Britain is in a different world to much of Europe now
Germany is at peak pandemic: most cases ever Hungary near pandemic peak Slovakia is at peak Czechia near peak Romania: morgues collapsing, curfew Slovenia at peak Cases surging in Serbia, Croatia, Belgium, Netherlands, the Baltics, Austria, Ireland
The vax is ameliorating much of the pain but not all of it
But we need to keep hammering the boosters. A winter with waning immunity would not be good.
Yes, absolutely. If Covid teaches anything, this must be top of the list: DO NOT BE COMPLACENT, AND DON'T GET SMUG
Boosters for everyone.
I am curious why the USA seems to be avoiding a fifth wave, unlike Europe. America's vax rates are lower than much of Europe, and America vaxxed first, so they should now be encountering a fall in immunity.
Yet not. I wonder if the sheer scale of the prior waves in the USA is now coming to their aid. ie Herd Immunity
Perhaps a better way of looking at this is to distinguish between MPs providing a service unrelated to their role in Parliament ie those who have some actual skills and knowledge for which they would get paid even if they were not an MP and those where the primary reason they are getting paid is because they are an MP
So an MP who is a teacher getting paid for tutoring is fine. Ditto an MP with an HGV licence doing some driving or an MP lawyer providing legal advice etc.
An MP who is made an "advisor" or a "consultant" to a company - well, what service are they providing exactly? Would they get such a job if they were not an MP? These are the sorts of second jobs which need to be stopped because these are the ones where the line between providing a real service and using your political office for private gain gets blurred. These are the cases where conflicts of interest arise and the potential for corruption.
Once again Paterson is the test case.
Will Randox keep paying him now?
Paterson was asked why Randox paid him. He answered "You'd have to ask them."
When Randox was asked they declined to answer.
What service exactly did they pay him for? What skills did he bring to them?
Or was it his position that was the value?
If the answer is the latter then that is where you have a potential problem and that is where the scrutiny - and any restrictions - should be focused.
They have tried today to spray it across the House at large, diverting to “second jobs” full stop rather than lobbying breaches per se, but it doesn’t seem to be working despite apologists on here.
This scandal is like a dynamite fuse, burning slowly toward the grand larceny of PPE procurement and the petty corruption of Boris’s redecoration bill.
What can the government do to arrest an explosion?
Here we go again, that's the US Congress, Ireland and other EU countries, a majority in Northern Ireland, and Conservative peers telling the UK government to stop doing what they intend to do.
Here we go again, that's the US Congress, Ireland and other EU countries, a majority in Northern Ireland, and Conservative peers telling the UK government to stop doing what they intend to do.
George Grylls @georgegrylls Exclusive: Tory MP Laurence Robertson is paid £24,000 a year by the gambling industry.
He regularly uses parliamentary questions to demand ministers scrap tough new laws on gambling.
He denies any conflict of interest.
Some of the proposed new laws on gambling do need to be challenged with industry voices. Unfortunately one group that will not be heard are winning punters!
If there were to be one simple change I would make to the gambling industry, which would be hated by the gambling industry, it would be that the bookies would be forbidden from restricting stakes or restricting offers from winning punters.
If the bookies want to offer "free bets" etc to entice people into gambling they should be forced to offer them to all who want to bet, not just those who bet and lose. If they want to offer stakes to losing punters, those same stakes should be available to winning punters. And if they're going to stake limit winning punters that's fine, so long as they stake limit the entire market including losing punters.
Being able to fleece losing punters but closing the door on winning ones shouldn't be legal if you hold a gambling licence.
Not very libertarian of you Philip. They are private businesses they can and should do what they like.
Private businesses aren’t subject to the law ?
They aren't and shouldn't be subject to the government telling them how to run their businesses.
Go to Coutts earning the median wage with no assets and ask to become a customer.
Coutts NatWest would be delighted to have your business
Rather than brag about how long they have worked, how about bragging about not busting one's hump? Who will own up to the lowest?
Every now and then Reddit will have a topic about "easiest jobs". It's not uncommon to see people claim that they have essentially automated their job and are getting paid a good salary for very little effort each week. e.g. They run a script and a week's worth of reports are produced.
