Greig Baker

Chair, Baker Kell Cumming Limited.

[Greig Baker @Greig_Baker]

Rather than asking the public sector to do "more, for less", perhaps we could be telling it to do "less, better".

[Greig Baker @Greig_Baker]

Rationally, it might be better for HMG (and other Western Governments) to do the same thing, just writ large. Officials can’t hope to stop someone from trying to use AI to cause a bank run, for example, but they might be able to build measures that make the attempt futile.

[Greig Baker @Greig_Baker]

Ministers will struggle to regulate AI.

That’s because potential bad actors (states and/ or individuals) who want to abuse AI can operate beyond any regulation that HMG could create.

[Greig Baker @Greig_Baker]

Longer term, we also expect other Governments’ responses to AI to reinforce differences between emerging cybergeographic blocs – trade between countries like the USA and China isn’t going to be helped if they take competing approaches to AI use and regulation.

[Greig Baker @Greig_Baker]

But that is not on the cards for now – not least because it would lead to Whitehall losing, not gaining, influence.

[Greig Baker @Greig_Baker]

There is an underestimation of @UKLabour’s ideological preferences – Starmer’s shadow cabinet is not simply Blairism revisited.

Blair and his Cabinet prepared for Government during the years of Kinnock and Smith. The current Labour Party evolved under Miliband and Corbyn.

[Greig Baker @Greig_Baker]

A better solution could entail giving Local Authorities both more freedom to decide local planning laws and a fiscal incentive to liberalise them (e.g. retaining some of the personal taxes levied on people persuaded to live in an area?).

[Greig Baker @Greig_Baker]

The @OBR_UK prediction for last year's Government debt, which influenced tax policy decisions, was about 10% out.

[Greig Baker @Greig_Baker]

.@kent_police do an extraordinarily difficult job and I saw them doing it really well today.

Just grateful for them. Thanks.

[Greig Baker @Greig_Baker]

Perhaps people working past pensionable age shouldn't pay any income tax?

It would incentivise economic contribution and prolong the health/ social/ community benefits of work.

[Greig Baker @Greig_Baker]

Good ideas do not need to be sheltered by rewriting old books

[Greig Baker @Greig_Baker]

Passport staff going on strike got me thinking...

Now passports include biometric data, can we just get ones that last for a lifetime and cut the bureaucracy/ cost racket of renewals?

[Greig Baker @Greig_Baker]

The golden rule of Budgets is that first day headlines are reversed by the weekend.

[Greig Baker @Greig_Baker]

Always impressed that the OBR has the gumption to make predictions for five years' time.