It doesn't, more efficient lines = better odds for punters. That is why Pinny/Asian books have better odds. The worst experience for gamblers is one with significant government intervention and/or limited professional involvement because there is no price discovery. Bookies don't just return that value to customers, in practice, they spend it on wildly expensive marketing, this means they have to offer lower payouts, and then spend inordinate amounts of time and money stopping professionals picking off their shitty lines.
He was also, at that point, very old. He started his first fund in 1968. It tells you something about the modern world that you can your fund successfully for three decades, accumulate one of the best all-time records, and you will still have people online call you useless if you bow out in your 70s when your returns go dry for a couple of years.
This isn't true. Very few places in the US run their books this way, and those that do limit your bet so most large bettors are still using beards. If you bet with someone who is moderately capable, for example Pinny, they will limit you then use your bets to reverse-engineer your strategy. Asian books are the only place where you can get action and, now, certain syndicates have become so large and dominant that they open lines earlier just for them. If you are only betting on outcomes, it is very hard to beat a line set by syndicate.
No, not full of shit. One of the most well-known investors in the world, worth $1bn, and he wrote papers on sports betting as well.
All of the things he mentions are massive problems with making money from gambling. All of the large gamblers in the US use beards, it is time-consuming and you are generally dealing with gambling addicts who are unreliable. The situation in HK was unique (and the people Benter partnered with proved to be very unreliable anyway when they began making large amounts of money).
All of the cases that I have seen have been group chats. The Act in question is - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_2003#Malici... - and there is also a 2001 Act that I believe is used when the prosecutors want a custodial sentence. The application of this law to WhatsApp has been controversial.
It is also worth understanding that in the UK, the security services use specific events to push politicians (with the help of the media) into passing these laws. The Online Safety Act is a recent example, the media campaign was orchestrated by the media/police/security services, and there was a similar campaign behind the 2003 Act...every time. To imply that the laws are there to do anything other than reduce freedom is the wrong starting point.
The person in question did not say the latter. You have, presumably deliberately, decontextualized it. She said roughly what you said followed by "for all I care", and she also deleted the post a few minutes after.
(What some people may not understand: UK police are running a dragnet online now, it is unclear when this started but was in full force after Covid, you can post and immediately delete, you can post with five followers...they will find it, and will attempt to prosecute. People on here go mad when police in the US pick up drug addicts, the UK has a China-style operation aimed at the public, they are making 200-300 arrests a week, it is complete insanity).
Now compare this to what else people are seeing. Some people in the UK (I cannot say which ones) are subject to rules: benefit fraud, tax evasion, public disturbances everywhere..."community policing" so these laws are not enforced. A well-known paedophile politician was recently convicted for attempted rape and sexual assault, they got a sentence shorter than the person you are referring to above...a convicted paedophile. Some parts of the UK have given prosecutors guidelines not to give a custodial sentence to paedophiles. During the riots, whilst people were being arrested for tweeting, there was a video online of a policeman asking attendees of a local mosque to put their weapons back in the mosque...no arrests made. For people in the UK, the problem is not the danger of things being said online, the danger is things going on in the physical world around them. I don't think a reasonable person can fail to connect these two things, there is a reason why the police go after the innocent online rather than criminals.
"At the time she had about 9,000 followers on X. Her message was reposted 940 times and viewed 310,000 times, before she deleted it three and a half hours later. " - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp3nn60wyr6o
>you can post and immediately delete, you can post with five followers...they will find it, and will attempt to prosecute
It would not if there wasn't proof that there was actual planning. That said, you would most likely be monitored by local and state law enforcement.
A similar case happened in Central Illinois a couple years ago, where threats were posted but arrests were not made until the threats moved to actual action.
Not in the US's case. A direct link would be needed.
American jurisprudence on speech leans towards Free Speech Absolutism [0] due to jurisprudence from the 1970s-2000s, and the test for "clear and imminent danger" is extremely high.