There's another class of employee, who I call the swans. They make a job look effortless, graceful and easy, but when they're absent due to holiday or illness, any number of people run around like headless chickens trying to fill the role. Then they come back, raise an eyebrow at the mess, and serenely continue on their way.
My wife is one of these.
The problem is that when we are both at home we attempt to “manage” each other, with “hilarious” consequences…
If he is working a 70 hour week (really - 8 til 8 during the week and 8 til 6 on a Saturday with zero breaks...?) and his political career is effectively over, he'd probably be better to take the Chiltern Hundreds and spending less time earning crap money and more of the £100k a quarter stuff.
I did average 70 hour weeks in my twenties. I genuinely couldn't concentrate long enough to do them now and a fair bit younger than Mr Cox. Does his 70 hour weeks include a significant proportion of lunches and dinners?
Are there any 70 hour week averagers in their sixties on pb? And no, pb posting does not count.
Yes, most people don't work 70 hours a week into their sixties. Most also don't earn millions a year as a leading QC. The two are probably related.
I am trying to understand how he is working 70 hours a week?
If it is 40 hours "normal working", 3 x 2 hr lunches, 2 x 3 hr dinners, and 18 hrs reading books and papers a week, that would be just about understandable to me.
If it is genuinely 70 hrs a week "normal working" I am interested in how he does it and how common it is to be capable of that.
I regularly worked those hours and more when I was running my team. There were plenty of times when I had to work through the night. I have done intense bursts of work - with similar hours - on particular projects since going freelance.
When working I often did not have time for any sort of lunch or dinner. This is not unusual for lawyers in court or doing investigations. Plenty of criminal barristers work these sorts of hours but get paid nothing like what Cox gets.
My worst period at work averaged 55 hour weeks for about 2 months. That was pretty much a full on day every day - get up, go to work (pre WFH days a commute every day), go home, cook, eat dinner, collapse into bed, repeat. I tried not to work weekends but gave in a couple of times when we were too far behind. At the end of that I was done for and I was in my mid 30s. I am dubious of anyone who claims to work 70 hour weeks regularly, maybe they are "at work" but I question how much they actually get done if that is more than a one-off.
I can assure I did do that sort of intense work for prolonged periods. It did have an effect on my health, which is one reason why I eventually left. But I do like and enjoy living on adrenaline, which is probably why I ended up doing and loving the job I did.
I look at that Goldman Sachs type stuff where they own you, but often you are young and single and think that I would have run on adrenaline to such an extent that I would have been in a full blown fist fight, or at very least a meltdown of the order of that Scientology reporter, with one of the partners in a matter of weeks (I also think I'm best avoiding teaching). I'm guessing that it is not rare that someone can't handle the pressure and is walked offsite and that partners do get thumped periodically. Kudos and some merit to the sort of people that can handle that. But I do wonder to what extent an obsession with the fact that the work is soooo hard and the ability to do it well soooo rare, that it is self fulfilling - by demanding the hours you render the ability rare and because the ability is rare you then have to demand the hours.
And senior people do sometimes work insanely hard, but this demands and money allows the compromises to be made - the wife (or husband) more often still gives up their career to be home and support the high flying endeavour of the partner or extensive use is made of, for example, live in childcare or other retained help.
And, imo, if this is for the best benefit of that family in that circumstance this is a perfectly respectable arrangement to come to - equality needn't demand able partners to be forced into work at gunpoint, sisters should have opportunity but should not be compelled to do it for themselves.
Here we go again, that's the US Congress, Ireland and other EU countries, a majority in Northern Ireland, and Conservative peers telling the UK government to stop doing what they intend to do.
Here we go again, that's the US Congress, Ireland and other EU countries, a majority in Northern Ireland, and Conservative peers telling the UK government to stop doing what they intend to do.
And did a single one of those assorted nobodies vote to Leave?
I seriously doubt that Frost’s statement has anything to do with pronouncements from a US committee.
I presume he has simply weighed up the pros and cons and decided not to uncap this grenade (despite claims on here that exercising A16 is cost/risk free).
