jaywalker

'so-called' English fans?

Yes, you did very well. This has become a major problem for many families, including mine. An obvious need for legislation (both for mandatory re-testing and mandatory reporting by GPs of failing health to DVLA). Many elderly drivers are very good drivers and will easily pass such tests; but many are not, as the tragic cases reported in the news indicate. The good relations of my own family have been at severe risk from this. A parent who should not drive (believe me), but who is convinced that they are absolutely fine. A GP who felt their duty of care was to support the expressed interests of the patient not the wider community, despite the overwhelming medical evidence. Persuasion fails. Then what do you do? Now in my '50s I have become father to my parents: they do not take kindly to it.

???? Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > "Water free at the point of use".....what could > possibly go wrong..... well mine is? what is your point? The NHS is free at the point of use too - that does not mean it is free???? if the marginal cost is near zero (which it is on household quantities) then it is also allocatively efficient to have a zero price, as any free-market neo-liberal economist will tell you. Unfortunately, the market has no way of getting there, does it?

OK I will get flamed for rehearsing my A-level economics, but that is not a Trumpy, that is strict economic reasoning, so to call it a Trumpy is a Trumpy :-). Assumptions: Thames Water is a natural monopoly (thank you Tories). Thames Water profit maximises (at least as an approximation). Thames Water have some idea of where their demand curve is. For them, today is like tomorrow in the sense that there are very high barriers to entry and no real sign of competition. This is a lump-sum tax, not one that varies with output. Conclusion: neither marginal cost nor marginal revenue have changed. Output and Price stay the same, the owners pay the lump-sum tax as they would be worse off if they tried to pass it on to consumers. Hence the rationale for one-off taxes on the banks etc in the past. Thames Water are also subject to RPI pricing regime - they will in any case not be allowed to build any variable cost of a less-polluting variable supply into their future price bids (well, that is not strictly true, as we saw with negotiations with water companies for cleaner beaches....) None of this is to try to justify the current set up of an industry that should be nationalised immediately to give water free at the point of use, with reservoirs and distribution based on national need, not financial interest.

It is a general principle that outsiders see the tacit predispositions of insiders more clearly than insiders could (Elias). This is one of the major reasons why, tribally, we tend to form alliances that idealise our own virtues and denigrate the other (to keep them from forcing a revelation). I think we should be more resolute in thinking of ourselves as subjects of myth. So when the other appears, even if, as here, in a restaurant review, we should think that there is probably truth in it. Our default position should be to think of the possibility of that truth, not denigrate the other.

I watch in disbelief as people buy the Sunday Times. What are the values or insights expressed in this newspaper that might be productive to engage with? I fear, as a general rule, none. In many ways I think it is worse than a tabloid. At least there one has the option of reading as if the model reader can sustain irony in response to what is written (this reader is probably the case for the journalists who produce them, thought not, perhaps, for the majority of empirical readers).

Funny how these things bring back memories. That episode of Dr Who where the stretched canvas anti-hero implored 'moisturise me! moisturise me!' before their inevitable conflagration (at what I seem to remember was the end of the world).

Lordship 516 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > @Jaywalker... > > Hesse's writings are influential mainly in the > physical sciences but could not be regarded as an > influential figure in the wider social science > context. I think this is wrong. Her arguments are about the nature of enquiry - there is nothing to disqualify them from an interrogation of social science. That there is a profound imbrication of the tropic in any 'rational' 'objective' 'value-free' enquiry extends beyond the physical science she used as her evidence. Knorr Cetina on the other hand does have > much value due to her studies in regard to the > relationships between science, knowledge & > society. I agree. I was blown away by her writing (see particularly the discussion of CERN in Epistemic Cultures). > All that navel-gazing stuff is a bit lost on me. But what else do we have? We cannot trust our everyday self-certainties - if we could, you would not bother with econometrics. And if you take THAT step, why stop there? > I am more grounded in Descartes, Descartes articulated radical doubt (he made the mistake of travelling in his youth - made him a bit postmodern). We do not have to take the cogito at face value. Newton & Leibniz > - the rationalists & mathematicians well, Newton believed in magic, Lucifer, and all sorts of influential (and rubbish) metaphysics. And he was, of course, wrong (about the physics). who embraced > empiricism also though many empiricists have a lot > of difficulty in embracing rationalism. I tend > also to add tinctures of skepticism & pragmatism > in my approach to my work. Each has their place. I guess pragmatism was a philosophy directly aimed at positivism. How do you live under these two roofs?? > Also - please don't confuse econometricists with > classical economists. bien sur, but you said you were doing 'agent based modelling'. So how do you theorise that? Quants are regularly at > odds or at least uneasy with our classical > cousins. Economists are good at big-picture > thinking, no they are not. usually good at talking and are really > really good at politics and influencing > government, I fear this is true whereas on the other hand quants are > not so good at this, mostly because we are too > critical of our own short-comings and very aware > of what criteria is missing from the mix - > politicians prefer absolutes to conditional > thought. Big picture 'blue-sky' thinking has been > the cause of most economic failure as the people > with the most clout are often people with very > little experience of analytical objectivity. ok > Science makes knowledge, knowledge shapes the > future. there is no such thing as knowledge. there is only action in which sense is stabilised/de-stabilised. you need to update your agent based models to accommodate this. It is a fundamental pragmatist principle (e.g. see John Dewey). Quants merely try to make sense of the > world around us today - we don't try to shape the > future; we test hypotheses & attempt to forecast > trends. Often we can see black holes but much of > the time a suitable solution eludes us. Our > successes are greater than our failures so we find > ourselves still gainfully employed. well, beware of the poker players delusion. "I won several tournaments so I am a good poker player" (then look at Monte-Carlo simulations of poker tournaments).

