"In March 2020, internal documents leaked to The Intercept revealed that moderators had been instructed to suppress posts created by users deemed "too ugly, poor, or disabled" for the platform, and to censor political speech in livestreams, punishing those who harmed "national honor" or broadcast streams about "state organs such as police" with bans from the platform."
I have never bothered with TikTok. Somebody once described it to me as "For people whose attention span is too small for YouTube Shorts". So surely that would mean that TikTok news coverage would be something like "Here is the news. Thank you for watching. More news in an hour"
I've never really bothered with it either, beyond understanding what it is. I've always thought of it as being ok as entertainment but a poor medium to discuss anything remotely serious.
What stood out to me was Nadia Whittome (MP) saying in a newspaper interview that she doesn't watch films, she spends her evenings on tic tok. These are the people we elect to parliament.
She’s far from alone. An awful lot of people have totally abandoned old patterns of media usage, eg tv. Watching tv has become a sign that you are way out of the game.
That's pretty appalling about TikTok. But I've not had a TV for years - I'd rather watch movies when it's convenient than when they happen to be broadcast, so Netflix works for me. I recently spent a few nights in the guest room of someone who was recently widowed and scared to be alone, and they had Sky with 100 or so channels. Apart from the BBC channels they seemed amazingly similar (and for my taste amazingly crap) - wall to wall game shows, comedies and sub-Bond action movies.
I used to think that when we had 100 channels there would be a sort of PR, with maybe 50% as above and the rest addressing a range of different audiences. But apparently nearly everyone's going for the Mail/Sun market.
"Apart from the BBC channels they seemed amazingly similar (and for my taste amazingly crap) - wall to wall game shows, comedies and sub-Bond action movies" - N Palmer.
"I am a socialist not because I love the poor but because I hate them" - anon
When people criticise the Australian government, it’s a good idea to pause and remember that this would not have happened in more authoritarian regimes around the word. The fact that a government can lose a court case is a good thing.
That is a fallacious argument. We are not criticising the system which allows both the original decision and the court case to overturn it. We are criticising the ineptitude of a Government that can give someone documented permission to travel to their country and then can cancel that permission for what appear to be reasons of political expediency.
I would also ask how likely this outcome would have been if Djokovic had not been a world famous tennis star?
The Victorian state government is Labor controlled and they were the ones who originally gave him permission
The federal govt were asked to check the visas in advance and declined saying it was a matter for the Victorian Govt.
And the Victorian government clearly did not do so properly hence the Federal Government has had to intervene to cancel it
As I understand it the Federal govt has powers to reject visas not available to states.
Which the Federal Immigration Minister is about to now use to deport Djokovic
So what your comment about “the Vic govt didn’t do it properly” all about?
The point was that the Federal Govt could have made it clear when asked originally that Djokovic wouldn’t be allowed in. Instead they initially washed their hands of it (deliberately?), thereby manufacturing a media storm, only to then take the popular(/populist?) decision to overrule Vic Govt/courts for political brownie points in an election year and chuck Djok out. When it could have been all easily quietly averted weeks ago.
The Victoria state government could have checked Djokovic's vaccination status properly in the first place and not allowed him a visa. They didn't as they wanted him to play. Hence the Federal Government is now intervening to cancel his visa and deport him
Australian government looking like a bunch of total arseholes. Not for the first time.
They aren't, Australian swing voters are with Morrison not the judge or Tennis Australia on this. Morrison has his eye on swing voters in an election year, the longer this stays in the headlines the better for him. Losing a few anti vaxxers who back Djokovic to One Nation on the primary vote is not much of a problem given the swing voters he could win back from Labor on the 2PP
Is this another of the times you applaud in this case a government opposing the court system and effectively overturning a court judgement because it is electorally popular?
Boris won a landslide after challenging that court judgment remember which Morrison will well remember too
'We had last week a proper outbreak and it showed up that we had a lot of false positives but the rules are like they are so all these players who are false positives couldn't play.
'The only real positive came from Trent Alexander-Arnold and all the rest were false positives.'
He obviously doesn't mean false positives, but not a great look for him to be talking about such things.
Talking about the BBC shocking that they - the Today prog - have just spent ten minutes or so effectively in an advert for Green Planet which was shown on the BBC last night.
Australian government looking like a bunch of total arseholes. Not for the first time.
They aren't, Australian swing voters are with Morrison not the judge or Tennis Australia on this. Morrison has his eye on swing voters in an election year, the longer this stays in the headlines the better for him. Losing a few anti vaxxers who back Djokovic to One Nation on the primary vote is not much of a problem given the swing voters he could win back from Labor on the 2PP
Is this another of the times you applaud in this case a government opposing the court system and effectively overturning a court judgement because it is electorally popular?
Boris won a landslide after challenging that court judgment remember which Morrison will well remember too
I'm sure he will. A lesson to populist leaders everywhere.
Interesting write-up in The Grocer on the Public Accounts Committee's report on the CAP-replacement Environmental Land Management program.
Summary? The scheme 'lacks detail and is based on “blind optimism”.' The plan will cut in half direct subsidy payments by 24/25 which the committee notes the risk that smaller and tenant farmers "who are operating on wafer-thin margins will go out of business"
' “We have known we were replacing the CAP since 2016 and still we see no clear plans, objectives or communications with those at the sharp end – farmers – in this multi-billion pound, radical overhaul of the way land is used and, more crucially, food is produced in this country,” said committee chair and veteran Tory MP Sir Geoffrey Clifton Brown.'
What an absolute fiasco. As with the customs SNAFU the government are all talk and no action. Whilst the Welsh Nationalist from Essex always says "we have delivered farmers from CAP as they wanted" that wasn't supposed to be the end game. Leaving the EU is the first step - what you do afterwards is critical.
Simple point - we either make farms economically viable or we're back to being massively reliant on imported food. Which is the reverse of what Brexit proclaimed and is strategically stupid. That the government don't know what to do, and think "cut subsidies in half" will work is lunacy.
The Tories had farmers and fishermen as a client vote for a while. Who will they vote for in 2024? Won't be Tory if dogma and incompetence threaten their industry and way of life.
It's up to the consumers, finally. If they want to pay more for UK-produced agricultural goods (if domestic produce turns out to be more expensive) then everyone is happy. If not, then the consumers will be happy but not some farmers.
Speaking to my man on the combine over the weekend he seems to think that the Australian deal is a red herring because over the course of its 10-year term growig demand from China will mean that nothing produced in Australia will ever leave Asia. As for the environmental scheme he believes that the benefits will accrue to large landowners which may present a problem for the government politically.
Domestic production is only more expensive if the EU subsidise and we don't. Food security isn't something that should be left to the whims of the market - didn't we learn during WWII how dangerous it is to be that heavily reliant on imports?
The Common Agricultural Policy had major faults. So Brexit really should have been he opportunity to have a grow British eat British campaign. Instead we're doing the opposite. Back to the big questions asked by Tory newspapers this last week - what was the point? Sovvrintyinnit isn't a shiny badge you get awarded. Its a tool to allow you to do things you couldn't do before. If you endlessly whine "we can't do this" then gain the powers to do this and then don't do this, whats the point?
When people criticise the Australian government, it’s a good idea to pause and remember that this would not have happened in more authoritarian regimes around the word. The fact that a government can lose a court case is a good thing.
That is a fallacious argument. We are not criticising the system which allows both the original decision and the court case to overturn it. We are criticising the ineptitude of a Government that can give someone documented permission to travel to their country and then can cancel that permission for what appear to be reasons of political expediency.
I would also ask how likely this outcome would have been if Djokovic had not been a world famous tennis star?
The Victorian state government is Labor controlled and they were the ones who originally gave him permission
The federal govt were asked to check the visas in advance and declined saying it was a matter for the Victorian Govt.
And the Victorian government clearly did not do so properly hence the Federal Government has had to intervene to cancel it
As I understand it the Federal govt has powers to reject visas not available to states.
Which the Federal Immigration Minister is about to now use to deport Djokovic
So what your comment about “the Vic govt didn’t do it properly” all about?
The point was that the Federal Govt could have made it clear when asked originally that Djokovic wouldn’t be allowed in. Instead they initially washed their hands of it (deliberately?), thereby manufacturing a media storm, only to then take the popular(/populist?) decision to overrule Vic Govt/courts for political brownie points in an election year and chuck Djok out. When it could have been all easily quietly averted weeks ago.
The Victoria state government could have checked Djokovic's vaccination status properly in the first place and not allowed him a visa. They didn't as they wanted him to play. Hence the Federal Government is now intervening to cancel his visa and deport him
Australian government looking like a bunch of total arseholes. Not for the first time.
They aren't, Australian swing voters are with Morrison not the judge or Tennis Australia on this. Morrison has his eye on swing voters in an election year, the longer this stays in the headlines the better for him. Losing a few anti vaxxers who back Djokovic to One Nation on the primary vote is not much of a problem given the swing voters he could win back from Labor on the 2PP
Is this another of the times you applaud in this case a government opposing the court system and effectively overturning a court judgement because it is electorally popular?
To be fair, it is the Australia government using a power specifically reserved to the Federal government - written into the law. And, IIRC, used and tested in the law courts.
Rather than trying some dodgy end run around the courts.
"In March 2020, internal documents leaked to The Intercept revealed that moderators had been instructed to suppress posts created by users deemed "too ugly, poor, or disabled" for the platform, and to censor political speech in livestreams, punishing those who harmed "national honor" or broadcast streams about "state organs such as police" with bans from the platform."
I have never bothered with TikTok. Somebody once described it to me as "For people whose attention span is too small for YouTube Shorts". So surely that would mean that TikTok news coverage would be something like "Here is the news. Thank you for watching. More news in an hour"
I hate to break it to you, but the next generation of voters are on it constantly. They never watch tv or read conventional news sites, nor use the older social media sites like FB.
The viewing figures for specific programmes over the Xmas break are interesting, though - News at 6 still going strong and BBC and ITV entirely dominant. These presumably exclude folk who don't watch TV at all, though.
Manufacturers have warned that Brexit will add to soaring costs facing British industry, amid concerns that customs delays and red tape will rank among the biggest challenges for firms this year.
Make UK, the industry body representing 20,000 manufacturing firms of all sizes from across the country, said that while optimism among its members had grown, it was being undermined by the after-effects of the UK’s departure from the EU.
One year on from the end of the transition period, two-thirds of industrial company leaders in its survey of 228 firms said Brexit had moderately or significantly hampered their business. More than half of firms warned they were likely to suffer further damage this year from customs delays due to import checks and changes to product labelling.
According to the 2022 MakeUK/PwC senior executive survey, Brexit disruption remains among the biggest concerns facing industry bosses for the year ahead as Britain’s departure from the EU complicates the fallout from Covid-19 and the rising costs facing companies.
Delays at customs, the additional costs from meeting separate regulatory regimes in the UK and the EU, and reduced access to migrant workers were among top concerns raised in the survey.
The British company that bid on the passports put in a ludicrous bid, thinking that because they were British they would win. It was one of those government-contract-will-fill-the-pension-fund-hole-and-pay-c-suite-bonus bids.
Yep. De La Rue, who had been doing it for decades and thought they were the only serious bidder.
It's as if they thought they had a license to print money.
"In March 2020, internal documents leaked to The Intercept revealed that moderators had been instructed to suppress posts created by users deemed "too ugly, poor, or disabled" for the platform, and to censor political speech in livestreams, punishing those who harmed "national honor" or broadcast streams about "state organs such as police" with bans from the platform."
I have never bothered with TikTok. Somebody once described it to me as "For people whose attention span is too small for YouTube Shorts". So surely that would mean that TikTok news coverage would be something like "Here is the news. Thank you for watching. More news in an hour"
I've never really bothered with it either, beyond understanding what it is. I've always thought of it as being ok as entertainment but a poor medium to discuss anything remotely serious.
What stood out to me was Nadia Whittome (MP) saying in a newspaper interview that she doesn't watch films, she spends her evenings on tic tok. These are the people we elect to parliament.
She’s far from alone. An awful lot of people have totally abandoned old patterns of media usage, eg tv. Watching tv has become a sign that you are way out of the game.
Like all these discussions I tend to thing these sorts of claims are a bit exaggerated. Often said by people who also complain about the power of the BBC, right wing press barons etc etc
I would say that being on TikTok is becoming where being on Facebook and Twitter was a few years ago. The age range on TikTok is growing older.
We can lament this. Or say that a politician has to know what is happening, just as they read the local papers in their constituency in the 19th Cent.
My children, as they've grown older, are watching more BBC. Solely on iPlayer - to them, the BBC is another streaming service. I will say it again - if the BBC had got the rights issue sorted out (it had the commercial power) and really gone for a world wide audience, imagine the revenue. The BBC would have become truly independent - it wouldn't have needed a license fee in the UK.
Just imagine that as a pitch - "The BBC - more resources than ever before. Totally independent. Totally free in the UK."
If the BBC had set up a $10/month subscription service, available worldwide and with most of the back catalogue included, they would have made more than enough money to abolish the licence fee in the UK, probably several times over. They’d be paying dividends to the government right now.
It’s probably not too late either, although they’ve missed the boat of first mover advantage to Netflix and Disney.
The BBC doesn’t own the global rights to most of its big shows, it’s one of the ways it’s forced to save money.
The other way was to buy the global rights and *use* them. Instead of following the modern management mantra of outsourcing "non-core business"
They don’t have the cash and never had. The BBC funded it’s U.K. content at a discount by providing incentives for production houses to then sell shows abroad. To have gone global would have taken massive investment at a time the government was pulling money out of the BBC. It could have been done, but under pressure from private media outlets the government wanted a smaller BBC. Did you know much of IPlayer content is available under the same time shifting rules that once enabled people to use VHS players? It’s done on a shoestring.
If Osbourne had been clueful he would have given the BBC a 1 off grant of £10bn back in 2010 / 12 and told them to get on with it.
Sadly he didn't so we are left with the BBC being a really regarded local broadcaster going forward - although it's worth noting that the BBC is just about the only company that Netflix and Amazon are happy to do co-productions with - so it doesn't do badly from its past reputation and the rules that stopped it becoming the power house it should be.
Interesting write-up in The Grocer on the Public Accounts Committee's report on the CAP-replacement Environmental Land Management program.
Summary? The scheme 'lacks detail and is based on “blind optimism”.' The plan will cut in half direct subsidy payments by 24/25 which the committee notes the risk that smaller and tenant farmers "who are operating on wafer-thin margins will go out of business"
' “We have known we were replacing the CAP since 2016 and still we see no clear plans, objectives or communications with those at the sharp end – farmers – in this multi-billion pound, radical overhaul of the way land is used and, more crucially, food is produced in this country,” said committee chair and veteran Tory MP Sir Geoffrey Clifton Brown.'
What an absolute fiasco. As with the customs SNAFU the government are all talk and no action. Whilst the Welsh Nationalist from Essex always says "we have delivered farmers from CAP as they wanted" that wasn't supposed to be the end game. Leaving the EU is the first step - what you do afterwards is critical.