Even though the US and the rest of the Anglophone speak English, America jurisprudence is extremely distinct from the rest of the Anglophone (and vice versa), and IMO it doesn't make sense to compare one with the other due to these significant differences.
For example, the UK dealt with the Troubles into the late 1990s, and the US never had a similar insurgency since the 1950s in Puerto Rico, so there is a hardening in NatSec laws in the UK compared to the US.
This is why the US often leverages allied states to help with this kind of monitoring to sidestep some of the legal implications domestically.
That said, I agree with your point to a certain extent, the issue is the US and other Anglophone countries have a different relation with speech and civil liberties. It doesn't make sense to compare the US with the UK or EU and vice versa.
How direct is direct enough? Connolley posted messages inciting racial violence, racial violence ensued.
Was Connolley a major instigator of these riots? No.
The judge's sentencing remarks are below, the key part being:
>6. When you published those words you were well aware of how volatile the situation was. As everyone is aware, that volatility led to serious disorder in a number of areas of the country where mindless violence was used to cause injury and damage to wholly innocent members of the public and to their properties.
Connolley's message was posted at 8.30pm on the 29th July. One day before crowds attacked Mosques in Southport. Related disturbances continued until August 5th.
No-one voted for this. The police in the UK are using a combination of existing powers (for example, intimidating people by using their powers to question people), non-statutory instruments that politicians have told them repeatedly to stop using, and laws that are being applied to the online world in an expansive way (the current PM is the former head of government prosecutions so is basically the worst person possible to prevent this, the person who passed one of the most infamous laws, Tony Blair, has said it is problematic).
Just generally, this model doesn't apply to the UK. There is an extremely long history of people voting one way and the government doing something else. This is because the country is led by people whose views are shared by no-one, and the tremendous power of the Civil Service (elected officials have limited powers to direct civil servants and cannot remove all but a handful of civil servants...there was an example recently of a senior civil servant giving incorrect information to a minister, the minister was forced to resign, that senior civil servant stayed in for several years, another minister attempted to remove them, the civil servant sued and won a substantial settlement then chose to retire early on a full pension...he was responsible for several massive issues in his department too, Windrush was one, there were many others).
A more nefarious factor is that turnout has collapsed because voters, correctly, understand that their vote doesn't actually matter. The government is unable to do things so why bother voting. Turnout is significantly higher in Russia presidential elections.
To give you an example, the current level of immigration is supported by ~3% of the population. No-one supports this. The government knows no-one supports this. Immigration has stayed high for multiple years, we have had elections, it doesn't matter. If we elected someone to fix it, they would be unable to fix it. Labour have tried to fix it...they spent years in opposition saying the Tories couldn't fix it with their policies...they get into government, within a year they are now trying the exact same policies...because Parliament has no real control, whether in theory or in reality, to change anything, the government gets in, the civil service present the same choices that won't work...you have to be actually mad to think voting makes a difference. The idea that you can fix things by voting is the reason why things are stagnating.
I think the entire West is experiencing this problem. Things like immigration laws are determined not by elected officials but by bureaucrats and judges/lawyers who it turns out are often on the same side. It's a very sticky problem. The Nomenklatura of the USSR is probably the most similar description.
At least in the US, we have discovered an even more complex situation where many of our government organizational low-mid-low/high level leaders all lean left, same for judges, but then our supreme court leans right as well as high level leaders (appointed by right president). It's as off the extreme political polarization our nation suffers from has also manifested itself in our own institutions.
> are determined not by elected officials but by bureaucrats and judges/lawyers who it turns out are often on the same side
"Fixing" that is an awfully slippery slope towards dictatorship though.
The entire reason that system exists -- to preserve competence and skills in government despite political leadership change and to provide independent checks on elected officials' power -- is because of historical abuses by elected officials.
Ergo, I'm enormously suspicious of suggestions about tearing down the barriers to change...
