Westminstenders: The Mask is Slipping

[RedToothBrush]

This week has seen the department of the Chancellor who launched a 50p piece, the serious contemplation of a tin pot bridge, the rebirth of eugenics as a subject for cabinet, the announcement of the end of the BBC as we know it, the cabinet chanting after the PM in a way Orwell would be proud of, suppression of a report into trade deals which dares to mention the effect of distance and geography, worrying signs of an ever growing rift with Europe over negotiations for a deal, an appointment which starts to make our membership of the ECHR look very dodgy and there have been rather a lot of floods which so far seemed to have escaped the attention of those in London busy in their own swamp.

It's becoming apparent very quickly just how Trump like our new government are and how they want the UK to emulate the very worst aspects of America.

We are falling fast and its not looking like it will be pretty.

All we need is a major global issue to test our national resilience and the incompetence will truly be laid bare for us all to see... But not necessarily speak of. Such us the way it works.

Brexit Britain is not a nice looking prospect.

What does it take to make good forecasts Misti?

I wouldn't call myself a forecaster. But I worked in strategy (long term) for 6 years.

FACTS are quite useful, I found.

Bercows thank you, hope they bring a little cheer to such depressing times.
Ellie the dining table is always clear, the kitchen table is never clutter free darn you found me out😂

"I don't think it's really that different from companies having, for eg, travel policies that restrict you to a specific mode or class of travel."

All my employers had travel and food policies that limited cost to them
Thankfully, they didn't interfere in my personal morality

Of course, all had policies - nothing to do with expenses - about "bringing the company into disrepute"

but that certainly didn't include eating meat, wearing fur etc

It was more about not expressing racism, disablism etc in public if you could be connected in any way to the company

PMK. Nothing useful to add but I'm still reading to see what you all make of events. It's not very hopeful, is it?

What does it take to make good forecasts Misti?

It depends what you are forecasting and over what time period.

For the sort of forecasting I do, you need a good understanding of physical (chemical/material) properties and technical processes, but also an ability to put that into a broader economic, political and business context. The starting point is always a very explicit set of assumptions and increasingly we tend to do scenario-driven work, with the aim of putting an upper and lower bound on our forecasts.

But IMO the most important attribute of a forecast is humility - a willingness to acknowledge that your forecasts are wrong, and to look back at what you got wrong (and right). Experience is also really important, especially for the qualitative aspects of forecasting. Anyone who calls themselves a superforecaster is probably just someone who got lucky once by chance and is dining out on it. Good forecasters know they are not superforecasters, because outside purely physically-driven processes, getting it right all the time is pretty much impossible.

All my employers had travel and food policies that limited cost to them
Thankfully, they didn't interfere in my personal morality

We have environmental policies at my work place. So it wouldn't shock me to see a policy on the sustainability of company-funded meals.

We have environmental policies at my work place. So it wouldn't shock me to see a policy on the sustainability of company-funded meals.

How about only paying for halal (or kosher) meals ?

So I thought perhaps there were people called superforecasters and they were like superagents or supermodels, but it turns out there are, professionally speaking, no such people, just an obscure publication by an even more obscure academic.

It leads to the old rhetorical question: "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?"

You the know the joke about Southern Baptists?

How do you stop a Southern Baptist drinking all your beer on a fishing trip?

Invite along another Southern Baptist.

(Probably best not retold at the annual dinner dance of a company run by Southern Baptists )

How about only paying for halal (or kosher) meals ?

I don't think any sane big company management would get involved in religion.

I'm sure most large companies which provide a staff canteen have policies regarding the sustainability and healthiness of the food provided. As long as they don't oblige staff to eat company-provided food, then IMO they are entitled to set any policy that's compatible with their legal/EHS obligations.

"If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?"

I took a punt about 5 years ago on one of my own forecasts that has paid off big time

But tbh those opportunities don't come up very often.

I don't think any sane big company management would get involved in religion.

Not directly, of course. But as we've seen - frequently - there's often a tension between religion and business. Especially when people choose to put it there. How about pharmacists that won't prescribe certain medications, for example ? Or companies that ask that employees don't wear jewellery - including crucifixes and the like ?

Pharmacists that won't provide certain medications are likely small businesses, where the opinions or beliefs of the owner have more weight (or else they may be breaching their employers' policies).

Of course there are some large companies which are traditionally associated with a particular philosophical or religious tradition (eg Quakers), my comment was about "big business" generally.

Asking employees not to display religious symbols while on company duty is a secular act, not a religious one. It's no different to enforcing a dress code and it's certainly more inherently reasonable than (say) requiring female employees to wear heels.

Thank you for that explanation Misti -

DGR - Are facts still a thing then?