Simple point - we either make farms economically viable or we're back to being massively reliant on imported food. Which is the reverse of what Brexit proclaimed and is strategically stupid. That the government don't know what to do, and think "cut subsidies in half" will work is lunacy.
The Tories had farmers and fishermen as a client vote for a while. Who will they vote for in 2024? Won't be Tory if dogma and incompetence threaten their industry and way of life.
It's up to the consumers, finally. If they want to pay more for UK-produced agricultural goods (if domestic produce turns out to be more expensive) then everyone is happy. If not, then the consumers will be happy but not some farmers.
Speaking to my man on the combine over the weekend he seems to think that the Australian deal is a red herring because over the course of its 10-year term growig demand from China will mean that nothing produced in Australia will ever leave Asia. As for the environmental scheme he believes that the benefits will accrue to large landowners which may present a problem for the government politically.
Domestic production is only more expensive if the EU subsidise and we don't. Food security isn't something that should be left to the whims of the market - didn't we learn during WWII how dangerous it is to be that heavily reliant on imports?
The Common Agricultural Policy had major faults. So Brexit really should have been he opportunity to have a grow British eat British campaign. Instead we're doing the opposite. Back to the big questions asked by Tory newspapers this last week - what was the point? Sovvrintyinnit isn't a shiny badge you get awarded. Its a tool to allow you to do things you couldn't do before. If you endlessly whine "we can't do this" then gain the powers to do this and then don't do this, whats the point?
It's an interesting discussion topic. For example, "whims of the market" = you and me and the other consumers.
Head out to the countryside. Food production is very healthy right now. As for subsidies well you are a seasoned commercial and business practitioner. They distort markets and are unhealthy for competition, sustaining inefficient producers at the expense of efficient ones.
I find it very difficult to support subsidies, especially for farmers who are famously flexible and responsive to prevailing types of different demand. Yes there will likely be market exit and yes the large landowners and corporations might benefit disproportionately but that is also an element of food security.
Australian government looking like a bunch of total arseholes. Not for the first time.
They aren't, Australian swing voters are with Morrison not the judge or Tennis Australia on this. Morrison has his eye on swing voters in an election year, the longer this stays in the headlines the better for him. Losing a few anti vaxxers who back Djokovic to One Nation on the primary vote is not much of a problem given the swing voters he could win back from Labor on the 2PP
Is this another of the times you applaud in this case a government opposing the court system and effectively overturning a court judgement because it is electorally popular?
To be fair, it is the Australia government using a power specifically reserved to the Federal government - written into the law. And, IIRC, used and tested in the law courts.
Rather than trying some dodgy end run around the courts.
Which they could have made clear they would use, in advance, but chose not to for political reasons.
Talking about the BBC shocking that they - the Today prog - have just spent ten minutes or so effectively in an advert for Green Planet which was shown on the BBC last night.
Their star interviewee, Michael Gove, was literally stuck in a lift. They were filling time.
Interesting write-up in The Grocer on the Public Accounts Committee's report on the CAP-replacement Environmental Land Management program.
Summary? The scheme 'lacks detail and is based on “blind optimism”.' The plan will cut in half direct subsidy payments by 24/25 which the committee notes the risk that smaller and tenant farmers "who are operating on wafer-thin margins will go out of business"
' “We have known we were replacing the CAP since 2016 and still we see no clear plans, objectives or communications with those at the sharp end – farmers – in this multi-billion pound, radical overhaul of the way land is used and, more crucially, food is produced in this country,” said committee chair and veteran Tory MP Sir Geoffrey Clifton Brown.'
What an absolute fiasco. As with the customs SNAFU the government are all talk and no action. Whilst the Welsh Nationalist from Essex always says "we have delivered farmers from CAP as they wanted" that wasn't supposed to be the end game. Leaving the EU is the first step - what you do afterwards is critical.
Simple point - we either make farms economically viable or we're back to being massively reliant on imported food. Which is the reverse of what Brexit proclaimed and is strategically stupid. That the government don't know what to do, and think "cut subsidies in half" will work is lunacy.
The Tories had farmers and fishermen as a client vote for a while. Who will they vote for in 2024? Won't be Tory if dogma and incompetence threaten their industry and way of life.
It's up to the consumers, finally. If they want to pay more for UK-produced agricultural goods (if domestic produce turns out to be more expensive) then everyone is happy. If not, then the consumers will be happy but not some farmers.
Speaking to my man on the combine over the weekend he seems to think that the Australian deal is a red herring because over the course of its 10-year term growig demand from China will mean that nothing produced in Australia will ever leave Asia. As for the environmental scheme he believes that the benefits will accrue to large landowners which may present a problem for the government politically.
Yep - as I pointed out a few weeks ago, in the Dales the large land owners are happy to let the tenant farmers go.
Which would provide a fair number of additional holiday lets...
And he handled it very well, as one might expect, on being released. Told that a twitter hashtag "Free Michael Gove" had emerged, he said he was pretty sure that there would be a probably larger movement to keep him where he was.
My brother drove me back to London as he had real estate meetings. He is buying a freehold of land thing on peoples homes and flats all over the country, driving to London to buy it in Yorkshire and Lancashire, for just a few thousands of pounds and then offering freehold to home owner for lots of times more than he paid, and like putting in planning to build on the freehold, like on top of block of flats to coerce them to buy it off him.
I told him he is going to jail. He said it’s not illegal, it’s very easy to do and easy money everyone’s doing it.
I told him it’s utterly utterly unethical, will cause nice people so much grief, so it’s bound to be illegal in this country. I told him I disown him, and if I was high up in Church I would excommunicate him but he was in such a cheerful mood he just laughed ☹️
No PB-ers are doing this same thing are they? 🤨
If he's buying flat freehold then its not illegal for him, but the original owners should be offering it to the leaseholders under the right to first refusal legislation. What happens in that situation is anyone's guess (compensation and rubbish and all that).
Talking about the BBC shocking that they - the Today prog - have just spent ten minutes or so effectively in an advert for Green Planet which was shown on the BBC last night.
Their star interviewee, Michael Gove, was literally stuck in a lift. They were filling time.
Yes the line quality with the producer was such that I can believe it was improvised.
"In March 2020, internal documents leaked to The Intercept revealed that moderators had been instructed to suppress posts created by users deemed "too ugly, poor, or disabled" for the platform, and to censor political speech in livestreams, punishing those who harmed "national honor" or broadcast streams about "state organs such as police" with bans from the platform."
I have never bothered with TikTok. Somebody once described it to me as "For people whose attention span is too small for YouTube Shorts". So surely that would mean that TikTok news coverage would be something like "Here is the news. Thank you for watching. More news in an hour"
I've never really bothered with it either, beyond understanding what it is. I've always thought of it as being ok as entertainment but a poor medium to discuss anything remotely serious.
What stood out to me was Nadia Whittome (MP) saying in a newspaper interview that she doesn't watch films, she spends her evenings on tic tok. These are the people we elect to parliament.
She’s far from alone. An awful lot of people have totally abandoned old patterns of media usage, eg tv. Watching tv has become a sign that you are way out of the game.
Like all these discussions I tend to thing these sorts of claims are a bit exaggerated. Often said by people who also complain about the power of the BBC, right wing press barons etc etc
I would say that being on TikTok is becoming where being on Facebook and Twitter was a few years ago. The age range on TikTok is growing older.
We can lament this. Or say that a politician has to know what is happening, just as they read the local papers in their constituency in the 19th Cent.
My children, as they've grown older, are watching more BBC. Solely on iPlayer - to them, the BBC is another streaming service. I will say it again - if the BBC had got the rights issue sorted out (it had the commercial power) and really gone for a world wide audience, imagine the revenue. The BBC would have become truly independent - it wouldn't have needed a license fee in the UK.
Just imagine that as a pitch - "The BBC - more resources than ever before. Totally independent. Totally free in the UK."
If the BBC had set up a $10/month subscription service, available worldwide and with most of the back catalogue included, they would have made more than enough money to abolish the licence fee in the UK, probably several times over. They’d be paying dividends to the government right now.
It’s probably not too late either, although they’ve missed the boat of first mover advantage to Netflix and Disney.
The BBC doesn’t own the global rights to most of its big shows, it’s one of the ways it’s forced to save money.
The other way was to buy the global rights and *use* them. Instead of following the modern management mantra of outsourcing "non-core business"
They don’t have the cash and never had. The BBC funded it’s U.K. content at a discount by providing incentives for production houses to then sell shows abroad. To have gone global would have taken massive investment at a time the government was pulling money out of the BBC. It could have been done, but under pressure from private media outlets the government wanted a smaller BBC. Did you know much of IPlayer content is available under the same time shifting rules that once enabled people to use VHS players? It’s done on a shoestring.
If Osbourne had been clueful he would have given the BBC a 1 off grant of £10bn back in 2010 / 12 and told them to get on with it.
Sadly he didn't so we are left with the BBC being a really regarded local broadcaster going forward - although it's worth noting that the BBC is just about the only company that Netflix and Amazon are happy to do co-productions with - so it doesn't do badly from its past reputation and the rules that stopped it becoming the power house it should be.
The BBC does actually have a DIsney+ equivalent outside the UK - it is called Britbox but, unlike the Britbox of the same name in the UK (and, yes, they are linked), it is actually quite successful. Over 2m subs and now in the US, Aus, NZ etc. It's a partnership with ITV.
'We had last week a proper outbreak and it showed up that we had a lot of false positives but the rules are like they are so all these players who are false positives couldn't play.
'The only real positive came from Trent Alexander-Arnold and all the rest were false positives.'
He obviously doesn't mean false positives, but not a great look for him to be talking about such things.
Whats he on about. An "outbreak" of false positives is less likely than well.. He clearly doesn't know what he's on about.
Interesting write-up in The Grocer on the Public Accounts Committee's report on the CAP-replacement Environmental Land Management program.
Summary? The scheme 'lacks detail and is based on “blind optimism”.' The plan will cut in half direct subsidy payments by 24/25 which the committee notes the risk that smaller and tenant farmers "who are operating on wafer-thin margins will go out of business"
' “We have known we were replacing the CAP since 2016 and still we see no clear plans, objectives or communications with those at the sharp end – farmers – in this multi-billion pound, radical overhaul of the way land is used and, more crucially, food is produced in this country,” said committee chair and veteran Tory MP Sir Geoffrey Clifton Brown.'
What an absolute fiasco. As with the customs SNAFU the government are all talk and no action. Whilst the Welsh Nationalist from Essex always says "we have delivered farmers from CAP as they wanted" that wasn't supposed to be the end game. Leaving the EU is the first step - what you do afterwards is critical.
Simple point - we either make farms economically viable or we're back to being massively reliant on imported food. Which is the reverse of what Brexit proclaimed and is strategically stupid. That the government don't know what to do, and think "cut subsidies in half" will work is lunacy.
The Tories had farmers and fishermen as a client vote for a while. Who will they vote for in 2024? Won't be Tory if dogma and incompetence threaten their industry and way of life.
It's up to the consumers, finally. If they want to pay more for UK-produced agricultural goods (if domestic produce turns out to be more expensive) then everyone is happy. If not, then the consumers will be happy but not some farmers.
Speaking to my man on the combine over the weekend he seems to think that the Australian deal is a red herring because over the course of its 10-year term growig demand from China will mean that nothing produced in Australia will ever leave Asia. As for the environmental scheme he believes that the benefits will accrue to large landowners which may present a problem for the government politically.
Domestic production is only more expensive if the EU subsidise and we don't. Food security isn't something that should be left to the whims of the market - didn't we learn during WWII how dangerous it is to be that heavily reliant on imports?
The Common Agricultural Policy had major faults. So Brexit really should have been he opportunity to have a grow British eat British campaign. Instead we're doing the opposite. Back to the big questions asked by Tory newspapers this last week - what was the point? Sovvrintyinnit isn't a shiny badge you get awarded. Its a tool to allow you to do things you couldn't do before. If you endlessly whine "we can't do this" then gain the powers to do this and then don't do this, whats the point?
It's an interesting discussion topic. For example, "whims of the market" = you and me and the other consumers.
Head out to the countryside. Food production is very healthy right now. As for subsidies well you are a seasoned commercial and business practitioner. They distort markets and are unhealthy for competition, sustaining inefficient producers at the expense of efficient ones.
I find it very difficult to support subsidies, especially for farmers who are famously flexible and responsive to prevailing types of different demand. Yes there will likely be market exit and yes the large landowners and corporations might benefit disproportionately but that is also an element of food security.
I can understand the concern about subsidies, but consider the wider market. If the competition subsidise and you do not then the competitor product is cheaper, takes substantial amounts of short-term business, cripples your long-term ability to produce, and hands the strategic advantage to the competition.
The EU subsidises farm production. We either do the same or we lose significant amounts of food production capacity very quickly. Once its gone it will cost significantly more to bring back than the subsidy would have cost.
EDIT - whims of the market is not always consumers. As an example, a decade ago I worked for a major multinational producing ready meals. Unless retailers stipulated ingredient sourcing it could be purchased from wherever was cheapest - and the need to do so was largely driven by retailers squeezing the life out of production margins.
Bringing in root vegetables from Eastern Europe is bloody stupid strategically, but when the pennies saved makes the difference between making money or not you do it. Consumers had no say as all the manufacturers were in the same boat doing the same thing for the same reason.
Interesting write-up in The Grocer on the Public Accounts Committee's report on the CAP-replacement Environmental Land Management program.
Summary? The scheme 'lacks detail and is based on “blind optimism”.' The plan will cut in half direct subsidy payments by 24/25 which the committee notes the risk that smaller and tenant farmers "who are operating on wafer-thin margins will go out of business"
' “We have known we were replacing the CAP since 2016 and still we see no clear plans, objectives or communications with those at the sharp end – farmers – in this multi-billion pound, radical overhaul of the way land is used and, more crucially, food is produced in this country,” said committee chair and veteran Tory MP Sir Geoffrey Clifton Brown.'
What an absolute fiasco. As with the customs SNAFU the government are all talk and no action. Whilst the Welsh Nationalist from Essex always says "we have delivered farmers from CAP as they wanted" that wasn't supposed to be the end game. Leaving the EU is the first step - what you do afterwards is critical.
Simple point - we either make farms economically viable or we're back to being massively reliant on imported food. Which is the reverse of what Brexit proclaimed and is strategically stupid. That the government don't know what to do, and think "cut subsidies in half" will work is lunacy.
The Tories had farmers and fishermen as a client vote for a while. Who will they vote for in 2024? Won't be Tory if dogma and incompetence threaten their industry and way of life.
It's up to the consumers, finally. If they want to pay more for UK-produced agricultural goods (if domestic produce turns out to be more expensive) then everyone is happy. If not, then the consumers will be happy but not some farmers.
Speaking to my man on the combine over the weekend he seems to think that the Australian deal is a red herring because over the course of its 10-year term growig demand from China will mean that nothing produced in Australia will ever leave Asia. As for the environmental scheme he believes that the benefits will accrue to large landowners which may present a problem for the government politically.
