Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Josquius]

I'm against the blanket bans of fans of course, it seems to be an overreach by the authorities to me.

I thought there was an international database of banned fans though? This could be used to keep the troublemakers out; perhaps it is not fit for purpose though 

I find this puzzling, maybe it's just different than how we do things in the United States, but how would this work?  How would the ticket seller know that I'm a Tel Aviv fan?  If I showed up in a I Heart Golda Meir t-shirt would they kick me out?  Do you regularly ban fans from soccer games in England?  Is this only soccer, or do other sports do the same?

It's mostly a football thing.
There's a famous video around of India and Pakistan cricket fans in a cricket stadium taking a break from watching their match to cheer for the English football team together.

In football there's a concept known as wrong ending which many partake in but is explicitly against the rules. When you buy a ticket to the home end of a game the t&cs are that you're a fan of that team - they usually don't care about neutrals coming to games, but it often happens that someone is kicked out when it's sussed they're an away fan amongst the home fans.

In domestic football it rarely happens that fans are banned entirely but there's absolutely special precautions and restrictions placed on some fixtures.
In international football bans are pretty common after hooligan incidents- villa had one with a polish team a few years back.
Quite famously English teams, not just fans, were banned from European competitions for years in the 80s after a particularly deadly hooligan incident (the Heysel disaster)

[Tonitrus]

A quick note that the Gary's Economics guy has suffered a big credibility hit with me when he mentioned in the last video that he has a Patreon, allegedly to pay the couple of guys making and editing his videos. Doesn't really add up with his "rich retired trader" shtick. Doesn't invalidate his message but pushes him on the grifters scale.

It's always seems a bit odd to me that the more direct these kind of payments are (viewer/consumer-to-Patreon-content creator) , the more they might be considered closer to "grifting" than the standard/old model (viewer/consumer-to retail-to manufacturer-to-advertising agency-to broadcast network-to tv host salary).

And if he is using the funds to employ a couple editors...that seems more like anti-grifting...it seems a much better means of being a job creator than many others.

[Josquius]

It is a valid point though that if he's as much the lord of the market he claims to be why does he need to do this.

[HVC]

Having a revenue and and expense stream seperate from him and or his calmy probably has tax implications too.

[Tamas]

The optics of this Aston Villa thing are terrible.https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/oct/19/aston-villa-jews-ed-miliband-maccabi-tel-aviv

Not only the police decided Jews are hated too much in the city for them to protect them during this event, but as it turns out even before that the football club decided that those stewards who find that their (or, I suspect, their family's and peers ) dislike of Jews in this climate is too much, they can stay home.

It is extremely easy for the far-right to paint a picture based on this, that Birmingham is too Muslim to control. And it is difficult to disagree with that assessment, when the local police and the football club appear in agreement with it.

[Josquius]

The optics of this Aston Villa thing are terrible.https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/oct/19/aston-villa-jews-ed-miliband-maccabi-tel-aviv

Not only the police decided Jews are hated too much in the city for them to protect them during this event, but as it turns out even before that the football club decided that those stewards who find that their (or, I suspect, their family's and peers ) dislike of Jews in this climate is too much, they can stay home.

It is extremely easy for the far-right to paint a picture based on this, that Birmingham is too Muslim to control. And it is difficult to disagree with that assessment, when the local police and the football club appear in agreement with it.

That's one spin.
I'd see it that there's pretty sensible reason to not want Tel Aviv fans freely coming over for the game after the crap they kicked up in Amsterdam.
It's a sensible straight forward decision that can be made without giving any thought at all to the current mess around Gaza.
But the government barging in and trying to overturn the police's decision completely.... That makes what could easily be seen as entirely about the hooliganism issue into one of "Muslamic Emirate of Birmingham so anti semitic!"
It's quite a dumb move.

For the stewards.... If I was a visibly Muslim woman not sure I'd be keen on getting paid minimum wage to stand in front of a notorious gang of far right Israeli football hooligans.
That's how I'd see it rather than " if you really hate Israelis that much... "
More "we get some of you might be particularly targeted by these cunts..."

[The Minsky Moment]

A quick note that the Gary's Economics guy has suffered a big credibility hit with me when he mentioned in the last video that he has a Patreon, allegedly to pay the couple of guys making and editing his videos. Doesn't really add up with his "rich retired trader" shtick. Doesn't invalidate his message but pushes him on the grifters scale.

He was a junior trader at Citibank for a 5-6 years.  No doubt he made some nice bonuses, enough to send him through his subsequent schooling.  I doubt he made enough during those years to live the rest of his life in retired leisure and affluence, without ever earning any other income again.

