Mrs Thatcher should have gone much further and completely smashed the unions in the UK. Good employment law is enough, unions are an anachronism, I'd love to see TfL smash the RMT as well even if it meant month of strikes and spotty service or just sacking the lot of them and rehiring non-unionised staff.
I don’t know about the RMT particularly, but it’s hard not to admire a union that secures such attractive conditions for its workers.
Given that wage growth for most deciles has been pretty shit over the past decade or even decades, they must be doing something right.
Having a monopoly on labour supply to certain industries is hardly worthy of admiration. We don't admire the train franchises that charge zillions for season tickets because they have an effective monopoly on the route. This is no different.
“Monopoly on labour”? It isn’t 1975.
In certain industries, and they do. TfL is fucked and Londoners with it because the RMT has monopoly supply on drivers. If they go on strike London grinds to a halt. I'd live with a few months of bad service to smash them to bits but unfortunately there's a lot of Londoners who would really struggle without the tube so the mayor won't do it.
You are trolling.
TfL has been fucked by Covid, not militant unions.
Obviously the occasional strikes are annoying but it’s hardly a first order problem.
It has been and it should mean mass redundancies among drivers to reduce off peak services and even some peak services to better match the new daily usage of ~65% on weekdays and ~85% on weekends. Yet the mayor is doing the opposite and has given in on the pre-COVID pay settlement for fear of strikes.
Even on those usage numbers I would argue the tube needs a full service, and I’d argue that those numbers won’t remain at that level anyway.
You sound like those Treasury bods you like to complain about who believe the answer is to slide the shit out of anything that supports economic growth in the UK.
Running a 100% service on ~70% usage means a 40% price rise for people who use it and a starting vicious circle of people deciding it's too expensive and not using it resulting in bigger price rises.
There's no economic upside to the additional capacity and drivers can be trained and hired pretty rapidly should the need arise for them. It's not as though there's a fixed supply. What I'm suggesting is we cut fixed costs to free up money to invest in the network. It's precisely the opposite of treasury thinking which would rather a higher current fixed cost at the expense of investment.
I did notice that even pro-Russian sources for what's going on on the ground were talking about Russia pulling back to defend against a Ukrainian counterattack.
What a dickbag. Buying into Russian talking points hook, line and sinker (or pretending to, which makes no difference).
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Thursday blamed NATO for the war in Ukraine and said he would resist calls to condemn Russia, in comments that cast doubt over whether he would be accepted by Ukraine or the West as a mediator.
"The war could have been avoided if NATO had heeded the warnings from amongst its own leaders and officials over the years that its eastward expansion would lead to greater, not less, instability in the region," Ramaphosa said in response to questions in parliament.
What a dickbag. Buying into Russian talking points hook, line and sinker (or pretending to, which makes no difference).
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Thursday blamed NATO for the war in Ukraine and said he would resist calls to condemn Russia, in comments that cast doubt over whether he would be accepted by Ukraine or the West as a mediator.
"The war could have been avoided if NATO had heeded the warnings from amongst its own leaders and officials over the years that its eastward expansion would lead to greater, not less, instability in the region," Ramaphosa said in response to questions in parliament.
I had thought Ramaphosa one of the good guys. Seems he is infected with the same brain-depleting virus as Chris Williamson.
Even Iran and China don’t believe this shit.
The invasion is an act of such startlingly disproportionate violence even if every concern raised by Russia and Russia's catamites were true, which they aren't, that it has provoked some very unusual clarity, coherence and rapidity among the West, and even caused most of those opposed to the West to at least play it cool. That South Africa's leaders cannot even go that far suggests very bad things.
I hate aftertiming, but PB didn't exist when his The End of History thesis first got publicity (1999?) so you will just have to take my word for it that I identified it at the time as the thesis of a complete and utter wanker. And here we are in 2022...
So having done a bit more reading the P&O ferries move feels like Ronald Reagan sacking the unionised air traffic controllers, just handled very poorly.
One day I do wonder whether a future London Mayor will take on the RMT and bankrupt TfL as a way to restructure all contracts and actually make the network sustainable.
Shame on you Max.
These weren't militant Red Robbo sabateurs they were P and O 30 year loyal staffers sacked on a Teams call, handcuffed by private security guards and frog marched off the vessels, to be replaced by cheap imported Labour. Wasn't Brexit all about "British jobs for British people"?
Oh and DP World owns Freeports and hence the Johnson Government. Labour and the LDs may be s*** but your lot are owned by f****** mafia hoods. Yesterday it was Russians today it is the Saudis.
I didn't say they handled it well - "handled very poorly" - but sometimes companies get fed up of going 10 rounds with the militant unions and just go for non union staff. It sucks for the actual people who have been sacked here and hopefully they are able to land on their feet and get better jobs, yet I can't blame any company for ridding itself of unionised staff. They're a menace.
Woah!!!! Honestly in the past I’ve been accused of being to the right of Ghengis Khan but there are times this website makes me look like a Marxist. Being in a union is something we all should do. And this story shows why.
It’s not 1975, and union powers are limited, but pay is best negotiated on mass for most people, and it’s always good to have someone to source legal advice from and represent you. Not least for managers!
Well, yes, but... the downside of collective bargaining is that management can also treat staff collectively. This incident is a result of collective bargaining.
No it's not. It's immoral foreign owners riding a coach and horses through our now inadequate employment rights.
On another note, isn't it nice to be discussing economics and employment? Rather than Brexit, culture wars, covid or war. Younger readers may be unaware, but up until the first decade of this century this is what politics was always like.
Mrs Thatcher should have gone much further and completely smashed the unions in the UK. Good employment law is enough, unions are an anachronism, I'd love to see TfL smash the RMT as well even if it meant month of strikes and spotty service or just sacking the lot of them and rehiring non-unionised staff.
I don’t know about the RMT particularly, but it’s hard not to admire a union that secures such attractive conditions for its workers.
Given that wage growth for most deciles has been pretty shit over the past decade or even decades, they must be doing something right.
Having a monopoly on labour supply to certain industries is hardly worthy of admiration. We don't admire the train franchises that charge zillions for season tickets because they have an effective monopoly on the route. This is no different.
“Monopoly on labour”? It isn’t 1975.
In certain industries, and they do. TfL is fucked and Londoners with it because the RMT has monopoly supply on drivers. If they go on strike London grinds to a halt. I'd live with a few months of bad service to smash them to bits but unfortunately there's a lot of Londoners who would really struggle without the tube so the mayor won't do it.
You are trolling.
TfL has been fucked by Covid, not militant unions.
Obviously the occasional strikes are annoying but it’s hardly a first order problem.
It has been and it should mean mass redundancies among drivers to reduce off peak services and even some peak services to better match the new daily usage of ~65% on weekdays and ~85% on weekends. Yet the mayor is doing the opposite and has given in on the pre-COVID pay settlement for fear of strikes.
Even on those usage numbers I would argue the tube needs a full service, and I’d argue that those numbers won’t remain at that level anyway.
You sound like those Treasury bods you like to complain about who believe the answer is to slide the shit out of anything that supports economic growth in the UK.
I mean, if his view turns out to be widespread and we needed to protect the public from it, then I might have to turn in my “right wing bastard” membership card (hard brexiteer who was a fan of quite a lot of the coalition’s union reforms) and support sectoral pay bargaining at government level to get around the employers.
Hard Brexiter? Oh no. What were you thinking?
Principled sovereignty point - though I started out assuming and wanting EFTA/EEA as a first step until it became clear that wasn’t possible. I believe in open borders and more or less unlimited immigration, so I’ve never felt “part” of most of those who share the objective.
I did notice that even pro-Russian sources for what's going on on the ground were talking about Russia pulling back to defend against a Ukrainian counterattack.
Very noticeable that, at best (for Russia) the North and North-East are stalled and not gaining anything, and in the South the front is now nearer Kherson than Mykolaiv. Now all the focus is on the South-East. The collapse of Mariupol would free up a lot of troops, and the potential encirclement of the Ukrainian Donbas forces from the North is slowly advancing despite heavy losses (which may stall it).
Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't P+O a monopolistic supplier of some ferry routes owned by an undemocratic, Autocratic government? Strange hill for lovers of the "free market" to fight on. But Unions.
You are wrong. What makes you think anybody "owns" a ferry route?
Syntactical issue there my friend. P+O are owned, not the ferry routes. Although it is difficult for any NI to Scotland start up when the only port is owned by P+O too.
Mrs Thatcher should have gone much further and completely smashed the unions in the UK. Good employment law is enough, unions are an anachronism, I'd love to see TfL smash the RMT as well even if it meant month of strikes and spotty service or just sacking the lot of them and rehiring non-unionised staff.
I don’t know about the RMT particularly, but it’s hard not to admire a union that secures such attractive conditions for its workers.
Given that wage growth for most deciles has been pretty shit over the past decade or even decades, they must be doing something right.
Having a monopoly on labour supply to certain industries is hardly worthy of admiration. We don't admire the train franchises that charge zillions for season tickets because they have an effective monopoly on the route. This is no different.
“Monopoly on labour”? It isn’t 1975.
In certain industries, and they do. TfL is fucked and Londoners with it because the RMT has monopoly supply on drivers. If they go on strike London grinds to a halt. I'd live with a few months of bad service to smash them to bits but unfortunately there's a lot of Londoners who would really struggle without the tube so the mayor won't do it.
You are trolling.
TfL has been fucked by Covid, not militant unions.
Obviously the occasional strikes are annoying but it’s hardly a first order problem.
It has been and it should mean mass redundancies among drivers to reduce off peak services and even some peak services to better match the new daily usage of ~65% on weekdays and ~85% on weekends. Yet the mayor is doing the opposite and has given in on the pre-COVID pay settlement for fear of strikes.
Even on those usage numbers I would argue the tube needs a full service, and I’d argue that those numbers won’t remain at that level anyway.
You sound like those Treasury bods you like to complain about who believe the answer is to slide the shit out of anything that supports economic growth in the UK.
Running a 100% service on ~70% usage means a 40% price rise for people who use it and a starting vicious circle of people deciding it's too expensive and not using it resulting in bigger price rises.
There's no economic upside to the additional capacity and drivers can be trained and hired pretty rapidly should the need arise for them. It's not as though there's a fixed supply. What I'm suggesting is we cut fixed costs to free up money to invest in the network. It's precisely the opposite of treasury thinking which would rather a higher current fixed cost at the expense of investment.
Decent response, but in my view the fixed cost is pretty fixed because if you really want to fuck the tube you reduce service levels.
I’m not going to pretend I know the Tube finances inside out, but I doubt you do either. I’m not convinced the trade off you talk about is there.
So having done a bit more reading the P&O ferries move feels like Ronald Reagan sacking the unionised air traffic controllers, just handled very poorly.
One day I do wonder whether a future London Mayor will take on the RMT and bankrupt TfL as a way to restructure all contracts and actually make the network sustainable.
Shame on you Max.
These weren't militant Red Robbo sabateurs they were P and O 30 year loyal staffers sacked on a Teams call, handcuffed by private security guards and frog marched off the vessels, to be replaced by cheap imported Labour. Wasn't Brexit all about "British jobs for British people"?
Oh and DP World owns Freeports and hence the Johnson Government. Labour and the LDs may be s*** but your lot are owned by f****** mafia hoods. Yesterday it was Russians today it is the Saudis.
I didn't say they handled it well - "handled very poorly" - but sometimes companies get fed up of going 10 rounds with the militant unions and just go for non union staff. It sucks for the actual people who have been sacked here and hopefully they are able to land on their feet and get better jobs, yet I can't blame any company for ridding itself of unionised staff. They're a menace.
Woah!!!! Honestly in the past I’ve been accused of being to the right of Ghengis Khan but there are times this website makes me look like a Marxist. Being in a union is something we all should do. And this story shows why.
Does it? If the company didn't have to go 10 rounds with the RMT for pay settlements and simple working practice changes do you think this would have happened? The company are scummers, just for the way they handled it, yet the RMT and other unions are the root cause of companies just figuring out it isn't worth the hassle.
My ex-girlfriend's dad worked in the printing industry. Loathed the unions, who had put him on the dole at least twice by making life so uncomfortable for the company owners that they decided it just wasn't worth the hassle and closed the company down.
It was enforced membership of NATSOPA which turned Norman Tebbit to the Dark Side.
I hate aftertiming, but PB didn't exist when his The End of History thesis first got publicity (1999?) so you will just have to take my word for it that I identified it at the time as the thesis of a complete and utter wanker. And here we are in 2022...
Yes, it was the equivalent of the late 19th century physicists who thought they’d sorted all of physics, apart from a few small tidying up issues, just before quantum theory exploded everything.
I did notice that even pro-Russian sources for what's going on on the ground were talking about Russia pulling back to defend against a Ukrainian counterattack.
It’s possible that Putin’s new strategy is:
1. Move Russia along the authoritarian to totalitarian spectrum
2. Scare the shit out of his own population.
Thereby cementing his own power and allowing a retreat from Ukraine.
So having done a bit more reading the P&O ferries move feels like Ronald Reagan sacking the unionised air traffic controllers, just handled very poorly.
One day I do wonder whether a future London Mayor will take on the RMT and bankrupt TfL as a way to restructure all contracts and actually make the network sustainable.
Shame on you Max.
These weren't militant Red Robbo sabateurs they were P and O 30 year loyal staffers sacked on a Teams call, handcuffed by private security guards and frog marched off the vessels, to be replaced by cheap imported Labour. Wasn't Brexit all about "British jobs for British people"?
Oh and DP World owns Freeports and hence the Johnson Government. Labour and the LDs may be s*** but your lot are owned by f****** mafia hoods. Yesterday it was Russians today it is the Saudis.
I didn't say they handled it well - "handled very poorly" - but sometimes companies get fed up of going 10 rounds with the militant unions and just go for non union staff. It sucks for the actual people who have been sacked here and hopefully they are able to land on their feet and get better jobs, yet I can't blame any company for ridding itself of unionised staff. They're a menace.
Woah!!!! Honestly in the past I’ve been accused of being to the right of Ghengis Khan but there are times this website makes me look like a Marxist. Being in a union is something we all should do. And this story shows why.
Does it? If the company didn't have to go 10 rounds with the RMT for pay settlements and simple working practice changes do you think this would have happened? The company are scummers, just for the way they handled it, yet the RMT and other unions are the root cause of companies just figuring out it isn't worth the hassle.
My ex-girlfriend's dad worked in the printing industry. Loathed the unions, who had put him on the dole at least twice by making life so uncomfortable for the company owners that they decided it just wasn't worth the hassle and closed the company down.
It was enforced membership of NATSOPA which turned Norman Tebbit to the Dark Side.
Mrs Thatcher should have gone much further and completely smashed the unions in the UK. Good employment law is enough, unions are an anachronism, I'd love to see TfL smash the RMT as well even if it meant month of strikes and spotty service or just sacking the lot of them and rehiring non-unionised staff.
I don’t know about the RMT particularly, but it’s hard not to admire a union that secures such attractive conditions for its workers.
Given that wage growth for most deciles has been pretty shit over the past decade or even decades, they must be doing something right.
Having a monopoly on labour supply to certain industries is hardly worthy of admiration. We don't admire the train franchises that charge zillions for season tickets because they have an effective monopoly on the route. This is no different.
It is different though, in the context of a corporate culture that tends towards oligopolistic, and runaway compensation growth for the top 0.5%
Not really. It's a monopoly position, they're exploiting it just as any other monopoly does. If the RMT were split into seven unions each unable to merge and competing objectives and only 1/7th of the staff able to strike at any one time do you think it would get the same outcomes?
