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    #26
    Owen Jones is on Question Time tonight

    When she mentioned Quebec, I thought she was going to point out that they don't even have their own word for "entrepreneur".

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      #27
      Owen Jones is on Question Time tonight

      Heh, I thought she was going to be offensively fundamentalist initially, but she ended up sounding like a plain old mentalist. A magnificent self-parody.

      Kramer was fucking appalling though.

      And one more thing about Clarke, as pointed out by Disco Sea Shanties on that Twitter, Ken Clarke doesn't even seem to know what Bills have become law. (The Localism Bill was passed last year). Good stuff for a Justice Secretary.

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        #28
        Owen Jones is on Question Time tonight

        I seriously wish I'd taken Tubby's odds upthread re Meyer and the "entrepreneur" thing and had some sort of Bet 365-type punt. She was pathetic. Unless she could formulate some sort of response in which the word "entrepreneur" was involved, you could see her visible floundering. Even Dimbleby was taking the piss out of her about it towards the end. But her comments about somehow converting the NHS into a three trillion pound profit making industry by subjecting it to the mercies of private enterprise were her nadir.

        I thought Owen Jones done well. Shame the Ken and John old boys double act soaked up as much time and attention as it did.

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          #29
          Owen Jones is on Question Time tonight

          YOu see Ursus, this is what makes us wonder about capitalism. If it's a ruthless Darwinian world where the weakest go to the wall and only the best survive, how the fuck does Julie Mayer survive? Great hand gestures -it's a shame she forgot her glove puppets otherwise she would have made a passable classroom assistant but entrepreneur! giving her actual money to invest!
          Do people really do that?

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            #30
            Owen Jones is on Question Time tonight

            I can't recall anyone arguing that the private market for capital allocation in the US is efficient.

            To the extent that it can even be called a "market", It tends to be the kind that even rabid free marketers recognise as being plagued with failures.

            As to whether people give her money, I don't know, but I do know that snake oil salesmen have never had difficulty finding customers over here. As Barnum said, there's one born every minute.

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              #31
              Owen Jones is on Question Time tonight

              Can't we make some money out of it? how about setting up a Berbaslug investment vehicle? Someone surely will bring the Crespometer to
              life.

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                #32
                Owen Jones is on Question Time tonight

                Jimmy Bignutz wrote:
                When she mentioned Quebec, I thought she was going to point out that they don't even have their own word for "entrepreneur".
                What was the Quebec comment?

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                  #33
                  Owen Jones is on Question Time tonight

                  For an entrepreneur, Meyer does extremely well out of a state-owned broadcaster. But then, that's the essence of neo-liberal capitalism really. The marketplace bluster is just froth; the real action is in grabbing rent from the state.

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                    #34
                    Owen Jones is on Question Time tonight

                    Garamczy Antal wrote:
                    Jimmy Bignutz wrote:
                    When she mentioned Quebec, I thought she was going to point out that they don't even have their own word for "entrepreneur".
                    What was the Quebec comment?
                    The subject of Scottish independence came up, and Meyer used the example of Quebec, who have threatened independence, but apparently always give up on the idea when the financial realities become clear.

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                      #35
                      Owen Jones is on Question Time tonight

                      They may not have a word for "entrepreneur", but they do have a word for "wrong".

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                        #36
                        Owen Jones is on Question Time tonight

                        the real action is in grabbing rent from the state.
                        Indeed. That's the absolute essence of the health and education reforms

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                          #37
                          Owen Jones is on Question Time tonight

                          It dawned on me last night that if I'm going to retain the last scraps of my sanity, I have to stop watching QT. That Meyer woman made my piss boil. Apparently 20 year olds are all "digital entrepreneurs" and they should be offering their expertise - for free! - to massive conglomerates who don't understand it all, bless 'em.

                          I need to kick something.

                          Comment


                            #38
                            Owen Jones is on Question Time tonight

                            I stopped ages ago.

                            I do a kind of "Gillette Soccer Special" thing with Question Time. There are about half a dozen people on Mailwatch who keep up a running commentary, which is always very good.

                            I've just been off to Coral to collect the winnings on the Julia Meyer bet. If I'd had "digitise" as well, it would be even better.

                            People in business are often thick, according to my very successful brother. And entrepreneurs by no means the least- all it takes is one good idea to be one.

                            People who talk about entrepreneurs don't even need one good idea.

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                              #39
                              Owen Jones is on Question Time tonight



                              A digitised message for Julie Meyer.

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                                #40
                                Owen Jones is on Question Time tonight

                                E10 Rifle wrote:
                                the real action is in grabbing rent from the state.
                                Indeed. That's the absolute essence of the health and education reforms
                                Only if you're using the word "rent" in a way that no economist would use it.

                                Comment


                                  #41
                                  Owen Jones is on Question Time tonight

                                  Well, hold on, GA. I mean, NHH is obviously not using the term literally: he's making a rhetorical point, namely that under the Coalition, money is to be made not only by ordinary marketplace profit (which comes from selling to people who choose to buy what you're selling) but also by milking the State for its targeted largesse, which in effect imposes a strictly involuntary levy on us all.

