Dr. Foxy, a customs union would allow the EU to dictate our trade deals. There's no point leaving the EU only to let them retain the power they had and throwing away any say whatsoever in said decisions.
Yes, and that is the essential stupidity of a soft Brexit. Either Remain, or accept true third nation status with respect to the EU with all the border paraphernalia that entails. Something that the Brexiteers still haven't got their heads around.
I was pointing out in 2016 that the first thing the UK needs to do is recruit customs and excise staff and build the physical and IT infrastructure. Instead Big Dog was asleep in his basket, dreaming of bones.
Pretty much agree there.
Mr Cameron prevented preparation, then walked away from his vow to see the process through.
Big Dog did not get power until the end of July 2019. Agree that he has been somewhat asleep however, even allowing for Covid.
Getting power in July 2019 is no excuse. The EU were willing to delay until we were ready. He rushed it not anybody else.
Dr. Foxy, a customs union would allow the EU to dictate our trade deals. There's no point leaving the EU only to let them retain the power they had and throwing away any say whatsoever in said decisions.
As and when there is any sign at all of this government going off signing new enhanced trade deals I would consider the point. There isn't. In Liz We Trust has copy pasted existing deals. The only "new" deal massively favours Australia in 15 years should it ever get implemented which it won't. Nor are there any prospects of major trading partners like Japan or America granting us new enhanced trade deals - we've openly been told to stick it.
The whole point about trade is that you form a block and negotiate en masse. The EU trade deals were better than anything we can realistically hope for because the EU is bigger than the GB. As we're now finding out.
Our post Brexit trade policy is scarcely a policy. It’s purely tactical, across the board. Looking for little wins that will impress the voters (or backbenchers) rather than any long term strategic direction that will make the country fertile ground for investment, or have a noticeable impact on consumers.
In fact the whole Brexit realignment so far has been net bad news for consumers. Not disastrous, and outweighed by other problems caused by Covid, but not positive.
The trouble is the downsides are boring. Somewhat reduced choice in retail. Traffic jams of stationary lorries in Kent. Increased costs and back office paperwork for businesses. It’s bad, but boring. So almost completely absent from media. Downing st parties, a pandemic and Russian aggression are all much more exciting.
The impact analysis by the Government on the Australian trade deal is interesting. It concedes that British agriculture will be damaged, but estimates overall that the economy will benefit by a tiny amount (0.08%) - because farming is a small industry in Britain, selling more whisky and financial products outweighs selling less British beef. But it's an odd decision by a Tory government to encourage a drift further away from farming and food security. The report is here - you have to read the whole executive summary to spot the downsides for farming:
It is, I think, true that Liz Truss saw her sole KPI as "sign several trade deals", and any benefit is hard to spot. Most of them have been rollovers from the EU, with the Australian and NZ deals the first to have at least a little significant content. Next up is probably a deal with the GCC (Saudi etc.).
I find the disregard for food security and the rural community sickening, and frightening.
That said, I don’t see how loyalty can be considered to be a defining characteristic of the Tory party. They are many things, loyal though? I can’t see it.
Watch Liz fizz up the polls with this premiere hair cut.
I might need a before and after to really comment (this is after? it's a bit shorter, maybe?)
I guess we really need to worry when her hair looks like Johnson's?
It’s spot on. This is getting proper serious.
This is the beauty of PB. Expert analysts in all fields flag up the indicators and betting opportunities to the rest of us
Checking Smarkets, the market puports 89% chance of a non-Truss next PM and THAT IS A DISGRACE.
The Indy's resident psychic and medium says that the clown will go in the fifth month, or possibly on the fifth of a month, and the next PM will be Sunak. DYOR etc.
It always susprises me that the dead people seem to mumble so much when talking to the mediums (or should that be 'media'?)
The grandparent's former shop in a secondary location we had to pull off the auction block 2 years ago because mum who owned it passed away 3 days previous finally sold yesterday (probate having arrived last autumn). And it sold for about 35% more than expected first time around.
That represents a shift in something in this small corner of the red wall. Background: general housing prices up by about half that rise.
The government would be doing ok if it didn't keep hitting that self destruct button.
I'm still trying to work out who the expected buyers of the batteries are...
As pointed out by someone else - this factory will produce about 1/8th of the batteries required if all cars produced in the UK are electric.
Car companies are directly investing in battery production, because there is nothing like the capacity required. Yet. There are no technological blockers to massively increasing battery production like this, but it hasn't been done yet. So there will be a market for the batteries, if virtually any circumstance.
For example, I think it was Porsche who, when they tried to expand EV production, got told the price of batteries would go UP. This was because the supplier would need to build an entire factory to meet the demand, and the costs and risks associated with that....
Vertical integration, with the car maker owning component factories would actually be unusual in the car business. The individual battery cells are likely to become commodity components, and will be bought by car makers.
The packs they are assembled into will probably be custom for each car model.
Once upon a time the Tories' secret weapon was loyalty. Not because they were nice people, usually the opposite. Not because the leaders were deserving of loyalty, they usually weren't, It was cold, hard, plain self interest.
The modern Conservative party seems to have forgotten that. Silly little factions of pompous popinjays fill the papers every day with gossip and accusations damaging their own party. Even after Boris's clearout of the remainer faction at the last election that is so. It raises genuine issues of whether the party as a whole is fit to govern at all.
Once upon a time the Tories' secret weapon was loyalty. Not because they were nice people, usually the opposite. Not because the leaders were deserving of loyalty, they usually weren't, It was cold, hard, plain self interest.
The modern Conservative party seems to have forgotten that. Silly little factions of pompous popinjays fill the papers every day with gossip and accusations damaging their own party. Even after Boris's clearout of the remainer faction at the last election that is so. It raises genuine issues of whether the party as a whole is fit to govern at all.
Once Upon a Time Tory PMs didn't break the laws they put in place. Your steadfast support for Boris is very, very strange.
The other issue is that loyalty is a two way street, Boris and the whips have used parliamentary gameplaying to force through votes without allowing MPs to actually scrutinise what it is they're voting for. Eventually that disrespect tells and you end up with a very, very unhappy flock. That's where we are and it's no surprise that Boris is friendless.
I have been very clear that I regard Boris's lying as unacceptable. I think that the underlying stupidity was survivable had Boris been honest about it from the start but he lied and lied and sought to blame others. Some of his statements have been laughable. I take responsiblity, it was my staff's fault. My point this morning was that the problems of the Tory party as a party of government go much deeper and will not be solved by getting rid of the liar. As Cameron and May found before him the current Conservative party is ungovernable and unfit to govern as a result.
Oh really?
Cameron had very little in the way of major divisions apart from on issues like gay marriage, which was always a conscience matter, and Europe that he deemed a conscience matter in the referendum. You don't deserve, get or expect 'loyalty' on a conscience matter, that's the entire point of making it a free vote.
Despite being completely unfit for office May was master of all she surveyed until she threw away Cameron's majority and tried to ram through her horrendous and utterly unacceptable Brexit deal through Parliament.
Once upon a time the Tories' secret weapon was loyalty. Not because they were nice people, usually the opposite. Not because the leaders were deserving of loyalty, they usually weren't, It was cold, hard, plain self interest.
The modern Conservative party seems to have forgotten that. Silly little factions of pompous popinjays fill the papers every day with gossip and accusations damaging their own party. Even after Boris's clearout of the remainer faction at the last election that is so. It raises genuine issues of whether the party as a whole is fit to govern at all.
Alternately it raises questions as to whether the FLSOJ is fit to govern.
The issue isn't that Tory MPs are disloyal to the PM. The issue is that the PM isn't fit to hold the office.
Quite. I was under the impression that Tories are quick on regicide, surprised at the lack of killer instinct this time round.
The only thing more disappointing has been how docile/complicit the press have been. It's a strength of the UK, compared with Scotland/EU, but they have been pathetic over the parties. Why didn't they report them in May 2020?!
I generally agree with (or at least appreciate) @DavidL posts. Does he think Douglas Ross is a gossiping popinjay?
I’d put good money on people bringing a bottle for ‘meetings’ being standard procedure for most of Fleet St during the pandemic, and not just on Fridays either.
Back over again now. But the real problem remains that our market is about the same level as it was in 2008 whilst the US market has more than doubled. Our largest companies are not engines of growth, they are cashcows feeding our pension industry. It is a major structural problem that undermines essential capital investment in this country. We need to change the mindset.
The FTSE 100 has returned 12.53% in the last 12 months. This is less than the big US players but it is hardly a damning indictment,
‘Tory civil war could drag on to the summer’ - Whatever the Gray report says, the PM will not quit and the plotters won’t give up... making Labour the only winners
(James Forsyth, The Times; £)
If this drags on with the same sort of daily headlines, but the recurrence of Brexit queues and cost of living crisis also putting in a simultaneous appearance, I could see the Tories heading down from 30 to around 25 in a few months. That is where they were last were when the public perceived there was a permanent crisis caused by them, in early-to-mid 2019.
Back over again now. But the real problem remains that our market is about the same level as it was in 2008 whilst the US market has more than doubled. Our largest companies are not engines of growth, they are cashcows feeding our pension industry. It is a major structural problem that undermines essential capital investment in this country. We need to change the mindset.
The FTSE 100 has returned 12.53% in the last 12 months. This is less than the big US players but it is hardly a damning indictment,
True, but as I say pretty much the same as it was 14 years ago. We need companies committed to growth to build our future.
Sue Gray is considering publishing a limited report detailing her findings on No 10 parties with names of some individuals subjected to disciplinary action removed
It will not be a "blow-by-blow account" of the different parties likely to be broad brush
No that's not because of whitewashing at all. It's because she doesn't want to name and shame in the public domain junior civil servants and officials who were following orders.
Its not 'orders' They were'nt ordered to bring drinks etc. It was the culture that was set. And that does come partly from the top, but also the civil service. In this country we don't replace the civil service when a new PM or party takes over. This continuity is seen as good in many ways, but it seem to me that some of the culture failings have come from the civil service and not just the government.
Sue Gray is considering publishing a limited report detailing her findings on No 10 parties with names of some individuals subjected to disciplinary action removed
It will not be a "blow-by-blow account" of the different parties likely to be broad brush
No that's not because of whitewashing at all. It's because she doesn't want to name and shame in the public domain junior civil servants and officials who were following orders.
Its not 'orders' They were'nt ordered to bring drinks etc. It was the culture that was set. And that does come partly from the top, but also the civil service. In this country we don't replace the civil service when a new PM or party takes over. This continuity is seen as good in many ways, but it seem to me that some of the culture failings have come from the civil service and not just the government.
I'm really struggling to understand how much of a cultural failing having a drink at your desk is. In lots of political comedies/dramas like West Wing/Yes, Minister etc senior people having alcohol in their office is not noteworthy. And throughout the pandemic many people were drinking at home while working.
Illegal parties etc absolutely are contemptible. But legal and tolerated drinking at your desk, for people who aren't operating heavy machinery or working on a frontline and where its allowed . . . I'm really struggling to see what the issue is.
That said, I don’t see how loyalty can be considered to be a defining characteristic of the Tory party. They are many things, loyal though? I can’t see it.
I dont see how one squares a (supposed) characteristic of ruthlessness with one of loyalty.
The government would be doing ok if it didn't keep hitting that self destruct button.
I'm still trying to work out who the expected buyers of the batteries are...
As pointed out by someone else - this factory will produce about 1/8th of the batteries required if all cars produced in the UK are electric.
Car companies are directly investing in battery production, because there is nothing like the capacity required. Yet. There are no technological blockers to massively increasing battery production like this, but it hasn't been done yet. So there will be a market for the batteries, if virtually any circumstance.
For example, I think it was Porsche who, when they tried to expand EV production, got told the price of batteries would go UP. This was because the supplier would need to build an entire factory to meet the demand, and the costs and risks associated with that....
Vertical integration, with the car maker owning component factories would actually be unusual in the car business. The individual battery cells are likely to become commodity components, and will be bought by car makers.
The packs they are assembled into will probably be custom for each car model.
There's also a requirement coming down the track for X% of a car made in the UK to be made in the UK wrt tariff rules with the EU market. For electric cars, batteries made here are important for that.
Mr. Pioneers, while the current PM does deserve criticism for this, it's also one of the reasons May was wrong to rush triggering Article 50. Not only did she not know what she wanted and threw away the time to consider it, it also made it more difficult when it came to getting systems in place to handle the new relationship.
Wrong to rush it? Cameron should have kept his promise and triggered A50 the day after the referendum. That would have snuffed out the remainers dreams of stopping Brexit and concentrated minds on a workable solution.
Lol. Not starting until we had a plan would have been a better approach - and the waiting would have concentrated minds.
We don't have a plan even now, because reconciling the internal contradictions and false promises with reality is hard, difficult work, requiring some honesty and some compromises, which no-one in power is either able or willing to do (although with Truss there are at least the first glimmers that this might be dawning on her).
In future this whole episode from Cameron's referendum onwards will be a case study of how not to go about things.
Thats true to a point, but I don't think it started there. There have been issues with our EU membership for a long time. The key points for me* were the lack of a referendum in the UK over Lisbon, and Brown slinking in the back door to sign away from the cameras, coupled with the EU getting nations who voted again to 'have another go'. You can argue that it was a conservative problem, but that doesn't get away from the fact that when finally asked the country said 'no thanks', we'd rather be out.
*I voted remain, with a heavy heart, but I still voted remain.
The government would be doing ok if it didn't keep hitting that self destruct button.
