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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Alastair Meeks gives his thoughts on university pensions

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  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    Sandpit said:

    rcs1000 said:

    viewcode said:

    For example, somebody from a top UK university with BSc, MSc, PhD, and 2-3 years of post-doc say in machine learning could easily end up working with a big tech firm or a bank on £150k+ a year pretty much straight away. Somebody with that in history of art on the other hand.

    Right, hold my beer... :)

    Somebody with a BSc, MSc, PhD and 2-3 years of post-doc in machine learning would be in their late 20s/early 30s, will have learned C++/Java in school, and will have recently transitioned to R and probably won't have Python.

    Whereas somebody with just a BSc and MSc will be in their early 20's, will have been coding in R and Python for most of their career and will accept jobs around the 30-40K outside London and 40-50K in London.

    You get old fast in this business and can get outbid very quickly.

    Over the past 18-24 months both the UK Government and Scottish Government have been throwing money into Data Mining/Machine Learning and there's going to be quite a few bright young Tillys emerging blinking into the employment worlds and will walk into 40-50K jobs. Which is great (and at that age is damn good) but it's not the hookers-and-coke level salaries you describe.

    I would be extremely surprised if said person had managed to avoid Python in the last decade.

    And even if they had, then - given their existing skillset - they could pick up Python in a couple of hours.

    Would you, by chance, know of an easy way to get Python anywhere?
    What do you mean by get it anywhere?
    https://www.pythonanywhere.com
    (Sponsored by @rcs100, he’s a shareholder).
  • Yorkcity said:

    Foxy said:

    Pulpstar said:

    They need to get on DC like the rest of us. Except those in gilded public sector retirement. But there isn't the money for that.

    Why dont you work for the Public Sector if the employment package is so attractive.
    BJO, if you were designing public sector employment from scratch, would you make it low pay/higher pension, or, to the same overall cost to the taxpayer, average pay/average pension?
    The former was the model i chose after Uni. I only wanted to work for 30 years knew many public sector employers were paying a bit less but knew if i paid 15% of salary (the pension then minimum of 6% plus a voluntary top up of 9%) I would be able to retire in my mid 50s (with a big Actuarial reduction compared to MPA of 60}

    As it turns out it was a good plan. I didnt expect the private sector pension schemes to get worse and worse so quickly .

    I retired at 54 on about 2/3rds of what i would have got at 60 if i had stayed which was a good job as we had 3yrs of good holidays before Mrs BJ became permanently paralysed.

    The other thing i hadn't totally realised is that my state pension will be over £30 a week less on current numbers compared to someone on a private scheme forever.

    Although actually now i am a carer that £30 a week gap is erroding. I understand someone who has been unemployed all their life get NI Contributions paid so they get the £30 more full state pension.

    Overall my age group is relatively lucky compared to the young. Public Sector schemes are based on average salary now and my minimum contribution would be treble in % terms compared to what it was 40 years ago.

    In fairness none of us know what the future holds and my plans for life after work have been shattered because of Mrs BJs health and thoroughly shit life she now has.
    I am so sorry that you and your wife have suffered such a traumatic event so soon after you retired. I just wish you both great happiness in the years to come. (And I think you agree that a few early nights help as we get older)
    Yes, none of us knows what is round the corner. It is why the Welfare State matters, most of us are only a few steps from needing it for us or our loved ones.
    Well said , many people think they are in control , but in reality life can change in a moment.
    Tell me about it. I am in similar situation to BJO. My sympathies.
  • Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    rcs1000 said:

    viewcode said:

    For example, somebody from a top UK university with BSc, MSc, PhD, and 2-3 years of post-doc say in machine learning could easily end up working with a big tech firm or a bank on £150k+ a year pretty much straight away. Somebody with that in history of art on the other hand.

    Right, hold my beer... :)

    Somebody with a BSc, MSc, PhD and 2-3 years of post-doc in machine learning would be in their late 20s/early 30s, will have learned C++/Java in school, and will have recently transitioned to R and probably won't have Python.

    Whereas somebody with just a BSc and MSc will be in their early 20's, will have been coding in R and Python for most of their career and will accept jobs around the 30-40K outside London and 40-50K in London.

    You get old fast in this business and can get outbid very quickly.

    Over the past 18-24 months both the UK Government and Scottish Government have been throwing money into Data Mining/Machine Learning and there's going to be quite a few bright young Tillys emerging blinking into the employment worlds and will walk into 40-50K jobs. Which is great (and at that age is damn good) but it's not the hookers-and-coke level salaries you describe.

    I would be extremely surprised if said person had managed to avoid Python in the last decade.

    And even if they had, then - given their existing skillset - they could pick up Python in a couple of hours.

    Would you, by chance, know of an easy way to get Python anywhere?
    What do you mean by get it anywhere?
    https://www.pythonanywhere.com
    (Sponsored by @rcs100, he’s a shareholder).
    Oh I missed the joke...
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,520

    Oh and still on the Telegraph, it used to have really good science coverage.

    I know the Economist is a dirty word amongst some on here, but it has really first-rate science coverage. The best in the country (and often better than the New Scientist, which has really gone downhill over the last decade or so).
  • John_MJohn_M Posts: 7,503
    edited February 2018
    Sandpit said:

    John_M said:

    DavidL said:

    Using current contributions to pay past obligations is the very definition of a Ponzi Scheme

    True yet that is also the basis of the State Pension.

    I really think the Triple Lock has to go but without cross party support will it??

    It can perhaps be afforded if the age of retirement goes up at least as fast as life expectancy. My actuary recently gave us the cheerful news that life expectancy is going up more slowly than previously thought. He also told us that we had had some unexpected claims benefits, which we eventually worked out meant some poor sods had died earlier than expected. Actuaries are weird.

    Really sorry to hear about your troubles. I very much hope things improve for Mrs BJO.
    Thanks David

    If you were forced to make a guesstimate what age would you predict my youngest daughter (age 22) would get a state pension.

    She is working on never and hoping to save circa 0.5m in todays money in next 40 years.
    Very sorry to hear about your wife John.

    FWIW, I just received my notice (it's still a long way off), 68 years, 8 months. I'm sure it'll go up further.

    There's a rising consensus that the inter-generational gap is morally wrong. My generation (I'm the last of the boomers), won on the swings and the roundabouts. Green has proposed an 'over 40 tax' for social care, the triple lock is daft, and I'd be delighted to see means testing for other pensioner freebies.
    Except that an awful lot of the 40 year olds have only just married, and are thinking about school fees rather than pensions. Any solution needs to be focussed on the 60 year olds who just retired on 2/3 of their final salary.
    I'd like to find the data (not arguing with you, but you've made me curious) on the proportion of retirees benefiting from a DB pension. I know I retired (v. early hurrah) at 50 on about 1/6 of my salary. I'll have a dig about.

    For our younger readers, the '91 recession was the death knell for the big corporate 'job-for-life' culture - this was something of a watershed. IBM shed over 100k employees, and my (then) company laid off over half its workforce that decade. Even within the boomers, there are the 'haves' and the 'have not as much' :).
  • chrisb said:

    Alastair, how do you view these comments from Prof. Michael Otsuka concerning the valuation of USS? Perhaps things are not all they seem:


    "the frightening and volatile reports of the level of the deficit between valuations are based on a fundamentally different and less reliable “gilts plus” method for estimating investment returns on the assets in the scheme. Between valuations, changes in the market yield on gilts are solely responsible for any changes in the discount rate that USS employs.

    If USS’s portfolio were invested almost entirely in gilts and other assets that behave like gilts, it would make sense for their discount rate to track the gilt yield. But only 17% of USS’s portfolio consists of gilts, and a majority is invested in return-seeking assets such as equity and property whose performance do not track the gilt yield. Therefore, investment returns on such a diversified portfolio will not track the gilt yield, nor will they exhibit the volatility of changes in the gilt yield."


    https://medium.com/@mikeotsuka/alarming-deterioration-in-uss-funding-is-based-on-an-incoherent-valuation-methodology-3f0a0cc07229#.7wxpsyixd

    [my bolding]


    Messrs Otsuka and Lech are right. The deficits are mostly phantom in nature, arising out of the dodgy accounting required by the actuaries and accounting standards setters. Quoting deficit figures of £6bn or £12bn and focusing on those to the exclusion of everything else is entirely unhelpful and will lead to poor outcomes for everyone.

    What matters is whether the USS scheme can continue to meet its pension liabilities into the future. In 2017, the scheme received £1.5bn in investment income (i.e. excluding capital gains), £1.9bn from the university employers, and £0.2bn from staff members, for a total cash income of £3.6bn.

    It paid out £1.8bn in benefits (in the form of pensions) and costs. So in cash terms, its pension payments were twice covered by its income, a very healthy state of affairs that is likely to last long into the future.

    In that context, closing the defined benefit scheme because of phantom deficits is completely misguided.
    Current cash in v current cash out is the basis for a Ponzi scheme.

    Pension deficits are valued the way they are because schemes move into gilts to account for retiring members. Therefore the fund is £6bn off where it would need to be to fund existing members. It must out-perform the gilt market, year on year, to close the £6bn gap.







    But the figures http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/dennisleech/ quotes show USS has 20% gilts in its fund. It is ridiculous to ignore the other 80% of investments when doing a deficit calculation.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,774
    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    rcs1000 said:

    viewcode said:

    For example, somebody from a top UK university with BSc, MSc, PhD, and 2-3 years of post-doc say in machine learning could easily end up working with a big tech firm or a bank on £150k+ a year pretty much straight away. Somebody with that in history of art on the other hand.