Left wing twitter is saying only Brit P&O employees sacked, EU staff retained. Is that correct? And the company’s struggled on the Channel routes cos Brexit? Obvs covid won’t have helped like, but has the long term viability of the cross-channel ferries been wrecked by trucks going straight to Ireland from the continent?
I believe the French employees are protected by French employment law, not EU law.
Seems the most likely explanation. Again, this is not new. It’s easier to sack UK workers. Anyone who has ever worked across Europe knows this.
It’s also easier to hire them.
In France it is much harder to fire workers. To make up for this, there are much larger capital allowances for machinery - so productivity is relatively high.
However, companies move work out of France when they can. In a large part, the Yellow Jacket protests are about this.
You may of noticed that the war in Ukraine is disrupting parts and materials for a number of industries. Those factories were created, as part of the push too move industry to cheaper and cheaper places - Eastern Europe in general has been "mined out" of cheap labour, to a great extent (though movement there is still happening).
Simply moving industry to the super cheap locations (undeveloped bits of Africa, say) doesn't actually get the big savings - you need a society with a semblance of modernity, rule of law and infrastructure to achieve productivity.
Except manufacturing is no longer reliant on cheap labour (though service industries are) which is why many developed countries have strong manufacturing economies with well paid workers.
Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't P+O a monopolistic supplier of some ferry routes owned by an undemocratic, Autocratic government? Strange hill for lovers of the "free market" to fight on. But Unions.
You are wrong. What makes you think anybody "owns" a ferry route?
Syntactical issue there my friend. P+O are owned, not the ferry routes. Although it is difficult for any NI to Scotland start up when the only port is owned by P+O too.
OK, but "monopolistic" makes the same point. There's no monopoly, except in the de facto sense of coca cola having a monopoly on brown fizzy drinks
So having done a bit more reading the P&O ferries move feels like Ronald Reagan sacking the unionised air traffic controllers, just handled very poorly.
One day I do wonder whether a future London Mayor will take on the RMT and bankrupt TfL as a way to restructure all contracts and actually make the network sustainable.
Shame on you Max.
These weren't militant Red Robbo sabateurs they were P and O 30 year loyal staffers sacked on a Teams call, handcuffed by private security guards and frog marched off the vessels, to be replaced by cheap imported Labour. Wasn't Brexit all about "British jobs for British people"?
Oh and DP World owns Freeports and hence the Johnson Government. Labour and the LDs may be s*** but your lot are owned by f****** mafia hoods. Yesterday it was Russians today it is the Saudis.
I didn't say they handled it well - "handled very poorly" - but sometimes companies get fed up of going 10 rounds with the militant unions and just go for non union staff. It sucks for the actual people who have been sacked here and hopefully they are able to land on their feet and get better jobs, yet I can't blame any company for ridding itself of unionised staff. They're a menace.
Woah!!!! Honestly in the past I’ve been accused of being to the right of Ghengis Khan but there are times this website makes me look like a Marxist. Being in a union is something we all should do. And this story shows why.
Does it? If the company didn't have to go 10 rounds with the RMT for pay settlements and simple working practice changes do you think this would have happened? The company are scummers, just for the way they handled it, yet the RMT and other unions are the root cause of companies just figuring out it isn't worth the hassle.
My ex-girlfriend's dad worked in the printing industry. Loathed the unions, who had put him on the dole at least twice by making life so uncomfortable for the company owners that they decided it just wasn't worth the hassle and closed the company down.
It was enforced membership of NATSOPA which turned Norman Tebbit to the Dark Side.
I think it is quite clear that Putin thought he was going to get to Kyiv in a day or 2, relieve the heroic paratroopers holding the airports, tea, medals and start arresting anyone on The Lists.
He is now in an attritional war with fluid front lines, with a well supplied opponent who is playing clever and facing a hostile population. The economy is collapsing around him, and he has found the boyars are "unreliable".
The question is whether he can survive long enough to grind down enough of Ukraine to celebrate or whether the Russian economy will implode first.
On another note, isn't it nice to be discussing economics and employment? Rather than Brexit, culture wars, covid or war. Younger readers may be unaware, but up until the first decade of this century this is what politics was always like.
Kind of miss the good old days when people used to say “they’re all the same”.
Mrs Thatcher should have gone much further and completely smashed the unions in the UK. Good employment law is enough, unions are an anachronism, I'd love to see TfL smash the RMT as well even if it meant month of strikes and spotty service or just sacking the lot of them and rehiring non-unionised staff.
I don’t know about the RMT particularly, but it’s hard not to admire a union that secures such attractive conditions for its workers.
Given that wage growth for most deciles has been pretty shit over the past decade or even decades, they must be doing something right.
Having a monopoly on labour supply to certain industries is hardly worthy of admiration. We don't admire the train franchises that charge zillions for season tickets because they have an effective monopoly on the route. This is no different.
“Monopoly on labour”? It isn’t 1975.
In certain industries, and they do. TfL is fucked and Londoners with it because the RMT has monopoly supply on drivers. If they go on strike London grinds to a halt. I'd live with a few months of bad service to smash them to bits but unfortunately there's a lot of Londoners who would really struggle without the tube so the mayor won't do it.
You are trolling.
TfL has been fucked by Covid, not militant unions.
Obviously the occasional strikes are annoying but it’s hardly a first order problem.
It has been and it should mean mass redundancies among drivers to reduce off peak services and even some peak services to better match the new daily usage of ~65% on weekdays and ~85% on weekends. Yet the mayor is doing the opposite and has given in on the pre-COVID pay settlement for fear of strikes.
Even on those usage numbers I would argue the tube needs a full service, and I’d argue that those numbers won’t remain at that level anyway.
You sound like those Treasury bods you like to complain about who believe the answer is to slide the shit out of anything that supports economic growth in the UK.
Running a 100% service on ~70% usage means a 40% price rise for people who use it and a starting vicious circle of people deciding it's too expensive and not using it resulting in bigger price rises.
There's no economic upside to the additional capacity and drivers can be trained and hired pretty rapidly should the need arise for them. It's not as though there's a fixed supply. What I'm suggesting is we cut fixed costs to free up money to invest in the network. It's precisely the opposite of treasury thinking which would rather a higher current fixed cost at the expense of investment.
Decent response, but in my view the fixed cost is pretty fixed because if you really want to fuck the tube you reduce service levels.
I’m not going to pretend I know the Tube finances inside out, but I doubt you do either. I’m not convinced the trade off you talk about is there.
No, I'm not an expert just going by the media reports that future network investment is being pushed further out into the future but no cuts to fixed costs are being considered by the mayor outside of a small bit of management consolidation. He cut the night tube, but we still get 40 TPH on the Victoria line all day, and loads of them are just empty outside of peak hours on weekdays because the demand isn't there. Seems a bit mad to me.
I did notice that even pro-Russian sources for what's going on on the ground were talking about Russia pulling back to defend against a Ukrainian counterattack.
It’s possible that Putin’s new strategy is:
1. Move Russia along the authoritarian to totalitarian spectrum
2. Scare the shit out of his own population.
Thereby cementing his own power and allowing a retreat from Ukraine.
Making his people poorer but more terrified, rather than getting richer and still maintaining an iron grip. Who knew he'd shoot for the Belarus model rather than the China model?
I hate aftertiming, but PB didn't exist when his The End of History thesis first got publicity (1999?) so you will just have to take my word for it that I identified it at the time as the thesis of a complete and utter wanker. And here we are in 2022...
Yes, it was the equivalent of the late 19th century physicists who thought they’d sorted all of physics, apart from a few small tidying up issues, just before quantum theory exploded everything.
Exactly
And they can't say they weren't warned - Thomas Young, double slit, 1801...
Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't P+O a monopolistic supplier of some ferry routes owned by an undemocratic, Autocratic government? Strange hill for lovers of the "free market" to fight on. But Unions.
You are wrong. What makes you think anybody "owns" a ferry route?
Syntactical issue there my friend. P+O are owned, not the ferry routes. Although it is difficult for any NI to Scotland start up when the only port is owned by P+O too.
OK, but "monopolistic" makes the same point. There's no monopoly, except in the de facto sense of coca cola having a monopoly on brown fizzy drinks
Yeah. In the sense that a few sturdy oarsmen could conceivably compete. It is a monopoly. Owned by an autocracy which supports Putin. If you're happy with that because Unions then fine.
I hate aftertiming, but PB didn't exist when his The End of History thesis first got publicity (1999?) so you will just have to take my word for it that I identified it at the time as the thesis of a complete and utter wanker. And here we are in 2022...
S’okay, I can hear your cry of rage echoing down the decades..
Bit earlier,1992. I can remember reading a review of it in the Saturday Guardian in the Blue Parrot cafe in Stockbridge, seemed an exciting concept at the time.
Chris 'Derby' Williamson retweets this nonsense tonight:
"Russia had no choice but to protect the Donbass peoples and since the Security Council could do nothing, and the EU and NATO were supporting the Kiev offensive against the Donbass, Russia was the only nation that could act."
Long article on why Russia was right to invade ukr.
If I recall this man was in the shadow cabinet under Corbyn and would have been housing minister or some such.
He was such a nasty piece of work he couldn't even make it under Corbyn (I think he resigned from a junior position).
I recall someone saying he was fairly normal in the past, but when he lost his seat in 2015 and regained it in 2017 he seemed to just lose it completely.
NPXMP supported him as I recall.
NPXMP has suggested in the last couple of days that Ukraine is favoured by the West purely because it has a superior media operation to Russia, and in the last couple of months that everybody is bored of Taiwan "crying wolf" about China. And he has insisted for years what a decent chap Corbyn is. He is an enormously urbane and intelligent poster, but he is also the one and only person here who is here with an agenda - whether dictated by a foreign power, and if so Russia or China, I'm not sure. But he is.
One hopes this is true, even if at the present moment they'd clearly take anyone who is willing to fight. From BBC
For weeks the southern port city of Mariupol has resisted a Russian onslaught, defended by a nationalist battalion of some 800 volunteers.
The Azov battalion was formed to resist Russian-backed separatists who seized areas of eastern Ukraine in 2014. It takes its name from the internal Sea of Azov on which Mariupol lies.
To Ukrainians these defenders are heroes, holding out against Russia's far more numerous invaders and losing their lives in a bombardment that has killed over 2,000 of Mariupol's civilians and damaged up to 90% of its buildings.
To Russia they are neo-Nazis and their origins lie in a neo-Nazi group called Patriot of Ukraine. They wear the pagan Wolfsangel insignia, which was used by notorious Nazi SS units and is favoured by neo-Nazis. But the battalion says it represents merely the first letters of the slogan National Idea.
The Azov volunteers' original extremist leaders are now gone and the battalion is part of Ukraine's National Guard, under the government's formal oversight and command, say local officials.
Ukraine has cracked down on neo-Nazis in recent years and there are no nationalist parties in parliament.
The battalion currently attracts a broad mix of nationalists, ultranationalists and other young men united by a loathing for Russia. Half of them come from the east and many are Russian-speaking.
I think it is quite clear that Putin thought he was going to get to Kyiv in a day or 2, relieve the heroic paratroopers holding the airports, tea, medals and start arresting anyone on The Lists.
It might even had worked if the US intelligence community had not already told Ukraine who was coming, when they were coming, and where they were going to attack. Ukraine basically watched the Russians land and then shelled them, and then went in on foot to mop up the survivors. So apart from Ukraine knowing their every move it was not a bad plan.
Mrs Thatcher should have gone much further and completely smashed the unions in the UK. Good employment law is enough, unions are an anachronism, I'd love to see TfL smash the RMT as well even if it meant month of strikes and spotty service or just sacking the lot of them and rehiring non-unionised staff.
I don’t know about the RMT particularly, but it’s hard not to admire a union that secures such attractive conditions for its workers.
Given that wage growth for most deciles has been pretty shit over the past decade or even decades, they must be doing something right.
Having a monopoly on labour supply to certain industries is hardly worthy of admiration. We don't admire the train franchises that charge zillions for season tickets because they have an effective monopoly on the route. This is no different.
It is different though, in the context of a corporate culture that tends towards oligopolistic, and runaway compensation growth for the top 0.5%
Not really. It's a monopoly position, they're exploiting it just as any other monopoly does. If the RMT were split into seven unions each unable to merge and competing objectives and only 1/7th of the staff able to strike at any one time do you think it would get the same outcomes?
Left wing twitter is saying only Brit P&O employees sacked, EU staff retained. Is that correct? And the company’s struggled on the Channel routes cos Brexit? Obvs covid won’t have helped like, but has the long term viability of the cross-channel ferries been wrecked by trucks going straight to Ireland from the continent?
I believe the French employees are protected by French employment law, not EU law.
Seems the most likely explanation. Again, this is not new. It’s easier to sack UK workers. Anyone who has ever worked across Europe knows this.
It’s also easier to hire them.
In France it is much harder to fire workers. To make up for this, there are much larger capital allowances for machinery - so productivity is relatively high.
However, companies move work out of France when they can. In a large part, the Yellow Jacket protests are about this.
You may of noticed that the war in Ukraine is disrupting parts and materials for a number of industries. Those factories were created, as part of the push too move industry to cheaper and cheaper places - Eastern Europe in general has been "mined out" of cheap labour, to a great extent (though movement there is still happening).
Simply moving industry to the super cheap locations (undeveloped bits of Africa, say) doesn't actually get the big savings - you need a society with a semblance of modernity, rule of law and infrastructure to achieve productivity.
Except manufacturing is no longer reliant on cheap labour (though service industries are) which is why many developed counties have strong manufacturing economies with well paid workers.
Look at all the companies saying that their parts pyramid is being interrupted by the Ukraine war - the process I am describing has been happening on a huge scale.
This is why since 1989, the economies of Eastern Europe have done so well (in most cases) - a river of money and jobs has poured into them. It's like watching the water flow into holes dug on a beach - levelling up in action.
So having done a bit more reading the P&O ferries move feels like Ronald Reagan sacking the unionised air traffic controllers, just handled very poorly.
One day I do wonder whether a future London Mayor will take on the RMT and bankrupt TfL as a way to restructure all contracts and actually make the network sustainable.
Shame on you Max.
These weren't militant Red Robbo sabateurs they were P and O 30 year loyal staffers sacked on a Teams call, handcuffed by private security guards and frog marched off the vessels, to be replaced by cheap imported Labour. Wasn't Brexit all about "British jobs for British people"?
Oh and DP World owns Freeports and hence the Johnson Government. Labour and the LDs may be s*** but your lot are owned by f****** mafia hoods. Yesterday it was Russians today it is the Saudis.
I didn't say they handled it well - "handled very poorly" - but sometimes companies get fed up of going 10 rounds with the militant unions and just go for non union staff. It sucks for the actual people who have been sacked here and hopefully they are able to land on their feet and get better jobs, yet I can't blame any company for ridding itself of unionised staff. They're a menace.
Woah!!!! Honestly in the past I’ve been accused of being to the right of Ghengis Khan but there are times this website makes me look like a Marxist. Being in a union is something we all should do. And this story shows why.
Does it? If the company didn't have to go 10 rounds with the RMT for pay settlements and simple working practice changes do you think this would have happened? The company are scummers, just for the way they handled it, yet the RMT and other unions are the root cause of companies just figuring out it isn't worth the hassle.
My ex-girlfriend's dad worked in the printing industry. Loathed the unions, who had put him on the dole at least twice by making life so uncomfortable for the company owners that they decided it just wasn't worth the hassle and closed the company down.
It was enforced membership of NATSOPA which turned Norman Tebbit to the Dark Side.