Here we go again, that's the US Congress, Ireland and other EU countries, a majority in Northern Ireland, and Conservative peers telling the UK government to stop doing what they intend to do.
And did a single one of those assorted nobodies vote to Leave?
Not sure why you think that matters. Is this a HYUFD-style purity test that (in)validates all future opinions?
Because loser's whining about Brexit getting implemented is irrelevant. Yeah we get it you don't like Brexit but you lost so get over yourselves already.
I couldn't care less if you got a list of 11 million names of people who said the government were doing the wrong thing, if they all voted against previously, then we already knew that! It isn't new information.
Here we go again, that's the US Congress, Ireland and other EU countries, a majority in Northern Ireland, and Conservative peers telling the UK government to stop doing what they intend to do.
You do realise that a settlement on this issue will end the debate on rejoining as the county moves on
At the risk of restarting the Troubles.
It's the EU and May's government who risked that first by abandoning the Unionists and taking the Nationalist side wholeheartedly.
The way to avoid Troubles is to treat both communities equitably, while accepting we voted to Leave so there will be divergence. As many checks on the Ireland/NI border as there are in the Irish Sea would do that.
Here we go again, that's the US Congress, Ireland and other EU countries, a majority in Northern Ireland, and Conservative peers telling the UK government to stop doing what they intend to do.
And did a single one of those assorted nobodies vote to Leave?
Not sure why you think that matters. Is this a HYUFD-style purity test that (in)validates all future opinions?
Because loser's whining about Brexit getting implemented is irrelevant. Yeah we get it you don't like Brexit but you lost so get over yourselves already.
I couldn't care less if you got a list of 11 million names of people who said the government were doing the wrong thing, if they all voted against previously, then we already knew that! It isn't new information.
That sounds an awful lot like a yes, to me. Their 2021 opinion is worthless because their 2016 vote was "wrong". That's not an attitude that's helpful for good future policy.
Here we go again, that's the US Congress, Ireland and other EU countries, a majority in Northern Ireland, and Conservative peers telling the UK government to stop doing what they intend to do.
And did a single one of those assorted nobodies vote to Leave?
I seriously doubt that Frost’s statement has anything to do with pronouncements from a US committee.
I presume he has simply weighed up the pros and cons and decided not to uncap this grenade (despite claims on here that exercising A16 is cost/risk free).
Where do you get the notion he's not going to uncap the grenade from?
He's still threatening to if the talks don't get the right results as he should. A16 was never going to be invoked until after COP26 has finished. 🤦♂️
Britain is in a different world to much of Europe now
Germany is at peak pandemic: most cases ever Hungary near pandemic peak Slovakia is at peak Czechia near peak Romania: morgues collapsing, curfew Slovenia at peak Cases surging in Serbia, Croatia, Belgium, Netherlands, the Baltics, Austria, Ireland
The vax is ameliorating much of the pain but not all of it
But we need to keep hammering the boosters. A winter with waning immunity would not be good.
Yes, absolutely. If Covid teaches anything, this must be top of the list: DO NOT BE COMPLACENT, AND DON'T GET SMUG
Boosters for everyone.
I am curious why the USA seems to be avoiding a fifth wave, unlike Europe. America's vax rates are lower than much of Europe, and America vaxxed first, so they should now be encountering a fall in immunity.
Yet not. I wonder if the sheer scale of the prior waves in the USA is now coming to their aid. ie Herd Immunity
Possibly, but our declines in NY state and locally in Westchester County have flatlined, and may be beginning to edge up again, and we’re only just beginning to get the sort of temps that require staying indoors as much as possible (i.e no outdoor dining, and no propane heaters for outdoor dining just don’t cut it for a New York winter).
If he is working a 70 hour week (really - 8 til 8 during the week and 8 til 6 on a Saturday with zero breaks...?) and his political career is effectively over, he'd probably be better to take the Chiltern Hundreds and spending less time earning crap money and more of the £100k a quarter stuff.
I did average 70 hour weeks in my twenties. I genuinely couldn't concentrate long enough to do them now and a fair bit younger than Mr Cox. Does his 70 hour weeks include a significant proportion of lunches and dinners?
Are there any 70 hour week averagers in their sixties on pb? And no, pb posting does not count.
