SlyRatchet

The BBC isn't allowed to make any money by selling its products to the British public. BBC worldwide has adverts on it and therefore British audiences aren't allowed to see it in case this becomes a loophole for making money by the BBC.

Not OP but,

In academic circles there's a field known as political economy (or sometimes 'International Political Economy', IPE). This field of research grew out of the academia surrounding Marx's work. One aspect of this theory is that there is essentially no difference between economics and politics. They're part of the same thing.

The current, heterodox understanding of economics only works if you assume that the economy is part of the 'private' sphere (in the same way family, friendship, and opinion are considered 'private', i.e. that the state has no business interfering).

A byproduct of this emphasis on politics, as opposed to heterodox economics, is that there's more focus on the word than the number. Heterodox economists love to quantify things, but quite often numbers are incapable of explaining things such as wellbeing (we often use GDP, gross domestic product, or GDP per person, as a proxy for overall wellbeing, but this has been heavily criticised, even amongst heterodox economists).

An IPE theorist might argue that the economy is so complex that reducing it down to numbers obfuscates the reality. Words, for all their faults and ambiguities, are a significant improvement. In any case, the heterodox economists' supply and demand curves would largely break down if you were to get to the sort of post-scarcity economy that many Marxists advocate. Even short to medium term measures such as Universal (Basic) Incomes would cause problems. It would also be difficult to properly graph models if there was an overbearing central bank that operates in a sort of 'command economy' style structure. Numbers just aren't useful ways of quantifying the sorts of things that Marxists recommend.

Is there a large demand for more translators at the parliament, or are they staffed sufficiently? I'm currently in university and considering interpreting as a career option afterwards.

I read that the European civil service has a bit of a dearth of British civil servants, because non of us speak languages, so the employment prospects are good?

That bit about Stephen Fry bit feels weird. I live in Sheffield and whenever I see a police officer up close on foot I'm no quite sure what to do. I feel kind of like I should wave or nod or tell them good morning/afternoon/evening

(Assuming you're not busy at the time) What do you think is appropriate, if anything is appropriate at all?

Ah, well at least Northern Ireland made it in there in some form! It's always nice when NI gets talked about for something positive.

What was your favourite place in the UK, not including the Northern Irish cliffs?