Starmer

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sTeamTraen
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Re: Starmer

Post by sTeamTraen » Wed Jan 15, 2025 6:49 pm

dyqik wrote:
Tue Jan 14, 2025 3:13 pm
It's also in direct conflict with the government's commitments to fighting climate change.
No no, not at all, because simultaneously every householder is going to get their own small modular reactor, with more than enough power to do little Johnny's homework for him via AI as well as running their heat pump.
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Re: Starmer

Post by jimbob » Thu Jan 16, 2025 10:22 am

monkey wrote:
Tue Jan 14, 2025 5:20 pm
I just looked it up and Starmer did have full confidence in Tulip Siddiq a little while ago, according to a spokesman.
That's the thing, there were always lots of potential conflicts of interest in her family relationship with a senior politician in country with a reputation for corruption (rank 149/180 according to Transparency International).

And to put her in a post dealing with corruption seems very shortsighted. Especially given the history of living for free in properties owned by political allies of her aunt. Sometimes being gifted them.
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Re: Starmer

Post by Tristan » Fri Jan 17, 2025 11:07 am

bjn wrote:
Tue Jan 14, 2025 4:20 pm
monkey wrote:
Tue Jan 14, 2025 3:30 pm
bjn wrote:
Tue Jan 14, 2025 2:27 pm
My current grump with them is the b.llsh.t AI strategy. Pissing billions up the wall on deploying a nascent technology whose utility we still arent fully sure of is going to have serious repercussions. Possibly most Post Office “computer says no” scandals in the making.

FWIW I am a computer science grad and have recently studied AI and ML at Imperial College, so I have some understanding of the subject matter.

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/01/13/uk-g ... y-details/
I found the stuff about potholes weird.

Driving around with a camera and having a machine learning doodad detect holes in the road seems like something that ML would be good at without draining any reservoirs. But on the other hand, the public don't seem averse to doing that all by themselves for free.
Spotting potholes isn’t the hard bit, fixing them is. So it’s totally a red herring.
ITYFIABMCTT

James O'Malley's written quite a good post on this: https://takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/ai-p ... ch-is-good

There's a lot more to identifying potholes than just pointing at one and saying "there's a pothole".

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Re: Starmer

Post by Sciolus » Mon Jan 20, 2025 9:48 pm

Interesting article, thanks, but the main lesson is that the term "AI" is now hopelessly broad and misapplied. The potholes stuff is basically image recognition (with optional big data) -- clever stuff, historically derived from AI research and using the same sort of techniques, but not what any normal person would call "artificial intelligence". Similarly, LLMs are great at parsing prompts, scraping the internet for related text and crafting grammatical sentences from it, but they haven't the least understanding of what they are saying or whether it's correct or incorrect.

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Re: Starmer

Post by bjn » Thu Jan 23, 2025 8:56 am

So they’ve sacked the head of the Competition and Markets Authority and replaced him the ex head of Amazon UK, who have had several tussles with the CMA in the past. This stinks. The mantra of “growth” is being used to justify all sorts of short term stupidity that won’t deliver any growth. I think we are staring at a Reform government at this rate.


https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... tervention

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Re: Starmer

Post by TopBadger » Thu Jan 23, 2025 10:39 am

I'm just staggered at the head-burying going on about the EU. If growth is really priority #1 - then surely undoing the thing that most harmed growth can't be the elephant in the room.

They don't seem to be making any good headlines, living standards aren't improving. Sensible reforms (like those planed for renters) are too slow in coming. Some other reforms are plain counter-productive like allowing banks to loan people more money to buy houses (I remain convinced that part of our problem with growth is that mortgages swallow too high a % of household income).

I think they're risking getting to their one year point having improved diddly swat for most people.

