UK Politics Omnishambles: Page 132 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

UK Politics Omnishambles

goon

Local councils are at the mercy of small but noisy activists who either have nothing better to do or are just ideologically driven to block any sort of development.

JazzG

goon Agreed, I've dealt with far too many of them over the years and these NIMBYs have no desire for any kind of development and happy to dedicate all their free time and energy into stopping others.

I think even for medium developments there should be an option to get it called into central government agency because local is not interested in helping. Even recent building regulations have gone way too over the top and needs to be rolled back.

Burnwinter

Solar and wind are getting along fairly well down here. We've got no nuclear industry, so the costs, timelines and risks of nuclear projects, which remain figments of the imagination, outweigh those of solar and wind, even after massive battery storage is factored in to help with the well understood load issues.

I gather the environmental impacts of solar arrays (even more so than wind farms) can be a bit underestimated.

The UK has different parameters but I wonder if it's really better to try to roll out more nuclear given the downsides—what are the numbers?

Mirth

JazzG more of this. My one big hope for Labour is that they tackle NIMBY-ism and push forward planning reform. The Lib Dems, Greens and Tories will never push for reform as their voting base is too dependent on appeasing those groups so it's Labour or bust. It won't even cost much money, just political capital.

JazzG

Very interesting, this would be on one hand a massive achievement for Labour but it would also get a lot of pushback from certain sectors like agriculture and Health. Though interestingly Vance and if Trump does bring in RFK jnr it looks like they want to take on those sectors and massively reform them.

If Trump starts dishing out tariffs it is definitely in this countries interest to consider this. Realignment with the EU is probably not, there is a realisation happening in the EU that over regulation is stifling innovation and growth, for example EU getting massively left behind on AI.

Burnwinter

JazzG there is a realisation happening in the EU that over regulation is stifling innovation and growth, for example EU getting massively left behind on AI.

Claims about AI and its progress will need to be qualified pretty carefully by investors over the coming year.

There's evidence accumulating in the form of investor reports, academic articles and anecdotal statements by industry insiders that the leap forward in "seeming intelligence" achieved with ChatGPT is not scaling in a nice way with platform spending on acquiring more training data, and using more model training time and compute.

The hype coming out of big US AI platforms such as OpenAI and Anthropic is sounding a bit more Jordan Belfort than Thomas Edison at this point.

There could be another big step change in how good AI seems to be, or there could be stagnation.

Mirth

It’s stated plainly in the Project 2025 manifesto.

Mirth

Burnwinter fair on AI but the European tech ecosystem has been languishing since around 2000.

JazzG

Saw yesterday that Trump might veto this, could turn into a massive embarrassment for Labour if this happens. They've had to defend this deal quite rigorously in recent weeks and supposedly the Biden administration were pushing them to hand it back.

Mirth

Even the guy who writes for the Mail on Sunday can call it what it is.

awooga83

Mirth why is Farage acting as trumps spokesperson in parliament as well. I thought Nigel disliked foreign interference. This is a non story there was a legal judgement saying the UK should return the island and has progressed by Tories and Labour..

JazzG

Mirth Even the guy who writes for the Mail on Sunday can call it what it is.

The thing about Farage is he is a monumental bellend but he's also very politically switched on, I suppose being a bellend and politically savvy kind of go hand in hand. If he is saying this that means there is a good chance he has been working with Trumps people to get this overruled. If he can sell the idea to them it will improve US security and make the old administration look inept there is a chance they'll put a stop to this. From Farage point of view he doesn't care about the Chagos islands but he does care about making Starmer look weak. Lets see what happens but usually just before an election so close possibly not wise by Labour to agree to this, should have waited for the next administration.

Burnwinter

Mirth I think some of those perceptions about Europe are because spectators have had absurd expectations due to Silicon Valley's unicorn phase.

There's absolutely no way FAANG workers and those at satellite companies and start-ups have been worth the money they've been paid on average. There's a lot of bright people and a lot of very hard workers, but it's also been a bubble with lots of grifters.

To the extent that AI looks like it can make routine coding a bit more efficient—if not automate programmers away en masse just yet—I think it'll lead to a beneficial shakeout of tech and a greater emphasis on what it should be about: higher level concepts, modelling and ensuring correct behaviour of software.

The task remaining after that is the same as it's been for quite a while, expropriate the billionaires.

Mirth

Burnwinter it's not just Silicon Valley start ups though, there's nothing close to the Mag 7 in Europe and, even if you discount the companies that have over inflated in an era of low rates, there's been genuine real world benefit (and damage, I guess) from those businesses. Of course they are overpaid but no more so than the banker bros or the oil barons of decades past.

Burnwinter

Mirth I'm not disagreeing with you. I get more than the average Euro programmer doing project work down here in Australia (but a lot less than my equivalent at Meta). Salaries aren't great in Europe.

However, last I checked it seemed I could still pretty easily go contract on app development in Berlin for a good hourly rate, roughly the same as I am getting here. It's not FAANG money, but it's fine and nothing to complain about. There has also been FAANG money in Europe (though I gather anecdotally that places like Google Zürich are cutting back hard).

Most of the United States tech investment and first mover advantage, the stuff that leads to unicorn valuations, locks in due to personal connections and geography.

You can't replicate that phenomenon unless you're circulating socially with the people who own the companies and infrastructure. That is who Sam Altman is, for example. China would have more idea about that than Europe at the moment.

Coincidentally I just read this article about a couple of rising European search companies:

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/12/ecosia-qwant-partner-on-search-engine-tech-to-counter-googles-power.html

The rhetoric akin to that of energy security is interesting and probably something we'll see more of if Trump keeps making hostile gestures to NATO.

Tam

JazzG If he is saying this that means there is a good chance he has been working with Trumps people to get this overruled.

I would imagine there are pretty serious consequences for anyone working with a foreign power against UK Government interests, not least a sitting MP.

JazzG

Tam Maybe not when you need to stay on the good side of foreign power for your country's security and trade need....

awooga83

JazzG I'm not sure that would be true if you don't have an official role with guidelines and governance around that engagement. The UK government determines who those envoys are not some random MP volunteering.Otherwise someone could claim that defence about needing to do that for Russia, China or Iran for example. I don't think that would hold water and there would be serious questions about exactly what country is this person actually looking to represent. It starts looking a like subversion.

JazzG

Technically speaking you're probably right but all Farage would need to say is he wasn't happy with the country giving away the Chagos Islands and Trump's people decided to look into it. Would that really count as some kind of breach? Senior Republicans have already come out against this in recent weeks.

The way many governments have run this country we are now overly reliant on America so we can't afford to piss them off either, if they say we keep Chagos then we keep it, if they say give it away then we'll give it away. It is a sad state of affairs. We found out during Covid that when it comes down to it nobody is really your ally yet still we are happily outsourcing everything and not working hard to become more self reliant.

Coombs

There is no such thing as self reliance.

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