Westministenders: No Australia Don't Have A Deal

[RedToothBrush]

Since Friday, far from letting things calm down, Johnson has doubled down stating that if we can't have a Canada Deal (which the EU says wouldn't be equal because we are much closer than Canada geographically) we will go for an Australia Deal.

This is the latest rehash of a managed no deal package up as something else which the EU have already repeatedly said no to.

So we are on track for no deal.

At the same time Johnson has got very excited about American food and how its great. Almost as if he wants no deal wit the EU to force a shitty bad deal with the us through.

Johnson and his chronies have also been trying to undermine journalistic transparency by blocking access to the lobby to some media outlets in a move that makes us look like a tinpot dictatorship. Fortunately there was a mass walk out of journalists but it remains to be seen how long that can be maintained.

Far from being a clean slate to move forward from its already proving that nothing has changed and old divisions are as deep as ever, if not worse...

(thread convergence)

Electric cars are the Ying to the Yang of autonomous cars. Together they make sense.

I am still calling this a golden age of the concept of personal transport. Much as future generations will see smoking as a "what were they thinking" blip in history, owning your own horse(s) will also be a blip in the long run.

(It's almost the reverse of computing where the wisdom was "nobody would need a computer").

I'm very sceptical about autonomous vehicles because of the liability issues. Plus they are largely going to be a city phenomenon, for the same reason that mass transit is a city phenomenon, and will therefore partly replace not personal vehicles but other forms of collective transport such as taxis and buses.

Outside city centres, people and goods will still need to travel. I agree to some extent that we are going to have to give up some personal mobility, but while governments fail to invest in non-car transport infrastructure, there is going to be a market for personal vehicles.

Not to mention the fact that goods still need to be delivered (personally I think this is a market ripe for electrification - battery electric for local deliveries, fuel cells for longer distances, including for trains and potentially for ships).

Since we have now gone on to computers, look how IBM got completely caught out by the PC revolution.

How does it all relate to Brexit? People, Govenments get caught out, smarter marketing, a whole host of factors come into play, some of which are unanticipated.

If we look now - Johnson got his majority, so can deliver Brexit, but the Coronavirus has hit Chinese Industry, Sinn Fein have done well in Ireland - all things which could have an influence and were three months ago only a theoretical possibility.

I'm very sceptical about autonomous vehicles because of the liability issues.

Liability is a man made thing. Easily addressed.

Plus they are largely going to be a city phenomenon, for the same reason that mass transit is a city phenomenon, and will therefore partly replace not personal vehicles but other forms of collective transport such as taxis and buses.

I'm seeing a network of autonomous vehicles that become the public transport infrastructure.

Not to mention the fact that goods still need to be delivered (personally I think this is a market ripe for electrification - battery electric for local deliveries, fuel cells for longer distances, including for trains and potentially for ships).

If you like your history full circle, I grew up to the clatter of milk bottles delivered by one of a fleet of electric vehicles.

We still have the clatter of milk bottles, but no longer delivered by an electric vehicle. As the numbers getting a milk delivery declined the routes were amalgamated and now a man with a petrol van comes round.

In other "Brexit, the gift that just keeps on giving" news:

I received a letter today saying that I was struck off the electoral roll on Feb 1st because UK nationals can no longer vote in any elections in France. So I am not allowed to vote in the municipal elections in March.
The letter I received on Jan 30th informing me that I was naturalised French on Dec 30th is dated Jan 2nd.

I've emailed the electoral service at my town hall to ask how I can request that the decision be overturned and the message bounced back due to their mailbox being overfull. I doubt I'll get it changed now by the March elections.

Electric milk floats were still alive and rattling in Edinburgh well into the 1990s.
I can remember in the 80s still seeing horse dung in the streets of Edinburgh New Town from delivery trailers. Milk or coal, I can't remember.

Mind you, the whole milk thing is a little bit of a mystery. Or a paradigm of everything that's wrong with modern life.

Recyclable containers being delivered by electric vehicles - what's not to like. Especially when you consider how much plastic is used to contain milk these days.