I'm still trying to work out who the expected buyers of the batteries are...
As pointed out by someone else - this factory will produce about 1/8th of the batteries required if all cars produced in the UK are electric.
Car companies are directly investing in battery production, because there is nothing like the capacity required. Yet. There are no technological blockers to massively increasing battery production like this, but it hasn't been done yet. So there will be a market for the batteries, if virtually any circumstance.
For example, I think it was Porsche who, when they tried to expand EV production, got told the price of batteries would go UP. This was because the supplier would need to build an entire factory to meet the demand, and the costs and risks associated with that....
Vertical integration, with the car maker owning component factories would actually be unusual in the car business. The individual battery cells are likely to become commodity components, and will be bought by car makers.
The packs they are assembled into will probably be custom for each car model.
There's also a requirement coming down the track for X% of a car made in the UK to be made in the UK wrt tariff rules with the EU market. For electric cars, batteries made here are important for that.
There's also the possibility that battery systems like Tesla's Powerwall could end up powering homes and businesses so that people can consume cheaper energy while the wind is blowing thus spreading out consumption to match supply.
Mr. Pioneers, while the current PM does deserve criticism for this, it's also one of the reasons May was wrong to rush triggering Article 50. Not only did she not know what she wanted and threw away the time to consider it, it also made it more difficult when it came to getting systems in place to handle the new relationship.
Wrong to rush it? Cameron should have kept his promise and triggered A50 the day after the referendum. That would have snuffed out the remainers dreams of stopping Brexit and concentrated minds on a workable solution.
Lol. Not starting until we had a plan would have been a better approach - and the waiting would have concentrated minds.
We don't have a plan even now, because reconciling the internal contradictions and false promises with reality is hard, difficult work, requiring some honesty and some compromises, which no-one in power is either able or willing to do (although with Truss there are at least the first glimmers that this might be dawning on her).
In future this whole episode from Cameron's referendum onwards will be a case study of how not to go about things.
No, my point is that with remain off the table, EFTA, CU, SM etc. would have got a look in. Instead both sides went for the extremes.
So the Council election in the ward next to me was close, Tories just got it - by 8 votes! Once again the non-Tory vote splits itself and lets them through the middle. Wonder what would've happened if the Yorkshire Party had stood.
Byram and Brotherton (Selby) council by-election result:
Sue Gray is considering publishing a limited report detailing her findings on No 10 parties with names of some individuals subjected to disciplinary action removed
It will not be a "blow-by-blow account" of the different parties likely to be broad brush
No that's not because of whitewashing at all. It's because she doesn't want to name and shame in the public domain junior civil servants and officials who were following orders.
Its not 'orders' They were'nt ordered to bring drinks etc. It was the culture that was set. And that does come partly from the top, but also the civil service. In this country we don't replace the civil service when a new PM or party takes over. This continuity is seen as good in many ways, but it seem to me that some of the culture failings have come from the civil service and not just the government.
I'm really struggling to understand how much of a cultural failing having a drink at your desk is. In lots of political comedies/dramas like West Wing/Yes, Minister etc senior people having alcohol in their office is not noteworthy. And throughout the pandemic many people were drinking at home while working.
Illegal parties etc absolutely are contemptible. But legal and tolerated drinking at your desk, for people who aren't operating heavy machinery or working on a frontline and where its allowed . . . I'm really struggling to see what the issue is.
I've done work while intoxicated before.
yes agree- although my experience of past working in the civil service is that you dont even get tea/coffee provided FFS (which results in everyone bringing in their own milk and it all going off )
Mr. Pioneers, while the current PM does deserve criticism for this, it's also one of the reasons May was wrong to rush triggering Article 50. Not only did she not know what she wanted and threw away the time to consider it, it also made it more difficult when it came to getting systems in place to handle the new relationship.
Wrong to rush it? Cameron should have kept his promise and triggered A50 the day after the referendum. That would have snuffed out the remainers dreams of stopping Brexit and concentrated minds on a workable solution.
Lol. Not starting until we had a plan would have been a better approach - and the waiting would have concentrated minds.
We don't have a plan even now, because reconciling the internal contradictions and false promises with reality is hard, difficult work, requiring some honesty and some compromises, which no-one in power is either able or willing to do (although with Truss there are at least the first glimmers that this might be dawning on her).
In future this whole episode from Cameron's referendum onwards will be a case study of how not to go about things.
No, my point is that with remain off the table, EFTA, CU, SM etc. would have got a look in. Instead both sides went for the extremes.
May took nearly all these off the table with her red lines at the very beginning. That was nothing to do with the remainers ; but she did immediately fracture the remain cause by doing this because many supporters of the SM in her own party were marginalised, pressured or silenced.
Once the starting government negotiating position was unreasonable - caused by pandering to Farage and the ERG - what had been the cross-party remain side shattered into a hundred pieces.
Sue Gray is considering publishing a limited report detailing her findings on No 10 parties with names of some individuals subjected to disciplinary action removed
It will not be a "blow-by-blow account" of the different parties likely to be broad brush
No that's not because of whitewashing at all. It's because she doesn't want to name and shame in the public domain junior civil servants and officials who were following orders.
Its not 'orders' They were'nt ordered to bring drinks etc. It was the culture that was set. And that does come partly from the top, but also the civil service. In this country we don't replace the civil service when a new PM or party takes over. This continuity is seen as good in many ways, but it seem to me that some of the culture failings have come from the civil service and not just the government.
I'm really struggling to understand how much of a cultural failing having a drink at your desk is. In lots of political comedies/dramas like West Wing/Yes, Minister etc senior people having alcohol in their office is not noteworthy. And throughout the pandemic many people were drinking at home while working.
Illegal parties etc absolutely are contemptible. But legal and tolerated drinking at your desk, for people who aren't operating heavy machinery or working on a frontline and where its allowed . . . I'm really struggling to see what the issue is.
I've done work while intoxicated before.
I suppose it depends on the job. My job requires my mental faculties to be working at 100% and so apart from dinners (where I drink sparingly anyway) I never drink alcohol at work. If the folk at Number 10 can do their job pissed I'd say it tells us something about the nature of their job, and certainly their approach to it.
Dr. Foxy, a customs union would allow the EU to dictate our trade deals. There's no point leaving the EU only to let them retain the power they had and throwing away any say whatsoever in said decisions.
Yes, and that is the essential stupidity of a soft Brexit. Either Remain, or accept true third nation status with respect to the EU with all the border paraphernalia that entails. Something that the Brexiteers still haven't got their heads around.
I was pointing out in 2016 that the first thing the UK needs to do is recruit customs and excise staff and build the physical and IT infrastructure. Instead Big Dog was asleep in his basket, dreaming of bones.
Pretty much agree there.
Mr Cameron prevented preparation, then walked away from his vow to see the process through.
Big Dog did not get power until the end of July 2019. Agree that he has been somewhat asleep however, even allowing for Covid.
Getting power in July 2019 is no excuse. The EU were willing to delay until we were ready. He rushed it not anybody else.
Which was the right thing to do. We had to rip off the bandage.
Yes that will mean problems, but we could have sat going around in circles trying to imagine every conceivable problem and trying to come up with a solution to them all. We'd spent years doing that and it wasn't getting us anywhere.
Sometimes the only way to make progress is to just get out there and do it. Run into issues and fix them as and when you can. A bit like modern software releases in many cases and that's exactly how its been handled with Brexit and quite right too.
Mr. Pioneers, while the current PM does deserve criticism for this, it's also one of the reasons May was wrong to rush triggering Article 50. Not only did she not know what she wanted and threw away the time to consider it, it also made it more difficult when it came to getting systems in place to handle the new relationship.
Wrong to rush it? Cameron should have kept his promise and triggered A50 the day after the referendum. That would have snuffed out the remainers dreams of stopping Brexit and concentrated minds on a workable solution.
Lol. Not starting until we had a plan would have been a better approach - and the waiting would have concentrated minds.
We don't have a plan even now, because reconciling the internal contradictions and false promises with reality is hard, difficult work, requiring some honesty and some compromises, which no-one in power is either able or willing to do (although with Truss there are at least the first glimmers that this might be dawning on her).
In future this whole episode from Cameron's referendum onwards will be a case study of how not to go about things.
No, my point is that with remain off the table, EFTA, CU, SM etc. would have got a look in. Instead both sides went for the extremes.
May took all these off the table with her red lines at the very beginning.
And the Tories won a landslide with them off the table as part of Boris' Brexit deal.
The idea a Tory government was ever going to agree to no trade deals via a CU or continued free movement via the SM was absurd.
The only way we get closer alignment to the SM and CU again is with a Labour government
Sue Gray is considering publishing a limited report detailing her findings on No 10 parties with names of some individuals subjected to disciplinary action removed
It will not be a "blow-by-blow account" of the different parties likely to be broad brush
No that's not because of whitewashing at all. It's because she doesn't want to name and shame in the public domain junior civil servants and officials who were following orders.
Its not 'orders' They were'nt ordered to bring drinks etc. It was the culture that was set. And that does come partly from the top, but also the civil service. In this country we don't replace the civil service when a new PM or party takes over. This continuity is seen as good in many ways, but it seem to me that some of the culture failings have come from the civil service and not just the government.
I'm really struggling to understand how much of a cultural failing having a drink at your desk is. In lots of political comedies/dramas like West Wing/Yes, Minister etc senior people having alcohol in their office is not noteworthy. And throughout the pandemic many people were drinking at home while working.
Illegal parties etc absolutely are contemptible. But legal and tolerated drinking at your desk, for people who aren't operating heavy machinery or working on a frontline and where its allowed . . . I'm really struggling to see what the issue is.
I've done work while intoxicated before.
I suppose it depends on the job. My job requires my mental faculties to be working at 100% and so apart from dinners (where I drink sparingly anyway) I never drink alcohol at work. If the folk at Number 10 can do their job pissed I'd say it tells us something about the nature of their job, and certainly their approach to it.
What about people working from home with a glass of wine?
Mr. Pioneers, while the current PM does deserve criticism for this, it's also one of the reasons May was wrong to rush triggering Article 50. Not only did she not know what she wanted and threw away the time to consider it, it also made it more difficult when it came to getting systems in place to handle the new relationship.
Wrong to rush it? Cameron should have kept his promise and triggered A50 the day after the referendum. That would have snuffed out the remainers dreams of stopping Brexit and concentrated minds on a workable solution.
Lol. Not starting until we had a plan would have been a better approach - and the waiting would have concentrated minds.
We don't have a plan even now, because reconciling the internal contradictions and false promises with reality is hard, difficult work, requiring some honesty and some compromises, which no-one in power is either able or willing to do (although with Truss there are at least the first glimmers that this might be dawning on her).
In future this whole episode from Cameron's referendum onwards will be a case study of how not to go about things.
No, my point is that with remain off the table, EFTA, CU, SM etc. would have got a look in. Instead both sides went for the extremes.
May took nearly all these off the table with her red lines at the very beginning. That was nothing to do with the remainers ; but she did immediately fracture the remain cause by doing that, because many supporters of the SM in her own party were marginalised and silenced.
Precisely. The continuing efforts to rewrite history and blame the pig's breakfast we have now on anyone other than the fools in the Conservative and Unionist Party who delivered it are laughable. May's Citizens of Nowhere speech (probably the only speech in my lifetime that gets raised regularly in casual conversation among non political types) closed off the soft Brexit route. As did the Tory whipping against those options in the Commons votes. It is nobody else's fault.
The government would be doing ok if it didn't keep hitting that self destruct button.
I'm still trying to work out who the expected buyers of the batteries are...
As pointed out by someone else - this factory will produce about 1/8th of the batteries required if all cars produced in the UK are electric.
Car companies are directly investing in battery production, because there is nothing like the capacity required. Yet. There are no technological blockers to massively increasing battery production like this, but it hasn't been done yet. So there will be a market for the batteries, if virtually any circumstance.
For example, I think it was Porsche who, when they tried to expand EV production, got told the price of batteries would go UP. This was because the supplier would need to build an entire factory to meet the demand, and the costs and risks associated with that....
Vertical integration, with the car maker owning component factories would actually be unusual in the car business. The individual battery cells are likely to become commodity components, and will be bought by car makers.
The packs they are assembled into will probably be custom for each car model.
There's also a requirement coming down the track for X% of a car made in the UK to be made in the UK wrt tariff rules with the EU market. For electric cars, batteries made here are important for that.
There's also the possibility that battery systems like Tesla's Powerwall could end up powering homes and businesses so that people can consume cheaper energy while the wind is blowing thus spreading out consumption to match supply.
Powerwalls aren't the immediate market. Given that space and weight aren't the priorities they are in cars, used batteries (past their peak, being given a second life) will be the basis of most at home storage.
Mr. Pioneers, while the current PM does deserve criticism for this, it's also one of the reasons May was wrong to rush triggering Article 50. Not only did she not know what she wanted and threw away the time to consider it, it also made it more difficult when it came to getting systems in place to handle the new relationship.
Wrong to rush it? Cameron should have kept his promise and triggered A50 the day after the referendum. That would have snuffed out the remainers dreams of stopping Brexit and concentrated minds on a workable solution.
Lol. Not starting until we had a plan would have been a better approach - and the waiting would have concentrated minds.
We don't have a plan even now, because reconciling the internal contradictions and false promises with reality is hard, difficult work, requiring some honesty and some compromises, which no-one in power is either able or willing to do (although with Truss there are at least the first glimmers that this might be dawning on her).