Yes, most people don't work 70 hours a week into their sixties. Most also don't earn millions a year as a leading QC. The two are probably related.
I am trying to understand how he is working 70 hours a week?
If it is 40 hours "normal working", 3 x 2 hr lunches, 2 x 3 hr dinners, and 18 hrs reading books and papers a week, that would be just about understandable to me.
If it is genuinely 70 hrs a week "normal working" I am interested in how he does it and how common it is to be capable of that.
I regularly worked those hours and more when I was running my team. There were plenty of times when I had to work through the night. I have done intense bursts of work - with similar hours - on particular projects since going freelance.
When working I often did not have time for any sort of lunch or dinner. This is not unusual for lawyers in court or doing investigations. Plenty of criminal barristers work these sorts of hours but get paid nothing like what Cox gets.
My worst period at work averaged 55 hour weeks for about 2 months. That was pretty much a full on day every day - get up, go to work (pre WFH days a commute every day), go home, cook, eat dinner, collapse into bed, repeat. I tried not to work weekends but gave in a couple of times when we were too far behind. At the end of that I was done for and I was in my mid 30s. I am dubious of anyone who claims to work 70 hour weeks regularly, maybe they are "at work" but I question how much they actually get done if that is more than a one-off.
I can assure I did do that sort of intense work for prolonged periods. It did have an effect on my health, which is one reason why I eventually left. But I do like and enjoy living on adrenaline, which is probably why I ended up doing and loving the job I did.
I look at that Goldman Sachs type stuff where they own you, but often you are young and single and think that I would have run on adrenaline to such an extent that I would have been in a full blown fist fight, or at very least a meltdown of the order of that Scientology reporter, with one of the partners in a matter of weeks (I also think I'm best avoiding teaching). I'm guessing that it is not rare that someone can't handle the pressure and is walked offsite and that partners do get thumped periodically. Kudos and some merit to the sort of people that can handle that. But I do wonder to what extent an obsession with the fact that the work is soooo hard and the ability to do it well soooo rare, that it is self fulfilling - by demanding the hours you render the ability rare and because the ability is rare you then have to demand the hours.
And senior people do sometimes work insanely hard, but this demands and money allows the compromises to be made - the wife (or husband) more often still gives up their career to be home and support the high flying endeavour of the partner or extensive use is made of, for example, live in childcare or other retained help.
And, imo, if this is for the best benefit of that family in that circumstance this is a perfectly respectable arrangement to come to - equality needn't demand able partners to be forced into work at gunpoint, sisters should have opportunity but should not be compelled to do it for themselves.
The reason I worked so hard was because:
(a) I was setting up a new function. It was the equivalent of setting up a business. (b) There was a hell of a lot of shit to clear up and the more I looked the more I found. (c) I simply was not given the resources and team I needed.
It was only after everything went nuclear that I finally got those resources and of course by then we really needed them. Plus now I had the role of managing this much larger team etc. But I did delegate. There were times of v intense activity and other times when you could do more normal hours. The problem was that you never knew when something would blow up so you could not slack off too much with the more routine stuff because you might suddenly find yourself embroiled in something critical.
The other issue was the cross-jurisdictional nature of the work. The late afternoon and evening was for the US. When the HK or Singapore offices got involved then you were in trouble.
I always felt that my biggest achievement was that if I was not there things worked just as well because it showed that I had built an effective team. It didn't mean that I didn't have plenty to do.
Some people work best under pressure or in a crisis. I realised a long time ago I was such a person. So I gravitated to that sort of work.
Cue much wailing and gnashing of teeth (those that have any) among the Hunneratti.
Ashley Preece @PreeceObserver Steven Gerrard to Aston Villa all but done as he finalises his backroom staff. I'm expecting an announcement within the next 24 to 48 hours if not sooner. Christian Purslow set to get his man. Villans; fill in our Villa-Gerrard survey https://data.reachplc.com/213132903276349 #avfc
Here we go again, that's the US Congress, Ireland and other EU countries, a majority in Northern Ireland, and Conservative peers telling the UK government to stop doing what they intend to do.
And did a single one of those assorted nobodies vote to Leave?
