Kim Spence-Jones

Refugee from Twitter, and now from home.social too. 🫤 Tofu-loving woke ex EU citizen. Retired hi-tech entrepreneur, once focused on future cities/buildings, climate & UBI, now keen on saving the planet and democracy. I dream of the day when I can return my focus to my first loves.

If you don’t like #politics, you probably shouldn’t follow me. 😁 Though I do also have a #creative side, and I'm a #maker too.

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KimSJ_at_mastodon.social@mostr.pub

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Last Notes

2024-07-25 07:38:32

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 One thing I’ve often wondered about, but not seen data on, is whether offshore wind is more reliable than onshore? That could be a good reason to support the option.

2024-07-13 08:05:36

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 Timpson could end up being the architect of the most important lasting legacy of this Government.

2024-06-29 08:33:52

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 Collateral damage, or a realisation that too much of the research is threatening to their ‘comfortable’ status quo?

2024-06-29 07:52:37

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 This is not an accident. Part of the alt-Right agenda is surely to restrict education to the elite,

2024-06-26 07:50:42

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 It’s a fantasy, of course. It’s hard to imagine the big economies giving up sovereignty in that way.

2024-06-20 07:53:10

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 This may be one of those ‘Yes Minister’ polls… ask the question “should governments support access to higher education for all, regardless of their background?” and you might get a different answer.

2024-04-18 16:42:43

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 It seems that Hunt is trying to promise cake for everyone and for no-one all at the same time. Basically, he hasn’t got a scoobie about what he’s going to do, and just wants everyone to leave him alone.

2024-03-22 08:31:44

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 The chart in that paper suggests that positive real interest rates were the norm in the three decades before the 2008 banking crisis, and switched to negative thereafter. I guess my instincts are wrong. Perhaps that’s because consumer returns on savings tend to be below central bank nominal interest rates? I haven’t quite got my head round the IMF concept of the ‘natural’ value, either, which they seem to think should be slightly positive. 🤔

2024-03-22 07:47:37

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 I wonder if there are data on historically how much time interest rates have been higher than inflation. My instinct is that this is quite unusual?
I found https://www.ft.com/content/088d3368-bb8b-4ff3-9df7-a7680d4d81b2, but it doesn’t go back very far.

2024-03-22 07:40:19

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 The statistic we really need is something like “average weekly hours worked per adult under retirement age and not in full time education”. The existing statistics give no indication of under-employed people. It would be even better to have numbers for set ranges (zero, up to 10, 10–20, etc, paid and unpaid] which would also show abuse at the high end too.
Perhaps this would be a useful addition to National Census data?

2024-03-19 17:14:00

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 @npub1dg3…udnr Is the tight labour market SWL mentions as much of a constraint as he suggests. Many in so-called employment are in low-productivity zero-hours jobs; more have left the labour force either because wages are too low, or because they are on NHS waiting lists. Add small businesses wasting effort fighting hostile and under-resourced public services. Add the option to relax immigration policy for key workers… Perhaps there is more spare capacity than raw figures suggest.

2024-03-19 11:41:35

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 I am only slowly beginning to understand the extent to which ‘jurassic’ economic theory has informed the politics of the past half century, and how that informs the MMT debate. It has never been about economic theory, it’s all about how the MMT view radically alters politics. No wonder so many people are resistant to its ideas.

2024-03-15 07:04:53

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 You may recall that this is exactly what I predicted, and there is a huge danger of a domino effect. Many businesses are on the edge thanks to the pressures created by Tory policies.

2024-03-11 09:05:32

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 My mostly unevidenced instinct is that possibly women will be less inclined to take wild risks in pursuit of large rewards. This can only be good for economic stability.
(The evidence I have comes from the last Scottish Independence referendum. Women proved to be more cautious over issues such as the ill-defined future of Scottish currency.)

2024-03-09 18:27:29

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 Is this still a metric we should be focused on? What if lower growth is accompanied by less damage to the environment? Or greater net happiness? Since we don’t measure these things properly, how would we know? Why is there no proper debate about what the Government should prioritise?

2024-03-07 09:24:50

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 It’s not nearly radical enough to solve UK’s problems, but it might be the only politically possible step.
If Great Britain is to survive intact, we need to rebalance power by giving English regions enough autonomy to have the same status as Wales and Scotland (with commensurate decrease in the power of Westminster). Sadly I can’t see that ever happening. I fervently hope I’m wrong.