In future this whole episode from Cameron's referendum onwards will be a case study of how not to go about things.
No, my point is that with remain off the table, EFTA, CU, SM etc. would have got a look in. Instead both sides went for the extremes.
With which I agree, but like others I don't think doing A50 earlier would have helped; we'd just have had even less time, not that we have used the time we had well in any event.
Mr. Pioneers, while the current PM does deserve criticism for this, it's also one of the reasons May was wrong to rush triggering Article 50. Not only did she not know what she wanted and threw away the time to consider it, it also made it more difficult when it came to getting systems in place to handle the new relationship.
Wrong to rush it? Cameron should have kept his promise and triggered A50 the day after the referendum. That would have snuffed out the remainers dreams of stopping Brexit and concentrated minds on a workable solution.
Lol. Not starting until we had a plan would have been a better approach - and the waiting would have concentrated minds.
We don't have a plan even now, because reconciling the internal contradictions and false promises with reality is hard, difficult work, requiring some honesty and some compromises, which no-one in power is either able or willing to do (although with Truss there are at least the first glimmers that this might be dawning on her).
In future this whole episode from Cameron's referendum onwards will be a case study of how not to go about things.
No, my point is that with remain off the table, EFTA, CU, SM etc. would have got a look in. Instead both sides went for the extremes.
May took nearly all these off the table with her red lines at the very beginning. That was nothing to do with the remainers ; but she did immediately fracture the remain cause by doing this because many supporters of the SM in her own party were marginalised and silenced.
Once the starting government negotiating position was unreasonable - caused by pandering to Farage and the ERG - what had been the cross-party remain side shattered into a hundred pieces.
All of those were quite rightly off the table because during the referendum both leaver and remainers said that is what Brexit meant. Quite literally both sides said unequivocally that Brexit meant leaving the Single Market and having to/having the ability to sign our own trade deals.
None of those options were remotely compatible with what was debated during the referendum. Yet May still tried to force us back into them via the backdoor via her utterly unacceptable backstop trade deal that its quite remarkable Remainers didn't grasp that with both hands gratefully.
Instead thankfully Remain MPs voted with Baker etc to keep us out of the backstop that was continued SM and CU membership via the backdoor.
For example, I think it was Porsche who, when they tried to expand EV production, got told the price of batteries would go UP. This was because the supplier would need to build an entire factory to meet the demand, and the costs and risks associated with that....
The supplier (Draxlmeier) did build a new factory because the Taycan was a sales sensation. Production is moving from Germany to Romania.
The Porsche toolkit to replace individual Taycan cells costs €40k! I have a lot of dealer only tools but haven't got that level of insanity yet.
Sue Gray is considering publishing a limited report detailing her findings on No 10 parties with names of some individuals subjected to disciplinary action removed
It will not be a "blow-by-blow account" of the different parties likely to be broad brush
No that's not because of whitewashing at all. It's because she doesn't want to name and shame in the public domain junior civil servants and officials who were following orders.
Its not 'orders' They were'nt ordered to bring drinks etc. It was the culture that was set. And that does come partly from the top, but also the civil service. In this country we don't replace the civil service when a new PM or party takes over. This continuity is seen as good in many ways, but it seem to me that some of the culture failings have come from the civil service and not just the government.
I'm really struggling to understand how much of a cultural failing having a drink at your desk is. In lots of political comedies/dramas like West Wing/Yes, Minister etc senior people having alcohol in their office is not noteworthy. And throughout the pandemic many people were drinking at home while working.
Illegal parties etc absolutely are contemptible. But legal and tolerated drinking at your desk, for people who aren't operating heavy machinery or working on a frontline and where its allowed . . . I'm really struggling to see what the issue is.
I've done work while intoxicated before.
I suppose it depends on the job. My job requires my mental faculties to be working at 100% and so apart from dinners (where I drink sparingly anyway) I never drink alcohol at work. If the folk at Number 10 can do their job pissed I'd say it tells us something about the nature of their job, and certainly their approach to it.
What about people working from home with a glass of wine?
Sue Gray is considering publishing a limited report detailing her findings on No 10 parties with names of some individuals subjected to disciplinary action removed
It will not be a "blow-by-blow account" of the different parties likely to be broad brush
No that's not because of whitewashing at all. It's because she doesn't want to name and shame in the public domain junior civil servants and officials who were following orders.
Its not 'orders' They were'nt ordered to bring drinks etc. It was the culture that was set. And that does come partly from the top, but also the civil service. In this country we don't replace the civil service when a new PM or party takes over. This continuity is seen as good in many ways, but it seem to me that some of the culture failings have come from the civil service and not just the government.
I'm really struggling to understand how much of a cultural failing having a drink at your desk is. In lots of political comedies/dramas like West Wing/Yes, Minister etc senior people having alcohol in their office is not noteworthy. And throughout the pandemic many people were drinking at home while working.
Illegal parties etc absolutely are contemptible. But legal and tolerated drinking at your desk, for people who aren't operating heavy machinery or working on a frontline and where its allowed . . . I'm really struggling to see what the issue is.
I've done work while intoxicated before.
All summed up in this ,the best of the mitchell and webb sketches !
Sue Gray is considering publishing a limited report detailing her findings on No 10 parties with names of some individuals subjected to disciplinary action removed
It will not be a "blow-by-blow account" of the different parties likely to be broad brush
No that's not because of whitewashing at all. It's because she doesn't want to name and shame in the public domain junior civil servants and officials who were following orders.
Its not 'orders' They were'nt ordered to bring drinks etc. It was the culture that was set. And that does come partly from the top, but also the civil service. In this country we don't replace the civil service when a new PM or party takes over. This continuity is seen as good in many ways, but it seem to me that some of the culture failings have come from the civil service and not just the government.
I'm really struggling to understand how much of a cultural failing having a drink at your desk is. In lots of political comedies/dramas like West Wing/Yes, Minister etc senior people having alcohol in their office is not noteworthy. And throughout the pandemic many people were drinking at home while working.
Illegal parties etc absolutely are contemptible. But legal and tolerated drinking at your desk, for people who aren't operating heavy machinery or working on a frontline and where its allowed . . . I'm really struggling to see what the issue is.
I've done work while intoxicated before.
I suppose it depends on the job. My job requires my mental faculties to be working at 100% and so apart from dinners (where I drink sparingly anyway) I never drink alcohol at work. If the folk at Number 10 can do their job pissed I'd say it tells us something about the nature of their job, and certainly their approach to it.
As my dad pointed out last week, when back in the 70s/80s you went out for a drink or more on a Friday Lunchtime, you were careful over the work you did on Friday afternoon to avoid having to spend Monday morning redoing it.
Alcohol really doesn't have much of a place in a work environment except well outside normal office hours.
Sue Gray is considering publishing a limited report detailing her findings on No 10 parties with names of some individuals subjected to disciplinary action removed
It will not be a "blow-by-blow account" of the different parties likely to be broad brush
No that's not because of whitewashing at all. It's because she doesn't want to name and shame in the public domain junior civil servants and officials who were following orders.
Its not 'orders' They were'nt ordered to bring drinks etc. It was the culture that was set. And that does come partly from the top, but also the civil service. In this country we don't replace the civil service when a new PM or party takes over. This continuity is seen as good in many ways, but it seem to me that some of the culture failings have come from the civil service and not just the government.
I'm really struggling to understand how much of a cultural failing having a drink at your desk is. In lots of political comedies/dramas like West Wing/Yes, Minister etc senior people having alcohol in their office is not noteworthy. And throughout the pandemic many people were drinking at home while working.
Illegal parties etc absolutely are contemptible. But legal and tolerated drinking at your desk, for people who aren't operating heavy machinery or working on a frontline and where its allowed . . . I'm really struggling to see what the issue is.
I've done work while intoxicated before.
I've worked for three different companies over the last 20 years or so, all of which has provided alcohol to be drunk during the last couple of hours of work every Friday.
Sue Gray is considering publishing a limited report detailing her findings on No 10 parties with names of some individuals subjected to disciplinary action removed
It will not be a "blow-by-blow account" of the different parties likely to be broad brush
No that's not because of whitewashing at all. It's because she doesn't want to name and shame in the public domain junior civil servants and officials who were following orders.
Its not 'orders' They were'nt ordered to bring drinks etc. It was the culture that was set. And that does come partly from the top, but also the civil service. In this country we don't replace the civil service when a new PM or party takes over. This continuity is seen as good in many ways, but it seem to me that some of the culture failings have come from the civil service and not just the government.
I'm really struggling to understand how much of a cultural failing having a drink at your desk is. In lots of political comedies/dramas like West Wing/Yes, Minister etc senior people having alcohol in their office is not noteworthy. And throughout the pandemic many people were drinking at home while working.
Illegal parties etc absolutely are contemptible. But legal and tolerated drinking at your desk, for people who aren't operating heavy machinery or working on a frontline and where its allowed . . . I'm really struggling to see what the issue is.
I've done work while intoxicated before.
I suppose it depends on the job. My job requires my mental faculties to be working at 100% and so apart from dinners (where I drink sparingly anyway) I never drink alcohol at work. If the folk at Number 10 can do their job pissed I'd say it tells us something about the nature of their job, and certainly their approach to it.
What about people working from home with a glass of wine?
Is that a scandal?
Not a scandal, it depends on the job like I said. Serious jobs usually require you to have your wits about you. I don't drink at home very often anyway, I tend to drink only when socialising.
The government would be doing ok if it didn't keep hitting that self destruct button.
I'm still trying to work out who the expected buyers of the batteries are...
As pointed out by someone else - this factory will produce about 1/8th of the batteries required if all cars produced in the UK are electric.
Car companies are directly investing in battery production, because there is nothing like the capacity required. Yet. There are no technological blockers to massively increasing battery production like this, but it hasn't been done yet. So there will be a market for the batteries, if virtually any circumstance.
For example, I think it was Porsche who, when they tried to expand EV production, got told the price of batteries would go UP. This was because the supplier would need to build an entire factory to meet the demand, and the costs and risks associated with that....
Vertical integration, with the car maker owning component factories would actually be unusual in the car business. The individual battery cells are likely to become commodity components, and will be bought by car makers.
The packs they are assembled into will probably be custom for each car model.
There's also a requirement coming down the track for X% of a car made in the UK to be made in the UK wrt tariff rules with the EU market. For electric cars, batteries made here are important for that.
There's also the possibility that battery systems like Tesla's Powerwall could end up powering homes and businesses so that people can consume cheaper energy while the wind is blowing thus spreading out consumption to match supply.
Powerwalls aren't the immediate market. Given that space and weight aren't the priorities they are in cars, used batteries (past their peak, being given a second life) will be the basis of most at home storage.
Indeed but having a ready market for second-hand batteries reduces the incentives to find a way to recycle old ones into new car batteries and thus keeps up demand for new ones.
[I don't even know if its technically possible to recycle batteries, it might not be, but if there were a ready supply of them without any other market available to take them then often where there's a will there's a way]
The big story of today has rather been missed. In a deposition, the CFO of the Trump organisation admitted that the valuation of Trump's Penthouse apartment - as used in his tax return - was out by (and I'm not joking here) $200m.
Forget the Capitol riot.
Tax evasion is a serious problem for DJT. If the State of New York comes after him, and it goes to trial, then he could end up in prison. Can he run for President from prison? Would it help him to have been locked up by a liberal state? What if he won the election? Could he order the army in to NY to secure his release?
He overstated the valuation though? Unless he was playing games with allowances that sounds like it would increase property tax.
More likely he was defrauding the banks using the tax filing as evidence of value of his collateral.
More than that… a 30,000 sq ft flat is really quite large.
So the Council election in the ward next to me was close, Tories just got it - by 8 votes! Once again the non-Tory vote splits itself and lets them through the middle. Wonder what would've happened if the Yorkshire Party had stood.
Byram and Brotherton (Selby) council by-election result:
I'm really struggling to understand how much of a cultural failing having a drink at your desk is. In lots of political comedies/dramas like West Wing/Yes, Minister etc senior people having alcohol in their office is not noteworthy. And throughout the pandemic many people were drinking at home while working.
I guess it's one of those things where you pick up the spoken and unspoken rules as you go along, and there's a lot of scope for pockets of very different cultures perhaps by industry or by generation. What I've observed personally is that drinking at your desk would be a wtf moment, but going out for a pub lunch with one pint of beer on a Friday before coming back to work in the afternoon would not occasion comment; and an employer might occasionally arrange to bring in a barrel of beer or glasses of champagne for an afternoon "we don't expect you to work after this" celebration of a big deal or similar company achievement. I'd find somebody drinking-while-wfh surprising but not report-to-HR-worthy, I think.
Sue Gray is considering publishing a limited report detailing her findings on No 10 parties with names of some individuals subjected to disciplinary action removed
It will not be a "blow-by-blow account" of the different parties likely to be broad brush
No that's not because of whitewashing at all. It's because she doesn't want to name and shame in the public domain junior civil servants and officials who were following orders.
Its not 'orders' They were'nt ordered to bring drinks etc. It was the culture that was set. And that does come partly from the top, but also the civil service. In this country we don't replace the civil service when a new PM or party takes over. This continuity is seen as good in many ways, but it seem to me that some of the culture failings have come from the civil service and not just the government.
I'm really struggling to understand how much of a cultural failing having a drink at your desk is. In lots of political comedies/dramas like West Wing/Yes, Minister etc senior people having alcohol in their office is not noteworthy. And throughout the pandemic many people were drinking at home while working.
