Corbyn doesn't speak the language of Labour's Old base, as well as scaring the Tory horses. It is what gives me confidence he will never be PM.
The swings in the June election would suggest that Corbyn can get the old Labour base out.
Con take Bolsover? Or Lab take Canterbury and Kensington? Which was the truth?
The Cons have taken 20 seats that voted Labour in 2010, and 36 have gone the other way, suggesting there's truth in both viewpoints.
Those Con gain seats were mostly from the SNP if I am right.
Comparing with 2010 is comparing to the pre Corbyn era.
Mortimer's Australian article is well worth reading. It touches on many of the class and race interplay issues that I was discussing with Islam yesterday afternoon. It also shows how Australia is changing. There is no going back to the Anglosphere so beloved of the PB league of Empire Loyalists.
Hmm
the Empire Loyalists are long gone
today the largest self deception is the those Europhiles who think they can just walk back in and take up from where they left.
The UK is damaged goods, suspect in every way, and can never be at the heart of Europe.
stop kidding yourself
Australian attitudes to immigration in parts of Australia can be about half-way between South Africans and the UK. Much firmer than, say, in New Zealand, yet alone Canada.
I don't see how the article Mortimer linked to has got anything to do with the Anglosphere and the future of Australia.
But, I am very worried they will go for a Republic now.
There is a serious debate to be had about housing but no one wants or is able to have it.
Too many people have too strong a vested interest in the status quo to do anything serious about the situation. Pledges to build thousands of new homes will regrettably remain pledges.
It shouldn't be about Bellway or Persimmon coining it in either - building has to involve both freehold and leasehold - I know Conservatives love the idea of home ownership but there's an argument for a strong private rental sector but that needs proper regulation as we're seeing with the evolution of the new slums in parts of London with the kind of overcrowding in properties we thought had been left behind in the 1930s.
I don't particularly object to controls on leasehold houses, but people really should read the documents before they buy.
There’s a role for solicitors and conveyancers here, isn’t there?
Yes, but I suspect lots of people don't read the reports on title their solicitors send them. Solicitors get loads of work out of people not reading things before signing them.
Can you blame them though?
Well, for that I can. A very important purchase where the issues are usually well explained, and relatively concise. But most "terms and conditions" you are supposed to read, prior to agreeing to them, are dozens and dozens of pages long.
No-one ever reads them.
Surely solicitors should emphasise important features of the contract. Although my family’s recent experience of solicitor conveyancing is not of the best.
Yes, I think so. Americans are the worst - check out any of the crap Apple or Google make you click "yes" to use their services.
It basically seems to say: it's our way or the high way, here are a thousand ways in which we can do you over, and we own your soul.
Of course, I've clicked yes to all of them. What choice do we have?
Corbyn doesn't speak the language of Labour's Old base, as well as scaring the Tory horses. It is what gives me confidence he will never be PM.
The swings in the June election would suggest that Corbyn can get the old Labour base out.
Con take Bolsover? Or Lab take Canterbury and Kensington? Which was the truth?
The Cons have taken 20 seats that voted Labour in 2010, and 36 have gone the other way, suggesting there's truth in both viewpoints.
The British aren't socialist. They are believers in fair play, waiting your turn, championing the underdog and otherwise minding your own business.
Right now, a good chunk of the population think the under 40s have a raw deal, whilst the over 60s have a pretty good one.
I think they have a point.
The British aren't conservative either. We're a beautiful mix of contradictions.
I think they are generally small C 'conservative' - naturally suspicious of grand theories - hence the joke about the French - 'sure, it may work in practice - but does it work in theory....
Corbyn doesn't speak the language of Labour's Old base, as well as scaring the Tory horses. It is what gives me confidence he will never be PM.
The swings in the June election would suggest that Corbyn can get the old Labour base out.
Con take Bolsover? Or Lab take Canterbury and Kensington? Which was the truth?
The Cons have taken 20 seats that voted Labour in 2010, and 36 have gone the other way, suggesting there's truth in both viewpoints.
The British aren't socialist. They are believers in fair play, waiting your turn, championing the underdog and otherwise minding your own business.
Right now, a good chunk of the population think the under 40s have a raw deal, whilst the over 60s have a pretty good one.
I think they have a point.
The British aren't conservative either. We're a beautiful mix of contradictions.
Yes, I agree with that.
You could argue the desire for one's own home, a bit of privacy, and keeping oneself to oneself are the conservative parts, without being "Conservative", per say.
Corbyn doesn't speak the language of Labour's Old base, as well as scaring the Tory horses. It is what gives me confidence he will never be PM.
The swings in the June election would suggest that Corbyn can get the old Labour base out.
Con take Bolsover? Or Lab take Canterbury and Kensington? Which was the truth?
The Cons have taken 20 seats that voted Labour in 2010, and 36 have gone the other way, suggesting there's truth in both viewpoints.
Those Con gain seats were mostly from the SNP if I am right.
Comparing with 2010 is comparing to the pre Corbyn era.
Mortimer's Australian article is well worth reading. It touches on many of the class and race interplay issues that I was discussing with Islam yesterday afternoon. It also shows how Australia is changing. There is no going back to the Anglosphere so beloved of the PB league of Empire Loyalists.
Hmm
the Empire Loyalists are long gone
today the largest self deception is the those Europhiles who think they can just walk back in and take up from where they left.
The UK is damaged goods, suspect in every way, and can never be at the heart of Europe.
stop kidding yourself
Australian attitudes to immigration in parts of Australia can be about half-way between South Africans and the UK. Much firmer than, say, in New Zealand, yet alone Canada.
I don't see how the article Mortimer linked to has got anything to do with the Anglosphere and the future of Australia.
But, I am very worried they will go for a Republic now.
Even the Liberal [ Conservative ] Prime Minister is a republican.
Went to see Dunkirk last night - glad I saw it, a remarkably convincing, unsentimental, pictures of people under extreme stress with a dramatic national backdrop (there's very little about the battle per se, and I suspect some young people will struggle to work out the context). The plot is minimal, though, and the characters not really explored in great depth. I must admit to preferring the sentimental, propagandist Mrs Miniver (would be interested in Casino's view?), but that was about rallying spirits and this is about individuals at a moment of extreme crisis.
There's a very interesting discussion of the soundtrack here:
- I noticed something going on with the music, but didn't grasp the exact intention (which is probably intended to be subconscious).
I thought it was terrific. Nolan clearly wanted to right the place of the RAF in the Dunkirk story too, and rightly so: some of those aerial battles were mind-blowing. I found it just as patriotic at the earlier film you describe, except more modern in style: it was still stoically British, and the weaving of Nimrod into pivotal scenes was simply beautiful.
You know I've bought Zimmer's soundtrack: the way he incorporates the Spitfire machines guns, sounds of ship steel bowing and breaking, synthesised waves breaking and clashing, the alarm klaxon, the watches ticking, and the divebomb sirens, all into his music is simply a work of genius.
It narrates the film better than a human narrator ever could.
Housing isn't just about houses (there's a surprise). It's about defining and shaping communities. In my part of London, it's all about flats on brownfield sites. Build 500 flats - easy - but that means at least an extra 1000 - 1200 people moving in to an area. That beings pressure on transport, medical services and a range of other infrastructural aspects little of which is picked up by the developer through the absurd Section 106 arrangements.
The people moving into the new houses will be paying taxes to pay for transport, medical services and all the other infrastructure. Why would you expect the company building the house to pay for it again?
Corbyn doesn't speak the language of Labour's Old base, as well as scaring the Tory horses. It is what gives me confidence he will never be PM.
The swings in the June election would suggest that Corbyn can get the old Labour base out.
Con take Bolsover? Or Lab take Canterbury and Kensington? Which was the truth?
The Cons have taken 20 seats that voted Labour in 2010, and 36 have gone the other way, suggesting there's truth in both viewpoints.
The British aren't socialist. They are believers in fair play, waiting your turn, championing the underdog and otherwise minding your own business.
Right now, a good chunk of the population think the under 40s have a raw deal, whilst the over 60s have a pretty good one.
I think they have a point.
The British aren't conservative either. We're a beautiful mix of contradictions.
I think they are generally small C 'conservative' - naturally suspicious of grand theories - hence the joke about the French - 'sure, it may work in practice - but does it work in theory....
Yes, that's right.
I think Corbyn/McDonnell think it's "game on" for the Red Flag now.
They will be sorely disappointed when that hits reality.
Most young people just want what the assets, wealth and independent lifestyle their parents have.
Corbyn doesn't speak the language of Labour's Old base, as well as scaring the Tory horses. It is what gives me confidence he will never be PM.
The swings in the June election would suggest that Corbyn can get the old Labour base out.
Con take Bolsover? Or Lab take Canterbury and Kensington? Which was the truth?
The Cons have taken 20 seats that voted Labour in 2010, and 36 have gone the other way, suggesting there's truth in both viewpoints.
The British aren't socialist. They are believers in fair play, waiting your turn, championing the underdog and otherwise minding your own business.
Right now, a good chunk of the population think the under 40s have a raw deal, whilst the over 60s have a pretty good one.
I think they have a point.
The British aren't conservative either. We're a beautiful mix of contradictions.
I think they are generally small C 'conservative' - naturally suspicious of grand theories - hence the joke about the French - 'sure, it may work in practice - but does it work in theory....
One thing about the British: they are all really good at sweeping generalisations.
C'mon Merkel. Europe's greatest leader for a long, long time.
it was Emperor Macron the First last month
He has been there only two months now ! Angela is forever !
it will be fun watching how she handles the german car industry scandal
These are mere detail. Taking on 1m refugees was the biggest, boldest move that no other politician could have taken. Yet two years later she leads the polls by 17%.
The closest would be Trudeau but Canadians as a whole are a lot Liberal. And Britain, screaming about taking 20,000 !
Corbyn doesn't speak the language of Labour's Old base, as well as scaring the Tory horses. It is what gives me confidence he will never be PM.
The swings in the June election would suggest that Corbyn can get the old Labour base out.
Con take Bolsover? Or Lab take Canterbury and Kensington? Which was the truth?
The Cons have taken 20 seats that voted Labour in 2010, and 36 have gone the other way, suggesting there's truth in both viewpoints.
The British aren't socialist. They are believers in fair play, waiting your turn, championing the underdog and otherwise minding your own business.
Right now, a good chunk of the population think the under 40s have a raw deal, whilst the over 60s have a pretty good one.
I think they have a point.
The British aren't conservative either. We're a beautiful mix of contradictions.
I think they are generally small C 'conservative' - naturally suspicious of grand theories - hence the joke about the French - 'sure, it may work in practice - but does it work in theory....
One thing about the British: they are all really good at sweeping generalisations.
But, you can say that about any culture: there will always be many who don't "fit", no matter how you describe it.
I think the comments in this thread are broadly correct, and explain much of our history.
Corbyn doesn't speak the language of Labour's Old base, as well as scaring the Tory horses. It is what gives me confidence he will never be PM.
The swings in the June election would suggest that Corbyn can get the old Labour base out.
Con take Bolsover? Or Lab take Canterbury and Kensington? Which was the truth?
The Cons have taken 20 seats that voted Labour in 2010, and 36 have gone the other way, suggesting there's truth in both viewpoints.
The British aren't socialist. They are believers in fair play, waiting your turn, championing the underdog and otherwise minding your own business.
Right now, a good chunk of the population think the under 40s have a raw deal, whilst the over 60s have a pretty good one.
I think they have a point.
Yet we had the BBC news leading on 'student tuition fees will have to rise to fund pensions'.
The end game of twenty years of over consumption might finally be arriving.
Apparently, the pensions deficit went up from £8.5bn to £17.5bn only in the last year ! What exactly happened in the last year to make that happen, I am not sure.
I thought it was terrific. Nolan clearly wanted to right the place of the RAF in the Dunkirk story too, and rightly so: some of those aerial battles were mind-blowing. I found it just as patriotic at the earlier film you describe, except more modern in style: it was still stoically British, and the weaving of Nimrod into pivotal scenes was simply beautiful.
You know I've bought Zimmer's soundtrack: the way he incorporates the Spitfire machines guns, sounds of ship steel bowing and breaking, synthesised waves breaking and clashing, the alarm klaxon, the watches ticking, and the divebomb sirens, all into his music is simply a work of genius.
It narrates the film better than a human narrator ever could.
Interesting insights, thanks - I understand it better with that description. (One of PB's charms is the opportunity to find common interests with people of other political frames of mind.)
Corbyn doesn't speak the language of Labour's Old base, as well as scaring the Tory horses. It is what gives me confidence he will never be PM.
The swings in the June election would suggest that Corbyn can get the old Labour base out.
