Elon Musk Is The REAL President Elect.

No guns here 🙂 just a question

FriedGreenTomatoes2

Reform is well on the way to destroying the existing two-party hegemony and it will happen with or without Musk's money.
Both main parties in the UK have belatedly realised that you can't betray the electorate and get away with it indefinitely.

I hope so 🙏

Re Musk & his Millions: I think you cannot buy democracy, because people actually have to go out and vote for your offering, regardless of how much money is thrown at the cause. I seem to recall vast sums of money being spent on the campaign for the UK to remain in the European Union. 🤷‍♀️

You can "buy" matters political in a number of ways

"Republican lawmakers on Sunday raced to praise and defend the X owner —

perhaps not surprisingly since the richest man in the world has threatened to finance primary challenges to members of Congress who defy Trump’s orders

(article on possible Musk/Trump issues)

edition.cnn.com/2024/12/23/politics/president-musk-trump-analysis/index.html

Well I think you can target money Wyllow in ways that help and promote a cause. Of course you can. People are indeed saying on tv it’s not just the money it’s how it’s spent. Apparently when Jo Swinson was leader (albeit briefly!) of the LibDems the party was given a substantial donation and they just didn’t know how to spend it (there are rules). They ended up, as one example, of just printing an extortionate number of glossy pamphlets and posting them through letterboxes. Most of which will have got thrown in the recycling bin!

However, at the end of the day, if a party or cause don’t resonate with one’s own values - it’s. Dead Duck.

I wonder if that’s the nub of the outrage? That Reform (real change a’coming) is in the ascendancy and the 2 main parties see it, know it’s coming down the tracks and are concerned (a bit).

FriedGreenTomatoes2

Morning SWGran! A kindred spirit! 😁 we are an irritating presence in this echo chamber to some (not all thankfully!). Nice to have you join me on the norty step - us fans of different viewpoints!

Yes, good evening to you and all on here. I have to say I do see what you mean, but happy to join you on the naughty step. I have been accused of misinterpretation, then misinterpreted myself by others. People on here clearly don’t like Musk and that’s absolutely fine, everyone has their own opinions. I am of a different opinion to which I believe I am also entitled.

I would personally love to see a department in our Government equivalent to that of DoGE, headed by someone like Musk outside of the existing establishment, to look at our Governments expenditure and provide true transparency. Wouldn’t that be something?

Governments publishes its accounts. They are available for anyone to examine.

The Parliamentary Public Accounts Select Committee: ^examines the value for money of Government projects, programmes and service delivery. Drawing on the work of the National Audit Office the Committee holds government officials to account for the economy, efficiency and
effectiveness of public spending^.

Reports are published on all the PA Select committee's findings.

What other transparency would you like, SWGran?

Ass a government is nothing like a business. It doesn't exist to make money, it exists to serve the country. I don't see how the opinion of a business man is of any relevance.

MaizieD

Governments publishes its accounts. They are available for anyone to examine.

The Parliamentary Public Accounts Select Committee: ^examines the value for money of Government projects, programmes and service delivery. Drawing on the work of the National Audit Office the Committee holds government officials to account for the economy, efficiency and
effectiveness of public spending^.

Reports are published on all the PA Select committee's findings.

What other transparency would you like, SWGran?

Ass a government is nothing like a business. It doesn't exist to make money, it exists to serve the country. I don't see how the opinion of a business man is of any relevance.

Ass a government is nothing like a business. It doesn't exist to make money, it exists to serve the country. I don't see how the opinion of a business man is of any relevance.

Well I think the idea behind it is that Governments are profligate in their spending on the various departments and people within it and 'business' can detect those areas of waste - hence the privatisation of most of our public services.

Which has really worked out well, hasn't it?

It worked really well for the shareholders in those businesses, though, didn't it?

The problem being that businesses will run like businesses and their objective is not the wellbeing of the country they serve but the maximisation of profit and shareholder dividends. At any cost....

A business has to please its customers to stay in business, but those privatised companies which have no competition don't have to please their customers at all. The 'customers' have no choice...

A governments purpose is to serve the people, in a democracy like the US elections are held every few years and voters can change the government, this year Trump was elected, they rejected Harris. How can anyone support inefficient government departments, using technology to make administration less wasteful seems a good idea to me and Musk seems a good choice to advise on that.

His SpaceX business has made the US space research much more active after many years of marking time and relying on Russian rockets. There is no evidence of any malicious intent from Musk, for him money is the driver, his businesses operate in concert with global direction. Harnessing solar power and electrification, reducing CO2 emissions. His wealth only represents the value others put on the value of his businesses at any point, I’m sure he has the trappings of wealth but at the end of the day an only eat meals a day and sleep in one bed.

You're just talking like a business man, David😆

The problem is that David49 is that your assessment of what Musk is is wrong.

Yes, he is good att harnessing technology but many of his other business decisions are open to question. His buy out of Twitter, now X has been a disaster, He sacked half the staff and drastically reduced monitoring. In fact he believes in complete free speech that would put no limits on pornography, terrorism, or any other harmful material on the internet.