... because those barriers exist for a damned good reason.
Imho, people should talk more about adjusting the balance in the system, but preserving all the independent components, and less about vilifying specific pieces of the balance of power.
I am concerned about how lawyers may be a closed off group. Especially with grads from the top law schools who often work at NGOs or become judges in high courts that end up deciding major things. I think precedent could be set in a way that reflects the tastes of a small and detached group of people.
ok I think being independent is fine, what I meant was a little different. Let me just ask you something instead which might clarify my thoughts. What did you have in mind when you said dictatorship? Like what is the historical precedent you are basing that on?
I'm not sure it can be attributed to political parties in the UK.
By most standards, the British political tradition has remained paternalistic in it's mindset, and a lot of the shifts in civil liberties happened fairly late (1980s-90s) and without the requisite judicial scaffolding being built in place.
Furthermore, a lot of the same powers and institutions used for internal security during the Troubles were redeployed during the GWOT and never pushed back against legally speaking.
For example, London was the first major city to deploy centralized CCTV surveillance en masse.
And this isn't a UK only thing - across Europe, mass surveillance laws and government perogative are much stronger than their equivalents in the US, and given tensions on the eastern border of EU+ due to a belligerent neighbor like Russia and Azerbaijan using grey zone tactics, I think we might see a further regression on this front, because NatSec will always trump liberties.
By most standards, we're in an interregnum period similar to the 1930s, the "Dreadnought Wars" (1906-1914), or the 1950s that can spill over.
Yes, the Troubles are a huge factor, the security services play a huge and unwelcome part in our political process. I think I mentioned elsewhere, I assume most people are familiar with this but most of the media campaigns that accompany legislation are pushed by the police/security services.
Online Safety Act was an example, there was a massive media campaign over multiple years. I believe the case that caused it happened nearly ten years ago now, it went quiet for years and then suddenly sparked back up again, parents put out in front of the media...every time.
And it is a legacy of things like the Troubles where you have massive internal political instability and these kind of things become normal. These powers aren't formal though, it is all informal. If we are talking about Europe, you see the same thing in Germany (to an extent, in Germany there is a paranoia about political parties, different but historical context).
> Online Safety Act was an example, there was a massive media campaign over multiple years. I believe the case that caused it happened nearly ten years ago now, it went quiet for years and then suddenly sparked back up again, parents put out in front of the media...every time.
That's actually a bit of a dumber story than that.
Basically, a well connected and knighted documentary maker (Beeban Kidron) made pornography regulation her sole personal mission after she became a mother.
The UK being a fairly small political playground and her significant network thanks to Miramax made it easy for her to lobby and get private and public support in the UK and California.
Once she was inducted in the House of Lords in 2012, she went gung ho lobbying for it.
> informal. If we are talking about Europe, you see the same thing in Germany (to an extent, in Germany there is a paranoia about political parties, different but historical context).
Yep. A lot of the Cold War era rules and regulations remain in place
A big part of this is caused by (as I understand it, open to correction!) the UK's fundamental lack of free speech rights (by individuals and groups).
The UK has free(ish) speech, that usually works well enough in practice, for most things.
But at the end of the day if the UK government and/or security services and/or wealthy people want to really put their foot on suppressing speech... they have legal tools to do so.
The UK has never really squared the circle on free speech even and especially when it's inconvenient to power.
That's a binary right. Either you have it, or you don't.
Okay...and you are presumably aware that every government since the 60s has tried to reform the Civil Service? And how has that gone?
Parliament is not sovereign because this is an administrative issue. As I explained, elected officials have limited direct control over ministries. And an even bigger issue is that the Civil Service is unionized, so if you were actually looking to reform it wholesale then you would have to shut down government for months with irreparable damage done in the media by civil servants briefing daily against you...so I am not aware of a way to do this. You can't reform ministries, you can't reform the whole thing...so what is the solution?