Illegal parties etc absolutely are contemptible. But legal and tolerated drinking at your desk, for people who aren't operating heavy machinery or working on a frontline and where its allowed . . . I'm really struggling to see what the issue is.
I've done work while intoxicated before.
I suppose it depends on the job. My job requires my mental faculties to be working at 100% and so apart from dinners (where I drink sparingly anyway) I never drink alcohol at work. If the folk at Number 10 can do their job pissed I'd say it tells us something about the nature of their job, and certainly their approach to it.
As my dad pointed out last week, when back in the 70s/80s you went out for a drink or more on a Friday Lunchtime, you were careful over the work you did on Friday afternoon to avoid having to spend Monday morning redoing it.
Alcohol really doesn't have much of a place in a work environment except well outside normal office hours.
When I started working in the City in the early 2000s, the drinking culture was dying to the point of nearly being dead.
Occasionally, when The Boss was having a good day, we'd go out for a Friday lunch drink. One/two pints per person - not enforced but that was the style. And only if there was nothing urgent for the afternoon.
Mr. Pioneers, while the current PM does deserve criticism for this, it's also one of the reasons May was wrong to rush triggering Article 50. Not only did she not know what she wanted and threw away the time to consider it, it also made it more difficult when it came to getting systems in place to handle the new relationship.
Wrong to rush it? Cameron should have kept his promise and triggered A50 the day after the referendum. That would have snuffed out the remainers dreams of stopping Brexit and concentrated minds on a workable solution.
Lol. Not starting until we had a plan would have been a better approach - and the waiting would have concentrated minds.
We don't have a plan even now, because reconciling the internal contradictions and false promises with reality is hard, difficult work, requiring some honesty and some compromises, which no-one in power is either able or willing to do (although with Truss there are at least the first glimmers that this might be dawning on her).
In future this whole episode from Cameron's referendum onwards will be a case study of how not to go about things.
No, my point is that with remain off the table, EFTA, CU, SM etc. would have got a look in. Instead both sides went for the extremes.
May took nearly all these off the table with her red lines at the very beginning. That was nothing to do with the remainers ; but she did immediately fracture the remain cause by doing this because many supporters of the SM in her own party were marginalised and silenced.
Once the starting government negotiating position was unreasonable - caused by pandering to Farage and the ERG - what had been the cross-party remain side shattered into a hundred pieces.
All of those were quite rightly off the table because during the referendum both leaver and remainers said that is what Brexit meant. Quite literally both sides said unequivocally that Brexit meant leaving the Single Market and having to/having the ability to sign our own trade deals.
None of those options were remotely compatible with what was debated during the referendum. Yet May still tried to force us back into them via the backdoor via her utterly unacceptable backstop trade deal that its quite remarkable Remainers didn't grasp that with both hands gratefully.
Instead thankfully Remain MPs voted with Baker etc to keep us out of the backstop that was continued SM and CU membership via the backdoor.
This is an argument that's been had many times on here, and it's also been demonstrated many times that figures like Hannan were still clearly promoting a soft exit only months before the referendum.
Devastated today that my rock hero Meatloaf has died. His songs were just magnificent and his dramatic gothic style performances of them just unbeatable. The west end musical "bat out of hell" is by far the best I have seen as well. My former CEO and me once had argument over who was best -Queen or Meatloaf and I just could comprehend how anyone can think Queen (decent enough ) is better than Meatloaf especially when most of the other Senior managers also agreed with him (maybe they were just brownnosing a bit but I think they genuinely believed what they said !)
Mr. Pioneers, while the current PM does deserve criticism for this, it's also one of the reasons May was wrong to rush triggering Article 50. Not only did she not know what she wanted and threw away the time to consider it, it also made it more difficult when it came to getting systems in place to handle the new relationship.
We're a year late in implementing the border conditions the FLSOJ demanded of Brussels. We've only implemented a small part of the final arrangements this month and we're still best part of a year away from having any of the supposed permanent systems available.
My conclusion is that as there would be no downsides to brexit there was no point shovelling time and money at such things because they wouldn't be needed. So they didn't. And here we are.
I remember posting last year about how the border queue would take the bulk of a day as it already did at external EU borders. Was mocked by PT and others. Yet we're already at 9 hours and having to turn traffic cameras off in embarrassment and we've barely begun, with part implementation in the lightest trafficed month.
Didn’t Phil Hammond refuse to allocate any funds to early preparation?
Sue Gray is considering publishing a limited report detailing her findings on No 10 parties with names of some individuals subjected to disciplinary action removed
It will not be a "blow-by-blow account" of the different parties likely to be broad brush
No that's not because of whitewashing at all. It's because she doesn't want to name and shame in the public domain junior civil servants and officials who were following orders.
Its not 'orders' They were'nt ordered to bring drinks etc. It was the culture that was set. And that does come partly from the top, but also the civil service. In this country we don't replace the civil service when a new PM or party takes over. This continuity is seen as good in many ways, but it seem to me that some of the culture failings have come from the civil service and not just the government.
I'm really struggling to understand how much of a cultural failing having a drink at your desk is. In lots of political comedies/dramas like West Wing/Yes, Minister etc senior people having alcohol in their office is not noteworthy. And throughout the pandemic many people were drinking at home while working.
Illegal parties etc absolutely are contemptible. But legal and tolerated drinking at your desk, for people who aren't operating heavy machinery or working on a frontline and where its allowed . . . I'm really struggling to see what the issue is.
I've done work while intoxicated before.
I suppose it depends on the job. My job requires my mental faculties to be working at 100% and so apart from dinners (where I drink sparingly anyway) I never drink alcohol at work. If the folk at Number 10 can do their job pissed I'd say it tells us something about the nature of their job, and certainly their approach to it.
What about people working from home with a glass of wine?
Is that a scandal?
Since starting working from home, I've never had a drink during a working day, whereas in the office it was probably something that happened every week or two due to birthday drinks at lunchtime, low-key celebrations in the office and so on. I don't think there was anything scandalous about the level of drinking in the office (and I encouraged it sometimes) but it might be hard to stop it becoming a habit at home.
Obviously the point here isn't people having drinks at desks anyway, as much as No.10 try to spin that as the story in order to throw the mud more widely and claim it's a long-term cultural problem (Cummings has pointed this out a few times) - it's the gatherings which were variously against guidance or law at different times, and would have been even if everyone had been partying while drinking orange juice.
Mr. Pioneers, while the current PM does deserve criticism for this, it's also one of the reasons May was wrong to rush triggering Article 50. Not only did she not know what she wanted and threw away the time to consider it, it also made it more difficult when it came to getting systems in place to handle the new relationship.
Wrong to rush it? Cameron should have kept his promise and triggered A50 the day after the referendum. That would have snuffed out the remainers dreams of stopping Brexit and concentrated minds on a workable solution.
Lol. Not starting until we had a plan would have been a better approach - and the waiting would have concentrated minds.
We don't have a plan even now, because reconciling the internal contradictions and false promises with reality is hard, difficult work, requiring some honesty and some compromises, which no-one in power is either able or willing to do (although with Truss there are at least the first glimmers that this might be dawning on her).
In future this whole episode from Cameron's referendum onwards will be a case study of how not to go about things.
No, my point is that with remain off the table, EFTA, CU, SM etc. would have got a look in. Instead both sides went for the extremes.
May took nearly all these off the table with her red lines at the very beginning. That was nothing to do with the remainers ; but she did immediately fracture the remain cause by doing that, because many supporters of the SM in her own party were marginalised and silenced.
Precisely. The continuing efforts to rewrite history and blame the pig's breakfast we have now on anyone other than the fools in the Conservative and Unionist Party who delivered it are laughable. May's Citizens of Nowhere speech (probably the only speech in my lifetime that gets raised regularly in casual conversation among non political types) closed off the soft Brexit route. As did the Tory whipping against those options in the Commons votes. It is nobody else's fault.
Brexit is "Leaves" fault, no one elses. They got exactly what they voted for.
If the Tory rebels (Patriots? Heroes?) want rid of Bozo but don't command half of the MPs in their ranks, they could always vote with the opposition in a VONC in the government in the House of Commons.
The government would be doing ok if it didn't keep hitting that self destruct button.
I'm still trying to work out who the expected buyers of the batteries are...
As pointed out by someone else - this factory will produce about 1/8th of the batteries required if all cars produced in the UK are electric.
Car companies are directly investing in battery production, because there is nothing like the capacity required. Yet. There are no technological blockers to massively increasing battery production like this, but it hasn't been done yet. So there will be a market for the batteries, if virtually any circumstance.
For example, I think it was Porsche who, when they tried to expand EV production, got told the price of batteries would go UP. This was because the supplier would need to build an entire factory to meet the demand, and the costs and risks associated with that....
Vertical integration, with the car maker owning component factories would actually be unusual in the car business. The individual battery cells are likely to become commodity components, and will be bought by car makers.
The packs they are assembled into will probably be custom for each car model.
There's also a requirement coming down the track for X% of a car made in the UK to be made in the UK wrt tariff rules with the EU market. For electric cars, batteries made here are important for that.
There's also the possibility that battery systems like Tesla's Powerwall could end up powering homes and businesses so that people can consume cheaper energy while the wind is blowing thus spreading out consumption to match supply.
Powerwalls aren't the immediate market. Given that space and weight aren't the priorities they are in cars, used batteries (past their peak, being given a second life) will be the basis of most at home storage.
Indeed but having a ready market for second-hand batteries reduces the incentives to find a way to recycle old ones into new car batteries and thus keeps up demand for new ones.
[I don't even know if its technically possible to recycle batteries, it might not be, but if there were a ready supply of them without any other market available to take them then often where there's a will there's a way]
The government would be doing ok if it didn't keep hitting that self destruct button.
I'm still trying to work out who the expected buyers of the batteries are...
As pointed out by someone else - this factory will produce about 1/8th of the batteries required if all cars produced in the UK are electric.
Car companies are directly investing in battery production, because there is nothing like the capacity required. Yet. There are no technological blockers to massively increasing battery production like this, but it hasn't been done yet. So there will be a market for the batteries, if virtually any circumstance.
For example, I think it was Porsche who, when they tried to expand EV production, got told the price of batteries would go UP. This was because the supplier would need to build an entire factory to meet the demand, and the costs and risks associated with that....
Vertical integration, with the car maker owning component factories would actually be unusual in the car business. The individual battery cells are likely to become commodity components, and will be bought by car makers.
The packs they are assembled into will probably be custom for each car model.
There's also a requirement coming down the track for X% of a car made in the UK to be made in the UK wrt tariff rules with the EU market. For electric cars, batteries made here are important for that.
There's also the possibility that battery systems like Tesla's Powerwall could end up powering homes and businesses so that people can consume cheaper energy while the wind is blowing thus spreading out consumption to match supply.
Powerwalls aren't the immediate market. Given that space and weight aren't the priorities they are in cars, used batteries (past their peak, being given a second life) will be the basis of most at home storage.
Indeed but having a ready market for second-hand batteries reduces the incentives to find a way to recycle old ones into new car batteries and thus keeps up demand for new ones.
[I don't even know if its technically possible to recycle batteries, it might not be, but if there were a ready supply of them without any other market available to take them then often where there's a will there's a way]
The EV battery re-cycling business is in it's early days. IIRC scrapies will pay real money for a defunct Prius battery.
I'm really struggling to understand how much of a cultural failing having a drink at your desk is. In lots of political comedies/dramas like West Wing/Yes, Minister etc senior people having alcohol in their office is not noteworthy. And throughout the pandemic many people were drinking at home while working.
I guess it's one of those things where you pick up the spoken and unspoken rules as you go along, and there's a lot of scope for pockets of very different cultures perhaps by industry or by generation. What I've observed personally is that drinking at your desk would be a wtf moment, but going out for a pub lunch with one pint of beer on a Friday before coming back to work in the afternoon would not occasion comment; and an employer might occasionally arrange to bring in a barrel of beer or glasses of champagne for an afternoon "we don't expect you to work after this" celebration of a big deal or similar company achievement. I'd find somebody drinking-while-wfh surprising but not report-to-HR-worthy, I think.
Under my current contract of employment drinking alcohol while working is grounds for gross misconduct and instant dismissal, and we're hardly a company of teetotallers after working hours.
Company Christmas dinners have been on a Thursday evening with senior management casting around for people to drink with them until dawn, with the expectation that sick leave would be granted for those who'd fail a breath test the next day - but never drinking and working at the same time.
Therefore alcohol is a clear indicator of it being a social event, rather than a work event, and is why my reaction to that excuse was incredulity.
Mr. Pioneers, while the current PM does deserve criticism for this, it's also one of the reasons May was wrong to rush triggering Article 50. Not only did she not know what she wanted and threw away the time to consider it, it also made it more difficult when it came to getting systems in place to handle the new relationship.
Wrong to rush it? Cameron should have kept his promise and triggered A50 the day after the referendum. That would have snuffed out the remainers dreams of stopping Brexit and concentrated minds on a workable solution.
Lol. Not starting until we had a plan would have been a better approach - and the waiting would have concentrated minds.
We don't have a plan even now, because reconciling the internal contradictions and false promises with reality is hard, difficult work, requiring some honesty and some compromises, which no-one in power is either able or willing to do (although with Truss there are at least the first glimmers that this might be dawning on her).
In future this whole episode from Cameron's referendum onwards will be a case study of how not to go about things.