Jah Lush Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Pseuds Corner. Perhaps you are right. But then, specialised intellectual endeavour is condemned tout court (so, in this case, we just KNOW that the fact/value distinction is true because we KNOW the difference between (say) the objective and subjective in aesthetic judgement). I assume this is your position rather than saying the specialised language is itself pseudo (I'm open to arguments but you just moo). That people working very hard over extended periods of time have specialised a sense that this distinction is misplaced can then be ignored: they are just "pseuds", presumably because they recruit specialised signifiers (itself no doubt, from your regard, a "pseudish" thing to say).

OK, Pugwash, I'm signing off on this thread as too complex to make lay-judgements, both of legal entitlement and (I fear) of ongoing income tax liabilities. However, I must note that the law did change and that bare trusts are now claimable at 18. There is a different type of trust where you can specify 25 (max) but only, if I understand it, if set up on death (not I think the intention of the OP). Of course I may be wrong about all this. Certainly a case for independent financial advice (and best to take that adjective in the strictest sense of the term). There are also variable income tax liabilities that must be honoured according to the nature of the trust. And the 18-25 on-death trust has its own tax issues ... I do not find the government website unclear on the matter.

I do confess (well, this seems to be the plat du jour) to dreaming that the universe is cat. They have devised a torment for hell: you keep thinking you've escaped; but in a blink you are back in their mouths. My cat will be the seat of judgement:

Lordship, you say "I don't quite understand what is written here - trying to make out whether it was written from a Marxist or possibly a Bhuddist perspective....there is certainly a confusion [for me] of philosophy, religion & behavioural science connotations in the thought process behind the writing." No none of those. Not the place to drag the topic off GO (on which we all seem to be agreed!) but I think it is now a mainstream philosophical idea that the fact/value distinction cannot be sustained (see particularly summaries by Putnam). It took an enormous amount of intellectual labour to see this point clearly, and it has by no means seeped through into non-specialised thinking (for example, the distinction is still taught in Economics as pretty much beyond dispute). The case in point is the crystalline purity of econometric/AI modelling (I suspect from what you have said about your own work, and admirably, more of the latter than the traditional former). To hypostatise a 'science' here in which all values are given up for ever greater clarity simply won't do. Isn't laboratory science itself saturated with values (not to mention antagonistic social process)? This is true at the deep level of the metaphors and analogies on which any scientific thinking is constituted. It is also true of the appropriation by science of mathematics as a metaphorical resource (unless you think that the universe is made of mathematics!) This seems also to be orthodoxy - either in the philosophy of science (starting seminally with Hesse) or in the best sociological accounts of what scientists do (Knorr-Cetina) as opposed to what they may say they do.

without doubt "with God on their side" made me (if not Dylan ... ) an atheist, and now I always ask, when I hear politicians, who (and so therefore what) is their God? I fear that the ones that they tend to cite (as with the church-going ones currently, but there are also secular versions) do not fill me with confidence.

Well, we will see, won't we.