The reason why politicians blame the civil servants is because they are bad. No-one thinks otherwise. The past three heads of the civil service have acknowledged there are massive issues with competence at every level, this is not new. But it isn't possible to reform.
I am not sure how anyone can think Parliament is sovereign in this matter either. It makes no sense based on the evidence of repeated issues with competence and multiple governments being unable to fix that.
No system is perfect or never in need of reform, including the UK civil service.
However, recent attacks on the civil service from the political right are almost always a consequence of reality colliding with politics, i.e. the civil service pointing out that ministerial decisions may be unlawful, etc. There are legions of examples of this conflict arising under the previous Tory government.
As such, it is indeed within the power of parliament to change the law so that their political objectives may be met. It is not up to the civil service to break the law when that is convenient to ministers.
The tories activly campaigned on the platform of regulating internet speech.
> Windrush was one, there were many others
mate, windrush was down to May and her spads. They knew the problems, but decided that the press was worth it.
> the current level of immigration is supported by ~3% of the population
Immigration has halved this year.
The problem is that has tradeoffs, like social care isn't going work anymore.
I understand your frustrations. I hate that no matter who I vote for I seem to get reform-lite dipshits.
Thats not the fault of the civil service (although there is an entire subject in it's self) thats the fault of the press and political class being too close.
I would read about what actually happened. There were multiple failures in the Home Office, in particular some statistics were incorrectly reported by the Rudd (I am not sure why you are talking about May) based on figures she was told by civil servants, she then had to resign. Not only that but the correct figures were actually leaked to the press shortly after (this is something that has happened in the Home Office before).
Okay, and it has halved to the highest level ever. If you want to have ones of these interminable discussions about your favourite politicians, please stop. I am not interested in hearing which colour rosette you prefer, and how everything is the fault of the other guys. It is complete and total nonsense. The reason why we have the system we have is because it is too easy for a politician to claim they will fix everything (the drop in immigration is nothing to do with Starmer either, it was to do with the Tories whose legacy on immigration is unspeakable, it has halved to a level that is unbelievably high).
Yes, it is the fault of the civil service because, as I assume you don't understand, ministers legally have a limited set of options when they are making policy (this was one of the issues the Tories faced, Rwanda was a variation of a policy that had been explored since the early 2000s...it wasn't a new policy, which is why Labour are now going down the same route...we had an election, same policies). They come into office, explain to the civil servants what they want to do, and then they are given a choice of policies...if a minister chooses not to one of these things then the policy can later be challenged in the courts, and legal discovery can be used to overturn the policy if there is no legal basis for it (essentially, whether it was approved by the civil service).
Every new government comes in finding the same thing. You are already seeing people in Labour complain about Reeves...well, guess what? There are no alternatives. Your comment about Reform-lite is ridiculous, every party is Reform, every party is Labour, every party is the Tories. The game continues as long as people like you give it credibility by suggesting that voting has any impact and will change anything...it won't. A lot of the briefing that the press get is from the civil service too...I can't understand how you can talk about immigration and then complain about the press...why do you think Johnson increased immigration? The press, relentless briefing from lobbyists, relentless pressure from civil servants in the Home Office briefing against the government (the Home Office is notorious for this btw, as I just explained above, I remember Charles Clarke complaining about this...unbelivable).
Yes, they have to make decisions that conform to UK laws. Rwanda is/was such a stupid idea that even if ministers had removed the relevant laws preventing them from implementing it, it would have cost hundreds of thousands per person, and not solved the issues it was supposed to.
The initial idea was, instantly deport as many people as possible (without due process, basically anyone who arrives without a visa is instantly classed as an illegal migrant, regardless of circumstances, and sent back to country of origin, even if that means death), and those that somehow do manage to claim asylum, send them to rwanda.