Con take Bolsover? Or Lab take Canterbury and Kensington? Which was the truth?
The Cons have taken 20 seats that voted Labour in 2010, and 36 have gone the other way, suggesting there's truth in both viewpoints.
The British aren't socialist. They are believers in fair play, waiting your turn, championing the underdog and otherwise minding your own business.
Right now, a good chunk of the population think the under 40s have a raw deal, whilst the over 60s have a pretty good one.
I think they have a point.
The British aren't conservative either. We're a beautiful mix of contradictions.
I think they are generally small C 'conservative' - naturally suspicious of grand theories - hence the joke about the French - 'sure, it may work in practice - but does it work in theory....
One thing about the British: they are all really good at sweeping generalisations.
But, you can say that about any culture: there will always be many who don't "fit", no matter how you describe it.
I think the comments in this thread are broadly correct, and explain much of our history.
I don't disagree. I just saw the ball, and decided to hit it
C'mon Merkel. Europe's greatest leader for a long, long time.
it was Emperor Macron the First last month
He has been there only two months now ! Angela is forever !
it will be fun watching how she handles the german car industry scandal
These are mere detail. Taking on 1m refugees was the biggest, boldest move that no other politician could have taken. Yet two years later she leads the polls by 17%.
The closest would be Trudeau but Canadians as a whole are a lot Liberal. And Britain, screaming about taking 20,000 !
Lebanon has taken as many people as Germany, I dont hear you singing their praises.
As for Frau M's boldness, if she meant what she said shed be taking in 3-4 million instead of dumping the problem on her neighbors and legging it.
Went to see Dunkirk last night - glad I saw it, a remarkably convincing, unsentimental, pictures of people under extreme stress with a dramatic national backdrop (there's very little about the battle per se, and I suspect some young people will struggle to work out the context). The plot is minimal, though, and the characters not really explored in great depth. I must admit to preferring the sentimental, propagandist Mrs Miniver (would be interested in Casino's view?), but that was about rallying spirits and this is about individuals at a moment of extreme crisis.
There's a very interesting discussion of the soundtrack here:
- I noticed something going on with the music, but didn't grasp the exact intention (which is probably intended to be subconscious).
I thought it was terrific. Nolan clearly wanted to right the place of the RAF in the Dunkirk story too, and rightly so: some of those aerial battles were mind-blowing. I found it just as patriotic at the earlier film you describe, except more modern in style: it was still stoically British, and the weaving of Nimrod into pivotal scenes was simply beautiful.
You know I've bought Zimmer's soundtrack: the way he incorporates the Spitfire machines guns, sounds of ship steel bowing and breaking, synthesised waves breaking and clashing, the alarm klaxon, the watches ticking, and the divebomb sirens, all into his music is simply a work of genius.
It narrates the film better than a human narrator ever could.
Heard this anecdote from our neighbour, who has yet to see the film...
Three of his uncles were at Dunkirk. Two were rescued from the beach: one, a reservist squaddie, would never talk about it at all. The second, a regular, was haunted by his horror at what he had seen as discipline completely broke down. (He went on to be a senior army officer with a reputation for being an exteme disciplinarian.)
The third uncle was an RAF pilot who flew sorties over Dunkirk. He told his nephew ( my neighbour) many years ago how he had been abused afterwards on the street when in uniform. There was a widespread feeling in June 1940 that the RAF had let the troops down shockingly. Of course, he said, two months later, he was lauded wherever he went as one of the 'few'.
All put our present woes into sharp perspective imo.
Corbyn doesn't speak the language of Labour's Old base, as well as scaring the Tory horses. It is what gives me confidence he will never be PM.
The swings in the June election would suggest that Corbyn can get the old Labour base out.
Con take Bolsover? Or Lab take Canterbury and Kensington? Which was the truth?
The Cons have taken 20 seats that voted Labour in 2010, and 36 have gone the other way, suggesting there's truth in both viewpoints.
The British aren't socialist. They are believers in fair play, waiting your turn, championing the underdog and otherwise minding your own business.
Right now, a good chunk of the population think the under 40s have a raw deal, whilst the over 60s have a pretty good one.
I think they have a point.
Yet we had the BBC news leading on 'student tuition fees will have to rise to fund pensions'.
The end game of twenty years of over consumption might finally be arriving.
Apparently, the pensions deficit went up from £8.5bn to £17.5bn only in the last year ! What exactly happened in the last year to make that happen, I am not sure.
I'm a USS pensioner and remained alive for another year
C'mon Merkel. Europe's greatest leader for a long, long time.
it was Emperor Macron the First last month
He has been there only two months now ! Angela is forever !
it will be fun watching how she handles the german car industry scandal
These are mere detail. Taking on 1m refugees was the biggest, boldest move that no other politician could have taken. Yet two years later she leads the polls by 17%.
The closest would be Trudeau but Canadians as a whole are a lot Liberal. And Britain, screaming about taking 20,000 !
Lebanon has taken as many people as Germany, I dont hear you singing their praises.
As for Frau M's boldness, if she meant what she said shed be taking in 3-4 million instead of dumping the problem on her neighbors and legging it.
And how have we helped the Lebanese ? No other person showed the willingness, boldness to defuse a major humanitarian crisis. Others would have put up barbed wires.
Went to see Dunkirk last night - glad I saw it, a remarkably convincing, unsentimental, pictures of people under extreme stress with a dramatic national backdrop (there's very little about the battle per se, and I suspect some young people will struggle to work out the context). The plot is minimal, though, and the characters not really explored in great depth. I must admit to preferring the sentimental, propagandist Mrs Miniver (would be interested in Casino's view?), but that was about rallying spirits and this is about individuals at a moment of extreme crisis.
There's a very interesting discussion of the soundtrack here:
- I noticed something going on with the music, but didn't grasp the exact intention (which is probably intended to be subconscious).
I enjoyed it but was left a little unsatisfied. Some great images (I particularly liked the fuelless Spitfire seemingly floating over the Dunkirk plage in the afternoon sun, prop slowly turning) but something lacking.
Not sure what supposed complaints for some on the right were about, seemed to be enough stiff upper lip-ism for those who like that sort of thing. As the film reached its conclusion, I whispered to a friend, half seriously, that Elgar's Nimrod was about to kick in, and lo, moments later..
Plenty for the hardware pedant (i.e. me) to get stuck into. Some very strange looking warships, and the Me 109s (as in the Battle of Britain film 50 years ago) were actually ex Spanish air force Buchons - I guess it was a pretty reductive choice between that & CGI. The air combat scenes were very convincingly done though, probably the best I've seen.
Corbyn doesn't speak the language of Labour's Old base, as well as scaring the Tory horses. It is what gives me confidence he will never be PM.
The swings in the June election would suggest that Corbyn can get the old Labour base out.
Con take Bolsover? Or Lab take Canterbury and Kensington? Which was the truth?
The Cons have taken 20 seats that voted Labour in 2010, and 36 have gone the other way, suggesting there's truth in both viewpoints.
The British aren't socialist. They are believers in fair play, waiting your turn, championing the underdog and otherwise minding your own business.
Right now, a good chunk of the population think the under 40s have a raw deal, whilst the over 60s have a pretty good one.
I think they have a point.
The British aren't conservative either. We're a beautiful mix of contradictions.
I think they are generally small C 'conservative' - naturally suspicious of grand theories - hence the joke about the French - 'sure, it may work in practice - but does it work in theory....
Yes, that's right.
I think Corbyn/McDonnell think it's "game on" for the Red Flag now.
They will be sorely disappointed when that hits reality.
Most young people just want what the assets, wealth and independent lifestyle their parents have.
Most young people feel cheated by their elders who felt their almost pagan dislike of foreigners outweighed their children's futures in an open Europe.
Corbyn doesn't speak the language of Labour's Old base, as well as scaring the Tory horses. It is what gives me confidence he will never be PM.
The swings in the June election would suggest that Corbyn can get the old Labour base out.
Con take Bolsover? Or Lab take Canterbury and Kensington? Which was the truth?
The Cons have taken 20 seats that voted Labour in 2010, and 36 have gone the other way, suggesting there's truth in both viewpoints.
The British aren't socialist. They are believers in fair play, waiting your turn, championing the underdog and otherwise minding your own business.
Right now, a good chunk of the population think the under 40s have a raw deal, whilst the over 60s have a pretty good one.
I think they have a point.
The British aren't conservative either. We're a beautiful mix of contradictions.
I think they are generally small C 'conservative' - naturally suspicious of grand theories - hence the joke about the French - 'sure, it may work in practice - but does it work in theory....
Conservatives tend to think the British are like them. Even the briefest look at our history suggests we're far more complicated and interesting than that. Empire was the grandest theory of them all.
Corbyn doesn't speak the language of Labour's Old base, as well as scaring the Tory horses. It is what gives me confidence he will never be PM.
The swings in the June election would suggest that Corbyn can get the old Labour base out.
Con take Bolsover? Or Lab take Canterbury and Kensington? Which was the truth?
The Cons have taken 20 seats that voted Labour in 2010, and 36 have gone the other way, suggesting there's truth in both viewpoints.
The British aren't socialist. They are believers in fair play, waiting your turn, championing the underdog and otherwise minding your own business.
Right now, a good chunk of the population think the under 40s have a raw deal, whilst the over 60s have a pretty good one.
I think they have a point.
Yet we had the BBC news leading on 'student tuition fees will have to rise to fund pensions'.
The end game of twenty years of over consumption might finally be arriving.
Apparently, the pensions deficit went up from £8.5bn to £17.5bn only in the last year ! What exactly happened in the last year to make that happen, I am not sure.
I'm a USS pensioner and remained alive for another year
They could give a portion of their funds for you to gamble with.
I reckon you might do better than the highly paid 'experts' who have done so badly.
C'mon Merkel. Europe's greatest leader for a long, long time.
it was Emperor Macron the First last month
He has been there only two months now ! Angela is forever !
it will be fun watching how she handles the german car industry scandal
These are mere detail. Taking on 1m refugees was the biggest, boldest move that no other politician could have taken. Yet two years later she leads the polls by 17%.
The closest would be Trudeau but Canadians as a whole are a lot Liberal. And Britain, screaming about taking 20,000 !
Germany's population has been flat for 20 years. They have a very low fertility rate and a strong performing economy, partly due to a relatively undervalued Euro keeping unemployment down. The single currency works nicely for them at the moment. And the broader story about those figures is the dire position of the centre left - something we see everywhere. That's not to say it wasn't remarkable to take in 1m migrants (something not to be repeated it must be said) but there is a bigger context.
Went to see Dunkirk last night - glad I saw it, a remarkably convincing, unsentimental, pictures of people under extreme stress with a dramatic national backdrop (there's very little about the battle per se, and I suspect some young people will struggle to work out the context). The plot is minimal, though, and the characters not really explored in great depth. I must admit to preferring the sentimental, propagandist Mrs Miniver (would be interested in Casino's view?), but that was about rallying spirits and this is about individuals at a moment of extreme crisis.
There's a very interesting discussion of the soundtrack here:
- I noticed something going on with the music, but didn't grasp the exact intention (which is probably intended to be subconscious).
I enjoyed it but was left a little unsatisfied. Some great images (I particularly liked the fuelless Spitfire seemingly floating over the Dunkirk plage in the afternoon sun, prop slowly turning) but something lacking.
Not sure what supposed complaints for some on the right were about, seemed to be enough stiff upper lip-ism for those who like that sort of thing. As the film reached its conclusion, I whispered to a friend, half seriously, that Elgar's Nimrod was about to kick in, and lo, moments later..
Plenty for the hardware pedant (i.e. me) to get stuck into. Some very strange looking warships, and the Me 109s (as in the Battle of Britain film 50 years ago) were actually ex Spanish air force Buchons - I guess it was a pretty reductive choice between that & CGI. The air combat scenes were very convincingly done though, probably the best I've seen.
Mmmm there aren't that many airworthy Me 109s but enough, you would have thought, to have used one or two real ones. Got to say though, they fooled me well enough.
Went to see Dunkirk last night - glad I saw it, a remarkably convincing, unsentimental, pictures of people under extreme stress with a dramatic national backdrop (there's very little about the battle per se, and I suspect some young people will struggle to work out the context). The plot is minimal, though, and the characters not really explored in great depth. I must admit to preferring the sentimental, propagandist Mrs Miniver (would be interested in Casino's view?), but that was about rallying spirits and this is about individuals at a moment of extreme crisis.
There's a very interesting discussion of the soundtrack here:
- I noticed something going on with the music, but didn't grasp the exact intention (which is probably intended to be subconscious).
