Far be it from me to be the first to state the obvious... But, erm. Isn't that why employers are having huge trouble filling minimum wage positions?
Thing is, hospitality jobs make most sense for people who are fairly young, without responsibilities, for whom being in a nice place for a summer, or coming to England to improve their English, is part of the package. There isn't enough value added by them to create a job to support a family, unless you want to raise prices to an unviable level.
The economy will rebalance... Quite possibly with less jobs. But that could be with fewer businesses rather than productivity by mechanisation.
Maybe it's just because I've moved so am noticing. But I'm struck by the sheer number of places to eat round here. Not restaurants, but chippies, pie shops, sandwich shops, kebab places, etc.. None of them are busy at any time. Can't see how the local economy ever supported them all in the first place. And can't see how many will survive for long at this rate.
How so many grotty takeaways and 8-to-late convenience stores exist is a mystery to everyone I know.
Its generally assumed that some of them are a front for more dubious activities.
Yes. We've just had 3 closed down for that very reason. However. There can't be a market for that many places to deliver drugs either, can there?
Probably not but there's also prostitution, money laundering and tax credit farming.
Having cash transactions and people coming and going at all hours must be useful for many criminal activities.
Far be it from me to be the first to state the obvious... But, erm. Isn't that why employers are having huge trouble filling minimum wage positions?
Thing is, hospitality jobs make most sense for people who are fairly young, without responsibilities, for whom being in a nice place for a summer, or coming to England to improve their English, is part of the package. There isn't enough value added by them to create a job to support a family, unless you want to raise prices to an unviable level.
The economy will rebalance... Quite possibly with less jobs. But that could be with fewer businesses rather than productivity by mechanisation.
Maybe it's just because I've moved so am noticing. But I'm struck by the sheer number of places to eat round here. Not restaurants, but chippies, pie shops, sandwich shops, kebab places, etc.. None of them are busy at any time. Can't see how the local economy ever supported them all in the first place. And can't see how many will survive for long at this rate.
How so many grotty takeaways and 8-to-late convenience stores exist is a mystery to everyone I know.
Its generally assumed that some of them are a front for more dubious activities.
Yes. We've just had 3 closed down for that very reason. However. There can't be a market for that many places to deliver drugs either, can there?
Walter White didn’t sell drugs from his car wash but to launder the money
Fair enough. There's some heavy duty laundering going on round here, then.
As well as laundering, there is also blind optimism since most restaurants are badly-located serial failures but the rise in online shopping and delivery means location does not matter. Your kebab shop does not need to be between the pub and the bus stop now that most of its customers use Deliveroo.
Climbdown back into holding pattern on the Northern Ireland Protocol, from a government evidently quite stuck on what to do. Can't successfully negotiate with the EU for fear of backbenchers / DUP, can't really threaten for fear of the consequences. Government without power. https://twitter.com/BBCBreakfast/status/1526440124426473472
Various holding patterns have now been in place for at least 100 years. Brexit threatened to bring a sort of finality between an irresistible force and an immovable object. But everyone manages to keep evading finality. This will continue until there is a united Ireland; at which point no doubt a new holding pattern will form itself. Personally I blame the Vikings and Henry II.
There will never be a united Ireland, at most the Catholic majority areas will join the Republic but Antrim and East Londonderry and Lagan Valley and the Protestant and Unionist dominated areas will stay in the UK.
Repartitioning not only Ireland, and not only the province, but even repartitioning Derry!
Far be it from me to be the first to state the obvious... But, erm. Isn't that why employers are having huge trouble filling minimum wage positions?
Thing is, hospitality jobs make most sense for people who are fairly young, without responsibilities, for whom being in a nice place for a summer, or coming to England to improve their English, is part of the package. There isn't enough value added by them to create a job to support a family, unless you want to raise prices to an unviable level.
The economy will rebalance... Quite possibly with less jobs. But that could be with fewer businesses rather than productivity by mechanisation.
Maybe it's just because I've moved so am noticing. But I'm struck by the sheer number of places to eat round here. Not restaurants, but chippies, pie shops, sandwich shops, kebab places, etc.. None of them are busy at any time. Can't see how the local economy ever supported them all in the first place. And can't see how many will survive for long at this rate.
How so many grotty takeaways and 8-to-late convenience stores exist is a mystery to everyone I know.
Its generally assumed that some of them are a front for more dubious activities.
Yes. We've just had 3 closed down for that very reason. However. There can't be a market for that many places to deliver drugs either, can there?