Pugwash Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > We did a trust fund for 4 of the grandchildren as > we had inherited some substantial stocks and > shares and due to the complexity of cashing them > in, we were advised to transfer them into a trust > Fund which is managed by the finance > fund/stockbrokers who had set up the original > portfolio. Since the grandchildren cannot inherit > until they are 25, the trustees have a bank > account where the interest from the portfolio is > transferred on a regular basis which trustees can > access to pay for school trips and essentials. > William Bailey solicitors drew up the Trust Fund > at a very reasonable cost. My point is that Trusts are neither simple nor invulnerable to change. The tax situation has changed (for example on what is owed on dividends). As it changes there are more emails to solicitors and accountants! The age conditions have also changed: what kind of a trust is it that means they cannot access until 25? This from the government website for a 'bare trust': Bare trusts Assets in a bare trust are held in the name of a trustee. However, the beneficiary has the right to all of the capital and income of the trust at any time if they?re 18 or over (in England and Wales), or 16 or over (in Scotland). This means the assets set aside by the settlor will always go directly to the intended beneficiary. Bare trusts are often used to pass assets to young people - the trustees look after them until the beneficiary is old enough. Perhaps your trust closed before this, or is another kind of trust?

"I dislike most politicians as they usually confuse the connect between microeconomics & macroeconomics, usually in an effort to justify their ideology that is always as fluid as the wind that they cast their words into. My work is always carried out dispassionately - if I do otherwise then I will get the wrong answer." Lordship, whilst I greatly appreciate your OP as satire, I doubt this can escape your own net. viz an "ideology" of fact versus value (a distinction now generally thought to be unstainable), an assertion of the integrity of recent economic theory that "connects" the micro and the macro (well, in one sense for sure - there is only the micro!: but to make anything of the macro is then an impossible task as you will never pin down the initial conditions), the consistency of your own position as an econometrician that requires you to make all sorts of ideology-saturated assumptions about probability distributions (somehow known before the developing and unknowable action that gives rise to outcomes), the adoption of ultimately rectilinear models of process (for example if they involves matrix algebra), and assumptions about the nature of decision making (here you cannot escape the infantile models of atomistic and acosmic human action on which economics rests).

I've decided to die with the rest of you. From now on, posting on just horse racing, football and very local issues like where to get the best curry will just have to do. My last social-media political will and testament says: May will undoubtedly go through with whatever she has started even if she does not believe in it (so like Heath in personality). Be very afraid. This will be seen as a period of terminal moral culpability of the Labour Party (although no one will be able to recall them). May will serially kill-off her inherited cabinet. Hammond and Truss (and I wish Grayling) in this summer's reshuffle. By the election, Boris will be one of the few survivors (safer in than out). In the election there will be huge gains for the Lib Dems. But the collapse of Labour (and the boundary changes) will see May returned with a working majority. The UK economy will shrink after hard brexit. Stagflation will worsen (the inevitable interest rate rise postponed until too late, the pound tanking as US rates are normalised more quickly than expected). Only then will the Lib Dems become the official opposition and, at the following general election, take power. Meanwhile (well at least still in my dreams), May's promise to Scotland (and to other suitors) to have a referendum after Brexit backfires: Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the City States all elect to leave in the face of economic meltdown.

It is now quite tight as to whether worthwhile. I am thinking more of gifting (7 year rule). They can then have opened for them a Junior ISA which they can only access at 18 (yes, this is young, but will a trust now extend much further?). This would probably involve a sequence of gifts each year within the ISA limit. This may be less than you are thinking of giving of course. I have been both the administrator and beneficiary of trusts: they are a nightmare. Hideously expensive to administer and complex to run. ISA's are transparent and so far seem to be immune to policy u-turns. For larger sums a trust might still be worthwhile but you will need a proper lawyer. The one who ran my family trust cost ?450 an hour (believe me).

I have already lived a long life. What I note is that despite a reasonable education and a willingness to spend some time (always so dispiriting) on current affairs, I have NO CLUE about council politics, budgets, use of funds, other than what IMMEDIATELY concerns my day-to-day life. All I can see are things that are NOT going well. My bins are now only collected when (in summer months) they have bred maggots. The new rules at the recycling centre. The stupid expenditure on things like the Melbourne Grove fiasco. The pavements are increasingly hazardous. There are road improvements at dangerous junctions that are 'too expensive'. Yet each year I get a bill for what seems to me a huge amount, and this year it has gone up much more than even the correct index of inflation (the RPI). I have no idea where the money goes or who decides how it is spent or how I might try to express my views on the matter. To whom do I write? Who are these people who are 'the Council'? What is the nature of their 'Cabinet' (really? are they serious?).

It is worth adding that cats are instinctively fearful of small children, and with good reason. Children are not yet part of the human-cat contract (a very recent evolution): to them, cats are rather like mice for play to well-fed cats (in the same way that young children regard parents as little more than a means to satisfy and amplify their narcissistic desires).

