The strange case of Britain’s demise • Hacker News Board

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#151

Post by taffronaut » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 9:11 PM UTC

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #48

Havoc wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Economic reform" is just the latest soundbite. Half hearted acknowledgement that current tory policies have failed so by necessity the next thing being pushed must be branded as a change. Hence "reform". I have yet to see anything of substance fly under that banner.

It isn't (the indicator for this is that Reeves is saying exactly the same thing). It is hard to be brief but: * Financial services - totally fucked, most of the VC funding in the UK comes from overseas investors because pension and insurance rules (that were largely adopted from Europe) mean that they have to own large amounts of govt bonds...the recent problems indicate how wise that was. Everything isn't working:…

> because pension and insurance rules (that were largely adopted from Europe) mean that they have to own large amounts of govt bonds

Let me help you with the brevity - you mean Solvency II. So you're fine with governments bailing out the financial system with our money, but not happy if they put (admittedly heavy-handed) measures in place to stop the casino mentality.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#152

Post by matkoniecz » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 9:18 PM UTC

recuter wrote: post #38

Ben Page, the boss of Ipsos, a global research firm, points to what he terms the “loss of the future”, common across the West but acute in Britain. In 2008, as the financial crisis struck, only 12% of Britons thought youngsters would have a worse quality of life than their parents, Mr Page notes. Now that figure is 41%. As elsewhere, people worry about immigration and feel threatened by globalisation. All this makes…

> Like lemmings off a cliff.

I just want to mention that actual lemmings are not doing this. This was faked by Disney employees throwing lemmings out off a cliff.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemming#Misconceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Wilderness_(film)#Contro...

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#153

Post by notahacker » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 9:20 PM UTC

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #140

notahacker wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are quite a few, it's just that none of them learned it from two hours a week between the ages of 11 and 16. (Mostly they learned it because their parents and many members of their local community speak Welsh or Punjabi or Urdu...)

Two hours a week between 11 and 16? I love this place. People speak with total authority about stuff they clearly do not understand.

> I love this place. People speak with total authority about stuff they clearly do not understand.

Well if I lack the authority to comment on my own education, please feel free to share your greater understanding of the years and hours my classmates and I devoted to learning a second language. Perhaps you can even convince me my A* GCSE made me fluent and not utterly incompetent in it!

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#154

Post by rsj_hn » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 9:23 PM UTC

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #147

recuter wrote: post #38

Ben Page, the boss of Ipsos, a global research firm, points to what he terms the “loss of the future”, common across the West but acute in Britain. In 2008, as the financial crisis struck, only 12% of Britons thought youngsters would have a worse quality of life than their parents, Mr Page notes. Now that figure is 41%. As elsewhere, people worry about immigration and feel threatened by globalisation. All this makes…

The end of the fossil fuel era is going to hit everybody. Making sure you are ready for that seems like a good start.

It will only hit those nations in the West that succumb to it.

Eurasia is doing fine with stable and reliable power, continuing to both increase fossil fuel usage and build out nuclear power at the same time. Africa is ramping up. Latin America is the wild card. Most of the world is going to keep on using fossil fuels, looking at what happened to Europe as an object lesson of becoming so rich that you forget what is foundational, indulge in religious fantasies -- and commit economic suicide.

In this sense the energy sanctions, while destroying the British and German economies, are a blessing to the rest of the world, because it provides a very clear picture of what happens when you go down this road. This is why China, India, and Japan are rushing to secure long term oil and gas contracts, and many nations in Africa and Asia are joining them in prioritizing secure fossil fuel providers even as they seek to build out more nuclear in order to reduce dependence on foreign inputs. See https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/ for detailed projections out to 2050 of different regions.

Britain and Germany are the main object lessons in this regard, but it's certainly not "the world".

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#155

Post by skippyboxedhero » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 9:23 PM UTC

sega_sai wrote: post #133

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason you spend that time is because of the rules. Actually, the homeless rate in Edinburgh (which actually has an eviction ban and, even, rent controls now) is 3x the rate of SF...the reason why is that most of the rental market disappeared because eviction control meant that landlords could only sell properties at the end of rental periods (and when these came up in September, they all just removed properties…

"is 3x the rate of SF" -- citation needed. I live in Edinburgh and have been in SF and very much struggle to believe it.

You need to find the data yourself. There is no public source that makes this comparison.

I have lived in Edinburgh for two decades btw. Most people who work here have absolutely no idea how many homeless people live there (it has been in the thousands for years) because almost none of these people live on the street or have substance abuse problems (and Edinburgh has very effective segregation so the wealthy don't have to see the poor or their problems). They are just normal people who have been evicted for whatever reason, and have nowhere to live because the city doesn't have enough housing. So they get put into hotels or B&Bs (but, because of the refugee situation, these have largely been exhausted now too...I remember a few years ago when they were trying to house Syrians, the council said...literally no room, we are overloaded beyond belief...since then refugees worth about 2-4% of the population came...the council has been telling poor people they have to leave now, go to England, go to the Highlands, they don't care, just leave...people who have been paying rates for decades).

Last year (i.e. before the latest crisis got very severe) there were 20 thousand people on the council's waiting list...this is in a city of 400k people (and, obviously, significantly less households).

The numbers are absolutely staggering and, again, people who live in Edinburgh have no idea because most people who work there have no contact whatsoever with "locals". They vote for brownfield-only building, they love the Cockburn Association intervening on every planning decision, they vote for the green belt, etc.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#156

Post by xhevahir » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 9:29 PM UTC

recuter wrote: post #38

Ben Page, the boss of Ipsos, a global research firm, points to what he terms the “loss of the future”, common across the West but acute in Britain. In 2008, as the financial crisis struck, only 12% of Britons thought youngsters would have a worse quality of life than their parents, Mr Page notes. Now that figure is 41%. As elsewhere, people worry about immigration and feel threatened by globalisation. All this makes…

This isn't a new phenomenon, and, as the author mentions, is not peculiar to the UK. When I was a 13-year-old in 1992 an eccentric science teacher would remind my class nearly every week that ours was the first American generation that was expected to enjoy a worse standard of living than our parents had. (Going back even farther you could point to popular expressions like the Sex Pistols' "God Save the Queen;" people have been talking like this for a long time.)