Yep - as I pointed out a few weeks ago, in the Dales the large land owners are happy to let the tenant farmers go.
Which would provide a fair number of additional holiday lets...
Plus all of a sudden that boggy marshland hitherto useless for any commercial purposes will be environmental gold dust.
Interesting write-up in The Grocer on the Public Accounts Committee's report on the CAP-replacement Environmental Land Management program.
Summary? The scheme 'lacks detail and is based on “blind optimism”.' The plan will cut in half direct subsidy payments by 24/25 which the committee notes the risk that smaller and tenant farmers "who are operating on wafer-thin margins will go out of business"
' “We have known we were replacing the CAP since 2016 and still we see no clear plans, objectives or communications with those at the sharp end – farmers – in this multi-billion pound, radical overhaul of the way land is used and, more crucially, food is produced in this country,” said committee chair and veteran Tory MP Sir Geoffrey Clifton Brown.'
What an absolute fiasco. As with the customs SNAFU the government are all talk and no action. Whilst the Welsh Nationalist from Essex always says "we have delivered farmers from CAP as they wanted" that wasn't supposed to be the end game. Leaving the EU is the first step - what you do afterwards is critical.
Simple point - we either make farms economically viable or we're back to being massively reliant on imported food. Which is the reverse of what Brexit proclaimed and is strategically stupid. That the government don't know what to do, and think "cut subsidies in half" will work is lunacy.
The Tories had farmers and fishermen as a client vote for a while. Who will they vote for in 2024? Won't be Tory if dogma and incompetence threaten their industry and way of life.
It's up to the consumers, finally. If they want to pay more for UK-produced agricultural goods (if domestic produce turns out to be more expensive) then everyone is happy. If not, then the consumers will be happy but not some farmers.
Speaking to my man on the combine over the weekend he seems to think that the Australian deal is a red herring because over the course of its 10-year term growig demand from China will mean that nothing produced in Australia will ever leave Asia. As for the environmental scheme he believes that the benefits will accrue to large landowners which may present a problem for the government politically.
Domestic production is only more expensive if the EU subsidise and we don't. Food security isn't something that should be left to the whims of the market - didn't we learn during WWII how dangerous it is to be that heavily reliant on imports?
The Common Agricultural Policy had major faults. So Brexit really should have been he opportunity to have a grow British eat British campaign. Instead we're doing the opposite. Back to the big questions asked by Tory newspapers this last week - what was the point? Sovvrintyinnit isn't a shiny badge you get awarded. Its a tool to allow you to do things you couldn't do before. If you endlessly whine "we can't do this" then gain the powers to do this and then don't do this, whats the point?
We should absolutely let the global market decide our food production, as we do for other industries. If there was a serious threat of German U-boats strangling our supply lines, it might be worth doing something to support domestic production. But there isn't. And farmers, like the Northern Irish and our huge aid bureaucracy have been far too coddled for far too long. Time for them to compete or go out of business like everyone else.
The Australian system is a real mess. A colleague of mine from Perth in Western Australia (fully vaxxed) working offshore Norway on a rotation with all the correct visas for both countries left Oslo on 20th December to travel home. He was let into Sydney with no issue but then was refused permission to travel home to Perth in Western Australia until 14 days after he had arrived back in Australia. The weird thing is that he wasn't in quarantine. This was not a requirement from the Federal border police or Government, it was a Western Australia rule that forbid him entering the state until 14 days after he had arrived back but with no other controls. And this after 2 years of traveling to and from Norway under the same circumstances but without this last delay.
Doesn't WA have like 1 case whereas Vicky and NSW have rates similar to here ?
But that hasn't changed much in the last year or so, so the question is why they have changed the rules now without warning.
Interesting write-up in The Grocer on the Public Accounts Committee's report on the CAP-replacement Environmental Land Management program.
Summary? The scheme 'lacks detail and is based on “blind optimism”.' The plan will cut in half direct subsidy payments by 24/25 which the committee notes the risk that smaller and tenant farmers "who are operating on wafer-thin margins will go out of business"
' “We have known we were replacing the CAP since 2016 and still we see no clear plans, objectives or communications with those at the sharp end – farmers – in this multi-billion pound, radical overhaul of the way land is used and, more crucially, food is produced in this country,” said committee chair and veteran Tory MP Sir Geoffrey Clifton Brown.'
What an absolute fiasco. As with the customs SNAFU the government are all talk and no action. Whilst the Welsh Nationalist from Essex always says "we have delivered farmers from CAP as they wanted" that wasn't supposed to be the end game. Leaving the EU is the first step - what you do afterwards is critical.
Simple point - we either make farms economically viable or we're back to being massively reliant on imported food. Which is the reverse of what Brexit proclaimed and is strategically stupid. That the government don't know what to do, and think "cut subsidies in half" will work is lunacy.
The Tories had farmers and fishermen as a client vote for a while. Who will they vote for in 2024? Won't be Tory if dogma and incompetence threaten their industry and way of life.
It's up to the consumers, finally. If they want to pay more for UK-produced agricultural goods (if domestic produce turns out to be more expensive) then everyone is happy. If not, then the consumers will be happy but not some farmers.
Speaking to my man on the combine over the weekend he seems to think that the Australian deal is a red herring because over the course of its 10-year term growig demand from China will mean that nothing produced in Australia will ever leave Asia. As for the environmental scheme he believes that the benefits will accrue to large landowners which may present a problem for the government politically.
Domestic production is only more expensive if the EU subsidise and we don't. Food security isn't something that should be left to the whims of the market - didn't we learn during WWII how dangerous it is to be that heavily reliant on imports?
The Common Agricultural Policy had major faults. So Brexit really should have been he opportunity to have a grow British eat British campaign. Instead we're doing the opposite. Back to the big questions asked by Tory newspapers this last week - what was the point? Sovvrintyinnit isn't a shiny badge you get awarded. Its a tool to allow you to do things you couldn't do before. If you endlessly whine "we can't do this" then gain the powers to do this and then don't do this, whats the point?
It's an interesting discussion topic. For example, "whims of the market" = you and me and the other consumers.
Head out to the countryside. Food production is very healthy right now. As for subsidies well you are a seasoned commercial and business practitioner. They distort markets and are unhealthy for competition, sustaining inefficient producers at the expense of efficient ones.
I find it very difficult to support subsidies, especially for farmers who are famously flexible and responsive to prevailing types of different demand. Yes there will likely be market exit and yes the large landowners and corporations might benefit disproportionately but that is also an element of food security.
I can understand the concern about subsidies, but consider the wider market. If the competition subsidise and you do not then the competitor product is cheaper, takes substantial amounts of short-term business, cripples your long-term ability to produce, and hands the strategic advantage to the competition.
The EU subsidises farm production. We either do the same or we lose significant amounts of food production capacity very quickly. Once its gone it will cost significantly more to bring back than the subsidy would have cost.
Yes they are subsidising but we are not presents problems as consumers (still you and I, btw) will switch to the cheaper product. But for the longer term health of our farming industry then it is not all a bad thing.
As it stands, it is perceived that there will be a structural shift in farming in the UK where, for example, large livestock companies will take on the capital risk of their produce and then sub-contract the actual husbandry to "farmers" who will be able to enhance their revenues by certain performance metrics. Hence you will have a PigCo which buys the animals (and hedges, if they choose, their forward sales prices) and then distributes the pigs to a number of farmers who are incentivised to produce as large and as healthy a yield as possible, being rewarded according to those relevant metrics. PigCo doesn't need subsidies and indeed there would be an outcry were they to receive them.
Interesting write-up in The Grocer on the Public Accounts Committee's report on the CAP-replacement Environmental Land Management program.
Summary? The scheme 'lacks detail and is based on “blind optimism”.' The plan will cut in half direct subsidy payments by 24/25 which the committee notes the risk that smaller and tenant farmers "who are operating on wafer-thin margins will go out of business"
' “We have known we were replacing the CAP since 2016 and still we see no clear plans, objectives or communications with those at the sharp end – farmers – in this multi-billion pound, radical overhaul of the way land is used and, more crucially, food is produced in this country,” said committee chair and veteran Tory MP Sir Geoffrey Clifton Brown.'
What an absolute fiasco. As with the customs SNAFU the government are all talk and no action. Whilst the Welsh Nationalist from Essex always says "we have delivered farmers from CAP as they wanted" that wasn't supposed to be the end game. Leaving the EU is the first step - what you do afterwards is critical.
Simple point - we either make farms economically viable or we're back to being massively reliant on imported food. Which is the reverse of what Brexit proclaimed and is strategically stupid. That the government don't know what to do, and think "cut subsidies in half" will work is lunacy.
The Tories had farmers and fishermen as a client vote for a while. Who will they vote for in 2024? Won't be Tory if dogma and incompetence threaten their industry and way of life.
It's up to the consumers, finally. If they want to pay more for UK-produced agricultural goods (if domestic produce turns out to be more expensive) then everyone is happy. If not, then the consumers will be happy but not some farmers.
Speaking to my man on the combine over the weekend he seems to think that the Australian deal is a red herring because over the course of its 10-year term growig demand from China will mean that nothing produced in Australia will ever leave Asia. As for the environmental scheme he believes that the benefits will accrue to large landowners which may present a problem for the government politically.
Domestic production is only more expensive if the EU subsidise and we don't. Food security isn't something that should be left to the whims of the market - didn't we learn during WWII how dangerous it is to be that heavily reliant on imports?
The Common Agricultural Policy had major faults. So Brexit really should have been he opportunity to have a grow British eat British campaign. Instead we're doing the opposite. Back to the big questions asked by Tory newspapers this last week - what was the point? Sovvrintyinnit isn't a shiny badge you get awarded. Its a tool to allow you to do things you couldn't do before. If you endlessly whine "we can't do this" then gain the powers to do this and then don't do this, whats the point?
It's an interesting discussion topic. For example, "whims of the market" = you and me and the other consumers.
Head out to the countryside. Food production is very healthy right now. As for subsidies well you are a seasoned commercial and business practitioner. They distort markets and are unhealthy for competition, sustaining inefficient producers at the expense of efficient ones.
I find it very difficult to support subsidies, especially for farmers who are famously flexible and responsive to prevailing types of different demand. Yes there will likely be market exit and yes the large landowners and corporations might benefit disproportionately but that is also an element of food security.
How much opportunity is there is to have a bit of joined up thinking from Govt and maybe create a win-win situation areas (the below is me surmising by the way - I have no clue how it would work or it would be practical)?
For example, let's say you change school dinners in state schools by switching to using British produce? Or hypothetically by re-introducing a pint of milk to all schoolchildren? You are both effectively subsidising farmers without specifically doing so, and giving them a guaranteed market for their produce, while improving the health of schoolchildren.
The Australian system is a real mess. A colleague of mine from Perth in Western Australia (fully vaxxed) working offshore Norway on a rotation with all the correct visas for both countries left Oslo on 20th December to travel home. He was let into Sydney with no issue but then was refused permission to travel home to Perth in Western Australia until 14 days after he had arrived back in Australia. The weird thing is that he wasn't in quarantine. This was not a requirement from the Federal border police or Government, it was a Western Australia rule that forbid him entering the state until 14 days after he had arrived back but with no other controls. And this after 2 years of traveling to and from Norway under the same circumstances but without this last delay.
Doesn't WA have like 1 case whereas Vicky and NSW have rates similar to here ?
But that hasn't changed much in the last year or so, so the question is why they have changed the rules now without warning.
Covid prevalence has gone way up in NSW since the start of December. 400 -> 40,000 cases/day
I thank you for something to read to help me understand better. 👍🏻
I’ll concede before reading it I expect Scottish Independence more complicated and nuanced than a couple of posts from Yorkie Girl could ever hope to help or even put my own concern about it very clearly. Especially if someone wants to say not all shared history of UK has been great, because we probably haven’t all been made aware of history the same, been taught UK history the same for me to agree, or disagree, only listen with open mind.
Certainly if you say you are hurting, although I can’t feel or know your pain, speaking for myself I have no reason to doubt what you are telling me. I think this is different to some replies you are getting, claiming you don’t have a problem because you’ve never had it so good from Barnett formula, which I suspect might miss the point if you see how to take back control to be in better place.
However. Certainly I don’t doubt too, after decades of globalisation the so called Brexit states of the US, the rust belt, are genuinely hurting, and they thought Dr Trump had the answer. It’s not that rust belt voters are stupid imo, it’s they were genuinely hurting, wanting change, and to be honest and fair to them, and Trump, just 4 years of such a change probably isn’t long enough to properly gauge if a new direction actually working or not.
So what is the change which helps? Because I can’t think it is Purely political. For control you do need to take back control of what you believe is your own wealth?
Do you already regard English Capital at work in Scotland as foreign? Because after Independence it should be seen as foreign.
Neither England or the USA are free of the agency of foreign capital and globalisation, so in a very nuanced picture there is one clear black and white answer - if this is the cause of your pain, for sure Independence does not relieve you of this type of pain - after Independence, power and controlling interest of English Capital will own land, housing, businesses and industry in Scotland. To a large degree. Perhaps even to a growing degree.
Moonrabbit, That is all just business , it is not the heart and soul of what a country is. As they say no-one is an island. It is matters closer to hand that will be completely different , ie we can be in the EU, we can decide our own poverty measures , drugs programmes , social programmes , etc. Currently England via Westminster parliament decides almost everything that happens , we get 40% of what we contribute back and even on that it cannot all be spent how the Scottish government wants to spend it , for good or bad. The other 60% Westminster wastes and we are not even allowed to borrow other than a miniscule amount , yet Westminster claim we are up to our necks in debt based on their follies. It is a joke , Scotland is the last colony on the planet.
'We had last week a proper outbreak and it showed up that we had a lot of false positives but the rules are like they are so all these players who are false positives couldn't play.
'The only real positive came from Trent Alexander-Arnold and all the rest were false positives.'
He obviously doesn't mean false positives, but not a great look for him to be talking about such things.
Whats he on about. An "outbreak" of false positives is less likely than well.. He clearly doesn't know what he's on about.
The reporting doesn't challenge the notion of an outbreak of false positives, simply reports it as verbatim fact
Interesting write-up in The Grocer on the Public Accounts Committee's report on the CAP-replacement Environmental Land Management program.
Summary? The scheme 'lacks detail and is based on “blind optimism”.' The plan will cut in half direct subsidy payments by 24/25 which the committee notes the risk that smaller and tenant farmers "who are operating on wafer-thin margins will go out of business"
' “We have known we were replacing the CAP since 2016 and still we see no clear plans, objectives or communications with those at the sharp end – farmers – in this multi-billion pound, radical overhaul of the way land is used and, more crucially, food is produced in this country,” said committee chair and veteran Tory MP Sir Geoffrey Clifton Brown.'
What an absolute fiasco. As with the customs SNAFU the government are all talk and no action. Whilst the Welsh Nationalist from Essex always says "we have delivered farmers from CAP as they wanted" that wasn't supposed to be the end game. Leaving the EU is the first step - what you do afterwards is critical.
