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Emeritus Prof. Christopher May

ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk

<p>Retired Professor of Political Economy; now enjoying the fediverse.</p>

Posts

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    The Labour Govt (under Keir Starmer *and* Andy Burnham) is casting around for money to bolster the UK&#39;s defence budget. So, of course part of that is seeking &#39;savings&#39; from other Dept.s including the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero; and there, it looks like support for heat pumps may be scaled back, undermining the Dept.&#39;s central &#39;mission&#39;. Presenting a &#39;choice&#39; between measures to shift energy use and national security is more political myopia! #p...

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    Meanwhile in Norfolk.... Anti-immigrant violence continues, with mobs storming houses they believe house immigrants (and/or refugees). This is the sort of behaviour that has been stoked by the Fascist Frog, ReformUK &amp; their familiars. The protestors are being goaded by those who claim to recognise their &#39;legitimate grievances&#39;... the toxic politics of immigration are directly responsibility for this public violence. #immigration #politics #Thetford https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ar...

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    So, of course, as more people use AI &amp; associated technologies to make job applications, so employers deluged with applications are using AI to sort, long list candidates. But, as we might expect, it transpires that AI prefers applications written with the aid of AI, being &#39;impressed&#39; by the forms of claim an AI-aided CV includes. Its classic &#39;enshittification&#39;, making the process less efficient, as humans need to intervene, and more, not less time consuming. #workers #AI...

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    Our political class generally, and the current Govt. in particular, often depict actions to respond to climate change as too expensive &amp; detrimental to growth (and by extension out economic wellbeing); so its no surprise that when specialised agencies conclude that actually *not* responding to climate change is more costly, and that climate change itself is endangering our security, such reports are buried (until someone finds them, that is). #politics #ClimateChange https://www.thenerve....

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    The proposed live-streaming of the execution by firing squad of Nidal Hasan (who murdered 13 people on a USArmy base in 2009) represents a new low (hard as that might be to imagine) in the morality of the administration of the Tangerine Tyrant. Whatever one may think about death sentences, the live-streaming of the event makes judicial execution an entertainment, and this takes us back to the idea of public hangings &amp; burnings. The USA is accelerating into the/its past. #politics #Trump

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    Oh dear, the wealth advisors claiming that David Reuben (billionaire) had &#39;left&#39; the UK due to Labour&#39;s tax changes, have been caught out... he&#39;s been domiciled in Monaco for tax purposes by his own admission for over a decade. And given other evidence of a lack of &#39;exodus&#39; by the super-rich, it would be nice if the media started reporting real news not making up things that are convenient to their owners.... Not holding my breath, though #tax #politics #inequality h...

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    A favourite trope of the small-state crowd is to attack taxes by saying &#39;make work pay&#39; as if taxes had prompted a low-wage economy. The *real* issue is the share of national Gross Value Added that accrues to capital &amp; to labour (in aggregated terms). In 1975 workers&#39; share of GVA was 71.9%.. fifty years later that has dropped to 59.7%. So, while the UK&#39;s economy has largely stagnated, capital has increased its capture of value from economic activity. #economics #inequali...

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    Whatever went on around the permitter of RAF Farirford it has spooked the USAF, who this weekend &#39;moved&#39; their heavy B-1 Lancer bombers elsewhere.... Depending on your perspective this could be a panic response to a miss-reported criminal incident, an accusation the UK cannot provide security for airfields, or a bit of political theatre designed to hide something else (although what might be being hidden is not clear). #RAFFairford #politics #security https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/artic...

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    In the last week OpenAI&#39;s software has been revealed (confirmed might be better) as a rogue agent, hacking IT systems around the world, prompting legal cases for damages. Might OpenAI&#39;s future not be one of growth but of decline under the growing weight of legal claims against it. The key issue will be Courts&#39; view of the ability to assign responsibility to OpenAI. Whichever jurisdiction *does* establish legal responsibility will quickly become the place to sue OpenAI! #AI #RuleOf...

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    When I worked for Charter 88 (in the early 1990s) on constitutional reform, a frequent argument against abandoning first past the post elections was only FPTP would deliver strong Govt.s, while forms of proportional representation would slow down governance &amp; require the building of consensus - all too slow for modern politics. By argument then, as it is now; is look around us, this is the country so-called strong &amp; quick Govt. has wrought; lets try something slower &amp; consensual! #...