I remember reading for the first time about the loss of the future as a frame of reference in this article, which I thought was very interesting but it now unfortunately seems to be only available behind a paywall: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/110330889900700102 .

Anyway, I think this sort of thing happens independently of the specific vagaries of politics and economics in any country: change is taking place quickly, on a grand scale, in societies where ordinary people are enjoined to think about the course of events over which they, individually, have little control.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#157

Post by skippyboxedhero » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 9:30 PM UTC

taffronaut wrote: post #151

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't (the indicator for this is that Reeves is saying exactly the same thing). It is hard to be brief but: * Financial services - totally fucked, most of the VC funding in the UK comes from overseas investors because pension and insurance rules (that were largely adopted from Europe) mean that they have to own large amounts of govt bonds...the recent problems indicate how wise that was. Everything isn't working:…

> because pension and insurance rules (that were largely adopted from Europe) mean that they have to own large amounts of govt bonds Let me help you with the brevity - you mean Solvency II. So you're fine with governments bailing out the financial system with our money, but not happy if they put (admittedly heavy-handed) measures in place to stop the casino mentality.

No, I mean Solvency II amongst other rules. There are many others (pension regulations are even worse). Let me help you with complexity (financial regulation doesn't happen to be particularly simple, it won't yield before your mighty intellect because you had a thought, you have to do the work).

Er no, the reason Solvency II exists is to bailout govts (and insurance companies, it is a tacit way of decreasing competition). That is the beauty of these regulations: you have poor people in Europe who are getting absolutely rinsed by this stuff AND they will actually fight for it (the "casino mentality"...is that something that European Commissioner tells you to say?).

It does nothing to increase systemic safety: look at Europe, almost every large bank is functionally insolvent, requires massive zero-interest loans from the govt, almost all new loans in some of the large economies are now govt-guaranteed...is this what a safe system looks like.

If you take a country like Germany, which has gone the farthest down this route, savers have net financial wealth equal to Greece. Look at Allianz's market share, they own everything. It is tragic. Removing these regulations will be massively beneficial for consumers, the reason they exist at all is to limit competition and choice.

Btw, this isn't hard. The US made these changes in the early 70s, that is why they fund most VC activity in London. Consumers need choice, they don't need to have their money trapped in govt bonds subsidizing govts that can't repay their debts in a free market, the only result of this is lower returns for consumers.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#158

Post by pharmakom » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 9:32 PM UTC

makomk wrote: post #127

petesergeant wrote: post #4

I feel like the article lays it out pretty well? It’s a government who’s been in power too long, whose talent base was massively thinned by a Brexit Purity witch hunt and the impossibility of delivering the Brexit fairy-tale, and who weren’t simply ejected at the last election because of Corbyn’s overwhelming unpopularity.

The article is part of the problem. UK politics and the media narratives around it have beeen utterly wrecked by the fight over Brexit and the attempts to give its creators the boot. For example, take this claim: "Investment is down and inflation higher than it would have been inside the European Union." The UK's inflation in the year to November 2022 was 10.7%, compared to 10.1% in the Eurozone. It just doesn't seem…

> The UK's inflation in the year to November 2022 was 10.7%, compared to 10.1% in the Eurozone. It just doesn't seem at all plausible that the UK would somehow have substantially lower inflation if it were in the EU

Why not?

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#159

Post by siquick » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 9:33 PM UTC

mmarq wrote: post #88

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't (the indicator for this is that Reeves is saying exactly the same thing). It is hard to be brief but: * Financial services - totally fucked, most of the VC funding in the UK comes from overseas investors because pension and insurance rules (that were largely adopted from Europe) mean that they have to own large amounts of govt bonds...the recent problems indicate how wise that was. Everything isn't working:…

> * Housing - separate from just planning, there are specific rules within the housing market that cause distortions above the planning system failing to produce enough supply. For example, rent controls in Scotland...that caused a 40% drop in rental supply in two weeks, this is economic mismanagement on a grand scale. Umpteenth reminder that England is the only place on planet Earth where people earning a top 10% sa…

> Umpteenth reminder that England is the only place on planet Earth where people earning a top 10% salary, that is 70K£ pa, are at constant risk of eviction

Reminder that London is not England. Top 10% earners in most other parts of the country live very comfortably.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#160

Post by fshbbdssbbgdd » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 9:34 PM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #120

ogogmad wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The accusations were partly based on him cosying up with terrorists, from Hamas, Iran, etc. Is it too much to ask that a candidate for Prime Minister should respect the Rule of Law? There's also his support for Chavez/Maduro, his suicidally naive pacifism which helps the enemy, etc. Oh, and the episode with the mural, where he was too stupid to understand why a picture of fat people with hooked noses oppressing "the…

Boris Johnson met ex-KGB oligarch and made his son a member of the House of Lords[1] He said "let the bodies pile high" about his plan for COVID, a plan which ended up killing ~100,000 people.[2][2.5] > " Oh, and the episode with the mural, where he was too stupid to understand why a picture of fat people with hooked noses oppressing "the workers" would be offensive to a certain group. " Is the certain group Jews? We…

Is the goal here to make Corbyn look good by comparison to Johnson? The median voter seems to think they are both unfit to lead, so it’s probably not an effective argument.