    Right, hold my beer... :)

    Somebody with a BSc, MSc, PhD and 2-3 years of post-doc in machine learning would be in their late 20s/early 30s, will have learned C++/Java in school, and will have recently transitioned to R and probably won't have Python.

    Whereas somebody with just a BSc and MSc will be in their early 20's, will have been coding in R and Python for most of their career and will accept jobs around the 30-40K outside London and 40-50K in London.

    You get old fast in this business and can get outbid very quickly.

    Over the past 18-24 months both the UK Government and Scottish Government have been throwing money into Data Mining/Machine Learning and there's going to be quite a few bright young Tillys emerging blinking into the employment worlds and will walk into 40-50K jobs. Which is great (and at that age is damn good) but it's not the hookers-and-coke level salaries you describe.

    I would be extremely surprised if said person had managed to avoid Python in the last decade.

    And even if they had, then - given their existing skillset - they could pick up Python in a couple of hours.

    Would you, by chance, know of an easy way to get Python anywhere?
    What do you mean by get it anywhere?
    https://www.pythonanywhere.com
    (Sponsored by @rcs100, he’s a shareholder).
    And while I am biased, if you want to run python in the cloud for an reason, it is an excellent service.
  • rcs1000 said:

    Foxy said:

    Using current contributions to pay past obligations is the very definition of a Ponzi Scheme

    True yet that is also the basis of the State Pension.

    I really think the Triple Lock has to go but without cross party support will it??

    It is a Ponzi scheme with the advantage that by law everyone must take part in it. Plus, if they really had to, we could cut the accrued rights of members.
    Surely the distinguishing feature of a Ponzi scheme is that it requires an ever expanding participation in order to survive. A pension scheme without a fund can remain viable as long as income meets expenditure, it doesn't need to be expansile.
    Well, yes.

    The reason - I suspect - that ratios have remained healthy in the Universities scheme, is that our education sector has continued to expand. We have more academics than ever before paying into a scheme.

    Now imagine that the UK population becomes fixed at 65 million. That means that the number of people going to university will be falling going forward, as a consequence of our ageing society. This in turn means we'll need fewer academics. At the same time, rising life expectancies and the recent increase in the number of academics, means the number of people supported by this diminishing number of workers.

    If the number of academics falls by a half, while the number of retirees double (and the second of these is a near certainty), then that positive funding ratio disappears very quickly. (And with it the assets of the scheme.)
    But the return on investments dwarfs the contribution from current staff by 5 to 1. So even if the number of staff fell by a chunk, as will happen if student fees become free and paid by tax payer, the 'ponzi' would be ok.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,520
    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    rcs1000 said:

    viewcode said:

    For example, somebody from a top UK university with BSc, MSc, PhD, and 2-3 years of post-doc say in machine learning could easily end up working with a big tech firm or a bank on £150k+ a year pretty much straight away. Somebody with that in history of art on the other hand.

    Right, hold my beer... :)

    Somebody with a BSc, MSc, PhD and 2-3 years of post-doc in machine learning would be in their late 20s/early 30s, will have learned C++/Java in school, and will have recently transitioned to R and probably won't have Python.

    Whereas somebody with just a BSc and MSc will be in their early 20's, will have been coding in R and Python for most of their career and will accept jobs around the 30-40K outside London and 40-50K in London.

    You get old fast in this business and can get outbid very quickly.

    Over the past 18-24 months both the UK Government and Scottish Government have been throwing money into Data Mining/Machine Learning and there's going to be quite a few bright young Tillys emerging blinking into the employment worlds and will walk into 40-50K jobs. Which is great (and at that age is damn good) but it's not the hookers-and-coke level salaries you describe.

    I would be extremely surprised if said person had managed to avoid Python in the last decade.

    And even if they had, then - given their existing skillset - they could pick up Python in a couple of hours.

    Would you, by chance, know of an easy way to get Python anywhere?
    What do you mean by get it anywhere?
    https://www.pythonanywhere.com
    (Sponsored by @rcs100, he’s a shareholder).
    And while I am biased, if you want to run python in the cloud for an reason, it is an excellent service.
    Does a Python in a cloud need Snakes on a Plane?
  • https://twitter.com/davidlammy/status/967817360114675712

    *If* the Telegraph (and the way it’s going these days, I’m saying if) is right about this, that’s a bit sad.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,760
    It is also worth remembering of course that most lecturers will not have started paying NIC until comparatively late on (my record begins at age 30). So a state pensions is not guaranteed and may be severely reduced.

    I'm currently haggling over back NI contributions, made much more difficult by the truly epic fuck up HMRC have made of my tax records which they seem to have lost.
  • chrisbchrisb Posts: 101
    Foxy said:

    DavidL said:

    Foxy said:

    Using current contributions to pay past obligations is the very definition of a Ponzi Scheme

    True yet that is also the basis of the State Pension.

    I really think the Triple Lock has to go but without cross party support will it??

    It is a Ponzi scheme with the advantage that by law everyone must take part in it. Plus, if they really had to, we could cut the accrued rights of members.
    Surely the distinguishing feature of a Ponzi scheme is that it requires an ever expanding participation in order to survive. A pension scheme without a fund can remain viable as long as income meets expenditure, it doesn't need to be expansile.
    It still depends on ratios. And they have been moving in the wrong direction with more pensioners being supported by fewer workers. We have better demographics than most western European countries but it is still a problem. So you have to fix the numbers by reducing the entitlements by putting up the age at which people qualify. Steven Webb did some sterling work in this area.
    Steve Webb was excellent, but while a Ponzi scheme is intrinsically fraudulent, a pension scheme just needs to strike a balance between contributions and liabilities. As indeed the universities are attempting.

    Many private schemes created their own problems by taking contribution holidays in the Eighties and Nineties.
    Yes, it's really not helpful to shout Ponzi where a pension scheme has payments to its pensioners that exceed its investment income, so is using ongoing contributions from younger members to make up the difference.

    It would be perfectly possible in theory for a scheme to be technically in surplus but to be in that same situation of paying some of its current pensions from ongoing contributions because its investment returns are lower than its pension payments.

    Defined benefit schemes are risk pooling arrangements where the assets are not linked to each individual member. What matters is whether the scheme can continue to meet its pension liabilities into the future as they fall due, not whether the value of today's investment portfolio exceeds some notional figure, almost certainly calculated incorrectly, of what the present value is of those future pension payments.

    There's really nothing wrong with focusing on cash in vs. cash out as long as the scheme can continue indefinitely to pay its liabilities as they fall due.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    Oh and still on the Telegraph, it used to have really good science coverage.

    The Telegraph used to be a serious paper, until they sacked the subs and put all but the clickbait behind a paywall.
  • chrisb said:

    Alastair, how do you view these comments from Prof. Michael Otsuka concerning the valuation of USS? Perhaps things are not all they seem:


    https://medium.com/@mikeotsuka/alarming-deterioration-in-uss-funding-is-based-on-an-incoherent-valuation-methodology-3f0a0cc07229#.7wxpsyixd

    [my bolding]


    Messrs Otsuka and Lech are right. The deficits are mostly phantom in nature, arising out of the dodgy accounting required by the actuaries and accounting standards setters. Quoting deficit figures of £6bn or £12bn and focusing on those to the exclusion of everything else is entirely unhelpful and will lead to poor outcomes for everyone.

    What matters is whether the USS scheme can continue to meet its pension liabilities into the future. In 2017, the scheme received £1.5bn in investment income (i.e. excluding capital gains), £1.9bn from the university employers, and £0.2bn from staff members, for a total cash income of £3.6bn.

    It paid out £1.8bn in benefits (in the form of pensions) and costs. So in cash terms, its pension payments were twice covered by its income, a very healthy state of affairs that is likely to last long into the future.

    In that context, closing the defined benefit scheme because of phantom deficits is completely misguided.
    Current cash in v current cash out is the basis for a Ponzi scheme.

    Pension deficits are valued the way they are because schemes move into gilts to account for retiring members. Therefore the fund is £6bn off where it would need to be to fund existing members. It must out-perform the gilt market, year on year, to close the £6bn gap.







    But the figures http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/dennisleech/ quotes show USS has 20% gilts in its fund. It is ridiculous to ignore the other 80% of investments when doing a deficit calculation.
    No, it isn't.

    The end state of any pension fund is to have sufficient gilts to meet pension costs.

    A pension "deficit" is therefore the amount of money a fund is short of its end state.

    That is perfectly appropriate because if we thought that equities were always going to out perform gilts, then the price of gilts would drop and equities would rise. The advantage that a pension fund has is time, which does means it can expect to close the gap as long as other factors aren't widening it.
  • https://twitter.com/davidlammy/status/967817360114675712

    *If* the Telegraph (and the way it’s going these days, I’m saying if) is right about this, that’s a bit sad.

    CCHQ ≠ The Government.

    Also Labour definitely has paid press staff, so not sure the point there...
  • YorkcityYorkcity Posts: 4,382

    Yorkcity said:

    Foxy said:

    Pulpstar said:

    They need to get on DC like the rest of us. Except those in gilded public sector retirement. But there isn't the money for that.

    Why dont you work for the Public Sector if the employment package is so attractive.
    BJO, if you were designing public sector employment from scratch, would you make it low pay/higher pension, or, to the same overall cost to the taxpayer, average pay/average pension?
    The former was the model i chose after Uni. I only wanted to work for 30 years knew many public sector employers were paying a bit less but knew if i paid 15% of salary (the pension then minimum of 6% plus a voluntary top up of 9%) I would be able to retire in my mid 50s (with a big Actuarial reduction compared to MPA of 60}

    As it turns out it was a good plan. I didnt expect the private sector pension schemes to get worse and worse so quickly .