They're also not going to bring in PR - which is a repeat of the mistake made by Blair/Brown.
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Re: Starmer

Post by IvanV » Thu Jan 23, 2025 11:28 am

bjn wrote:
Thu Jan 23, 2025 8:56 am
So they’ve sacked the head of the Competition and Markets Authority and replaced him the ex head of Amazon UK, who have had several tussles with the CMA in the past. This stinks. The mantra of “growth” is being used to justify all sorts of short term stupidity that won’t deliver any growth. I think we are staring at a Reform government at this rate.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... tervention
In general we tend to think cock-up is more likely than conspiracy. But when it comes to politics - short of some totally deluded dictator - then undue influence is much more likely than rank stupidity. Numerous classic texts by Nobel prizewinners, including the most recent winners, reinforce this view.

The question becomes, who was bending Labour's ear to this very-well-known-to-be-wrong view of what's good for growth when it comes to competition policy, and what influence did they use to obtain it.

I continue to be disappointed at the poor economic management of the Labour government. At the same time, as the previous governments went around damaging the institutions of good governance in this country, I knew it to be unlikely that an incoming government would go around fixing them. It is much more likely that an incoming government will take advantage of the situation they find, rather than fix it to their own short term disadvantage. For it is those damaged institutions that help governments to cement themselves in place for the longer term. And at the same time it is precisely those damaged institutions that result in governments making decisions in the interest of narrow interest groups rather than the general public. This is precisely the subject of the work of the most recent Nobel prizewinners in Economics. The work of the 2019 winners is also relevant.

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Re: Starmer

Post by jimbob » Thu Jan 23, 2025 4:22 pm

TopBadger wrote:
Thu Jan 23, 2025 10:39 am
I'm just staggered at the head-burying going on about the EU. If growth is really priority #1 - then surely undoing the thing that most harmed growth can't be the elephant in the room.

They don't seem to be making any good headlines, living standards aren't improving. Sensible reforms (like those planed for renters) are too slow in coming. Some other reforms are plain counter-productive like allowing banks to loan people more money to buy houses (I remain convinced that part of our problem with growth is that mortgages swallow too high a % of household income).

I think they're risking getting to their one year point having improved diddly swat for most people.

They're also not going to bring in PR - which is a repeat of the mistake made by Blair/Brown.
Absolutely agree on all this
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Re: Starmer

Post by discovolante » Thu Jan 23, 2025 5:27 pm

So, I'm not totally convinced that removing basic procedural rights in relation to specific sets of issues is a great idea: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce3l9jdy2q1o and has a whiff of the Tories about it. I suppose reform to introduce statutory rights of appeal with their own procedures (and perhaps tribunal) regulating them is too much to ask right now. I'm a bit conflicted about the issue but I think on balance if you are experiencing problems with people 'abusing' existing procedure then a wholesale restriction on bringing challenges regardless of merit (infrastructure includes a huge range of things of course, good and bad) then I think some finer tuning is needed.
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Re: Starmer

Post by headshot » Thu Jan 23, 2025 6:56 pm

Yeah. This sort of idea worries me because there are absolutely nefarious parties out there that will exploit those rules to get something through that should absolutely be rejected.

Blanket approaches rarely achieve their objectives in the way they were intended.

In other news, Labour do something good: https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ollinators
Government overturns Tory measure and bans emergency use of bee-killing pesticide
Emergency use of Cruiser SB, a neonicotinoid pesticide highly toxic to bees, to be outlawed in UK in line with EU

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Re: Starmer

Post by snoozeofreason » Thu Jan 23, 2025 7:05 pm

TopBadger wrote:
Thu Jan 23, 2025 10:39 am
I'm just staggered at the head-burying going on about the EU. If growth is really priority #1 - then surely undoing the thing that most harmed growth can't be the elephant in the room.
Labour is chary about any mention of EU re-entry because of what happened in GE 2019. We went in to that election with a poorly thought-out manifesto commitment, and paid the price for it. The manifesto pledge was
Labour will give the people the final say on Brexit. Within three months of coming to power, a Labour government will secure a sensible [withdrawal] deal. And within six months, we will put that deal to a public vote alongside the option to remain. A Labour government will implement whatever the people decide.
This presumably looked fine to remainers. But a leaver's interpretation would be that we were going to hold a second referendum where the "Leave" option had been chosen by people who, for the most part, didn't want to leave, and which consisted of the opportunity to vote for a withdrawal agreement negotiated by people who, for the most part, didn't want to withdraw. (And tbh, even as a remainer, I could follow the reasoning behind that summary.)