I thought it was terrific. Nolan clearly wanted to right the place of the RAF in the Dunkirk story too, and rightly so: some of those aerial battles were mind-blowing. I found it just as patriotic at the earlier film you describe, except more modern in style: it was still stoically British, and the weaving of Nimrod into pivotal scenes was simply beautiful.
You know I've bought Zimmer's soundtrack: the way he incorporates the Spitfire machines guns, sounds of ship steel bowing and breaking, synthesised waves breaking and clashing, the alarm klaxon, the watches ticking, and the divebomb sirens, all into his music is simply a work of genius.
It narrates the film better than a human narrator ever could.
I agree. I've never bought a film soundtrack on its own before but I did so for Dunkirk based on your recommendation here the other day.
I would like to thank you again for that. It's fantastic, as is the film.
C'mon Merkel. Europe's greatest leader for a long, long time.
it was Emperor Macron the First last month
He has been there only two months now ! Angela is forever !
it will be fun watching how she handles the german car industry scandal
These are mere detail. Taking on 1m refugees was the biggest, boldest move that no other politician could have taken. Yet two years later she leads the polls by 17%.
The closest would be Trudeau but Canadians as a whole are a lot Liberal. And Britain, screaming about taking 20,000 !
Lebanon has taken as many people as Germany, I dont hear you singing their praises.
As for Frau M's boldness, if she meant what she said shed be taking in 3-4 million instead of dumping the problem on her neighbors and legging it.
And how have we helped the Lebanese ? No other person showed the willingness, boldness to defuse a major humanitarian crisis. Others would have put up barbed wires.
last time I looked the UK policy was to provide assistance in the troubled area which is what we are doing.
Frau M created a humanitarian crisis by inviting refugees through other peoples countries and across the sea and then shutting her border.
Corbyn doesn't speak the language of Labour's Old base, as well as scaring the Tory horses. It is what gives me confidence he will never be PM.
The swings in the June election would suggest that Corbyn can get the old Labour base out.
Con take Bolsover? Or Lab take Canterbury and Kensington? Which was the truth?
The Cons have taken 20 seats that voted Labour in 2010, and 36 have gone the other way, suggesting there's truth in both viewpoints.
The British aren't socialist. They are believers in fair play, waiting your turn, championing the underdog and otherwise minding your own business.
Right now, a good chunk of the population think the under 40s have a raw deal, whilst the over 60s have a pretty good one.
I think they have a point.
Yet we had the BBC news leading on 'student tuition fees will have to rise to fund pensions'.
The end game of twenty years of over consumption might finally be arriving.
Apparently, the pensions deficit went up from £8.5bn to £17.5bn only in the last year ! What exactly happened in the last year to make that happen, I am not sure.
Probably decline gilt yields which are the basis for the discount rate they have to use to price the notional deficit. The lower the yield the higher the deficit, which is why I despair of the ultra low interest rate regime, which is a big part of stoking this issue.
Could be too that with a bigger deficit someone has decided to alter their risk covenant profile which would lead to a big lurch upwards in the deficit too. Sort of "you owe lots, so we think that's risky, so we're going to say you owe even more, which means you'll find it more difficult to keep up, but if you do, you won't actually in reality have owed any of the extra we said in the first place". Bonkers, but welcome to the wacky world of defined benefit pension maths.
Most of the deficits are black holes created out of legal thin air to try to force sponsors to keep up payments. Fair enough in theory, but it all goes somewhat haywire if interest rates and gilt yields are at levels nobody ever dreamt of.
Went to see Dunkirk last night - glad I saw it, a remarkably convincing, unsentimental, pictures of people under extreme stress with a dramatic national backdrop (there's very little about the battle per se, and I suspect some young people will struggle to work out the context). The plot is minimal, though, and the characters not really explored in great depth. I must admit to preferring the sentimental, propagandist Mrs Miniver (would be interested in Casino's view?), but that was about rallying spirits and this is about individuals at a moment of extreme crisis.
There's a very interesting discussion of the soundtrack here:
- I noticed something going on with the music, but didn't grasp the exact intention (which is probably intended to be subconscious).
I enjoyed it but was left a little unsatisfied. Some great images (I particularly liked the fuelless Spitfire seemingly floating over the Dunkirk plage in the afternoon sun, prop slowly turning) but something lacking.
Not sure what supposed complaints for some on the right were about, seemed to be enough stiff upper lip-ism for those who like that sort of thing. As the film reached its conclusion, I whispered to a friend, half seriously, that Elgar's Nimrod was about to kick in, and lo, moments later..
Plenty for the hardware pedant (i.e. me) to get stuck into. Some very strange looking warships, and the Me 109s (as in the Battle of Britain film 50 years ago) were actually ex Spanish air force Buchons - I guess it was a pretty reductive choice between that & CGI. The air combat scenes were very convincingly done though, probably the best I've seen.
Mmmm there aren't that many airworthy Me 109s but enough, you would have thought, to have used one or two real ones. Got to say though, they fooled me well enough.
A brilliant, moving, thought-provoking film!
Wiki has a definitive list of surviving examples and from that 10 appear to be flying - although in all corners of the world.
Went to see Dunkirk last night - glad I saw it, a remarkably convincing, unsentimental, pictures of people under extreme stress with a dramatic national backdrop (there's very little about the battle per se, and I suspect some young people will struggle to work out the context). The plot is minimal, though, and the characters not really explored in great depth. I must admit to preferring the sentimental, propagandist Mrs Miniver (would be interested in Casino's view?), but that was about rallying spirits and this is about individuals at a moment of extreme crisis.
There's a very interesting discussion of the soundtrack here:
- I noticed something going on with the music, but didn't grasp the exact intention (which is probably intended to be subconscious).
I enjoyed it but was left a little unsatisfied. Some great images (I particularly liked the fuelless Spitfire seemingly floating over the Dunkirk plage in the afternoon sun, prop slowly turning) but something lacking.
Not sure what supposed complaints for some on the right were about, seemed to be enough stiff upper lip-ism for those who like that sort of thing. As the film reached its conclusion, I whispered to a friend, half seriously, that Elgar's Nimrod was about to kick in, and lo, moments later..
Plenty for the hardware pedant (i.e. me) to get stuck into. Some very strange looking warships, and the Me 109s (as in the Battle of Britain film 50 years ago) were actually ex Spanish air force Buchons - I guess it was a pretty reductive choice between that & CGI. The air combat scenes were very convincingly done though, probably the best I've seen.
Mmmm there aren't that many airworthy Me 109s but enough, you would have thought, to have used one or two real ones. Got to say though, they fooled me well enough.
A brilliant, moving, thought-provoking film!
The Buchons are 99% Me109s, just built in Spain in the 1950s.
There is a serious debate to be had about housing but no one wants or is able to have it.
Too many people have too strong a vested interest in the status quo to do anything serious about the situation. Pledges to build thousands of the 1930s.
I don't particularly object to controls on leasehold houses, but people really should read the documents before they buy.
There’s a role for solicitors and conveyancers here, isn’t there?
Yes, but I suspect lots of people don't read the reports on title their solicitors send them. Solicitors get loads of work out of people not reading things before signing them.
Can you blame them though?
Well, for that I can. A very important purchase where the issues are usually well explained, and relatively concise. But most "terms and conditions" you are supposed to read, prior to agreeing to them, are dozens and dozens of pages long.
No-one ever reads them.
Surely solicitors should emphasise important features of the contract. Although my family’s recent experience of solicitor conveyancing is not of the best.
There is a serious debate to be had about housing but no one wants or is able to have it.
Too many people have
I don't particularly object to controls on leasehold houses, but people really should read the documents before they buy.
There’s a role for solicitors and conveyancers here, isn’t there?
Yes, but I suspect lots of people don't read the reports on title their solicitors send them. Solicitors get loads of work out of people not reading things before signing them.
Can you blame them though?
Well, for that I can. A very important purchase where the issues are usually well explained, and relatively concise. But most "terms and conditions" you are supposed to read, prior to agreeing to them, are dozens and dozens of pages long.
No-one ever reads them.
I can understand not reading small print, which can only be understood by a lawyer anyway.
It's failure to read the big print that reads like a Ladybird book that frequently amazes me. Contracts where the contractor draws attention to the fact that they're going to screw you over.
WRT leases, I provide a summary of principal terms to the client, which is normal conveyancing practice.
Went to see Dunkirk last night - glad I saw it, a remarkably convincing, unsentimental, pictures of people under extreme stress with a dramatic national backdrop (there's very little about the battle per se, and I suspect some young people will struggle to work out the context). The plot is minimal, though, and the characters not really explored in great depth. I must admit to preferring the sentimental, propagandist Mrs Miniver (would be interested in Casino's view?), but that was about rallying spirits and this is about individuals at a moment of extreme crisis.
There's a very interesting discussion of the soundtrack here:
- I noticed something going on with the music, but didn't grasp the exact intention (which is probably intended to be subconscious).
I enjoyed it but was left a little unsatisfied. Some great images (I particularly liked the fuelless Spitfire seemingly floating over the Dunkirk plage in the afternoon sun, prop slowly turning) but something lacking.
Not sure what supposed complaints for some on the right were about, seemed to be enough stiff upper lip-ism for those who like that sort of thing. As the film reached its conclusion, I whispered to a friend, half seriously, that Elgar's Nimrod was about to kick in, and lo, moments later..
Plenty for the hardware pedant (i.e. me) to get stuck into. Some very strange looking warships, and the Me 109s (as in the Battle of Britain film 50 years ago) were actually ex Spanish air force Buchons - I guess it was a pretty reductive choice between that & CGI. The air combat scenes were very convincingly done though, probably the best I've seen.
Mmmm there aren't that many airworthy Me 109s but enough, you would have thought, to have used one or two real ones. Got to say though, they fooled me well enough.
A brilliant, moving, thought-provoking film!
The Buchons are 99% Me109s, just built in Spain in the 1950s.
Sort of SEATs vs Volkswagens of the piston engined fighter world then?
Went to see Dunkirk last night - glad I saw it, a remarkably convincing, unsentimental, pictures of people under extreme stress with a dramatic national backdrop (there's very little about the battle per se, and I suspect some young people will struggle to work out the context). The plot is minimal, though, and the characters not really explored in great depth. I must admit to preferring the sentimental, propagandist Mrs Miniver (would be interested in Casino's view?), but that was about rallying spirits and this is about individuals at a moment of extreme crisis.
There's a very interesting discussion of the soundtrack here:
- I noticed something going on with the music, but didn't grasp the exact intention (which is probably intended to be subconscious).
I enjoyed it but was left a little unsatisfied. Some great images (I particularly liked the fuelless Spitfire seemingly floating over the Dunkirk plage in the afternoon sun, prop slowly turning) but something lacking.
Not sure what supposed complaints for some on the right were about, seemed to be enough stiff upper lip-ism for those who like that sort of thing. As the film reached its conclusion, I whispered to a friend, half seriously, that Elgar's Nimrod was about to kick in, and lo, moments later..
Plenty for the hardware pedant (i.e. me) to get stuck into. Some very strange looking warships, and the Me 109s (as in the Battle of Britain film 50 years ago) were actually ex Spanish air force Buchons - I guess it was a pretty reductive choice between that & CGI. The air combat scenes were very convincingly done though, probably the best I've seen.
Mmmm there aren't that many airworthy Me 109s but enough, you would have thought, to have used one or two real ones. Got to say though, they fooled me well enough.
A brilliant, moving, thought-provoking film!
I'm pedantic enough to have checked! There are actually 2 flying Me 109Es which would have been historically accurate but I guess their rarity value would have made insurance prohibitive for dog fighting. A lot of the Buchon airframes are now being retrofitted with Daimler Benz engines which would make them visually accurate.
They apparently used Yak 2 seater trainers with the front cockpit mocked up as a Spifire for the pilots' view scenes - certainly convinced me.
C'mon Merkel. Europe's greatest leader for a long, long time.
it was Emperor Macron the First last month
He has been there only two months now ! Angela is forever !
it will be fun watching how she handles the german car industry scandal
These are mere detail. Taking on 1m refugees was the biggest, boldest move that no other politician could have taken. Yet two years later she leads the polls by 17%.
The closest would be Trudeau but Canadians as a whole are a lot Liberal. And Britain, screaming about taking 20,000 !
Lebanon has taken as many people as Germany, I dont hear you singing their praises.
As for Frau M's boldness, if she meant what she said shed be taking in 3-4 million instead of dumping the problem on her neighbors and legging it.
And how have we helped the Lebanese ? No other person showed the willingness, boldness to defuse a major humanitarian crisis. Others would have put up barbed wires.