No, my point is that with remain off the table, EFTA, CU, SM etc. would have got a look in. Instead both sides went for the extremes.
May took nearly all these off the table with her red lines at the very beginning. That was nothing to do with the remainers ; but she did immediately fracture the remain cause by doing this because many supporters of the SM in her own party were marginalised, pressured or silenced.
Once the starting government negotiating position was unreasonable - caused by pandering to Farage and the ERG - what had been the cross-party remain side shattered into a hundred pieces.
Not quite. Both Art 50 - which creates an artificial timetable with a bomb at the end, and decision was in the hands of parliament, not government. If soft and gradualist brexiteers and remainers had coalesced instead of fragmenting, the outcome could have been very different.
The greatest responsibility for bad outcomes is still the long term failure, 40 years, to consult the public over gradual incorporation into a developing EU in referendums, and the failure of moderates to agree a line and use their votes.
Mr. Pioneers, while the current PM does deserve criticism for this, it's also one of the reasons May was wrong to rush triggering Article 50. Not only did she not know what she wanted and threw away the time to consider it, it also made it more difficult when it came to getting systems in place to handle the new relationship.
Wrong to rush it? Cameron should have kept his promise and triggered A50 the day after the referendum. That would have snuffed out the remainers dreams of stopping Brexit and concentrated minds on a workable solution.
Lol. Not starting until we had a plan would have been a better approach - and the waiting would have concentrated minds.
We don't have a plan even now, because reconciling the internal contradictions and false promises with reality is hard, difficult work, requiring some honesty and some compromises, which no-one in power is either able or willing to do (although with Truss there are at least the first glimmers that this might be dawning on her).
In future this whole episode from Cameron's referendum onwards will be a case study of how not to go about things.
No, my point is that with remain off the table, EFTA, CU, SM etc. would have got a look in. Instead both sides went for the extremes.
May took nearly all these off the table with her red lines at the very beginning. That was nothing to do with the remainers ; but she did immediately fracture the remain cause by doing this because many supporters of the SM in her own party were marginalised and silenced.
Once the starting government negotiating position was unreasonable - caused by pandering to Farage and the ERG - what had been the cross-party remain side shattered into a hundred pieces.
All of those were quite rightly off the table because during the referendum both leaver and remainers said that is what Brexit meant. Quite literally both sides said unequivocally that Brexit meant leaving the Single Market and having to/having the ability to sign our own trade deals.
None of those options were remotely compatible with what was debated during the referendum. Yet May still tried to force us back into them via the backdoor via her utterly unacceptable backstop trade deal that its quite remarkable Remainers didn't grasp that with both hands gratefully.
Instead thankfully Remain MPs voted with Baker etc to keep us out of the backstop that was continued SM and CU membership via the backdoor.
This is an argument that's been had many times on here, and it's also been demonstrated many times that figures like Hannan were still clearly promoting a soft exit only months before the referendum.
Before the referendum campaign some did yes, prior to Vote Leave etc being formed and coming up with policy positions as to what Brexit meant, never during it.
During the referendum Hannan etc [as well as all Remainers] signed up to what Brexit meant which was leaving the Single Market.
There was no acceptable way to stay in the SM and keep free movement post-Brexit that matched what either Remainers or Leavers said during the Referendum.
If the Tory rebels (Patriots? Heroes?) want rid of Bozo but don't command half of the MPs in their ranks, they could always vote with the opposition in a VONC in the government in the House of Commons.
Country before party, and all that.
Of course they won't, that would certainly see them lose their seats now
Mr. Pioneers, while the current PM does deserve criticism for this, it's also one of the reasons May was wrong to rush triggering Article 50. Not only did she not know what she wanted and threw away the time to consider it, it also made it more difficult when it came to getting systems in place to handle the new relationship.
Wrong to rush it? Cameron should have kept his promise and triggered A50 the day after the referendum. That would have snuffed out the remainers dreams of stopping Brexit and concentrated minds on a workable solution.
Lol. Not starting until we had a plan would have been a better approach - and the waiting would have concentrated minds.
We don't have a plan even now, because reconciling the internal contradictions and false promises with reality is hard, difficult work, requiring some honesty and some compromises, which no-one in power is either able or willing to do (although with Truss there are at least the first glimmers that this might be dawning on her).
In future this whole episode from Cameron's referendum onwards will be a case study of how not to go about things.
No, my point is that with remain off the table, EFTA, CU, SM etc. would have got a look in. Instead both sides went for the extremes.
May took nearly all these off the table with her red lines at the very beginning. That was nothing to do with the remainers ; but she did immediately fracture the remain cause by doing that, because many supporters of the SM in her own party were marginalised and silenced.
Precisely. The continuing efforts to rewrite history and blame the pig's breakfast we have now on anyone other than the fools in the Conservative and Unionist Party who delivered it are laughable. May's Citizens of Nowhere speech (probably the only speech in my lifetime that gets raised regularly in casual conversation among non political types) closed off the soft Brexit route. As did the Tory whipping against those options in the Commons votes. It is nobody else's fault.
Brexit is "Leaves" fault, no one elses. They got exactly what they voted for.
Brexit it Leaver's credit. We got exactly what we voted for.
That nothing softer happened was Remainers fault. Leavers didn't want softer, so not our fault it didn't happen, our credit.
With May's dreadfully appalling backstop you Remaienrs looked a gift horse in the mouth and rejected it.
Thank you very much for letting us win. Couldn't have done it without the votes of Lib Dems, Grieve, Starmer etc
Mr. Pioneers, while the current PM does deserve criticism for this, it's also one of the reasons May was wrong to rush triggering Article 50. Not only did she not know what she wanted and threw away the time to consider it, it also made it more difficult when it came to getting systems in place to handle the new relationship.
Wrong to rush it? Cameron should have kept his promise and triggered A50 the day after the referendum. That would have snuffed out the remainers dreams of stopping Brexit and concentrated minds on a workable solution.
Lol. Not starting until we had a plan would have been a better approach - and the waiting would have concentrated minds.
We don't have a plan even now, because reconciling the internal contradictions and false promises with reality is hard, difficult work, requiring some honesty and some compromises, which no-one in power is either able or willing to do (although with Truss there are at least the first glimmers that this might be dawning on her).
In future this whole episode from Cameron's referendum onwards will be a case study of how not to go about things.
No, my point is that with remain off the table, EFTA, CU, SM etc. would have got a look in. Instead both sides went for the extremes.
May took nearly all these off the table with her red lines at the very beginning.
She did, but it was several months after "the very beginning", during which many vocal Remainers were refusing to accept that they had lost. If at the real very beginning - the day after the referendum - the prominent Remainers had allied with the Hannanites, an EEA type result would have quickly become the preferred outcome and May wouldn't have been able to have her red lines (if indeed she'd even won).
Precisely. The continuing efforts to rewrite history and blame the pig's breakfast we have now on anyone other than the fools in the Conservative and Unionist Party who delivered it are laughable. May's Citizens of Nowhere speech (probably the only speech in my lifetime that gets raised regularly in casual conversation among non political types) closed off the soft Brexit route. As did the Tory whipping against those options in the Commons votes. It is nobody else's fault.
The way that May's 'Citizens' of Nowhere' speech has been traduced and misrepresented is one of the most extraordinary feature of the of politics of the last decade. You obviously haven't read it, but you have strong views about it.
It's not even principally about Brexit, but here's what she actually said about the relationship with the EU:
It is, of course, too early to say exactly what agreement we will reach with the EU. It’s going to be a tough negotiation, it will require some give and take. And while there will always be pressure to give a running commentary, it will not be in our national interest to do so.
But let me be clear about the agreement we seek. I want it to reflect the strong and mature relationships we enjoy with our European friends. I want it to include cooperation on law enforcement and counter-terrorism work. I want it to involve free trade, in goods and services.
I want it to give British companies the maximum freedom to trade with and operate within the Single Market – and let European businesses do the same here.
But let’s state one thing loud and clear: we are not leaving the European Union only to give up control of immigration all over again. And we are not leaving only to return to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. That’s not going to happen.
There's no closing off there, quite the opposite. She was genuinely trying to find a route which respected the referendum result but kept trade frictions to a minimum. It was of course a hugely difficult circle to square, and she failed in the end, thanks to the 2017 election disaster and Labour joining the ERG in torpedoing any compromise, but she was certainly trying hard.
And the 'citizens of nowhere' phrase was about tax evaders and irresponsible employers, but was seized upon by the Guardian-reading classes and twisted into something which bore no relation to what she was saying.
Rebel Tory MPs, known as the "pork pie plotters", are considering publishing a secretly recorded "heated" exchange with the government chief whip, according to reports.
The big story of today has rather been missed. In a deposition, the CFO of the Trump organisation admitted that the valuation of Trump's Penthouse apartment - as used in his tax return - was out by (and I'm not joking here) $200m.
Forget the Capitol riot.
Tax evasion is a serious problem for DJT. If the State of New York comes after him, and it goes to trial, then he could end up in prison. Can he run for President from prison? Would it help him to have been locked up by a liberal state? What if he won the election? Could he order the army in to NY to secure his release?
He overstated the valuation though? Unless he was playing games with allowances that sounds like it would increase property tax.
More likely he was defrauding the banks using the tax filing as evidence of value of his collateral.
More than that… a 30,000 sq ft flat is really quite large.
The continual story about Trump and property is that he uses 1 (low) valuation for tax purposes and a different (far higher) valuation for mortgage / loan purposes..
The issue has been finding the paperwork that demonstrates the fact - which New York seem to have finally found so now it's a matter of identifying who knew about it.
I'm really struggling to understand how much of a cultural failing having a drink at your desk is. In lots of political comedies/dramas like West Wing/Yes, Minister etc senior people having alcohol in their office is not noteworthy. And throughout the pandemic many people were drinking at home while working.
I guess it's one of those things where you pick up the spoken and unspoken rules as you go along, and there's a lot of scope for pockets of very different cultures perhaps by industry or by generation. What I've observed personally is that drinking at your desk would be a wtf moment, but going out for a pub lunch with one pint of beer on a Friday before coming back to work in the afternoon would not occasion comment; and an employer might occasionally arrange to bring in a barrel of beer or glasses of champagne for an afternoon "we don't expect you to work after this" celebration of a big deal or similar company achievement. I'd find somebody drinking-while-wfh surprising but not report-to-HR-worthy, I think.
Under my current contract of employment drinking alcohol while working is grounds for gross misconduct and instant dismissal, and we're hardly a company of teetotallers after working hours.
Company Christmas dinners have been on a Thursday evening with senior management casting around for people to drink with them until dawn, with the expectation that sick leave would be granted for those who'd fail a breath test the next day - but never drinking and working at the same time.
Therefore alcohol is a clear indicator of it being a social event, rather than a work event, and is why my reaction to that excuse was incredulity.
Not all employers operate the same though.
I've had jobs were alcohol was strictly banned at work, and other jobs were alcohol was allowed in moderation at work.
Getting drunk certainly could cause you to do things that would be gross misconduct in any job, but simply having a drink is absolutely not universally gross misconduct..
As an optimist I would hope that Boris goes soon (>50%) and if that happens Nadine Dorries should follow soon after (>90%). I'd love Brexit to vanish too like a bad smell but that has to be (<10%).
Mr. Pioneers, while the current PM does deserve criticism for this, it's also one of the reasons May was wrong to rush triggering Article 50. Not only did she not know what she wanted and threw away the time to consider it, it also made it more difficult when it came to getting systems in place to handle the new relationship.
Wrong to rush it? Cameron should have kept his promise and triggered A50 the day after the referendum. That would have snuffed out the remainers dreams of stopping Brexit and concentrated minds on a workable solution.
Lol. Not starting until we had a plan would have been a better approach - and the waiting would have concentrated minds.
We don't have a plan even now, because reconciling the internal contradictions and false promises with reality is hard, difficult work, requiring some honesty and some compromises, which no-one in power is either able or willing to do (although with Truss there are at least the first glimmers that this might be dawning on her).
In future this whole episode from Cameron's referendum onwards will be a case study of how not to go about things.
No, my point is that with remain off the table, EFTA, CU, SM etc. would have got a look in. Instead both sides went for the extremes.
May took nearly all these off the table with her red lines at the very beginning. That was nothing to do with the remainers ; but she did immediately fracture the remain cause by doing this because many supporters of the SM in her own party were marginalised, pressured or silenced.
Once the starting government negotiating position was unreasonable - caused by pandering to Farage and the ERG - what had been the cross-party remain side shattered into a hundred pieces.
Not quite. Both Art 50 - which creates an artificial timetable with a bomb at the end, and decision was in the hands of parliament, not government. If soft and gradualist brexiteers and remainers had coalesced instead of fragmenting, the outcome could have been very different.
The greatest responsibility for bad outcomes is still the long term failure, 40 years, to consult the public over gradual incorporation into a developing EU in referendums, and the failure of moderates to agree a line and use their votes.
This wasn't possible. May set the agenda, and she continually galvanised, focused and expanded the hard Brexiters by giving into their demands, and making it harder and harder to reach a softer agreement. The Tory pro-Europeans were silenced, confused, defected, a group within them eventually expelled, and there was no clear route to a softer Brexit other than an election. With May having laid the groundwork for a galvanised Brexiter side and a weaker and divided Remain side, Johnson simply swept in to the finish this process in the most logical and inevitable way. He finally got the job done.
