why you're getting frustrated.
Nobody should get to avoid responsibility for security just because they believe they have a $deity-given right to ignore security in the quest for money.
Do you think people care? Normal people, not us. Do any of them ever stop to think what information they're entering into Farcebook, or what they're blathering about on tw@tter? Unless you can convince the masses that privacy is better than 'fame' (xfactor's brothers got talent style) then you'll never make them understand - you place a higher priority on the security of their information than they themselves do.
Bad as things are now, they will get worse when the millenials end up running things, because they've grown up just mindlessly handing over data to be farmed, in return for doodads and trivial improvements to convenience.
@Pete H
Stop thinking of it as (only) a coding problem.
I dearly wish I could make some of my colleagues understand that security IS a coding problem, not just something for the networks guys to fret over. Seriously, I've seen systems broadcast trade data to anything subscribing to them - no security at all, and no comprehension of why that is unprofessional.
Security is everyones job. There are no roles in IT or even using IT where that is not the case.
@Potty
We can refuse to work on projects that, based on our professional opinions and experience are security problems waiting to happen.
Systems administrators can refuse to install hardware and software that they know can't be defended.
Sure, if you like being fired for insubordination. Yes, I was actually threatened with that where I work for refusing to do something my then tool of a manager wanted done but which wasn't actually possible.
I agree with the sentiment, taking the action you can take, fixing what you can fix. But if there's any yoot out there reading this, and they work for a large corporate, what you've advocated could very easily see them fired. IIRC you're self employed, so this is less of a concern to you, but large companies just don't work like you're suggesting, and they haven't for the 20 odd years I've been playing the game.
@Aanakin
The case would fall a part in atoms if Assange would stand trail and USA would extract him the same second he set foot at swedish soil.
Ok, but can you just please take a moment to explain why that wasn't more of a risk in the UK?
The way I see it the risks were at best identical, and at worst manifestly more likely to be extradited from the UK to the US.
There is the rub. He can't walk out scot-free. Well Scotland Yard free anyway.
Having ducked the rape investigation, he'll never be free. Men who have not raped women rarely refuse to talk to the police by hiding in an embassy for a decade. Julian needs to come out and be interviewed, or answer questions through some other means. I'll always regard his failure to do so as a sign of guilt.
Enjoy the couch Julian, but don't ever get to thinking you'll be free. You'll never be free of this now, and that is very much your own doing.
Lets have an investigation into what she was trying to hide. Sure, theres a bit of TS stuff floating about, and that's bad, but its not what she was trying to hide.
Investigators need to get down to the real reason she had the server setup and find out what she was obfuscating/covering up/hiding, why she was doing it, and what laws or protocols have been broken in doing so.
A credible plan to prevent reoccurances can then be drawn up, and Hillary can face whatever punishment she has coming. It probably should be jail time, for the TS documents alone, but I think I can speak for everyone when I say I'm not holding my breath on that.
My other question, not being leftpondian, is - If this is the best candidate for President that the democrats have, then why should anyone vote democrat? I'm certainly no fan of the family Bush, and have no clue who I'd vote for in a US election (as I understand it the democrats are somewhere tot he right of our current Government), but surely any party wanting to run the Presidency has to have a more credible candidate than Free Willy's Wife?
As long as they have a place to crash, an internet connection, and enough money to keep the wolf from the door, they are perfectly happy doing what they love without having to worry about performance reviews or dress codes.
I miss those days, I really do. But children and a mortgage don't fund themselves... Still, I'll always be profoundly happy for my dot com days.
@Aimee
Which has the better overall security, Android or IPhone?
Windows Phone. I'm the only person I know that uses it, so its pretty much a waste of time anyone developing attack vectors. Security through obscurity - it's like the 80s never ended!
I suspect no mobile OS has good security. Since most internet access is now via a phone/tablet rather than PC, these are the most common attack surfaces. Regardless of which OS you run on a proper computer, I'd bet the security is considerably better when factoring in firewalling, virus/trojan scanning, logging, and system/network monitoring tool sets etc.
Paris, because she didn't have anything left to fear from the iCloud leak.
So who here hasn't left stuff on a train or lost an unencrypted laptop?
Me. I haven't ever left "stuff" on a train or taken data beyond the firewall while unencrypted. On the rare occasions where it has been necessary to move data beyond the firewall, that data is ALWAYS encrypted, and the dataset kept as small as possible. The custodian of the data then treats it with the same care and respect as it were their own data or that of their children.
It is exceptionally rare to need to move data beyond a firewall if best practices are followed. It is NEVER required that it be moved unencrypted.
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