In terms of the knowledge necessary to teach a subject, that hasn't risen that much. It's important to realise that higher degrees don't teach the breadth of a subject necessary for teaching - they focus down on a remarkably small area. In as far as being an academic is being a teacher, there hasn't been that much change in the knowledge needed to do the job.

The complexity comes from the fact that academics are expected to contribute their subject's advance, and that does need the depth of knowledge. However in practice the skills learnt by a PhD are more than enough to do that; the reality is that post docs exist to absorb the excess supply of PhDs.

Their universities are coming up to speed nicely...

Historically university posts were open to people with a BA (e.g. John Wesley and John Newman at Oxford in the 18th and 19th century) That it now takes a PhD and post doctoral work to get the same post means that we are training too many. Therefore the only solution is to row back on the PhDs being generated; given that governments are looking for money saving measures, this would seem an obvious starting point.

It's a rounding error in the accounts of an organisation like that; at least one more zero on it would have been a good start...

In an international free market, if US companies are seen to succumb to this pressure, open source and foreign companies will come along and sell items that (they claim( don't have the back doors. Either the US can shut up about this, or it can lose its companies...

In reality the Feds have overwhelmed every constitutional principle that they've found irritating, and the armed uprising has never happened. But it's a nice fantasy that keeps a few people quiet - because they KNOW they can do something about it when... at which point they will just be mown down in a hail of bullets.

I guess the question that springs to mind is whether that covers ALL network costs, including the high voltage lines from the power station to the sub station. I'm also wondering whether the rural nature of your area doesn't provide a degree of latency and resilience that may be more absent in an urban environment. But I'm guessing there. But yes, you do make an interesting point; thanks.

I guess the other question about costings is about baseload; the issues are spelt out here:

http://www.economist.com/news/...

not quite sure how that translates to the western side of the Pond.

The fact that the UK's gas and electricity prices are among the cheaper in the EU is a hint that there's not a lot of price gouging going on, as does the relative failure of the cooperative buying efforts local authorities have organised. Of course it's attractive to blame the providers when price rises happen, and there IS a suggestion that they don't lower prices as rapidly as they might when wholesale prices fall. but I'm less than convinced that the CEGB and the regional electricity boards would have been any better.Yes Labour got itself a nice little bounce at the polls by proposing a price freeze when in its manifesto for the next election; the most probable effect of that is that all the companies increase their prices beforehand

Utilities are boring because they do a simple job which generates small but predictable profits. Therefore investors put their money into them in the expectation that they will remain boring.

When a new development comes along that destroys their business model, one of two things will happen; they will increase their prices, or they will go out of business. Note that 'the government taking them over' is a subset of 'they will increase their prices'. The service that they provide; a reliable baseload supply and a safe network to distribute electricity HAVE TO BE PAID FOR. At the moment those costs are hidden in the average cost of a kWh. If private solar power reduces the average demand some of the time, the average cost of a kWh will have to be increased, or the other features be recognised and paid for.

Ladies and gentlemen, there is no such thing as a free lunch, despite politicians pretending otherwise for several thousand years.

So which does he prefer? This way he get to keep the backdoors that have been slipped in - just can't use them for evidence. The alternative is no backdoors. Great publicity for the firms; the FBI complaining they are secure. Anyone would think this has been choreographed...

The purpose of the BROADCAST regulator derives, historically, from the limited number of channels available on TV, so it was argued that there was a public interest in controlling who put what on the air. The internet is surely more like the press, where there are no such limitations, so there is no justification for regulation. That the broadcast regulator is trying to butt into internet activities does seem like mission creep - always popular with the regulators as generating more jobs for their people, and with politicians who gain some leverage over the media. NOT good for freedom of speech however...

Expropriation is the theft of a company by the state with no compensation - or as a result of a court order in connection with something else. Nationalisation is the state taking ownership but paying the owners a fair price for the assets. There is obviously a spectrum here; many Asian owned businesses in East Africa in the 60s and 70s were 'nationalised', but the price was paid in government bonds in an non-convertible currency that promptly inflated to zero value.

In the Western context, the process of nationalisation is essentially the same as compulsory purchase of land with a similar expectation of fair value paid. To do otherwise does constitute the state stealing the asset, and would probably constitute a post facto law; this, of course is why we have constitutions...

In extremis. Of course you are right that laws change all the time, but at some level the constitutional principle has some significance. Certainly whole scale expropriation without compensation of things owned by corporations would be illegitimate. The issue is where to draw the line; the challenge is to resist being totally dogmatic in both directions!

Because people have the right, under law, to create corporations and benefit from them, they inherit much the same right to act in the interest of those people as those people have. [Yes, this has probably been over-extended in the Supreme Court case that lets them do political donations to their hearts' content]. However the core idea in the organisation of a society is that laws lock in rights and expectations; if I set up an organisation with certain rights, then I have to right to expect to see those right protected.

Specifically if I invest money in a corporation with certain rights, I have the right to expect to see those rights not tampered with. What you are proposed is to overthrow that principle - technically this constitutes a breach of the constraint on the Congress not to pass a 'post facto' law - see section 9 of the US constitution, Whilst you may regret this situation, to assert that the situation can be reversed is not legitimate.