Any active investor can benefit from sudden changes if they know what they're doing, it's just the rich can make more money because they're in deeper. It was obvious from the early days of the pandemic that shorting airline stocks say, was going to make you some serious money.

SpaceGazelle wrote:

Any active investor can benefit from sudden changes if they know what they're doing, it's just the rich can make more money because they're in deeper. It was obvious from the early days of the pandemic that shorting airline stocks say, was going to make you some serious money.

It also helps that through rubbing shoulders and lining pockets those sudden changes may not be so sudden to them.

All of this is true, but I still believe that on the whole, the benefits (immediate, large and for the few) are outweighed by the drawbacks (also immediate but with far longer lasting impacts, enormous, and eventually will affect everyone but the super rich - there are a LOT of influential "just" rich people who will see the value of their assets plummet in the UK with no obvious plan for recovery). We'll see I guess. 

Don't mistake my "optimism" for some kind of faith in Johnson &co, or for naivety regarding the venality of the very rich. I just believe on balance a deal is better for them too.

I work for local government and state aid can get in the way. It can make it difficult to even run an open procurement.

A thousand dollars, surely?

Jeff Bezos could solve the next gen wars at a stroke with such a gesture. Why won't he do it?

This is the most humiliating exchange on this forum since two days ago when I was essentially exposed as a stubby-dicked chubber

Aye...the Yanks sold us their cheap billion.

Spectator. Basically the PM's / Cummings' propaganda rag.

Peston. Everyone's least favourite Cummings Whisperer.

The idea that this bunch of utter charlatans could somehow "wisely invest state aid" to compete with the likes of Apple and Google and Tencent and Alibaba and Amazon is a joke. No deal would be a disaster for millions of lower income families and needs to be called out as such by any person with humanity. Clearly Peston has made his bed and is now lying in it.

I don't know enough about the stuff to comment on whether it is correct or not but it seems a fair article in terms of what it's outlining and the potential problems it might bring (not least is the admission is that the horse may have already bolted on the issue of creating a giant tech area.)

It's quite feasible that this is the thinking behind the current UK government's action

Logically there’s is a reasoning but it’s reasoning like stopping gangrene by chopping off your leg. But the problem is in this case they are putting the gangrene in themselves and and then deciding to chop off the leg in case it spreads.

Yeah that’s better.

Probably selling the legs to KFC.

Some of the points in the withdrawal agreement the gov are supposedly questioning do need clarification.
For example, goods coming to GB to NI need to be regulated if there is a risk of them going across the border to IRE. The gov have asked to define "risk".

The big problem here is only a damned fool would trust anything this government says anymore. Even a legitimate attempt at clarification will be raised as a potential back door or hoodwink for some other bullshit. If they said the sky is blue I would be checking who has investments in refracted light.

Cummings has studied ML a little and I suspect he plans to use Brexit as an excuse for massively altering the data protection laws. Deep learning is accessible to anybody with a GPU and the idea you need to invest heavily in AI is a little silly. It's linear algebra at the end of the day and you can make a learning machine with a few lines of code.

What you do need is access to datasets and the bigger the better, and that means using data from people living outside the UK. The EU has some of the strongest data protection laws in the World. You can't even buy an Oculus Quest in Germany right now for data law breaches caused by the forced integration of Facebook, and some of those laws are expected to be introduced to the rest of the EU. 

A no deal would actually scupper data exchange between the UK and the Europe if the EU declares that the UK's protection laws are inadequate to hold data about its citizens, but it would mean opening up dodgy data exchange with the rest of the World.

With the prospect of full automation looming I'd expect some investment back into manufacturing and that might require some state aid to set up, but I wouldn't trust the Tories on this in the slightest.

Funkstain wrote:

RedDave2 wrote:

I don't know enough about the stuff to comment on whether it is correct or not but it seems a fair article in terms of what it's outlining and the potential problems it might bring (not least is the admission is that the horse may have already bolted on the issue of creating a giant tech area.) It's quite feasible that this is the thinking behind the current UK government's action

I do always appreciate the "reasonable take" post which sets out the "reasonable alternative view" on what a person may have meant. But you seem to be saying that either I'm right, and Peston is a shill for destructive power-hungry forces, or you're right and he's written an utterly pointless fence-sitting article which says "well they may be trying this (but it's too late) and it'll harm a lot of people" which is basically yeah, no shit.

I'm siding with me - he doesn't in any way emphasise enough the clear and present danger which no deal represents for millions. So, fuck you Peston, and fuck your "special access to special advisors" so that you can dilute their shitery into a "reasonable takes"

I wasn't commentating on either really. I read the article and I felt is was more a view of what is going on. I didn't feel it took either side. It posted up some ideas as to what might be happening, why it might be happening and what the results might be.

I find it odd that you feel his article is pointless, I found it gave a brief insight into the possible benefits (at least as seen by the tory leaders) to the no deal brexit scenario. For me that has a value. I don't need Preston to take either a pro or anti government side. Sometimes fence sitting when reporting might be the best thing.