Simple point - we either make farms economically viable or we're back to being massively reliant on imported food. Which is the reverse of what Brexit proclaimed and is strategically stupid. That the government don't know what to do, and think "cut subsidies in half" will work is lunacy.
The Tories had farmers and fishermen as a client vote for a while. Who will they vote for in 2024? Won't be Tory if dogma and incompetence threaten their industry and way of life.
It's up to the consumers, finally. If they want to pay more for UK-produced agricultural goods (if domestic produce turns out to be more expensive) then everyone is happy. If not, then the consumers will be happy but not some farmers.
Speaking to my man on the combine over the weekend he seems to think that the Australian deal is a red herring because over the course of its 10-year term growig demand from China will mean that nothing produced in Australia will ever leave Asia. As for the environmental scheme he believes that the benefits will accrue to large landowners which may present a problem for the government politically.
Domestic production is only more expensive if the EU subsidise and we don't. Food security isn't something that should be left to the whims of the market - didn't we learn during WWII how dangerous it is to be that heavily reliant on imports?
The Common Agricultural Policy had major faults. So Brexit really should have been he opportunity to have a grow British eat British campaign. Instead we're doing the opposite. Back to the big questions asked by Tory newspapers this last week - what was the point? Sovvrintyinnit isn't a shiny badge you get awarded. Its a tool to allow you to do things you couldn't do before. If you endlessly whine "we can't do this" then gain the powers to do this and then don't do this, whats the point?
It's an interesting discussion topic. For example, "whims of the market" = you and me and the other consumers.
Head out to the countryside. Food production is very healthy right now. As for subsidies well you are a seasoned commercial and business practitioner. They distort markets and are unhealthy for competition, sustaining inefficient producers at the expense of efficient ones.
I find it very difficult to support subsidies, especially for farmers who are famously flexible and responsive to prevailing types of different demand. Yes there will likely be market exit and yes the large landowners and corporations might benefit disproportionately but that is also an element of food security.
How much opportunity is there is to have a bit of joined up thinking from Govt and maybe create a win-win situation areas (the below is me surmising by the way - I have no clue how it would work or it would be practical)?
For example, let's say you change school dinners in state schools by switching to using British produce? Or hypothetically by re-introducing a pint of milk to all schoolchildren? You are both effectively subsidising farmers without specifically doing so, and giving them a guaranteed market for their produce, while improving the health of schoolchildren.
I'm not sure I, or in your example dairy farmers, would trust the government to organise and execute such a large scale project.
Have been doing some reading on the new interlinked smoke alarms legislation up here from next month.
As I haven't yet clicked the button to buy new interlinked alarms to replace the existing interlinked alarms I was curious about the whole fiasco.
Various MSPs and councillors demanding a further delay as so many people don't know about it or don't have the cash or think they are already compliant.
We got ours fitted just before Christmas. Don’t want to give the Insurance Company any excuse not to pay out in case of fire.
Balls. Going to have to get them, aren't I.
I had extension done ten years ago. They had to be fitted then, i was told. Maybe that was because it was building regs for a part of the house that was effectively new build?
There is hope! I'll check them tomorrow morning.
If you do any work in the house now they force you to fit them. They are not expensive , biggest hassle is getting the mains electricity. If you cannot fit near an existing light fitting it can mean a few holes in ceiling etc , so you need electrician's and maybe even plasterer's.
Hypothetical question. Smoke alarms are there not to prevent fire but to prevent death. Fire in house. Alarms allow the safe evacuation of inhabitants.
Will their insurance company refuse to pay out because their functional alarms which worked as intended were not the specific type required by Scotland's new law?
Most insurance policies have a clause about complying with legislation. But that's always so far been about things like building codes (which Grenfell did!). So it's a letter vs spirit of the law question...
Messing around with insurance companies is probably not a smart move in general. If you give them a loophole to get out of paying, or paying less than you expect, then don't be surprised if they take it. It seems that's the assessors job post-incident.
I'm going to get it done because I can. But as 95% of existing smoke alarms are not compliant there will be an awful lot of people who won't be. Because they don't know, can't afford it, or think it's stupid.
So it's back down to how much of a row the insurance industry wants to have up here. Invalidating one person's policy because they had functional smoke alarms that did their job is one thing. If they try and do that to a lot of people, it may be the insurers in trouble.
I suspect that insurance companies will be more reasonable than jobsworth bureaucrats.
It's an interesting one. I understand that they get arsey if people have non-functional alarms. But what of you have functional alarms that do the job but aren't strictly compliant?
This is the mess we have with this new law. Even the deadline isn't a deadline. Law says homeowners have a "reasonable period" afterwards to be compliant.
So, 3rd April. Fire. Everyone out as the alarms go off. You're the insurance company. How do you handle it?
Of course the Scottish government say everyone must know about the new rules as advertised in a locked filing cabinet in the basement with a sign that says beware of the leopard
Where did you see the compliance period information please?
It seems the Oz Gvt lost the case not on the substance but as a consequence of how Novax was treated - as often, such cases are lost on the way something was done rather than the fact of its doing.
Yes, to tell someone they'll discuss it in the morning after he's had a rest, and then cancel it overnight seems indefensible, regardless of the other merits of the case.
Richard T's question of what would have happened if he wasn't famous is interesting. My guess is that he'd have been rejected but we'd never have heard about it. There is a lot of pretty arbitrary decision-making on visas out there.
We’ll yes and no. It appears that there were a couple of other players who got let in without issues, who only got deported as a result of all visas being reviewed in the light of the publicity surrounding Djokovic.
I think it boils down to politicking a pandemic (again). My take-away is the discourtesy shown by Australia.
Governments have, in effect, contracted out their checks to airlines so they should bollock the airline if something was amiss. As it was, he showed up in good faith and they could have simply tested him.
Manufacturers have warned that Brexit will add to soaring costs facing British industry, amid concerns that customs delays and red tape will rank among the biggest challenges for firms this year.
Make UK, the industry body representing 20,000 manufacturing firms of all sizes from across the country, said that while optimism among its members had grown, it was being undermined by the after-effects of the UK’s departure from the EU.
One year on from the end of the transition period, two-thirds of industrial company leaders in its survey of 228 firms said Brexit had moderately or significantly hampered their business. More than half of firms warned they were likely to suffer further damage this year from customs delays due to import checks and changes to product labelling.
According to the 2022 MakeUK/PwC senior executive survey, Brexit disruption remains among the biggest concerns facing industry bosses for the year ahead as Britain’s departure from the EU complicates the fallout from Covid-19 and the rising costs facing companies.
Delays at customs, the additional costs from meeting separate regulatory regimes in the UK and the EU, and reduced access to migrant workers were among top concerns raised in the survey.
The British company that bid on the passports put in a ludicrous bid, thinking that because they were British they would win. It was one of those government-contract-will-fill-the-pension-fund-hole-and-pay-c-suite-bonus bids.
I discovered recently that my son's passport is over a year out of date, so he will be the first in our family to enjoy the dubious honour of the new shit passport. Poor kid, utterly failed by the older generation. At least he has an American passport to fall back on.
Hypothetical question. Smoke alarms are there not to prevent fire but to prevent death. Fire in house. Alarms allow the safe evacuation of inhabitants.
Will their insurance company refuse to pay out because their functional alarms which worked as intended were not the specific type required by Scotland's new law?
Most insurance policies have a clause about complying with legislation. But that's always so far been about things like building codes (which Grenfell did!). So it's a letter vs spirit of the law question...
As far as I know if you have done any building work since regulations came out you would be on a sticky wicket. You need linked alarms and specific heat detectors in kitchen areas nowadays. A pain in the butt for sure but believe it is only mandatory if you change anything.
'We had last week a proper outbreak and it showed up that we had a lot of false positives but the rules are like they are so all these players who are false positives couldn't play.
'The only real positive came from Trent Alexander-Arnold and all the rest were false positives.'
He obviously doesn't mean false positives, but not a great look for him to be talking about such things.
Whats he on about. An "outbreak" of false positives is less likely than well.. He clearly doesn't know what he's on about.
The reporting doesn't challenge the notion of an outbreak of false positives, simply reports it as verbatim fact
More likely: they get positive LFTs but feel more-or-less fine, or are asymptomatic. So they 'decide' to game the system in various ways, as they don't want to be away from football. Hence "Oh, it was just a false positive."
Login for first time in a while. Nonchalantly scroll about a bit around last night’s thread. See kjh has spent the whole weekend stewing about a humourous video I gave about 6 seconds thought to before posting on Friday and wants to CANCEL ME for it. Ooh Matron.
Hopefully the site administrators keep user IPs under lock and key or I might need a restraining order against this obsessive weirdo.
Anyway hope all else have a good week. Yesterday’s weather was a joy, the first of the bluebells have begun to sprout in these parts. Spring and the end of the pandemic is around the corner.
So when do you plan to post your next QAnon video? Seems when you suggested I was seeing conspiracies everywhere I was right. How do you justify posting stuff that comes from a site that claims Hanks is a peodophile and that COVID doesn't exist and that the govt has been taken over by aliens. Did you not spot it was QAnon. How stupid can you be?
'We had last week a proper outbreak and it showed up that we had a lot of false positives but the rules are like they are so all these players who are false positives couldn't play.
'The only real positive came from Trent Alexander-Arnold and all the rest were false positives.'
He obviously doesn't mean false positives, but not a great look for him to be talking about such things.
Do you think he means asymptomatic then? Why do you say that he doesn't mean false positives? There have been examples.
'We had last week a proper outbreak and it showed up that we had a lot of false positives but the rules are like they are so all these players who are false positives couldn't play.
'The only real positive came from Trent Alexander-Arnold and all the rest were false positives.'
He obviously doesn't mean false positives, but not a great look for him to be talking about such things.
Whats he on about. An "outbreak" of false positives is less likely than well.. He clearly doesn't know what he's on about.
The reporting doesn't challenge the notion of an outbreak of false positives, simply reports it as verbatim fact
If the lfts were apparently false positives the entire brand of whoever they did the lfts with needs to be withdrawn from the market yesterday.
Yougov finds only 22% of British voters think sportspeople should be able to compete in events regardless of their vaccination status. A plurality think they should have to have had at least 3 jabs to be allowed to compete
The NHS will avoid the crisis they’ve been in for (at least) six weeks? It appears the word “crisis” has lots of different meanings in the NHS.
NHS trusts declaring there black status or whatever is not the same as a crisis - its a management process to allow them to divert A and E etc. Not saying this is easy, its not, but we should be wary of the media in this.
Hypothetical question. Smoke alarms are there not to prevent fire but to prevent death. Fire in house. Alarms allow the safe evacuation of inhabitants.
Will their insurance company refuse to pay out because their functional alarms which worked as intended were not the specific type required by Scotland's new law?
Most insurance policies have a clause about complying with legislation. But that's always so far been about things like building codes (which Grenfell did!). So it's a letter vs spirit of the law question...
Messing around with insurance companies is probably not a smart move in general. If you give them a loophole to get out of paying, or paying less than you expect, then don't be surprised if they take it. It seems that's the assessors job post-incident.
I'm going to get it done because I can. But as 95% of existing smoke alarms are not compliant there will be an awful lot of people who won't be. Because they don't know, can't afford it, or think it's stupid.
So it's back down to how much of a row the insurance industry wants to have up here. Invalidating one person's policy because they had functional smoke alarms that did their job is one thing. If they try and do that to a lot of people, it may be the insurers in trouble.
I suspect that insurance companies will be more reasonable than jobsworth bureaucrats.
It's an interesting one. I understand that they get arsey if people have non-functional alarms. But what of you have functional alarms that do the job but aren't strictly compliant?
This is the mess we have with this new law. Even the deadline isn't a deadline. Law says homeowners have a "reasonable period" afterwards to be compliant.
So, 3rd April. Fire. Everyone out as the alarms go off. You're the insurance company. How do you handle it?
Of course the Scottish government say everyone must know about the new rules as advertised in a locked filing cabinet in the basement with a sign that says beware of the leopard
Where did you see the compliance period information please?
"While we encourage homeowners to install interlinked alarms at the earliest opportunity, the legislation provides flexibility for work to be completed within a reasonable period, taking into account individual circumstances."
As I currently have interlinked alarms I am considering hanging on before forking out for a 2nd set of them. There was money put up to help at least 35k people who can't afford this, yet only 800 have had new alarms fitted under the grant scheme. They don't have the cash to have had them done without a grant, loads of other people don't know about the change, so I'm assuming they kick the can down the road again next month after shocking headlines about half of households being technically illegal or whatever the number is.
Mr. Tubbs, given the choice between more NHS staff and them not all being vaccinated or fewer and 100% vaccination I'd be inclined to go for the former.
Policies that decrease the number of doctors and nurses do not seem helpful.
Hypothetical question. Smoke alarms are there not to prevent fire but to prevent death. Fire in house. Alarms allow the safe evacuation of inhabitants.
Will their insurance company refuse to pay out because their functional alarms which worked as intended were not the specific type required by Scotland's new law?
Most insurance policies have a clause about complying with legislation. But that's always so far been about things like building codes (which Grenfell did!). So it's a letter vs spirit of the law question...
Messing around with insurance companies is probably not a smart move in general. If you give them a loophole to get out of paying, or paying less than you expect, then don't be surprised if they take it. It seems that's the assessors job post-incident.
I'm going to get it done because I can. But as 95% of existing smoke alarms are not compliant there will be an awful lot of people who won't be. Because they don't know, can't afford it, or think it's stupid.
So it's back down to how much of a row the insurance industry wants to have up here. Invalidating one person's policy because they had functional smoke alarms that did their job is one thing. If they try and do that to a lot of people, it may be the insurers in trouble.
I suspect that insurance companies will be more reasonable than jobsworth bureaucrats.
Er... Insurance companies are staffed with jobsworth bureaucrats.
According to the new standards I need to fit alarms on either side of my living room door. Which makes total sense really...
Question - is not hearing an alarm somewhere inside a single property really a thing?
Obviously, interconnected systems make sense in blocks of flats. But unless you accidentally live in Edinburgh Castle, is there really a problem with not hearing fire alarms in the kitchen from the bedroom etc?
Every minute counts and if you are upstairs , doors closed there is a very good chance you will not hear immediately. Seconds can make a difference so I would rather be safe than sorry.
I thank you for something to read to help me understand better. 👍🏻
I’ll concede before reading it I expect Scottish Independence more complicated and nuanced than a couple of posts from Yorkie Girl could ever hope to help or even put my own concern about it very clearly. Especially if someone wants to say not all shared history of UK has been great, because we probably haven’t all been made aware of history the same, been taught UK history the same for me to agree, or disagree, only listen with open mind.
Certainly if you say you are hurting, although I can’t feel or know your pain, speaking for myself I have no reason to doubt what you are telling me. I think this is different to some replies you are getting, claiming you don’t have a problem because you’ve never had it so good from Barnett formula, which I suspect might miss the point if you see how to take back control to be in better place.
