Yes. From a social perspective. Just exactly who in the long term has it benefited? Everything is crumbling, nothing works, it's an absolute joke. I'd sacrifice all my nice to haves in a heartbeat if it meant a functional country.Originally Posted by niko_cee
Nothing (regrettably) is done with long term aims in mind (for obvious reasons), so the fact that we got a good thirty years out of it is a good result. 30 years previous to that we were still rationing.
We should do this.
Pining for some sort of halcyon time in the past where 'everything worked' is daft. The past was almost always worse, it's just you either didn't have to suffer through it, or have erased the suffering from your mind.
Who's doing that? The point is there were multiple paths forward to improve life and the only ones that were taken were to benefit the elite to the detriment of wider society.
See all the rich freaks in Malibu offering to pay people to put out fires near their mansions because the fire service has been cut to the bone.
I see Liz Truss has sent a cease and desist letter to Sir Beer Korma to tell him to stop saying that she crashed the economy. Has there ever been a more useless, thin-skinned cock-womble PM? That's bearing in mind the shower of shite that has followed her as well.
She was absolutely the worst in my living memory. Against some stiff competition as well.
The main difference between when Truss 'crashed the economy' and now is that the Labour Party are all fully behind their programme, at least in public, where as the Conservative Party couldn't help immediately being a bunch of fannies and dripping to the media to set the confidence spiral off.
If memory serves, didn't Truss deliver exactly what the Tories voted her in to do at the time? Only when they saw what it actually did to the economy they turned on her.
It won't be long before Labour start doing the same. Nothing will actually change policy-wise though, someone else (Wesley) will just want their turn in the big seat.
Their priorities up to now make me think they would all happily embrace austerity, at least for one term, in return for getting a load of other shit through.
Good job we have the competent people in charge now.
That sort of thinking assumes that Rachel Reeves is the problem, when in reality the Treasury probably had two equally shit budgets written and she just read out the one in the red envelope. What would any of those people be doing differently?
Absolutely nothing. Still funny though.
One of 4 things will happen over the next month.
1) An Emergency budget announcing austerity measures (and Starmer is probably gone)
2) An Emergency budget announcing Tax Increases (and Starmer is probably gone)
3) The market chills out and stops devaluing the pound and increasing the Interest on our national debt (phew)
4) The market goes into another Lettuceesque death spiral and the Bank of England is forced into action again (shit)
This is an absolute mess. If I were looking at one of my Tenants in this situation, I would be expecting bankruptcy.
Your man Gary of "Gary's Economics" had quite a good video explaining the situation the other day. Kinda seems like the UK is a bit fucked.
It's quite long but it was mostly borrowing costs are too high and therefore debt is increasing as percentage of GDP because GDP isn't growing fast enough to keep the proportion the same due to low growth and now low inflation again.
Can't believe a country that refused to invest in itself when money was cheap for 2 decades is fucked.
Remember the Tories crowing about Labour not fixing the roof when the sun was shining when they started implementing austerity in the 2010s?
Quite. If they’d levelled up the north by building micro chip manufacturing even 10 years ago let alone 20 we’d just have a massively profitable industry coming online instead we decided to spend 20 billion on a train line to make it 20 minutes faster to get from Birmingham to London which was also abandoned because it was too expensive. Fucking abysmal handling of the economy by the ‘sensible people’
Alternatively, money remained cheap because the government wasn't wasting it on boondoggle shite like the Featherstone microchip foundry, limiting itself only to doubling the national debt to line the pockets of pensioners and human rights barristers. Besides, any worthwhile investments that we might have made during that period would probably have been seen off by European Union rules (or at least or pathetic approach to them). Meanwhile, houses go unbuilt, wages get compressed, and the welfare bill spirals out of control because having eczema or whatever gets you a free car.
Even in this fucking farcical world you pretend exists that happened under the people you voted for your entire life you realise?