Yes. But this is the 2020's. Not the 1970's.
Alas
You'd have hated the platform shoes, four inch waist bands and penny collar shirts...and they were all lime green, brown and orange.
So having done a bit more reading the P&O ferries move feels like Ronald Reagan sacking the unionised air traffic controllers, just handled very poorly.
One day I do wonder whether a future London Mayor will take on the RMT and bankrupt TfL as a way to restructure all contracts and actually make the network sustainable.
Shame on you Max.
These weren't militant Red Robbo sabateurs they were P and O 30 year loyal staffers sacked on a Teams call, handcuffed by private security guards and frog marched off the vessels, to be replaced by cheap imported Labour. Wasn't Brexit all about "British jobs for British people"?
Oh and DP World owns Freeports and hence the Johnson Government. Labour and the LDs may be s*** but your lot are owned by f****** mafia hoods. Yesterday it was Russians today it is the Saudis.
I didn't say they handled it well - "handled very poorly" - but sometimes companies get fed up of going 10 rounds with the militant unions and just go for non union staff. It sucks for the actual people who have been sacked here and hopefully they are able to land on their feet and get better jobs, yet I can't blame any company for ridding itself of unionised staff. They're a menace.
Woah!!!! Honestly in the past I’ve been accused of being to the right of Ghengis Khan but there are times this website makes me look like a Marxist. Being in a union is something we all should do. And this story shows why.
It’s not 1975, and union powers are limited, but pay is best negotiated on mass for most people, and it’s always good to have someone to source legal advice from and represent you. Not least for managers!
Well, yes, but... the downside of collective bargaining is that management can also treat staff collectively. This incident is a result of collective bargaining.
No it's not. It's immoral foreign owners riding a coach and horses through our now inadequate employment rights.
It’s an area where we need to take back control, so it’s only UK owners who ride coach and horses through inadequate employment rights. 😤
Chris 'Derby' Williamson retweets this nonsense tonight:
"Russia had no choice but to protect the Donbass peoples and since the Security Council could do nothing, and the EU and NATO were supporting the Kiev offensive against the Donbass, Russia was the only nation that could act."
Long article on why Russia was right to invade ukr.
If I recall this man was in the shadow cabinet under Corbyn and would have been housing minister or some such.
He was such a nasty piece of work he couldn't even make it under Corbyn (I think he resigned from a junior position).
I recall someone saying he was fairly normal in the past, but when he lost his seat in 2015 and regained it in 2017 he seemed to just lose it completely.
NPXMP supported him as I recall.
NPXMP has suggested in the last couple of days that Ukraine is favoured by the West purely because it has a superior media operation to Russia, and in the last couple of months that everybody is bored of Taiwan "crying wolf" about China. And he has insisted for years what a decent chap Corbyn is. He is an enormously urbane and intelligent poster, but he is also the one and only person here who is here with an agenda - whether dictated by a foreign power, and if so Russia or China, I'm not sure. But he is.
Not the only one, surely?
Well, the only one who, if he is getting paid, is providing value for money.
Mrs Thatcher should have gone much further and completely smashed the unions in the UK. Good employment law is enough, unions are an anachronism, I'd love to see TfL smash the RMT as well even if it meant month of strikes and spotty service or just sacking the lot of them and rehiring non-unionised staff.
I don’t know about the RMT particularly, but it’s hard not to admire a union that secures such attractive conditions for its workers.
Given that wage growth for most deciles has been pretty shit over the past decade or even decades, they must be doing something right.
Having a monopoly on labour supply to certain industries is hardly worthy of admiration. We don't admire the train franchises that charge zillions for season tickets because they have an effective monopoly on the route. This is no different.
“Monopoly on labour”? It isn’t 1975.
In certain industries, and they do. TfL is fucked and Londoners with it because the RMT has monopoly supply on drivers. If they go on strike London grinds to a halt. I'd live with a few months of bad service to smash them to bits but unfortunately there's a lot of Londoners who would really struggle without the tube so the mayor won't do it.
You are trolling.
TfL has been fucked by Covid, not militant unions.
Obviously the occasional strikes are annoying but it’s hardly a first order problem.
It has been and it should mean mass redundancies among drivers to reduce off peak services and even some peak services to better match the new daily usage of ~65% on weekdays and ~85% on weekends. Yet the mayor is doing the opposite and has given in on the pre-COVID pay settlement for fear of strikes.
Even on those usage numbers I would argue the tube needs a full service, and I’d argue that those numbers won’t remain at that level anyway.
You sound like those Treasury bods you like to complain about who believe the answer is to slide the shit out of anything that supports economic growth in the UK.
Running a 100% service on ~70% usage means a 40% price rise for people who use it and a starting vicious circle of people deciding it's too expensive and not using it resulting in bigger price rises.
There's no economic upside to the additional capacity and drivers can be trained and hired pretty rapidly should the need arise for them. It's not as though there's a fixed supply. What I'm suggesting is we cut fixed costs to free up money to invest in the network. It's precisely the opposite of treasury thinking which would rather a higher current fixed cost at the expense of investment.
Decent response, but in my view the fixed cost is pretty fixed because if you really want to fuck the tube you reduce service levels.
I’m not going to pretend I know the Tube finances inside out, but I doubt you do either. I’m not convinced the trade off you talk about is there.
No, I'm not an expert just going by the media reports that future network investment is being pushed further out into the future but no cuts to fixed costs are being considered by the mayor outside of a small bit of management consolidation. He cut the night tube, but we still get 40 TPH on the Victoria line all day, and loads of them are just empty outside of peak hours on weekdays because the demand isn't there. Seems a bit mad to me.
Though if you have the trains and the tunnels, the general principle is that you're paying for them so you might as well use them. The cost of the drivers is a pretty small part of the total bill.
These guys seem to know what they're talking about;
I did notice that even pro-Russian sources for what's going on on the ground were talking about Russia pulling back to defend against a Ukrainian counterattack.
It’s possible that Putin’s new strategy is:
1. Move Russia along the authoritarian to totalitarian spectrum
2. Scare the shit out of his own population.
Thereby cementing his own power and allowing a retreat from Ukraine.
Making his people poorer but more terrified, rather than getting richer and still maintaining an iron grip. Who knew he'd shoot for the Belarus model rather than the China model?
In a way it is the Chinese model.
I was impressed by that Anatol Lieven article in the FT about how Putin and the oligarchs admire the way China (Xi) has achieved a much tighter grip while continuing to deliver economic growth.
So having done a bit more reading the P&O ferries move feels like Ronald Reagan sacking the unionised air traffic controllers, just handled very poorly.
One day I do wonder whether a future London Mayor will take on the RMT and bankrupt TfL as a way to restructure all contracts and actually make the network sustainable.
Shame on you Max.
These weren't militant Red Robbo sabateurs they were P and O 30 year loyal staffers sacked on a Teams call, handcuffed by private security guards and frog marched off the vessels, to be replaced by cheap imported Labour. Wasn't Brexit all about "British jobs for British people"?
Oh and DP World owns Freeports and hence the Johnson Government. Labour and the LDs may be s*** but your lot are owned by f****** mafia hoods. Yesterday it was Russians today it is the Saudis.
I didn't say they handled it well - "handled very poorly" - but sometimes companies get fed up of going 10 rounds with the militant unions and just go for non union staff. It sucks for the actual people who have been sacked here and hopefully they are able to land on their feet and get better jobs, yet I can't blame any company for ridding itself of unionised staff. They're a menace.
Woah!!!! Honestly in the past I’ve been accused of being to the right of Ghengis Khan but there are times this website makes me look like a Marxist. Being in a union is something we all should do. And this story shows why.
Does it? If the company didn't have to go 10 rounds with the RMT for pay settlements and simple working practice changes do you think this would have happened? The company are scummers, just for the way they handled it, yet the RMT and other unions are the root cause of companies just figuring out it isn't worth the hassle.
My ex-girlfriend's dad worked in the printing industry. Loathed the unions, who had put him on the dole at least twice by making life so uncomfortable for the company owners that they decided it just wasn't worth the hassle and closed the company down.
It was enforced membership of NATSOPA which turned Norman Tebbit to the Dark Side.
Yes. But this is the 2020's. Not the 1970's.
Alas
You'd have hated the platform shoes, four inch waist bands and penny collar shirts...and they were all lime green, brown and orange.
Mate, I was born in 1961. I have kodak photos of me in that lot.
Chris 'Derby' Williamson retweets this nonsense tonight:
"Russia had no choice but to protect the Donbass peoples and since the Security Council could do nothing, and the EU and NATO were supporting the Kiev offensive against the Donbass, Russia was the only nation that could act."
Long article on why Russia was right to invade ukr.
If I recall this man was in the shadow cabinet under Corbyn and would have been housing minister or some such.
On another note, isn't it nice to be discussing economics and employment? Rather than Brexit, culture wars, covid or war. Younger readers may be unaware, but up until the first decade of this century this is what politics was always like.
I was reflecting the other day that one of my clearest childhood memories was one of my parents getting publicly scapegoated by a major multiple for falling sales in the other half of the company at the outset of the great recession. Since then average graduate salaries have fallen by over a third in real terms, I had Brexit at the end of my schooling, and graduated at the start of Covid, now I'm in work and having to help deal with the fallout of the Russian arm of our business get axed. What I'd give for the calm growth of the early naughties again.
So having done a bit more reading the P&O ferries move feels like Ronald Reagan sacking the unionised air traffic controllers, just handled very poorly.
One day I do wonder whether a future London Mayor will take on the RMT and bankrupt TfL as a way to restructure all contracts and actually make the network sustainable.
Shame on you Max.
These weren't militant Red Robbo sabateurs they were P and O 30 year loyal staffers sacked on a Teams call, handcuffed by private security guards and frog marched off the vessels, to be replaced by cheap imported Labour. Wasn't Brexit all about "British jobs for British people"?
Oh and DP World owns Freeports and hence the Johnson Government. Labour and the LDs may be s*** but your lot are owned by f****** mafia hoods. Yesterday it was Russians today it is the Saudis.
I didn't say they handled it well - "handled very poorly" - but sometimes companies get fed up of going 10 rounds with the militant unions and just go for non union staff. It sucks for the actual people who have been sacked here and hopefully they are able to land on their feet and get better jobs, yet I can't blame any company for ridding itself of unionised staff. They're a menace.
Woah!!!! Honestly in the past I’ve been accused of being to the right of Ghengis Khan but there are times this website makes me look like a Marxist. Being in a union is something we all should do. And this story shows why.
Does it? If the company didn't have to go 10 rounds with the RMT for pay settlements and simple working practice changes do you think this would have happened? The company are scummers, just for the way they handled it, yet the RMT and other unions are the root cause of companies just figuring out it isn't worth the hassle.
My ex-girlfriend's dad worked in the printing industry. Loathed the unions, who had put him on the dole at least twice by making life so uncomfortable for the company owners that they decided it just wasn't worth the hassle and closed the company down.
It was enforced membership of NATSOPA which turned Norman Tebbit to the Dark Side.
Yes. But this is the 2020's. Not the 1970's.
Alas
You'd have hated the platform shoes, four inch waist bands and penny collar shirts...and they were all lime green, brown and orange.
Mrs Thatcher should have gone much further and completely smashed the unions in the UK. Good employment law is enough, unions are an anachronism, I'd love to see TfL smash the RMT as well even if it meant month of strikes and spotty service or just sacking the lot of them and rehiring non-unionised staff.
I don’t know about the RMT particularly, but it’s hard not to admire a union that secures such attractive conditions for its workers.
Given that wage growth for most deciles has been pretty shit over the past decade or even decades, they must be doing something right.
Having a monopoly on labour supply to certain industries is hardly worthy of admiration. We don't admire the train franchises that charge zillions for season tickets because they have an effective monopoly on the route. This is no different.
“Monopoly on labour”? It isn’t 1975.
In certain industries, and they do. TfL is fucked and Londoners with it because the RMT has monopoly supply on drivers. If they go on strike London grinds to a halt. I'd live with a few months of bad service to smash them to bits but unfortunately there's a lot of Londoners who would really struggle without the tube so the mayor won't do it.
You are trolling.
TfL has been fucked by Covid, not militant unions.
Obviously the occasional strikes are annoying but it’s hardly a first order problem.
It has been and it should mean mass redundancies among drivers to reduce off peak services and even some peak services to better match the new daily usage of ~65% on weekdays and ~85% on weekends. Yet the mayor is doing the opposite and has given in on the pre-COVID pay settlement for fear of strikes.
Even on those usage numbers I would argue the tube needs a full service, and I’d argue that those numbers won’t remain at that level anyway.
You sound like those Treasury bods you like to complain about who believe the answer is to slide the shit out of anything that supports economic growth in the UK.
Running a 100% service on ~70% usage means a 40% price rise for people who use it and a starting vicious circle of people deciding it's too expensive and not using it resulting in bigger price rises.
There's no economic upside to the additional capacity and drivers can be trained and hired pretty rapidly should the need arise for them. It's not as though there's a fixed supply. What I'm suggesting is we cut fixed costs to free up money to invest in the network. It's precisely the opposite of treasury thinking which would rather a higher current fixed cost at the expense of investment.
Decent response, but in my view the fixed cost is pretty fixed because if you really want to fuck the tube you reduce service levels.
I’m not going to pretend I know the Tube finances inside out, but I doubt you do either. I’m not convinced the trade off you talk about is there.
No, I'm not an expert just going by the media reports that future network investment is being pushed further out into the future but no cuts to fixed costs are being considered by the mayor outside of a small bit of management consolidation. He cut the night tube, but we still get 40 TPH on the Victoria line all day, and loads of them are just empty outside of peak hours on weekdays because the demand isn't there. Seems a bit mad to me.
What I can say is that NY subway is utter shit. They have cut services, the stations are filthy and poorly manned, and violent crime is on the up.
Mrs Thatcher should have gone much further and completely smashed the unions in the UK. Good employment law is enough, unions are an anachronism, I'd love to see TfL smash the RMT as well even if it meant month of strikes and spotty service or just sacking the lot of them and rehiring non-unionised staff.
I don’t know about the RMT particularly, but it’s hard not to admire a union that secures such attractive conditions for its workers.
Given that wage growth for most deciles has been pretty shit over the past decade or even decades, they must be doing something right.
Having a monopoly on labour supply to certain industries is hardly worthy of admiration. We don't admire the train franchises that charge zillions for season tickets because they have an effective monopoly on the route. This is no different.
It is different though, in the context of a corporate culture that tends towards oligopolistic, and runaway compensation growth for the top 0.5%
Not really. It's a monopoly position, they're exploiting it just as any other monopoly does. If the RMT were split into seven unions each unable to merge and competing objectives and only 1/7th of the staff able to strike at any one time do you think it would get the same outcomes?
Left wing twitter is saying only Brit P&O employees sacked, EU staff retained. Is that correct? And the company’s struggled on the Channel routes cos Brexit? Obvs covid won’t have helped like, but has the long term viability of the cross-channel ferries been wrecked by trucks going straight to Ireland from the continent?
I believe the French employees are protected by French employment law, not EU law.
Seems the most likely explanation. Again, this is not new. It’s easier to sack UK workers. Anyone who has ever worked across Europe knows this.
It’s also easier to hire them.
In France it is much harder to fire workers. To make up for this, there are much larger capital allowances for machinery - so productivity is relatively high.
However, companies move work out of France when they can. In a large part, the Yellow Jacket protests are about this.
You may of noticed that the war in Ukraine is disrupting parts and materials for a number of industries. Those factories were created, as part of the push too move industry to cheaper and cheaper places - Eastern Europe in general has been "mined out" of cheap labour, to a great extent (though movement there is still happening).