However. Certainly I don’t doubt too, after decades of globalisation the so called Brexit states of the US, the rust belt, are genuinely hurting, and they thought Dr Trump had the answer. It’s not that rust belt voters are stupid imo, it’s they were genuinely hurting, wanting change, and to be honest and fair to them, and Trump, just 4 years of such a change probably isn’t long enough to properly gauge if a new direction actually working or not.
So what is the change which helps? Because I can’t think it is Purely political. For control you do need to take back control of what you believe is your own wealth?
Do you already regard English Capital at work in Scotland as foreign? Because after Independence it should be seen as foreign.
Neither England or the USA are free of the agency of foreign capital and globalisation, so in a very nuanced picture there is one clear black and white answer - if this is the cause of your pain, for sure Independence does not relieve you of this type of pain - after Independence, power and controlling interest of English Capital will own land, housing, businesses and industry in Scotland. To a large degree. Perhaps even to a growing degree.
Moonrabbit, That is all just business , it is not the heart and soul of what a country is. As they say no-one is an island. It is matters closer to hand that will be completely different , ie we can be in the EU, we can decide our own poverty measures , drugs programmes , social programmes , etc. Currently England via Westminster parliament decides almost everything that happens , we get 40% of what we contribute back and even on that it cannot all be spent how the Scottish government wants to spend it , for good or bad. The other 60% Westminster wastes and we are not even allowed to borrow other than a miniscule amount , yet Westminster claim we are up to our necks in debt based on their follies. It is a joke , Scotland is the last colony on the planet.
No, if Scotland was a colony we would have to scrap Holyrood and expel Scottish MPs from Westminster and impose direct rule on it back from Westminster
If Novax gets to defend his title there will be quite an edge to some of his matches. Compulsive viewing I'd say, and a nice little earner for the TV viewing rights holder.
'We had last week a proper outbreak and it showed up that we had a lot of false positives but the rules are like they are so all these players who are false positives couldn't play.
'The only real positive came from Trent Alexander-Arnold and all the rest were false positives.'
He obviously doesn't mean false positives, but not a great look for him to be talking about such things.
Do you think he means asymptomatic then? Why do you say that he doesn't mean false positives? There have been examples.
I don't know. Just going on what I've read here, false positives basically don't happen.
Hypothetical question. Smoke alarms are there not to prevent fire but to prevent death. Fire in house. Alarms allow the safe evacuation of inhabitants.
Will their insurance company refuse to pay out because their functional alarms which worked as intended were not the specific type required by Scotland's new law?
Most insurance policies have a clause about complying with legislation. But that's always so far been about things like building codes (which Grenfell did!). So it's a letter vs spirit of the law question...
Messing around with insurance companies is probably not a smart move in general. If you give them a loophole to get out of paying, or paying less than you expect, then don't be surprised if they take it. It seems that's the assessors job post-incident.
I'm going to get it done because I can. But as 95% of existing smoke alarms are not compliant there will be an awful lot of people who won't be. Because they don't know, can't afford it, or think it's stupid.
So it's back down to how much of a row the insurance industry wants to have up here. Invalidating one person's policy because they had functional smoke alarms that did their job is one thing. If they try and do that to a lot of people, it may be the insurers in trouble.
I suspect that insurance companies will be more reasonable than jobsworth bureaucrats.
Er... Insurance companies are staffed with jobsworth bureaucrats.
According to the new standards I need to fit alarms on either side of my living room door. Which makes total sense really...
Question - is not hearing an alarm somewhere inside a single property really a thing?
Obviously, interconnected systems make sense in blocks of flats. But unless you accidentally live in Edinburgh Castle, is there really a problem with not hearing fire alarms in the kitchen from the bedroom etc?
Every minute counts and if you are upstairs , doors closed there is a very good chance you will not hear immediately. Seconds can make a difference so I would rather be safe than sorry.
Does anyone have details on this Scottish law RP's been mentioning, as it sounds interesting.
We have connected fire alarms on every floor of our townhouse. They're loud, and we can certainly hear them, even with the TV on. But I must admit that I've never actually checked they're audible from every room - but given where they're placed, I'd think they are.
Interesting write-up in The Grocer on the Public Accounts Committee's report on the CAP-replacement Environmental Land Management program.
Summary? The scheme 'lacks detail and is based on “blind optimism”.' The plan will cut in half direct subsidy payments by 24/25 which the committee notes the risk that smaller and tenant farmers "who are operating on wafer-thin margins will go out of business"
' “We have known we were replacing the CAP since 2016 and still we see no clear plans, objectives or communications with those at the sharp end – farmers – in this multi-billion pound, radical overhaul of the way land is used and, more crucially, food is produced in this country,” said committee chair and veteran Tory MP Sir Geoffrey Clifton Brown.'
What an absolute fiasco. As with the customs SNAFU the government are all talk and no action. Whilst the Welsh Nationalist from Essex always says "we have delivered farmers from CAP as they wanted" that wasn't supposed to be the end game. Leaving the EU is the first step - what you do afterwards is critical.
Simple point - we either make farms economically viable or we're back to being massively reliant on imported food. Which is the reverse of what Brexit proclaimed and is strategically stupid. That the government don't know what to do, and think "cut subsidies in half" will work is lunacy.
The Tories had farmers and fishermen as a client vote for a while. Who will they vote for in 2024? Won't be Tory if dogma and incompetence threaten their industry and way of life.
It's up to the consumers, finally. If they want to pay more for UK-produced agricultural goods (if domestic produce turns out to be more expensive) then everyone is happy. If not, then the consumers will be happy but not some farmers.
Speaking to my man on the combine over the weekend he seems to think that the Australian deal is a red herring because over the course of its 10-year term growig demand from China will mean that nothing produced in Australia will ever leave Asia. As for the environmental scheme he believes that the benefits will accrue to large landowners which may present a problem for the government politically.
Domestic production is only more expensive if the EU subsidise and we don't. Food security isn't something that should be left to the whims of the market - didn't we learn during WWII how dangerous it is to be that heavily reliant on imports?
The Common Agricultural Policy had major faults. So Brexit really should have been he opportunity to have a grow British eat British campaign. Instead we're doing the opposite. Back to the big questions asked by Tory newspapers this last week - what was the point? Sovvrintyinnit isn't a shiny badge you get awarded. Its a tool to allow you to do things you couldn't do before. If you endlessly whine "we can't do this" then gain the powers to do this and then don't do this, whats the point?
It's an interesting discussion topic. For example, "whims of the market" = you and me and the other consumers.
Head out to the countryside. Food production is very healthy right now. As for subsidies well you are a seasoned commercial and business practitioner. They distort markets and are unhealthy for competition, sustaining inefficient producers at the expense of efficient ones.
I find it very difficult to support subsidies, especially for farmers who are famously flexible and responsive to prevailing types of different demand. Yes there will likely be market exit and yes the large landowners and corporations might benefit disproportionately but that is also an element of food security.
Food production is very healthy right now.
We must be in the lull between 'all the pigs will have to be culled' and 'the crops are rotting in the fields'.
Manufacturers have warned that Brexit will add to soaring costs facing British industry, amid concerns that customs delays and red tape will rank among the biggest challenges for firms this year.
Make UK, the industry body representing 20,000 manufacturing firms of all sizes from across the country, said that while optimism among its members had grown, it was being undermined by the after-effects of the UK’s departure from the EU.
One year on from the end of the transition period, two-thirds of industrial company leaders in its survey of 228 firms said Brexit had moderately or significantly hampered their business. More than half of firms warned they were likely to suffer further damage this year from customs delays due to import checks and changes to product labelling.
According to the 2022 MakeUK/PwC senior executive survey, Brexit disruption remains among the biggest concerns facing industry bosses for the year ahead as Britain’s departure from the EU complicates the fallout from Covid-19 and the rising costs facing companies.
Delays at customs, the additional costs from meeting separate regulatory regimes in the UK and the EU, and reduced access to migrant workers were among top concerns raised in the survey.
The British company that bid on the passports put in a ludicrous bid, thinking that because they were British they would win. It was one of those government-contract-will-fill-the-pension-fund-hole-and-pay-c-suite-bonus bids.
I discovered recently that my son's passport is over a year out of date, so he will be the first in our family to enjoy the dubious honour of the new shit passport. Poor kid, utterly failed by the older generation. At least he has an American passport to fall back on.
Errr ... the US passport is as valuable as the UK's, which is as valuable as many other European countries, at least according to this ranking:
However, aesthetically I think the US passport is the best in the world, with images on each page of the great sights of the US - the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore and so on. We should do similar in our passport - the Tower of London, Durham Cathedral and so on.
Hypothetical question. Smoke alarms are there not to prevent fire but to prevent death. Fire in house. Alarms allow the safe evacuation of inhabitants.
Will their insurance company refuse to pay out because their functional alarms which worked as intended were not the specific type required by Scotland's new law?
Most insurance policies have a clause about complying with legislation. But that's always so far been about things like building codes (which Grenfell did!). So it's a letter vs spirit of the law question...
Messing around with insurance companies is probably not a smart move in general. If you give them a loophole to get out of paying, or paying less than you expect, then don't be surprised if they take it. It seems that's the assessors job post-incident.
I'm going to get it done because I can. But as 95% of existing smoke alarms are not compliant there will be an awful lot of people who won't be. Because they don't know, can't afford it, or think it's stupid.
So it's back down to how much of a row the insurance industry wants to have up here. Invalidating one person's policy because they had functional smoke alarms that did their job is one thing. If they try and do that to a lot of people, it may be the insurers in trouble.
I suspect that insurance companies will be more reasonable than jobsworth bureaucrats.
Er... Insurance companies are staffed with jobsworth bureaucrats.
According to the new standards I need to fit alarms on either side of my living room door. Which makes total sense really...
Question - is not hearing an alarm somewhere inside a single property really a thing?
Obviously, interconnected systems make sense in blocks of flats. But unless you accidentally live in Edinburgh Castle, is there really a problem with not hearing fire alarms in the kitchen from the bedroom etc?
Every minute counts and if you are upstairs , doors closed there is a very good chance you will not hear immediately. Seconds can make a difference so I would rather be safe than sorry.
It's a prime example of people not understanding / being told what the extra alarms are for. As you say it's not because there needs to be a smoke detector in the bedroom, it's to make sure there is a smoke alarm in the bedroom.
On Djokovic it has just been reported that should the Federal Australian government proceed as rumoured to expel him from Australia, he will be banned from re-entering Australia for 3 years and no doubt cause him problems worldwide
"In March 2020, internal documents leaked to The Intercept revealed that moderators had been instructed to suppress posts created by users deemed "too ugly, poor, or disabled" for the platform, and to censor political speech in livestreams, punishing those who harmed "national honor" or broadcast streams about "state organs such as police" with bans from the platform."
I have never bothered with TikTok. Somebody once described it to me as "For people whose attention span is too small for YouTube Shorts". So surely that would mean that TikTok news coverage would be something like "Here is the news. Thank you for watching. More news in an hour"
I've never really bothered with it either, beyond understanding what it is. I've always thought of it as being ok as entertainment but a poor medium to discuss anything remotely serious.
What stood out to me was Nadia Whittome (MP) saying in a newspaper interview that she doesn't watch films, she spends her evenings on tic tok. These are the people we elect to parliament.
I don't like her politics but what's wrong with that? How is viewing TikTok inferior to watching films? Why should a politician not be looking at that?
I don't personally use TikTok but my wife does and I see nothing wrong with that whatsoever - and interestingly she's seen political stories sometimes discussed on TikTok before they've been discussed in more traditional media although almost always with a very left-wing slant which is hardly surprising given the demographics that use it.
Interesting write-up in The Grocer on the Public Accounts Committee's report on the CAP-replacement Environmental Land Management program.
Summary? The scheme 'lacks detail and is based on “blind optimism”.' The plan will cut in half direct subsidy payments by 24/25 which the committee notes the risk that smaller and tenant farmers "who are operating on wafer-thin margins will go out of business"
' “We have known we were replacing the CAP since 2016 and still we see no clear plans, objectives or communications with those at the sharp end – farmers – in this multi-billion pound, radical overhaul of the way land is used and, more crucially, food is produced in this country,” said committee chair and veteran Tory MP Sir Geoffrey Clifton Brown.'
What an absolute fiasco. As with the customs SNAFU the government are all talk and no action. Whilst the Welsh Nationalist from Essex always says "we have delivered farmers from CAP as they wanted" that wasn't supposed to be the end game. Leaving the EU is the first step - what you do afterwards is critical.
Simple point - we either make farms economically viable or we're back to being massively reliant on imported food. Which is the reverse of what Brexit proclaimed and is strategically stupid. That the government don't know what to do, and think "cut subsidies in half" will work is lunacy.
The Tories had farmers and fishermen as a client vote for a while. Who will they vote for in 2024? Won't be Tory if dogma and incompetence threaten their industry and way of life.
It's up to the consumers, finally. If they want to pay more for UK-produced agricultural goods (if domestic produce turns out to be more expensive) then everyone is happy. If not, then the consumers will be happy but not some farmers.
Speaking to my man on the combine over the weekend he seems to think that the Australian deal is a red herring because over the course of its 10-year term growig demand from China will mean that nothing produced in Australia will ever leave Asia. As for the environmental scheme he believes that the benefits will accrue to large landowners which may present a problem for the government politically.
Domestic production is only more expensive if the EU subsidise and we don't. Food security isn't something that should be left to the whims of the market - didn't we learn during WWII how dangerous it is to be that heavily reliant on imports?
The Common Agricultural Policy had major faults. So Brexit really should have been he opportunity to have a grow British eat British campaign. Instead we're doing the opposite. Back to the big questions asked by Tory newspapers this last week - what was the point? Sovvrintyinnit isn't a shiny badge you get awarded. Its a tool to allow you to do things you couldn't do before. If you endlessly whine "we can't do this" then gain the powers to do this and then don't do this, whats the point?
It's an interesting discussion topic. For example, "whims of the market" = you and me and the other consumers.
Head out to the countryside. Food production is very healthy right now. As for subsidies well you are a seasoned commercial and business practitioner. They distort markets and are unhealthy for competition, sustaining inefficient producers at the expense of efficient ones.
I find it very difficult to support subsidies, especially for farmers who are famously flexible and responsive to prevailing types of different demand. Yes there will likely be market exit and yes the large landowners and corporations might benefit disproportionately but that is also an element of food security.
How much opportunity is there is to have a bit of joined up thinking from Govt and maybe create a win-win situation areas (the below is me surmising by the way - I have no clue how it would work or it would be practical)?
For example, let's say you change school dinners in state schools by switching to using British produce? Or hypothetically by re-introducing a pint of milk to all schoolchildren? You are both effectively subsidising farmers without specifically doing so, and giving them a guaranteed market for their produce, while improving the health of schoolchildren.