Mr. Pioneers, while the current PM does deserve criticism for this, it's also one of the reasons May was wrong to rush triggering Article 50. Not only did she not know what she wanted and threw away the time to consider it, it also made it more difficult when it came to getting systems in place to handle the new relationship.
Wrong to rush it? Cameron should have kept his promise and triggered A50 the day after the referendum. That would have snuffed out the remainers dreams of stopping Brexit and concentrated minds on a workable solution.
Lol. Not starting until we had a plan would have been a better approach - and the waiting would have concentrated minds.
We don't have a plan even now, because reconciling the internal contradictions and false promises with reality is hard, difficult work, requiring some honesty and some compromises, which no-one in power is either able or willing to do (although with Truss there are at least the first glimmers that this might be dawning on her).
In future this whole episode from Cameron's referendum onwards will be a case study of how not to go about things.
No, my point is that with remain off the table, EFTA, CU, SM etc. would have got a look in. Instead both sides went for the extremes.
May took nearly all these off the table with her red lines at the very beginning.
She did, but it was several months after "the very beginning", during which many vocal Remainers were refusing to accept that they had lost. If at the real very beginning - the day after the referendum - the prominent Remainers had allied with the Hannanites, an EEA type result would have quickly become the preferred outcome and May wouldn't have been able to have her red lines (if indeed she'd even won).
And the Brexit Party would now be on 25% of the vote if free movement had been kept and the Tories would not have won the majority they did in 2019
Precisely. The continuing efforts to rewrite history and blame the pig's breakfast we have now on anyone other than the fools in the Conservative and Unionist Party who delivered it are laughable. May's Citizens of Nowhere speech (probably the only speech in my lifetime that gets raised regularly in casual conversation among non political types) closed off the soft Brexit route. As did the Tory whipping against those options in the Commons votes. It is nobody else's fault.
The way that May's 'Citizens' of Nowhere' speech has been traduced and misrepresented is one of the most extraordinary feature of the of politics of the last decade. You obviously haven't read it, but you have strong views about it.
It's not even principally about Brexit, but here's what she actually said about the relationship with the EU:
It is, of course, too early to say exactly what agreement we will reach with the EU. It’s going to be a tough negotiation, it will require some give and take. And while there will always be pressure to give a running commentary, it will not be in our national interest to do so.
But let me be clear about the agreement we seek. I want it to reflect the strong and mature relationships we enjoy with our European friends. I want it to include cooperation on law enforcement and counter-terrorism work. I want it to involve free trade, in goods and services.
I want it to give British companies the maximum freedom to trade with and operate within the Single Market – and let European businesses do the same here.
But let’s state one thing loud and clear: we are not leaving the European Union only to give up control of immigration all over again. And we are not leaving only to return to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. That’s not going to happen.
There's no closing off there, quite the opposite. She was genuinely trying to find a route which respected the referendum result but kept trade frictions to a minimum. It was of course a hugely difficult circle to square, and she failed in the end, thanks to the 2017 election disaster and Labour joining the ERG in torpedoing any compromise, but she was certainly trying hard.
And the 'citizens of nowhere' phrase was about tax evaders and irresponsible employers, but was seized upon by the Guardian-reading classes and twisted into something which bore no relation to what she was saying.
So the Council election in the ward next to me was close, Tories just got it - by 8 votes! Once again the non-Tory vote splits itself and lets them through the middle. Wonder what would've happened if the Yorkshire Party had stood.
Byram and Brotherton (Selby) council by-election result:
Isn't that ward based a pit village outside Castleford ?
Its traditionally been safe Labour and was won by them in 2015.
But its a local byelection in winter.
It does surprise me that a by-election in a place between Leeds and Doncaster with all that has been going on has returned a Tory Councillor.
It's a few miles outside Cas but it is just inside N. Yorkshire. It's got a very rural feel to it. It's surprising how stark the demarcation is between these staunchly Labour small towns, but a few miles away it very much feels like Shire Tory territory. Lots of farms, small villages dotted around, old estates, that kind of place stretches all the way to the North Sea. Not your Yorkshire Dales landscape, not that kind of Yorkshire, billiard table flat arable farming.
Mr. Pioneers, while the current PM does deserve criticism for this, it's also one of the reasons May was wrong to rush triggering Article 50. Not only did she not know what she wanted and threw away the time to consider it, it also made it more difficult when it came to getting systems in place to handle the new relationship.
Wrong to rush it? Cameron should have kept his promise and triggered A50 the day after the referendum. That would have snuffed out the remainers dreams of stopping Brexit and concentrated minds on a workable solution.
Lol. Not starting until we had a plan would have been a better approach - and the waiting would have concentrated minds.
We don't have a plan even now, because reconciling the internal contradictions and false promises with reality is hard, difficult work, requiring some honesty and some compromises, which no-one in power is either able or willing to do (although with Truss there are at least the first glimmers that this might be dawning on her).
In future this whole episode from Cameron's referendum onwards will be a case study of how not to go about things.
No, my point is that with remain off the table, EFTA, CU, SM etc. would have got a look in. Instead both sides went for the extremes.
May took nearly all these off the table with her red lines at the very beginning. That was nothing to do with the remainers ; but she did immediately fracture the remain cause by doing this because many supporters of the SM in her own party were marginalised and silenced.
Once the starting government negotiating position was unreasonable - caused by pandering to Farage and the ERG - what had been the cross-party remain side shattered into a hundred pieces.
All of those were quite rightly off the table because during the referendum both leaver and remainers said that is what Brexit meant. Quite literally both sides said unequivocally that Brexit meant leaving the Single Market and having to/having the ability to sign our own trade deals.
None of those options were remotely compatible with what was debated during the referendum. Yet May still tried to force us back into them via the backdoor via her utterly unacceptable backstop trade deal that its quite remarkable Remainers didn't grasp that with both hands gratefully.
Instead thankfully Remain MPs voted with Baker etc to keep us out of the backstop that was continued SM and CU membership via the backdoor.
This is an argument that's been had many times on here, and it's also been demonstrated many times that figures like Hannan were still clearly promoting a soft exit only months before the referendum.
Besides which what happened during the referendum was various politicians speaking words. None of which was remotely law. None of which had any dictat over the 2017 parliament which followed.
Brexit was at least in part about the supremacy of Parliament. As no parliament can bind the hands of its successors May's 2017 government was free to do whatever it wanted. As Johnson's 2019 government is. As Starmer's 2024 government will be.
It simply doesn't matter what Cameron said in the 2015 parliament. In no way did his words somehow transform into law, nor would any law transform into immutable slabs of stone carved with the Will Of The People.
I'm really struggling to understand how much of a cultural failing having a drink at your desk is. In lots of political comedies/dramas like West Wing/Yes, Minister etc senior people having alcohol in their office is not noteworthy. And throughout the pandemic many people were drinking at home while working.
I guess it's one of those things where you pick up the spoken and unspoken rules as you go along, and there's a lot of scope for pockets of very different cultures perhaps by industry or by generation. What I've observed personally is that drinking at your desk would be a wtf moment, but going out for a pub lunch with one pint of beer on a Friday before coming back to work in the afternoon would not occasion comment; and an employer might occasionally arrange to bring in a barrel of beer or glasses of champagne for an afternoon "we don't expect you to work after this" celebration of a big deal or similar company achievement. I'd find somebody drinking-while-wfh surprising but not report-to-HR-worthy, I think.
Under my current contract of employment drinking alcohol while working is grounds for gross misconduct and instant dismissal, and we're hardly a company of teetotallers after working hours.
Company Christmas dinners have been on a Thursday evening with senior management casting around for people to drink with them until dawn, with the expectation that sick leave would be granted for those who'd fail a breath test the next day - but never drinking and working at the same time.
Therefore alcohol is a clear indicator of it being a social event, rather than a work event, and is why my reaction to that excuse was incredulity.
Not all employers operate the same though.
I've had jobs were alcohol was strictly banned at work, and other jobs were alcohol was allowed in moderation at work.
Getting drunk certainly could cause you to do things that would be gross misconduct in any job, but simply having a drink is absolutely not universally gross misconduct..
Working in Germany in the mid 80s, managers kept booze in the bottom drawers of filing cabinets for the frequent joining/leaving/birthday celebrations. Beer bottles were available from machines next to the snack machines.
Rebel Tory MPs, known as the "pork pie plotters", are considering publishing a secretly recorded "heated" exchange with the government chief whip, according to reports.
Devastated today that my rock hero Meatloaf has died. His songs were just magnificent and his dramatic gothic style performances of them just unbeatable. The west end musical "bat out of hell" is by far the best I have seen as well. My former CEO and me once had argument over who was best -Queen or Meatloaf and I just could comprehend how anyone can think Queen (decent enough ) is better than Meatloaf especially when most of the other Senior managers also agreed with him (maybe they were just brownnosing a bit but I think they genuinely believed what they said !)
I'm a massive Meat Loaf fan too, but I also love Queen, so that one's tough for me. A while back when people were naming best albums of the 90s I nominated Bat Out of Hell II for that list.
The West End musical is great, if its still going I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't been. So is Queen's one too, for balance.
Had the privilege of seeing Meat Loaf live in Manchester a few years ago in Manchester in his final tour of the UK. Was a strange night as when it started he sounded absolutely awful and we both thought he must have just lost it with his old age (but lets be honest, pure classical singing was never his strong point). But something must have gone badly wrong with the pre-show sound check, partway through the third song it was suddenly all fixed like someone had flicked a switch and he certainly still knew how to perform and hold the audience.
I'm really struggling to understand how much of a cultural failing having a drink at your desk is. In lots of political comedies/dramas like West Wing/Yes, Minister etc senior people having alcohol in their office is not noteworthy. And throughout the pandemic many people were drinking at home while working.
I guess it's one of those things where you pick up the spoken and unspoken rules as you go along, and there's a lot of scope for pockets of very different cultures perhaps by industry or by generation. What I've observed personally is that drinking at your desk would be a wtf moment, but going out for a pub lunch with one pint of beer on a Friday before coming back to work in the afternoon would not occasion comment; and an employer might occasionally arrange to bring in a barrel of beer or glasses of champagne for an afternoon "we don't expect you to work after this" celebration of a big deal or similar company achievement. I'd find somebody drinking-while-wfh surprising but not report-to-HR-worthy, I think.
Under my current contract of employment drinking alcohol while working is grounds for gross misconduct and instant dismissal, and we're hardly a company of teetotallers after working hours.
Company Christmas dinners have been on a Thursday evening with senior management casting around for people to drink with them until dawn, with the expectation that sick leave would be granted for those who'd fail a breath test the next day - but never drinking and working at the same time.
Therefore alcohol is a clear indicator of it being a social event, rather than a work event, and is why my reaction to that excuse was incredulity.
Not all employers operate the same though.
I've had jobs were alcohol was strictly banned at work, and other jobs were alcohol was allowed in moderation at work.
Getting drunk certainly could cause you to do things that would be gross misconduct in any job, but simply having a drink is absolutely not universally gross misconduct..
In my first job I had to do a huge amount of client entertaining - in December it could involve lunches and or dinners four days a week. Generally you would follow the mood of the client and gauge if it was going to be pissy or not but most of my clients and professional counterparts were raging alcoholics so was quite messy. So was social but also was work.
So it was accepted that drinking was part of work but drinking only happened on work premises after markets closed.
The one rule we had though was that if you weren’t back to your desk by 2.45 from a client lunch you didn’t come back - there was no negative reaction from on high as they applied the rule to themselves too but the reasoning was twofold - firstly that if you had gunned a bottle of wine then came back to the office inevitably you would be either loud and annoying or a little “tired” and so not great for colleagues. The second was that if you made an error after a few drinks it could be that the error would have happened if sober but wouldn’t look good if affected client had known or seen you drinking.
I believe things are very different now with drinking and entertaining but clearly in some workplaces and cultures it’s definitely considered an element of work……
Peanuts compared to No such thing as society. Wilful misconstruction is sadly part of the game
See also Had enough of experts
Yes, the 'no such thing as society' misrepresentation was even more extraordinary, since Maggie was clearly saying the exact opposite of what she was portrayed as saying. It does seem to be a particularly unpleasant characteristic of the Left to twist things in this way and make an alternate history out of it to portray their opponents as villains.
Peanuts compared to No such thing as society. Wilful misconstruction is sadly part of the game
See also Had enough of experts
Yes, the 'no such thing as society' misrepresentation was even more extraordinary, since Maggie was clearly saying the exact opposite of what she was portrayed as saying. It does seem to be a particularly unpleasant characteristic of the Left to twist things in this way and make an alternate history out of it to portray their opponents as villains.
The right thinks the left is misguided, the left thinks the right is evil.
Sadly too often true. Although in America both sides seem to want to consider the other side evil, and that's much worse.
Rebel Tory MPs, known as the "pork pie plotters", are considering publishing a secretly recorded "heated" exchange with the government chief whip, according to reports.
Mr. Pioneers, while the current PM does deserve criticism for this, it's also one of the reasons May was wrong to rush triggering Article 50. Not only did she not know what she wanted and threw away the time to consider it, it also made it more difficult when it came to getting systems in place to handle the new relationship.
Wrong to rush it? Cameron should have kept his promise and triggered A50 the day after the referendum. That would have snuffed out the remainers dreams of stopping Brexit and concentrated minds on a workable solution.
Lol. Not starting until we had a plan would have been a better approach - and the waiting would have concentrated minds.