[The Minsky Moment]

As for the match, of course safety must take priority over all else.  While we are at it, also ban all black people from attending away games for African clubs.  In fact, because this isn't just a Birmingham problem, I'd recommend that all football grounds in Britain implement separate seating as a precaution. Each race and ethnic group would have their own separate sections.  That way everyone is happy and safe!  Who knows, perhaps such benign segregation policies could take root in all aspects of society, to the benefit of all.

[Sheilbh]

How do Switzerland, Japan and others manage with such dense made in-nation sectors?

I do think we need to put a lot more focus on the benefits industries bring to communities as well as the overall economic gains they bring.
Like if there's a big factory churning out widgets in Wigan or wherever, this might not do anything for Britain on an international scale, we're never going to compete with China on widgets, but as long as we're not blowing billions on supporting it and it is keeping several thousands employed.... then its absolutely something to be encouraged.

Basically a "Why not do both", the city, education, etc.... and industry.

Sure I don't disagree. But they're not the same thing - and this is the bind of path dependency. The areas where we're already strong (which are services heavy: culture, tourism, tech, life sciences, professional and financial services) are a growth strategy. But going for that growth strategy will just increase them, from a higher base, making them more important in the future.

I don't disagree with supporting and promoting other industries, however that is at this point effectively welfare/redistribution/regeneration. It's not a growth strategy - and for it to become one with them as a larger share of the economy I think you probably need to be deliberately in some way keeping those service sectors tamped down.

Personally I think the best "do both" approach would be to just build physical infrastructure - but that's my answer to everything

As to the international comparison - part of it is that we don't have those industries anymore. And that is a legacy of Blair and New Labour. Thatcher and Major privatised major companies because they didn't think the state needed to own them, but they also blocked several attempts at international takeovers or mergers because they thought "domestic" industries in those sectors were important, for example, ICI. I think Blair and New Labour believed in globalisation. I think in part it's the process that David Edgerton describes of the shift from a triumph of British capital to a playground for global capital. This persists in other ways - in international comparisons the UK is far more likely to have CEOs from other companies in charge of big listed companies, and there have been studies on this which shows they're far more likely to/comfortable with closing factories domestically, cutting costs domestically etc. I think we need to build a little bit more of a national approach.

Also I've heard someone speak who asked why Labour weren't taking more steps like they did in British Steel (where they didn't nationalise the company but they made it a crime to shut down the blast furnaces and gave the Secretary of State power to seize the factory in order to keep them on). They asked why there wasn't more intervention for "political" ends like that or to help communities as well as economic ones apart from national security like British Steel. He said that apparently (from Labour people) civil servants advise that would likely cause problems with relations with Europe, possibly being sued by the EU for breaking the TCA and possibly be in breach of international trade law.

I think there's probably some truth to that and I think that sort of interventionist model, especially on public procurement is something I'd back, but would probably breach the TCA and other international trade law. Personally I think the benefits both real and political are worth it. Although I'm not totally sure how accurate that is. As I say, it might be right. It could also just be inexperienced ministers who generally come from political/NGO backgrounds not being willing to take a risk or overly cautious advice from government lawyers (which has been a repeated complaint in this government from ministers). It could also just be what civil servants say to stop this government from doing something they don't want it to do.

I do long term feel quite pessimistic about AI. Afterall, after the .com bubble things did come back and this time it stuck.  But I don't think LLMs are the tech to eliminate white collar work. That will need something quite different and predicting these future-techs is always a risky game, so when the time will come I do not know.

Yeah I think at this point we're all guessing. There was a really interesting conversation between Paul Krugman on Martin Wolf on this recently:
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/talking-ai-with-martin-wolf

My own guess - and it is just that - is that it's a bit like electricity in that we've not quite worked out how it will be used commercially yet, but it will be transformative.

You think Russia will pull through?

I don't think Russia's eating up the last of its power necessarily - though I think 2026 will be a key year for it. Again we don't know, but my basic view is that Putin genuinely believes Ukraine doesn't really exist and that Russia is winning and will win if it keeps pushing. So they will keep pushing. If that means they transform into more of a work economy and deepen their dependency on China (especially once those pipelines come online in the next few years), then so be it - those are problems for the next guy. And I think there's an element of if you have a hammer about this. Once Russia has a war economy - designed to be insulated from Western pressure and built for military production - then it will carry on using it.

I also don't think the Middle East is becoming less relevant. If anything, it's more relevant for Europe in recent years - but it's of less interest to the US (and those two are linked).