I doubt that we would have been able to implement the policy we had pledged (and I am certain we couldn't have implemented it in the time scale promised). But that ended up being irrelevant, because we lost the election. And, if you look at which seats we lost, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that annoying leave voters made a bigger contribution to our defeat than having a lefty leader (animosity to lefties would, for example, not explain why we lost Bolsover, where Dennis Skinner had been MP since time immemorial).

So, basically, for at least the duration of this parliament, EU re-entry is going to be treated like Kryptonite. And I don't think it's just because of fear of antagonising eurosceptics. The Brexit debate was so toxic that even europhiles aren't enthusiastic about reopening it. And just by way of anecdata, I spent a lot of time knocking on doors for Labour during the run up to last year's election, and virtually no one I spoke to, leaver or remainer, would put rejoining the EU anywhere near their top political priorities.

I'd guess, and I hope, that we will get back into the EU at some point. But I am not sure that I will live to see the day, and I suspect that pushing the issue at the moment would delay rather than hasten it.
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Re: Starmer

Post by discovolante » Thu Jan 23, 2025 7:21 pm

headshot wrote:
Thu Jan 23, 2025 6:56 pm
Yeah. This sort of idea worries me because there are absolutely nefarious parties out there that will exploit those rules to get something through that should absolutely be rejected.

Blanket approaches rarely achieve their objectives in the way they were intended.

In other news, Labour do something good: https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ollinators
Government overturns Tory measure and bans emergency use of bee-killing pesticide
Emergency use of Cruiser SB, a neonicotinoid pesticide highly toxic to bees, to be outlawed in UK in line with EU
I'm not totally sure that will happen because it's not a change in planning rules (oh look there's another thing that could have been changed) but it is a bit of a blunt instrument.
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Re: Starmer

Post by headshot » Thu Jan 23, 2025 7:23 pm

But rejoining the EU isn't the issue at hand. It's joining the pan-European customs area: https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... s-area-pem

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Re: Starmer

Post by snoozeofreason » Thu Jan 23, 2025 8:55 pm

headshot wrote:
Thu Jan 23, 2025 7:23 pm
But rejoining the EU isn't the issue at hand. It's joining the pan-European customs area: https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... s-area-pem
Yes, that kind of gradual inching towards Europe is probably the best we can hope for at the moment (and even that has to be done cautiously, because the name of the PEM sounds a bit exciting when you say it in its entirety). There's also the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill (whose name, I am sure has been deliberately chosen to be as boring as possible).
In six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them. The human body was knocked up pretty late on the Friday afternoon, with a deadline looming. How well do you expect it to work?

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Re: Starmer

Post by Woodchopper » Fri Jan 24, 2025 8:53 am

snoozeofreason wrote:
Thu Jan 23, 2025 8:55 pm
headshot wrote:
Thu Jan 23, 2025 7:23 pm
But rejoining the EU isn't the issue at hand. It's joining the pan-European customs area: https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... s-area-pem
Yes, that kind of gradual inching towards Europe is probably the best we can hope for at the moment (and even that has to be done cautiously, because the name of the PEM sounds a bit exciting when you say it in its entirety). There's also the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill (whose name, I am sure has been deliberately chosen to be as boring as possible).
I agree, there’s zero chance of the UK being taken seriously if it had more ambitious plans.

The only way that UK rejoining will be considered in the rest of Europe is if it is actively supported by all the major UK political parties. There’s no motivation to start a rejoining process that would be rescinded by a future Tory or Reform government.