Simply moving industry to the super cheap locations (undeveloped bits of Africa, say) doesn't actually get the big savings - you need a society with a semblance of modernity, rule of law and infrastructure to achieve productivity.
Except manufacturing is no longer reliant on cheap labour (though service industries are) which is why many developed countries have strong manufacturing economies with well paid workers.
That's completely false. The vast majority of manufacturing relies on cheap labour, we just don't do a lot of it as it's moved to countries like China or India where the cost of labour is very low.
Mrs Thatcher should have gone much further and completely smashed the unions in the UK. Good employment law is enough, unions are an anachronism, I'd love to see TfL smash the RMT as well even if it meant month of strikes and spotty service or just sacking the lot of them and rehiring non-unionised staff.
I don’t know about the RMT particularly, but it’s hard not to admire a union that secures such attractive conditions for its workers.
Given that wage growth for most deciles has been pretty shit over the past decade or even decades, they must be doing something right.
Having a monopoly on labour supply to certain industries is hardly worthy of admiration. We don't admire the train franchises that charge zillions for season tickets because they have an effective monopoly on the route. This is no different.
It is different though, in the context of a corporate culture that tends towards oligopolistic, and runaway compensation growth for the top 0.5%
Not really. It's a monopoly position, they're exploiting it just as any other monopoly does. If the RMT were split into seven unions each unable to merge and competing objectives and only 1/7th of the staff able to strike at any one time do you think it would get the same outcomes?
Left wing twitter is saying only Brit P&O employees sacked, EU staff retained. Is that correct? And the company’s struggled on the Channel routes cos Brexit? Obvs covid won’t have helped like, but has the long term viability of the cross-channel ferries been wrecked by trucks going straight to Ireland from the continent?
I believe the French employees are protected by French employment law, not EU law.
Seems the most likely explanation. Again, this is not new. It’s easier to sack UK workers. Anyone who has ever worked across Europe knows this.
It’s also easier to hire them.
In France it is much harder to fire workers. To make up for this, there are much larger capital allowances for machinery - so productivity is relatively high.
However, companies move work out of France when they can. In a large part, the Yellow Jacket protests are about this.
You may of noticed that the war in Ukraine is disrupting parts and materials for a number of industries. Those factories were created, as part of the push too move industry to cheaper and cheaper places - Eastern Europe in general has been "mined out" of cheap labour, to a great extent (though movement there is still happening).
Simply moving industry to the super cheap locations (undeveloped bits of Africa, say) doesn't actually get the big savings - you need a society with a semblance of modernity, rule of law and infrastructure to achieve productivity.
Except manufacturing is no longer reliant on cheap labour (though service industries are) which is why many developed counties have strong manufacturing economies with well paid workers.
Look at all the companies saying that their parts pyramid is being interrupted by the Ukraine war - the process I am describing has been happening on a huge scale.
This is why since 1989, the economies of Eastern Europe have done so well (in most cases) - a river of money and jobs has poured into them. It's like watching the water flow into holes dug on a beach - levelling up in action.
And vice versa too. That is just internationalisation of supply chains.
Sure, some manufacturing is low paid (though even there the rag trade has increased here with fast turn around times) but increasingly it is high tech and well paid, at least compared to many service industries. Automation means far fewer employees in Britain build more cars than we did in the Seventies.
I think that the nihilism over manufacturing from Tory freemarketerrs is over done.
Mrs Thatcher should have gone much further and completely smashed the unions in the UK. Good employment law is enough, unions are an anachronism, I'd love to see TfL smash the RMT as well even if it meant month of strikes and spotty service or just sacking the lot of them and rehiring non-unionised staff.
I don’t know about the RMT particularly, but it’s hard not to admire a union that secures such attractive conditions for its workers.
Given that wage growth for most deciles has been pretty shit over the past decade or even decades, they must be doing something right.
Having a monopoly on labour supply to certain industries is hardly worthy of admiration. We don't admire the train franchises that charge zillions for season tickets because they have an effective monopoly on the route. This is no different.
“Monopoly on labour”? It isn’t 1975.
In certain industries, and they do. TfL is fucked and Londoners with it because the RMT has monopoly supply on drivers. If they go on strike London grinds to a halt. I'd live with a few months of bad service to smash them to bits but unfortunately there's a lot of Londoners who would really struggle without the tube so the mayor won't do it.
You are trolling.
TfL has been fucked by Covid, not militant unions.
Obviously the occasional strikes are annoying but it’s hardly a first order problem.
It has been and it should mean mass redundancies among drivers to reduce off peak services and even some peak services to better match the new daily usage of ~65% on weekdays and ~85% on weekends. Yet the mayor is doing the opposite and has given in on the pre-COVID pay settlement for fear of strikes.
Even on those usage numbers I would argue the tube needs a full service, and I’d argue that those numbers won’t remain at that level anyway.
You sound like those Treasury bods you like to complain about who believe the answer is to slide the shit out of anything that supports economic growth in the UK.
Running a 100% service on ~70% usage means a 40% price rise for people who use it and a starting vicious circle of people deciding it's too expensive and not using it resulting in bigger price rises.
There's no economic upside to the additional capacity and drivers can be trained and hired pretty rapidly should the need arise for them. It's not as though there's a fixed supply. What I'm suggesting is we cut fixed costs to free up money to invest in the network. It's precisely the opposite of treasury thinking which would rather a higher current fixed cost at the expense of investment.
Decent response, but in my view the fixed cost is pretty fixed because if you really want to fuck the tube you reduce service levels.
I’m not going to pretend I know the Tube finances inside out, but I doubt you do either. I’m not convinced the trade off you talk about is there.
No, I'm not an expert just going by the media reports that future network investment is being pushed further out into the future but no cuts to fixed costs are being considered by the mayor outside of a small bit of management consolidation. He cut the night tube, but we still get 40 TPH on the Victoria line all day, and loads of them are just empty outside of peak hours on weekdays because the demand isn't there. Seems a bit mad to me.
What I can say is that NY subway is utter shit. They have cut services, the stations are filthy and poorly manned, and violent crime is on the up.
Not a model to follow.
Different issue really, a lot of why the NY subway is shit is the inability to let go of 24h service. There was an incredible piece on it in the NY Times a few years ago, the gist was that it made it impossible to do routine maintenance without extremely high marginal costs which has hollowed out the budget for any investment and now it's cutting into normal services.
Principled sovereignty point - though I started out assuming and wanting EFTA/EEA as a first step until it became clear that wasn’t possible. I believe in open borders and more or less unlimited immigration, so I’ve never felt “part” of most of those who share the objective.
Thanks for a response that doesn’t include the words “remoaner” and “saboteurs”.
I think EEA *was* available, but Theresa May fucked it, partly through her own incompetence and partly because she in turn was sabotaged by Johnson et al.
I think it is quite clear that Putin thought he was going to get to Kyiv in a day or 2, relieve the heroic paratroopers holding the airports, tea, medals and start arresting anyone on The Lists.
It might even had worked if the US intelligence community had not already told Ukraine who was coming, when they were coming, and where they were going to attack. Ukraine basically watched the Russians land and then shelled them, and then went in on foot to mop up the survivors. So apart from Ukraine knowing their every move it was not a bad plan.
I am no military expert, but the Russian's don't seem very well trained. They seem totally clueless what they are supposed to be doing.....
So having done a bit more reading the P&O ferries move feels like Ronald Reagan sacking the unionised air traffic controllers, just handled very poorly.
One day I do wonder whether a future London Mayor will take on the RMT and bankrupt TfL as a way to restructure all contracts and actually make the network sustainable.
Shame on you Max.
These weren't militant Red Robbo sabateurs they were P and O 30 year loyal staffers sacked on a Teams call, handcuffed by private security guards and frog marched off the vessels, to be replaced by cheap imported Labour. Wasn't Brexit all about "British jobs for British people"?
Oh and DP World owns Freeports and hence the Johnson Government. Labour and the LDs may be s*** but your lot are owned by f****** mafia hoods. Yesterday it was Russians today it is the Saudis.
I didn't say they handled it well - "handled very poorly" - but sometimes companies get fed up of going 10 rounds with the militant unions and just go for non union staff. It sucks for the actual people who have been sacked here and hopefully they are able to land on their feet and get better jobs, yet I can't blame any company for ridding itself of unionised staff. They're a menace.
Woah!!!! Honestly in the past I’ve been accused of being to the right of Ghengis Khan but there are times this website makes me look like a Marxist. Being in a union is something we all should do. And this story shows why.
It’s not 1975, and union powers are limited, but pay is best negotiated on mass for most people, and it’s always good to have someone to source legal advice from and represent you. Not least for managers!
Well, yes, but... the downside of collective bargaining is that management can also treat staff collectively. This incident is a result of collective bargaining.
No it's not. It's immoral foreign owners riding a coach and horses through our now inadequate employment rights.
It’s an area where we need to take back control, so it’s only UK owners who ride coach and horses through inadequate employment rights. 😤
Yeah but, that's ok. there's a trickle down effect, I read about it on PB.
Mrs Thatcher should have gone much further and completely smashed the unions in the UK. Good employment law is enough, unions are an anachronism, I'd love to see TfL smash the RMT as well even if it meant month of strikes and spotty service or just sacking the lot of them and rehiring non-unionised staff.
I don’t know about the RMT particularly, but it’s hard not to admire a union that secures such attractive conditions for its workers.
Given that wage growth for most deciles has been pretty shit over the past decade or even decades, they must be doing something right.
Having a monopoly on labour supply to certain industries is hardly worthy of admiration. We don't admire the train franchises that charge zillions for season tickets because they have an effective monopoly on the route. This is no different.
It is different though, in the context of a corporate culture that tends towards oligopolistic, and runaway compensation growth for the top 0.5%
Not really. It's a monopoly position, they're exploiting it just as any other monopoly does. If the RMT were split into seven unions each unable to merge and competing objectives and only 1/7th of the staff able to strike at any one time do you think it would get the same outcomes?
Left wing twitter is saying only Brit P&O employees sacked, EU staff retained. Is that correct? And the company’s struggled on the Channel routes cos Brexit? Obvs covid won’t have helped like, but has the long term viability of the cross-channel ferries been wrecked by trucks going straight to Ireland from the continent?
I believe the French employees are protected by French employment law, not EU law.
Seems the most likely explanation. Again, this is not new. It’s easier to sack UK workers. Anyone who has ever worked across Europe knows this.
It’s also easier to hire them.
In France it is much harder to fire workers. To make up for this, there are much larger capital allowances for machinery - so productivity is relatively high.
However, companies move work out of France when they can. In a large part, the Yellow Jacket protests are about this.
You may of noticed that the war in Ukraine is disrupting parts and materials for a number of industries. Those factories were created, as part of the push too move industry to cheaper and cheaper places - Eastern Europe in general has been "mined out" of cheap labour, to a great extent (though movement there is still happening).
Simply moving industry to the super cheap locations (undeveloped bits of Africa, say) doesn't actually get the big savings - you need a society with a semblance of modernity, rule of law and infrastructure to achieve productivity.
Except manufacturing is no longer reliant on cheap labour (though service industries are) which is why many developed counties have strong manufacturing economies with well paid workers.
Look at all the companies saying that their parts pyramid is being interrupted by the Ukraine war - the process I am describing has been happening on a huge scale.
This is why since 1989, the economies of Eastern Europe have done so well (in most cases) - a river of money and jobs has poured into them. It's like watching the water flow into holes dug on a beach - levelling up in action.
And vice versa too. That is just internationalisation of supply chains.
Sure, some manufacturing is low paid (though even there the rag trade has increased here with fast turn around times) but increasingly it is high tech and well paid, at least compared to many service industries. Automation means far fewer employees in Britain build more cars than we did in the Seventies.
I think that the nihilism over manufacturing from Tory freemarketerrs is over done.
I'd agree that investment in automation onshore is a better bet in the long run.
The effect, however at various levels in the economy is to cause economic progress to go backwards for some people, while they see shiny new towers in Bulgaria housing the jobs they once had.
Simply ignoring this is where Le Pen & Co get their votes....
Principled sovereignty point - though I started out assuming and wanting EFTA/EEA as a first step until it became clear that wasn’t possible. I believe in open borders and more or less unlimited immigration, so I’ve never felt “part” of most of those who share the objective.
Thanks for a response that doesn’t include the words “remoaner” and “saboteurs”.
I think EEA *was* available, but Theresa May fucked it, partly through her own incompetence and partly because she in turn was sabotaged by Johnson et al.
I’m going to add that even though I think immigration is fantastic, I do think the volume was extraordinarily high for a significant period (it’s still very high, but Europeans are being replaced by Indians).
However the way to address was largely to follow the Swiss model, and also to take the opportunity for some benefit reform.
We also failed to incentivise or “reward” communities with immigration, so it was often perceived as a reduction of public service.
Mrs Thatcher should have gone much further and completely smashed the unions in the UK. Good employment law is enough, unions are an anachronism, I'd love to see TfL smash the RMT as well even if it meant month of strikes and spotty service or just sacking the lot of them and rehiring non-unionised staff.
I don’t know about the RMT particularly, but it’s hard not to admire a union that secures such attractive conditions for its workers.
Given that wage growth for most deciles has been pretty shit over the past decade or even decades, they must be doing something right.
Having a monopoly on labour supply to certain industries is hardly worthy of admiration. We don't admire the train franchises that charge zillions for season tickets because they have an effective monopoly on the route. This is no different.
It is different though, in the context of a corporate culture that tends towards oligopolistic, and runaway compensation growth for the top 0.5%
Not really. It's a monopoly position, they're exploiting it just as any other monopoly does. If the RMT were split into seven unions each unable to merge and competing objectives and only 1/7th of the staff able to strike at any one time do you think it would get the same outcomes?
Left wing twitter is saying only Brit P&O employees sacked, EU staff retained. Is that correct? And the company’s struggled on the Channel routes cos Brexit? Obvs covid won’t have helped like, but has the long term viability of the cross-channel ferries been wrecked by trucks going straight to Ireland from the continent?
I believe the French employees are protected by French employment law, not EU law.
Seems the most likely explanation. Again, this is not new. It’s easier to sack UK workers. Anyone who has ever worked across Europe knows this.
It’s also easier to hire them.
In France it is much harder to fire workers. To make up for this, there are much larger capital allowances for machinery - so productivity is relatively high.
However, companies move work out of France when they can. In a large part, the Yellow Jacket protests are about this.
You may of noticed that the war in Ukraine is disrupting parts and materials for a number of industries. Those factories were created, as part of the push too move industry to cheaper and cheaper places - Eastern Europe in general has been "mined out" of cheap labour, to a great extent (though movement there is still happening).
Simply moving industry to the super cheap locations (undeveloped bits of Africa, say) doesn't actually get the big savings - you need a society with a semblance of modernity, rule of law and infrastructure to achieve productivity.
Except manufacturing is no longer reliant on cheap labour (though service industries are) which is why many developed counties have strong manufacturing economies with well paid workers.
Look at all the companies saying that their parts pyramid is being interrupted by the Ukraine war - the process I am describing has been happening on a huge scale.
This is why since 1989, the economies of Eastern Europe have done so well (in most cases) - a river of money and jobs has poured into them. It's like watching the water flow into holes dug on a beach - levelling up in action.
And vice versa too. That is just internationalisation of supply chains.
Sure, some manufacturing is low paid (though even there the rag trade has increased here with fast turn around times) but increasingly it is high tech and well paid, at least compared to many service industries. Automation means far fewer employees in Britain build more cars than we did in the Seventies.