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    As over half the NHS Trusts that had originally &#39;encouraged&#39; by NHS England to use Palantir&#39;s software have actually stopped doing so, the Statistics Regulator is renewing its investigation into the claims for success put about by NHSE. NHS Trusts have found the claims often to be unsubstantiated &amp; as such the regulator now wants to know how &amp; why NHSE made such claims in the first place. The answer is likely to be summed up by the phrase;&#39; follow the money&#39;! #Pal...

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    My favourite paintings, no.62 Harmonia Rosales, The Harvest (1984) Like many artists of African decent, Afro-Cuban Harmonia Rosales has been exploring the absence (or marginalisation) of black people from paintings across centuries of art history. This has led her to reinterpret classic art subjects substituting people from different ethnicities for the usual white subjects. This example is a powerful reimagining of a common renaissance composition. Wonderful. #art #TodaysPainting #racism

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    On Thursday Zack Polanski hopes to win the Holborn &amp; St Pancras by-election, where currently the betting is he will fail to dislodge Labour. The key Q. will be whether the Green Party of England &amp; Wales annual conference in the days before the vote will aid or hinder his local campaign. The next seven days may well be pivotal for the GPEW &amp; its leader. We can expect a lot of far from disinterested political commentary &amp; political spin, so be prepared for a fog of invective. #...

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    I know, you know I&#39;ve said this before but today&#39;s headline in the Guardian &#39;live&#39; section just (as always) makes me grind my teeth... housing price rises are not &#39;growth&#39;... they are, let&#39;s be clear: ASSET PRICE INFLATION.... and as such *not* a good thing that needs to be maintained or worried about when it such inflation is &#39;weak&#39;. Until we end this mind set we will be unlikely to solve our housing problems #housing #media #politics

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    You&#39;ll see a lot of media coverage of strikes by university academic staff in the next weeks; so, whatever the immediate/local causes of industrial action, the underlying (albeit linked) factors are these: 1. the Govt. &amp; political class no longer really value a strong university sector &amp; treat it merely as a unprofitable personal service; 2. Universities&#39; senior management have lost sight of the fact that their academic staff are vital to their institutions success. #universit...

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    For those of us/you waiting for the (inevitable?) crash related to AI &amp; related technologies, the late economist Rüdiger Dornbusch, observed: &#39;crises take longer to arrive than you can possibly imagine, but when they do come, they happen faster than you can possibly imagine&#39;! #AI #FinancialCrisis h/t FT

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    Meanwhile in the Southern Hemisphere, the peak of winter ice in Antartica has again falls to a record low level (as it has for the last there years). As Will Hobbs (UTasmania) says: &#39;How sensitive is the global climate system to this loss of sea ice? We are still working to put numbers on that. But the system is changing faster than we are understanding it&#39;. My guess is its unlikely to be good news when we do find out for sure. #ClimateChange #Environment #Antartica https://www.the...

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    My favourite paintings, no.58 Lavinia Fontana, Portrait of a Pregnant Woman (no date, late C16th). Lavinia Fontana is generally regarded as the first woman to earn her living as a professional painter. This possible self-portrait therefore may have been a statement about her pregnancy not being an impediment to her ongoing production of paintings. Pregnant self-portraits are also rare &amp; so this may also be the first. A female artist taking command of her own image?! #art #TodaysPainting

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    Our US friends likely know this but on this side of the Atlantic, all had gone pretty quiet on ICE &amp; the continuing round-up of people suspected of being illegal immigrants (whether they actually are or not).... And this likely reflects a change in approach that has seen the agency take a quieter (but as it happens ever more active) stance on arrests &amp; detentions. So, here is a long piece from the Guardian detailing what is actually going on.... shocking! #ICE #USPol https://www.theg...

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    RE: https://mastodon.me.uk/@ChrisMayLA6/117336467223964993 If you&#39;re considering a hybrid car, then the debate in the thread after my post (below) this morning is fascinating, surfaces some interesting data &amp; research and certainly should be read (not least due to owners&#39; experience being set out) before you go the the dealership to test drive a hybrid. Thanks to everyone who has contributed (so far) to this thread - its been fascinating &amp; a good example of the socialisation of...