By providing vastly more money to support refugees in the Middle East than Germany has.
Corbyn doesn't speak the language of Labour's Old base, as well as scaring the Tory horses. It is what gives me confidence he will never be PM.
The swings in the June election would suggest that Corbyn can get the old Labour base out.
Con take Bolsover? Or Lab take Canterbury and Kensington? Which was the truth?
The Cons have taken 20 seats that voted Labour in 2010, and 36 have gone the other way, suggesting there's truth in both viewpoints.
The British aren't socialist. They are believers in fair play, waiting your turn, championing the underdog and otherwise minding your own business.
Right now, a good chunk of the population think the under 40s have a raw deal, whilst the over 60s have a pretty good one.
I think they have a point.
Yet we had the BBC news leading on 'student tuition fees will have to rise to fund pensions'.
The end game of twenty years of over consumption might finally be arriving.
Apparently, the pensions deficit went up from £8.5bn to £17.5bn only in the last year ! What exactly happened in the last year to make that happen, I am not sure.
Probably decline gilt yields which are the basis for the discount rate they have to use to price the notional deficit. The lower the yield the higher the deficit, which is why I despair of the ultra low interest rate regime, which is a big part of stoking this issue.
Could be too that with a bigger deficit someone has decided to alter their risk covenant profile which would lead to a big lurch upwards in the deficit too. Sort of "you owe lots, so we think that's risky, so we're going to say you owe even more, which means you'll find it more difficult to keep up, but if you do, you won't actually in reality have owed any of the extra we said in the first place". Bonkers, but welcome to the wacky world of defined benefit pension maths.
Most of the deficits are black holes created out of legal thin air to try to force sponsors to keep up payments. Fair enough in theory, but it all goes somewhat haywire if interest rates and gilt yields are at levels nobody ever dreamt of.
This article is of interest on the subject of valuations and deficits:
Went to see Dunkirk last night - glad I saw it, a remarkably convincing, unsentimental, pictures of people under extreme stress with a dramatic national backdrop (there's very little about the battle per se, and I suspect some young people will struggle to work out the context). The plot is minimal, though, and the characters not really explored in great depth. I must admit to preferring the sentimental, propagandist Mrs Miniver (would be interested in Casino's view?), but that was about rallying spirits and this is about individuals at a moment of extreme crisis.
There's a very interesting discussion of the soundtrack here:
- I noticed something going on with the music, but didn't grasp the exact intention (which is probably intended to be subconscious).
I enjoyed it but was left a little unsatisfied. Some great images (I particularly liked the fuelless Spitfire seemingly floating over the Dunkirk plage in the afternoon sun, prop slowly turning) but something lacking.
Not sure what supposed complaints for some on the right were about, seemed to be enough stiff upper lip-ism for those who like that sort of thing. As the film reached its conclusion, I whispered to a friend, half seriously, that Elgar's Nimrod was about to kick in, and lo, moments later..
Plenty for the hardware pedant (i.e. me) to get stuck into. Some very strange looking warships, and the Me 109s (as in the Battle of Britain film 50 years ago) were actually ex Spanish air force Buchons - I guess it was a pretty reductive choice between that & CGI. The air combat scenes were very convincingly done though, probably the best I've seen.
Mmmm there aren't that many airworthy Me 109s but enough, you would have thought, to have used one or two real ones. Got to say though, they fooled me well enough.
A brilliant, moving, thought-provoking film!
The Buchons are 99% Me109s, just built in Spain in the 1950s.
They had Hispano then Merlin engines; that isn't 1%, and the nose of a single seater fighter is visually its most defining feature. The later Buchons look more like P40 Warhawks than Me 109s imo.
Corbyn doesn't speak the language of Labour's Old base, as well as scaring the Tory horses. It is what gives me confidence he will never be PM.
The swings in the June election would suggest that Corbyn can get the old Labour base out.
Con take Bolsover? Or Lab take Canterbury and Kensington? Which was the truth?
The Cons have taken 20 seats that voted Labour in 2010, and 36 have gone the other way, suggesting there's truth in both viewpoints.
The British aren't socialist. They are believers in fair play, waiting your turn, championing the underdog and otherwise minding your own business.
Right now, a good chunk of the population think the under 40s have a raw deal, whilst the over 60s have a pretty good one.
I think they have a point.
The British aren't conservative either. We're a beautiful mix of contradictions.
I think they are generally small C 'conservative' - naturally suspicious of grand theories - hence the joke about the French - 'sure, it may work in practice - but does it work in theory....
Empire was the grandest theory of them all.
But that's the point - it wasn't a theory unlike some other European powers - it was 'acquired in a fit of absent mindedness' as someone once observed....
Corbyn doesn't speak the language of Labour's Old base, as well as scaring the Tory horses. It is what gives me confidence he will never be PM.
The swings in the June election would suggest that Corbyn can get the old Labour base out.
Con take Bolsover? Or Lab take Canterbury and Kensington? Which was the truth?
The Cons have taken 20 seats that voted Labour in 2010, and 36 have gone the other way, suggesting there's truth in both viewpoints.
The British aren't socialist. They are believers in fair play, waiting your turn, championing the underdog and otherwise minding your own business.
Right now, a good chunk of the population think the under 40s have a raw deal, whilst the over 60s have a pretty good one.
I think they have a point.
Yet we had the BBC news leading on 'student tuition fees will have to rise to fund pensions'.
The end game of twenty years of over consumption might finally be arriving.
Apparently, the pensions deficit went up from £8.5bn to £17.5bn only in the last year ! What exactly happened in the last year to make that happen, I am not sure.
I'm a USS pensioner and remained alive for another year
They could give a portion of their funds for you to gamble with.
I reckon you might do better than the highly paid 'experts' who have done so badly.
Actually the USS 'experts' got a 20% return this year. Unfortunately, the liabilities rose faster.
Very worrying as I am a deferred member of the scheme. God knows what state it will be in by the time I am in my 60s and can convert to an actual pension.
...Frau M created a humanitarian crisis by inviting refugees through other peoples countries and across the sea and then shutting her border...
It's amazing how she can create a humanitarian crisis all by herself by doing that. If she hadn't done it, they'd all be in their original houses, not even slightly thinking of leaving. 'Mazing...
I was most interested to know where you could buy a house in 1981 that cost £20,000 then and is now worth £1.5million.
I bought my first house in 1981 for £21,000, Zoopla currently estimate its value around £154,000......(adjusted for earnings £21,000 would be £104,000) but that's the North East for you.......they just don't get it.....
Same for me more or less. I paid £25.5k in the Midlands in 1986, was on £8.3k at the time. Equivalent now would be about £31k and it recently resold for £150k, so the rise relative to earnings is about 50%. This is offset by a base rate of 0.25% rather than 8.25% and also by the fact that I paid more income tax then than I would now (27% versus 23%), more council tax then (£440 a year rates then, £1,098 now), more for water, more for the phone, etc, etc.
I was most interested to know where you could buy a house in 1981 that cost £20,000 then and is now worth £1.5million.
I bought my first house in 1981 for £21,000, Zoopla currently estimate its value around £154,000......(adjusted for earnings £21,000 would be £104,000) but that's the North East for you.......they just don't get it.....
The 2 bed flat I bought in Wimbledon for £36 000 with my brother in 1985 would sell for about £850 000 at the moment. I sold my share to him in 1990 when I went to the antipodes. Even allowing for inflation, I reckon that is an eightfold increase.
My brother sold it and bought a 3 bed house on Wimbledon Common, worth probably £1.5 million now. A nice spot, but no way could he get a mortgage on anything like it were he 30 again.
While the facts in the video are wrong the truth is there, albeit a little exaggerated.
So 30 years ago he bought one house and 30 years on he owns one house. How has he gained exactly?
On topic, I'm finding America confusing at the moment. I agree with OGH this will be seen as a missed opportunity by Republicans in years to come. The mid terms next year will be illuminating and I wonder how many Democrats are considering a Presidential bid for 2020.
Off topic - property in the south east, the veritable golden egg for a generation or more. I bought a 2-bedroom flat brand new off plan in 1996 for £58,500 and sold in 2005 for £145,000.
Two generations of Londoners have done phenomenally well out of property (including former council house owners who bought theirs for a song in the early 80s and still sing the praises of the Blessed Margaret (and rightly so)).
That certainty of a strong return on asset value also allowed people to keep spending and consuming and not worrying too much about pensions and savings. Why bother saving ? The house value is going up 10% year on year. I can take the profit when I downsize and that will be my retirement capital.
Others saw property as an investment - why bother with stocks and shares ? Property is a guaranteed winner - buy a property, rent it out, take the profit and use that. To be fair, that won't be so easy from now on but as a method of making money, property in London is absurdly egalitarian. Whether you have a small flat in Barking or a five bedroom house in Beckenham, no matter. It's not money in the bank, it IS the bank.
It's not profit. It's inflation. When you sold your place for £145k did you then buy another identical one in the same place for the 1996 price? Or did you have to pay £145k?
Was the 1996 price the right price or was it in fact seriously undervalued?
Corbyn doesn't speak the language of Labour's Old base, as well as scaring the Tory horses. It is what gives me confidence he will never be PM.
The swings in the June election would suggest that Corbyn can get the old Labour base out.
Con take Bolsover? Or Lab take Canterbury and Kensington? Which was the truth?
The Cons have taken 20 seats that voted Labour in 2010, and 36 have gone the other way, suggesting there's truth in both viewpoints.
The British aren't socialist. They are believers in fair play, waiting your turn, championing the underdog and otherwise minding your own business.
Right now, a good chunk of the population think the under 40s have a raw deal, whilst the over 60s have a pretty good one.
I think they have a point.
Yet we had the BBC news leading on 'student tuition fees will have to rise to fund pensions'.
The end game of twenty years of over consumption might finally be arriving.
Apparently, the pensions deficit went up from £8.5bn to £17.5bn only in the last year ! What exactly happened in the last year to make that happen, I am not sure.
I'm a USS pensioner and remained alive for another year
They could give a portion of their funds for you to gamble with.
I reckon you might do better than the highly paid 'experts' who have done so badly.
Actually the USS 'experts' got a 20% return this year. Unfortunately, the liabilities rose faster.
Very worrying as I am a deferred member of the scheme. God knows what state it will be in by the time I am in my 60s and can convert to an actual pension.
...The 2 bed flat I bought in Wimbledon for £36 000 with my brother in 1985 would sell for about £850 000 at the moment. I sold my share to him in 1990 when I went to the antipodes. Even allowing for inflation, I reckon that is an eightfold increase.
My brother sold it and bought a 3 bed house on Wimbledon Common, worth probably £1.5 million now. A nice spot, but no way could he get a mortgage on anything like it were he 30 again...
So 30 years ago he bought one house and 30 years on he owns one house. How has he gained exactly?
1) He has gained in rank against those younger than him and against those of the same age who did not buy a house, or bought in different places.
2) He has advantaged his children, who will now have more money when he dies than others of their cohort.
I can understand not reading small print, which can only be understood by a lawyer anyway.
It's failure to read the big print that reads like a Ladybird book that frequently amazes me. Contracts where the contractor draws attention to the fact that they're going to screw you over.
WRT leases, I provide a summary of principal terms to the client, which is normal conveyancing practice.
Like big-print pricing in supermarkets, there may be reverse psychology at work here - perhaps you're supposed to think "As they've highlighted this they must be honest fellows, keen to give me a fair deal." Or even, "I don't quite understand why this is a good deal, but clearly it must be."
There used to be (maybe sitll is?) an estate agent which would highlight the bad points in property that they were selling, the idea there being to give the impression that this dump must be a real bargain. If you happened not to mind the highlighted defect (very noisy as on a major road, but you're a bit deaf so don't really care), so much the better.
On topic, I'm finding America confusing at the moment. I agree with OGH this will be seen as a missed opportunity by Republicans in years to come. The mid terms next year will be illuminating and I wonder how many Democrats are considering a Presidential bid for 2020.
Off topic - property in the south east, the veritable golden egg for a generation or more. I bought a 2-bedroom flat brand new off plan in 1996 for £58,500 and sold in 2005 for £145,000.
Two generations of Londoners have done phenomenally well out of property (including former council house owners who bought theirs for a song in the early 80s and still sing the praises of the Blessed Margaret (and rightly so)).
That certainty of a strong return on asset value also allowed people to keep spending and consuming and not worrying too much about pensions and savings. Why bother saving ? The house value is going up 10% year on year. I can take the profit when I downsize and that will be my retirement capital.