I think that the nihilism over manufacturing from Tory freemarketerrs is over done.
I'd agree that investment in automation onshore is a better bet in the long run.
The effect, however at various levels in the economy is to cause economic progress to go backwards for some people, while they see shiny new towers in Bulgaria housing the jobs they once had.
Simply ignoring this is where Le Pen & Co get their votes....
Yes but we see with P and O that they were sold a lie. Their jobs are going to the foreigners post Brexit too.
Principled sovereignty point - though I started out assuming and wanting EFTA/EEA as a first step until it became clear that wasn’t possible. I believe in open borders and more or less unlimited immigration, so I’ve never felt “part” of most of those who share the objective.
Thanks for a response that doesn’t include the words “remoaner” and “saboteurs”.
I think EEA *was* available, but Theresa May fucked it, partly through her own incompetence and partly because she in turn was sabotaged by Johnson et al.
You forgot to mention the word Labour. According to my Dad Labour sabotaged both the 2016 remain vote and the more business friendly Brexit by playing opposition games, and it’s why remainers should think twice about voting for the fools
I think it is quite clear that Putin thought he was going to get to Kyiv in a day or 2, relieve the heroic paratroopers holding the airports, tea, medals and start arresting anyone on The Lists.
It might even had worked if the US intelligence community had not already told Ukraine who was coming, when they were coming, and where they were going to attack. Ukraine basically watched the Russians land and then shelled them, and then went in on foot to mop up the survivors. So apart from Ukraine knowing their every move it was not a bad plan.
I am no military expert, but the Russian's don't seem very well trained. They seem totally clueless what they are supposed to be doing.....
I'm just remembering the shouting that would have occurred in the CCF for wandering around like that, standing up, in an exercise. And pointing your gun at people on your own side.....
Mrs Thatcher should have gone much further and completely smashed the unions in the UK. Good employment law is enough, unions are an anachronism, I'd love to see TfL smash the RMT as well even if it meant month of strikes and spotty service or just sacking the lot of them and rehiring non-unionised staff.
I don’t know about the RMT particularly, but it’s hard not to admire a union that secures such attractive conditions for its workers.
Given that wage growth for most deciles has been pretty shit over the past decade or even decades, they must be doing something right.
Having a monopoly on labour supply to certain industries is hardly worthy of admiration. We don't admire the train franchises that charge zillions for season tickets because they have an effective monopoly on the route. This is no different.
It is different though, in the context of a corporate culture that tends towards oligopolistic, and runaway compensation growth for the top 0.5%
Not really. It's a monopoly position, they're exploiting it just as any other monopoly does. If the RMT were split into seven unions each unable to merge and competing objectives and only 1/7th of the staff able to strike at any one time do you think it would get the same outcomes?
Left wing twitter is saying only Brit P&O employees sacked, EU staff retained. Is that correct? And the company’s struggled on the Channel routes cos Brexit? Obvs covid won’t have helped like, but has the long term viability of the cross-channel ferries been wrecked by trucks going straight to Ireland from the continent?
I believe the French employees are protected by French employment law, not EU law.
Seems the most likely explanation. Again, this is not new. It’s easier to sack UK workers. Anyone who has ever worked across Europe knows this.
It’s also easier to hire them.
In France it is much harder to fire workers. To make up for this, there are much larger capital allowances for machinery - so productivity is relatively high.
However, companies move work out of France when they can. In a large part, the Yellow Jacket protests are about this.
You may of noticed that the war in Ukraine is disrupting parts and materials for a number of industries. Those factories were created, as part of the push too move industry to cheaper and cheaper places - Eastern Europe in general has been "mined out" of cheap labour, to a great extent (though movement there is still happening).
Simply moving industry to the super cheap locations (undeveloped bits of Africa, say) doesn't actually get the big savings - you need a society with a semblance of modernity, rule of law and infrastructure to achieve productivity.
Except manufacturing is no longer reliant on cheap labour (though service industries are) which is why many developed counties have strong manufacturing economies with well paid workers.
Look at all the companies saying that their parts pyramid is being interrupted by the Ukraine war - the process I am describing has been happening on a huge scale.
This is why since 1989, the economies of Eastern Europe have done so well (in most cases) - a river of money and jobs has poured into them. It's like watching the water flow into holes dug on a beach - levelling up in action.
And vice versa too. That is just internationalisation of supply chains.
Sure, some manufacturing is low paid (though even there the rag trade has increased here with fast turn around times) but increasingly it is high tech and well paid, at least compared to many service industries. Automation means far fewer employees in Britain build more cars than we did in the Seventies.
I think that the nihilism over manufacturing from Tory freemarketerrs is over done.
I'd agree that investment in automation onshore is a better bet in the long run.
The effect, however at various levels in the economy is to cause economic progress to go backwards for some people, while they see shiny new towers in Bulgaria housing the jobs they once had.
Simply ignoring this is where Le Pen & Co get their votes....
Yes but we see with P and O that they were sold a lie. Their jobs are going to the foreigners post Brexit too.
BREXIT was the symptom. Not the cause, or the cure.
Principled sovereignty point - though I started out assuming and wanting EFTA/EEA as a first step until it became clear that wasn’t possible. I believe in open borders and more or less unlimited immigration, so I’ve never felt “part” of most of those who share the objective.
Thanks for a response that doesn’t include the words “remoaner” and “saboteurs”.
I think EEA *was* available, but Theresa May fucked it, partly through her own incompetence and partly because she in turn was sabotaged by Johnson et al.
You forgot to mention the word Labour. According to my Dad Labour sabotaged both the 2016 remain vote and the more business friendly Brexit by playing opposition games, and it’s why remainers should think twice about voting for the fools
Yes, but I don’t buy that especially. For a start, the Remain vote did not map 1:1 to Labour.
Corbyn is one of the fathers of Brexit, but not, I think, significantly to blame for the *shape* of Brexit.
I think it is quite clear that Putin thought he was going to get to Kyiv in a day or 2, relieve the heroic paratroopers holding the airports, tea, medals and start arresting anyone on The Lists.
It might even had worked if the US intelligence community had not already told Ukraine who was coming, when they were coming, and where they were going to attack. Ukraine basically watched the Russians land and then shelled them, and then went in on foot to mop up the survivors. So apart from Ukraine knowing their every move it was not a bad plan.
US intelligence is definitely a way to give major help to allies without intervening overtly - didn't we get US help that way in the Falklands war?
Principled sovereignty point - though I started out assuming and wanting EFTA/EEA as a first step until it became clear that wasn’t possible. I believe in open borders and more or less unlimited immigration, so I’ve never felt “part” of most of those who share the objective.
Thanks for a response that doesn’t include the words “remoaner” and “saboteurs”.
I think EEA *was* available, but Theresa May fucked it, partly through her own incompetence and partly because she in turn was sabotaged by Johnson et al.
Yeah, the main problem with May making EEA land was that it would have sealed her Premiership and then Johnson wouldn't have got a go. And that would never have done.
(I'm not convinced that EEA works in the medium term, because the autonomy in some things / vassalage in many things tradeoff works for a small nation but not for a large one. But it was the rational place to stand while working out what to do next as a nation. But nobody (and I mean nobody) was being rational in 2016.)
Macron said that if re-elected he would move swiftly to carry out the pensions overhaul that he had failed to put in place in his current mandate. He would gradually increase the pension age from 62 to 65, bringing it into line with countries such as the UK and Germany, while setting a minimum pension rate at €1,100 a month. He said he had “learned the lessons” from his past difficulties.
In 2019, Macron’s proposed pensions overhaul sparked protests that lasted longer than any strike since the wildcat workers’ stoppages of 1968, and the measures were shelved during the pandemic.
Macron said he would also radically overhaul the unemployment benefits system to push people back to work. This would include requiring unemployed people to undertake 15 to 20 hours of work or training a week. In another politically risky change, all social benefits – for unemployment, housing or childcare – would be centralised in a single system, affecting up to 20 million people.
Principled sovereignty point - though I started out assuming and wanting EFTA/EEA as a first step until it became clear that wasn’t possible. I believe in open borders and more or less unlimited immigration, so I’ve never felt “part” of most of those who share the objective.
Thanks for a response that doesn’t include the words “remoaner” and “saboteurs”.
I think EEA *was* available, but Theresa May fucked it, partly through her own incompetence and partly because she in turn was sabotaged by Johnson et al.
I’m going to add that even though I think immigration is fantastic, I do think the volume was extraordinarily high for a significant period (it’s still very high, but Europeans are being replaced by Indians).
However the way to address was largely to follow the Swiss model, and also to take the opportunity for some benefit reform.
We also failed to incentivise or “reward” communities with immigration, so it was often perceived as a reduction of public service.
I think immigration is mostly about narrative, and we lost the narrative. But I do agree there was something to be done around benefits. I also think there was some reform needed to address low wages, and removing access to cheap foreign replacements is the lazy way. We have just not done enough to combat border line slavey and exploitation.
Principled sovereignty point - though I started out assuming and wanting EFTA/EEA as a first step until it became clear that wasn’t possible. I believe in open borders and more or less unlimited immigration, so I’ve never felt “part” of most of those who share the objective.
Thanks for a response that doesn’t include the words “remoaner” and “saboteurs”.
I think EEA *was* available, but Theresa May fucked it, partly through her own incompetence and partly because she in turn was sabotaged by Johnson et al.
Yeah, the main problem with May making EEA land was that it would have sealed her Premiership and then Johnson wouldn't have got a go. And that would never have done.
(I'm not convinced that EEA works in the medium term, because the autonomy in some things / vassalage in many things tradeoff works for a small nation but not for a large one. But it was the rational place to stand while working out what to do next as a nation. But nobody (and I mean nobody) was being rational in 2016.)
I think the vassal thing is a bit overdone. I would not describe Switzerland as a vassal of the EU.
Of course there are trade-offs, but there always are. Even a hard Brexit does not deliver untrammelled “sovereignty”.
Principled sovereignty point - though I started out assuming and wanting EFTA/EEA as a first step until it became clear that wasn’t possible. I believe in open borders and more or less unlimited immigration, so I’ve never felt “part” of most of those who share the objective.
Thanks for a response that doesn’t include the words “remoaner” and “saboteurs”.
I think EEA *was* available, but Theresa May fucked it, partly through her own incompetence and partly because she in turn was sabotaged by Johnson et al.
Yeah, the main problem with May making EEA land was that it would have sealed her Premiership and then Johnson wouldn't have got a go. And that would never have done.
(I'm not convinced that EEA works in the medium term, because the autonomy in some things / vassalage in many things tradeoff works for a small nation but not for a large one. But it was the rational place to stand while working out what to do next as a nation. But nobody (and I mean nobody) was being rational in 2016.)
Exactly my view at the time. You “park” in the EEA, process the stuff that you repatriate by doing that, then think about phase two.
Mrs Thatcher should have gone much further and completely smashed the unions in the UK. Good employment law is enough, unions are an anachronism, I'd love to see TfL smash the RMT as well even if it meant month of strikes and spotty service or just sacking the lot of them and rehiring non-unionised staff.
I don’t know about the RMT particularly, but it’s hard not to admire a union that secures such attractive conditions for its workers.
Given that wage growth for most deciles has been pretty shit over the past decade or even decades, they must be doing something right.
Having a monopoly on labour supply to certain industries is hardly worthy of admiration. We don't admire the train franchises that charge zillions for season tickets because they have an effective monopoly on the route. This is no different.
It is different though, in the context of a corporate culture that tends towards oligopolistic, and runaway compensation growth for the top 0.5%
Not really. It's a monopoly position, they're exploiting it just as any other monopoly does. If the RMT were split into seven unions each unable to merge and competing objectives and only 1/7th of the staff able to strike at any one time do you think it would get the same outcomes?
Left wing twitter is saying only Brit P&O employees sacked, EU staff retained. Is that correct? And the company’s struggled on the Channel routes cos Brexit? Obvs covid won’t have helped like, but has the long term viability of the cross-channel ferries been wrecked by trucks going straight to Ireland from the continent?
I believe the French employees are protected by French employment law, not EU law.
Seems the most likely explanation. Again, this is not new. It’s easier to sack UK workers. Anyone who has ever worked across Europe knows this.
It’s also easier to hire them.
In France it is much harder to fire workers. To make up for this, there are much larger capital allowances for machinery - so productivity is relatively high.
However, companies move work out of France when they can. In a large part, the Yellow Jacket protests are about this.
You may of noticed that the war in Ukraine is disrupting parts and materials for a number of industries. Those factories were created, as part of the push too move industry to cheaper and cheaper places - Eastern Europe in general has been "mined out" of cheap labour, to a great extent (though movement there is still happening).
Simply moving industry to the super cheap locations (undeveloped bits of Africa, say) doesn't actually get the big savings - you need a society with a semblance of modernity, rule of law and infrastructure to achieve productivity.
Except manufacturing is no longer reliant on cheap labour (though service industries are) which is why many developed counties have strong manufacturing economies with well paid workers.
Look at all the companies saying that their parts pyramid is being interrupted by the Ukraine war - the process I am describing has been happening on a huge scale.
This is why since 1989, the economies of Eastern Europe have done so well (in most cases) - a river of money and jobs has poured into them. It's like watching the water flow into holes dug on a beach - levelling up in action.
And vice versa too. That is just internationalisation of supply chains.
Sure, some manufacturing is low paid (though even there the rag trade has increased here with fast turn around times) but increasingly it is high tech and well paid, at least compared to many service industries. Automation means far fewer employees in Britain build more cars than we did in the Seventies.
I think that the nihilism over manufacturing from Tory freemarketerrs is over done.
I'd agree that investment in automation onshore is a better bet in the long run.
The effect, however at various levels in the economy is to cause economic progress to go backwards for some people, while they see shiny new towers in Bulgaria housing the jobs they once had.
Simply ignoring this is where Le Pen & Co get their votes....
Yes but we see with P and O that they were sold a lie. Their jobs are going to the foreigners post Brexit too.
BREXIT was the symptom. Not the cause, or the cure.
Brexit is a blind alley that will lead to a lost decade or two. The answer to the ills of globalisation is not speeding up globalisation.
Still, the financiers will count their piles of money in London, Zurich and it seems in Dubai.
Principled sovereignty point - though I started out assuming and wanting EFTA/EEA as a first step until it became clear that wasn’t possible. I believe in open borders and more or less unlimited immigration, so I’ve never felt “part” of most of those who share the objective.
Thanks for a response that doesn’t include the words “remoaner” and “saboteurs”.
I think EEA *was* available, but Theresa May fucked it, partly through her own incompetence and partly because she in turn was sabotaged by Johnson et al.
Yeah, the main problem with May making EEA land was that it would have sealed her Premiership and then Johnson wouldn't have got a go. And that would never have done.
(I'm not convinced that EEA works in the medium term, because the autonomy in some things / vassalage in many things tradeoff works for a small nation but not for a large one. But it was the rational place to stand while working out what to do next as a nation. But nobody (and I mean nobody) was being rational in 2016.)
Exactly my view at the time. You “park” in the EEA, process the stuff that you repatriate by doing that, then think about phase two.
Me too!
Sadly we were not running Brexit policy. I do find it intriguing though that we had the same general view, but were in two very opposing camps.
Braverman showing her true crappy colours: very difficult to get rid of people once they’re in the country, who knows what reprehensible things they might do if we don’t do proper checks etc.
Mrs Thatcher should have gone much further and completely smashed the unions in the UK. Good employment law is enough, unions are an anachronism, I'd love to see TfL smash the RMT as well even if it meant month of strikes and spotty service or just sacking the lot of them and rehiring non-unionised staff.