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Re: Starmer

Post by IvanV » Fri Jan 24, 2025 2:19 pm

discovolante wrote:
Thu Jan 23, 2025 5:27 pm
So, I'm not totally convinced that removing basic procedural rights in relation to specific sets of issues is a great idea: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce3l9jdy2q1o and has a whiff of the Tories about it. I suppose reform to introduce statutory rights of appeal with their own procedures (and perhaps tribunal) regulating them is too much to ask right now. I'm a bit conflicted about the issue but I think on balance if you are experiencing problems with people 'abusing' existing procedure then a wholesale restriction on bringing challenges regardless of merit (infrastructure includes a huge range of things of course, good and bad) then I think some finer tuning is needed.
headshot wrote:
Thu Jan 23, 2025 6:56 pm
Yeah. This sort of idea worries me because there are absolutely nefarious parties out there that will exploit those rules to get something through that should absolutely be rejected.

Blanket approaches rarely achieve their objectives in the way they were intended.
In France, individuals do not have the right to make planning objections. So it is not necessarily a feature of a reasonable planning system that such a right should exist. But plainly France gets its checks and balances for planning decisions in other ways. So what you need is a reasonable overall planning system, not piecemeal adjustments. In other piecemeal adjustments to the planning system, various environmental quangos are having their rights to put spanners in the works of development temporarily restricted. But environmental quangos are not the only bodies that are empowered to fling spanners into the works of development, and some kind of environmental control is required. So I doubt this is quite the best way to address this problem.

So we can argue about where the best balance point is. But the general perception is that in the UK it swings too far towards not building, gives excessive power to objectors, and gives excessive power to to quangos and other executive bodies to impede or increase the cost of the implementation of projects that society has agreed to through legislation or the planning system - as the £100m bat tunnel case illustrates - numerous other illustrative cases are available.

In France, there is much more use of build first pay compensation later, whereas it is illegal to compensate affected neighbours for planning issues in the in UK. If affected neighbours could get reasonable compensation in UK, they might be less objecting in the first place, and build first compensate later might be a cheaper, fairer system.

So probably our planning system is far from the best that could be designed - remembering that perfection in such things is never available. But it needs an overall redesign, not piecemeal temporary adjustments.

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Re: Starmer

Post by headshot » Sat Jan 25, 2025 8:04 pm

Trump’s latest mad rambling about forcing “regime change” in the UK seems like the perfect political opportunity to create closer ties with the EU.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... or-uk-poll
Keir Starmer is under growing pressure to forge closer economic links with Europe five years on from Brexit, as a major new poll shows voters clearly favour prioritising more trade with the EU over the US.

The MRP survey of almost 15,000 people by YouGov for the Best for Britain thinktank shows more people in every constituency in England, Scotland and Wales back closer arrangements with the EU rather than more transatlantic trade with Washington.

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Re: Starmer

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Sun Jan 26, 2025 9:10 am

IvanV wrote:
Fri Jan 24, 2025 2:19 pm
So we can argue about where the best balance point is. But the general perception is that in the UK it swings too far towards not building, gives excessive power to objectors, and gives excessive power to to quangos and other executive bodies to impede or increase the cost of the implementation of projects that society has agreed to through legislation or the planning system - as the £100m bat tunnel case illustrates - numerous other illustrative cases are available.

In France, there is much more use of build first pay compensation later, whereas it is illegal to compensate affected neighbours for planning issues in the in UK. If affected neighbours could get reasonable compensation in UK, they might be less objecting in the first place, and build first compensate later might be a cheaper, fairer system.

So probably our planning system is far from the best that could be designed - remembering that perfection in such things is never available. But it needs an overall redesign, not piecemeal temporary adjustments.
Ivan makes a good point here. The UK is terrible at building infrastructure. Awful. And a good chunk of the reason why it's so expensive to do it, takes ages, and delays the benefits that our economy needs is because of things like this.

The policy stated here doesn't stop objections, for what it's worth, it streamlines them and creates fewer stages, and stages which a judge feels have no merit can't appeal. Good objections will still be heard, and will still have a chance of successfully changing outcomes. Even then, outside the legal process, where new infrastructure requires an Act of Parliament to proceed (such as railways), the legal requirements will not be based so much on compatibility with other legal problems (this will be part of the consideration), but on whatever the bill committee feels is germane to shut up the person sat in front of them complaining.