    I retired at 54 on about 2/3rds of what i would have got at 60 if i had stayed which was a good job as we had 3yrs of good holidays before Mrs BJ became permanently paralysed.

    The other thing i hadn't totally realised is that my state pension will be over £30 a week less on current numbers compared to someone on a private scheme forever.

    Although actually now i am a carer that £30 a week gap is erroding. I understand someone who has been unemployed all their life get NI Contributions paid so they get the £30 more full state pension.

    Overall my age group is relatively lucky compared to the young. Public Sector schemes are based on average salary now and my minimum contribution would be treble in % terms compared to what it was 40 years ago.

    In fairness none of us know what the future holds and my plans for life after work have been shattered because of Mrs BJs health and thoroughly shit life she now has.
    I am so sorry that you and your wife have suffered such a traumatic event so soon after you retired. I just wish you both great happiness in the years to come. (And I think you agree that a few early nights help as we get older)
    Yes, none of us knows what is round the corner. It is why the Welfare State matters, most of us are only a few steps from needing it for us or our loved ones.
    Well said , many people think they are in control , but in reality life can change in a moment.
    Tell me about it. I am in similar situation to BJO. My sympathies.
    Sorry to hear that RB, all the best to you and your loved ones.
  • JonathanDJonathanD Posts: 2,400

    chrisb said:

    Alastair, how do you view these comments from Prof. Michael Otsuka concerning the valuation of USS? Perhaps things are not all they seem:


    "the frightening and volatile reports of the level of the deficit between valuations are based on a fundamentally different and less reliable “gilts plus” method for estimating investment returns on the assets in the scheme. Between valuations, changes in the market yield on gilts are solely responsible for any changes in the discount rate that USS employs.



    https://medium.com/@mikeotsuka/alarming-deterioration-in-uss-funding-is-based-on-an-incoherent-valuation-methodology-3f0a0cc07229#.7wxpsyixd

    [my bolding]


    Messrs Otsuka and Lech are right. The deficits are mostly phantom in nature, arising out of the dodgy accounting required by the actuaries and accounting standards setters. Quoting deficit figures of £6bn or £12bn and focusing on those to the exclusion of everything else is entirely unhelpful and will lead to poor outcomes for everyone.

    What matters is whether the USS scheme can continue to meet its pension liabilities into the future. In 2017, the scheme received £1.5bn in investment income (i.e. excluding capital gains), £1.9bn from the university employers, and £0.2bn from staff members, for a total cash income of £3.6bn.

    It paid out £1.8bn in benefits (in the form of pensions) and costs. So in cash terms, its pension payments were twice covered by its income, a very healthy state of affairs that is likely to last long into the future.

    In that context, closing the defined benefit scheme because of phantom deficits is completely misguided.
    Current cash in v current cash out is the basis for a Ponzi scheme.

    Pension deficits are valued the way they are because schemes move into gilts to account for retiring members. Therefore the fund is £6bn off where it would need to be to fund existing members. It must out-perform the gilt market, year on year, to close the £6bn gap.







    But the figures http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/dennisleech/ quotes show USS has 20% gilts in its fund. It is ridiculous to ignore the other 80% of investments when doing a deficit calculation.
    Some of the problem as i understand it is that the Universities have voted to change USS to being a very low risk fund and so the deficit has to be assessed using gilts rather than the actual current split. In that sense some of the current crisis seems to be deliberately invited especially since the last major change (final salary pension to career average) only occurred a few years ago and was meant to solve the deficit problem.
  • https://twitter.com/davidlammy/status/967817360114675712

    *If* the Telegraph (and the way it’s going these days, I’m saying if) is right about this, that’s a bit sad.

    CCHQ ≠ The Government.

    Also Labour definitely has paid press staff, so not sure the point there...
    I don’t think there’s anything wrong with paid press staff, but if the story is true this doesn’t seem to be that. It seems as though they’re paying people to go on social media to make it seem like the Tories are more popular online than they actually are.

    The Conservative Party is hiring an army of paid tweeters to take on Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters on social media, the Telegraph can disclose.

    Brandon Lewis, the new Tory chairman, is recruiting hundreds of staff across the country in a bid to dramatically increase the party’s online presence.
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,263

    https://twitter.com/davidlammy/status/967817360114675712

    *If* the Telegraph (and the way it’s going these days, I’m saying if) is right about this, that’s a bit sad.

    CCHQ ≠ The Government.

    Also Labour definitely has paid press staff, so not sure the point there...
    I don’t think there’s anything wrong with paid press staff, but if the story is true this doesn’t seem to be that. It seems as though they’re paying people to go on social media to make it seem like the Tories are more popular online than they actually are.

    The Conservative Party is hiring an army of paid tweeters to take on Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters on social media, the Telegraph can disclose.

    Brandon Lewis, the new Tory chairman, is recruiting hundreds of staff across the country in a bid to dramatically increase the party’s online presence.
    Yes - we have people who will do it because they actually believe in it, they need to pay people to pretend they believe in it. What could possibly go wrong?
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069

    https://twitter.com/davidlammy/status/967817360114675712

    *If* the Telegraph (and the way it’s going these days, I’m saying if) is right about this, that’s a bit sad.

    CCHQ ≠ The Government.

    Also Labour definitely has paid press staff, so not sure the point there...
    The implication is that CCHQ are going for a battalion of professional tweeters and Facebookers, to try to balance that social media space.

    A forlorn task methinks, as paid shares are never taken as seriously as one from known contacts.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,043
    edited February 2018

    chrisb said:

    Alastair, how do you view these comments from Prof. Michael Otsuka concerning the valuation of USS? Perhaps things are not all they seem:


    https://medium.com/@mikeotsuka/alarming-deterioration-in-uss-funding-is-based-on-an-incoherent-valuation-methodology-3f0a0cc07229#.7wxpsyixd

    [my bolding]


    snip

    What matters is whether the USS scheme can continue to meet its pension liabilities into the future. In 2017, the scheme received £1.5bn in investment income (i.e. excluding capital gains), £1.9bn from the university employers, and £0.2bn from staff members, for a total cash income of £3.6bn.

    It paid out £1.8bn in benefits (in the form of pensions) and costs. So in cash terms, its pension payments were twice covered by its income, a very healthy state of affairs that is likely to last long into the future.

    In that context, closing the defined benefit scheme because of phantom deficits is completely misguided.
    snip






    But the figures http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/dennisleech/ quotes show USS has 20% gilts in its fund. It is ridiculous to ignore the other 80% of investments when doing a deficit calculation.
    No, it isn't.

    The end state of any pension fund is to have sufficient gilts to meet pension costs.

    A pension "deficit" is therefore the amount of money a fund is short of its end state.

    That is perfectly appropriate because if we thought that equities were always going to out perform gilts, then the price of gilts would drop and equities would rise. The advantage that a pension fund has is time, which does means it can expect to close the gap as long as other factors aren't widening it.
    But this end state approach basically is assuming the scheme will close and is not an ongoing situation. It makes a massive difference to make that assumption.

    To quote Leech again:

    "On the assumption that the scheme may have to close and therefore must be extremely prudent, so called 'gilts plus', which is the proposed basis, the 'deficit' is £5.1bn. (This has been changed since the TP document was published and is now £7.1 bn. The fact that these figures are so very volatile, with pension liabilities which change very slowly over decades being valued at amounts varying from month to month by billions calls into question the whole methodology.)

    On the other hand, if the scheme remains open, there is no need to apply a great layer of prudence to all the calculations, and the valuation of the liabilities can be done using the 'best estimate' of the investment returns as the discount rate. On this basis the scheme is massively in surplus, to the tune of £8.3bn!"
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 21,723
    Off Topic I see Momentum are saying they have had record sign ups this week.

    Mainly down to Commie Spy headlines

    I reckon the Young Labour Elections also a factor

    Little Miss BJO just voted for the left slate she just told me.
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,263

    Yorkcity said:

    Foxy said:



    Yes, none of us knows what is round the corner. It is why the Welfare State matters, most of us are only a few steps from needing it for us or our loved ones.

    Well said , many people think they are in control , but in reality life can change in a moment.
    Tell me about it. I am in similar situation to BJO. My sympathies.
    Sympathies and fellow-feeling to you both - as Foxy says, most of us fear something like this.
  • Off Topic I see Momentum are saying they have had record sign ups this week.

    Mainly down to Commie Spy headlines

    I reckon the Young Labour Elections also a factor

    Little Miss BJO just voted for the left slate she just told me.

    Millennial Marxists on the march.
  • chrisb said:


    [my bolding]

    What matters is whether the USS scheme can continue to meet its pension liabilities into the future.

    In that context, closing the defined benefit scheme because of phantom deficits is completely misguided.

    But the figures http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/dennisleech/ quotes show USS has 20% gilts in its fund. It is ridiculous to ignore the other 80% of investments when doing a deficit calculation.
    No, it isn't.

    The end state of any pension fund is to have sufficient gilts to meet pension costs.

    A pension "deficit" is therefore the amount of money a fund is short of its end state.

    That is perfectly appropriate because if we thought that equities were always going to out perform gilts, then the price of gilts would drop and equities would rise. The advantage that a pension fund has is time, which does means it can expect to close the gap as long as other factors aren't widening it.
    But this end state approach basically is assuming the scheme will close and is not an ongoing situation. It makes a massive difference to make that assumption.

    To quote Leech again:

    "On the assumption that the scheme may have to close and therefore must be extremely prudent, so called 'gilts plus', which is the proposed basis, the 'deficit' is £5.1bn. (This has been changed since the TP document was published and is now £7.1 bn. The fact that these figures are so very volatile, with pension liabilities which change very slowly over decades being valued at amounts varying from month to month by billions calls into question the whole methodology.)