Others saw property as an investment - why bother with stocks and shares ? Property is a guaranteed winner - buy a property, rent it out, take the profit and use that. To be fair, that won't be so easy from now on but as a method of making money, property in London is absurdly egalitarian. Whether you have a small flat in Barking or a five bedroom house in Beckenham, no matter. It's not money in the bank, it IS the bank.
It's not profit. It's inflation. When you sold your place for £145k did you then buy another identical one in the same place for the 1996 price? Or did you have to pay £145k?
Was the 1996 price the right price or was it in fact seriously undervalued?
Just because you would need to sell in order to crystallise a profit, it does not make the wealth gain any less real. House price inflation was an escalator that pulled up those who were on it, in relative terms, and left those who were not behind.
Corbyn doesn't speak the language of Labour's Old base, as well as scaring the Tory horses. It is what gives me confidence he will never be PM.
The swings in the June election would suggest that Corbyn can get the old Labour base out.
Con take Bolsover? Or Lab take Canterbury and Kensington? Which was the truth?
The Cons have taken 20 seats that voted Labour in 2010, and 36 have gone the other way, suggesting there's truth in both viewpoints.
The British aren't socialist. They are believers in fair play, waiting your turn, championing the underdog and otherwise minding your own business.
Right now, a good chunk of the population think the under 40s have a raw deal, whilst the over 60s have a pretty good one.
I think they have a point.
Yet we had the BBC news leading on 'student tuition fees will have to rise to fund pensions'.
The end game of twenty years of over consumption might finally be arriving.
Apparently, the pensions deficit went up from £8.5bn to £17.5bn only in the last year ! What exactly happened in the last year to make that happen, I am not sure.
Probably decline gilt yields which are the basis for the discount rate they have to use to price the notional deficit. The lower the yield the higher the deficit, which is why I despair of the ultra low interest rate regime, which is a big part of stoking this issue.
Could be too that with a bigger deficit someone has decided to alter their risk covenant profile which would lead to a big lurch upwards in the deficit too. Sort of "you owe lots, so we think that's risky, so we're going to say you owe even more, which means you'll find it more difficult to keep up, but if you do, you won't actually in reality have owed any of the extra we said in the first place". Bonkers, but welcome to the wacky world of defined benefit pension maths.
Most of the deficits are black holes created out of legal thin air to try to force sponsors to keep up payments. Fair enough in theory, but it all goes somewhat haywire if interest rates and gilt yields are at levels nobody ever dreamt of.
This article is of interest on the subject of valuations and deficits:
On topic, I'm finding America confusing at the moment. I agree with OGH this will be seen as a missed opportunity by Republicans in years to come. The mid terms next year will be illuminating and I wonder how many Democrats are considering a Presidential bid for 2020.
Off topic - property in the south east, the veritable golden egg for a generation or more. I bought a 2-bedroom flat brand new off plan in 1996 for £58,500 and sold in 2005 for £145,000.
Two generations of Londoners have done phenomenally well out of property (including former council house owners who bought theirs for a song in the early 80s and still sing the praises of the Blessed Margaret (and rightly so)).
That certainty of a strong return on asset value also allowed people to keep spending and consuming and not worrying too much about pensions and savings. Why bother saving ? The house value is going up 10% year on year. I can take the profit when I downsize and that will be my retirement capital.
Others saw property as an investment - why bother with stocks and shares ? Property is a guaranteed winner - buy a property, rent it out, take the profit and use that. To be fair, that won't be so easy from now on but as a method of making money, property in London is absurdly egalitarian. Whether you have a small flat in Barking or a five bedroom house in Beckenham, no matter. It's not money in the bank, it IS the bank.
It's not profit. It's inflation. When you sold your place for £145k did you then buy another identical one in the same place for the 1996 price? Or did you have to pay £145k?
Was the 1996 price the right price or was it in fact seriously undervalued?
The property in London sold for £145,000 is probably now worth £300,000+.
Went to see Dunkirk last night - glad I saw it, a remarkably convincing, unsentimental, pictures of people under extreme stress with a dramatic national backdrop (there's very little about the battle per se, and I suspect some young people will struggle to work out the context). The plot is minimal, though, and the characters not really explored in great depth. I must admit to preferring the sentimental, propagandist Mrs Miniver (would be interested in Casino's view?), but that was about rallying spirits and this is about individuals at a moment of extreme crisis.
There's a very interesting discussion of the soundtrack here:
- I noticed something going on with the music, but didn't grasp the exact intention (which is probably intended to be subconscious).
I thought it was terrific. Nolan clearly wanted to right the place of the RAF in the Dunkirk story too, and rightly so: some of those aerial battles were mind-blowing. I found it just as patriotic at the earlier film you describe, except more modern in style: it was still stoically British, and the weaving of Nimrod into pivotal scenes was simply beautiful.
You know I've bought Zimmer's soundtrack: the way he incorporates the Spitfire machines guns, sounds of ship steel bowing and breaking, synthesised waves breaking and clashing, the alarm klaxon, the watches ticking, and the divebomb sirens, all into his music is simply a work of genius.
It narrates the film better than a human narrator ever could.
I agree. I've never bought a film soundtrack on its own before but I did so for Dunkirk based on your recommendation here the other day.
I would like to thank you again for that. It's fantastic, as is the film.
...The 2 bed flat I bought in Wimbledon for £36 000 with my brother in 1985 would sell for about £850 000 at the moment. I sold my share to him in 1990 when I went to the antipodes. Even allowing for inflation, I reckon that is an eightfold increase.
My brother sold it and bought a 3 bed house on Wimbledon Common, worth probably £1.5 million now. A nice spot, but no way could he get a mortgage on anything like it were he 30 again...
So 30 years ago he bought one house and 30 years on he owns one house. How has he gained exactly?
1) He has gained in rank against those younger than him and against those of the same age who did not buy a house, or bought in different places.
2) He has advantaged his children, who will now have more money when he dies than others of their cohort.
Was that genuinely a question?
Somewhat surprisingly, I read a piece by the IFS that argued that inheritance is mildly redistributive, as poorer relatives really do gain.
Ah, in the those good old days, you could leave a job on Friday night and walk into another one on a Monday morning.
But aren't Labour now the party of the ABC1s anyway - particularly in London?
"Ah, in the those good old days ..."
I've said passim that I think the idea that we have to go to university to succeed is a fallacy that hurts our youngsters. I also think it's a fallacy that there are not opportunities for youngsters who eschew university or higher education. But if you don't go to university, you need to ensure you have life skills to compensate.
An anecdote: the interview was in a light industrial building, and he was the third scheduled for that day. The second made it in through the door, but waited in an unstaffed waiting area without ringing the bell on the desk to summon anyone to come!
The belief I've bolded was founded in the belief of such as Tony Blair that those without degrees were second-class serfs. Policy based on snobbery is not a good idea. The 50% target for people to go to university needs to balanced against the fact that when we had GCEs and CSEs, fewer than 50% sat the former. This means that we are now sending to university people who 35 years ago would have been judged unfit to sit an O-Level.
I recall a Delingpole column in which he noted that the tariff to get into UEA to read Climate Science was BBB. To get a B in the A Level subjects applicant typically sat, you only needed to score 45% or so. Hence climate science undergraduates are people who at A Level got the answers mostly wrong.
The solution is for bad universities and bad faculties of universities to close. If you can't get a job with your English degree and this is bloody obvious then sooner or later everyone will stop doing English degrees. The problem is that this isn't being allowed to happen. We need a few universities to go bust.
An analogy is with the Common Entrance. You sat an exam, got a score and you hawked this around fee-paying schools to see who would let you in with that score. The best scores got into the best schools, the next-best into the next, and so on. At a certain point you got down to schools that took pupils who couldn't get into any half-decent school at all. To be a private school that took not-very-bright kids, who then didn't improve and got poor O-Levels and A-Levels, was not a viable position, and plenty of these have closed. When I was growing up there was a school near Pinner called Atholl that you went to only if you had a poor Common Entrance score but your parents wanted you educated privately. It went bust in the 1990s, as have many such.
We need a few UEAs and Wolverhampton Polys to go bust and close. It will then be possible to go to university only if it's worth your doing so.
Ah, in the those good old days, you could leave a job on Friday night and walk into another one on a Monday morning.
But aren't Labour now the party of the ABC1s anyway - particularly in London?
"Ah, in the those good old days ..."
I've said passim that I think the idea that we have to go to university to succeed is a fallacy that hurts our youngsters. I also think it's a fallacy that there are not opportunities for youngsters who eschew university or higher education. But if you don't go to university, you need to ensure you have life skills to compensate.
An anecdote: the interview was in a light industrial building, and he was the third scheduled for that day. The second made it in through the door, but waited in an unstaffed waiting area without ringing the bell on the desk to summon anyone to come!
.
I recall a Delingpole column in which he noted that the tariff to get into UEA to read Climate Science was BBB. To get a B in the A Level subjects applicant typically sat, you only needed to score 45% or so. Hence climate science undergraduates are people who at A Level got the answers mostly wrong.
The solution is for bad universities and bad faculties of universities to close. If you can't get a job with your English degree and this is bloody obvious then sooner or later everyone will stop doing English degrees. The problem is that this isn't being allowed to happen. We need a few universities to go bust.
An analogy is with the Common Entrance. You sat an exam, got a score and you hawked this around fee-paying schools to see who would let you in with that score. The best scores got into the best schools, the next-best into the next, and so on. At a certain point you got down to schools that took pupils who couldn't get into any half-decent school at all. To be a private school that took not-very-bright kids, who then didn't improve and got poor O-Levels and A-Levels, was not a viable position, and plenty of these have closed. When I was growing up there was a school near Pinner called Atholl that you went to only if you had a poor Common Entrance score but your parents wanted you educated privately. It went bust in the 1990s, as have many such.
We need a few UEAs and Wolverhampton Polys to go bust and close. It will then be possible to go to university only if it's worth your doing so.
I find it difficult to believe, looking at the exam scores from my grandchildren over the past few years (A level through to degree), that you can get a B at A level with 45%. Pass yes, B no.
Same for me more or less. I paid £25.5k in the Midlands in 1986, was on £8.3k at the time. Equivalent now would be about £31k and it recently resold for £150k, so the rise relative to earnings is about 50%. This is offset by a base rate of 0.25% rather than 8.25%..
The mortgage rate is not the same as the base rate. The mortgage rate you would pay now would be between 3% and 4%
Corbyn doesn't speak the language of Labour's Old base, as well as scaring the Tory horses. It is what gives me confidence he will never be PM.
The swings in the June election would suggest that Corbyn can get the old Labour base out.
Con take Bolsover? Or Lab take Canterbury and Kensington? Which was the truth?
The Cons have taken 20 seats that voted Labour in 2010, and 36 have gone the other way, suggesting there's truth in both viewpoints.
The British aren't socialist. They are believers in fair play, waiting your turn, championing the underdog and otherwise minding your own business.
Right now, a good chunk of the population think the under 40s have a raw deal, whilst the over 60s have a pretty good one.
I think they have a point.
The British aren't conservative either. We're a beautiful mix of contradictions.
I think they are generally small C 'conservative' - naturally suspicious of grand theories - hence the joke about the French - 'sure, it may work in practice - but does it work in theory....
Yes, that's right.
I think Corbyn/McDonnell think it's "game on" for the Red Flag now.
They will be sorely disappointed when that hits reality.
Most young people just want what the assets, wealth and independent lifestyle their parents have.
And they want it now rather than waiting and tax-paying for 40 years.
Corbyn doesn't speak the language of Labour's Old base, as well as scaring the Tory horses. It is what gives me confidence he will never be PM.
The swings in the June election would suggest that Corbyn can get the old Labour base out.
Con take Bolsover? Or Lab take Canterbury and Kensington? Which was the truth?
The Cons have taken 20 seats that voted Labour in 2010, and 36 have gone the other way, suggesting there's truth in both viewpoints.
snip
I think they have a point.
Yet we had the BBC news leading on 'student tuition fees will have to rise to fund pensions'.
The end game of twenty years of over consumption might finally be arriving.
Apparently, the pensions deficit went up from £8.5bn to £17.5bn only in the last year ! What exactly happened in the last year to make that happen, I am not sure.
I'm a USS pensioner and remained alive for another year
They could give a portion of their funds for you to gamble with.
I reckon you might do better than the highly paid 'experts' who have done so badly.
How are the liabilities rising faster than 20% per year ?
Someone, somewhere has fecked up.
I don't follow the technicalities of it all, but it seems that this is to do with how liabilities are tied up with the yield on gilts. If I understand it correct, if hazily, it will cost more to provide in the long term each £1 of pension because this provision is so closely tied up with the situation with gilts.
Reading the USS report they say there are various ways of doing a valuation.