There's a lively discussion on all this, as you'd expect, and in my day job I lobby for high welfare standards with protection against imports with lower standards (it's a mistake to think British standards are the best, but they're on average better than most). There are WTO issues - in general it's tricky to express preference for something because of the way it's produced if you can't otherwise tell the difference, though there are explicit exceptions for things like production by slave labour and a more nebulous one on "public morals" - essentially you can argue that so many people in your country would be revolted by X that you're entitled to ban it (the possible foie gras ban would come under that).
If you simply subsidised school milk you would increase the marginal profitability of milk for British producers and importers alike, which might not be the most efficient use of money if your objective was to improve British self-sufficiency and/or help British farmers. A better solution is probably to subsidise farmers for farming the way you want them to (I'd say high welfare, someone else might say good soil protection or something else). One of the reasons I rate Michael Gove is that he introduced the "public mmoney for public goods" approach to Defra, which in principle does exactly that. The devil is in the detail, of course, but it's better than simply subsidising you because you have a lot of land, which is the way CAP tended to work in practice.
Mr. Tubbs, given the choice between more NHS staff and them not all being vaccinated or fewer and 100% vaccination I'd be inclined to go for the former.
Policies that decrease the number of doctors and nurses do not seem helpful.
Yep. I have been thinking a lot about this over the weekend, mainly after that doctor had the 'discussion' with the Sajid Javed. On balance I do not want to lose staff over this, particularly now we have a variant that is very capable of infecting double and even triple jabbed folk. I hope that there is a compromise arrived at - it frustrates me hugely, but I also don't wan to lose the experienced staff.
One thing I would wonder about - how unusual is this doctor? We are often given an NHS wide number, but that must include all types of staff (receptionist, cleaners(?) and so on). How many doctors are not vaccinated?
"In March 2020, internal documents leaked to The Intercept revealed that moderators had been instructed to suppress posts created by users deemed "too ugly, poor, or disabled" for the platform, and to censor political speech in livestreams, punishing those who harmed "national honor" or broadcast streams about "state organs such as police" with bans from the platform."
I have never bothered with TikTok. Somebody once described it to me as "For people whose attention span is too small for YouTube Shorts". So surely that would mean that TikTok news coverage would be something like "Here is the news. Thank you for watching. More news in an hour"
I've never really bothered with it either, beyond understanding what it is. I've always thought of it as being ok as entertainment but a poor medium to discuss anything remotely serious.
What stood out to me was Nadia Whittome (MP) saying in a newspaper interview that she doesn't watch films, she spends her evenings on tic tok. These are the people we elect to parliament.
She’s far from alone. An awful lot of people have totally abandoned old patterns of media usage, eg tv. Watching tv has become a sign that you are way out of the game.
Like all these discussions I tend to thing these sorts of claims are a bit exaggerated. Often said by people who also complain about the power of the BBC, right wing press barons etc etc
I would say that being on TikTok is becoming where being on Facebook and Twitter was a few years ago. The age range on TikTok is growing older.
We can lament this. Or say that a politician has to know what is happening, just as they read the local papers in their constituency in the 19th Cent.
My children, as they've grown older, are watching more BBC. Solely on iPlayer - to them, the BBC is another streaming service. I will say it again - if the BBC had got the rights issue sorted out (it had the commercial power) and really gone for a world wide audience, imagine the revenue. The BBC would have become truly independent - it wouldn't have needed a license fee in the UK.
Just imagine that as a pitch - "The BBC - more resources than ever before. Totally independent. Totally free in the UK."
If the BBC had set up a $10/month subscription service, available worldwide and with most of the back catalogue included, they would have made more than enough money to abolish the licence fee in the UK, probably several times over. They’d be paying dividends to the government right now.
It’s probably not too late either, although they’ve missed the boat of first mover advantage to Netflix and Disney.
The BBC doesn’t own the global rights to most of its big shows, it’s one of the ways it’s forced to save money.
The other way was to buy the global rights and *use* them. Instead of following the modern management mantra of outsourcing "non-core business"
They don’t have the cash and never had. The BBC funded it’s U.K. content at a discount by providing incentives for production houses to then sell shows abroad. To have gone global would have taken massive investment at a time the government was pulling money out of the BBC. It could have been done, but under pressure from private media outlets the government wanted a smaller BBC. Did you know much of IPlayer content is available under the same time shifting rules that once enabled people to use VHS players? It’s done on a shoestring.
If Osbourne had been clueful he would have given the BBC a 1 off grant of £10bn back in 2010 / 12 and told them to get on with it.
Sadly he didn't so we are left with the BBC being a really regarded local broadcaster going forward - although it's worth noting that the BBC is just about the only company that Netflix and Amazon are happy to do co-productions with - so it doesn't do badly from its past reputation and the rules that stopped it becoming the power house it should be.
Of course Netflix and Amazon are happy to co-produce with the BBC. Auntie will cover most of the costs, and the web-based international giants will see most of the worldwide revenues - doubly so over time, with the long tail streaming enables.
That’s exactly the sort of deal the BBC need to stop doing.
'We had last week a proper outbreak and it showed up that we had a lot of false positives but the rules are like they are so all these players who are false positives couldn't play.
'The only real positive came from Trent Alexander-Arnold and all the rest were false positives.'
He obviously doesn't mean false positives, but not a great look for him to be talking about such things.
I don't see why its not a great look? Until now an LFT positive followed by a PCR negative has been treated as a false positive.
Given that you can very easily fake an LFT positive (I believe Lemonade triggers a positive) I have little faith in its credibility.
If LFTs are causing positives but PCRs aren't finding them then that's a really serious problem that should be getting discussed.
Hypothetical question. Smoke alarms are there not to prevent fire but to prevent death. Fire in house. Alarms allow the safe evacuation of inhabitants.
Will their insurance company refuse to pay out because their functional alarms which worked as intended were not the specific type required by Scotland's new law?
Most insurance policies have a clause about complying with legislation. But that's always so far been about things like building codes (which Grenfell did!). So it's a letter vs spirit of the law question...
Messing around with insurance companies is probably not a smart move in general. If you give them a loophole to get out of paying, or paying less than you expect, then don't be surprised if they take it. It seems that's the assessors job post-incident.
I'm going to get it done because I can. But as 95% of existing smoke alarms are not compliant there will be an awful lot of people who won't be. Because they don't know, can't afford it, or think it's stupid.
So it's back down to how much of a row the insurance industry wants to have up here. Invalidating one person's policy because they had functional smoke alarms that did their job is one thing. If they try and do that to a lot of people, it may be the insurers in trouble.
I suspect that insurance companies will be more reasonable than jobsworth bureaucrats.
Er... Insurance companies are staffed with jobsworth bureaucrats.
According to the new standards I need to fit alarms on either side of my living room door. Which makes total sense really...
Question - is not hearing an alarm somewhere inside a single property really a thing?
Obviously, interconnected systems make sense in blocks of flats. But unless you accidentally live in Edinburgh Castle, is there really a problem with not hearing fire alarms in the kitchen from the bedroom etc?
Every minute counts and if you are upstairs , doors closed there is a very good chance you will not hear immediately. Seconds can make a difference so I would rather be safe than sorry.
Anecdote:
40 years ago my brother was asleep in bed during the day after a nightshift and was woken up by some kind of alarm; there were no smoke detectors in the house in those days. He looked at his alarm clock but no it wasn't that - far too early. Half asleep, he checked through the curtains and saw a fire engine outside.
Satisfied, he slumped back into bed.
10 seconds later he jumped out of bed as his half conscious brain processed what he had seen, namely firemen charging down his drive with hoses. The garden shed was on fire and had been reported by neighbours.
The fire was soon put out but his experience stuck with me. It made me very aware that we don't always react quickly or sensibly to an alarm, especially if deeply asleep.
"Apart from the BBC channels they seemed amazingly similar (and for my taste amazingly crap) - wall to wall game shows, comedies and sub-Bond action movies" - N Palmer.
"I am a socialist not because I love the poor but because I hate them" - anon
Duh, nobody's hating anyone, and it's patronising to think that if you're poor you automatically like game shows.
Mr. Tubbs, given the choice between more NHS staff and them not all being vaccinated or fewer and 100% vaccination I'd be inclined to go for the former.
Policies that decrease the number of doctors and nurses do not seem helpful.
I must say I have doubts about doctors and nurses who oppose modern medical practice on crackpot grounds.
If they're so against vaccination how can they be trusted to not let their beliefs interfere with their work.
Manufacturers have warned that Brexit will add to soaring costs facing British industry, amid concerns that customs delays and red tape will rank among the biggest challenges for firms this year.
Make UK, the industry body representing 20,000 manufacturing firms of all sizes from across the country, said that while optimism among its members had grown, it was being undermined by the after-effects of the UK’s departure from the EU.
One year on from the end of the transition period, two-thirds of industrial company leaders in its survey of 228 firms said Brexit had moderately or significantly hampered their business. More than half of firms warned they were likely to suffer further damage this year from customs delays due to import checks and changes to product labelling.
According to the 2022 MakeUK/PwC senior executive survey, Brexit disruption remains among the biggest concerns facing industry bosses for the year ahead as Britain’s departure from the EU complicates the fallout from Covid-19 and the rising costs facing companies.
Delays at customs, the additional costs from meeting separate regulatory regimes in the UK and the EU, and reduced access to migrant workers were among top concerns raised in the survey.
The British company that bid on the passports put in a ludicrous bid, thinking that because they were British they would win. It was one of those government-contract-will-fill-the-pension-fund-hole-and-pay-c-suite-bonus bids.
I discovered recently that my son's passport is over a year out of date, so he will be the first in our family to enjoy the dubious honour of the new shit passport. Poor kid, utterly failed by the older generation. At least he has an American passport to fall back on.
Errr ... the US passport is as valuable as the UK's, which is as valuable as many other European countries, at least according to this ranking:
However, aesthetically I think the US passport is the best in the world, with images on each page of the great sights of the US - the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore and so on. We should do similar in our passport - the Tower of London, Durham Cathedral and so on.
That's bollocks. The ranking you cite is based on visa free holiday travel or short business trips. My son's UK passport used to entitle him to total freedom to live and work in an economy of 400mn odd people. Luckily he still has the opportunity to do that in the US but not via his UK passport. Would be ironic if we put a picture of the Tower of London - symbol of subjugation by an invading continental power - on our French/Polish Brexit passport.
Hypothetical question. Smoke alarms are there not to prevent fire but to prevent death. Fire in house. Alarms allow the safe evacuation of inhabitants.
Will their insurance company refuse to pay out because their functional alarms which worked as intended were not the specific type required by Scotland's new law?
Most insurance policies have a clause about complying with legislation. But that's always so far been about things like building codes (which Grenfell did!). So it's a letter vs spirit of the law question...
Messing around with insurance companies is probably not a smart move in general. If you give them a loophole to get out of paying, or paying less than you expect, then don't be surprised if they take it. It seems that's the assessors job post-incident.
I'm going to get it done because I can. But as 95% of existing smoke alarms are not compliant there will be an awful lot of people who won't be. Because they don't know, can't afford it, or think it's stupid.
So it's back down to how much of a row the insurance industry wants to have up here. Invalidating one person's policy because they had functional smoke alarms that did their job is one thing. If they try and do that to a lot of people, it may be the insurers in trouble.
I suspect that insurance companies will be more reasonable than jobsworth bureaucrats.
Er... Insurance companies are staffed with jobsworth bureaucrats.
According to the new standards I need to fit alarms on either side of my living room door. Which makes total sense really...
Question - is not hearing an alarm somewhere inside a single property really a thing?
Obviously, interconnected systems make sense in blocks of flats. But unless you accidentally live in Edinburgh Castle, is there really a problem with not hearing fire alarms in the kitchen from the bedroom etc?
Every minute counts and if you are upstairs , doors closed there is a very good chance you will not hear immediately. Seconds can make a difference so I would rather be safe than sorry.
Does anyone have details on this Scottish law RP's been mentioning, as it sounds interesting.
We have connected fire alarms on every floor of our townhouse. They're loud, and we can certainly hear them, even with the TV on. But I must admit that I've never actually checked they're audible from every room - but given where they're placed, I'd think they are.
Something to test later.
You have to have RF-interconnected detectors with sealed batteries or mains connection. Smoke in your living room, and any floor's hallway, heat in the kitchen, CO anywhere you have a combustible source like an open fire or boiler. All have to meet a specific new standard - have read that 95% of installed detectors are now incompatible.
What I don't get is that this is post-Grenfell, yet the detectors do not need to be interconnected between flats in a block. Having a fire roaring away in the flat below you and your detectors not connected to theirs is fine. But in a house? You MUST have detectors in practically every sodding room - I would need three in adjoining rooms downstairs because one isn't sufficient despite being deafening.
On Djokovic it has just been reported that should the Federal Australian government proceed as rumoured to expel him from Australia, he will be banned from re-entering Australia for 3 years and no doubt cause him problems worldwide
It will cause Australia a few problems, too. If they want to be a venue for international elite sport they need to drop their insistence that 'everyone's the same'. People who spend their working lives travelling from country to country clearly need a different system from tourists and migrants.
On Djokovic it has just been reported that should the Federal Australian government proceed as rumoured to expel him from Australia, he will be banned from re-entering Australia for 3 years and no doubt cause him problems worldwide
Surely the Australian Government have to accept defeat on this now. They clearly cocked-up. Time to move on.
Hypothetical question. Smoke alarms are there not to prevent fire but to prevent death. Fire in house. Alarms allow the safe evacuation of inhabitants.
Will their insurance company refuse to pay out because their functional alarms which worked as intended were not the specific type required by Scotland's new law?
Most insurance policies have a clause about complying with legislation. But that's always so far been about things like building codes (which Grenfell did!). So it's a letter vs spirit of the law question...
Messing around with insurance companies is probably not a smart move in general. If you give them a loophole to get out of paying, or paying less than you expect, then don't be surprised if they take it. It seems that's the assessors job post-incident.
I'm going to get it done because I can. But as 95% of existing smoke alarms are not compliant there will be an awful lot of people who won't be. Because they don't know, can't afford it, or think it's stupid.
So it's back down to how much of a row the insurance industry wants to have up here. Invalidating one person's policy because they had functional smoke alarms that did their job is one thing. If they try and do that to a lot of people, it may be the insurers in trouble.
I suspect that insurance companies will be more reasonable than jobsworth bureaucrats.
Er... Insurance companies are staffed with jobsworth bureaucrats.
According to the new standards I need to fit alarms on either side of my living room door. Which makes total sense really...
Question - is not hearing an alarm somewhere inside a single property really a thing?
Obviously, interconnected systems make sense in blocks of flats. But unless you accidentally live in Edinburgh Castle, is there really a problem with not hearing fire alarms in the kitchen from the bedroom etc?
Every minute counts and if you are upstairs , doors closed there is a very good chance you will not hear immediately. Seconds can make a difference so I would rather be safe than sorry.
Does anyone have details on this Scottish law RP's been mentioning, as it sounds interesting.
We have connected fire alarms on every floor of our townhouse. They're loud, and we can certainly hear them, even with the TV on. But I must admit that I've never actually checked they're audible from every room - but given where they're placed, I'd think they are.