The policy then was "honed" as follows, so that it was actually legal, but no less stupid:
1) make it effectively illegal to claim asylum
2) buy housing in rwanda to house all successful asylum seekers, but only upto low thousands
2.1) pay over inflated costs to keep those people there for ever. They can't work there, so we have to pay them for ever.
3) make it effectively impossible to process any asylum claims.
4) because its impossible to process claims, you cant deport failed claimants, because they've not been processed
5) exhaust all short term housing in the UK for claimants, because they can't be processed and deported.
6) pay ever increasing bills for short term housing, and piss off locals, because the number of claimants increases for ever, because they can't be processed.
7) claimants abscond and are never seen again, living without a paper trail in the UK
It was so fucking mind bendingly stupid and expensive, you too would try and stop it.
Of course the press and the twitter sphere loved it, because it was a deterent. Regardless of the cost or stupidity.
What labour have floated, is that failed claimants be immediately moved to a 3rd party country pending appeal. Which much less stupid, but still expensive. I imagine it'll be dropped. The solution is to actually process asylum claims properly(which is what is being done, hence why those migrant camps are reducing).
> The game continues as long as people like you give it credibility by suggesting that voting
You seem to suggest that its the civil service that runs policy. I really would suggest reading the actual laws that are passed, and the research provided to the commons library. Civil servants can only do what the law allows. And often, those laws are fucking stupid, and done to chase a headline (see johnson/sunak)
Labour as not reform, you and I both know that. Labour are just shit and have painted themselves into a corner. Moreover, the current PM doesn't acutally publically stand for anything, which means that making decisions as a minister is very hard. (its partly the same reason sunak was so useless, most of it was he had useless ministers)
> why do you think Johnson increased immigration
because we have a chronic skills shortage, and to keep a lid on wage rises, and to stop the care sector grinding to a complete halt, we needed immigration.
Look, the issue is this, public finances are fucked. Until taxes are reformed, or we somehow grow the economy 10%, everything will be salami sliced to nothing.
both the tories and labour were dishonest about taxation. The press failed to actually tackle them on it. Mind you, if they had, would people listen. Nobody likes to bother about public finances.
"everyone is the same" is just not true, thats how we get extremists, like reform.
The EU explicitly does not promote free trade. The countries within the EU are almost all countries with a very long history of protectionism, there are significant NTBs in every industry, there are specific industries where there have been decades of massive subsidies, and...perhaps the most funny...there isn't free trade within the EU. EU politicians talk endlessly about free trade but these are rules for other people, not them. The lack of harmonization INSIDE the EU in services is significant (and btw, this is also true of other economic blocs, for example this is true of the US to a certain, far lesser, extent). Finally, the issue with free trade for the EU is that their products aren't competitive. They have 2 countries which run massive trade surpluses because due of the Euro and obviously bad central bank policy, if this wasn't the case then there would be rebalancing (EU's persistent trade surpluses contribute to financial instability in the same way that China's trade surpluses contributed to instability pre-07, it is very bad for everyone but politicians in two countries in the EU).
Also, there was significant trade before WW1 (we didn't recover that peak in terms of trade until the late 90s) and it didn't stop war. Saying that opposing free trade is the same thing as declaring war on your neighbours is nonsensical (and I assume relates to something going on US politics).
The entire genesis of the EU was initially to integrate and regulate trade of coal and steel.
Perhaps that’s “no true Scotsman” for you with respect to free trade, but it is a version of it designed to avoid continuing the centuries of armed conflict that defined Europe.
You failed to engage with any of the points I made, your only evidence is a vague statement of principles that no-one has ever behaved in line with.
This is a peculiarly modern viewpoint with people raised on social media: saying something is a good as doing it. What you say matters, what you do doesn't.
To just go through the list: there isn't free movement of goods externally, there isn't free movement of goods WITHIN the EU (again, be clear...we aren't talking about the EU trading with other countries, this is countries within the EU trading with each other), there isn't free movement of capital WITHIN the EU, there is free movement of people...sometimes, but Schengen has been repeatedly suspended by member states because of the political instability it causes.