                                  You may or may not agree with that--you may feel that the State is acting like a bona fide consumer, for example--but this rhetorical usage, in the service of that rhetorical point, seems to me legitimate.

                                  Comment


                                    #42
                                    Owen Jones is on Question Time tonight

                                    It's not good rhetorical language, though. What NHH and E10 are objecting to is the state acting as purchaser of services rather than provider of services. But just because the private sector is being paid by government for services - something that also happens every time a government asks for a building to be built, or orders new computers or desks - doesn't mean there is rent involved. Or even profit (aren't for-profits still forbidden under the new education arrangements?).

                                    Rent, in a service industry, is about extracting profit through monopoly or restriction of new entrants to competition. What the government is doing may be imprudent in all sorts of ways, but in introducing competition it is doing the opposite of allowing rent.

                                    Strictly speaking, the current system (in education, anyway) is more rent-oriented in that the lack of competition in public services allows teachers to earn salaries above what would likely be available in a competitive market. And obviously, that's something that has its positive points (though it, too, could be described as being paid for by involuntary levy, as you put it).

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                                      #43
                                      Owen Jones is on Question Time tonight

                                      AG, if you can put your 'optimum policy outcome' technocrat-talk to one side for a second, NHH was responding to a particularly deranged performance on a particular television programme, and how it pertains to particularly insane pieces of legislation that we are going to have to suffer - and see our tax income wasted on - and you aren't.

                                      He was, as I understood it, talking about a particular type of 'entrepreneur' who, in fact, isn't very good at the sort of innovation and 'entrepreneurship' they bang on about, and who gets by by peddling snake-oil consultancy at gullible public institutions. The New Labour years were also particularly marked by this - useless companies such as Capita and Serco, who were clearly not much cop at surviving in the rugged private marketplace, creaming off vast amounts of money in outsourcing contracts and 'consultancies', and about whose service complaints were many and legion.

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                                        #44
                                        Owen Jones is on Question Time tonight

                                        It seems to me a perfectly reasonable rhetorical use of rent. Gramsch seems to be arguing from a textbook.

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                                          #45
                                          Owen Jones is on Question Time tonight

                                          Have to admit that I agree.

                                          Gramsci is technically correct (as he usually is), but the applicable standard isn't one of peer reviewed papers in economics journals.

                                          And I know that Gramsci has spoken to too many economists to honestly believe that they never use technical terms for rhetorical effect.

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                                            #46
                                            Owen Jones is on Question Time tonight

                                            He's not doing "technocrat talk". He's perfectly intelligible. You can still provide state services and be an entrepreneur- Chiltern Railways could call itself that, having taken a degree of financial risk itself because National Rail were so shit. So were Wrexham and Shropshire, an "open access" rail company, constantly highly rated. They were put out of business by Branson stopping them picking up passengers at "his" stations.

                                            I found the suggestion that someone supporting free enterprise shouldn't appear on the BBC rather more baffling. We support nationalising trains, but we're not a hypocrite if you go on one of Beardie's in the meantime.

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                                              #47
                                              Owen Jones is on Question Time tonight

                                              E10 Rifle wrote:
                                              He was, as I understood it, talking about a particular type of 'entrepreneur' who, in fact, isn't very good at the sort of innovation and 'entrepreneurship' they bang on about, and who gets by by peddling snake-oil consultancy at gullible public institutions. The New Labour years were also particularly marked by this - useless companies such as Capita and Serco, who were clearly not much cop at surviving in the rugged private marketplace, creaming off vast amounts of money in outsourcing contracts and 'consultancies', and about whose service complaints were many and legion.
                                              That may have been what he was reacting to, but it isn't what he said.

                                              If I sell computers to a government department, is that "rent"? If not, what's the distinction?

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                                                #48
                                                Owen Jones is on Question Time tonight

                                                Garamczy Antal wrote:
                                                Strictly speaking, the current system (in education, anyway) is more rent-oriented in that the lack of competition in public services allows teachers to earn salaries above what would likely be available in a competitive market. And obviously, that's something that has its positive points (though it, too, could be described as being paid for by involuntary levy, as you put it).
                                                Well, that depends, as I'm sure you well know, on what you mean by "strictly". According to at least one very influential strand of economic theory, "rent" refers not to the sale of services above putative market rates, but to "pure" profit based on non-productive ownership.

                                                Either usage is rhetorical, but one casts teachers as rentiers, which is the kind of rhetoric I dislike.

                                                (That's if one accepts your premise, which I don't. There's actually a shortage of teachers with certain skillsets, and surplus of teachers with others. As, again, I'm sure you know.)

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                                                  #49
                                                  Owen Jones is on Question Time tonight

                                                  Why on earth do you lot still watch Question Time? It jumped the shark when they started having comedians on. Talking about it has as much point as news bulletins covering Prime Minster's Questions and Gardener's Question Time is about as relevant.

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                                                    #50
                                                    Owen Jones is on Question Time tonight

                                                    On the contrary, the comedian has often been the only one talking sense.

                                                    (But actually, to be honest, I hardly ever watch it.)

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