Well, I just went to Carluccio's, and the beef ragut was good (although weirdly served with spaghetti rather than tagliatelli as is mandatory in Bologna according to The Times today). However, things have moved on from parochial Italian cooking. BTW, never mind that May has now formally torn up the manifesto on which she gained power, or that millions of pensioners are worse off due to some sort of Treasury enthusiasm that forgot they earn income from shares, we should focus on our stomachs... To which end ... ... in all seriousness, authentic cooking is generally a disaster. what do you want: to return to medieval flavours?? and I remember the spag bol from my childhood with great affection: that tub of sawdust masquerading as 'parmesan' particularly. as someone said above, even Italians didn't always have tomatoes. There can be no 'authentic' recipe or Italian cuisine: it was always-already a turbulence of reinvention. So here is what you have to do today in Lordship Lane (where else?). traditional base essential. in casserole dish, lightly fry chopped celery, onion, carrot in butter and olive oil (fundamental: if this is too much just forget it and go to M&S for ready-made). add and gently brown beef mince (Moxon's of course) turn up heat. add red wine. this must be worth drinking. current best value is Cote du Rhone Villages 2015 (the year matters) in bags at M & S (probably the best value wine currently on sale in London). 2015 was a sensational year for all French alcohol. You need more than any of the newspaper recipes. I suggest two big glasses. Reduce a little. Add Moxon's beef stock. I have found this superior to all stock cubes. Add half tin of Italian chopped tomatoes. Add squeeze of tomato paste. Also add a little boiling water (add more if sauce dries out during cooking). Add (here is the riff) fresh OREGANO (SMB foods generally stock this), and at least two bay leaves. W Sauce optional (just a little if so). By this stage, Italians have now declared war (probably at the opening of the tin of Italian tomatoes), but that is just a reactionary stance. Personally I add garlic (crush a cube with the heel of your hand and add to pot). This is as inauthentic as it gets. Delicious. Add: ground black pepper and only a little salt (lots already in the tomato paste). There is no need at all for disgusting MILK in this recipe if the mince is well sourced. If you have gas you must now deploy a heat diffuser between gas flame and casserole dish. This sauce is ONLY possible if it simmers rather than boils. Simmer for a MINIMUM of 2.5 hours (three is better). Ensure sauce is reduced to thick consistency with no water run-off (if you force the simmer there will be). Serve with tagliatelli (I always used dried, much better than fresh). Add copious parmesan reggiano from Cheese Block. Note to pensioners or the self-employed: enjoy whilst you can. You still have a year: most of the tax increases don't come in until 2018. I love the way May said tonight of the tax change: 'It's fair'. How about 'we lied, but its fair' (the Manifesto was rather clear on the subject) or (more duplicitously) 'Cameron lied, but its fair'. Or (more truthfully) 'we knew you were too stupid to realise we were lying, but its fair'. And it seems 'fairness' in her eyes includes monstrosities such as exclusive privileges in education for an arbitrarily chosen 10% of school children aged 11, a continued reduction of social benefits to those who most need them and etc.)

They do not care. Really, we have to come to terms with this (not the same as accepting it). On this monstrous issue, but also on Brexit, on immigration, today on manifesto promises. They do not care. Ultimately, policies are just a means to power: that is the attraction for these people. They are, as Foucault warned, enamoured of it.

Trump is an illusion, or better a mirage floating on the desert in view. It is the Republican majority we need to be scared of. They (not he) have God on their side. And it is they, I fear, that will do the legislating. Trump is an innocent: that is the secret of his success (as Dostoevsky noted so penetratingly). He actually believes everything as he slides from one moment to another (no matter the idiocy as each inconsistent belief is as good as the next, and can thus be as truly felt).

If this is not an illness then might it be a social issue? The obvious remedy for a social issue is to make the cat feel special again? Suggest dedicated play time, and treats (such as webbox, fresh food treats such as turkey and crab, if he can stomach it a teaspoon of double cream occasionally, and Kong brand premium dried catnip (class A drugs for cats, give good pinch on safe area of carpet just as you turn the lights out at night). I think it may be less 'behaviour' and more 'recognition' and feeling safe? Also, does he have his own dedicated sleeping space, with a towel or whatever that you can wash from time to time? For example, an open suitcase under a bed, or a dog bed or equiv. higher up somewhere?

It is just as likely that she is acting against the diet food. On the TV secret life of cats, several were recorded raiding other cat's dinners unknown to the human providers. Most cat flaps are not micro-chip sentries: cats work out precise times they can raid safely.