You’re a fucking racist retard that the world would be better without.
Make up excuses for why we can’t do things and then make up your iq. Have a pint of milk and fuck off.
Who is they? The government? Are you suggesting that the government should have built some sort of state-owned microchip facility twenty years ago? First of all, that would require a massive amount of foretelling from their part, which they are obviously incapable of, but even if they had built such a thing, there is no way that some sort of British state-owned semiconductor company would be in any way competitive against the likes of TSMC. If you are suggesting that private companies should have invested in semiconductor manufacturing in the UK, then that probably would have required the types of policies you would chimp out about if they were enacted.
To imagine we'd ever be competitive with Chinese fabs is insane. We should achieve growth with a massive rearmament programme.
Last edited by Jimmy Floyd; 13-01-2025 at 07:16 AM.
The last government spent the last few years parroting promises that they were going to turn Oxbridge into the UK's Silicon Valley. Predictably, nothing at all happened, a tale that explains the last decade and a half. Talk, but no action.
Whether Phonics would have chimped out or not, he's right.
Last edited by Spikey M; 13-01-2025 at 09:30 AM.
He's just chimped out here, is there a cooldown on that?
The plans to make Britain a leader in AI sound like the same shambles.
As ever the devil is in the detail. For a start, how’s this £14bn been calculated and what period does it land over?
We all know that 14bn would have become 140bn and the end result would have been an AI that's basically one of those Chatbots from the 2010's.
Coleco GPT.
It's just building a couple of data centres and giving the rest to a consultant who claims it will cut down on admin.
The thing is, I don't even need AI. I just need something that will do things for me.
For example, I have to merge one of my old company maintenance contract with my new company. It is a literal fucking admin nightmare. Why doesn't anything exist that will do that for me? I know what I want it to look like and I know what needs done. I don't need some stupid 10 step plan to monetise taking a shit.
Apparently they are going to drive about with an AI camera that identifies potholes that need fixing. Probably cheaper to just set up a website where locals can report them but what do I know.
Reporting potholes on the council website is one of my favourite hobbies. And to be fair when I do report them they usually come and sort them within a week. So the facility is there and if people use it, evidently it does work. AI not required.
Lol how about fixing the ones we know about first. Classic AI business management bollocks. REPORTING.
One use case I can think of is to just use Google Maps data and get it to view that, rather than to just remap the entire country
The consultant nonce who sold them a load of dogshit wouldn't be able to get paid for that though.
This country doesn't make anything or do anything. It's just consultants bleeding us dry because we don't do or make anything we just do 'services' so it's just being bumfucked by consultants all the way down and then getting a half baked piece of dogshit at the end thats over budget by 400%.
My employer has recently put a "scrutiny team" in place. They have gone out of their way to make trouble for themselves and pay handsomely for it. I think that's a pretty good case study of why the country is so fucked. Where ever you look there are people seemingly employed just to make things difficult.
Now, obviously you don't want houses being built that are going to blow over in the next storm, so I get it to an extent, but there has to be a balance and I think the balance is about as far off as it's possible to be at the moment.
When I went to Lara Beach last year, there were cranes as far as the eye could see as we headed from the airport to the hotel. Building houses, offices, shops, all over the place. It's impossible to imagine anything like that here. We can't even come up with a new ID card, never mind lay a train track.
Which, again, is a complete misunderstanding of how Silicon Valley came to be. The government didn't decide 'let's turn San Francisco into the tech capital of the world' and set a multi-year, multi-billion plan forth to do it. The US is simply a place more welcoming to entrepreneurship, so people here came up with new ideas and had the right environment to run riot with them. Maybe if you lot were less into 'tax the rich' and more into 'let them run riot,' you would have something similar, but again, that kind of policy is not very popular, is it?
Same, the government has had nothing to do with the US being a leader in AI. Government programs won't make a country a leader on AI either, unless maybe you adopt China-like policies, I guess. I bet those would go well with the public.
