pmyteh

18 ms·

211.
by pmyteh 4y ago
"longer" is comparatively easy: More staff scientists (moving from grant to grant within an institution but on open-ended contracts) and fewer postdocs. "Paying more" is harder, though one or more of reducing marginal gr
212.
by pmyteh 4y ago
Clearly greater than zero, if only for the novelty value. What are Zimbabwean $100trn bills going for on eBay these days?
213.
by pmyteh 4y ago
Very little stock market wealth is held by pension funds on behalf of workers, as opposed to the already wealthy. See https://www.pensionsage.com/pa/Pension-scheme-holding-less-t... , for example. And the value on these
214.
by pmyteh 4y ago
The particular Sci-Hub trade-off is one that shouldn't worry you. If Pornhub are made responsible for user uploaded content it won't make any difference to Sci-Hub because they're already flagrantly infringing . It's no
215.
by pmyteh 4y ago
There is a lot that government could be doing which would make family breakdown less likely and less traumatic: building enough social housing that local authorities are capable of discharging their homelessness duties, for example, or reop
216.
by pmyteh 4y ago
The practice in England and Wales is summed up by the following (now rather famous) passage from Mr Justice Hedley in a 2007 case[0]: > Basically it is the tradition of the United Kingdom, recognised in law, that children are best brough
217.
by pmyteh 4y ago
The problem is mostly working conditions. They're set up to keep migrant workers living on site, while most locals would want to live at home. Doing the work well and quickly is skilled, but the pay is low. It's backbreaking labou
218.
by pmyteh 4y ago
It's mostly because the ability of the economy to produce positive economic (but not direct financial) returns on very cheap credit is basically infinite, and borrowing money to invest in all of these things would need a huge amount of
219.
by pmyteh 4y ago
Yes, probably. This can bring its own problems, though. In Britain, for example, the Treasury is extremely reluctant to approve new public capital projects, even at negative real interest rates. Investment is effectively rationed by requiri
220.
by pmyteh 4y ago
There is (for most crimes) an entitlement to release on licence after 1/2 or 2/3 of the sentence, with the rest being served in the community but subject to recall to prison. So the most important takeaway is that the 'headli
221.
by pmyteh 4y ago
Yeah. The rollout of domestic wiring standards was pre-EU, and dealing with the entrenched incompatible standardisation gets in the way of the EU goal of a single market in goods and services. They really don't want more arbitrary st
222.
by pmyteh 4y ago
Most bitcoin regulation scenarios would just be an ordinary investment risk, in some senses. If you invest in commercial property and then changes in the tax treatment of real estate mean that the value of your investment falls then that ju
223.
by pmyteh 4y ago
Yeah. The UK tried too, with a prototype reactor at Dounreay. We had all kinds of operational problems and gave up when it became apparent that the falling level of new nuclear installations meant that we weren't going to be short of u
224.
by pmyteh 4y ago
I don't know about medical research, but that's exactly what the rest of us in universities do.
225.
by pmyteh 4y ago
We do; just not everywhere. I've moved to Liverpool, and the rail system here is great (as far as it goes - it could always use more lines). Fifteen minute interval suburban service from the south suburbs under the city all the way to
226.
by pmyteh 4y ago
It is a big qualifier, but not entirely that big. Yes, it would mean that the decision to start the dictatorship was democratic, but you could definitely arrange it so there is no Disabling Act. Don't forget that to pass such an Act
227.
by pmyteh 4y ago
Yeah, maybe that stretches the analogy too far. I think it is distinct from ministers governing in their own right (or in the right of the semi-fictional unitary 'Secretary of State') though. Most statutory instruments, for exam
228.
by pmyteh 4y ago
It's complex. There's nothing really to stop a British prime minister going full dictator if they want, as long as they can get Parliament to pass an Enabling Act. And that's not an entirely fanciful proposition: they have th
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by pmyteh 4y ago
Something like that. And with the Governor General as the VM root.
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by pmyteh 4y ago
Pretty much exactly that. The Government can (and does) request a Privy Council meeting, which issues various kinds of Orders in the name of the Queen. The Queen's Speech is another (less instrumental) way of government using the root
231.
by pmyteh 4y ago
First Direct is great; I've been an account holder for a bit over ten years, after getting an offset mortgage with them. I've once needed physical contact, for which they have an arrangement to use your local HSBC branch. Otherw
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by pmyteh 4y ago
When I was a postdoc at Oxford there was an article in one of the university magazines complaining that full professors could no longer afford one of the lovely giant late-Victorian villas in North Oxford that used to be occupied by academi
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by pmyteh 4y ago
Honestly, I don't think this would be such a problem if the job wasn't getting so grim. It's HR 101 that salaries help with recruitment but are less important for retention and that a cash raise can't substitute for a po
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by pmyteh 4y ago
Ah, interesting. Yes, our current position is deeply unhelpful. State enough that VCs will jump to follow some arbitrary after-dinner speech by the Minister, but private enough that we're competing in a 'market' with each oth
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by pmyteh 4y ago
Yeah, those days were ended years ago. The present generation of senior management are doing very nicely though: their historically-acquired final salary entitlements with a generous accrual rate coupled with recent insane inflation in se
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by pmyteh 4y ago
Oh yes, absolutely. This particular scheme is very heavily pre-funded (currently to ~30% of salary, which is why many employers want it dead) and is sustainable as long as your investment strategy isn't 'putting the money under th
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by pmyteh 4y ago
They're backstopped by the government, in that they're written off after ~30 years if they weren't paid off in that time by the 9% marginal income charge. The scheme was designed as a backdoor graduate tax rather than a conve
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by pmyteh 4y ago
FWIW on your (5) there's nothing unsustainable about the most recent iteration of the pension scheme. The problems are an interesting (if infuriating) combination of the employers wanting to kill the defined benefit scheme to save mone
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by pmyteh 4y ago
Where are you based?
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by pmyteh 4y ago
We don't have tenure as such in the UK (it was abolished by Thatcher). We do have jobs with permanent contracts; these used to be really quite secure (occasional department-closure redundancies notwithstanding) but the current batch of

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