    On the other hand, if the scheme remains open, there is no need to apply a great layer of prudence to all the calculations, and the valuation of the liabilities can be done using the 'best estimate' of the investment returns as the discount rate. On this basis the scheme is massively in surplus, to the tune of £8.3bn!"
    If Leech wants to rewrite what it means to have a pension deficit, sure.

    But it doesn't change the fact the fund has a deficit.

    I need £50,000 as a deposit on my new house which I propose to buy this time next year.

    I have £20,000 in the bank.

    You can price in my expected investment returns between now and then, but it doesn't change the fact I am currently £30,000 short.

    Changing the rules to fit the situation is both problematic and quite frankly dangerous.

    If pricing the deficit moves month to month god knows what "best guess investment returns must do"
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 21,723
    Countryfile is in Derbyshire tonight. Visiting Alpacas methinks
  • @rottenborough

    The sympathy I have however for the argument Leech has is this: don't close a scheme because it has a £6bn deficit just because £6bn sounds like a big number and a deficit sounds like a bad thing. Close it because it is unsustainable, all things considered, to keep it open.
  • The reason why there's a smidgen of schadenfreude at the ivory tower elitists is that they don't seem to have the faintest clue about how generously they are treated: currently they are getting nearly 30% more on top of their nominal salaries in employer contributions, and take zero investment risk. Even in the proposed new scheme, they will still be getting far more in employer pension contributions than almost everyone else. A bit of acknowledgement of this wouldn't go amiss before they complain that they are hard done by.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    Fundamentally employers have underestimated the cost of providing DB pensions in the past. That has now changed. It sucks for employees but essentially they are being paid more than market rates and this will change.

    There is also an element of fairness in that private sector taxpayers in the main don’t have these arrangements but are bearing the cost of the public sector schemes
  • Off Topic I see Momentum are saying they have had record sign ups this week.

    Mainly down to Commie Spy headlines

    I reckon the Young Labour Elections also a factor

    Little Miss BJO just voted for the left slate she just told me.

    Millennial Marxists on the march.
    Straight over the cliff like all the other lemmings before them.
  • Charles said:

    Fundamentally employers have underestimated the cost of providing DB pensions in the past. That has now changed. It sucks for employees but essentially they are being paid more than market rates and this will change.

    There is also an element of fairness in that private sector taxpayers in the main don’t have these arrangements but are bearing the cost of the public sector schemes

    DB schemes should have shifted the risk to the employer. But in reality (well, since about 1995) they exposed workers to an unlikely but catastrophic risk, which is contrary to what is appropriate for most people.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,773

    https://twitter.com/davidlammy/status/967817360114675712

    *If* the Telegraph (and the way it’s going these days, I’m saying if) is right about this, that’s a bit sad.

    CCHQ ≠ The Government.

    Also Labour definitely has paid press staff, so not sure the point there...
    I don’t think there’s anything wrong with paid press staff, but if the story is true this doesn’t seem to be that. It seems as though they’re paying people to go on social media to make it seem like the Tories are more popular online than they actually are.

    The Conservative Party is hiring an army of paid tweeters to take on Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters on social media, the Telegraph can disclose.

    Brandon Lewis, the new Tory chairman, is recruiting hundreds of staff across the country in a bid to dramatically increase the party’s online presence.
    They should hire Putin's people. They know what they're doing.
  • YorkcityYorkcity Posts: 4,382

    The reason why there's a smidgen of schadenfreude at the ivory tower elitists is that they don't seem to have the faintest clue about how generously they are treated: currently they are getting nearly 30% more on top of their nominal salaries in employer contributions, and take zero investment risk. Even in the proposed new scheme, they will still be getting far more in employer pension contributions than almost everyone else. A bit of acknowledgement of this wouldn't go amiss before they complain that they are hard done by.

    I thought most of the public sector pension schemes , were reviewed by the coalition .Was this one included ? https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/independent-public-service-pensions-commission-final-report-by-lord-hutton
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 18,233

    ...Mrs BJ became permanently paralysed...
    .

    You mentioned this before, I think, and it threw me for a tizz then. Damn, dude, major sympathies: extraordinarily bad luck and I hope you both find the strength to continue coping as best you can.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited February 2018
    Gobee.bike, the first of several Asian dockless bike share operators that launched in Paris last year, has announced it is pulling out of the city because thousands of its bicycles were stolen or vandalised.

    “Over the months of December and January, the mass destruction of our fleet has become the new entertainment of underaged individuals, encouraged by content broadly shared on social media,” the Hong Kong startup wrote in an email to its users in the city.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/25/wheels-fall-latest-paris-bike-scheme-thefts-vandalism/

    SADDDDDDDDDD....

    I have to say the terminology of the bikes being nicked as them being "privatised” is a new one on me.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,760

    Gobee.bike, the first of several Asian dockless bike share operators that launched in Paris last year, has announced it is pulling out of the city because thousands of its bicycles were stolen or vandalised.

    “Over the months of December and January, the mass destruction of our fleet has become the new entertainment of underaged individuals, encouraged by content broadly shared on social media,” the Hong Kong startup wrote in an email to its users in the city.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/25/wheels-fall-latest-paris-bike-scheme-thefts-vandalism/

    SADDDDDDDDDD....

    I have to say the terminology of the bikes being nicked as them being "privatised” is a new one on me.

    You clearly didn't study the French Revolutionary Era (1788-1871). 'Property is theft...'
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,789
    Sean_F said:

    https://twitter.com/davidlammy/status/967817360114675712

    *If* the Telegraph (and the way it’s going these days, I’m saying if) is right about this, that’s a bit sad.

    CCHQ ≠ The Government.

    Also Labour definitely has paid press staff, so not sure the point there...
    I don’t think there’s anything wrong with paid press staff, but if the story is true this doesn’t seem to be that. It seems as though they’re paying people to go on social media to make it seem like the Tories are more popular online than they actually are.

    The Conservative Party is hiring an army of paid tweeters to take on Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters on social media, the Telegraph can disclose.

    Brandon Lewis, the new Tory chairman, is recruiting hundreds of staff across the country in a bid to dramatically increase the party’s online presence.
    They should hire Putin's people. They know what they're doing.
    They know what they’re doing, but they know not what they do.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,774

    Gobee.bike, the first of several Asian dockless bike share operators that launched in Paris last year, has announced it is pulling out of the city because thousands of its bicycles were stolen or vandalised.

    “Over the months of December and January, the mass destruction of our fleet has become the new entertainment of underaged individuals, encouraged by content broadly shared on social media,” the Hong Kong startup wrote in an email to its users in the city.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/25/wheels-fall-latest-paris-bike-scheme-thefts-vandalism/

    SADDDDDDDDDD....

    I have to say the terminology of the bikes being nicked as them being "privatised” is a new one on me.

    Here in Santa Monica / LA, there is a scheme called Bird, which is dockless electric scooters.

    You pay $1 to unlock the scooter, and then a time and distance based metric. In total, rides typically cost $1.25-2.00, and are used for going anything from a few hundred meters to a couple of miles.

    Personally, I prefer to cycle, but - because you can usually find one within fifty meters of wherever you are - they have really done a great job of stopping people using their cars for short journeys.

    It's almost certainly a terrific economic model too. Let's say a scooter does 15 journeys a day, then it's bringing in $25/day. If it cost $750 to buy, then you get payback in a month. The cost of collecting and charging has to be pretty small too.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited February 2018
    rcs1000 said:

    Gobee.bike, the first of several Asian dockless bike share operators that launched in Paris last year, has announced it is pulling out of the city because thousands of its bicycles were stolen or vandalised.

    “Over the months of December and January, the mass destruction of our fleet has become the new entertainment of underaged individuals, encouraged by content broadly shared on social media,” the Hong Kong startup wrote in an email to its users in the city.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/25/wheels-fall-latest-paris-bike-scheme-thefts-vandalism/

    SADDDDDDDDDD....

    I have to say the terminology of the bikes being nicked as them being "privatised” is a new one on me.

    Here in Santa Monica / LA, there is a scheme called Bird, which is dockless electric scooters.

    You pay $1 to unlock the scooter, and then a time and distance based metric. In total, rides typically cost $1.25-2.00, and are used for going anything from a few hundred meters to a couple of miles.

    Personally, I prefer to cycle, but - because you can usually find one within fifty meters of wherever you are - they have really done a great job of stopping people using their cars for short journeys.

    It's almost certainly a terrific economic model too. Let's say a scooter does 15 journeys a day, then it's bringing in $25/day. If it cost $750 to buy, then you get payback in a month. The cost of collecting and charging has to be pretty small too.
    I hear in China, these schemes are very very popular. The only problem is that they don't exactly leave them neatly when they have finished with them.

    https://news.sky.com/video/chinas-bike-boom-overinflates-11191372
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069
    Autocracy is surprisingly acceptable to Britons, so hope for TSE yet:

    http://www.pewglobal.org/2017/10/16/globally-broad-support-for-representative-and-direct-democracy/
  • FregglesFreggles Posts: 3,486
    Yorkcity said:

    The reason why there's a smidgen of schadenfreude at the ivory tower elitists is that they don't seem to have the faintest clue about how generously they are treated: currently they are getting nearly 30% more on top of their nominal salaries in employer contributions, and take zero investment risk. Even in the proposed new scheme, they will still be getting far more in employer pension contributions than almost everyone else. A bit of acknowledgement of this wouldn't go amiss before they complain that they are hard done by.

    I thought most of the public sector pension schemes , were reviewed by the coalition .Was this one included ? https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/independent-public-service-pensions-commission-final-report-by-lord-hutton
    I don't know, but there were a set of changes made in 2015, which contributes to the sense of unfairness (it's only been 3 years...)