I think the death of doorstep milk was a downward spiral. Falling demand made rounds longer, which meant milk was delivered mid-morning and left on the step all day, which led to more fall in demand, etc.

"I'm very sceptical about autonomous vehicles because of the liability issues.
Liability is a man made thing. Easily addressed."

It is being, within the EU at least:

When we were discussing this with an EU vehicle safety bigwig at a conference a few years ago - during the breaks - he said they were preparing draft legislation to remove liability from manufacturers and drivers in the case of accidents caused by autonomous tech going wrong

We were asking specifically about automatic braking and automatic swerving for collision avoidance,
but he said that if studies showed that enabling autonomous systems would improve safety overall - which is the result of research so far - then this removal of liability would become more widespread.

Not that big a leap - there are the occasional cases where e.g. out-of-position or small female occupants are killed / seriously injured by their airbag activating and hitting them too hard because they are still inflating
Manufacturers aren't facing swingeing damages for this as they sometimes have in other cases of harm, e.g. vehicles catching fire

Just had a pointless government Brexit email telling me there will be new passport rules from January 1st 2021 for travelling to the EU. Anyone reading the information will immediately think, ok what are they? Of course we don't know yet, but no mention of negotiations to determine the new rules, no mention of what might happen. A complete waste of civil service time and tax payers money.

"I'm very sceptical about autonomous vehicles because of the liability issues. Liability is a man made thing. Easily addressed."

It is being, within the EU at least

I know - I used to work for an insurance company .

It's incredible how a fascinating and nerdy topic such as self driving cars can become the equivalent of listening to paint dry, when you have a room of people dreaming up ever more inventive scenarios as definitive "proof" that autonomous cars will never work. Bearing in mind most humans get a free pass when they make a mistake driving anyway.

My feeling is that the liability issue will be initially limited, as autonomous cars will only be allowed in controlled environments to start with. Motorways being the most obvious.

Do you think the £900 billion that financial institutions transferred out of the UK since March - because of Brexit - is unimportant?

Not concerned at the moment - that particular figure appears to be based on a survey carried out last year by think tank, New Financial - similar research carried out by another think tank EY; "£1 trillion of assets and 7,000 banking jobs moved from UK to EU so far, research finds" -

Six months later 'so far' turned out to be an estimate, not a fact; 'A fraction of expected staff moves to EU have occurred.' “Financial services firms have the building blocks in place, but have so far transferred fewer staff and assets to the continent than expected,” Omar Ali, U.K. financial services leader at EY.

Far too much speculation rather than facts;
Helaba Chief Economist Gertrud Traud said 3,500 'Brexit' banker jobs would be created in Frankfurt by the end of 2021.“It will be a bit less than our original estimate of 8,000 jobs,” she said.That compared to a more optimistic estimate of about 10,000 jobs put out by the city’s lobby group Frankfurt Main Finance (FMF).

"Bank restructurings [will] offset a lot of the Brexit-related job creation in Frankfurt and total banker numbers working in Frankfurt would by 2021 only increase by 1 percent to 64,500 compared to 2018 levels. After 2021, total banker numbers in Frankfurt are expected to decrease"...

Just had a pointless government Brexit email telling me there will be new passport rules from January 1st 2021 for travelling to the EU. Anyone reading the information will immediately think, ok what are they? Of course we don't know yet, but no mention of negotiations to determine the new rules, no mention of what might happen.

I refer you to my post yesterday noting there's a lot of "you must" and "you will have to" about these. Does make you wonder what the governments job is, really ?

definitive "proof" that autonomous cars will never work.

I don't think they won't work and I certainly don't think they will be more dangerous than human-driven cars, since most drivers are objectively not very good/safe at driving.

Liability is a much more complex issue for autonomous vehicles than for eg airbags - I think it's fairly intuitive for most people to understand that airbags are there to improve safety and that it's bad luck if occasionally they kill someone. Selling autonomous cars as safer is going to be much harder, given that people routinely underestimate how dangerous an activity driving is (for themselves and other road users).