They also argue that there is a full triennial valuation due at end of this year which will give a more complete picture.
from the report:
"Since 31 March 2014 there has been a great deal of volatility in financial markets, which has been reflected in the volatility of the scheme’s deficit and funding ratio. The real yield on government bonds has continued to decline with the result that the value placed on the scheme’s liabilities have increased."
...The 2 bed flat I bought in Wimbledon for £36 000 with my brother in 1985 would sell for about £850 000 at the moment. I sold my share to him in 1990 when I went to the antipodes. Even allowing for inflation, I reckon that is an eightfold increase.
My brother sold it and bought a 3 bed house on Wimbledon Common, worth probably £1.5 million now. A nice spot, but no way could he get a mortgage on anything like it were he 30 again...
So 30 years ago he bought one house and 30 years on he owns one house. How has he gained exactly?
1) He has gained in rank against those younger than him and against those of the same age who did not buy a house, or bought in different places.
2) He has advantaged his children, who will now have more money when he dies than others of their cohort.
Was that genuinely a question?
Somewhat surprisingly, I read a piece by the IFS that argued that inheritance is mildly redistributive, as poorer relatives really do gain.
Fair point, but house price inflation played its part in making them relatively poorer in the first place. Unfortunately it's not a net gain overall. If it was, we could just all inflate ourselves rich.
Went to see Dunkirk last night - glad I saw it, a remarkably convincing, unsentimental, pictures of people under extreme stress with a dramatic national backdrop (there's very little about the battle per se, and I suspect some young people will struggle to work out the context). The plot is minimal, though, and the characters not really explored in great depth. I must admit to preferring the sentimental, propagandist Mrs Miniver (would be interested in Casino's view?), but that was about rallying spirits and this is about individuals at a moment of extreme crisis.
There's a very interesting discussion of the soundtrack here:
- I noticed something going on with the music, but didn't grasp the exact intention (which is probably intended to be subconscious).
I enjoyed it but was left a little unsatisfied. Some great images (I particularly liked the fuelless Spitfire seemingly floating over the Dunkirk plage in the afternoon sun, prop slowly turning) but something lacking.
Not sure what supposed complaints for some on the right were about, seemed to be enough stiff upper lip-ism for those who like that sort of thing. As the film reached its conclusion, I whispered to a friend, half seriously, that Elgar's Nimrod was about to kick in, and lo, moments later..
Plenty for the hardware pedant (i.e. me) to get stuck into. Some very strange looking warships, and the Me 109s (as in the Battle of Britain film 50 years ago) were actually ex Spanish air force Buchons - I guess it was a pretty reductive choice between that & CGI. The air combat scenes were very convincingly done though, probably the best I've seen.
Mmmm there aren't that many airworthy Me 109s but enough, you would have thought, to have used one or two real ones. Got to say though, they fooled me well enough.
A brilliant, moving, thought-provoking film!
Wiki has a definitive list of surviving examples and from that 10 appear to be flying - although in all corners of the world.
Wouldn't they have to be the right sort of Messerschmitt though?
A relative who works in film post production and knows about this stuff tells me most of those seen in Dunkirk are Spanish ones with a British engine. Shrug
The belief I've bolded was founded in the belief of such as Tony Blair that those without degrees were second-class serfs. Policy based on snobbery is not a good idea. The 50% target for people to go to university needs to balanced against the fact that when we had GCEs and CSEs, fewer than 50% sat the former. This means that we are now sending to university people who 35 years ago would have been judged unfit to sit an O-Level.
I recall a Delingpole column in which he noted that the tariff to get into UEA to read Climate Science was BBB. To get a B in the A Level subjects applicant typically sat, you only needed to score 45% or so. Hence climate science undergraduates are people who at A Level got the answers mostly wrong.
The solution is for bad universities and bad faculties of universities to close. If you can't get a job with your English degree and this is bloody obvious then sooner or later everyone will stop doing English degrees. The problem is that this isn't being allowed to happen. We need a few universities to go bust.
An analogy is with the Common Entrance. You sat an exam, got a score and you hawked this around fee-paying schools to see who would let you in with that score. The best scores got into the best schools, the next-best into the next, and so on. At a certain point you got down to schools that took pupils who couldn't get into any half-decent school at all. To be a private school that took not-very-bright kids, who then didn't improve and got poor O-Levels and A-Levels, was not a viable position, and plenty of these have closed. When I was growing up there was a school near Pinner called Atholl that you went to only if you had a poor Common Entrance score but your parents wanted you educated privately. It went bust in the 1990s, as have many such.
We need a few UEAs and Wolverhampton Polys to go bust and close. It will then be possible to go to university only if it's worth your doing so.
We need a few UEAs and Wolverhampton Polys to go bust and close. It will then be possible to go to university only if it's worth your doing so.
Those are bad examples, as it happens. Wolverhampton sells itself as a local university and is particularly good at part-time degrees for those in work (it seems to be modelling itself on Birkbeck). I am told, although I don't know for sure, that it didn't even take part in the last RAE/REF (whatever the incompetent clown in charge of it called it at the moment of publication). Salford has a similar approach. UEA is a good university in several key disciplines including meteorology and even history.
Most of the really bad universities - off the top of my head, Thames Valley, Westminster, London Met - are in London, which I believe has around 50 universities in total (including the old colleges of the University of London). Some of those could certainly be removed without any loss at all. There are others elsewhere that should either be closed (South Wales) or ordered to become (again) specialist colleges in key disciplines (Gloucestershire, Harper Adams). But the pruning might throw up some surprises.
...The 2 bed flat I bought in Wimbledon for £36 000 with my brother in 1985 would sell for about £850 000 at the moment. I sold my share to him in 1990 when I went to the antipodes. Even allowing for inflation, I reckon that is an eightfold increase.
My brother sold it and bought a 3 bed house on Wimbledon Common, worth probably £1.5 million now. A nice spot, but no way could he get a mortgage on anything like it were he 30 again...
So 30 years ago he bought one house and 30 years on he owns one house. How has he gained exactly?
1) He has gained in rank against those younger than him and against those of the same age who did not buy a house, or bought in different places.
2) He has advantaged his children, who will now have more money when he dies than others of their cohort.
Was that genuinely a question?
Of course it was. At what point in the above cycle was the individual in question supposed to think, Blimey, others are worse off due to inflation - better impoverish myself quick?
When should he have sold, downsized and donated the money to HMRC? 1990? 2000? 2015? If you buy a house and live in it for 45 years and are then accused of having somehow acted disreputably, something is awry.
The belief I've bolded was founded in the belief of such as Tony Blair that those without degrees were second-class serfs. Policy based on snobbery is not a good idea. The 50% target for people to go to university needs to balanced against the fact that when we had GCEs and CSEs, fewer than 50% sat the former. This means that we are now sending to university people who 35 years ago would have been judged unfit to sit an O-Level.
I recall a Delingpole column in which he noted that the tariff to get into UEA to read Climate Science was BBB. To get a B in the A Level subjects applicant typically sat, you only needed to score 45% or so. Hence climate science undergraduates are people who at A Level got the answers mostly wrong.
The solution is for bad universities and bad faculties of universities to close. If you can't get a job with your English degree and this is bloody obvious then sooner or later everyone will stop doing English degrees. The problem is that this isn't being allowed to happen. We need a few universities to go bust.
An analogy is with the Common Entrance. You sat an exam, got a score and you hawked this around fee-paying schools to see who would let you in with that score. The best scores got into the best schools, the next-best into the next, and so on. At a certain point you got down to schools that took pupils who couldn't get into any half-decent school at all. To be a private school that took not-very-bright kids, who then didn't improve and got poor O-Levels and A-Levels, was not a viable position, and plenty of these have closed. When I was growing up there was a school near Pinner called Atholl that you went to only if you had a poor Common Entrance score but your parents wanted you educated privately. It went bust in the 1990s, as have many such.
We need a few UEAs and Wolverhampton Polys to go bust and close. It will then be possible to go to university only if it's worth your doing so.
What's your source for the 45% B grade?
To get a B in a levels you need 70% UMS, which when unadjusted to raw marks seems to be around 65%. 64% would be a C. So the 45% seems to be a complete fabrication.
On topic, I'm finding America confusing at the moment. I agree with OGH this will be seen as a missed opportunity by Republicans in years to come. The mid terms next year will be illuminating and I wonder how many Democrats are considering a Presidential bid for 2020.
Off topic - property in the south east, the veritable golden egg for a generation or more. I bought a 2-bedroom flat brand new off plan in 1996 for £58,500 and sold in 2005 for £145,000.
Two generations of Londoners have done phenomenally well out of property (including former council house owners who bought theirs for a song in the early 80s and still sing the praises of the Blessed Margaret (and rightly so)).
That certainty of a strong return on asset value also allowed people to keep spending and consuming and not worrying too much about pensions and savings. Why bother saving ? The house value is going up 10% year on year. I can take the profit when I downsize and that will be my retirement capital.
Others saw property as an investment - why bother with stocks and shares ? Property is a guaranteed winner - buy a property, rent it out, take the profit and use that. To be fair, that won't be so easy from now on but as a method of making money, property in London is absurdly egalitarian. Whether you have a small flat in Barking or a five bedroom house in Beckenham, no matter. It's not money in the bank, it IS the bank.
It's not profit. It's inflation. When you sold your place for £145k did you then buy another identical one in the same place for the 1996 price? Or did you have to pay £145k?
Was the 1996 price the right price or was it in fact seriously undervalued?
Just because you would need to sell in order to crystallise a profit, it does not make the wealth gain any less real. House price inflation was an escalator that pulled up those who were on it, in relative terms, and left those who were not behind.
Except that as an owner, I can't control what my house is worth. This is decided by the highest bidder. If I don't sell then it matters not whether my house is worth £1 or £1 million. And if I do sell I can't spend it because I'll be needing another inflated house.
The belief I've bolded was founded in the belief of such as Tony Blair that those without degrees were second-class serfs. Policy based on snobbery is not a good idea. The 50% target for people to go to university needs to balanced against the fact that when we had GCEs and CSEs, fewer than 50% sat the former. This means that we are now sending to university people who 35 years ago would have been judged unfit to sit an O-Level.
I recall a Delingpole column in which he noted that the tariff to get into UEA to read Climate Science was BBB. To get a B in the A Level subjects applicant typically sat, you only needed to score 45% or so. Hence climate science undergraduates are people who at A Level got the answers mostly wrong.
The solution is for bad universities and bad faculties of universities to close. If you can't get a job with your English degree and this is bloody obvious then sooner or later everyone will stop doing English degrees. The problem is that this isn't being allowed to happen. We need a few universities to go bust.
An analogy is with the Common Entrance. You sat an exam, got a score and you hawked this around fee-paying schools to see who would let you in with that score. The best scores got into the best schools, the next-best into the next, and so on. At a certain point you got down to schools that took pupils who couldn't get into any half-decent school at all. To be a private school that took not-very-bright kids, who then didn't improve and got poor O-Levels and A-Levels, was not a viable position, and plenty of these have closed. When I was growing up there was a school near Pinner called Atholl that you went to only if you had a poor Common Entrance score but your parents wanted you educated privately. It went bust in the 1990s, as have many such.
We need a few UEAs and Wolverhampton Polys to go bust and close. It will then be possible to go to university only if it's worth your doing so.
What's your source for the 45% B grade?
A level grades on the new system are banded by the percentage of students who should be put in them e.g. the top 3% (not the correct figure as I don't know it off hand) would get an A*. That varies across subjects, year groups and papers - for example in history a-level last year (2016) my school's combination had 68% for A, the highest (for a much easier combination) was 74%.
Therefore you would only be able to give rough estimates at best of who would get which grades. 45% seems extremely low however. For history there would be a strong likelihood of a U for that mark.
I googled for Delingpole UAE grades, and got no useful hits.
I'm pretty sure it was in his Telegraph blog - tho' I Googled that as well and can't find any of those blogs.
Thinking harder about this I think what he may actually noted what that in the subjects they accepted something like 70% got an A or a B, in which case the majority of UEA types would be in the bottom half of the class.
C'mon Merkel. Europe's greatest leader for a long, long time.
it was Emperor Macron the First last month
He has been there only two months now ! Angela is forever !
it will be fun watching how she handles the german car industry scandal
These are mere detail. Taking on 1m refugees was the biggest, boldest move that no other politician could have taken. Yet two years later she leads the polls by 17%.
The closest would be Trudeau but Canadians as a whole are a lot Liberal. And Britain, screaming about taking 20,000 !
Lebanon has taken as many people as Germany, I dont hear you singing their praises.