    "From 1 April 2016, there will be changes to the benefits provided by USS. From that date the final salary arrangements which currently apply to some members will come to an end and all members will thereafter build up benefits on a CRB basis. From 1 October 2016, CRB benefits will be built up in respect of salary up to a threshold of £55,000 a year. Contributions in respect of salary above £55,000 a year will be paid into a new defined contribution (DC) section of the scheme. This salary threshold will be revalued each year in line with the Consumer Price Index (CPI), (subject to certain restrictions). Both employer and member contribution rates will increase from 1 April 2016 to 18% for employers (from 16%) and to 8% for employees (from 6.5% for current CRB members and 7.5% for final salary members). For more information about changes to the benefits provided please refer to the USS for the future website, at forthefuture.uss. co.uk "

    https://www.uss.co.uk/~/media/document-libraries/uss/how-uss-is-run/annual-reports/mar2015.pdf
  • rcs1000 said:

    Gobee.bike, the first of several Asian dockless bike share operators that launched in Paris last year, has announced it is pulling out of the city because thousands of its bicycles were stolen or vandalised.

    “Over the months of December and January, the mass destruction of our fleet has become the new entertainment of underaged individuals, encouraged by content broadly shared on social media,” the Hong Kong startup wrote in an email to its users in the city.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/25/wheels-fall-latest-paris-bike-scheme-thefts-vandalism/

    SADDDDDDDDDD....

    I have to say the terminology of the bikes being nicked as them being "privatised” is a new one on me.

    Here in Santa Monica / LA, there is a scheme called Bird, which is dockless electric scooters.

    You pay $1 to unlock the scooter, and then a time and distance based metric. In total, rides typically cost $1.25-2.00, and are used for going anything from a few hundred meters to a couple of miles.

    Personally, I prefer to cycle, but - because you can usually find one within fifty meters of wherever you are - they have really done a great job of stopping people using their cars for short journeys.

    It's almost certainly a terrific economic model too. Let's say a scooter does 15 journeys a day, then it's bringing in $25/day. If it cost $750 to buy, then you get payback in a month. The cost of collecting and charging has to be pretty small too.
    I hear in China, these schemes are very very popular. The only problem is that they don't exactly leave them neatly when they have finished with them.

    https://news.sky.com/video/chinas-bike-boom-overinflates-11191372
    I was once told that people riding bikes downhill in Paris so outnumbered people riding them uphill that they had continually bus them back again...
  • FloaterFloater Posts: 14,195
    edited February 2018
    Completely off topic - but be aware that trains to / from London Liverpool street will stop running at 10pm Monday night reduced service from 8pm.

    Tuesday will have reduced services on main lines only between 6am and 10pm.

    No service other times or other lines

    All this before 1 flake of snow lands.

  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    edited February 2018
    rcs1000 said:

    Gobee.bike, the first of several Asian dockless bike share operators that launched in Paris last year, has announced it is pulling out of the city because thousands of its bicycles were stolen or vandalised.

    “Over the months of December and January, the mass destruction of our fleet has become the new entertainment of underaged individuals, encouraged by content broadly shared on social media,” the Hong Kong startup wrote in an email to its users in the city.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/25/wheels-fall-latest-paris-bike-scheme-thefts-vandalism/

    SADDDDDDDDDD....

    I have to say the terminology of the bikes being nicked as them being "privatised” is a new one on me.

    Here in Santa Monica / LA, there is a scheme called Bird, which is dockless electric scooters.

    You pay $1 to unlock the scooter, and then a time and distance based metric. In total, rides typically cost $1.25-2.00, and are used for going anything from a few hundred meters to a couple of miles.

    Personally, I prefer to cycle, but - because you can usually find one within fifty meters of wherever you are - they have really done a great job of stopping people using their cars for short journeys.

    It's almost certainly a terrific economic model too. Let's say a scooter does 15 journeys a day, then it's bringing in $25/day. If it cost $750 to buy, then you get payback in a month. The cost of collecting and charging has to be pretty small too.
    I’d imagine the cost of the permits for the stations and chargers in LA represents a large part of their costs.

    Or are they “doing an Uber” and just ignoring rules, preferring to throw venture capitalist lawyers at any problems they come across?
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069
    Floater said:

    Completely off topic - but be aware that trains to / from London Liverpool street will stop running at 10pm Monday night reduced service from 8pm.

    Tuesday will have reduced services on main lines only between 6am and 10pm.

    No service other times or other lines

    All this before 1 flake of snow lands.

    Wrong type of snowflake on the line?
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited February 2018
    Sandpit said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Gobee.bike, the first of several Asian dockless bike share operators that launched in Paris last year, has announced it is pulling out of the city because thousands of its bicycles were stolen or vandalised.

    “Over the months of December and January, the mass destruction of our fleet has become the new entertainment of underaged individuals, encouraged by content broadly shared on social media,” the Hong Kong startup wrote in an email to its users in the city.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/25/wheels-fall-latest-paris-bike-scheme-thefts-vandalism/

    SADDDDDDDDDD....

    I have to say the terminology of the bikes being nicked as them being "privatised” is a new one on me.

    Here in Santa Monica / LA, there is a scheme called Bird, which is dockless electric scooters.

    You pay $1 to unlock the scooter, and then a time and distance based metric. In total, rides typically cost $1.25-2.00, and are used for going anything from a few hundred meters to a couple of miles.

    Personally, I prefer to cycle, but - because you can usually find one within fifty meters of wherever you are - they have really done a great job of stopping people using their cars for short journeys.

    It's almost certainly a terrific economic model too. Let's say a scooter does 15 journeys a day, then it's bringing in $25/day. If it cost $750 to buy, then you get payback in a month. The cost of collecting and charging has to be pretty small too.
    I’d imagine the cost of the permits for the stations and chargers in LA represents a large part of their costs.

    Or are they “doing an Uber” and just ignoring rules, preferring to throw venture capitalist lawyers at any problems they come across?
    The article i read said the guy behind it used to work for Uber and erhhh well took their approach to permits ie better ask for forgiveness than what permits might be required
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,520
    There's been an 'explosion' of some sort in Leicester:
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43192909
  • Foxy said:

    Floater said:

    Completely off topic - but be aware that trains to / from London Liverpool street will stop running at 10pm Monday night reduced service from 8pm.

    Tuesday will have reduced services on main lines only between 6am and 10pm.

    No service other times or other lines

    All this before 1 flake of snow lands.

    Wrong type of snowflake on the line?
    Are maomentum planning a protest?
  • FrankBoothFrankBooth Posts: 9,005

    There's been an 'explosion' of some sort in Leicester:
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43192909

    Heard the word 'Hinkley' and had a momentary intake of breath.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,774
    Sandpit said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Gobee.bike, the first of several Asian dockless bike share operators that launched in Paris last year, has announced it is pulling out of the city because thousands of its bicycles were stolen or vandalised.

    “Over the months of December and January, the mass destruction of our fleet has become the new entertainment of underaged individuals, encouraged by content broadly shared on social media,” the Hong Kong startup wrote in an email to its users in the city.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/25/wheels-fall-latest-paris-bike-scheme-thefts-vandalism/

    SADDDDDDDDDD....

    I have to say the terminology of the bikes being nicked as them being "privatised” is a new one on me.

    Here in Santa Monica / LA, there is a scheme called Bird, which is dockless electric scooters.

    You pay $1 to unlock the scooter, and then a time and distance based metric. In total, rides typically cost $1.25-2.00, and are used for going anything from a few hundred meters to a couple of miles.

    Personally, I prefer to cycle, but - because you can usually find one within fifty meters of wherever you are - they have really done a great job of stopping people using their cars for short journeys.

    It's almost certainly a terrific economic model too. Let's say a scooter does 15 journeys a day, then it's bringing in $25/day. If it cost $750 to buy, then you get payback in a month. The cost of collecting and charging has to be pretty small too.
    I’d imagine the cost of the permits for the stations and chargers in LA represents a large part of their costs.

    Or are they “doing an Uber” and just ignoring rules, preferring to throw venture capitalist lawyers at any problems they come across?
    The latter. People just leave the scooters on the sidewalk.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,774

    Sandpit said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Gobee.bike, the first of several Asian dockless bike share operators that launched in Paris last year, has announced it is pulling out of the city because thousands of its bicycles were stolen or vandalised.

    “Over the months of December and January, the mass destruction of our fleet has become the new entertainment of underaged individuals, encouraged by content broadly shared on social media,” the Hong Kong startup wrote in an email to its users in the city.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/25/wheels-fall-latest-paris-bike-scheme-thefts-vandalism/

    SADDDDDDDDDD....

    I have to say the terminology of the bikes being nicked as them being "privatised” is a new one on me.

    Here in Santa Monica / LA, there is a scheme called Bird, which is dockless electric scooters.

    You pay $1 to unlock the scooter, and then a time and distance based metric. In total, rides typically cost $1.25-2.00, and are used for going anything from a few hundred meters to a couple of miles.

    Personally, I prefer to cycle, but - because you can usually find one within fifty meters of wherever you are - they have really done a great job of stopping people using their cars for short journeys.

    It's almost certainly a terrific economic model too. Let's say a scooter does 15 journeys a day, then it's bringing in $25/day. If it cost $750 to buy, then you get payback in a month. The cost of collecting and charging has to be pretty small too.
    I’d imagine the cost of the permits for the stations and chargers in LA represents a large part of their costs.