We don't have a plan even now, because reconciling the internal contradictions and false promises with reality is hard, difficult work, requiring some honesty and some compromises, which no-one in power is either able or willing to do (although with Truss there are at least the first glimmers that this might be dawning on her).
In future this whole episode from Cameron's referendum onwards will be a case study of how not to go about things.
No, my point is that with remain off the table, EFTA, CU, SM etc. would have got a look in. Instead both sides went for the extremes.
May took all these off the table with her red lines at the very beginning.
And the Tories won a landslide with them off the table as part of Boris' Brexit deal.
The idea a Tory government was ever going to agree to no trade deals via a CU or continued free movement via the SM was absurd.
The only way we get closer alignment to the SM and CU again is with a Labour government
Or when Brussels moves on some of its sillier kneejerks .
Precisely. The continuing efforts to rewrite history and blame the pig's breakfast we have now on anyone other than the fools in the Conservative and Unionist Party who delivered it are laughable. May's Citizens of Nowhere speech (probably the only speech in my lifetime that gets raised regularly in casual conversation among non political types) closed off the soft Brexit route. As did the Tory whipping against those options in the Commons votes. It is nobody else's fault.
The way that May's 'Citizens' of Nowhere' speech has been traduced and misrepresented is one of the most extraordinary feature of the of politics of the last decade. You obviously haven't read it, but you have strong views about it.
It's not even principally about Brexit, but here's what she actually said about the relationship with the EU:
It is, of course, too early to say exactly what agreement we will reach with the EU. It’s going to be a tough negotiation, it will require some give and take. And while there will always be pressure to give a running commentary, it will not be in our national interest to do so.
But let me be clear about the agreement we seek. I want it to reflect the strong and mature relationships we enjoy with our European friends. I want it to include cooperation on law enforcement and counter-terrorism work. I want it to involve free trade, in goods and services.
I want it to give British companies the maximum freedom to trade with and operate within the Single Market – and let European businesses do the same here.
But let’s state one thing loud and clear: we are not leaving the European Union only to give up control of immigration all over again. And we are not leaving only to return to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. That’s not going to happen.
There's no closing off there, quite the opposite. She was genuinely trying to find a route which respected the referendum result but kept trade frictions to a minimum. It was of course a hugely difficult circle to square, and she failed in the end, thanks to the 2017 election disaster and Labour joining the ERG in torpedoing any compromise, but she was certainly trying hard.
And the 'citizens of nowhere' phrase was about tax evaders and irresponsible employers, but was seized upon by the Guardian-reading classes and twisted into something which bore no relation to what she was saying.
I keep saying it on here and nobody seems to believe a word of it - reality does not matter, it is perception that counts.
No one except a political nerd will go back and check what she said. They will latch on to a key phrase and interpret that as per their prejudices and then assume that it is a summary of the whole speech.
The classic example is from another Tory PM - "There is no such thing as society"
Peanuts compared to No such thing as society. Wilful misconstruction is sadly part of the game
See also Had enough of experts
Yes, the 'no such thing as society' misrepresentation was even more extraordinary, since Maggie was clearly saying the exact opposite of what she was portrayed as saying. It does seem to be a particularly unpleasant characteristic of the Left to twist things in this way and make an alternate history out of it to portray their opponents as villains.
The right thinks the left is misguided, the left thinks the right is evil.
Sadly too often true. Although in America both sides seem to want to consider the other side evil, and that's much worse.
I think we got to both sides evil when the Labour government was to be led by Jezbollah...
I'm really struggling to understand how much of a cultural failing having a drink at your desk is. In lots of political comedies/dramas like West Wing/Yes, Minister etc senior people having alcohol in their office is not noteworthy. And throughout the pandemic many people were drinking at home while working.
I guess it's one of those things where you pick up the spoken and unspoken rules as you go along, and there's a lot of scope for pockets of very different cultures perhaps by industry or by generation. What I've observed personally is that drinking at your desk would be a wtf moment, but going out for a pub lunch with one pint of beer on a Friday before coming back to work in the afternoon would not occasion comment; and an employer might occasionally arrange to bring in a barrel of beer or glasses of champagne for an afternoon "we don't expect you to work after this" celebration of a big deal or similar company achievement. I'd find somebody drinking-while-wfh surprising but not report-to-HR-worthy, I think.
Under my current contract of employment drinking alcohol while working is grounds for gross misconduct and instant dismissal, and we're hardly a company of teetotallers after working hours.
Company Christmas dinners have been on a Thursday evening with senior management casting around for people to drink with them until dawn, with the expectation that sick leave would be granted for those who'd fail a breath test the next day - but never drinking and working at the same time.
Therefore alcohol is a clear indicator of it being a social event, rather than a work event, and is why my reaction to that excuse was incredulity.
Not all employers operate the same though.
I've had jobs were alcohol was strictly banned at work, and other jobs were alcohol was allowed in moderation at work.
Getting drunk certainly could cause you to do things that would be gross misconduct in any job, but simply having a drink is absolutely not universally gross misconduct..
Working in Germany in the mid 80s, managers kept booze in the bottom drawers of filing cabinets for the frequent joining/leaving/birthday celebrations. Beer bottles were available from machines next to the snack machines.
I have been told by HR in one company, that the UK fired-for-open-containers-in-the-office thing is a product of liability insurance.
I'm really struggling to understand how much of a cultural failing having a drink at your desk is. In lots of political comedies/dramas like West Wing/Yes, Minister etc senior people having alcohol in their office is not noteworthy. And throughout the pandemic many people were drinking at home while working.
I guess it's one of those things where you pick up the spoken and unspoken rules as you go along, and there's a lot of scope for pockets of very different cultures perhaps by industry or by generation. What I've observed personally is that drinking at your desk would be a wtf moment, but going out for a pub lunch with one pint of beer on a Friday before coming back to work in the afternoon would not occasion comment; and an employer might occasionally arrange to bring in a barrel of beer or glasses of champagne for an afternoon "we don't expect you to work after this" celebration of a big deal or similar company achievement. I'd find somebody drinking-while-wfh surprising but not report-to-HR-worthy, I think.
Under my current contract of employment drinking alcohol while working is grounds for gross misconduct and instant dismissal, and we're hardly a company of teetotallers after working hours.
Company Christmas dinners have been on a Thursday evening with senior management casting around for people to drink with them until dawn, with the expectation that sick leave would be granted for those who'd fail a breath test the next day - but never drinking and working at the same time.
Therefore alcohol is a clear indicator of it being a social event, rather than a work event, and is why my reaction to that excuse was incredulity.
Not all employers operate the same though.
I've had jobs were alcohol was strictly banned at work, and other jobs were alcohol was allowed in moderation at work.
Getting drunk certainly could cause you to do things that would be gross misconduct in any job, but simply having a drink is absolutely not universally gross misconduct..
Working in Germany in the mid 80s, managers kept booze in the bottom drawers of filing cabinets for the frequent joining/leaving/birthday celebrations. Beer bottles were available from machines next to the snack machines.
'twas the same here. In my first job, every manager had a bottle of scotch in their company provided drinks cupboard, and it wasn't unknown for it to be fished out and generous glasses of neat whisky be passed around at meetings as early as 10am
Precisely. The continuing efforts to rewrite history and blame the pig's breakfast we have now on anyone other than the fools in the Conservative and Unionist Party who delivered it are laughable. May's Citizens of Nowhere speech (probably the only speech in my lifetime that gets raised regularly in casual conversation among non political types) closed off the soft Brexit route. As did the Tory whipping against those options in the Commons votes. It is nobody else's fault.
The way that May's 'Citizens' of Nowhere' speech has been traduced and misrepresented is one of the most extraordinary feature of the of politics of the last decade. You obviously haven't read it, but you have strong views about it.
It's not even principally about Brexit, but here's what she actually said about the relationship with the EU:
It is, of course, too early to say exactly what agreement we will reach with the EU. It’s going to be a tough negotiation, it will require some give and take. And while there will always be pressure to give a running commentary, it will not be in our national interest to do so.
But let me be clear about the agreement we seek. I want it to reflect the strong and mature relationships we enjoy with our European friends. I want it to include cooperation on law enforcement and counter-terrorism work. I want it to involve free trade, in goods and services.
I want it to give British companies the maximum freedom to trade with and operate within the Single Market – and let European businesses do the same here.
But let’s state one thing loud and clear: we are not leaving the European Union only to give up control of immigration all over again. And we are not leaving only to return to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. That’s not going to happen.
There's no closing off there, quite the opposite. She was genuinely trying to find a route which respected the referendum result but kept trade frictions to a minimum. It was of course a hugely difficult circle to square, and she failed in the end, thanks to the 2017 election disaster and Labour joining the ERG in torpedoing any compromise, but she was certainly trying hard.
And the 'citizens of nowhere' phrase was about tax evaders and irresponsible employers, but was seized upon by the Guardian-reading classes and twisted into something which bore no relation to what she was saying.
I keep saying it on here and nobody seems to believe a word of it - reality does not matter, it is perception that counts.
No one except a political nerd will go back and check what she said. They will latch on to a key phrase and interpret that as per their prejudices and then assume that it is a summary of the whole speech.
The classic example is from another Tory PM - "There is no such thing as society"
Or the Sermon on the Mound, as it is known in Scotland (a double play: she was speaking in the Kirk's assembly rooms on the Mound, so you get the Mount/Mound equivalence, as well as the kirk sermon bit).
Precisely. The continuing efforts to rewrite history and blame the pig's breakfast we have now on anyone other than the fools in the Conservative and Unionist Party who delivered it are laughable. May's Citizens of Nowhere speech (probably the only speech in my lifetime that gets raised regularly in casual conversation among non political types) closed off the soft Brexit route. As did the Tory whipping against those options in the Commons votes. It is nobody else's fault.
The way that May's 'Citizens' of Nowhere' speech has been traduced and misrepresented is one of the most extraordinary feature of the of politics of the last decade. You obviously haven't read it, but you have strong views about it.
It's not even principally about Brexit, but here's what she actually said about the relationship with the EU:
It is, of course, too early to say exactly what agreement we will reach with the EU. It’s going to be a tough negotiation, it will require some give and take. And while there will always be pressure to give a running commentary, it will not be in our national interest to do so.
But let me be clear about the agreement we seek. I want it to reflect the strong and mature relationships we enjoy with our European friends. I want it to include cooperation on law enforcement and counter-terrorism work. I want it to involve free trade, in goods and services.
I want it to give British companies the maximum freedom to trade with and operate within the Single Market – and let European businesses do the same here.
But let’s state one thing loud and clear: we are not leaving the European Union only to give up control of immigration all over again. And we are not leaving only to return to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. That’s not going to happen.
There's no closing off there, quite the opposite. She was genuinely trying to find a route which respected the referendum result but kept trade frictions to a minimum. It was of course a hugely difficult circle to square, and she failed in the end, thanks to the 2017 election disaster and Labour joining the ERG in torpedoing any compromise, but she was certainly trying hard.
And the 'citizens of nowhere' phrase was about tax evaders and irresponsible employers, but was seized upon by the Guardian-reading classes and twisted into something which bore no relation to what she was saying.
Yes, the “citizens of nowhere” referred to the likes of Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, wealthy people and companies who didn’t pay taxes anywhere. It wasn’t anything to do with the EU.
Rebel Tory MPs, known as the "pork pie plotters", are considering publishing a secretly recorded "heated" exchange with the government chief whip, according to reports.
I am loving every second of the "Conservative" party's civil war.
Different civil war to previous ones though.
It's not wet vs dry or about Europe. It's almost entirely ideology free. It's almost entirely about Boris and whether MPs are against him or for him (or against-him-bit-don't-see-an-upside-in-deposing-him).
I honestly don't know what is misconstrued about "There's no such thing as society" interview.
Shes whinging about people skiving on the dole, her meaning is pretty clear.
If you read the speech, she was talking about a variant of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect, where people think that "This problem is going to be fixed by Society*, not me".
*As in some remote, amorphous organisation that exists completely separately from the population at large.
But then, nobody saw the Western Roman Empire's collapse coming. And that was altogether more significant.
I suspect the EU will hang together and integrate more in the coming decades, before national and EU tensions erupt. Perhaps it won't. Perhaps it will become a country. Neither would be good for the UK.
Precisely. The continuing efforts to rewrite history and blame the pig's breakfast we have now on anyone other than the fools in the Conservative and Unionist Party who delivered it are laughable. May's Citizens of Nowhere speech (probably the only speech in my lifetime that gets raised regularly in casual conversation among non political types) closed off the soft Brexit route. As did the Tory whipping against those options in the Commons votes. It is nobody else's fault.
The way that May's 'Citizens' of Nowhere' speech has been traduced and misrepresented is one of the most extraordinary feature of the of politics of the last decade. You obviously haven't read it, but you have strong views about it.
It's not even principally about Brexit, but here's what she actually said about the relationship with the EU:
It is, of course, too early to say exactly what agreement we will reach with the EU. It’s going to be a tough negotiation, it will require some give and take. And while there will always be pressure to give a running commentary, it will not be in our national interest to do so.
But let me be clear about the agreement we seek. I want it to reflect the strong and mature relationships we enjoy with our European friends. I want it to include cooperation on law enforcement and counter-terrorism work. I want it to involve free trade, in goods and services.
I want it to give British companies the maximum freedom to trade with and operate within the Single Market – and let European businesses do the same here.
But let’s state one thing loud and clear: we are not leaving the European Union only to give up control of immigration all over again. And we are not leaving only to return to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. That’s not going to happen.