*

I was reading an article about the Alt-right and worse - written by Joe Mulhall from Hope Not Hate anti-racism group. This paragraph jumped out at me with a horrible sort of familiarity:

Neo-reaction is a very strange, marginal and extreme far-right ideology. It foresees a shift from globalised, multicultural liberal democracies with Enlightenment principles to competing states, run by dictatorships or monarchies, where ethnic groups live apart to ensure they are “preserved” and humans are transformed using sophisticated technology.

DGR - Are facts still a thing then?

Very much so Although there is a lot of work to unpick facts, from peoples interpretations of them, and to be careful when looking at correlation and causation. After all a non trivial number of people in the UK last week had thoughts of a homosexual nature for at least a passing moment. That is incontestably a fact. However, it's less of a "fact" that it caused Storm Dennis.

For example.

Deliberately conflating correlation and causation is really an aspect of gaslighting. And as such should be of interest to Westminstenders as it's SOP for governments to justify their actions. Or inactions. As they forgive ours ... (oops, went all Christian there for a moment, have to go and sacrifice a few goats ....)

Like apartheid with iShinies then ....

Neo-reaction is a very strange, marginal and extreme far-right ideology. It foresees a shift from globalised, multicultural liberal democracies with Enlightenment principles to competing states, run by dictatorships or monarchies, where ethnic groups live apart to ensure they are “preserved” and humans are transformed using sophisticated technology.

You know (since Amazon are in the news) I did find myself imagining a future where instead of countries and nations, we just have a collection of entwined companies, and people work for them in a nation-state paradigm. So you might have an "Amazonian" who works for Amazon with all the benefits Amazon can bestow, but their neighbour could be a "Starbuckian" who works for Starbucks, who provide equivalent benefits for it's employees.

Of course Amazon buys the healthcare it offers from HeathCorp inc. whereas Starbucks use WorldHealth Inc.

I would write more, but I'm sure those that are worth engaging with on here will get the picture as this margin is too small

I've been half-jokingly thinking along the same lines for years, DG

Except I envisioned it as something you would opt into instead of just for employees. So you could be an Amazon family, or an Apple family, or Unilever whatever.

Except I envisioned it as something you would opt into instead of just for employees. So you could be an Amazon family, or an Apple family, or Unilever whatever.

My "vision" is more that companies will supplant the state when it comes to taxes and benefits. So regardless of where you work (UK, US, wherever) you'll be an "Amazon" covered employee.

We've already seen the nation-state pretty much give up at regulating these behemoths (has anyone picked up :

Apple had provided an unusually wide revenue guidance of between $63bn and $67bn for the quarter amid worries the novel coronavirus, now formally known as COVID-19, would destabilise factories in China. Their margin of error is $4 billion !!!!)

so it's not such a big leap.

What's this news about Amazon and the BBC? It bought the Washington Post and I was grateful the Bezos saved the WP and the role it plays in holding the UG gov't to account (such as it can).

What's this news about Amazon and the BBC?

It's news about Amazon on the BBC.

I say news, it reads more like what Americans call "a resume". One of those pieces of reportage (after Betteridges Law) which means you can save part of your life by not finishing it.

Still, your choice :

www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/CLQYZENMBI/amazon-data

Ah, the Beeb a bit late here on that topic ... someone watched Panorama last night and thought to write it up as a BBC story? Not so interesting as a story about Bezos being a knight on his white steed riding to save the Beeb then...

Not so interesting as a story about Bezos being a knight on his white steed riding to save the Beeb then...

Well now you've written it, given the current standard of UK journalism it might actually become a story

Be curious what an asset-stripper would actually want from the BBC in 2020 ? Presumably there is some value in the archive content, but a lot of that is tied up with a myriad of other companies. Extant and (more tricky) defunct. That's before you factor in the fact that from various sources it seems the BBC values it's archives way beyond any commercial reality. There's the various broadcast spectra I guess. But if you run the UK government and OFCOM, then you're already king of that castle.

No, the only reason anyone would buy the BBC would be to eliminate competition. In a dance as old as time.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Especially when you are a forecaster, let along a superforecaster. But in hindsight, when Murdoch started grumbling about the BBC in the early 90s, there should have been a plan to make the License Fee an explicit tax - much like council tax. That way, rather than being able to rail against a vague shadowy "licence" that 70% of the population never see, people would have looked at their payslips with a £0.50/month line for the BBC and realised that it was pretty good value compared to £19.99/month for Sky.

Or, as we have now: £19.99/month Sky + £8.99/month Amazon + £7.99/month Netflix + £x Britbox + £x Virgin ....

And some of these packages are taking the piss. I mean Amazon want £3.49 for me to watch a 1957 film with Tommy Steele, even though I am a Prime subscriber. Sorry, for the price of Prime I would want a discount if I watched that film.

If I actually paid for all the content I consume, I'd be very cross indeed.

I don't see how changing funding to income tax would bring it down from 13 quid to 50 p per month - unless some other people pay a lot more than 13

That would actually be the only kind of compulsory funding of the BBC I'd accept:
make it an additional tax only paid by those earning in the 150k+ tax bracket