    Or are they “doing an Uber” and just ignoring rules, preferring to throw venture capitalist lawyers at any problems they come across?
    The article i read said the guy behind it used to work for Uber and erhhh well took their approach to permits ie better ask for forgiveness than what permits might be required
    As a general rule in life, I find begging forgiveness works better than asking permission.
  • FrankBoothFrankBooth Posts: 9,005
    Foxy said:

    Autocracy is surprisingly acceptable to Britons, so hope for TSE yet:

    http://www.pewglobal.org/2017/10/16/globally-broad-support-for-representative-and-direct-democracy/

    Sad, but not in my view surprising that the UK is towards the bottom of the long established democracies.
  • Ishmael_ZIshmael_Z Posts: 8,981
    They are well ahead of the UK meejah in identifying building as a convenience store.

    Gas main, or engineer hoist with own petard.
  • Ishmael_ZIshmael_Z Posts: 8,981
    Pong said:
    Why? The story seems to be substantially true, given the weakness of the non-denial denials of it. Leveson was triggered by improper interference with communications. What evidence is there in this case of similar misconduct?
  • TwistedFireStopperTwistedFireStopper Posts: 2,538
    edited February 2018
    Ishmael_Z said:

    They are well ahead of the UK meejah in identifying building as a convenience store.

    Gas main, or engineer hoist with own petard.
    I guess I know where I'll be going when I get back to work tomorrow. Twitter is way ahead in breaking this. Looks like a Polish supermarket according to most reports- the usual suspects are calling for Muslims to be expelled and the burka to be banned already, though!
  • John_MJohn_M Posts: 7,503
  • Ishmael_Z said:

    Pong said:
    Why? The story seems to be substantially true, given the weakness of the non-denial denials of it. Leveson was triggered by improper interference with communications. What evidence is there in this case of similar misconduct?
    And it was a Sunday times investigation who weren’t involved in dodgy celeb hacking in the way the notw and mirror were.
  • Ishmael_ZIshmael_Z Posts: 8,981
    John_M said:
    On the side nearer the camera. Pedantry trumps mathematics.
  • rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Gobee.bike, the first of several Asian dockless bike share operators that launched in Paris last year, has announced it is pulling out of the city because thousands of its bicycles were stolen or vandalised.

    “Over the months of December and January, the mass destruction of our fleet has become the new entertainment of underaged individuals, encouraged by content broadly shared on social media,” the Hong Kong startup wrote in an email to its users in the city.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/25/wheels-fall-latest-paris-bike-scheme-thefts-vandalism/

    SADDDDDDDDDD....

    I have to say the terminology of the bikes being nicked as them being "privatised” is a new one on me.

    Here in Santa Monica / LA, there is a scheme called Bird, which is dockless electric scooters.

    You pay $1 to unlock the scooter, and then a time and distance based metric. In total, rides typically cost $1.25-2.00, and are used for going anything from a few hundred meters to a couple of miles.

    Personally, I prefer to cycle, but - because you can usually find one within fifty meters of wherever you are - they have really done a great job of stopping people using their cars for short journeys.

    It's almost certainly a terrific economic model too. Let's say a scooter does 15 journeys a day, then it's bringing in $25/day. If it cost $750 to buy, then you get payback in a month. The cost of collecting and charging has to be pretty small too.
    I’d imagine the cost of the permits for the stations and chargers in LA represents a large part of their costs.

    Or are they “doing an Uber” and just ignoring rules, preferring to throw venture capitalist lawyers at any problems they come across?
    The article i read said the guy behind it used to work for Uber and erhhh well took their approach to permits ie better ask for forgiveness than what permits might be required
    As a general rule in life, I find begging forgiveness works better than asking permission.
    Don’t go putting any hands on knees.....
  • Ishmael_Z said:

    Pong said:
    Why? The story seems to be substantially true, given the weakness of the non-denial denials of it. Leveson was triggered by improper interference with communications. What evidence is there in this case of similar misconduct?
    True stories can upset even more if they're inconvenient true stories.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Gobee.bike, the first of several Asian dockless bike share operators that launched in Paris last year, has announced it is pulling out of the city because thousands of its bicycles were stolen or vandalised.

    “Over the months of December and January, the mass destruction of our fleet has become the new entertainment of underaged individuals, encouraged by content broadly shared on social media,” the Hong Kong startup wrote in an email to its users in the city.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/25/wheels-fall-latest-paris-bike-scheme-thefts-vandalism/

    SADDDDDDDDDD....

    I have to say the terminology of the bikes being nicked as them being "privatised” is a new one on me.

    Here in Santa Monica / LA, there is a scheme called Bird, which is dockless electric scooters.

    You pay $1 to unlock the scooter, and then a time and distance based metric. In total, rides typically cost $1.25-2.00, and are used for going anything from a few hundred meters to a couple of miles.

    Personally, I prefer to cycle, but - because you can usually find one within fifty meters of wherever you are - they have really done a great job of stopping people using their cars for short journeys.

    It's almost certainly a terrific economic model too. Let's say a scooter does 15 journeys a day, then it's bringing in $25/day. If it cost $750 to buy, then you get payback in a month. The cost of collecting and charging has to be pretty small too.
    I’d imagine the cost of the permits for the stations and chargers in LA represents a large part of their costs.

    Or are they “doing an Uber” and just ignoring rules, preferring to throw venture capitalist lawyers at any problems they come across?
    The article i read said the guy behind it used to work for Uber and erhhh well took their approach to permits ie better ask for forgiveness than what permits might be required
    As a general rule in life, I find begging forgiveness works better than asking permission.
    Don’t go putting any hands on knees.....
    When begging forgiveness or when asking permission?
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,520

    Ishmael_Z said:

    They are well ahead of the UK meejah in identifying building as a convenience store.

    Gas main, or engineer hoist with own petard.
    I guess I know where I'll be going when I get back to work tomorrow. Twitter is way ahead in breaking this. Looks like a Polish supermarket according to most reports- the usual suspects are calling for Muslims to be expelled and the burka to be banned already, though!
    How big a problem is there with people 'tapping' gas supplies? I know it's frequently done with leccy, but ISTR a proggie where a small store was running equipment from a gas main coming from two doors down. It's quite a trick.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,760
    Foxy said:

    Floater said:

    Completely off topic - but be aware that trains to / from London Liverpool street will stop running at 10pm Monday night reduced service from 8pm.

    Tuesday will have reduced services on main lines only between 6am and 10pm.

    No service other times or other lines

    All this before 1 flake of snow lands.

    Wrong type of snowflake on the line?
    I was expecting lots of puns about snowflakes driving the trains/doing the risk assessments.

    What happens if the service improves as a result of the reductions?
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,749
    edited February 2018
    Nothing to fear.
    FEAR!
    Nothing to fear.
    FEAR!!

    Rinse and repeat.

    https://twitter.com/finalobillig/status/967800587554361344
  • Ishmael_Z said:

    They are well ahead of the UK meejah in identifying building as a convenience store.

    Gas main, or engineer hoist with own petard.
    I guess I know where I'll be going when I get back to work tomorrow. Twitter is way ahead in breaking this. Looks like a Polish supermarket according to most reports- the usual suspects are calling for Muslims to be expelled and the burka to be banned already, though!
    How big a problem is there with people 'tapping' gas supplies? I know it's frequently done with leccy, but ISTR a proggie where a small store was running equipment from a gas main coming from two doors down. It's quite a trick.
    I've not had a lot of dealing with gas pipes being tapped- a couple of incidents where dodgy DIY was carried out, but we get a lot of leccy problems, usually cannabis farm related.
  • Ishmael_ZIshmael_Z Posts: 8,981
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/24/jobs-immigration-eu-italian-fury-palpable-ahead-general-election/

    "Since the last election in 2014, the migration issue has transformed Italian politics, fueling anger with both Brussels and the Italian government. Four years ago only 4% of Italians put immigration top of their electoral concerns, today that figure is over 33%, according to surveys.

    The issue is never far from the news, as last month when an Italian woman was found dismembered in a suitcase and several Nigerian immigrants were arrested for the crime. A former Lega supporter then shot and injured six migrants in retaliation.

    “Nigerian pushers like that one who hacked an Italian girl into pieces are going to be sent home with a kick up the ass,” Mr Salvini tells a crowd in the pretty, pink central piazza of Sassuolo, a tile-making town in the hills above Parma and Bologna.

    Above a placard proclaiming “STOP Invasione”, Mr Salvini rails against globalisation and promises Muslims will not be able to build mosques as long as they discriminate against women."

    A staggering statistic.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited February 2018
    Talking of staggering statistics....50% of all 2017 ICOs are already bust or abandoned.
  • Ishmael_Z said:

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/24/jobs-immigration-eu-italian-fury-palpable-ahead-general-election/

    "Since the last election in 2014, the migration issue has transformed Italian politics, fueling anger with both Brussels and the Italian government. Four years ago only 4% of Italians put immigration top of their electoral concerns, today that figure is over 33%, according to surveys.

    The issue is never far from the news, as last month when an Italian woman was found dismembered in a suitcase and several Nigerian immigrants were arrested for the crime. A former Lega supporter then shot and injured six migrants in retaliation.

    “Nigerian pushers like that one who hacked an Italian girl into pieces are going to be sent home with a kick up the ass,” Mr Salvini tells a crowd in the pretty, pink central piazza of Sassuolo, a tile-making town in the hills above Parma and Bologna.

    Above a placard proclaiming “STOP Invasione”, Mr Salvini rails against globalisation and promises Muslims will not be able to build mosques as long as they discriminate against women."

    A staggering statistic.

    The Merkel effect.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,520

    Ishmael_Z said:

    They are well ahead of the UK meejah in identifying building as a convenience store.

