Woosh

How true is that statement? The present government has to borrow £132+ this year to pay £110 billions in interest, leaving it with just £22 billions to spend. Each 1% of interest on the present estimate of £2.9 trillions will cost extra 15-18 billions. Can a Farage or Burnham government afford 'any' interest rate? Burnham vying for the top job has already cost the Treasury £2 billions in extra interest payment in just a couple of months. If and when his government talks about more public spending, the extra interest payment will shoot up, mortgage payments will follow. He has ambitions but it's difficult to govern after 2008 squeeze, Covid, Ukraine and Hormuz.

Thank you for the feedback. I found 2-3 is about right for myself too.

Do you realise that once in power, all successive governments in the past 4 decades veered to the centre? There seems that they all have to borrow and lenders only stump up the money for moderate governments.

I would have thought your views correspond more with a Badenoch PM. I have always seen Farage as opportunistic and a flawed character. He is attracted to people with wealth. Kemi Badenoch as Prime Minister would probably govern differently from both Nigel Farage and recent Conservative PMs. Her politics are generally: economically conservative, socially conservative, more market-oriented, sceptical of high public spending, strongly focused on immigration and national identity. Recent statements suggest she is pushing the Conservative Party further to the right on: welfare, immigration, net zero, tax, the role of the state. Compared with Farage: Badenoch is usually seen as more ideologically conservative and more fiscally orthodox. Farage tends to be more populist and sometimes more willing to spend heavily to support older voters or domestic industry. On welfare and minimum income: Badenoch has supported tighter welfare control and reducing some benefit spending. But she also supports lower taxes, stronger incentives to work, and backing business growth. On pensioners: Like most UK politicians, she would be unlikely to make large cuts to the State Pension because pensioners vote heavily. Pension Credit would probably remain, though eligibility or growth rates could tighten under fiscal pressure. Supporters of Badenoch argue she could: reduce bureaucracy, improve business confidence, slow immigration, push economic growth through deregulation, be more decisive than recent governments.

If governments don't intervene,children from poor families will be at an disadvantage and it can't be their fault. If you want to help them to have a better chance in life, the logical thing is you have to help their families too. Don't you agree?

Uk governments, regardless of parties, have supported minimum floor on living standard, partly to reduce crime, partly derived from human rights legislation. Don't you agree with those policies?

If we were to adopt your logic, we won't have for example pension credit for those who haven't paid enough national insurance. You would instantly put about 1.5 million pensioners into absolute poverty. They won't be able to pay for food, energy, transport, lodging etc. Would you go for it?

If you think it's an important public service then as a government, you have to subsidise it because that's how to help poor people with the bill. The logical consequence of this is you shouldn't sell it because your subsidies are going to help pay dividend to shareholders. You can see that in rail tickets.

I asked ChatGPT if Labour replaces a managerial Starmer with a populist Burnham, it would shoot itself in the foot. The answer is 'quite possibly '. ChatGPT: There is also a structural issue: Burnham probably works best as a complement to Labour rather than necessarily as a replacement leader. His appeal comes partly from being: outside Westminster, blunt, locally rooted, and less obviously scripted. National leaders often lose some of that authenticity once exposed to daily Westminster/media warfare. So yes — Labour absolutely could shoot itself in the foot if it moved from: “safe pair of hands” to “expensive activist government” too abruptly. But the opposite danger also exists: if Starmerism comes to be associated with managed decline and no visible improvement, Labour could bleed support to Reform from the other direction. That’s why Burnham keeps appearing in these discussions. He represents an alternative path if Labour concludes that caution alone will not hold together a winning coalition by 2029.

Burnham said he is pro public ownership to win approval of Labour membership. He also said that he'll be fiscally prudent, in other words, Starmer with more spending. British politics has tendency to over-estimate the value pof a saviour. That didn't work with Truss and Rishi so would it work with Burnham? I have my doubts.

I watched Laura Kuensberg's sunday program. There was an astonishing bit toward the end when Kuensberg talked to a pollster. Badenoch would beat Farage by a very substantial margin (18 points) if they were going head to head. Burnham came second, Streeting third and even Starmer had a chance beating Farage in a head to head favourability poll.

Musk is intelligent, capable coder but his strength is his business acumen. He saw opportunities and grabbed them, knew whom he needs to hire to make a success. The speed he does that is truly astonishing. He invested in Open AI just at the right time, his Starlink project is exceptionally successful. But like others before him, he is no longer an engineer. He is now just a capitalist. I don't think his Grok ai his robots and tesla evs are exceptional, going to the moon or to Mars is going to do him much good. The legacy of Sophie Wilson and Steve Furber is huge. Think of Apple silicon and all the mobile phones out there plus everything electronics sold on Aliexpress. Both of them went on to teach at unis. I am glad I lived in Cambridge for a while at that time. The Coffee pot at my house was always hot.

Chris Curry, Hermann Hauser, Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, Seven Wozniak and Clive Sinclair all started with very little seed capital. Later, they became extremely well known. To me, they are all visionary. Sophie Wilson, Steve Furber designed the first ARM chip under Hermann Hauser. The project cost less than £1M. We now have Elon Musk and his band of tech bros.

Yes, you are right on 3D and Claude design. The result is rather poor. Anyway, there are plenty of yt videos on the subject and we always talk to customers before making up their kits. I am waiting for more feedback at the moment.

If Burnham loses Makerfield by-election, Streeting and Rayner will fight Starmer. If he wins Makerfield then it's between Starmer and him. The other two have signalled that they will support him. If you go by any questions and any answers, the majority of callers do not want a Labour leadership contest nor Starmer.