Theresa May Seeks Snap U.K. Election to Get Brexit Backing - Bloomberg

Theresa May Seeks Snap U.K. Election to Get Brexit Backing

by Robert Hutton , Alex Morales , and Tim Ross

18 April 2017 at 8:07:19 PM AEST 18 April 2017 at 8:40:53 PM AEST

U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May said she will seek an early election on June 8, in an unexpected gamble aimed at strengthening her hand going into talks on leaving the European Union.

The surprise statement came less than a month after she triggered the formal start of Brexit and marks a reversal of her position before the Easter break, when her office insisted an early election wasn’t on the cards.

An election isn’t due until 2020 though her popularity -- polls show her Conservative Party is more than 20 points ahead of the main opposition -- give her an opening to consolidate her power. The announcement indicates that May has decided she cannot get the Brexit legislation she needs through the House of Commons with the slim majority she inherited from David Cameron.

All About Brexit

“There should be unity here in Westminster but instead there is division,” she said in a statement outside her Downing Street residence on Tuesday. “The country is coming together but Westminster is not.” A rift in Parliament will damage the government’s ability to make a success of Brexit, she said.

Her current polling lead over Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party means she can be fairly confident of increasing her majority, and bringing Tory lawmakers into Parliament who will back her on the flavor of Brexit that she prefers. Moreover, a survey last week by Orb International showed that 55 percent of Britons support her handling of Brexit talks.

“This is Theresa May’s attempt to free herself from some of the constraints she’s under and get the mandate to execute the hard Brexit she’s been talking about,” said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director of the Eurasia Group. “She sees an opportunity to win the election, secure a bigger mandate and execute the hard Brexit.”

Popularity Surge

A poll on Monday gave the Conservatives a 21-point lead over Labour for the first time in nine years, according to the Times newspaper. May’s party would win 44 percent of the vote, compared with 23 percent for Labour and 12 percent for the Liberal Democrats, the Times said, citing a poll by YouGov.

However, a 2011 law passed by Cameron during his coalition government with the Liberal Democrats has complicated matters. It means there are two circumstances in which there could be an early election: If two-thirds of the House of Commons votes for one or if the government loses a no-confidence vote and a new administration fails to win a confidence motion within 14 days.

In her statement May said she was taking the first course of action. “Tomorrow I will move a motion in the House of Commons calling for a general election to be held on the 8th of June,” she said.

The vote will need the backing of a substantial number of opposition lawmakers, including many from Labour. For the Liberal Democrats, leader Tim Farron signaled he’d support the motion and urged voters who oppose leaving the EU to back his party.

“If you want to avoid a disastrous hard Brexit, if you want to keep Britain in the single market, if you want a Britain that is open, tolerant and united, this is your chance,” he said.

Labour’s Corbyn has previously said his party would back an early election.

Uber Drivers Aren’t Worried About Self-Driving Cars — Yet - TIME Business

Uber Drivers Aren’t Worried About Self-Driving Cars — Yet

Posted: 10 Apr 2017 06:36 AM PDT

Rachel Bolles, who’s been driving for Uber in the Columbus, Ohio area for just over a year, says her job is about much more than getting passengers from A to B. “I consider myself part nanny, part chauffeur,” she says. “A lot of these people just need someone to talk to.”
That was more true than ever when Bolles picked up a distraught customer coping with the death of his girlfriend’s father. Having recently lost her own father, Bolles empathized and offered advice during the trip. “It was one of those rides you walk away from feeling really good,” she says.

But many observers argue that the approximately 4.5 million Americans who work as professional drivers in the U.S. are at risk of being replaced by self-driving vehicles. Once a far-flung fantasy, the technology is inching closer to reality every day. Silicon Valley firms like Uber and Google, as well as automakers like GM and Ford, view driverless cars as the next holy grail of transportation — and a potentially lucrative market. Already, self-driving cars are picking up passengers in Pittsburgh and Arizona, driverless trucks have made deliveries in Colorado, and London is about to deploy autonomous busses.
Despite self-driving vehicles’ impressive progress, neither Bolles nor any of the half-dozen other rideshare drivers TIME interviewed expressed fear of losing their job to a robotic car any time soon. Some envision themselves working in a different field by the time self-driving technology is ready for primetime, which will likely take several years at least. (Workers, after all, tend to be short-term thinkers.) Others believe the tech may complement, but not completely replace, human drivers. “There’s a lot more to driving than not running into another car,” said Kat Ellery, who also drives for Uber and Lyft in Columbus. “There are a lot of idiosyncrasies that [self-driving cars] can’t account for.”