    Gas main, or engineer hoist with own petard.
    I guess I know where I'll be going when I get back to work tomorrow. Twitter is way ahead in breaking this. Looks like a Polish supermarket according to most reports- the usual suspects are calling for Muslims to be expelled and the burka to be banned already, though!
    How big a problem is there with people 'tapping' gas supplies? I know it's frequently done with leccy, but ISTR a proggie where a small store was running equipment from a gas main coming from two doors down. It's quite a trick.
    I've not had a lot of dealing with gas pipes being tapped- a couple of incidents where dodgy DIY was carried out, but we get a lot of leccy problems, usually cannabis farm related.
    Thanks.

    You might like an anecdote. There was a large factory complex not a million miles away from your neck of the woods. At the top end of the main avenue was a gatehouse, where there would always be a security man. The first thing one of the men would do after arriving for his shift would be to switch on 'his' kettle, which he always left plugged in. No-one else used it. One day, the plug popped part of the way out of the socket. He thought nothing of it, pushed the plug back in, and everything worked.

    This happened more times, and he never reported it. Then one day, after he had been off for a while, he came back, switched on his kettle, and the plug flew out of the socket, taking the kettle with it. The site fire brigade were called out and there was the usual kafuffle.

    It turns out that gas from a leak over 100 metres away was following pipes, trunking, and even cables, and small quantities were collecting behind the plug over time.

    We had to use sniffers and lots of test holes to locate the leak. Good money!

    BTW, I have no idea what the ignition source was.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074

    Ishmael_Z said:

    Pong said:
    Why? The story seems to be substantially true, given the weakness of the non-denial denials of it. Leveson was triggered by improper interference with communications. What evidence is there in this case of similar misconduct?
    True stories can upset even more if they're inconvenient true stories.
    If those allegations are true it would appear that fraud is being committed.

    And yet the reaction of some is to want to stop the story being reported.

    Telling.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited February 2018
    Cyclefree said:

    Ishmael_Z said:

    Pong said:
    Why? The story seems to be substantially true, given the weakness of the non-denial denials of it. Leveson was triggered by improper interference with communications. What evidence is there in this case of similar misconduct?
    True stories can upset even more if they're inconvenient true stories.
    If those allegations are true it would appear that fraud is being committed.

    And yet the reaction of some is to want to stop the story being reported.

    Telling.
    I remember the reaction by some quarters to the times investigation into Rotherham abuse scandal.
  • BarnesianBarnesian Posts: 7,979
    Ishmael_Z said:

    John_M said:
    On the side nearer the camera. Pedantry trumps mathematics.
    It's got at least six sides including its backside. It's white on its nearside and topside and apparently on its outside but probably not on its inside.
  • Cyclefree said:

    Ishmael_Z said:

    Pong said:
    Why? The story seems to be substantially true, given the weakness of the non-denial denials of it. Leveson was triggered by improper interference with communications. What evidence is there in this case of similar misconduct?
    True stories can upset even more if they're inconvenient true stories.
    If those allegations are true it would appear that fraud is being committed.

    And yet the reaction of some is to want to stop the story being reported.

    Telling.
    I remember the reaction by some quarters to the times investigation into Rochdale abuse scandal.
    Nothing is happening in Rotherham (ditto others)
    Stafford hospital is safe (ditto others)
    Jimmy Savile is a great person (ditto others)
    Kids Company is a well run charity (ditto others)
    Elections in Tower Hamlets are fair
    The banks are well run

    I'm sure there are many other examples.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,520

    Cyclefree said:

    Ishmael_Z said:

    Pong said:
    Why? The story seems to be substantially true, given the weakness of the non-denial denials of it. Leveson was triggered by improper interference with communications. What evidence is there in this case of similar misconduct?
    True stories can upset even more if they're inconvenient true stories.
    If those allegations are true it would appear that fraud is being committed.

    And yet the reaction of some is to want to stop the story being reported.

    Telling.
    I remember the reaction by some quarters to the times investigation into Rochdale abuse scandal.
    Nothing is happening in Rotherham (ditto others)
    Stafford hospital is safe (ditto others)
    Jimmy Savile is a great person (ditto others)
    Kids Company is a well run charity (ditto others)
    Elections in Tower Hamlets are fair
    The banks are well run

    I'm sure there are many other examples.
    President's Club was fine ... ;)
  • Cyclefree said:

    Ishmael_Z said:

    Pong said:
    Why? The story seems to be substantially true, given the weakness of the non-denial denials of it. Leveson was triggered by improper interference with communications. What evidence is there in this case of similar misconduct?
    True stories can upset even more if they're inconvenient true stories.
    If those allegations are true it would appear that fraud is being committed.

    And yet the reaction of some is to want to stop the story being reported.

    Telling.
    I remember the reaction by some quarters to the times investigation into Rochdale abuse scandal.
    Nothing is happening in Rotherham (ditto others)
    Stafford hospital is safe (ditto others)
    Jimmy Savile is a great person (ditto others)
    Kids Company is a well run charity (ditto others)
    Elections in Tower Hamlets are fair
    The banks are well run

    I'm sure there are many other examples.
    Just wait for when jezza gets in and implements his supreme leader reforms of the free press...it will be a choice between thesqwawkbox and thecanary to tell us the truth...
  • Cyclefree said:

    Ishmael_Z said:

    Pong said:
    Why? The story seems to be substantially true, given the weakness of the non-denial denials of it. Leveson was triggered by improper interference with communications. What evidence is there in this case of similar misconduct?
    True stories can upset even more if they're inconvenient true stories.
    If those allegations are true it would appear that fraud is being committed.

    And yet the reaction of some is to want to stop the story being reported.

    Telling.
    I remember the reaction by some quarters to the times investigation into Rochdale abuse scandal.
    Nothing is happening in Rotherham (ditto others)
    Stafford hospital is safe (ditto others)
    Jimmy Savile is a great person (ditto others)
    Kids Company is a well run charity (ditto others)
    Elections in Tower Hamlets are fair
    The banks are well run

    I'm sure there are many other examples.
    President's Club was fine ... ;)
    Indeed.

    Nobody who went knew anything about anything apparently.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772

    Cyclefree said:

    Ishmael_Z said:

    Pong said:
    Why? The story seems to be substantially true, given the weakness of the non-denial denials of it. Leveson was triggered by improper interference with communications. What evidence is there in this case of similar misconduct?
    True stories can upset even more if they're inconvenient true stories.
    If those allegations are true it would appear that fraud is being committed.

    And yet the reaction of some is to want to stop the story being reported.

    Telling.
    I remember the reaction by some quarters to the times investigation into Rochdale abuse scandal.
    Nothing is happening in Rotherham (ditto others)
    Stafford hospital is safe (ditto others)
    Jimmy Savile is a great person (ditto others)
    Kids Company is a well run charity (ditto others)
    Elections in Tower Hamlets are fair
    The banks are well run

    I'm sure there are many other examples.
    President's Club was fine ... ;)
    Indeed.

    Nobody who went knew anything about anything apparently.
    Well in fairness they were mainly directors.
  • FloaterFloater Posts: 14,195

    Ishmael_Z said:

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/24/jobs-immigration-eu-italian-fury-palpable-ahead-general-election/

    "Since the last election in 2014, the migration issue has transformed Italian politics, fueling anger with both Brussels and the Italian government. Four years ago only 4% of Italians put immigration top of their electoral concerns, today that figure is over 33%, according to surveys.

    The issue is never far from the news, as last month when an Italian woman was found dismembered in a suitcase and several Nigerian immigrants were arrested for the crime. A former Lega supporter then shot and injured six migrants in retaliation.

    “Nigerian pushers like that one who hacked an Italian girl into pieces are going to be sent home with a kick up the ass,” Mr Salvini tells a crowd in the pretty, pink central piazza of Sassuolo, a tile-making town in the hills above Parma and Bologna.

    Above a placard proclaiming “STOP Invasione”, Mr Salvini rails against globalisation and promises Muslims will not be able to build mosques as long as they discriminate against women."

    A staggering statistic.

    The Merkel effect.
    There has been a uptick in sexual assaults in Italy by migrants

    I am visiting Brindisi in the summer and recently two immigrants raped a young lad outside the main railway station.

    There was also the gang rape of a young lady in front of her partner (he got badly hurt too) - that was on a beach but I can't remember where exactly

  • Ishmael_ZIshmael_Z Posts: 8,981

    Cyclefree said:

    Ishmael_Z said:

    Pong said:
    Why? The story seems to be substantially true, given the weakness of the non-denial denials of it. Leveson was triggered by improper interference with communications. What evidence is there in this case of similar misconduct?
    True stories can upset even more if they're inconvenient true stories.
    If those allegations are true it would appear that fraud is being committed.

    And yet the reaction of some is to want to stop the story being reported.

    Telling.
    I remember the reaction by some quarters to the times investigation into Rochdale abuse scandal.
    Nothing is happening in Rotherham (ditto others)
    Stafford hospital is safe (ditto others)
    Jimmy Savile is a great person (ditto others)
    Kids Company is a well run charity (ditto others)
    Elections in Tower Hamlets are fair
    The banks are well run

    I'm sure there are many other examples.
    President's Club was fine ... ;)
    You badly needed to stop digging over this, even before GOSH hilariously pulled the rug from under you. You are so much more royalist than the king, that even the FT journalist who reported the thing said that most of the women involved were fine with it, and therefore she was fine with it, but it should just have been made clearer to the naive (and not overly bright) minority who read nothing in to the dress code that, yes, there was the outside chance of an elderly stockbroker getting his knob out in the course of the evening (to cries of "Oh look, it's just like a real one, only smaller!") Why does your judgment outweigh hers, beyond the obvious fact that she is a woman? Are you over 80? Have you never been on a stag night? Are you not essentially on a mission to mansplain that this is not the sort of thing you would permit your wife, servants or adult daughters to be involved in?
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,520
    Ishmael_Z said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Ishmael_Z said:

    Pong said:
    Why? The story seems to be substantially true, given the weakness of the non-denial denials of it. Leveson was triggered by improper interference with communications. What evidence is there in this case of similar misconduct?
    True stories can upset even more if they're inconvenient true stories.
    If those allegations are true it would appear that fraud is being committed.