Something to test later.
You have to have RF-interconnected detectors with sealed batteries or mains connection. Smoke in your living room, and any floor's hallway, heat in the kitchen, CO anywhere you have a combustible source like an open fire or boiler. All have to meet a specific new standard - have read that 95% of installed detectors are now incompatible.
What I don't get is that this is post-Grenfell, yet the detectors do not need to be interconnected between flats in a block. Having a fire roaring away in the flat below you and your detectors not connected to theirs is fine. But in a house? You MUST have detectors in practically every sodding room - I would need three in adjoining rooms downstairs because one isn't sufficient despite being deafening.
Thanks. We wouldn't meet that requirement if it came in in England.
Seems like a licence for some companies to print money.
Mr. Tubbs, given the choice between more NHS staff and them not all being vaccinated or fewer and 100% vaccination I'd be inclined to go for the former.
Policies that decrease the number of doctors and nurses do not seem helpful.
I must say I have doubts about doctors and nurses who oppose modern medical practice on crackpot grounds.
If they're so against vaccination how can they be trusted to not let their beliefs interfere with their work.
Its like having a science teacher that doesn't believe in evolution, or a Police Officer who doesn't follow the law himself, or a politician who doesn't believe in the rule of law.
Some might consider all those to be normal though.
Interesting write-up in The Grocer on the Public Accounts Committee's report on the CAP-replacement Environmental Land Management program.
Summary? The scheme 'lacks detail and is based on “blind optimism”.' The plan will cut in half direct subsidy payments by 24/25 which the committee notes the risk that smaller and tenant farmers "who are operating on wafer-thin margins will go out of business"
' “We have known we were replacing the CAP since 2016 and still we see no clear plans, objectives or communications with those at the sharp end – farmers – in this multi-billion pound, radical overhaul of the way land is used and, more crucially, food is produced in this country,” said committee chair and veteran Tory MP Sir Geoffrey Clifton Brown.'
What an absolute fiasco. As with the customs SNAFU the government are all talk and no action. Whilst the Welsh Nationalist from Essex always says "we have delivered farmers from CAP as they wanted" that wasn't supposed to be the end game. Leaving the EU is the first step - what you do afterwards is critical.
Simple point - we either make farms economically viable or we're back to being massively reliant on imported food. Which is the reverse of what Brexit proclaimed and is strategically stupid. That the government don't know what to do, and think "cut subsidies in half" will work is lunacy.
The Tories had farmers and fishermen as a client vote for a while. Who will they vote for in 2024? Won't be Tory if dogma and incompetence threaten their industry and way of life.
It's up to the consumers, finally. If they want to pay more for UK-produced agricultural goods (if domestic produce turns out to be more expensive) then everyone is happy. If not, then the consumers will be happy but not some farmers.
Speaking to my man on the combine over the weekend he seems to think that the Australian deal is a red herring because over the course of its 10-year term growig demand from China will mean that nothing produced in Australia will ever leave Asia. As for the environmental scheme he believes that the benefits will accrue to large landowners which may present a problem for the government politically.
Domestic production is only more expensive if the EU subsidise and we don't. Food security isn't something that should be left to the whims of the market - didn't we learn during WWII how dangerous it is to be that heavily reliant on imports?
The Common Agricultural Policy had major faults. So Brexit really should have been he opportunity to have a grow British eat British campaign. Instead we're doing the opposite. Back to the big questions asked by Tory newspapers this last week - what was the point? Sovvrintyinnit isn't a shiny badge you get awarded. Its a tool to allow you to do things you couldn't do before. If you endlessly whine "we can't do this" then gain the powers to do this and then don't do this, whats the point?
It's an interesting discussion topic. For example, "whims of the market" = you and me and the other consumers.
Head out to the countryside. Food production is very healthy right now. As for subsidies well you are a seasoned commercial and business practitioner. They distort markets and are unhealthy for competition, sustaining inefficient producers at the expense of efficient ones.
I find it very difficult to support subsidies, especially for farmers who are famously flexible and responsive to prevailing types of different demand. Yes there will likely be market exit and yes the large landowners and corporations might benefit disproportionately but that is also an element of food security.
Food production is very healthy right now.
We must be in the lull between 'all the pigs will have to be culled' and 'the crops are rotting in the fields'.
Lots of production. I made no comment about the lack of abattoirs or Polish temporary farm workers.
Manufacturers have warned that Brexit will add to soaring costs facing British industry, amid concerns that customs delays and red tape will rank among the biggest challenges for firms this year.
Make UK, the industry body representing 20,000 manufacturing firms of all sizes from across the country, said that while optimism among its members had grown, it was being undermined by the after-effects of the UK’s departure from the EU.
One year on from the end of the transition period, two-thirds of industrial company leaders in its survey of 228 firms said Brexit had moderately or significantly hampered their business. More than half of firms warned they were likely to suffer further damage this year from customs delays due to import checks and changes to product labelling.
According to the 2022 MakeUK/PwC senior executive survey, Brexit disruption remains among the biggest concerns facing industry bosses for the year ahead as Britain’s departure from the EU complicates the fallout from Covid-19 and the rising costs facing companies.
Delays at customs, the additional costs from meeting separate regulatory regimes in the UK and the EU, and reduced access to migrant workers were among top concerns raised in the survey.
The British company that bid on the passports put in a ludicrous bid, thinking that because they were British they would win. It was one of those government-contract-will-fill-the-pension-fund-hole-and-pay-c-suite-bonus bids.
I discovered recently that my son's passport is over a year out of date, so he will be the first in our family to enjoy the dubious honour of the new shit passport. Poor kid, utterly failed by the older generation. At least he has an American passport to fall back on.
Errr ... the US passport is as valuable as the UK's, which is as valuable as many other European countries, at least according to this ranking:
However, aesthetically I think the US passport is the best in the world, with images on each page of the great sights of the US - the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore and so on. We should do similar in our passport - the Tower of London, Durham Cathedral and so on.
That's bollocks. The ranking you cite is based on visa free holiday travel or short business trips. My son's UK passport used to entitle him to total freedom to live and work in an economy of 400mn odd people. Luckily he still has the opportunity to do that in the US but not via his UK passport. Would be ironic if we put a picture of the Tower of London - symbol of subjugation by an invading continental power - on our French/Polish Brexit passport.
And yes, I am still pissed off about the Norman conquest so don't plan on getting over Brexit any time soon!
'We had last week a proper outbreak and it showed up that we had a lot of false positives but the rules are like they are so all these players who are false positives couldn't play.
'The only real positive came from Trent Alexander-Arnold and all the rest were false positives.'
He obviously doesn't mean false positives, but not a great look for him to be talking about such things.
Do you think he means asymptomatic then? Why do you say that he doesn't mean false positives? There have been examples.
I don't know. Just going on what I've read here, false positives basically don't happen.
LFT specificity 99.9%. Odds of 13 false positives about 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001.
Either the PCRs were false negatives (Lab error) or the lfts were from a duff batch (That brand of LFTs need to be withdrawn from the market immediately). Either way there's more story than blindly putting out '13 false positives'.
On Djokovic it has just been reported that should the Federal Australian government proceed as rumoured to expel him from Australia, he will be banned from re-entering Australia for 3 years and no doubt cause him problems worldwide
Surely the Australian Government have to accept defeat on this now. They clearly cocked-up. Time to move on.
Nope. Time to dig in. They're not called diggers for nothing.
Not that this will surprise many people here but Help To Buy was a waste of money and the money should have been directly spent on social housing - a Lord's report says
Interesting write-up in The Grocer on the Public Accounts Committee's report on the CAP-replacement Environmental Land Management program.
Summary? The scheme 'lacks detail and is based on “blind optimism”.' The plan will cut in half direct subsidy payments by 24/25 which the committee notes the risk that smaller and tenant farmers "who are operating on wafer-thin margins will go out of business"
' “We have known we were replacing the CAP since 2016 and still we see no clear plans, objectives or communications with those at the sharp end – farmers – in this multi-billion pound, radical overhaul of the way land is used and, more crucially, food is produced in this country,” said committee chair and veteran Tory MP Sir Geoffrey Clifton Brown.'
What an absolute fiasco. As with the customs SNAFU the government are all talk and no action. Whilst the Welsh Nationalist from Essex always says "we have delivered farmers from CAP as they wanted" that wasn't supposed to be the end game. Leaving the EU is the first step - what you do afterwards is critical.
Simple point - we either make farms economically viable or we're back to being massively reliant on imported food. Which is the reverse of what Brexit proclaimed and is strategically stupid. That the government don't know what to do, and think "cut subsidies in half" will work is lunacy.
The Tories had farmers and fishermen as a client vote for a while. Who will they vote for in 2024? Won't be Tory if dogma and incompetence threaten their industry and way of life.
It's up to the consumers, finally. If they want to pay more for UK-produced agricultural goods (if domestic produce turns out to be more expensive) then everyone is happy. If not, then the consumers will be happy but not some farmers.
Speaking to my man on the combine over the weekend he seems to think that the Australian deal is a red herring because over the course of its 10-year term growig demand from China will mean that nothing produced in Australia will ever leave Asia. As for the environmental scheme he believes that the benefits will accrue to large landowners which may present a problem for the government politically.
Domestic production is only more expensive if the EU subsidise and we don't. Food security isn't something that should be left to the whims of the market - didn't we learn during WWII how dangerous it is to be that heavily reliant on imports?
The Common Agricultural Policy had major faults. So Brexit really should have been he opportunity to have a grow British eat British campaign. Instead we're doing the opposite. Back to the big questions asked by Tory newspapers this last week - what was the point? Sovvrintyinnit isn't a shiny badge you get awarded. Its a tool to allow you to do things you couldn't do before. If you endlessly whine "we can't do this" then gain the powers to do this and then don't do this, whats the point?
It's an interesting discussion topic. For example, "whims of the market" = you and me and the other consumers.
Head out to the countryside. Food production is very healthy right now. As for subsidies well you are a seasoned commercial and business practitioner. They distort markets and are unhealthy for competition, sustaining inefficient producers at the expense of efficient ones.
I find it very difficult to support subsidies, especially for farmers who are famously flexible and responsive to prevailing types of different demand. Yes there will likely be market exit and yes the large landowners and corporations might benefit disproportionately but that is also an element of food security.
How much opportunity is there is to have a bit of joined up thinking from Govt and maybe create a win-win situation areas (the below is me surmising by the way - I have no clue how it would work or it would be practical)?
For example, let's say you change school dinners in state schools by switching to using British produce? Or hypothetically by re-introducing a pint of milk to all schoolchildren? You are both effectively subsidising farmers without specifically doing so, and giving them a guaranteed market for their produce, while improving the health of schoolchildren.
The devil is in the detail, of course, but it's better than simply subsidising you because you have a lot of land, which is the way CAP tended to work in practice.
And will likely work in future as it is the large landowners with a preponderance of environmental-eligible land, for example.
Any way you cut or regulate it, the large landowners win out from agriculture.
This is the first time China has admitted to proper Omicron outbreaks. Could be a big 2022 story
Yep. Fk knows why the markets are so sanguine. It’s entirely predictable that China vs Omicron seriously screws up international trade for a good while.
On Djokovic it has just been reported that should the Federal Australian government proceed as rumoured to expel him from Australia, he will be banned from re-entering Australia for 3 years and no doubt cause him problems worldwide
Surely the Australian Government have to accept defeat on this now. They clearly cocked-up. Time to move on.
Nope. Time to dig in. They're not called diggers for nothing.
Novax staying in the country will cost the Government a significant number of votes (remember there are Australians who have not been able to return home now for 2 years)
So the Government is going to do everything it can to resolve their embarrassment by expelling him.
I haven’t followed it much but QAnon are pro trump aren’t they? I saw that video pop up and was amused by the uncomfortable facial reactions from left and right ex presidents and family and assumed the letters must have been something like an invite by Donald to drinks round his. But it’s not really the most interesting thing to talk about for so long and spend an entire weekend researching.
Not sure how I’ve wronged but your focus on me is a bit odd.
"Apart from the BBC channels they seemed amazingly similar (and for my taste amazingly crap) - wall to wall game shows, comedies and sub-Bond action movies" - N Palmer.
"I am a socialist not because I love the poor but because I hate them" - anon
Duh, nobody's hating anyone, and it's patronising to think that if you're poor you automatically like game shows.
Hypothetical question. Smoke alarms are there not to prevent fire but to prevent death. Fire in house. Alarms allow the safe evacuation of inhabitants.
Will their insurance company refuse to pay out because their functional alarms which worked as intended were not the specific type required by Scotland's new law?
Most insurance policies have a clause about complying with legislation. But that's always so far been about things like building codes (which Grenfell did!). So it's a letter vs spirit of the law question...
Messing around with insurance companies is probably not a smart move in general. If you give them a loophole to get out of paying, or paying less than you expect, then don't be surprised if they take it. It seems that's the assessors job post-incident.
I'm going to get it done because I can. But as 95% of existing smoke alarms are not compliant there will be an awful lot of people who won't be. Because they don't know, can't afford it, or think it's stupid.
So it's back down to how much of a row the insurance industry wants to have up here. Invalidating one person's policy because they had functional smoke alarms that did their job is one thing. If they try and do that to a lot of people, it may be the insurers in trouble.
I suspect that insurance companies will be more reasonable than jobsworth bureaucrats.
Er... Insurance companies are staffed with jobsworth bureaucrats.
According to the new standards I need to fit alarms on either side of my living room door. Which makes total sense really...
Question - is not hearing an alarm somewhere inside a single property really a thing?
Obviously, interconnected systems make sense in blocks of flats. But unless you accidentally live in Edinburgh Castle, is there really a problem with not hearing fire alarms in the kitchen from the bedroom etc?
Every minute counts and if you are upstairs , doors closed there is a very good chance you will not hear immediately. Seconds can make a difference so I would rather be safe than sorry.
My kids have headphones on a lot of the time. Bedroom door shut + headphones on means they wouldn’t hear an alarm if it was only going off in the kitchen with the kitchen door shut.
I made a point of putting in a set of wired in smoke alarms throughout the house when we renovated it: if one goes off they all go off (plus a heat alarm in the kitchen). Plus I read the kids the riot act: if they weren’t at the front door within thirty seconds after an alarm going off then privilieges (i.e. internet access) would be pulled.
'We had last week a proper outbreak and it showed up that we had a lot of false positives but the rules are like they are so all these players who are false positives couldn't play.
'The only real positive came from Trent Alexander-Arnold and all the rest were false positives.'
He obviously doesn't mean false positives, but not a great look for him to be talking about such things.
Do you think he means asymptomatic then? Why do you say that he doesn't mean false positives? There have been examples.
I don't know. Just going on what I've read here, false positives basically don't happen.
LFT specificity 99.9%. Odds of 13 false positives about 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001.
Either the PCRs were false negatives (Lab error) or the lfts were from a duff batch (That brand of LFTs need to be withdrawn from the market immediately). Either way there's more story than blindly putting out '13 false positives'.