I don’t know about the RMT particularly, but it’s hard not to admire a union that secures such attractive conditions for its workers.
Given that wage growth for most deciles has been pretty shit over the past decade or even decades, they must be doing something right.
Having a monopoly on labour supply to certain industries is hardly worthy of admiration. We don't admire the train franchises that charge zillions for season tickets because they have an effective monopoly on the route. This is no different.
It is different though, in the context of a corporate culture that tends towards oligopolistic, and runaway compensation growth for the top 0.5%
Not really. It's a monopoly position, they're exploiting it just as any other monopoly does. If the RMT were split into seven unions each unable to merge and competing objectives and only 1/7th of the staff able to strike at any one time do you think it would get the same outcomes?
Left wing twitter is saying only Brit P&O employees sacked, EU staff retained. Is that correct? And the company’s struggled on the Channel routes cos Brexit? Obvs covid won’t have helped like, but has the long term viability of the cross-channel ferries been wrecked by trucks going straight to Ireland from the continent?
I believe the French employees are protected by French employment law, not EU law.
Seems the most likely explanation. Again, this is not new. It’s easier to sack UK workers. Anyone who has ever worked across Europe knows this.
It’s also easier to hire them.
In France it is much harder to fire workers. To make up for this, there are much larger capital allowances for machinery - so productivity is relatively high.
However, companies move work out of France when they can. In a large part, the Yellow Jacket protests are about this.
You may of noticed that the war in Ukraine is disrupting parts and materials for a number of industries. Those factories were created, as part of the push too move industry to cheaper and cheaper places - Eastern Europe in general has been "mined out" of cheap labour, to a great extent (though movement there is still happening).
Simply moving industry to the super cheap locations (undeveloped bits of Africa, say) doesn't actually get the big savings - you need a society with a semblance of modernity, rule of law and infrastructure to achieve productivity.
Except manufacturing is no longer reliant on cheap labour (though service industries are) which is why many developed counties have strong manufacturing economies with well paid workers.
Look at all the companies saying that their parts pyramid is being interrupted by the Ukraine war - the process I am describing has been happening on a huge scale.
This is why since 1989, the economies of Eastern Europe have done so well (in most cases) - a river of money and jobs has poured into them. It's like watching the water flow into holes dug on a beach - levelling up in action.
And vice versa too. That is just internationalisation of supply chains.
Sure, some manufacturing is low paid (though even there the rag trade has increased here with fast turn around times) but increasingly it is high tech and well paid, at least compared to many service industries. Automation means far fewer employees in Britain build more cars than we did in the Seventies.
I think that the nihilism over manufacturing from Tory freemarketerrs is over done.
I'd agree that investment in automation onshore is a better bet in the long run.
The effect, however at various levels in the economy is to cause economic progress to go backwards for some people, while they see shiny new towers in Bulgaria housing the jobs they once had.
Simply ignoring this is where Le Pen & Co get their votes....
Yes but we see with P and O that they were sold a lie. Their jobs are going to the foreigners post Brexit too.
BREXIT was the symptom. Not the cause, or the cure.
Brexit is a blind alley that will lead to a lost decade or two. The answer to the ills of globalisation is not speeding up globalisation.
Still, the financiers will count their piles of money in London, Zurich and it seems in Dubai.
Brexit (however it was sold to Tory elites), is autarchic in nature, not “speeding up” globalisation.
Braverman showing her true crappy colours: very difficult to get rid of people once they’re in the country, who knows what reprehensible things they might do if we don’t do proper checks etc.
I think it is quite clear that Putin thought he was going to get to Kyiv in a day or 2, relieve the heroic paratroopers holding the airports, tea, medals and start arresting anyone on The Lists.
It might even had worked if the US intelligence community had not already told Ukraine who was coming, when they were coming, and where they were going to attack. Ukraine basically watched the Russians land and then shelled them, and then went in on foot to mop up the survivors. So apart from Ukraine knowing their every move it was not a bad plan.
US intelligence is definitely a way to give major help to allies without intervening overtly - didn't we get US help that way in the Falklands war?
Mrs Thatcher should have gone much further and completely smashed the unions in the UK. Good employment law is enough, unions are an anachronism, I'd love to see TfL smash the RMT as well even if it meant month of strikes and spotty service or just sacking the lot of them and rehiring non-unionised staff.
I don’t know about the RMT particularly, but it’s hard not to admire a union that secures such attractive conditions for its workers.
Given that wage growth for most deciles has been pretty shit over the past decade or even decades, they must be doing something right.
Having a monopoly on labour supply to certain industries is hardly worthy of admiration. We don't admire the train franchises that charge zillions for season tickets because they have an effective monopoly on the route. This is no different.
It is different though, in the context of a corporate culture that tends towards oligopolistic, and runaway compensation growth for the top 0.5%
Not really. It's a monopoly position, they're exploiting it just as any other monopoly does. If the RMT were split into seven unions each unable to merge and competing objectives and only 1/7th of the staff able to strike at any one time do you think it would get the same outcomes?
Left wing twitter is saying only Brit P&O employees sacked, EU staff retained. Is that correct? And the company’s struggled on the Channel routes cos Brexit? Obvs covid won’t have helped like, but has the long term viability of the cross-channel ferries been wrecked by trucks going straight to Ireland from the continent?
I believe the French employees are protected by French employment law, not EU law.
Seems the most likely explanation. Again, this is not new. It’s easier to sack UK workers. Anyone who has ever worked across Europe knows this.
It’s also easier to hire them.
In France it is much harder to fire workers. To make up for this, there are much larger capital allowances for machinery - so productivity is relatively high.
However, companies move work out of France when they can. In a large part, the Yellow Jacket protests are about this.
You may of noticed that the war in Ukraine is disrupting parts and materials for a number of industries. Those factories were created, as part of the push too move industry to cheaper and cheaper places - Eastern Europe in general has been "mined out" of cheap labour, to a great extent (though movement there is still happening).
Simply moving industry to the super cheap locations (undeveloped bits of Africa, say) doesn't actually get the big savings - you need a society with a semblance of modernity, rule of law and infrastructure to achieve productivity.
Except manufacturing is no longer reliant on cheap labour (though service industries are) which is why many developed counties have strong manufacturing economies with well paid workers.
Look at all the companies saying that their parts pyramid is being interrupted by the Ukraine war - the process I am describing has been happening on a huge scale.
This is why since 1989, the economies of Eastern Europe have done so well (in most cases) - a river of money and jobs has poured into them. It's like watching the water flow into holes dug on a beach - levelling up in action.
And vice versa too. That is just internationalisation of supply chains.
Sure, some manufacturing is low paid (though even there the rag trade has increased here with fast turn around times) but increasingly it is high tech and well paid, at least compared to many service industries. Automation means far fewer employees in Britain build more cars than we did in the Seventies.
I think that the nihilism over manufacturing from Tory freemarketerrs is over done.
I'd agree that investment in automation onshore is a better bet in the long run.
The effect, however at various levels in the economy is to cause economic progress to go backwards for some people, while they see shiny new towers in Bulgaria housing the jobs they once had.
Simply ignoring this is where Le Pen & Co get their votes....
Yes but we see with P and O that they were sold a lie. Their jobs are going to the foreigners post Brexit too.
BREXIT was the symptom. Not the cause, or the cure.
Brexit is a blind alley that will lead to a lost decade or two. The answer to the ills of globalisation is not speeding up globalisation.
Still, the financiers will count their piles of money in London, Zurich and it seems in Dubai.
Brexit (however it was sold to Tory elites), is autarchic in nature, not “speeding up” globalisation.
Do you think that all small states are autarchic "in nature" and should immediately seek to dissolve themselves into larger neighbours?
Mrs Thatcher should have gone much further and completely smashed the unions in the UK. Good employment law is enough, unions are an anachronism, I'd love to see TfL smash the RMT as well even if it meant month of strikes and spotty service or just sacking the lot of them and rehiring non-unionised staff.
I don’t know about the RMT particularly, but it’s hard not to admire a union that secures such attractive conditions for its workers.
Given that wage growth for most deciles has been pretty shit over the past decade or even decades, they must be doing something right.
Having a monopoly on labour supply to certain industries is hardly worthy of admiration. We don't admire the train franchises that charge zillions for season tickets because they have an effective monopoly on the route. This is no different.
It is different though, in the context of a corporate culture that tends towards oligopolistic, and runaway compensation growth for the top 0.5%
Not really. It's a monopoly position, they're exploiting it just as any other monopoly does. If the RMT were split into seven unions each unable to merge and competing objectives and only 1/7th of the staff able to strike at any one time do you think it would get the same outcomes?
Left wing twitter is saying only Brit P&O employees sacked, EU staff retained. Is that correct? And the company’s struggled on the Channel routes cos Brexit? Obvs covid won’t have helped like, but has the long term viability of the cross-channel ferries been wrecked by trucks going straight to Ireland from the continent?
I believe the French employees are protected by French employment law, not EU law.
Seems the most likely explanation. Again, this is not new. It’s easier to sack UK workers. Anyone who has ever worked across Europe knows this.
It’s also easier to hire them.
In France it is much harder to fire workers. To make up for this, there are much larger capital allowances for machinery - so productivity is relatively high.
However, companies move work out of France when they can. In a large part, the Yellow Jacket protests are about this.
You may of noticed that the war in Ukraine is disrupting parts and materials for a number of industries. Those factories were created, as part of the push too move industry to cheaper and cheaper places - Eastern Europe in general has been "mined out" of cheap labour, to a great extent (though movement there is still happening).
Simply moving industry to the super cheap locations (undeveloped bits of Africa, say) doesn't actually get the big savings - you need a society with a semblance of modernity, rule of law and infrastructure to achieve productivity.
Except manufacturing is no longer reliant on cheap labour (though service industries are) which is why many developed counties have strong manufacturing economies with well paid workers.
Look at all the companies saying that their parts pyramid is being interrupted by the Ukraine war - the process I am describing has been happening on a huge scale.
This is why since 1989, the economies of Eastern Europe have done so well (in most cases) - a river of money and jobs has poured into them. It's like watching the water flow into holes dug on a beach - levelling up in action.
And vice versa too. That is just internationalisation of supply chains.
Sure, some manufacturing is low paid (though even there the rag trade has increased here with fast turn around times) but increasingly it is high tech and well paid, at least compared to many service industries. Automation means far fewer employees in Britain build more cars than we did in the Seventies.
I think that the nihilism over manufacturing from Tory freemarketerrs is over done.
I'd agree that investment in automation onshore is a better bet in the long run.
The effect, however at various levels in the economy is to cause economic progress to go backwards for some people, while they see shiny new towers in Bulgaria housing the jobs they once had.
Simply ignoring this is where Le Pen & Co get their votes....
Yes but we see with P and O that they were sold a lie. Their jobs are going to the foreigners post Brexit too.
BREXIT was the symptom. Not the cause, or the cure.
Brexit is a blind alley that will lead to a lost decade or two. The answer to the ills of globalisation is not speeding up globalisation.
Still, the financiers will count their piles of money in London, Zurich and it seems in Dubai.
Brexit (however it was sold to Tory elites), is autarchic in nature, not “speeding up” globalisation.
No, the Brexiteers in the driving seat are the P and O style buccaneers. Not the Red Wallers, who will be kept onside with some red meat over culture wars etc. Same in America.
Chris 'Derby' Williamson retweets this nonsense tonight:
"Russia had no choice but to protect the Donbass peoples and since the Security Council could do nothing, and the EU and NATO were supporting the Kiev offensive against the Donbass, Russia was the only nation that could act."
Long article on why Russia was right to invade ukr.
If I recall this man was in the shadow cabinet under Corbyn and would have been housing minister or some such.
He was such a nasty piece of work he couldn't even make it under Corbyn (I think he resigned from a junior position).
I recall someone saying he was fairly normal in the past, but when he lost his seat in 2015 and regained it in 2017 he seemed to just lose it completely.
NPXMP supported him as I recall.
NPXMP has suggested in the last couple of days that Ukraine is favoured by the West purely because it has a superior media operation to Russia, and in the last couple of months that everybody is bored of Taiwan "crying wolf" about China. And he has insisted for years what a decent chap Corbyn is. He is an enormously urbane and intelligent poster, but he is also the one and only person here who is here with an agenda - whether dictated by a foreign power, and if so Russia or China, I'm not sure. But he is.
Macron said that if re-elected he would move swiftly to carry out the pensions overhaul that he had failed to put in place in his current mandate. He would gradually increase the pension age from 62 to 65, bringing it into line with countries such as the UK and Germany, while setting a minimum pension rate at €1,100 a month. He said he had “learned the lessons” from his past difficulties.
In 2019, Macron’s proposed pensions overhaul sparked protests that lasted longer than any strike since the wildcat workers’ stoppages of 1968, and the measures were shelved during the pandemic.
Macron said he would also radically overhaul the unemployment benefits system to push people back to work. This would include requiring unemployed people to undertake 15 to 20 hours of work or training a week. In another politically risky change, all social benefits – for unemployment, housing or childcare – would be centralised in a single system, affecting up to 20 million people.
Yellow Jackets will be rioting in the streets of France every weekend again.
No need for rioting. Macron has just lost the election.
This is what I was saying last week, this time he will need to defend his policy positions, to an electorate who don’t want them. You can say Melenchon is left, Le Pen right, but they both speak for yellow jackets and the silent majority of electorate behind them; their voters can be fluid on this issue, type of Nationalism, anti EU, and another one not mentioned in this paragraph, tax system flawed against workers. Now this is where it gets interesting - fillion got nearly 20% of 1st round voters about half peeled to Macron rest sat on their vote, almost the same with Melechon. How do these 2nd round vote splits if you give more of the abstentions and pecresse votes to the challenger. This election isn’t remotely in the bag.
Macron is a centerist EU supporter, with policy’s neither the right or left in the electorate support.
Mrs Thatcher should have gone much further and completely smashed the unions in the UK. Good employment law is enough, unions are an anachronism, I'd love to see TfL smash the RMT as well even if it meant month of strikes and spotty service or just sacking the lot of them and rehiring non-unionised staff.
I don’t know about the RMT particularly, but it’s hard not to admire a union that secures such attractive conditions for its workers.
Given that wage growth for most deciles has been pretty shit over the past decade or even decades, they must be doing something right.
Having a monopoly on labour supply to certain industries is hardly worthy of admiration. We don't admire the train franchises that charge zillions for season tickets because they have an effective monopoly on the route. This is no different.
It is different though, in the context of a corporate culture that tends towards oligopolistic, and runaway compensation growth for the top 0.5%
Not really. It's a monopoly position, they're exploiting it just as any other monopoly does. If the RMT were split into seven unions each unable to merge and competing objectives and only 1/7th of the staff able to strike at any one time do you think it would get the same outcomes?
Left wing twitter is saying only Brit P&O employees sacked, EU staff retained. Is that correct? And the company’s struggled on the Channel routes cos Brexit? Obvs covid won’t have helped like, but has the long term viability of the cross-channel ferries been wrecked by trucks going straight to Ireland from the continent?
I believe the French employees are protected by French employment law, not EU law.
Seems the most likely explanation. Again, this is not new. It’s easier to sack UK workers. Anyone who has ever worked across Europe knows this.
It’s also easier to hire them.
In France it is much harder to fire workers. To make up for this, there are much larger capital allowances for machinery - so productivity is relatively high.
However, companies move work out of France when they can. In a large part, the Yellow Jacket protests are about this.
You may of noticed that the war in Ukraine is disrupting parts and materials for a number of industries. Those factories were created, as part of the push too move industry to cheaper and cheaper places - Eastern Europe in general has been "mined out" of cheap labour, to a great extent (though movement there is still happening).