I also think the market will be smaller than enthusiasts think. Autonomous cars are basically just a less efficient and less sustainable type of public transport.

🔹“Planet not literally being currently devoured in flames by collapsing red giant star 👉 Brexit is a success!”
🔹“Look! A squirrel 🐿!”

In Japan everyone buys the latest kit and throws everything away after two or three years. Nobody wants secondhand. Their old cars (RHD) are exported to Australia and the UK.

The latest thing is that Blu-Ray is dying because Sony charge a fortune in licensing for every disc and so more and more films are getting DVD-only releases.

In Japan everyone buys the latest kit and throws everything away after two or three years. Nobody wants secondhand. Their old cars (RHD) are exported to Australia and the UK.

This is really not correct at all. The average age of a Japanese vehicle when it is deregistered is similar or slightly higher to that in Europe. And the export of deregistered vehicles is a feature of most major vehicle markets.

There is probably (I'd have to check) a bigger export market for end-of-life Japanese vehicles because they typically do a lower annual mileage, so they have more life left in them when they are deregistered.

The latest thing is that Blu-Ray is dying because Sony charge a fortune in licensing for every disc and so more and more films are getting DVD-only releases

nothing to do with streaming being the main source of digital content for the past 10 years ?

I get "twitchy" when I read logic like that. It's a little like people proclaiming the return of the high street as if internet shopping is a fad.

Times have changed, and things move on.

Although that said, the pathological attachment people have to yakking on the fucking phone completely eludes me. I am beginning to wonder if I have some undiagnosed condition (along with the well diagnosed ones ) even if I am into my second half century.

I was thinking in particular of sports cars, where there is a big grey import market for MR2s, MX5s and ZXs

Why am I remembering "Cash for Clunkers" and a scandal ...

Meanwhile, conflating issues and posts, it seems Boris (of all people) has agree the UK-US extradition treaty is unbalanced. Which is odd, as I am sure it was pored over by every expert in the world and found to be fair and balanced.

This was in response to a question about Assange. Who may yet not get to see Club Fed.

I was thinking in particular of sports cars, where there is a big grey import market for MR2s, MX5s and ZXs

Which reminds me of the way motor manufacturers gouged UK consumers, when it was possible to import a UK spec car (i.e. RHD) from the Netherlands for a good few grand less than the UK price ...

I guess those are the good old days we were missing ...

Sreaming is eating into the mass-market, but cinephiles will be aware that an "HD" 90m movie will be about 3gb, whereas on Blu-Ray you get around 30gb.

DVD sales remain strong. Plenty of people think if they watch a DVD on a 4k tv they are watching it in 4k.

Streaming is eating into the mass-market, but cinephiles will be aware that an "HD" 90m movie will be about 3gb, whereas on Blu-Ray you get around 30gb.

But it's the mass market which drives everything, really ... going back to VHS/Beta. Beta was better, but failed to attract the mass market.

Still, at least the UK can look forward to good relations with the Commonwealth, as part of it's stated Brexit strategy.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51467686
The British government has suspended its funding of the Commonwealth Secretariat, the body that runs the international organisation from London, the BBC has learned.

UK diplomats have told Lady Scotland, the secretary-general of the Commonwealth, that Britain's annual £4.7m voluntary contribution will be withheld until her secretariat improves its financial procedures.

The Secretariat insisted it was implementing recommendations made by external auditors.

The UK decision came after Lady Scotland was criticised by auditors for "circumventing" usual competitive tendering rules when she awarded a lucrative consultancy contract to a company run by a friend.

The auditors also discovered that procurement rules had been waived by the secretariat on no fewer than 50 occasions over three years.

Both New Zealand and Australia have also suspended their discretionary funding to the Commonwealth Secretariat until its financial systems are tightened up and tested by external auditors.

The UK decision threatens to plunge the secretariat into a financial crisis and will raise fresh questions about Lady Scotland's leadership.

Commonwealth heads of government have already rejected calls to give Lady Scotland an automatic second term of office when it comes up for renewal this year.

(contd)