    And yet the reaction of some is to want to stop the story being reported.

    Telling.
    I remember the reaction by some quarters to the times investigation into Rochdale abuse scandal.
    Nothing is happening in Rotherham (ditto others)
    Stafford hospital is safe (ditto others)
    Jimmy Savile is a great person (ditto others)
    Kids Company is a well run charity (ditto others)
    Elections in Tower Hamlets are fair
    The banks are well run

    I'm sure there are many other examples.
    President's Club was fine ... ;)
    You badly needed to stop digging over this, even before GOSH hilariously pulled the rug from under you. You are so much more royalist than the king, that even the FT journalist who reported the thing said that most of the women involved were fine with it, and therefore she was fine with it, but it should just have been made clearer to the naive (and not overly bright) minority who read nothing in to the dress code that, yes, there was the outside chance of an elderly stockbroker getting his knob out in the course of the evening (to cries of "Oh look, it's just like a real one, only smaller!") Why does your judgment outweigh hers, beyond the obvious fact that she is a woman? Are you over 80? Have you never been on a stag night? Are you not essentially on a mission to mansplain that this is not the sort of thing you would permit your wife, servants or adult daughters to be involved in?
    WTF are you on about?
  • Ishmael_ZIshmael_Z Posts: 8,981

    Ishmael_Z said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Ishmael_Z said:

    Pong said:
    Why? The story seems to be substantially true, given the weakness of the non-denial denials of it. Leveson was triggered by improper interference with communications. What evidence is there in this case of similar misconduct?
    True stories can upset even more if they're inconvenient true stories.
    If those allegations are true it would appear that fraud is being committed.

    And yet the reaction of some is to want to stop the story being reported.

    Telling.
    I remember the reaction by some quarters to the times investigation into Rochdale abuse scandal.
    Nothing is happening in Rotherham (ditto others)
    Stafford hospital is safe (ditto others)
    Jimmy Savile is a great person (ditto others)
    Kids Company is a well run charity (ditto others)
    Elections in Tower Hamlets are fair
    The banks are well run

    I'm sure there are many other examples.
    President's Club was fine ... ;)
    You badly needed to stop digging over this, even before GOSH hilariously pulled the rug from under you. You are so much more royalist than the king, that even the FT journalist who reported the thing said that most of the women involved were fine with it, and therefore she was fine with it, but it should just have been made clearer to the naive (and not overly bright) minority who read nothing in to the dress code that, yes, there was the outside chance of an elderly stockbroker getting his knob out in the course of the evening (to cries of "Oh look, it's just like a real one, only smaller!") Why does your judgment outweigh hers, beyond the obvious fact that she is a woman? Are you over 80? Have you never been on a stag night? Are you not essentially on a mission to mansplain that this is not the sort of thing you would permit your wife, servants or adult daughters to be involved in?
    WTF are you on about?
    Ah, the feigned incomprehension defence.
  • brendan16brendan16 Posts: 2,315

    Ishmael_Z said:

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/24/jobs-immigration-eu-italian-fury-palpable-ahead-general-election/

    "Since the last election in 2014, the migration issue has transformed Italian politics, fueling anger with both Brussels and the Italian government. Four years ago only 4% of Italians put immigration top of their electoral concerns, today that figure is over 33%, according to surveys.

    The issue is never far from the news, as last month when an Italian woman was found dismembered in a suitcase and several Nigerian immigrants were arrested for the crime. A former Lega supporter then shot and injured six migrants in retaliation.

    “Nigerian pushers like that one who hacked an Italian girl into pieces are going to be sent home with a kick up the ass,” Mr Salvini tells a crowd in the pretty, pink central piazza of Sassuolo, a tile-making town in the hills above Parma and Bologna.

    Above a placard proclaiming “STOP Invasione”, Mr Salvini rails against globalisation and promises Muslims will not be able to build mosques as long as they discriminate against women."

    A staggering statistic.

    The Merkel effect.
    More like the Mediterranean and being the closest European nation to Libya which has turned into a basket case.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,520
    edited February 2018
    Ishmael_Z said:

    Ah, the feigned incomprehension defence.

    No, just greatly bemused by your unwarranted tirade.
  • Ishmael_ZIshmael_Z Posts: 8,981

    Ishmael_Z said:

    Ah, the feigned incomprehension defence.

    No, just greatly bemused by your unwarranted tirade.
    Well, review your own posting history, then. You were giving it very large about how this was the worst thing to happen in the history of ever, and how saying that the women involved were mostly fine with it was "victim blaming", and you are still appending it to a list which has Jimmy Savile in it. So the fact that GOSH aren't fussed enough to reject the donation makes your position look a bit weak.

    Unless there are two of you posting under the same name, in which case apologies.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited February 2018
    I really wish people stopped doing these thread things...just write a blog post or a text doc and link it. Or better still tw@tter actually had an option to accommodate this properly.
  • FloaterFloater Posts: 14,195
    brendan16 said:

    Ishmael_Z said:

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/24/jobs-immigration-eu-italian-fury-palpable-ahead-general-election/

    "Since the last election in 2014, the migration issue has transformed Italian politics, fueling anger with both Brussels and the Italian government. Four years ago only 4% of Italians put immigration top of their electoral concerns, today that figure is over 33%, according to surveys.

    The issue is never far from the news, as last month when an Italian woman was found dismembered in a suitcase and several Nigerian immigrants were arrested for the crime. A former Lega supporter then shot and injured six migrants in retaliation.

    “Nigerian pushers like that one who hacked an Italian girl into pieces are going to be sent home with a kick up the ass,” Mr Salvini tells a crowd in the pretty, pink central piazza of Sassuolo, a tile-making town in the hills above Parma and Bologna.

    Above a placard proclaiming “STOP Invasione”, Mr Salvini rails against globalisation and promises Muslims will not be able to build mosques as long as they discriminate against women."

    A staggering statistic.

    The Merkel effect.
    More like the Mediterranean and being the closest European nation to Libya which has turned into a basket case.
    The migrants involved in the Brindisi rape were Pakistani nationals
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited February 2018

    I really wish people stopped doing these thread things...just write a blog post or a text doc and link it. Or better still tw@tter actually had an option to accommodate this properly.
    https://twitter.com/JeremyCliffe/status/967813726693986311

    So we have France, Italy and Russia taking this aggressive approach to ISIS members from their own countries.
  • https://twitter.com/JeremyCliffe/status/967821458348101632

    The BBC did a programme post-brexit where the journalist travelled around Europe and in particular Italy and this was the perceived wisdom. When put to the EU bigwhigs, their solution it was only not working well enough because their wasn't enough EU integration.
  • Talking of Rotherham...

    Rotherham child abuse scandal is so big that police need another 100 officers to work on investigation which has already cost £10million

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5433053/Police-need-100-officers-tackle-Rotherham-abuse.html
  • Ishmael_ZIshmael_Z Posts: 8,981

    I really wish people stopped doing these thread things...just write a blog post or a text doc and link it. Or better still tw@tter actually had an option to accommodate this properly.
    https://twitter.com/JeremyCliffe/status/967813726693986311

    So we have France, Italy and Russia taking this aggressive approach to ISIS members from their own countries.
    "Italian special forces in Libya are pulling out stops to reduce migration on Central Med route." I am trying to think of a non-sinister literal value for which the metaphor "pulling out stops" can be cashed, and failing.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281
    JonathanD said:

    chrisb said:

    A


    Messrs Otsuka and Lech are right. The deficits are mostly phantom in nature, arising out of the dodgy accounting required by the actuaries and accounting standards setters. Quoting deficit figures of £6bn or £12bn and focusing on those to the exclusion of everything else is entirely unhelpful and will lead to poor outcomes for everyone.

    What matters is whether the USS scheme can continue to meet its pension liabilities into the future. In 2017, the scheme received £1.5bn in investment income (i.e. excluding capital gains), £1.9bn from the university employers, and £0.2bn from staff members, for a total cash income of £3.6bn.

    It paid out £1.8bn in benefits (in the form of pensions) and costs. So in cash terms, its pension payments were twice covered by its income, a very healthy state of affairs that is likely to last long into the future.

    In that context, closing the defined benefit scheme because of phantom deficits is completely misguided.
    Current cash in v current cash out is the basis for a Ponzi scheme.

    Pension deficits are valued the way they are because schemes move into gilts to account for retiring members. Therefore the fund is £6bn off where it would need to be to fund existing members. It must out-perform the gilt market, year on year, to close the £6bn gap.







    But the figures http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/dennisleech/ quotes show USS has 20% gilts in its fund. It is ridiculous to ignore the other 80% of investments when doing a deficit calculation.
    Some of the problem as i understand it is that the Universities have voted to change USS to being a very low risk fund and so the deficit has to be assessed using gilts rather than the actual current split. In that sense some of the current crisis seems to be deliberately invited especially since the last major change (final salary pension to career average) only occurred a few years ago and was meant to solve the deficit problem.
    Isn't the important fact here that historically low gilt yields have driven the cost of annuities up, which means the fund size required to purchase prospective final salary pensions is at an all time high?

    If/when gilt yields return to historically 'normal' levels the funding positions of defined benefit schemes will naturally improve.
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