Simply moving industry to the super cheap locations (undeveloped bits of Africa, say) doesn't actually get the big savings - you need a society with a semblance of modernity, rule of law and infrastructure to achieve productivity.
Except manufacturing is no longer reliant on cheap labour (though service industries are) which is why many developed counties have strong manufacturing economies with well paid workers.
Look at all the companies saying that their parts pyramid is being interrupted by the Ukraine war - the process I am describing has been happening on a huge scale.
This is why since 1989, the economies of Eastern Europe have done so well (in most cases) - a river of money and jobs has poured into them. It's like watching the water flow into holes dug on a beach - levelling up in action.
And vice versa too. That is just internationalisation of supply chains.
Sure, some manufacturing is low paid (though even there the rag trade has increased here with fast turn around times) but increasingly it is high tech and well paid, at least compared to many service industries. Automation means far fewer employees in Britain build more cars than we did in the Seventies.
I think that the nihilism over manufacturing from Tory freemarketerrs is over done.
I'd agree that investment in automation onshore is a better bet in the long run.
The effect, however at various levels in the economy is to cause economic progress to go backwards for some people, while they see shiny new towers in Bulgaria housing the jobs they once had.
Simply ignoring this is where Le Pen & Co get their votes....
Yes but we see with P and O that they were sold a lie. Their jobs are going to the foreigners post Brexit too.
BREXIT was the symptom. Not the cause, or the cure.
Brexit is a blind alley that will lead to a lost decade or two. The answer to the ills of globalisation is not speeding up globalisation.
Still, the financiers will count their piles of money in London, Zurich and it seems in Dubai.
Brexit (however it was sold to Tory elites), is autarchic in nature, not “speeding up” globalisation.
Do you think that all small state are autarchic "in nature" and should immediately seek to dissolve themselves into larger neighbours?
I don’t buy your premise here, which is that EU entails “dissolution”. In fact, I think it’s batty.
It’s one thing Bono writing that shit, it’s another one Pelosi reading it.
She should have stuck with Yeats, as @Cyclefree could have told her.
Fucking morons the lot of them.
Happy St Patrick’s Day, all.
I think some allowance has to be made for very old people thinking Bono is quite the young hipster, helping them to connect with de yoot. Next up, Mick and the boys (the ones left alive) introduce Biden’s state of the union address.
No. No allowance
You would not grant Trump any latitude
This woman probably should not be in charge of a shopping cart, she is orders of magnitude incapable of running a superpower. It is embarrassing and scary that America is reduced to this, just as we tiptoe towards World War 3
Isn't it good news she isn't, then?
She's two heartbeats away from running the USA, and she has significant power in the Capitol
It's ridiculous. She's my sad demented aunty Lois on the sauce.
America, get a grip
By January it will probably be GOP leader Kevin Mccarthy after the midterms who replaces Pelosi as Speaker and 3rd in line anyway.
Mccarthy is 57
Thank fuck
I don't envy American voters. The Democrats are diseased and need to be hurled into oblivion for a decade to acquire more sense and better leaders. And yet, Trump and the GOP contrive to be worse?!
Maybe Putin and China are right. Democracy is fatally flawed
It's not a good time to be doubting the fundamentals of western freedom, but America is making me do that
Liberal democracy is dying and the US will be the first to fall. What follows will be far worse than communism would have been. You had your chance.
Macron said that if re-elected he would move swiftly to carry out the pensions overhaul that he had failed to put in place in his current mandate. He would gradually increase the pension age from 62 to 65, bringing it into line with countries such as the UK and Germany, while setting a minimum pension rate at €1,100 a month. He said he had “learned the lessons” from his past difficulties.
In 2019, Macron’s proposed pensions overhaul sparked protests that lasted longer than any strike since the wildcat workers’ stoppages of 1968, and the measures were shelved during the pandemic.
Macron said he would also radically overhaul the unemployment benefits system to push people back to work. This would include requiring unemployed people to undertake 15 to 20 hours of work or training a week. In another politically risky change, all social benefits – for unemployment, housing or childcare – would be centralised in a single system, affecting up to 20 million people.
Yellow Jackets will be rioting in the streets of France every weekend again.
Yes, between this and Corsica, it must be that Le Pen has more than 1 chance in 20. Seems value, even if a trading bet. Macron is way short at 1.08 on Smarkets.
Mrs Thatcher should have gone much further and completely smashed the unions in the UK. Good employment law is enough, unions are an anachronism, I'd love to see TfL smash the RMT as well even if it meant month of strikes and spotty service or just sacking the lot of them and rehiring non-unionised staff.
I don’t know about the RMT particularly, but it’s hard not to admire a union that secures such attractive conditions for its workers.
Given that wage growth for most deciles has been pretty shit over the past decade or even decades, they must be doing something right.
Having a monopoly on labour supply to certain industries is hardly worthy of admiration. We don't admire the train franchises that charge zillions for season tickets because they have an effective monopoly on the route. This is no different.
It is different though, in the context of a corporate culture that tends towards oligopolistic, and runaway compensation growth for the top 0.5%
Not really. It's a monopoly position, they're exploiting it just as any other monopoly does. If the RMT were split into seven unions each unable to merge and competing objectives and only 1/7th of the staff able to strike at any one time do you think it would get the same outcomes?
Left wing twitter is saying only Brit P&O employees sacked, EU staff retained. Is that correct? And the company’s struggled on the Channel routes cos Brexit? Obvs covid won’t have helped like, but has the long term viability of the cross-channel ferries been wrecked by trucks going straight to Ireland from the continent?
I believe the French employees are protected by French employment law, not EU law.
Seems the most likely explanation. Again, this is not new. It’s easier to sack UK workers. Anyone who has ever worked across Europe knows this.
It’s also easier to hire them.
In France it is much harder to fire workers. To make up for this, there are much larger capital allowances for machinery - so productivity is relatively high.
However, companies move work out of France when they can. In a large part, the Yellow Jacket protests are about this.
You may of noticed that the war in Ukraine is disrupting parts and materials for a number of industries. Those factories were created, as part of the push too move industry to cheaper and cheaper places - Eastern Europe in general has been "mined out" of cheap labour, to a great extent (though movement there is still happening).
Simply moving industry to the super cheap locations (undeveloped bits of Africa, say) doesn't actually get the big savings - you need a society with a semblance of modernity, rule of law and infrastructure to achieve productivity.
Except manufacturing is no longer reliant on cheap labour (though service industries are) which is why many developed counties have strong manufacturing economies with well paid workers.
Look at all the companies saying that their parts pyramid is being interrupted by the Ukraine war - the process I am describing has been happening on a huge scale.
This is why since 1989, the economies of Eastern Europe have done so well (in most cases) - a river of money and jobs has poured into them. It's like watching the water flow into holes dug on a beach - levelling up in action.
And vice versa too. That is just internationalisation of supply chains.
Sure, some manufacturing is low paid (though even there the rag trade has increased here with fast turn around times) but increasingly it is high tech and well paid, at least compared to many service industries. Automation means far fewer employees in Britain build more cars than we did in the Seventies.
I think that the nihilism over manufacturing from Tory freemarketerrs is over done.
I'd agree that investment in automation onshore is a better bet in the long run.
The effect, however at various levels in the economy is to cause economic progress to go backwards for some people, while they see shiny new towers in Bulgaria housing the jobs they once had.
Simply ignoring this is where Le Pen & Co get their votes....
Yes but we see with P and O that they were sold a lie. Their jobs are going to the foreigners post Brexit too.
BREXIT was the symptom. Not the cause, or the cure.
Brexit is a blind alley that will lead to a lost decade or two. The answer to the ills of globalisation is not speeding up globalisation.
Still, the financiers will count their piles of money in London, Zurich and it seems in Dubai.
Brexit (however it was sold to Tory elites), is autarchic in nature, not “speeding up” globalisation.
Do you think that all small state are autarchic "in nature" and should immediately seek to dissolve themselves into larger neighbours?
I don’t buy your premise here, which is that EU entails “dissolution”. In fact, I think it’s batty.
Over the long term it's a state building project.
Regardless of the specifics of the EU debate, I don't see how you can argue that not being part of a trade bloc has any inherent bias towards autarky.
It’s one thing Bono writing that shit, it’s another one Pelosi reading it.
She should have stuck with Yeats, as @Cyclefree could have told her.
Fucking morons the lot of them.
Happy St Patrick’s Day, all.
I think some allowance has to be made for very old people thinking Bono is quite the young hipster, helping them to connect with de yoot. Next up, Mick and the boys (the ones left alive) introduce Biden’s state of the union address.
No. No allowance
You would not grant Trump any latitude
This woman probably should not be in charge of a shopping cart, she is orders of magnitude incapable of running a superpower. It is embarrassing and scary that America is reduced to this, just as we tiptoe towards World War 3
Isn't it good news she isn't, then?
She's two heartbeats away from running the USA, and she has significant power in the Capitol
It's ridiculous. She's my sad demented aunty Lois on the sauce.
America, get a grip
By January it will probably be GOP leader Kevin Mccarthy after the midterms who replaces Pelosi as Speaker and 3rd in line anyway.
Mccarthy is 57
Thank fuck
I don't envy American voters. The Democrats are diseased and need to be hurled into oblivion for a decade to acquire more sense and better leaders. And yet, Trump and the GOP contrive to be worse?!
Maybe Putin and China are right. Democracy is fatally flawed
It's not a good time to be doubting the fundamentals of western freedom, but America is making me do that
Liberal democracy is dying and the US will be the first to fall. What follows will be far worse than communism would have been. You had your chance.
NPXMP has suggested in the last couple of days that Ukraine is favoured by the West purely because it has a superior media operation to Russia, and in the last couple of months that everybody is bored of Taiwan "crying wolf" about China. And he has insisted for years what a decent chap Corbyn is. He is an enormously urbane and intelligent poster, but he is also the one and only person here who is here with an agenda - whether dictated by a foreign power, and if so Russia or China, I'm not sure. But he is.
Your first sentence is false and I think you should apologise for it (or find a citation if you can!) - of course I didn't say Ukraine is favoured by the West purely because it has a superior media operation. It does, but obviously we'd favour them anyway. I oppose the invasion and spoke at a large Ukraine solidarity rally only last week. I proposed a motion supporting Ukraine at a Labour meeting two days ago.
Yes, I don't think Taiwan is under credible threat at all, and I'm fond of Corbyn, who i've known on and off for more than 50 years and regard as a friend. I don't turn my back on people when they become unpopular.
As for the suggestion that I'm possibly acting on instructions from Russia or China, you're just being silly. They're both dictatonships, which I opposed even in my communist teens, and Russia, as we see, is a militarist and nationalist one as well - if you've followed my comments you'll know what I think about aggressive nationalism anywhere. I retain some sympathy with Russians as a people because of my mother, but that's as far as it goes.
It’s one thing Bono writing that shit, it’s another one Pelosi reading it.
She should have stuck with Yeats, as @Cyclefree could have told her.
Fucking morons the lot of them.
Happy St Patrick’s Day, all.
I think some allowance has to be made for very old people thinking Bono is quite the young hipster, helping them to connect with de yoot. Next up, Mick and the boys (the ones left alive) introduce Biden’s state of the union address.
No. No allowance
You would not grant Trump any latitude
This woman probably should not be in charge of a shopping cart, she is orders of magnitude incapable of running a superpower. It is embarrassing and scary that America is reduced to this, just as we tiptoe towards World War 3
Isn't it good news she isn't, then?
She's two heartbeats away from running the USA, and she has significant power in the Capitol
It's ridiculous. She's my sad demented aunty Lois on the sauce.
America, get a grip
By January it will probably be GOP leader Kevin Mccarthy after the midterms who replaces Pelosi as Speaker and 3rd in line anyway.
Mccarthy is 57
Thank fuck
I don't envy American voters. The Democrats are diseased and need to be hurled into oblivion for a decade to acquire more sense and better leaders. And yet, Trump and the GOP contrive to be worse?!
Maybe Putin and China are right. Democracy is fatally flawed
It's not a good time to be doubting the fundamentals of western freedom, but America is making me do that
Liberal democracy is dying and the US will be the first to fall. What follows will be far worse than communism would have been. You had your chance.
Communism isn't compatible with liberal democracy, and who's to say that communism isn't what's coming to the US anyway?
I did notice that even pro-Russian sources for what's going on on the ground were talking about Russia pulling back to defend against a Ukrainian counterattack.
It’s possible that Putin’s new strategy is:
1. Move Russia along the authoritarian to totalitarian spectrum
2. Scare the shit out of his own population.
Thereby cementing his own power and allowing a retreat from Ukraine.
Since Putin has complete control of the media, why can't he announce victory, no NATO for Ukraine etc and arrest anyone who says otherwise? Then withdraw the troops and say that all Western goods are evil which is why there are none in the shops. Job done.
Principled sovereignty point - though I started out assuming and wanting EFTA/EEA as a first step until it became clear that wasn’t possible. I believe in open borders and more or less unlimited immigration, so I’ve never felt “part” of most of those who share the objective.
Thanks for a response that doesn’t include the words “remoaner” and “saboteurs”.
I think EEA *was* available, but Theresa May fucked it, partly through her own incompetence and partly because she in turn was sabotaged by Johnson et al.
You forgot to mention the word Labour. According to my Dad Labour sabotaged both the 2016 remain vote and the more business friendly Brexit by playing opposition games, and it’s why remainers should think twice about voting for the fools
Yes, but I don’t buy that especially. For a start, the Remain vote did not map 1:1 to Labour.
Corbyn is one of the fathers of Brexit, but not, I think, significantly to blame for the *shape* of Brexit.
That’s a big call. At one point Boris voted for May Brexit and Labour killed it is what factually happened in the history books is it not?
Mrs Thatcher should have gone much further and completely smashed the unions in the UK. Good employment law is enough, unions are an anachronism, I'd love to see TfL smash the RMT as well even if it meant month of strikes and spotty service or just sacking the lot of them and rehiring non-unionised staff.
I don’t know about the RMT particularly, but it’s hard not to admire a union that secures such attractive conditions for its workers.
Given that wage growth for most deciles has been pretty shit over the past decade or even decades, they must be doing something right.
Having a monopoly on labour supply to certain industries is hardly worthy of admiration. We don't admire the train franchises that charge zillions for season tickets because they have an effective monopoly on the route. This is no different.
It is different though, in the context of a corporate culture that tends towards oligopolistic, and runaway compensation growth for the top 0.5%
Not really. It's a monopoly position, they're exploiting it just as any other monopoly does. If the RMT were split into seven unions each unable to merge and competing objectives and only 1/7th of the staff able to strike at any one time do you think it would get the same outcomes?
Left wing twitter is saying only Brit P&O employees sacked, EU staff retained. Is that correct? And the company’s struggled on the Channel routes cos Brexit? Obvs covid won’t have helped like, but has the long term viability of the cross-channel ferries been wrecked by trucks going straight to Ireland from the continent?
I believe the French employees are protected by French employment law, not EU law.
Seems the most likely explanation. Again, this is not new. It’s easier to sack UK workers. Anyone who has ever worked across Europe knows this.
It’s also easier to hire them.
In France it is much harder to fire workers. To make up for this, there are much larger capital allowances for machinery - so productivity is relatively high.
However, companies move work out of France when they can. In a large part, the Yellow Jacket protests are about this.
You may of noticed that the war in Ukraine is disrupting parts and materials for a number of industries. Those factories were created, as part of the push too move industry to cheaper and cheaper places - Eastern Europe in general has been "mined out" of cheap labour, to a great extent (though movement there is still happening).