But, yes, Labour promised reform - this isn't reform, it's tinkering at the edges.
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Re: Starmer

Post by Tristan » Sun Jan 26, 2025 1:01 pm

There’s a decent thread on the planning reform stuff here from Sam Dumitriu: https://bsky.app/profile/samdumitriu.bs ... dxeoy6k2n

He co-authored a paper on what needs to be done to planning to support growth, Britain Remade, last year.

I think there’s a lot to welcome in the proposals. We absolutely need to reduce the amount of challenges, appeals, objections etc, that are gumming up building and infrastructure projects. There’s another interesting thread of a serial objector who’s so far cost £200-300bn on what were eventually failed objections. A system that allows for that is clearly going wrong somewhere.

He talks about stopping the creation of any new Statutory Consultees (groups you legally have to consult with when planning) with further reforms to come, hopefully reducing the number of them already in place.

Does all this create a risk that some things get built that shouldn’t? Probably, but the alternative is what we have now, where very little gets built, it takes longer, and costs ridiculous amounts. I’d take that risk.

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Re: Starmer

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Mon Jan 27, 2025 12:44 pm

Tristan wrote:
Sun Jan 26, 2025 1:01 pm
There’s a decent thread on the planning reform stuff here from Sam Dumitriu: https://bsky.app/profile/samdumitriu.bs ... dxeoy6k2n

He co-authored a paper on what needs to be done to planning to support growth, Britain Remade, last year.

I think there’s a lot to welcome in the proposals. We absolutely need to reduce the amount of challenges, appeals, objections etc, that are gumming up building and infrastructure projects. There’s another interesting thread of a serial objector who’s so far cost £200-300bn on what were eventually failed objections. A system that allows for that is clearly going wrong somewhere.

He talks about stopping the creation of any new Statutory Consultees (groups you legally have to consult with when planning) with further reforms to come, hopefully reducing the number of them already in place.

Does all this create a risk that some things get built that shouldn’t? Probably, but the alternative is what we have now, where very little gets built, it takes longer, and costs ridiculous amounts. I’d take that risk.
That's a great thread, thanks. There's a lot there that looks good. And yes, we need to build more. The atrophying of the country in the last fourteen years is in large part because of the failure to invest.

(Also, it's £200-300m, rather than bn!)
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Re: Starmer

Post by dyqik » Mon Jan 27, 2025 3:13 pm

El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Mon Jan 27, 2025 12:44 pm
Tristan wrote:
Sun Jan 26, 2025 1:01 pm
There’s a decent thread on the planning reform stuff here from Sam Dumitriu: https://bsky.app/profile/samdumitriu.bs ... dxeoy6k2n

He co-authored a paper on what needs to be done to planning to support growth, Britain Remade, last year.

I think there’s a lot to welcome in the proposals. We absolutely need to reduce the amount of challenges, appeals, objections etc, that are gumming up building and infrastructure projects. There’s another interesting thread of a serial objector who’s so far cost £200-300bn on what were eventually failed objections. A system that allows for that is clearly going wrong somewhere.

He talks about stopping the creation of any new Statutory Consultees (groups you legally have to consult with when planning) with further reforms to come, hopefully reducing the number of them already in place.

Does all this create a risk that some things get built that shouldn’t? Probably, but the alternative is what we have now, where very little gets built, it takes longer, and costs ridiculous amounts. I’d take that risk.
That's a great thread, thanks. There's a lot there that looks good. And yes, we need to build more. The atrophying of the country in the last fourteen years is in large part because of the failure to invest.

(Also, it's £200-300m, rather than bn!)
There's also substantial future risk of disaster without investment, that needs to be costed in to the "do nothing" case.

Here we have substantial risks due to failing dams and bridges, not to mention risk of train crashes etc. due to underinvestment in maintenance and replacement.

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