He paid $44 billion for Twitter. X is now valued at $9.4 billion and users are migrating from X to Blue Sky in their millions.

If Musk's way of introducing efficiency to US government matches what he did to Twitter, the result for government in the USA will be disastrous.

MaizieD, David is not talking like a business man. theyare talking like a Musk groupie.

MaizieD

You're just talking like a business man, David😆

I am, it’s up to the government how to spent the great amount of cash that I give to them each year and I definitely don’t want to see it wasted on those that don’t need it, or given to empire building civil servants.

empire building civil servants.
Why would you say that? It's just a throwaway remark.

Much of the Civil Service has disappeared over a number of years, to the detriment of services offered. Some departments became agencies under the Tories and subsequently privatised or contracted out which does not necessarily mean more efficiency or lower running costs.

I don’t care what he did with Twitter and there is no evidence that it’s any worse monitoring social media than Snapchat or Tic Toc
The truth is they could all eliminate harmful material if they wanted to but they are making too much money.

Personally don’t use any SM at all, my opinions are not influenced by outside media which is more than can be said for most of GN posts.

Allira

^empire building civil servants.^
Why would you say that? It's just a throwaway remark.

Much of the Civil Service has disappeared over a number of years, to the detriment of services offered. Some departments became agencies under the Tories and subsequently privatised or contracted out which does not necessarily mean more efficiency or lower running costs.

That’s exactly why many/most utilities are privatized because the in house departments were so top heavy with managers it became a paper chase. The same can be said of many large organizations layers of beaurocracy that’s not needed, which has become self serving.

Starmer seems determined to do the same in the UK and I support that.

Utilities were not part of the civil service.

And - are they better and more efficient now?
Which ones have improved? Water companies, railways?

David49

Allira

empire building civil servants.
Why would you say that? It's just a throwaway remark.

Much of the Civil Service has disappeared over a number of years, to the detriment of services offered. Some departments became agencies under the Tories and subsequently privatised or contracted out which does not necessarily mean more efficiency or lower running costs.

That’s exactly why many/most utilities are privatized because the in house departments were so top heavy with managers it became a paper chase. The same can be said of many large organizations layers of beaurocracy that’s not needed, which has become self serving.

Starmer seems determined to do the same in the UK and I support that.

I suspect that the stuff about 'top heavy management in the old nationalised industries and utilities is more like Thatcherite propaganda than the actual truth. 😆

Water companies anyone?
It carried on for years too, under subsequent governments.

Starmer seems determined to do the same in the UK and I support that.

Oh, jolly good. Everything will be foreign-owned, then.

I don't think the government is happy at all with foreign owned utilities as you seem to suggest, David. Not so easy however to suggest viable ways to change the current situation. Yes Allira the thought of foreign investors still creaming profits off failing water companies makes my blood boil.

Twitter was hideous pre Musk, it censored speech and was just awful. It absolutely has its problems now, but I can cope with hearing different opinions. Blue sky has the usual death threats towards feminists so I dont see how that's much different to Twitter.

Utilities and national core industries should be state controlled. The water industry is in a poor state because of very poor regulation and government not permitting spending to keep bills down, because of that bills are going to increase at a much faster rate to catch up with public expectations.

Running a government is just like any business, you either exploit resources or borrow/create money to provide the infrastructure, then you tax those that use it. That tax is the surplus to distribute to provide services to the population. Since WW2 many UK assets have been sold off to foreigners taking revenue out of the UK, they dont do it for charity, they are going to many money out of us!. In addition the digital online economy is not paying its share of taxation, which is especially unfair because they are awash with money.

We are paying foreigners to run our core industries and most other businesses it’s hardly surprising we haven’t had enough tax revenue to meet public demand, so we have to borrow. We haven’t done that to grow the economy it’s been done to win votes and meet expectations, Labour has stated that day to day spending should equal revenue raised which I support. 2+2 do not equal 5, the only way they are going to achieve that is to increase taxation or cut services, or a combination.

For many years changes have been made for short term gain, now the cost of that is beginning to bite and we have no resources to turn the clock back, we have to work harder and expect less until we rebuild the economy.

The meddling of oligarchs and other monied interests in the fate of nations is not new.

Last October, Colin Kahl, then the Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy at the Pentagon, sat in a hotel in Paris and prepared to make a call to avert disaster in Ukraine. A staffer handed him an iPhone—in part to avoid inviting an onslaught of late-night textsand colorful emojis on Kahl’s own phone. Kahl had returned to his room, with its heavy drapery and distant view of the Eiffel Tower, after a day of meetings with officials from the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. A senior defense official told me that Kahl was surprised by whom he was about to contact:

He was, like, ‘Why am I calling Elon Musk?’

How the U.S. government came to rely on the tech billionaire—and is now struggling to rein him in.

www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/08/28/elon-musks-shadow-rule

Perhaps we should question Musk's involvement in our political establishment - maybe even REFORM should question it, too - to ensure that the tail does not ultimately end up wagging the dog.

It's probably just as well that we'll see what he gets up to in the USA and who loses out before there's too much enthusiasm to "import".