And your nonsense about 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 odds is the same sort of innumerate nonsense that Professor Meadow came up with to get Sally Clark falsely convicted of murder. If something is wrong systemically you can't multiply the odds like that.
And he handled it very well, as one might expect, on being released. Told that a twitter hashtag "Free Michael Gove" had emerged, he said he was pretty sure that there would be a probably larger movement to keep him where he was.
I know he’s a Marmite politician, but a little self-deprication and a good sense of humour can go an awful long way!
Mr. xP, certainly refuse to receive. I don't know if they'd perform a transfusion of someone else's (although it's worth noting most medical staff do not do this).
This is the first time China has admitted to proper Omicron outbreaks. Could be a big 2022 story
Yep. Fk knows why the markets are so sanguine. It’s entirely predictable that China vs Omicron seriously screws up international trade for a good while.
China is desparate to keep it away until after the Olympics, by whatever means necessary.
Yes, we can still see the knock-on effects of the factory shutdowns in China, more than a year later. There’s still a huge computer chip shortage everywhere, from cars to PS5s and RTX3090s.
Hypothetical question. Smoke alarms are there not to prevent fire but to prevent death. Fire in house. Alarms allow the safe evacuation of inhabitants.
Will their insurance company refuse to pay out because their functional alarms which worked as intended were not the specific type required by Scotland's new law?
Most insurance policies have a clause about complying with legislation. But that's always so far been about things like building codes (which Grenfell did!). So it's a letter vs spirit of the law question...
Messing around with insurance companies is probably not a smart move in general. If you give them a loophole to get out of paying, or paying less than you expect, then don't be surprised if they take it. It seems that's the assessors job post-incident.
I'm going to get it done because I can. But as 95% of existing smoke alarms are not compliant there will be an awful lot of people who won't be. Because they don't know, can't afford it, or think it's stupid.
So it's back down to how much of a row the insurance industry wants to have up here. Invalidating one person's policy because they had functional smoke alarms that did their job is one thing. If they try and do that to a lot of people, it may be the insurers in trouble.
I suspect that insurance companies will be more reasonable than jobsworth bureaucrats.
Er... Insurance companies are staffed with jobsworth bureaucrats.
According to the new standards I need to fit alarms on either side of my living room door. Which makes total sense really...
Question - is not hearing an alarm somewhere inside a single property really a thing?
Obviously, interconnected systems make sense in blocks of flats. But unless you accidentally live in Edinburgh Castle, is there really a problem with not hearing fire alarms in the kitchen from the bedroom etc?
Every minute counts and if you are upstairs , doors closed there is a very good chance you will not hear immediately. Seconds can make a difference so I would rather be safe than sorry.
My kids have headphones on a lot of the time. Bedroom door shut + headphones on means they wouldn’t hear an alarm if it was only going off in the kitchen with the kitchen door shut.
I made a point of putting in a set of wired in smoke alarms throughout the house when we renovated it: if one goes off they all go off (plus a heat alarm in the kitchen). Plus I read the kids the riot act: if they weren’t at the front door within thirty seconds after an alarm going off then privilieges (i.e. internet access) would be pulled.
Fire is no joke.
Happily my now non-compliant and imminently illegal alarms set off all the Google devices including the phone my son would be listening to music on. Which is why I will be keeping them as my primary system even as and when a set of dumb compliant alarms go in.
Mr. Tubbs, given the choice between more NHS staff and them not all being vaccinated or fewer and 100% vaccination I'd be inclined to go for the former.
Policies that decrease the number of doctors and nurses do not seem helpful.
I must say I have doubts about doctors and nurses who oppose modern medical practice on crackpot grounds.
If they're so against vaccination how can they be trusted to not let their beliefs interfere with their work.
Its like having a science teacher that doesn't believe in evolution, or a Police Officer who doesn't follow the law himself, or a politician who doesn't believe in the rule of law.
Some might consider all those to be normal though.
Not all opposition to getting vaccinated (especially if you’ve had prior infection) is that scientifically crackpot though, is it?
I can also understand (if not agree) why some sports people (especially again if prior infected) are reluctant to get jabbed - given there are side effects which can be quite disruptive to training schedules etc if at all lingering. This isn’t in general a high risk population. The case for mass vaccination is often a case for, well, mass vaccination - the case isn’t always so clear cut for all individuals. Hell JCVI even said the case was “balanced” for teenagers in general, so it’s hardly a big step to suggest it might be the same for young elite sports people when the decision ultimately remains one for individual choice.
On Djokovic it has just been reported that should the Federal Australian government proceed as rumoured to expel him from Australia, he will be banned from re-entering Australia for 3 years and no doubt cause him problems worldwide
Surely the Australian Government have to accept defeat on this now. They clearly cocked-up. Time to move on.
Can ScoMo afford to take the L? He's staring down the barrel of a tough election against everyone's second favourite Smiths fan after Chloe Sevigny in a few months.
Comments
"I am a socialist not because I love the poor but because I hate them" - anon
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-10384931/Jurgen-Klopp-reveals-Liverpools-Covid-outbreak-lot-false-positives.html
'We had last week a proper outbreak and it showed up that we had a lot of false positives but the rules are like they are so all these players who are false positives couldn't play.
'The only real positive came from Trent Alexander-Arnold and all the rest were false positives.'
He obviously doesn't mean false positives, but not a great look for him to be talking about such things.
The Common Agricultural Policy had major faults. So Brexit really should have been he opportunity to have a grow British eat British campaign. Instead we're doing the opposite. Back to the big questions asked by Tory newspapers this last week - what was the point? Sovvrintyinnit isn't a shiny badge you get awarded. Its a tool to allow you to do things you couldn't do before. If you endlessly whine "we can't do this" then gain the powers to do this and then don't do this, whats the point?
Rather than trying some dodgy end run around the courts.
https://www.barb.co.uk/viewing-data/most-viewed-programmes/
https://twitter.com/JackLamport/status/1480455314260508672?s=20
Sadly he didn't so we are left with the BBC being a really regarded local broadcaster going forward - although it's worth noting that the BBC is just about the only company that Netflix and Amazon are happy to do co-productions with - so it doesn't do badly from its past reputation and the rules that stopped it becoming the power house it should be.
Head out to the countryside. Food production is very healthy right now. As for subsidies well you are a seasoned commercial and business practitioner. They distort markets and are unhealthy for competition, sustaining inefficient producers at the expense of efficient ones.
I find it very difficult to support subsidies, especially for farmers who are famously flexible and responsive to prevailing types of different demand. Yes there will likely be market exit and yes the large landowners and corporations might benefit disproportionately but that is also an element of food security.
Which would provide a fair number of additional holiday lets...
What happens in that situation is anyone's guess (compensation and rubbish and all that).
He clearly doesn't know what he's on about.
The EU subsidises farm production. We either do the same or we lose significant amounts of food production capacity very quickly. Once its gone it will cost significantly more to bring back than the subsidy would have cost.
EDIT - whims of the market is not always consumers. As an example, a decade ago I worked for a major multinational producing ready meals. Unless retailers stipulated ingredient sourcing it could be purchased from wherever was cheapest - and the need to do so was largely driven by retailers squeezing the life out of production margins.
Bringing in root vegetables from Eastern Europe is bloody stupid strategically, but when the pennies saved makes the difference between making money or not you do it. Consumers had no say as all the manufacturers were in the same boat doing the same thing for the same reason.
As it stands, it is perceived that there will be a structural shift in farming in the UK where, for example, large livestock companies will take on the capital risk of their produce and then sub-contract the actual husbandry to "farmers" who will be able to enhance their revenues by certain performance metrics. Hence you will have a PigCo which buys the animals (and hedges, if they choose, their forward sales prices) and then distributes the pigs to a number of farmers who are incentivised to produce as large and as healthy a yield as possible, being rewarded according to those relevant metrics. PigCo doesn't need subsidies and indeed there would be an outcry were they to receive them.
For example, let's say you change school dinners in state schools by switching to using British produce? Or hypothetically by re-introducing a pint of milk to all schoolchildren? You are both effectively subsidising farmers without specifically doing so, and giving them a guaranteed market for their produce, while improving the health of schoolchildren.
On December 18th, two days after his purported positive PCR test on December 16th, Djokovic did a photoshoot with L’Equipe. https://twitter.com/BenRothenberg/status/1480002675588567041/photo/1
Governments have, in effect, contracted out their checks to airlines so they should bollock the airline if something was amiss. As it was, he showed up in good faith and they could have simply tested him.
Cynical, me?
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1480462186132688901?s=20
"While we encourage homeowners to install interlinked alarms at the earliest opportunity, the legislation provides flexibility for work to be completed within a reasonable period, taking into account individual circumstances."
As I currently have interlinked alarms I am considering hanging on before forking out for a 2nd set of them. There was money put up to help at least 35k people who can't afford this, yet only 800 have had new alarms fitted under the grant scheme. They don't have the cash to have had them done without a grant, loads of other people don't know about the change, so I'm assuming they kick the can down the road again next month after shocking headlines about half of households being technically illegal or whatever the number is.
Policies that decrease the number of doctors and nurses do not seem helpful.
We have connected fire alarms on every floor of our townhouse. They're loud, and we can certainly hear them, even with the TV on. But I must admit that I've never actually checked they're audible from every room - but given where they're placed, I'd think they are.
Something to test later.
We must be in the lull between 'all the pigs will have to be culled' and 'the crops are rotting in the fields'.
https://thepointsguy.com/guide/world-best-passport/
However, aesthetically I think the US passport is the best in the world, with images on each page of the great sights of the US - the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore and so on. We should do similar in our passport - the Tower of London, Durham Cathedral and so on.
On Djokovic it has just been reported that should the Federal Australian government proceed as rumoured to expel him from Australia, he will be banned from re-entering Australia for 3 years and no doubt cause him problems worldwide
I don't personally use TikTok but my wife does and I see nothing wrong with that whatsoever - and interestingly she's seen political stories sometimes discussed on TikTok before they've been discussed in more traditional media although almost always with a very left-wing slant which is hardly surprising given the demographics that use it.
https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/gatt_ai_e/art20_e.pdf
If you simply subsidised school milk you would increase the marginal profitability of milk for British producers and importers alike, which might not be the most efficient use of money if your objective was to improve British self-sufficiency and/or help British farmers. A better solution is probably to subsidise farmers for farming the way you want them to (I'd say high welfare, someone else might say good soil protection or something else). One of the reasons I rate Michael Gove is that he introduced the "public mmoney for public goods" approach to Defra, which in principle does exactly that. The devil is in the detail, of course, but it's better than simply subsidising you because you have a lot of land, which is the way CAP tended to work in practice.
One thing I would wonder about - how unusual is this doctor? We are often given an NHS wide number, but that must include all types of staff (receptionist, cleaners(?) and so on). How many doctors are not vaccinated?
That’s exactly the sort of deal the BBC need to stop doing.
Given that you can very easily fake an LFT positive (I believe Lemonade triggers a positive) I have little faith in its credibility.
If LFTs are causing positives but PCRs aren't finding them then that's a really serious problem that should be getting discussed.
40 years ago my brother was asleep in bed during the day after a nightshift and was woken up by some kind of alarm; there were no smoke detectors in the house in those days. He looked at his alarm clock but no it wasn't that - far too early. Half asleep, he checked through the curtains and saw a fire engine outside.
Satisfied, he slumped back into bed.
10 seconds later he jumped out of bed as his half conscious brain processed what he had seen, namely firemen charging down his drive with hoses. The garden shed was on fire and had been reported by neighbours.
The fire was soon put out but his experience stuck with me. It made me very aware that we don't always react quickly or sensibly to an alarm, especially if deeply asleep.
If they're so against vaccination how can they be trusted to not let their beliefs interfere with their work.
Here is the site @moonshine video came from for anyone who has any doubt about moonshine. Either an QAnon supporter or very very stupid.
https://www.bitchute.com/channel/MkhzkRt3MsFe/
Would be ironic if we put a picture of the Tower of London - symbol of subjugation by an invading continental power - on our French/Polish Brexit passport.
What I don't get is that this is post-Grenfell, yet the detectors do not need to be interconnected between flats in a block. Having a fire roaring away in the flat below you and your detectors not connected to theirs is fine. But in a house? You MUST have detectors in practically every sodding room - I would need three in adjoining rooms downstairs because one isn't sufficient despite being deafening.
Seems like a licence for some companies to print money.
Some might consider all those to be normal though.
“Omicron outbreak sees Tianjin enter partial lockdown - Splash247”
https://twitter.com/ltdmanagement/status/1480466648985444354?s=21
This is the first time China has admitted to proper Omicron outbreaks. Could be a big 2022 story
LFT specificity 99.9%. Odds of 13 false positives about 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001.
Either the PCRs were false negatives (Lab error) or the lfts were from a duff batch (That brand of LFTs need to be withdrawn from the market immediately). Either way there's more story than blindly putting out '13 false positives'.
https://www.ft.com/content/19236eef-abed-4401-a6b1-25c1035ab095
Any way you cut or regulate it, the large landowners win out from agriculture.
So the Government is going to do everything it can to resolve their embarrassment by expelling him.
Not sure how I’ve wronged but your focus on me is a bit odd.
I made a point of putting in a set of wired in smoke alarms throughout the house when we renovated it: if one goes off they all go off (plus a heat alarm in the kitchen). Plus I read the kids the riot act: if they weren’t at the front door within thirty seconds after an alarm going off then privilieges (i.e. internet access) would be pulled.
Fire is no joke.
And your nonsense about 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 odds is the same sort of innumerate nonsense that Professor Meadow came up with to get Sally Clark falsely convicted of murder. If something is wrong systemically you can't multiply the odds like that.
Yes, we can still see the knock-on effects of the factory shutdowns in China, more than a year later. There’s still a huge computer chip shortage everywhere, from cars to PS5s and RTX3090s.
Lab: 37% (+1 from 19-20 Dec)
Con: 33% (+3)
Lib Dem: 10% (-2)
Green: 6% (-2)
SNP: 5% (-1)
Reform UK: 5% (n/c)
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2022/01/07/voting-intention-con-33-lab-37-6-7-jan?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=website_article&utm_campaign=voting_intention https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1480473251499462660/photo/1
Keir Starmer: 33% (-1 from 19-20 Dec)
Boris Johnson: 28% (+6)
Don't know: 36%
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2022/01/07/voting-intention-con-33-lab-37-6-7-jan?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=website_article&utm_campaign=voting_intention https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1480473255756578824/photo/1
I can also understand (if not agree) why some sports people (especially again if prior infected) are reluctant to get jabbed - given there are side effects which can be quite disruptive to training schedules etc if at all lingering. This isn’t in general a high risk population. The case for mass vaccination is often a case for, well, mass vaccination - the case isn’t always so clear cut for all individuals. Hell JCVI even said the case was “balanced” for teenagers in general, so it’s hardly a big step to suggest it might be the same for young elite sports people when the decision ultimately remains one for individual choice.