Walter White didn’t sell drugs from his car wash but to launder the money
In Ozarks it's a motel, at least initially. Although how so much money can be laundered through one motel remains a mystery to me.
Am I the only one who wishes they’d just get on with it and reunify Ireland so we can be free of endless retweets from Scott about the Northern Ireland Protocol and unflinching unionist posts from HYFUD?
I agree with the reunification objective, mainly because it is a righting of a100 yr wrong, not just to get Bozo the Clown out of a hole.
Far be it from me to be the first to state the obvious... But, erm. Isn't that why employers are having huge trouble filling minimum wage positions?
Thing is, hospitality jobs make most sense for people who are fairly young, without responsibilities, for whom being in a nice place for a summer, or coming to England to improve their English, is part of the package. There isn't enough value added by them to create a job to support a family, unless you want to raise prices to an unviable level.
The economy will rebalance... Quite possibly with less jobs. But that could be with fewer businesses rather than productivity by mechanisation.
Maybe it's just because I've moved so am noticing. But I'm struck by the sheer number of places to eat round here. Not restaurants, but chippies, pie shops, sandwich shops, kebab places, etc.. None of them are busy at any time. Can't see how the local economy ever supported them all in the first place. And can't see how many will survive for long at this rate.
How so many grotty takeaways and 8-to-late convenience stores exist is a mystery to everyone I know.
Its generally assumed that some of them are a front for more dubious activities.
Yes. We've just had 3 closed down for that very reason. However. There can't be a market for that many places to deliver drugs either, can there?
Walter White didn’t sell drugs from his car wash but to launder the money
Fair enough. There's some heavy duty laundering going on round here, then.
As well as laundering, there is also blind optimism since most restaurants are badly-located serial failures but the rise in online shopping and delivery means location does not matter. Your kebab shop does not need to be between the pub and the bus stop now that most of its customers use Deliveroo.
Deliveroo doesn't exist round here. Almost every other one is advertising for drivers. Remarkable since they seem to do almost no business. Maybe it should?
Far be it from me to be the first to state the obvious... But, erm. Isn't that why employers are having huge trouble filling minimum wage positions?
Thing is, hospitality jobs make most sense for people who are fairly young, without responsibilities, for whom being in a nice place for a summer, or coming to England to improve their English, is part of the package. There isn't enough value added by them to create a job to support a family, unless you want to raise prices to an unviable level.
The economy will rebalance... Quite possibly with less jobs. But that could be with fewer businesses rather than productivity by mechanisation.
Maybe it's just because I've moved so am noticing. But I'm struck by the sheer number of places to eat round here. Not restaurants, but chippies, pie shops, sandwich shops, kebab places, etc.. None of them are busy at any time. Can't see how the local economy ever supported them all in the first place. And can't see how many will survive for long at this rate.
How so many grotty takeaways and 8-to-late convenience stores exist is a mystery to everyone I know.
Its generally assumed that some of them are a front for more dubious activities.
Yes. We've just had 3 closed down for that very reason. However. There can't be a market for that many places to deliver drugs either, can there?
Walter White didn’t sell drugs from his car wash but to launder the money
Fair enough. There's some heavy duty laundering going on round here, then.
As well as laundering, there is also blind optimism since most restaurants are badly-located serial failures but the rise in online shopping and delivery means location does not matter. Your kebab shop does not need to be between the pub and the bus stop now that most of its customers use Deliveroo.
There's a little cafe very near me. Tiny. Too small to make a living basically. Every two years it folds and is empty for a few weeks.
And then someone else rents it and opens as...a cafe.
I often wonder why these people don't do some basic research before setting up.
Far be it from me to be the first to state the obvious... But, erm. Isn't that why employers are having huge trouble filling minimum wage positions?
Thing is, hospitality jobs make most sense for people who are fairly young, without responsibilities, for whom being in a nice place for a summer, or coming to England to improve their English, is part of the package. There isn't enough value added by them to create a job to support a family, unless you want to raise prices to an unviable level.
The economy will rebalance... Quite possibly with less jobs. But that could be with fewer businesses rather than productivity by mechanisation.
Apparently some hospitality sectors in the USA - this is a worldwide problem - have had to triple or even quadruple wages to get the staff. This is in many ways a good thing, workers in US hospitality were paid horrible wages and expected to make up for it in tipping. Which is a peculiar custom that descends all the way from slavery: slaves emancipated by Lincoln went north and took hospitality jobs (the easiest for the young and rootless, as now) and their employers decided they could do without “white wages” and it went from there
So: good riddance. However this means that American hotel prices have gone through the roof. Double, triple, more. Advice: don’t go on holiday in the USA for a year or two
Given the current £/$ or xyz/$ exchange rate I'm not rushing to go anywhere West - although the Mrs does want to go back to Barbados.