There's no closing off there, quite the opposite. She was genuinely trying to find a route which respected the referendum result but kept trade frictions to a minimum. It was of course a hugely difficult circle to square, and she failed in the end, thanks to the 2017 election disaster and Labour joining the ERG in torpedoing any compromise, but she was certainly trying hard.
And the 'citizens of nowhere' phrase was about tax evaders and irresponsible employers, but was seized upon by the Guardian-reading classes and twisted into something which bore no relation to what she was saying.
Yes, the “citizens of nowhere” referred to the likes of Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, wealthy people and companies who didn’t pay taxes anywhere. It wasn’t anything to do with the EU.
Mr. Pioneers, while the current PM does deserve criticism for this, it's also one of the reasons May was wrong to rush triggering Article 50. Not only did she not know what she wanted and threw away the time to consider it, it also made it more difficult when it came to getting systems in place to handle the new relationship.
Wrong to rush it? Cameron should have kept his promise and triggered A50 the day after the referendum. That would have snuffed out the remainers dreams of stopping Brexit and concentrated minds on a workable solution.
Lol. Not starting until we had a plan would have been a better approach - and the waiting would have concentrated minds.
We don't have a plan even now, because reconciling the internal contradictions and false promises with reality is hard, difficult work, requiring some honesty and some compromises, which no-one in power is either able or willing to do (although with Truss there are at least the first glimmers that this might be dawning on her).
In future this whole episode from Cameron's referendum onwards will be a case study of how not to go about things.
No, my point is that with remain off the table, EFTA, CU, SM etc. would have got a look in. Instead both sides went for the extremes.
May took nearly all these off the table with her red lines at the very beginning. That was nothing to do with the remainers ; but she did immediately fracture the remain cause by doing this because many supporters of the SM in her own party were marginalised and silenced.
Once the starting government negotiating position was unreasonable - caused by pandering to Farage and the ERG - what had been the cross-party remain side shattered into a hundred pieces.
All of those were quite rightly off the table because during the referendum both leaver and remainers said that is what Brexit meant. Quite literally both sides said unequivocally that Brexit meant leaving the Single Market and having to/having the ability to sign our own trade deals.
None of those options were remotely compatible with what was debated during the referendum. Yet May still tried to force us back into them via the backdoor via her utterly unacceptable backstop trade deal that its quite remarkable Remainers didn't grasp that with both hands gratefully.
Instead thankfully Remain MPs voted with Baker etc to keep us out of the backstop that was continued SM and CU membership via the backdoor.
This is an argument that's been had many times on here, and it's also been demonstrated many times that figures like Hannan were still clearly promoting a soft exit only months before the referendum.
Besides which what happened during the referendum was various politicians speaking words. None of which was remotely law. None of which had any dictat over the 2017 parliament which followed.
Brexit was at least in part about the supremacy of Parliament. As no parliament can bind the hands of its successors May's 2017 government was free to do whatever it wanted. As Johnson's 2019 government is. As Starmer's 2024 government will be.
It simply doesn't matter what Cameron said in the 2015 parliament. In no way did his words somehow transform into law, nor would any law transform into immutable slabs of stone carved with the Will Of The People.
Quite so. And that was only where Grieve and others came in in 2017, long after May had set the hard Brexit agenda. Far from respecting the supremacy of the Westminster parliament as the supposed key to Brexit, May was clearly promoting a no-deal Brexit with no say-so from the UK parliament whatsoever.
But then, nobody saw the Western Roman Empire's collapse coming. And that was altogether more significant.
I suspect the EU will hang together and integrate more in the coming decades, before national and EU tensions erupt. Perhaps it won't. Perhaps it will become a country. Neither would be good for the UK.
If it’s going to be a country, it will need a foreign policy backed by a military force capable of taking on the Russians.
As the Polish and the Baltics are finding out the hard way.
Comments
The grandparent's former shop in a secondary location we had to pull off the auction block 2 years ago because mum who owned it passed away 3 days previous finally sold yesterday (probate having arrived last autumn). And it sold for about 35% more than expected first time around.
That represents a shift in something in this small corner of the red wall. Background: general housing prices up by about half that rise.
Car companies are directly investing in battery production, because there is nothing like the capacity required. Yet. There are no technological blockers to massively increasing battery production like this, but it hasn't been done yet.
So there will be a market for the batteries, if virtually any circumstance.
For example, I think it was Porsche who, when they tried to expand EV production, got told the price of batteries would go UP. This was because the supplier would need to build an entire factory to meet the demand, and the costs and risks associated with that....
Vertical integration, with the car maker owning component factories would actually be unusual in the car business. The individual battery cells are likely to become commodity components, and will be bought by car makers.
The packs they are assembled into will probably be custom for each car model.
Cameron had very little in the way of major divisions apart from on issues like gay marriage, which was always a conscience matter, and Europe that he deemed a conscience matter in the referendum. You don't deserve, get or expect 'loyalty' on a conscience matter, that's the entire point of making it a free vote.
Despite being completely unfit for office May was master of all she surveyed until she threw away Cameron's majority and tried to ram through her horrendous and utterly unacceptable Brexit deal through Parliament.
Illegal parties etc absolutely are contemptible. But legal and tolerated drinking at your desk, for people who aren't operating heavy machinery or working on a frontline and where its allowed . . . I'm really struggling to see what the issue is.
I've done work while intoxicated before.
*I voted remain, with a heavy heart, but I still voted remain.
Its traditionally been safe Labour and was won by them in 2015.
But its a local byelection in winter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUcEVkfuZ9U
Sadly does not have the cut to a gently stunned Bob Harris at the end.
Once the starting government negotiating position was unreasonable - caused by pandering to Farage and the ERG - what had been the cross-party remain side shattered into a hundred pieces.
Yes that will mean problems, but we could have sat going around in circles trying to imagine every conceivable problem and trying to come up with a solution to them all. We'd spent years doing that and it wasn't getting us anywhere.
Sometimes the only way to make progress is to just get out there and do it. Run into issues and fix them as and when you can. A bit like modern software releases in many cases and that's exactly how its been handled with Brexit and quite right too.
The idea a Tory government was ever going to agree to no trade deals via a CU or continued free movement via the SM was absurd.
The only way we get closer alignment to the SM and CU again is with a Labour government
Is that a scandal?
None of those options were remotely compatible with what was debated during the referendum. Yet May still tried to force us back into them via the backdoor via her utterly unacceptable backstop trade deal that its quite remarkable Remainers didn't grasp that with both hands gratefully.
Instead thankfully Remain MPs voted with Baker etc to keep us out of the backstop that was continued SM and CU membership via the backdoor.
The Porsche toolkit to replace individual Taycan cells costs €40k! I have a lot of dealer only tools but haven't got that level of insanity yet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zmp_--Oow5o
Alcohol really doesn't have much of a place in a work environment except well outside normal office hours.
The so called conservative and unionist party would remove him if they cared about the union. I am not so sure.
[I don't even know if its technically possible to recycle batteries, it might not be, but if there were a ready supply of them without any other market available to take them then often where there's a will there's a way]
More likely he was defrauding the banks using the tax filing as evidence of value of his collateral.
More than that… a 30,000 sq ft flat is really quite large.
https://twitter.com/Andrew_Adonis/status/1484454264512684039?s=20
Occasionally, when The Boss was having a good day, we'd go out for a Friday lunch drink. One/two pints per person - not enforced but that was the style. And only if there was nothing urgent for the afternoon.
He got furious at your spelling
That said, I’d have expected party gate to have more of an impact on the Indy numbers
Obviously the point here isn't people having drinks at desks anyway, as much as No.10 try to spin that as the story in order to throw the mud more widely and claim it's a long-term cultural problem (Cummings has pointed this out a few times) - it's the gatherings which were variously against guidance or law at different times, and would have been even if everyone had been partying while drinking orange juice.
Country before party, and all that.
Company Christmas dinners have been on a Thursday evening with senior management casting around for people to drink with them until dawn, with the expectation that sick leave would be granted for those who'd fail a breath test the next day - but never drinking and working at the same time.
Therefore alcohol is a clear indicator of it being a social event, rather than a work event, and is why my reaction to that excuse was incredulity.
The greatest responsibility for bad outcomes is still the long term failure, 40 years, to consult the public over gradual incorporation into a developing EU in referendums, and the failure of moderates to agree a line and use their votes.
During the referendum Hannan etc [as well as all Remainers] signed up to what Brexit meant which was leaving the Single Market.
There was no acceptable way to stay in the SM and keep free movement post-Brexit that matched what either Remainers or Leavers said during the Referendum.
That nothing softer happened was Remainers fault. Leavers didn't want softer, so not our fault it didn't happen, our credit.
With May's dreadfully appalling backstop you Remaienrs looked a gift horse in the mouth and rejected it.
Thank you very much for letting us win. Couldn't have done it without the votes of Lib Dems, Grieve, Starmer etc
It's not even principally about Brexit, but here's what she actually said about the relationship with the EU:
It is, of course, too early to say exactly what agreement we will reach with the EU. It’s going to be a tough negotiation, it will require some give and take. And while there will always be pressure to give a running commentary, it will not be in our national interest to do so.
But let me be clear about the agreement we seek. I want it to reflect the strong and mature relationships we enjoy with our European friends. I want it to include cooperation on law enforcement and counter-terrorism work. I want it to involve free trade, in goods and services.
I want it to give British companies the maximum freedom to trade with and operate within the Single Market – and let European businesses do the same here.
But let’s state one thing loud and clear: we are not leaving the European Union only to give up control of immigration all over again. And we are not leaving only to return to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. That’s not going to happen.
There's no closing off there, quite the opposite. She was genuinely trying to find a route which respected the referendum result but kept trade frictions to a minimum. It was of course a hugely difficult circle to square, and she failed in the end, thanks to the 2017 election disaster and Labour joining the ERG in torpedoing any compromise, but she was certainly trying hard.
And the 'citizens of nowhere' phrase was about tax evaders and irresponsible employers, but was seized upon by the Guardian-reading classes and twisted into something which bore no relation to what she was saying.
Full text here:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/full-text-theresa-may-s-conference-speech
https://news.sky.com/politics
Ferrets in sack
The issue has been finding the paperwork that demonstrates the fact - which New York seem to have finally found so now it's a matter of identifying who knew about it.
I've had jobs were alcohol was strictly banned at work, and other jobs were alcohol was allowed in moderation at work.
Getting drunk certainly could cause you to do things that would be gross misconduct in any job, but simply having a drink is absolutely not universally gross misconduct..
See also Had enough of experts
Brexit was at least in part about the supremacy of Parliament. As no parliament can bind the hands of its successors May's 2017 government was free to do whatever it wanted. As Johnson's 2019 government is. As Starmer's 2024 government will be.
It simply doesn't matter what Cameron said in the 2015 parliament. In no way did his words somehow transform into law, nor would any law transform into immutable slabs of stone carved with the Will Of The People.
I am loving every second of the "Conservative" party's civil war.
The West End musical is great, if its still going I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't been. So is Queen's one too, for balance.
Had the privilege of seeing Meat Loaf live in Manchester a few years ago in Manchester in his final tour of the UK. Was a strange night as when it started he sounded absolutely awful and we both thought he must have just lost it with his old age (but lets be honest, pure classical singing was never his strong point). But something must have gone badly wrong with the pre-show sound check, partway through the third song it was suddenly all fixed like someone had flicked a switch and he certainly still knew how to perform and hold the audience.
RIP. One of the greats.
So it was accepted that drinking was part of work but drinking only happened on work premises after markets closed.
The one rule we had though was that if you weren’t back to your desk by 2.45 from a client lunch you didn’t come back - there was no negative reaction from on high as they applied the rule to themselves too but the reasoning was twofold - firstly that if you had gunned a bottle of wine then came back to the office inevitably you would be either loud and annoying or a little “tired” and so not great for colleagues. The second was that if you made an error after a few drinks it could be that the error would have happened if sober but wouldn’t look good if affected client had known or seen you drinking.
I believe things are very different now with drinking and entertaining but clearly in some workplaces and cultures it’s definitely considered an element of work……
Sadly too often true. Although in America both sides seem to want to consider the other side evil, and that's much worse.
Delayed recognition of Equivalence for a start.
No one except a political nerd will go back and check what she said. They will latch on to a key phrase and interpret that as per their prejudices and then assume that it is a summary of the whole speech.
The classic example is from another Tory PM - "There is no such thing as society"
It's not wet vs dry or about Europe. It's almost entirely ideology free. It's almost entirely about Boris and whether MPs are against him or for him (or against-him-bit-don't-see-an-upside-in-deposing-him).
Gone within three weeks, I still think.
Shes whinging about people skiving on the dole, her meaning is pretty clear.
Tories actually increased their vote share in a Scottish by election in the current environment !
Labour (Elected) ~ 1793 (38.5%, -4.2)
SNP ~ 1217 (26.2%, -1.4)
Conservative ~ 1154 (24.8%, +0.7)
Green ~ 231 (5.0%, +1.9)
Lib Dem ~ 136 (2.9%, +0.5)
Miller (Ind) ~ 122 (2.6%, new)
*As in some remote, amorphous organisation that exists completely separately from the population at large.
But then, nobody saw the Western Roman Empire's collapse coming. And that was altogether more significant.
I suspect the EU will hang together and integrate more in the coming decades, before national and EU tensions erupt. Perhaps it won't. Perhaps it will become a country. Neither would be good for the UK.
As the Polish and the Baltics are finding out the hard way.