Not sure why you think that matters. Is this a HYUFD-style purity test that (in)validates all future opinions?
Because loser's whining about Brexit getting implemented is irrelevant. Yeah we get it you don't like Brexit but you lost so get over yourselves already.
I couldn't care less if you got a list of 11 million names of people who said the government were doing the wrong thing, if they all voted against previously, then we already knew that! It isn't new information.
That sounds an awful lot like a yes, to me. Their 2021 opinion is worthless because their 2016 vote was "wrong". That's not an attitude that's helpful for good future policy.
It pretty much is a yes, yes.
PS most of those named didn't vote wrong either, they didn't vote as all as they're not British which again makes their pronouncements worthless.
That counterparties don't want Britain to place Britain's interests first isn't interesting.
Cue much wailing and gnashing of teeth (those that have any) among the Hunneratti.
Ashley Preece @PreeceObserver Steven Gerrard to Aston Villa all but done as he finalises his backroom staff. I'm expecting an announcement within the next 24 to 48 hours if not sooner. Christian Purslow set to get his man. Villans; fill in our Villa-Gerrard survey https://data.reachplc.com/213132903276349 #avfc
Good for Gerrard.
Hopefully his experience winning a lesser league will serve him well when he faces the much tougher competition of a proper league.
Here we go again, that's the US Congress, Ireland and other EU countries, a majority in Northern Ireland, and Conservative peers telling the UK government to stop doing what they intend to do.
And did a single one of those assorted nobodies vote to Leave?
Not sure why you think that matters. Is this a HYUFD-style purity test that (in)validates all future opinions?
Because loser's whining about Brexit getting implemented is irrelevant. Yeah we get it you don't like Brexit but you lost so get over yourselves already.
I couldn't care less if you got a list of 11 million names of people who said the government were doing the wrong thing, if they all voted against previously, then we already knew that! It isn't new information.
That sounds an awful lot like a yes, to me. Their 2021 opinion is worthless because their 2016 vote was "wrong". That's not an attitude that's helpful for good future policy.
It pretty much is a yes, yes.
PS most of those named didn't vote wrong either, they didn't vote as all as they're not British which again makes their pronouncements worthless.
That counterparties don't want Britain to place Britain's interests first isn't interesting.
So Leavers have their Leavy conversations, and Remainers have their Remainy conversations, and nobody listens to the other. And that doesn't strike you as a toxic, regressive attitude to politics?
Rather than brag about how long they have worked, how about bragging about not busting one's hump? Who will own up to the lowest?
Every now and then Reddit will have a topic about "easiest jobs". It's not uncommon to see people claim that they have essentially automated their job and are getting paid a good salary for very little effort each week. e.g. They run a script and a week's worth of reports are produced.
I did write a script once that covered for me when I was on holiday, so that I'd have results to show at a meeting the day after I returned to work.
Here we go again, that's the US Congress, Ireland and other EU countries, a majority in Northern Ireland, and Conservative peers telling the UK government to stop doing what they intend to do.
You do realise that a settlement on this issue will end the debate on rejoining as the county moves on
At the risk of restarting the Troubles.
It's the EU and May's government who risked that first by abandoning the Unionists and taking the Nationalist side wholeheartedly.
The way to avoid Troubles is to treat both communities equitably, while accepting we voted to Leave so there will be divergence. As many checks on the Ireland/NI border as there are in the Irish Sea would do that.
The problem stems from Brexit in the first place. Brexit changes the constitutional position of Northern Ireland and it does so despite being overwhelmingly rejected by the voters of Northern Ireland.
That's the first breach of the consent principle of the Good Friday Agreement right there.
The Northern Ireland Protocol loads the cost of that onto the Unionist side, which I guess is not too unreasonable as they voted for Brexit, but it does breach the consent principle too, for a second time. At one point you were happy with that, because the NI Assembly can vote to end the arrangement. That used to be good enough for you.
Where's the advantage in breaking the consent principle for a third time in an attempt to unilaterally give Unionists what they want without regard to anyone else?
It's hardly going to make an awful situation better.
Comments
Boosters for everyone.