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    My favourite paintings, no.57 Stanley Spencer, Swan Upping at Cookham (no date) Stanley Spencer painted Cookham a lot (setting biblical scenes there as well as painting everyday life), but this painting is one of the best, offering a narrative (of swan upping, whatever that might be?), as well as a strong sense of pattern &amp; colour. The slightly mysterious subject is part of its charm, and the tension between stillness and movement is just lovely. Something to savour. #art #TodaysPaintin...

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    One potential trigger for the much anticipated AI-related financial crash, might be the uptake across (non-Silicon Valley) corporate America of Chinese &#39;open&#39; AI &amp; related technologies, with so-called &#39;open weight&#39; technologies (not all Chinese, of course) accounting for over half of token usage (but less than 15% of expenditure). For the large proprietary AI-firms the time of expanding demand for their services may already be over? If so, the investment over-hang may drive...

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    The impact on free speech &amp; the right to protest of the proscription of Palestine Action seems to be growing as voters report growing concerns about Labour&#39;s policy. While hardly likely to encourage voters to shift rightwards, it could easily contribute to voters &#39;sitting on their hands&#39; or shifting votes to the Green Party of England &amp; Wales or others. One more own goal by Blue Labour. #politics #protest #democracy #PalestineAction https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026...

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    Corporate welfare (from direct subsidies to &#39;tax holidays&#39;) are often offered to corporations, due to implicit &amp; often explicit threats they will relocate without such &#39;support&#39;. But, as Rana Foroohar (FT), notes: &#39;Research looking at business incentives between 1990 &amp; 2015 [by US states] found that they tripled as a share of business “value added” during that time. But they changed the location, expansion or retention decision of 25% or less of firms receiving them...

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    My favourite paintings no.56 Beryl Cook, Shopping Mall (1995) The art world has long dismissed Beryl Cook, although recently she has been &#39;rediscovered&#39;. One of the UK&#39;s most popular painters her work offers both entertainment but often also subtle social commentary. Here the everyday life of a shopping mall is depicted as also saying something about our everyday interactions *and* distances. There is a strong sense of consumerism as an isolating social practice. #art #TodaysPain...

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    Q, are hybrid cars really part of Green Transition? If drivers rely on the petrol element too much, then likely not really. as Shane Brennan (ChargeUK) put it: &#39;A plug-in hybrid electric vehicle that is never plugged in is a costly petrol car puling round a heavy battery&#39;; as PHEV drivers often find mid-journey charging too time consuming (75% of popular PHEVs can&#39;t use fast charging), they rely (too much) on the petrol engine aspect of their cars. #ElectricCars #GreenTransition...

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    As Cas Mudde notes, &#39;both the far right &amp; “far left” threaten the established parties, only the far right threatens liberal democracy&#39;; those who have &#39;legitimate concerns&#39; about immigration are listened to while this who have other social concerns (which are much more legitimate) are ignored by the mainstream parties.... No wonder parties outside the democratic oligopoly of modern politics are picking up more votes; voters want change not more of the same! #politics http...

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    As Michael Basler argues (Observer letters), &#39;judging regional economies through tax receipts ignores the historical concentration of wealth, capital &amp; corporate power in London&#39;! Regional disparities have not been the accidental consequences of economic processes, but rather have been engineered by the City of London &amp; financial services. Unless the new regionalism promised by Andy Burnham specifically seeks to rebalance the UK&#39;s economy, it will amount to little. #econom...

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    So, who is Katie Lewis? Its becoming apparent that Lewis is the sherpa (or conduit) who facilitates closer (funding) links between the world of Crypto &amp; ReformUK Ltd. She sits in the core team of Reform, but has no social media presence (all now seemingly deleted) and is seldom if ever in the spotlight. She once worked for Cameo (where the Fascist Frog&#39;s videos-for-hire appeared) but little else is known about her. Anyone know more? #ReformUK #Politics #crypto #NigelFarage h/t Obse...

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    Despite the housing crisis being in a large part caused by the high price of housing (stoked by the lax availability of credit, pushing up prices), Andy Burnham is now looking to revive the &#39;Help-to-Buy&#39; scheme for first-time buyers. Once again a short term solution to a problem that doesn&#39;t exist (a lack of &#39;demand&#39; for expensive houses) is being proposed, instead of the better solution of building more social housing to shift the logic of the hosing market! Nuts! #housin...