KentVillan

To use a personal finance analogy (which is still wrong because we’re a major economy, not Joe Bloggs relying on his Experian credit rating) there’s a difference between borrowing money to buy a sports car and borrowing money to pay for a university degree or double glazing for your house. The latter have a long term positive return in increased income / reduced costs. That type of borrowing is almost always sensible.

It’s an area absolutely riddled with scammers. That’s the problem with just relying on govt cash incentives - needs good regulation and enforcement too.

He can, especially in dysfunctional spaces like crypto. My point is I don’t think Apple are scared of him in the slightest, and I don’t think they have any reason to be.

I hope this kind of investment (I don’t know much about relative merits of tidal, wind, etc but whatever) will be one of the unexpected positive consequences of the Russia-Ukraine situation.

I think it dates back to the days when English centre halves moved like oil tankers. Modern defenders generally don’t struggle that much with pace, unless it’s absolutely electric and combined with real skill (a la Mbappe).

When you take on debt to pay for pensions or tax cuts or whatever, then yes, you’re out of pocket and have to find the cash somewhere. When you take on debt to pay for productive investment, it pays for itself eventually.

There aren’t finite resources… at least, not in the way you mean. And no, I don’t trust the Tories, but you can use that argument for literally anything that happens while they’re in power. HS2 was supported by all three major parties.

Waiting for the TED Talk "I've had this idea. It's a portable device. You can communicate with your friends on it. You can read emails. And get this - you can recharge it ELECTRICALLY." Audience busy wanking their cocks to smithereens

It's not an either / or. How does building HS2 stop any of this from happening?

Musk doesn't have more money than any individual. He has more TSLA stock than any individual. In terms of liquid cash wealth he's nowhere near someone like Warren Buffett. In order to turn his wealth into cash, Musk would have to tank the price of TSLA by selling his stock. And I've no idea what the relevance of billions not using iPhones is. We were talking about Apple losing customers...

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06594/ Once you start pitching it as “we should spend more on this infra instead of this infra” you’re just playing along with the short termism. Pretty much any infra investment that delivers a long term multiplier effect should be done - all of it, in London, in Birmingham, wherever it delivers a benefit. It’s not a zero sum game, there isn’t a finite pool of money. We’re a rich economy with a good credit rating, there’s absolutely nothing stopping it other than irrationality, Nimbyism and inertia. Edit: and what's a shame actually is that the Truss / Kwarteng budget has I think made fiscal "responsibility" seem incredibly important in all contexts, but not all deficits are created equal. If you're running up a huge deficit to just fund tax cuts for the rich (etc.) that is different from running a deficit to invest in the infrastructure that supports long-term growth, and I think the markets would react differently. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know.

This is just restating Tory book balancing austerity ideology… we’re cutting govt spending, therefore this thing is bad because it involves govt spending.

There are over 1bn iPhone users in the world. What % of them do you think are Musk worshippers (to the point they'll stop using iPhone under Musk's orders)? I'd guess <5%, probably <1%. And they're well within their rights to do this because Musk has removed all the legal / compliance teams at Twitter and is walking into a massive fight with the EU over GDPR etc. He doesn't really have a leg to stand on.

The arguments people make against HS2 and other grand infrastructure projects are the same arguments people make against building nuclear power stations. "It'll take too long to build, we need something now." "It'll take years to recoup the cost." Etc Etc Meanwhile the world keeps turning, and 10 years later you're still in the same boat, still saying the same things, wishing you'd done it 10 years previous. And really it's often just disguised NIMBYism.

Can't find it but a mate messaged me he's done an interview in the England camp where he says best thing since sliced veg

Nobhead

They *did* try to curb the growth of London (and the Green Belt is a massive restriction on London’s growth) but the policies had a much harsher impact on Birmingham because of the nature of its economy. Your second point just isn’t true. London has a great transport network, but people don’t routinely pop from one side of the city to the other.

Birmingham / West Mids is definitely big enough to have an underground network. Milan is a comparable size city and has a much better transport network, including underground.

The background isn’t quite as often assumed, though. It wasn’t an attempt to stop Birmingham overtaking London (that wouldn’t have happened anyway) but a misguided attempt to rebalance to other regions. From: http://spatial-economics.blogspot.com/2013/05/booming-birmingham-and-need-for.html?m=1 It’s actually a good example of why “zero sum” rebalancing away from booming regions is a bad idea. It’s better to support booming cities with more housing, more infrastructure, etc. rather than trying to bring growth to an unnatural halt. So it’s definitely true that Birmingham got screwed over, and it’s definitely true that the ideas originated in London, but it wasn’t motivated by fear or spite. Just bad policy. And the North West was the beneficiary. London actually suffers in a different way from the same mode of thinking - but in terms of housing rather than transport. London transport is superb, but the housing situation is a mess. It’s the same mentality motivating it though (tight planning restrictions to prevent population expansion). A simple thing the UK govt could do to rebalance the economy is just invest a lot more in mobile and broadband networks to give 100% nationwide coverage. That would make remote work and rural offices more feasible in more locations. The other thing you have in France (for example) is a lot more commuting the length of the country for hybrid work, which means someone can live in the south but work in Paris a couple of days a week, and commute via TGV. That means they’re then spending their Paris salary in the south. I just don’t think that happens in the UK to any significant extent? I think that’s where the HS2 debate got a bit lost tbh. People argue that it just makes London even more of a hub city at the expense of surrounding cities, but surely it would mean more money travelling from London to Midlands and North, especially post-Covid when 2-3 days pw in office makes long distance commuting much more manageable?

Perisic also still a surprisingly threatening winger at 33. I think World Cups tend to make the players in the strongest squads stand out, so I’ve been interested by some of the guys performing in weaker sides. Alphonso Davies really is an excellent player. Ziyech has looked very good for Morocco. Surely Mbappe is the best player in the world right now, though. His ability to play good technical football with both feet at lightning pace is astonishing, and the fact he’s standing out in a side stacked with quality players shows how good he is.

It is definitely 18+. It’s a weird mix of sitcom farce comedy and American upper class satire and something a bit darker. Very glossy but good!

Watching season 1 of The White Lotus. Excellent so far

There is some effort made (and I think certainly for a business like Sainsbury’s this would be fairly accurate): From https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicsectorfinance/methodologies/countryandregionalpublicsectorfinancesmethodologyguide#corporation-tax-onshore But it’s not perfect. Generally I think the ONS are one of the few govt bodies that do their job properly and aren’t politically biased, but no doubt this is a particularly difficult task to get right.