I am curious why the USA seems to be avoiding a fifth wave, unlike Europe. America's vax rates are lower than much of Europe, and America vaxxed first, so they should now be encountering a fall in immunity.
Yet not. I wonder if the sheer scale of the prior waves in the USA is now coming to their aid. ie Herd Immunity
Paterson was asked why Randox paid him. He answered "You'd have to ask them."
When Randox was asked they declined to answer.
What service exactly did they pay him for? What skills did he bring to them?
Or was it his position that was the value?
If the answer is the latter then that is where you have a potential problem and that is where the scrutiny - and any restrictions - should be focused.
I'm pretty sure that the story would run for days rather than just one article.
They have tried today to spray it across the House at large, diverting to “second jobs” full stop rather than lobbying breaches per se, but it doesn’t seem to be working despite apologists on here.
This scandal is like a dynamite fuse, burning slowly toward the grand larceny of PPE procurement and the petty corruption of Boris’s redecoration bill.
What can the government do to arrest an explosion?
The problem is that when we are both at home we attempt to “manage” each other, with “hilarious” consequences…
And senior people do sometimes work insanely hard, but this demands and money allows the compromises to be made - the wife (or husband) more often still gives up their career to be home and support the high flying endeavour of the partner or extensive use is made of, for example, live in childcare or other retained help.
And, imo, if this is for the best benefit of that family in that circumstance this is a perfectly respectable arrangement to come to - equality needn't demand able partners to be forced into work at gunpoint, sisters should have opportunity but should not be compelled to do it for themselves.
I presume he has simply weighed up the pros and cons and decided not to uncap this grenade (despite claims on here that exercising A16 is cost/risk free).
I couldn't care less if you got a list of 11 million names of people who said the government were doing the wrong thing, if they all voted against previously, then we already knew that! It isn't new information.
The way to avoid Troubles is to treat both communities equitably, while accepting we voted to Leave so there will be divergence. As many checks on the Ireland/NI border as there are in the Irish Sea would do that.
He's still threatening to if the talks don't get the right results as he should. A16 was never going to be invoked until after COP26 has finished. 🤦♂️
(a) I was setting up a new function. It was the equivalent of setting up a business.
(b) There was a hell of a lot of shit to clear up and the more I looked the more I found.
(c) I simply was not given the resources and team I needed.
It was only after everything went nuclear that I finally got those resources and of course by then we really needed them. Plus now I had the role of managing this much larger team etc. But I did delegate. There were times of v intense activity and other times when you could do more normal hours. The problem was that you never knew when something would blow up so you could not slack off too much with the more routine stuff because you might suddenly find yourself embroiled in something critical.
The other issue was the cross-jurisdictional nature of the work. The late afternoon and evening was for the US. When the HK or Singapore offices got involved then you were in trouble.
I always felt that my biggest achievement was that if I was not there things worked just as well because it showed that I had built an effective team. It didn't mean that I didn't have plenty to do.
Some people work best under pressure or in a crisis. I realised a long time ago I was such a person. So I gravitated to that sort of work.
Ashley Preece
@PreeceObserver
Steven Gerrard to Aston Villa all but done as he finalises his backroom staff. I'm expecting an announcement within the next 24 to 48 hours if not sooner. Christian Purslow set to get his man. Villans; fill in our Villa-Gerrard survey https://data.reachplc.com/213132903276349 #avfc
PS most of those named didn't vote wrong either, they didn't vote as all as they're not British which again makes their pronouncements worthless.
That counterparties don't want Britain to place Britain's interests first isn't interesting.
Hopefully his experience winning a lesser league will serve him well when he faces the much tougher competition of a proper league.
NEW THREAD
It worked almost too well.
That's the first breach of the consent principle of the Good Friday Agreement right there.
The Northern Ireland Protocol loads the cost of that onto the Unionist side, which I guess is not too unreasonable as they voted for Brexit, but it does breach the consent principle too, for a second time. At one point you were happy with that, because the NI Assembly can vote to end the arrangement. That used to be good enough for you.
Where's the advantage in breaking the consent principle for a third time in an attempt to unilaterally give Unionists what they want without regard to anyone else?
It's hardly going to make an awful situation better.