As for Frau M's boldness, if she meant what she said shed be taking in 3-4 million instead of dumping the problem on her neighbors and legging it.
And how have we helped the Lebanese ? No other person showed the willingness, boldness to defuse a major humanitarian crisis. Others would have put up barbed wires.
By providing vastly more money to support refugees in the Middle East than Germany has.
Equivalent of taking on 1m people. Don't talk tripe. No wonder you are a kipper.
The belief I've bolded was founded in the belief of such as Tony Blair that those without degrees were second-class serfs. Policy based on snobbery is not a good idea. The 50% target for people to go to university needs to balanced against the fact that when we had GCEs and CSEs, fewer than 50% sat the former. This means that we are now sending to university people who 35 years ago would have been judged unfit to sit an O-Level.
I recall a Delingpole column in which he noted that the tariff to get into UEA to read Climate Science was BBB. To get a B in the A Level subjects applicant typically sat, you only needed to score 45% or so. Hence climate science undergraduates are people who at A Level got the answers mostly wrong.
The solution is for bad universities and bad faculties of universities to close. If you can't get a job with your English degree and this is bloody obvious then sooner or later everyone will stop doing English degrees. The problem is that this isn't being allowed to happen. We need a few universities to go bust.
An analogy is with the Common Entrance. You sat an exam, got a score and you hawked this around fee-paying schools to see who would let you in with that score. The best scores got into the best schools, the next-best into the next, and so on. At a certain point you got down to schools that took pupils who couldn't get into any half-decent school at all. To be a private school that took not-very-bright kids, who then didn't improve and got poor O-Levels and A-Levels, was not a viable position, and plenty of these have closed. When I was growing up there was a school near Pinner called Atholl that you went to only if you had a poor Common Entrance score but your parents wanted you educated privately. It went bust in the 1990s, as have many such.
We need a few UEAs and Wolverhampton Polys to go bust and close. It will then be possible to go to university only if it's worth your doing so.
What's your source for the 45% B grade?
A level grades on the new system are banded by the percentage of students who should be put in them e.g. the top 3% (not the correct figure as I don't know it off hand) would get an A*. That varies across subjects, year groups and papers - for example in history a-level last year (2016) my school's combination had 68% for A, the highest (for a much easier combination) was 74%.
Therefore you would only be able to give rough estimates at best of who would get which grades. 45% seems extremely low however. For history there would be a strong likelihood of a U for that mark.
At university the first year maths exam for engineering students was extremely hard. They had to award 120% to one of the students (chinese of course) so that the rest of us achieved the pass mark.
We need a few UEAs and Wolverhampton Polys to go bust and close. It will then be possible to go to university only if it's worth your doing so.
Those are bad examples, as it happens. Wolverhampton sells itself as a local university and is particularly good at part-time degrees for those in work (it seems to be modelling itself on Birkbeck). I am told, although I don't know for sure, that it didn't even take part in the last RAE/REF (whatever the incompetent clown in charge of it called it at the moment of publication). Salford has a similar approach. UEA is a good university in several key disciplines including meteorology and even history.
Most of the really bad universities - off the top of my head, Thames Valley, Westminster, London Met - are in London, which I believe has around 50 universities in total (including the old colleges of the University of London). Some of those could certainly be removed without any loss at all. There are others elsewhere that should either be closed (South Wales) or ordered to become (again) specialist colleges in key disciplines (Gloucestershire, Harper Adams). But the pruning might throw up some surprises.
Which is the one that does Waste Management with Dance? I struggle to see what career that leads to. Media Studies is often laughed but does unexpectedly well on getting people into jobs.
A level grades on the new system are banded by the percentage of students who should be put in them e.g. the top 3% (not the correct figure as I don't know it off hand) would get an A*. That varies across subjects, year groups and papers - for example in history a-level last year (2016) my school's combination had 68% for A, the highest (for a much easier combination) was 74%.
Therefore you would only be able to give rough estimates at best of who would get which grades. 45% seems extremely low however. For history there would be a strong likelihood of a U for that mark.
At university the first year maths exam for engineering students was extremely hard. They had to award 120% to one of the students (chinese of course) so that the rest of us achieved the pass mark.
I think you misunderstood me - top 3% of entrants, not those within three percentage points of the top mark.
I don't know which university you attended but they seem to have had an exceptionally muddled assessment system if that was the only solution to a very straightforward problem.
Although I suspect your newfound liking of Hans Zimmer may just be limited to Dunkirk rather than him generally, and I hate to sound like the sommelier in John Wick, but may I recommend Molossus (Batman Begins), or Chevaliers de Sangreal (Da Vinci Code). If you want something longer there's Wayne Manor or the Bane Suite. And there is much, much more...
I googled for Delingpole UAE grades, and got no useful hits.
I'm pretty sure it was in his Telegraph blog - tho' I Googled that as well and can't find any of those blogs.
Thinking harder about this I think what he may actually noted what that in the subjects they accepted something like 70% got an A or a B, in which case the majority of UEA types would be in the bottom half of the class.
Also not true. Browse www.bstubbs.co.uk/a-lev.html. In biology for example 51% of people achieved a B or greater, 42.3 in Business Studies, 38.9 in Computing etc etc. (The only exception is maths, at 64.1%, due to further maths and further additional).
Moreover bare in mind that all people sitting these exams chose it as it was one of their best subjects.
May I suggest that you find some facts to push your agenda?
We need a few UEAs and Wolverhampton Polys to go bust and close. It will then be possible to go to university only if it's worth your doing so.
Those are bad examples, as it happens. Wolverhampton sells itself as a local university and is particularly good at part-time degrees for those in work (it seems to be modelling itself on Birkbeck). I am told, although I don't know for sure, that it didn't even take part in the last RAE/REF (whatever the incompetent clown in charge of it called it at the moment of publication). Salford has a similar approach. UEA is a good university in several key disciplines including meteorology and even history.
Most of the really bad universities - off the top of my head, Thames Valley, Westminster, London Met - are in London, which I believe has around 50 universities in total (including the old colleges of the University of London). Some of those could certainly be removed without any loss at all. There are others elsewhere that should either be closed (South Wales) or ordered to become (again) specialist colleges in key disciplines (Gloucestershire, Harper Adams). But the pruning might throw up some surprises.
Which is the one that does Waste Management with Dance? I struggle to see what career that leads to. Media Studies is often laughed but does unexpectedly well on getting people into jobs.
That sounds to me like somebody doing a waste management course (which is actually a very useful subset of human geography) while opting to take modules in dance as an extra because they enjoyed dancing. Most universities will allow you to take a limited number of credits in a different department if you ask.
Rather like me doing an MA in politics including a course of Welsh poetry, and rather less closely doing a doctorate in History while running two choirs.
Although I suspect your newfound liking of Hans Zimmer may just be limited to Dunkirk rather than him generally, and I hate to sound like the sommelier in John Wick, but may I recommend Molossus (Batman Begins), or Chevaliers de Sangreal (Da Vinci Code). If you want something longer there's Wayne Manor or the Bane Suite. And there is much, much more...
His stuff on the Rain Man soundtrack was good too.
We need a few UEAs and Wolverhampton Polys to go bust and close. It will then be possible to go to university only if it's worth your doing so.
Those are bad examples, as it happens. Wolverhampton sells itself as a local university and is particularly good at part-time degrees for those in work (it seems to be modelling itself on Birkbeck). I am told, although I don't know for sure, that it didn't even take part in the last RAE/REF (whatever the incompetent clown in charge of it called it at the moment of publication). Salford has a similar approach. UEA is a good university in several key disciplines including meteorology and even history.
Most of the really bad universities - off the top of my head, Thames Valley, Westminster, London Met - are in London, which I believe has around 50 universities in total (including the old colleges of the University of London). Some of those could certainly be removed without any loss at all. There are others elsewhere that should either be closed (South Wales) or ordered to become (again) specialist colleges in key disciplines (Gloucestershire, Harper Adams). But the pruning might throw up some surprises.
Which is the one that does Waste Management with Dance? I struggle to see what career that leads to. Media Studies is often laughed but does unexpectedly well on getting people into jobs.
Northampton. It's probably a decent degree in that they get to do part of a degree that they want to do, and part of a degree which is employable.
Corbyn doesn't speak the language of Labour's Old base, as well as scaring the Tory horses. It is what gives me confidence he will never be PM.
The swings in the June election would suggest that Corbyn can get the old Labour base out.
Con take Bolsover? Or Lab take Canterbury and Kensington? Which was the truth?
The Cons have taken 20 seats that voted Labour in 2010, and 36 have gone the other way, suggesting there's truth in both viewpoints.
The British aren't socialist. They are believers in fair play, waiting your turn, championing the underdog and otherwise minding your own business.
Right now, a good chunk of the population think the under 40s have a raw deal, whilst the over 60s have a pretty good one.
I think they have a point.
Yet we had the BBC news leading on 'student tuition fees will have to rise to fund pensions'.
The end game of twenty years of over consumption might finally be arriving.
Apparently, the pensions deficit went up from £8.5bn to £17.5bn only in the last year ! What exactly happened in the last year to make that happen, I am not sure.
Probably decline gilt yields which are the basis for the discount rate they have to use to price the notional deficit. The lower the yield the higher the deficit, which is why I despair of the ultra low interest rate regime, which is a big part of stoking this issue.
Could be too that with a bigger deficit someone has decided to alter their risk covenant profile which would lead to a big lurch upwards in the deficit too. Sort of "you owe lots, so we think that's risky, so we're going to say you owe even more, which means you'll find it more difficult to keep up, but if you do, you won't actually in reality have owed any of the extra we said in the first place". Bonkers, but welcome to the wacky world of defined benefit pension maths.
Most of the deficits are black holes created out of legal thin air to try to force sponsors to keep up payments. Fair enough in theory, but it all goes somewhat haywire if interest rates and gilt yields are at levels nobody ever dreamt of.
The gilt yields halved ? Surely, their entire portfolio is not in gilts and there would be a reasonable spread. Anyway since August 2016, yields have gone up - so some of this "deficit" is temporary.
surbiton - one million - you can multiply that figure by eight as family members are reunited. One Iraqi asylum seeker in a canadian village brought in two hundred of his closest family.
The Cons have taken 20 seats that voted Labour in 2010, and 36 have gone the other way, suggesting there's truth in both viewpoints.
snip
I think they have a point.
Yet we had the BBC news leading on 'student tuition fees will have to rise to fund pensions'.
The end game of twenty years of over consumption might finally be arriving.
Apparently, the pensions deficit went up from £8.5bn to £17.5bn only in the last year ! What exactly happened in the last year to make that happen, I am not sure.
I'm a USS pensioner and remained alive for another year
They could give a portion of their funds for you to gamble with.
I reckon you might do better than the highly paid 'experts' who have done so badly.
How are the liabilities rising faster than 20% per year ?
Someone, somewhere has fecked up.
I don't follow the technicalities of it all, but it seems that this is to do with how liabilities are tied up with the yield on gilts. If I understand it correct, if hazily, it will cost more to provide in the long term each £1 of pension because this provision is so closely tied up with the situation with gilts.
Reading the USS report they say there are various ways of doing a valuation.
They also argue that there is a full triennial valuation due at end of this year which will give a more complete picture.
from the report:
"Since 31 March 2014 there has been a great deal of volatility in financial markets, which has been reflected in the volatility of the scheme’s deficit and funding ratio. The real yield on government bonds has continued to decline with the result that the value placed on the scheme’s liabilities have increased."
Yet they are already angling for an another increase in tuition fees.
If interest rates go up - thus increasing bond yields - will they then reverse any tuition fees increase ? We all know the answer to that is no.
And of course declining bond yields mean increasing bond prices which should mean the pension fund assets have increased. Likewise the increase in the share prices and their overseas funds should also have boosted the pension fund assets.
C'mon Merkel. Europe's greatest leader for a long, long time.
it was Emperor Macron the First last month
He has been there only two months now ! Angela is forever !
it will be fun watching how she handles the german car industry scandal
These are mere detail. Taking on 1m refugees was the biggest, boldest move that no other politician could have taken. Yet two years later she leads the polls by 17%.
The closest would be Trudeau but Canadians as a whole are a lot Liberal. And Britain, screaming about taking 20,000 !
Lebanon has taken as many people as Germany, I dont hear you singing their praises.
As for Frau M's boldness, if she meant what she said shed be taking in 3-4 million instead of dumping the problem on her neighbors and legging it.
And how have we helped the Lebanese ? No other person showed the willingness, boldness to defuse a major humanitarian crisis. Others would have put up barbed wires.
By providing vastly more money to support refugees in the Middle East than Germany has.