Such sentiment may seem like denying the inevitable. But self-driving vehicles indeed have their limitations. Bad weather, for instance, remains a roadblock. That means they might be fine in sunny San Diego, but less useful in snowy Buffalo.
Some drivers, meanwhile, argue they’re better than computers at knowing which routes to avoid at certain times, or which side roads to take when the highways are clogged up. Daniel Woermer, a longtime Uber driver in Connecticut, argues that his GPS still doesn’t always immediately reflect changes in road conditions, like when a new divider appears overnight. “An autonomous vehicle, if it’s not updated and doesn’t have that proper knowledge, it could drive right into a barrier,” he says.
A fleet of networked, self-driving cars could potentially learn from one another, passing data about new road conditions from one vehicle to the next. However, you would still need that first car to be able to handle an unanticipated circumstance. But adaptability remains a weak point for computers, says Professor John Leonard of The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Mechanical Engineering: “The capacity for human intelligence, to deal with the unexpected and to use what we call common sense knowledge to handle situations for which they weren’t trained, those things are hard for a robot to do.”
Some Uber drivers also argue they play the role of babysitter by making sure their passengers aren’t mistreating their vehicle. “[If you’re] spilling coffee, a driver might say you can’t eat in here,” says Julian Jackson, who also drives for Uber in Columbus. “If you realize that someone is watching, then you might end up being a little more respectful of other people’s things.”
Ultimately, the biggest factor holding back self-driving cars may not be technology, but passengers. “There are a lot of people out there who wouldn’t trust a self-driving car,” says Carl Johnson, an Uber driver in Kansas City, Mo. That’s true no matter how studies show autonomous cars are more capable than human drivers. (One report from McKinsey and Company estimated that driverless cars could reduce automotive accidents by 90%.) Of course, that sentiment may change as self-driving cars become a more typical element of everyday life.
Despite these drivers’ confidence, it may not be wise for a young person today to bank on a lifelong rideshare career tomorrow. Uber executives in particular have not been shy about their pursuit of self-driving cars, which don’t clamor for higher fares or attempt to unionize. So far, the company has tested its autonomous vehicles in Pittsburgh, Tempe, Ariz., and its hometown of San Francisco. (Rival Lyft says it plans to deploy autonomous cars around 2021 or 2022.) But Uber’s self-driving progress hasn’t come without setbacks. A recent crash in Arizona, clashes with state regulators, and an ongoing and increasingly nasty legal battle with Google parent company Alphabet have all highlighted just how far it and other companies have to go before robots are zipping us around town.
Regardless of how drivers might feel, it’s increasingly likely that autonomous cars will make up some portion of tomorrow’s transportation landscape. But that world is far enough away that most professional drivers aren’t feeling the heat — yet. Some, like Johnson, are even ready to embrace such a future. “I think it’s a great idea,” he says. “I seriously believe there will be one day where we’re going to be like The Jetsons.”

The Military Is Revamping Its Retirement System to Attract Millennials - TIME

The Military Is Revamping Its Retirement System to Attract Millennials Posted: 13 Apr 2017 03:00 AM PDT In a bid to lure millennials, the U.S. military is making the most sweeping changes to its retirement program since World War II. Gone are the days when only a 20-year veteran leaves the service with a nest egg. Going forward, those who serve as little as two years will return to civilian life with retirement savings. The new system introduces 401(k)-type savings for military personnel while downsizing the traditional pension benefit—a trade the corporate world has been making for 35 years. The new design also comes with a stepped-up effort to provide service members with the education they will need to make the most of a system that demands more individual involvement. The new Blended Retirement System, authorized through the National Defense Act of 2016, goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2018. Those who enroll in the military after that date will be put into the new blended plan. Anyone with less than 12 years of service on that date will have one year to choose between the old system and the new one. Those with more than 12 years of service will remain under the old plan. Under the new plan, 85% of those serving in future years will leave with a portable retirement benefit, the military says. That compares to less than 19% that leave with a benefit under a system that has been in force since the days of MacArthur and Patton. The switch highlights some of the tradeoffs between defined-benefit pensions and defined-contribution 401(k)s that workers in private industry have been grappling with for decades. Pension plans can provide worry-free income for life, but the benefits go mostly to long-tenured workers. With savings plans, far more people get a retirement nest egg. But much of the responsibility for diligently saving and for making reasonable investment choices rests with the workers themselves. The military employs 1.4 million men and women, many of whom struggle with the demands of serving and managing their financial affairs at the same time. Veterans of all the armed services are twice as likely as civilians to carry debt from month to month, according to a recent financial literacy survey conducted by Harris Poll for the National Foundation for Credit Counseling. More than half say they are unprepared for a financial emergency. Such figures prompted the federal government to order all branches of the military to take steps to improve the financial capability of service members. “When I was battery commander in Germany, soldiers were purchasing encyclopedias and $2,000 washer-dryers,” Michael Meese, chief operating officer of the American Armed Forces Mutual Aid Association, a nonprofit helping service members with financial issues, has said. “Then they return home to a pile of debt.” The military now provides financial counseling at most bases on such things as managing bank accounts, living on a budget and avoiding debt. Before deployment, all service members now must attend a financial preparedness class, which includes explanations on how to access bank accounts from overseas, ways to pay bills remotely, powers of attorney, wills, and death benefits. All current and future service members remain eligible for a lifetime annuity after 20 years of service. For those in the new blended plan, that annuity benefit will be 20% less than under the old pension plan. But those service members will have the benefit of also being enrolled in the government’s giant Thrift Savings Plan, where they will receive a contribution of 1% of base pay beginning almost immediately. They fully vest in the TSP in two years, meaning they can take all those dollars with them if they leave the service at that point. They will also receive a matching contribution of up to another 4%, depending on their own contributions and length of service. Most importantly, the new plan ensures that most service members get a retirement benefit, an incentive to help recruit millennials who are less likely to want long-term military careers. Military officials concede that cutting pensions for those with 20-plus years of service might lead to more service members not sticking around. But attracting millennials is the main objective. For the government, the savings don’t hurt either, says Meese. The U.S. will save about $2 billion annually under this system and may be using it as a trial balloon. “This is the first time since the 1983 reforms to Social Security that the federal government has actually cut entitlements,” he told me in an email. “I wonder if the military taking the lead in entitlement reform will lead to similar reforms in Social Security or Medicare.” Change might be coming on a broader scale than just for those who serve.