[Richard Hakluyt]

Maybe the coppers are right to be concerned about the match :

"The Israeli Premier League derby between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Hapoel Tel Aviv was cancelled before kick-off on Sunday, after what police described as "public disorder and violent riots"."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cgr4n07509wo

[Razgovory]

The optics of this Aston Villa thing are terrible.https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/oct/19/aston-villa-jews-ed-miliband-maccabi-tel-aviv

Not only the police decided Jews are hated too much in the city for them to protect them during this event, but as it turns out even before that the football club decided that those stewards who find that their (or, I suspect, their family's and peers ) dislike of Jews in this climate is too much, they can stay home.

It is extremely easy for the far-right to paint a picture based on this, that Birmingham is too Muslim to control. And it is difficult to disagree with that assessment, when the local police and the football club appear in agreement with it.

That's one spin.
I'd see it that there's pretty sensible reason to not want Tel Aviv fans freely coming over for the game after the crap they kicked up in Amsterdam.
It's a sensible straight forward decision that can be made without giving any thought at all to the current mess around Gaza.
But the government barging in and trying to overturn the police's decision completely.... That makes what could easily be seen as entirely about the hooliganism issue into one of "Muslamic Emirate of Birmingham so anti semitic!"
It's quite a dumb move.

For the stewards.... If I was a visibly Muslim woman not sure I'd be keen on getting paid minimum wage to stand in front of a notorious gang of far right Israeli football hooligans.
That's how I'd see it rather than " if you really hate Israelis that much... "
More "we get some of you might be particularly targeted by these cunts..."

Yeah, how dare they get beaten up in Amsterdam.  Christ, Josq.  Why is it you never see Muslims as "far-right"?

[Tamas]

Maybe the coppers are right to be concerned about the match :

"The Israeli Premier League derby between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Hapoel Tel Aviv was cancelled before kick-off on Sunday, after what police described as "public disorder and violent riots"."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cgr4n07509wo

Yeah, just read that.

[Josquius]

As I say this is a big thing annoying me about this story.
So much of the media is presenting this as being part of the Gaza issue and how nasty and anti semitic Birmingham is.

Look at the original police decision though and all the facts around it and it's clear in reality it's a response to the trouble in Amsterdam.
Maccabi Tel Aviv are basically the Israeli Millwal (but worse. Far more akin to Eastern European scum bag teams) . They've a notorious ultra element in their fan base.

[garbon]

I just saw another story like this and wondered, is fare evasion really such a big issue? As in, has it risen and is it significantly impacting budgets? Thinking of things like Jenrick's crusade at Stratford, it feels like a lot of focus is being put on this issue.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clykvr732rpo

Rail firm losing £45.5m revenue from fare evasion

An estimated £45.5m of annual revenue is being lost from passengers not paying for tickets, South Western Railway (SWR) has said.

The data was released after a campaign group submitted a Freedom of Information request to SWR, which said the overall rate of ticketless travel was about 3.9%.

The rail operator runs services in London, Surrey, Hampshire, Berkshire, Dorset, Devon, Somerset and Wiltshire.

An SWR spokesperson said: "Our revenue protection team is focused on effectively deterring fare evasion and bringing down the rate of ticketless travel."

It said ticketless travel had reduced by 40% since 2017 and was now at its lowest ever level.

The figure appears to be £5m higher than what SWR said in May, while across the rail industry in the UK, it is estimated fare evasion costs nearly £240m a year.

The Freedom of Information request also said that SWR spent more than £370,000 reimbursing passengers for hotels and taxis due to delays and cancellations.

Additionally, 7,293 trains in the last year were short formed and had less carriages than planned, due to train faults and other issues.

Jeremy Varns, who is part of the SWR Watch travel group which campaigns for improved rail services, said he believed the service had got worse since May, when it became the first to be renationalised by the Labour government.

He said: "My primary concern is a lack of accountability.

"There's still no publicly accessible contract between the operator and government and Department for Transport."

SWR said it was in a transitional arrangement and subject to amendments.

It added that a copy of the final Service Agreement would be published in due course.

'Duty of care'
Mr Varns added: "It's crucial that people have a positive experience when using the railway.

"SWR also needs to ensure that operational decisions are not made at the expense of passengers who have already been inconvenienced.

"Station skipping continues to occur too often."

The SWR spokesperson said it had a "duty of care to customers, and in times of significant disruption, we make every effort to ensure customers can complete their journeys".

"In line with the National Rail Conditions of Travel, we are obliged to provide customers with alternative means of travel to their destination, such as refundable taxis, or to provide overnight accommodation where we reasonably can," they added.

The firm added that 0.18% of services were short formed in the last 12 months and the new trains would add resilience to the current fleet.

[Josquius]

I think its just becoming a popular issue that has people enraged because the fare evaders reality tv thing on channel 5 is weirdly popular.

Its a weird issue in reality as you're always going to have some level of fare evasion, the key is to try and get the right balance of enough staff patrolling to dissuade as many people as possible whilst not collecting less in fines than their salary.