Equivalent of taking on 1m people. Don't talk tripe. No wonder you are a kipper.
It depends whether you think the priority is feeding, clothing, and sheltering a larger number of people, or providing a smaller number of people with a First World standard of living.
As I understand it, even though all the actual assets are not gilts (e.g. there are also shares and property investments etc), the way the liabilities are valued is through sort of assuming the required pensions will be funded entirely through gilts. I am guessing because that gives a rigid answer into the future.
I may have got this wrong, so any experts please correct.
"However it is not clear that there is anything fundamentally wrong with defined benefit pension schemes. A common complaint that one sometimes hears from experienced trustees and finance managers is that a pension scheme that appeared ostensibly to have been in good shape was closed on actuarial advice, after having been shown to be in technical deficit."
Although I suspect your newfound liking of Hans Zimmer may just be limited to Dunkirk rather than him generally, and I hate to sound like the sommelier in John Wick, but may I recommend Molossus (Batman Begins), or Chevaliers de Sangreal (Da Vinci Code). If you want something longer there's Wayne Manor or the Bane Suite. And there is much, much more...
His stuff on the Rain Man soundtrack was good too.
The problem with Zimmer is not what to put in, but what to leave out (Interstellar, mostly). I believe there's a prize for the first person to mention he did the "Going For Gold" theme tune...
Corbyn doesn't speak the language of Labour's Old base, as well as scaring the Tory horses. It is what gives me confidence he will never be PM.
The swings in the June election would suggest that Corbyn can get the old Labour base out.
Con take Bolsover? Or Lab take Canterbury and Kensington? Which was the truth?
The Cons have taken 20 seats that voted Labour in 2010, and 36 have gone the other way, suggesting there's truth in both viewpoints.
The British aren't socialist. They are believers in fair play, waiting your turn, championing the underdog and otherwise minding your own business.
Right now, a good chunk of the population think the under 40s have a raw deal, whilst the over 60s have a pretty good one.
I think they have a point.
Yet we had the BBC news leading on 'student tuition fees will have to rise to fund pensions'.
The end game of twenty years of over consumption might finally be arriving.
Apparently, the pensions deficit went up from £8.5bn to £17.5bn only in the last year ! What exactly happened in the last year to make that happen, I am not sure.
This article is of interest on the subject of valuations and deficits:
Excellent article. Our newly appointed fund managers are seeking to address our substantial deficit in our DB scheme by matching the yields on the bonds with the expected pension payments. This seems to me to be a much more sensible way of matching the liabilities of the scheme with the resources needed to meet those liabilities, certainly a lot more sensible than match to market valuations.
My concern is that we might find ourselves having paid too much money into the scheme to address what ultimately proves to be a non existent deficit. Applying that risk at a macro level and we have the situation where our private sector is struggling to find money for investment because so much surplus cash is being diverted to address pension liabilities on the insistence of the regulator.
This could prove one of the worst regulatory errors of all time.
Edit. Damn seemed to messed up the quotes on my phone.
Comments
it will be Eddie Izzard next
I don't see how the article Mortimer linked to has got anything to do with the Anglosphere and the future of Australia.
But, I am very worried they will go for a Republic now.
It basically seems to say: it's our way or the high way, here are a thousand ways in which we can do you over, and we own your soul.
Of course, I've clicked yes to all of them. What choice do we have?
You could argue the desire for one's own home, a bit of privacy, and keeping oneself to oneself are the conservative parts, without being "Conservative", per say.
You know I've bought Zimmer's soundtrack: the way he incorporates the Spitfire machines guns, sounds of ship steel bowing and breaking, synthesised waves breaking and clashing, the alarm klaxon, the watches ticking, and the divebomb sirens, all into his music is simply a work of genius.
It narrates the film better than a human narrator ever could.
I think Corbyn/McDonnell think it's "game on" for the Red Flag now.
They will be sorely disappointed when that hits reality.
Most young people just want what the assets, wealth and independent lifestyle their parents have.
The end game of twenty years of over consumption might finally be arriving.
The closest would be Trudeau but Canadians as a whole are a lot Liberal. And Britain, screaming about taking 20,000 !
I think the comments in this thread are broadly correct, and explain much of our history.
I was confident with 12 of them and I lucky-guessed the Green Party one because I knew the BBC would want "balance".
Lebanon has taken as many people as Germany, I dont hear you singing their praises.
As for Frau M's boldness, if she meant what she said shed be taking in 3-4 million instead of dumping the problem on her neighbors and legging it.
Three of his uncles were at Dunkirk. Two were rescued from the beach: one, a reservist squaddie, would never talk about it at all. The second, a regular, was haunted by his horror at what he had seen as discipline completely broke down. (He went on to be a senior army officer with a reputation for being an exteme disciplinarian.)
The third uncle was an RAF pilot who flew sorties over Dunkirk. He told his nephew ( my neighbour) many years ago how he had been abused afterwards on the street when in uniform. There was a widespread feeling in June 1940 that the RAF had let the troops down shockingly. Of course, he said, two months later, he was lauded wherever he went as one of the 'few'.
All put our present woes into sharp perspective imo.
Not sure what supposed complaints for some on the right were about, seemed to be enough stiff upper lip-ism for those who like that sort of thing. As the film reached its conclusion, I whispered to a friend, half seriously, that Elgar's Nimrod was about to kick in, and lo, moments later..
Plenty for the hardware pedant (i.e. me) to get stuck into. Some very strange looking warships, and the Me 109s (as in the Battle of Britain film 50 years ago) were actually ex Spanish air force Buchons - I guess it was a pretty reductive choice between that & CGI. The air combat scenes were very convincingly done though, probably the best I've seen.
I reckon you might do better than the highly paid 'experts' who have done so badly.
A brilliant, moving, thought-provoking film!
I would like to thank you again for that. It's fantastic, as is the film.
Frau M created a humanitarian crisis by inviting refugees through other peoples countries and across the sea and then shutting her border.
Could be too that with a bigger deficit someone has decided to alter their risk covenant profile which would lead to a big lurch upwards in the deficit too. Sort of "you owe lots, so we think that's risky, so we're going to say you owe even more, which means you'll find it more difficult to keep up, but if you do, you won't actually in reality have owed any of the extra we said in the first place". Bonkers, but welcome to the wacky world of defined benefit pension maths.
Most of the deficits are black holes created out of legal thin air to try to force sponsors to keep up payments. Fair enough in theory, but it all goes somewhat haywire if interest rates and gilt yields are at levels nobody ever dreamt of.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_surviving_Messerschmitt_Bf_109s
Iraqi gunman opens fire at German nightclub, killing one, injuring several.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/30/gunman-kills-one-injures-three-in-shooting-at-german-nightclub
It's failure to read the big print that reads like a Ladybird book that frequently amazes me. Contracts where the contractor draws attention to the fact that they're going to screw you over.
WRT leases, I provide a summary of principal terms to the client, which is normal conveyancing practice.
There are actually 2 flying Me 109Es which would have been historically accurate but I guess their rarity value would have made insurance prohibitive for dog fighting. A lot of the Buchon airframes are now being retrofitted with Daimler Benz engines which would make them visually accurate.
They apparently used Yak 2 seater trainers with the front cockpit mocked up as a Spifire for the pilots' view scenes - certainly convinced me.
http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/files/dennisleech/pensions_regulation.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVWTQcZbLgY
Very worrying as I am a deferred member of the scheme. God knows what state it will be in by the time I am in my 60s and can convert to an actual pension.
https://www.uss.co.uk/how-uss-is-run/running-uss/annual-reports-and-accounts
"Rees-Mogg, who is almost posh enough to be one of Jeremy Corbyn’s advisers..."
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/philip-hammond-prime-minister-brexit-transitional-deal-period-theresa-may-a7866666.html
The Momentun video is quite dishonest really.
Was the 1996 price the right price or was it in fact seriously undervalued?
Someone, somewhere has fecked up.
2) He has advantaged his children, who will now have more money when he dies than others of their cohort.
Was that genuinely a question?
There used to be (maybe sitll is?) an estate agent which would highlight the bad points in property that they were selling, the idea there being to give the impression that this dump must be a real bargain. If you happened not to mind the highlighted defect (very noisy as on a major road, but you're a bit deaf so don't really care), so much the better.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4743230/Even-flag-waving-Falklanders-don-t-want-Brexit.html
Glad you enjoyed it.
I recall a Delingpole column in which he noted that the tariff to get into UEA to read Climate Science was BBB. To get a B in the A Level subjects applicant typically sat, you only needed to score 45% or so. Hence climate science undergraduates are people who at A Level got the answers mostly wrong.
The solution is for bad universities and bad faculties of universities to close. If you can't get a job with your English degree and this is bloody obvious then sooner or later everyone will stop doing English degrees. The problem is that this isn't being allowed to happen. We need a few universities to go bust.
An analogy is with the Common Entrance. You sat an exam, got a score and you hawked this around fee-paying schools to see who would let you in with that score. The best scores got into the best schools, the next-best into the next, and so on. At a certain point you got down to schools that took pupils who couldn't get into any half-decent school at all. To be a private school that took not-very-bright kids, who then didn't improve and got poor O-Levels and A-Levels, was not a viable position, and plenty of these have closed. When I was growing up there was a school near Pinner called Atholl that you went to only if you had a poor Common Entrance score but your parents wanted you educated privately. It went bust in the 1990s, as have many such.
We need a few UEAs and Wolverhampton Polys to go bust and close. It will then be possible to go to university only if it's worth your doing so.
Reading the USS report they say there are various ways of doing a valuation.
They also argue that there is a full triennial valuation due at end of this year which will give a more complete picture.
from the report:
"Since 31 March 2014 there has been a great deal of volatility in financial markets, which has been reflected in the volatility of the scheme’s deficit and funding ratio. The real yield on government bonds has continued to decline with the result that the value placed on the scheme’s liabilities have increased."
A relative who works in film post production and knows about this stuff tells me most of those seen in Dunkirk are Spanish ones with a British engine. Shrug
Most of the really bad universities - off the top of my head, Thames Valley, Westminster, London Met - are in London, which I believe has around 50 universities in total (including the old colleges of the University of London). Some of those could certainly be removed without any loss at all. There are others elsewhere that should either be closed (South Wales) or ordered to become (again) specialist colleges in key disciplines (Gloucestershire, Harper Adams). But the pruning might throw up some surprises.
I googled for Delingpole UAE grades, and got no useful hits.
When should he have sold, downsized and donated the money to HMRC? 1990? 2000? 2015? If you buy a house and live in it for 45 years and are then accused of having somehow acted disreputably, something is awry.
Therefore you would only be able to give rough estimates at best of who would get which grades. 45% seems extremely low however. For history there would be a strong likelihood of a U for that mark.
It is like the knife attack, not jahadi just an islamist, not terrorist, motivated by hate. That is what the authorities actually said.
Thinking harder about this I think what he may actually noted what that in the subjects they accepted something like 70% got an A or a B, in which case the majority of UEA types would be in the bottom half of the class.
I don't know which university you attended but they seem to have had an exceptionally muddled assessment system if that was the only solution to a very straightforward problem.
Although I suspect your newfound liking of Hans Zimmer may just be limited to Dunkirk rather than him generally, and I hate to sound like the sommelier in John Wick, but may I recommend Molossus (Batman Begins), or Chevaliers de Sangreal (Da Vinci Code). If you want something longer there's Wayne Manor or the Bane Suite. And there is much, much more...
Moreover bare in mind that all people sitting these exams chose it as it was one of their best subjects.
May I suggest that you find some facts to push your agenda?
Rather like me doing an MA in politics including a course of Welsh poetry, and rather less closely doing a doctorate in History while running two choirs.
If interest rates go up - thus increasing bond yields - will they then reverse any tuition fees increase ? We all know the answer to that is no.
And of course declining bond yields mean increasing bond prices which should mean the pension fund assets have increased. Likewise the increase in the share prices and their overseas funds should also have boosted the pension fund assets.
You think the latter is the priority.
As I understand it, even though all the actual assets are not gilts (e.g. there are also shares and property investments etc), the way the liabilities are valued is through sort of assuming the required pensions will be funded entirely through gilts. I am guessing because that gives a rigid answer into the future.
I may have got this wrong, so any experts please correct.
"However it is not clear that there is anything fundamentally wrong with defined benefit pension schemes. A common complaint that one sometimes hears from experienced trustees and finance managers is that a pension scheme that appeared ostensibly to have been in good shape was closed on actuarial advice, after having been shown to be in technical deficit."
https://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/dennisleech/
http://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/15442390.Angela_Haggerty__Is_court_action_the_best_way_to_challenge_views_we_disagree_with_/