Thankfully she has used all her holiday up so it won't be this year.
HI, Anyone else had their email hacked, the basis seeming to come from this site?
Hacked in what sense? If the baddies have taken control of your email account, then you have a problem because most sites will use it to reset your password. If they are just sending spam to you, or to others pretending it is from you (spoofing) then welcome to the 21st Century.
Though that may change in time. ...Looking further ahead, the Commission is thinking about expanding its strategic infrastructure corridors, dubbed TEN-T, into Ukraine. Such an initiative won't have an immediate impact, but it will make European gauge railways in Ukraine and Moldova eligible for billions in EU funding....
For now, there's only three months to solve the problem of creating room to store this year's harvest.
Climbdown back into holding pattern on the Northern Ireland Protocol, from a government evidently quite stuck on what to do. Can't successfully negotiate with the EU for fear of backbenchers / DUP, can't really threaten for fear of the consequences. Government without power. https://twitter.com/BBCBreakfast/status/1526440124426473472
Simple solution, stop worrying about the consequences and JFDI fix the problem to the satisfaction of the backbenches and DUP.
Once that's done, we can move forwards. That's how the 80 seat majority was won.
Far be it from me to be the first to state the obvious... But, erm. Isn't that why employers are having huge trouble filling minimum wage positions?
Thing is, hospitality jobs make most sense for people who are fairly young, without responsibilities, for whom being in a nice place for a summer, or coming to England to improve their English, is part of the package. There isn't enough value added by them to create a job to support a family, unless you want to raise prices to an unviable level.
The economy will rebalance... Quite possibly with less jobs. But that could be with fewer businesses rather than productivity by mechanisation.
Maybe it's just because I've moved so am noticing. But I'm struck by the sheer number of places to eat round here. Not restaurants, but chippies, pie shops, sandwich shops, kebab places, etc.. None of them are busy at any time. Can't see how the local economy ever supported them all in the first place. And can't see how many will survive for long at this rate.
How so many grotty takeaways and 8-to-late convenience stores exist is a mystery to everyone I know.
Its generally assumed that some of them are a front for more dubious activities.
Yes. We've just had 3 closed down for that very reason. However. There can't be a market for that many places to deliver drugs either, can there?
Walter White didn’t sell drugs from his car wash but to launder the money
Fair enough. There's some heavy duty laundering going on round here, then.
As well as laundering, there is also blind optimism since most restaurants are badly-located serial failures but the rise in online shopping and delivery means location does not matter. Your kebab shop does not need to be between the pub and the bus stop now that most of its customers use Deliveroo.
There's a little cafe very near me. Tiny. Too small to make a living basically. Every two years it folds and is empty for a few weeks.
And then someone else rents it and opens as...a cafe.
I often wonder why these people don't do some basic research before setting up.
Because a failed restaurant is already fitted out, it is cheap for the new, optimistic owners to open.
Climbdown back into holding pattern on the Northern Ireland Protocol, from a government evidently quite stuck on what to do. Can't successfully negotiate with the EU for fear of backbenchers / DUP, can't really threaten for fear of the consequences. Government without power. https://twitter.com/BBCBreakfast/status/1526440124426473472
Simple solution, stop worrying about the consequences and JFDI fix the problem to the satisfaction of the backbenches and DUP.
Once that's done, we can move forwards. That's how the 80 seat majority was won.
Climbdown back into holding pattern on the Northern Ireland Protocol, from a government evidently quite stuck on what to do. Can't successfully negotiate with the EU for fear of backbenchers / DUP, can't really threaten for fear of the consequences. Government without power. https://twitter.com/BBCBreakfast/status/1526440124426473472
Various holding patterns have now been in place for at least 100 years. Brexit threatened to bring a sort of finality between an irresistible force and an immovable object. But everyone manages to keep evading finality. This will continue until there is a united Ireland; at which point no doubt a new holding pattern will form itself. Personally I blame the Vikings and Henry II.
There will never be a united Ireland, at most the Catholic majority areas will join the Republic but Antrim and East Londonderry and Lagan Valley and the Protestant and Unionist dominated areas will stay in the UK.
Repartitioning not only Ireland, and not only the province, but even repartitioning Derry!
Personal rant against the use of 'likely' as an unqualified adverb. Ugh!