Simply moving industry to the super cheap locations (undeveloped bits of Africa, say) doesn't actually get the big savings - you need a society with a semblance of modernity, rule of law and infrastructure to achieve productivity.
Except manufacturing is no longer reliant on cheap labour (though service industries are) which is why many developed counties have strong manufacturing economies with well paid workers.
Look at all the companies saying that their parts pyramid is being interrupted by the Ukraine war - the process I am describing has been happening on a huge scale.
This is why since 1989, the economies of Eastern Europe have done so well (in most cases) - a river of money and jobs has poured into them. It's like watching the water flow into holes dug on a beach - levelling up in action.
And vice versa too. That is just internationalisation of supply chains.
Sure, some manufacturing is low paid (though even there the rag trade has increased here with fast turn around times) but increasingly it is high tech and well paid, at least compared to many service industries. Automation means far fewer employees in Britain build more cars than we did in the Seventies.
I think that the nihilism over manufacturing from Tory freemarketerrs is over done.
I'd agree that investment in automation onshore is a better bet in the long run.
The effect, however at various levels in the economy is to cause economic progress to go backwards for some people, while they see shiny new towers in Bulgaria housing the jobs they once had.
Simply ignoring this is where Le Pen & Co get their votes....
Yes but we see with P and O that they were sold a lie. Their jobs are going to the foreigners post Brexit too.
BREXIT was the symptom. Not the cause, or the cure.
Brexit is a blind alley that will lead to a lost decade or two. The answer to the ills of globalisation is not speeding up globalisation.
Still, the financiers will count their piles of money in London, Zurich and it seems in Dubai.
Brexit (however it was sold to Tory elites), is autarchic in nature, not “speeding up” globalisation.
Do you think that all small state are autarchic "in nature" and should immediately seek to dissolve themselves into larger neighbours?
I don’t buy your premise here, which is that EU entails “dissolution”. In fact, I think it’s batty.
Over the long term it's a state building project.
Regardless of the specifics of the EU debate, I don't see how you can argue that not being part of a trade bloc has any inherent bias towards autarky.
On your second point, because the UK now has more restricted trade with other countries, and I think you ignore that while the EU is a trade bloc it is not static in itself, it seems to agree trade deals with others.
Your first point I would want to reply more fully, I am heading to a bar, but I don’t believe the direction of travel has been very fast; and nor is it fixed.
I see the workers are finding out what global buccaneering Britain is all about, and why they need a decent union.
Would being in the EU have made any difference though? Happy to be shown I’m wrong about that.
I took Foxy to mean trade union…
Correct.
Well yebbut "global buccaneering Britain" is an implied ref to EU membership, no?
No, it is the style of Brexit. There are others, that actually do protect the workers and farmers rather than shaft them for a quick buck.
Would being in the EU have made a difference?
I believe there would have been a compulsory consultation period. More important though is a government that believes protection of workers is not just red tape.
I think there still is, hence the ‘offer’ is 13 weeks pay in lieu of this. I hate what they are doing, but I don’t see evidence that the ability to do it is linked to Brexit. Happy to be shown I’m wrong, genuinely.
I don't think it's Brexit. It's capitalism working as designed - the employers are optimising by finding non-union staff from poorer countries willing to work for less.
As soon as globalisation took hold, I predicted that this sort of thing would become routine, though as MaxPB says it's more usually by a business reopening somewhere poorer (cf. the manufacturing industry and China). In a very crude way, it redistributes money from poorer people in rich countries to (a) employers and (b) poorer people in poorer countries.
My view, of course, is that the process needs to be balanced by intervenionist governments, who tax the employers on local turnover (none of this "Haha, we're based in the Virgin Islands" stuff), require lengthy notice, subsidise retraining, and support low-paid workers and the unemployed. Globalisation shouldn't be stopped, but it should be constrained by minimum conditions, with tax havens subject to sanctions. The process shouldn't be stopped, but it should be made slow and expensive, so that people affected can be helped, with obstacles imposed on companies that try to circumvent the rules.
Will the Conservatives do more than say "Tsk!" and move on? Of course not. They see the system working as they expect, and are just a bit embarrassed that it's so obvious in this case.
The conservative mp who chairs the transport select committee seemed pretty hacked off and in full agreement the labour mp who was featured before him. It sounds pretty shocking at the moment, so hopefully a lot can be done.
The only shocking aspect I can see is that the workers seem not to have gone through any form of consultation, and the manner of communication was crass.
Otherwise, it’s pretty standard stuff, isn’t it?
Yes, they've been made an offer of termination too, I think it's 13 weeks of regular pay. Which actually seems quite generous on the face of it. The communication has been substandard, but the pay off is probably why there's no consultation, it's not redundancy.
If more than 20 people you have to have consultation. Sure you would be delighted with same treatment. Generous my arse. Pretty stupid , with that number you need minimum 90 days consultaion so 13 weeks is shite.
It’s one thing Bono writing that shit, it’s another one Pelosi reading it.
She should have stuck with Yeats, as @Cyclefree could have told her.
Fucking morons the lot of them.
Happy St Patrick’s Day, all.
I think some allowance has to be made for very old people thinking Bono is quite the young hipster, helping them to connect with de yoot. Next up, Mick and the boys (the ones left alive) introduce Biden’s state of the union address.
No. No allowance
You would not grant Trump any latitude
This woman probably should not be in charge of a shopping cart, she is orders of magnitude incapable of running a superpower. It is embarrassing and scary that America is reduced to this, just as we tiptoe towards World War 3
Isn't it good news she isn't, then?
She's two heartbeats away from running the USA, and she has significant power in the Capitol
It's ridiculous. She's my sad demented aunty Lois on the sauce.
America, get a grip
By January it will probably be GOP leader Kevin Mccarthy after the midterms who replaces Pelosi as Speaker and 3rd in line anyway.
Mccarthy is 57
Thank fuck
I don't envy American voters. The Democrats are diseased and need to be hurled into oblivion for a decade to acquire more sense and better leaders. And yet, Trump and the GOP contrive to be worse?!
Maybe Putin and China are right. Democracy is fatally flawed
It's not a good time to be doubting the fundamentals of western freedom, but America is making me do that
Liberal democracy is dying and the US will be the first to fall. What follows will be far worse than communism would have been. You had your chance.
Communism isn't compatible with liberal democracy, and who's to say that communism isn't what's coming to the US anyway?
I think Lenin and the Bolshevik’s were actually in the Liberal Democrat party?
I did notice that even pro-Russian sources for what's going on on the ground were talking about Russia pulling back to defend against a Ukrainian counterattack.
It’s possible that Putin’s new strategy is:
1. Move Russia along the authoritarian to totalitarian spectrum
2. Scare the shit out of his own population.
Thereby cementing his own power and allowing a retreat from Ukraine.
Since Putin has complete control of the media, why can't he announce victory, no NATO for Ukraine etc and arrest anyone who says otherwise? Then withdraw the troops and say that all Western goods are evil which is why there are none in the shops. Job done.
His true goal is the history books. He wants to be the 21st century Peter the Great.
Even he is not deluded enough to think that the history books of 2150 will be written by his FSB mates and oligarch friends.
Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, has hit out at Russian “dirty tricks” after being targeted by an impostor posing as the Ukrainian prime minister.
He told The Times that a man pretending to be prime minister Denys Shmyhal on a video call asked him a series of questions which “got wilder and wilder so I ended the call”.
One line of inquiry is that the call was orchestrated by Russian intelligence as an attempt to extract sensitive information from Wallace or as an attempt to embarrass him.
Wallace, a former Scots Guards who was in Poland at the time, ordered an immediate inquiry to find out how the impostor was able to speak to him. It is understood the call lasted less than ten minutes.
No, but I don't think it's that outrageous that they were able to speak to him.
What he said, on the other hand...
not too bright if he got 10 minutes out of him. WTF did he talked to some looney about for nearly ten minutes before discovering he was a fake. Shows the calibre of donkey we have in Westminster.
I am assuming you are used to your calls being scheduled by your office, and that it was also occurring through a "translator" at one end or the other. I don't think the Minister is to blame.
PMSL, your excuse for him being an absolute donkey and employing other donkeys to make him look even more donkeyish.
I'm not saying they are not donkeys. It just sounds like a typical institutional failure.
It happens too often to tehm and they constantly prove they are useless donkeys nevertheless.
Comments
There's no economic upside to the additional capacity and drivers can be trained and hired pretty rapidly should the need arise for them. It's not as though there's a fixed supply. What I'm suggesting is we cut fixed costs to free up money to invest in the network. It's precisely the opposite of treasury thinking which would rather a higher current fixed cost at the expense of investment.
I hate aftertiming, but PB didn't exist when his The End of History thesis first got publicity (1999?) so you will just have to take my word for it that I identified it at the time as the thesis of a complete and utter wanker. And here we are in 2022...
Although it is difficult for any NI to Scotland start up when the only port is owned by P+O too.
I’m not going to pretend I know the Tube finances inside out, but I doubt you do either. I’m not convinced the trade off you talk about is there.
1. Move Russia along the authoritarian to totalitarian spectrum
2. Scare the shit out of his own population.
Thereby cementing his own power and allowing a retreat from Ukraine.
Christ, Braverman actually did the GSTQ NLAW wank.
He is now in an attritional war with fluid front lines, with a well supplied opponent who is playing clever and facing a hostile population. The economy is collapsing around him, and he has found the boyars are "unreliable".
The question is whether he can survive long enough to grind down enough of Ukraine to celebrate or whether the Russian economy will implode first.
And they can't say they weren't warned - Thomas Young, double slit, 1801...
If you're happy with that because Unions then fine.
Bit earlier,1992. I can remember reading a review of it in the Saturday Guardian in the Blue Parrot cafe in Stockbridge, seemed an exciting concept at the time.
For weeks the southern port city of Mariupol has resisted a Russian onslaught, defended by a nationalist battalion of some 800 volunteers.
The Azov battalion was formed to resist Russian-backed separatists who seized areas of eastern Ukraine in 2014. It takes its name from the internal Sea of Azov on which Mariupol lies.
To Ukrainians these defenders are heroes, holding out against Russia's far more numerous invaders and losing their lives in a bombardment that has killed over 2,000 of Mariupol's civilians and damaged up to 90% of its buildings.
To Russia they are neo-Nazis and their origins lie in a neo-Nazi group called Patriot of Ukraine. They wear the pagan Wolfsangel insignia, which was used by notorious Nazi SS units and is favoured by neo-Nazis. But the battalion says it represents merely the first letters of the slogan National Idea.
The Azov volunteers' original extremist leaders are now gone and the battalion is part of Ukraine's National Guard, under the government's formal oversight and command, say local officials.
Ukraine has cracked down on neo-Nazis in recent years and there are no nationalist parties in parliament.
The battalion currently attracts a broad mix of nationalists, ultranationalists and other young men united by a loathing for Russia. Half of them come from the east and many are Russian-speaking.
This is why since 1989, the economies of Eastern Europe have done so well (in most cases) - a river of money and jobs has poured into them. It's like watching the water flow into holes dug on a beach - levelling up in action.
These guys seem to know what they're talking about;
https://www.londonreconnections.com/2021/tube-financial-crisis-why-closures-rarely-save-money/
https://www.londonreconnections.com/2021/the-political-myth-of-the-driverless-tube-train/
I was impressed by that Anatol Lieven article in the FT about how Putin and the oligarchs admire the way China (Xi) has achieved a much tighter grip while continuing to deliver economic growth.
Not a model to follow.
Cruella on the other hand is on Conservative Party duty. What an idiot.
Sure, some manufacturing is low paid (though even there the rag trade has increased here with fast turn around times) but increasingly it is high tech and well paid, at least compared to many service industries. Automation means far fewer employees in Britain build more cars than we did in the Seventies.
I think that the nihilism over manufacturing from Tory freemarketerrs is over done.
I think EEA *was* available, but Theresa May fucked it, partly through her own incompetence and partly because she in turn was sabotaged by Johnson et al.
https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1504584420166193165?s=20&t=PR0lIKTajcTh4md88QqCJw
The effect, however at various levels in the economy is to cause economic progress to go backwards for some people, while they see shiny new towers in Bulgaria housing the jobs they once had.
Simply ignoring this is where Le Pen & Co get their votes....
However the way to address was largely to follow the Swiss model, and also to take the opportunity for some benefit reform.
We also failed to incentivise or “reward” communities with immigration, so it was often perceived as a reduction of public service.
For a start, the Remain vote did not map 1:1 to Labour.
Corbyn is one of the fathers of Brexit, but not, I think, significantly to blame for the *shape* of Brexit.
(I'm not convinced that EEA works in the medium term, because the autonomy in some things / vassalage in many things tradeoff works for a small nation but not for a large one. But it was the rational place to stand while working out what to do next as a nation. But nobody (and I mean nobody) was being rational in 2016.)
In 2019, Macron’s proposed pensions overhaul sparked protests that lasted longer than any strike since the wildcat workers’ stoppages of 1968, and the measures were shelved during the pandemic.
Macron said he would also radically overhaul the unemployment benefits system to push people back to work. This would include requiring unemployed people to undertake 15 to 20 hours of work or training a week. In another politically risky change, all social benefits – for unemployment, housing or childcare – would be centralised in a single system, affecting up to 20 million people.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/17/emmanuel-macron-vows-to-step-up-welfare-reforms-if-re-elected
Yellow Jackets will be rioting in the streets of France every weekend again.
I would not describe Switzerland as a vassal of the EU.
Of course there are trade-offs, but there always are. Even a hard Brexit does not deliver untrammelled “sovereignty”.
Suspect her mobile will be ringing from No 10 in a few minutes.
Still, the financiers will count their piles of money in London, Zurich and it seems in Dubai.
Sadly we were not running Brexit policy.
I do find it intriguing though that we had the same general view, but were in two very opposing camps.
This is what I was saying last week, this time he will need to defend his policy positions, to an electorate who don’t want them. You can say Melenchon is left, Le Pen right, but they both speak for yellow jackets and the silent majority of electorate behind them; their voters can be fluid on this issue, type of Nationalism, anti EU, and another one not mentioned in this paragraph, tax system flawed against workers. Now this is where it gets interesting - fillion got nearly 20% of 1st round voters about half peeled to Macron rest sat on their vote, almost the same with Melechon. How do these 2nd round vote splits if you give more of the abstentions and pecresse votes to the challenger. This election isn’t remotely in the bag.
Macron is a centerist EU supporter, with policy’s neither the right or left in the electorate support.
Regardless of the specifics of the EU debate, I don't see how you can argue that not being part of a trade bloc has any inherent bias towards autarky.
But Dems need to wake from slumber.
Yes, I don't think Taiwan is under credible threat at all, and I'm fond of Corbyn, who i've known on and off for more than 50 years and regard as a friend. I don't turn my back on people when they become unpopular.
As for the suggestion that I'm possibly acting on instructions from Russia or China, you're just being silly. They're both dictatonships, which I opposed even in my communist teens, and Russia, as we see, is a militarist and nationalist one as well - if you've followed my comments you'll know what I think about aggressive nationalism anywhere. I retain some sympathy with Russians as a people because of my mother, but that's as far as it goes.
Give over, eh?
Hope you are watching Chris Derby Williamson. You and your three mates are utterly at odds with the rest of Britain.
Your first point I would want to reply more fully, I am heading to a bar, but I don’t believe the direction of travel has been very fast; and nor is it fixed.
Even he is not deluded enough to think that the history books of 2150 will be written by his FSB mates and oligarch friends.