2024-03-05 12:10:10

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 What is deeply sad is that the solutions are obvious and well researched, but they just seem to be politically unacceptable. Which is really odd, because any party that did the right thing would become extremely popular.

2024-03-04 10:18:30

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 @npub1t3r…6knd The fact that Reeves was trained by the PPE lunatics In Oxford gives little hope that she doesn’t actually believe the dumb stuff she’s spouting.
Never have I so fervently hoped I’m wrong!

2024-02-29 18:08:07

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 Isn’t this mainly a result of GDP per capita falling steadily over the past few years? That really should be the metric used to define recession.

2024-02-25 11:17:30

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 Increasing insecurity is more likely to increase the desire to spend on ‘big’ weapons, I fear.

2024-01-31 09:25:39

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@npub1psd…9sr7 As usual, greed trumps delivering service to customers. 😢
Now there’s no longer any reason to be loyal to the Pi. It was fun while it lasted.

2023-12-30 12:04:28

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 My take on this is subtly different. It’s politicians ability to portray others as less than human which is the root problem. Such sociopaths see no one except themselves as ‘human’. To wage war, you have to be able to discount the harm to your own side as well as the other.
Why do we continue to allow sociopaths to lead us? Sadly, it’s because they can lie so convincingly that we continue to trust them.

2023-12-27 12:04:35

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 How can you do that without spreading Covid? 🤔

2023-12-07 11:04:26

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 Yup, me too, but I’m also frustrated be #justStopOil’s unrealistic idealism. As Manny Shinwell (of sainted memory) once remarked, “deal with people where you find them, not where you’d like them to be’.

2023-12-07 10:28:34

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 I have always felt that ‘just stop oil’ was a doomed approach. We need to focus on demand reduction, not supply reduction. The oil companies will fight tooth and nail to preserve their business models.
Governments should focus on using tax (on fossil fuels) and grants (for renewables and for demand reduction like home insulation) to encourage that pivot.

2023-11-28 13:19:54

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@npub1pxk…sxqy @npub1g0t…tvm4 We failed with a rooted Christmas tree last year. In two minds about whether to try again this year. Part of the household is in favour of buying an expensive plastic (realistic-looking) tree. I’ve no idea whether that would be an ecologically sound decision. 🤷

2023-11-19 11:20:57

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 I find myself disturbed by the door handle being installed upside-down. I assume this is symbolic, but I’m not sure of what?

2023-11-13 13:38:57

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 Hmm. I can see good arguments for using either metric. If I were leader of India, I would be quite pissed off at being lectured by US which produces twice as much CO2 from a population a quarter of the size! Conversely, China dominates total CO2 emissions.
Btw, here is a useful (though somewhat dated) and sortable summary of country-by-country emissions…
https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-per-capita/

2023-11-13 01:51:12

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 Wouldn’t emissions per capita be a fairer metric to use

2023-11-10 16:04:28

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@npub1kr8…znpx @npub1wyu…t407 @npub1g0t…tvm4 GDP measurement would be fine if it was just one of many statistics collected by the public sector. The problem is it is considered THE signifier how the UK is doing. It is high time we started to measure and pay attention to net national happiness.

2023-11-04 12:19:40

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 One might hope that in the 21st century, politics should be about more than self-interest. I wonder if that will ever be true.

2023-09-18 14:53:07

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@npub1xpc…3t05 Maybe the Apple Tag fell off.
😂😂😂😂

2023-09-01 15:18:58

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@npub1wpj…7m4z Shares also represent income. Oligarchs’ dividends provide regular incomes most of us won’t see in a lifetime’s earnings.

2023-09-01 14:59:00

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@npub1ddp…2tax Presumably, as per his promise, Musk will be paying all legal fees for this poor guy.
I’m not holding my breath.

2023-07-19 13:17:04

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 @npub1dg3…udnr
A rock and a hard place… Imposing adequate regulation on privatised utilities will massively destroy shareholder value (with knock-on effects on pensions, etc.), & probably make it impossible to raise the capital needed to fulfil their new obligations. Nationalising them, otoh, will be expensive, open to re-privatisation, and likely to lead to under-investment.
Is the solution to impose regulation, & for Gov’t to become a major shareholder in exchange for investment.