Btw...all of this public, the EU has been trying to harmonize services for two decades (before this, they didn't even try), the EU has been trying to harmonize capital markets furiously since the Euro crisis...it hasn't worked because of the issues with the Euro, central bank policy, and the weakness of French/German banks.
Ok, so I can't throw a van full of computers in the back of a truck in the Czech Republic, drive it to Estonia and sell it in the local market with no customs fees? (hint: yes I can).
Nobody was talking about free trade outside of the EU, when the whole point of the single-market was to prevent war in a region that had not seen total peace for more than 20 years for the preceding 2,000+ years: the point becomes much more about that region.
70 years without a major war is absolutely incredible. Even "the long peace" had minor wars.
The EU does promote free trade, and signs deals when it can, and I was talking about internally anyway since that's whats relevant here; the EU is made up of countries that no longer go to war with each other. Which is the entire point.
Because the data they possess is the monopoly, they have better search results because it is too expensive for competitors to gather the data at this point as(I also think people who are unfamiliar with finance do not understand the quantum, Meta has a similar type of business but was under huge pressure with investing tens of billions into VR...it would cost hundreds of billions to get parity with Google, there is no way to finance this).
It is nothing to do with "hiring the best people". Google's exec-level leadership is extremely poor, Mr Magoo-tier management. This is largely due to their share classes, the people at the very top are not very good at business so Google largely isn't run like a business. They have one business that is probably worth $4-5tn, and the rest is worth -$3-4tn. The number of "best people" out there is usually under 500 in a country the size of the US, a country that has hundreds of thousands of employees is not hiring the best.
I would guess under 100 people at Google actually positively impact financial results in any way because the advertising business grows rapidly, uses no capital, and requires no staff. This is true of many of the tech companies do, you aren't getting the best if you pay an exec $50m because the best will always do their own thing and make more. Rather you get someone like Pichai or Cook who sounds good and will get shareholders to believe that setting fire to $200m/year to pay them is a good idea, they are indistinguishable from politicians.
Google is under-earning massively. Staff aren't a monopoly, you just pay someone to leave and they are yours now (you see this in other areas like HFT where staff actually know useful stuff, you don't see this in tech because most staff don't know anything, they are looking for drones).
It's incredibly naive to think Google's continuous growth is automatic. It happened because of all the work the employees do, not in spite of it. Are there employees who don't contribute? Sure. But that's different from only 100 contributing to positive growth.
Do you actually understand how and why they are growing?
They start with a page with zero ads, they add one ad to that page one year, ad sales pushes that placements, then a few years they do it again, etc. Meta are the same.
Google do sell at a higher price than offline ads because of targeting/intent but this is inherent to the product: search has inherently better intent and their targeting tech is no better than anyone else such that their prices are higher/grow faster.
That is their growth model: higher ad density, the CEO deciding to add another ad to a page and earning $100m/year. There is no value-added otherwise because you don't need many people, you don't need capital and you are making $300bn/year.
And, again, if you own the shares you understand that you are getting the ads business, and because of the dual class you are also getting this tech bureaucracy that sets fire to tens of billions every year employing people to do nothing. If these people are so productive...where is the revenue? It is all ads or ancillary business, they have GCP now but there is nothing else...because these people aren't doing anything.
It is like owning a business that turns lead into gold, the process is automatic, requires no capital...and then employing a bunch of monks to pray for the lead and saying the business couldn't exist without them. Lol.
> The number of "best people" out there is usually under 500 in a country the size of the US, a country that has hundreds of thousands of employees is not hiring the best.
> I would guess under 100 people at Google actually positively impact financial results in any way
It's really funny to me that people write comments like this and yet are incapable of basic arithmetic, like this being 0.0001% of the US population, or thinking that the entire ad business runs on just 100 people who are magically making the company $4 trillion dollars while everyone else drags it down.
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