Difference in the US is a) they have the world dominant currency (always underrated this, and is why Thatcher's achievements are so much more impressive than Reagan's), and b) they don't have a docile population addicted to state welfare.
Do it yourself (hire a couple of Indians to help you out) and become rich.
I see. Can you provide me with a 10 step plan please?
Sure:
1. Define Your Business Idea and Research the Market
Conduct thorough market research to validate your business idea
Identify your target customers and analyze competitors
Create a unique selling proposition that differentiates your business
Test your concept with potential customers
2. Write a Comprehensive Business Plan
Outline your business strategy and objectives
Include detailed financial projections and funding requirements
Plan your marketing and sales strategies
Set clear milestones and goals for the first few years
3. Choose Your Business Structure
Decide between sole trader, limited company, or partnership
Register with Companies House if forming a limited company
Get professional advice from an accountant if needed
Select a business name and check its availability
4. Sort Out Your Finances
Open a business bank account
Arrange startup funding (savings, loans, investors)
Set up accounting systems and bookkeeping processes
Consider hiring an accountant or using accounting software
5. Register for Taxes
Register for Self Assessment with HMRC
Register for VAT if expected turnover exceeds £85,000
Set up PAYE if hiring employees
Understand your tax obligations and deadlines
6. Get Business Insurance
Identify required insurance types (public liability, professional indemnity)
Shop around for the best coverage
Ensure compliance with legal requirements
Consider additional optional coverage
7. Set Up Your Business Location
Choose between home-based, office, or retail space
Check zoning laws and obtain necessary permits
Set up utilities and business services
Create a professional work environment
8. Legal and Administrative Setup
Apply for necessary licenses and permits
Register for data protection with ICO if handling personal data
Create terms and conditions and privacy policies
Set up contracts and legal documents
9. Build Your Business Infrastructure
Set up IT systems and software
Create operational procedures
Establish supplier relationships
Develop quality control processes
10. Launch and Market Your Business
Create a marketing plan and budget
Build a website and social media presence
Network within your industry
Start promoting your products or services
That will be $5,000.
Simply replace the underpants with what you want to achieve.
I would also like $5000.
If you let the rich run riot in the UK (we already do), they'll just buy up property and not invest in anything productive.
Taking off my communist hat and putting on my, I dunno, social democrat (?) hat - we need to make a distinction between productive investment and non-productive investment. The former will raise productivity, develop new technology and provide good jobs and all that jazz. The latter does fuck all other than enrich someone already rich and has negative effects on the the rest of society. Let the former run wild and tax the fuck out of the latter.
You'd get more entrepreneurship if people lived in a society where they were more able to take a risk too. If housing was much cheaper for instance and people could afford to take a year out of their regular jobs to have a go at starting a business.
I think re-training is an issue too. Everywhere I look they're crying out for tradesmen. Something I'd love to move into, but there's no way of making the step without having to quit my job. No evening training or work based learning, etc. So instead we rely on immigration to plug these gaps, rather than helping people change careers.
Let's not pretend it wasn't also the fact California is sub tropical, a fairly liberal state and crawling with beautiful people willing to lick the nutsack of a rich nerd to get ahead. Those conditions can't be replicated in Grimsby.
We're also shit at getting people into careers generally. I spent 3 months on Universal Credit where we wasted each others time for an hour every week where I would list the 50 jobs I'd applied for in the area I had 15 years of experience and a degree and they would say 'Have you considered being a prison guard?' to all 9.5 stone of me.
You have to remember also that America contains depths (mostly murder and opioid related ones) that we don't have here. We have lots of regulations and a huge welfare state and that means people don't die in those ways, but it also means no one is forced to take risks like they are in the States. You takes your choices, I suppose.
I think one of our big underrated issues is that our elites are insufficiently patriotic. That needs to be sorted out. Travel ban to Dubai? Maybe.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