(I may be becoming an old fogey, of course.)
Kicking against the pricks there Ben.
“Likely” is an Americanism and I like it. And use it. A nice alternative to “probably”
Not all Americanisms are bad or ugly or pointless. Plenty are excellent and useful
A point of agreement. UK English is centuries of borrowings of one kind or another. Why complain now ?
One of my various spare-time jobs is translation from American to English for companies ranging from IT server suppliers to high-end furniture companies, which think that their profit margins may as well be protected by ensuring that the customer aren't put off by refrerence to "color" or "likely". Because American English has crept into British usage, it's actually non-trivial - will a British purchaser of luxury curtains will be upset if they're called "drapes"? It's not the most politically progressive part of my life.
I'm not too bothered by Americanisms - the language moves as it will, like a river stealthily infiltrating the woods. But I do resist bad spelling in public documents. My council is currently examining an extremely glossy 20-pages analysis of housing projects from a professional UK consultancy that do nothing but this sort of thing. The document repeatedly refers to "appartments" with two p's, which isn't just American but wrong even in American English. It's like a Jaguar salesman referring to his product as a "Jagguar". Brrrr.
Climbdown back into holding pattern on the Northern Ireland Protocol, from a government evidently quite stuck on what to do. Can't successfully negotiate with the EU for fear of backbenchers / DUP, can't really threaten for fear of the consequences. Government without power. https://twitter.com/BBCBreakfast/status/1526440124426473472
Simple solution, stop worrying about the consequences and JFDI fix the problem to the satisfaction of the backbenches and DUP.
Once that's done, we can move forwards. That's how the 80 seat majority was won.
So much for negotiating then, bugger the Nats and Non-Aligned, it's their backbenchers and DUP count?
Here is @BrandonLewis repeating the false claim "there are more people in work now than before the pandemic" for which the PM has been fact-checked eight times and reprimanded by the govt's own statistical authority - here:
UK unemployment rate now 3.8% UK unemployment rate December 2019 3.9%
Proportionately more people are employed now than then. Yes quite a few people have retired during the pandemic, but we have never, ever classed the retired within employed/unemployed discussions.
Feeling like a very minor PB celebrity this morning. Obviously nothing like the fame (or infamy) of @leon or @hyufd. Why? Well I have been referenced unsolicited twice in the last 24 hours. This has rather gone to my head. In fairness one reference was for a post I didn't make (I hope it was good) and this morning nameless as the PB dude who broke both his legs just walking. So pretty minor stuff but hey take anything you can get re the impact you have made on the PB universe.
Anyway having been given permission to throw away the crutches and orthopaedic boot at my discretion I of course did both immediately. Walking without crutches is easy peasy. Without the boot not so much. Bloody painful actually.
Climbdown back into holding pattern on the Northern Ireland Protocol, from a government evidently quite stuck on what to do. Can't successfully negotiate with the EU for fear of backbenchers / DUP, can't really threaten for fear of the consequences. Government without power. https://twitter.com/BBCBreakfast/status/1526440124426473472
Simple solution, stop worrying about the consequences and JFDI fix the problem to the satisfaction of the backbenches and DUP.
Once that's done, we can move forwards. That's how the 80 seat majority was won.
So much for negotiating then, bugger the Nats and Non-Aligned, it's their backbenchers and DUP count?
Well obviously the SDLP and Alliance would back Starmer for PM in a hung parliament which polls suggest as the likely outcome of the next general election, as would SF if they take their seats.
Only the DUP would consider making Boris PM again and only if he removed the Irish Sea border. Boris also needs his backbenchers back on board to secure his leadership and premiership
Anyway, I am off to the heart of the City of London for the first time in simply ages to give a talk on Bad People and How to Stop Them etc etc. in front of real life human beings.
It will be an odd experience after all this time doing stuff by Zoom.
Wish me luck!
Break a leg, you'll be fine
Given the average PBer's propensity for accidents (wasn't there someone who broke both their legs just walking about?!), you shouldn't joke.
If that is the case, surely we are in obligatory joke territory. #objoke
70%!!! Christ you’d want to spend/invest all cash the instant it entered your account. Lots of gold under their mattresses, presumably?
When bitcoin and currencies collapse, gold under mattresses will be very useful. Never dismiss wisdom tried and tested over thousands of years.
When Yugoslavia collapsed, gold was useless.
The exchange rate of bread to gold was off the charts.
What you needed, apparently, was a large quantity of average to cheap wine. Need food? Swap for wine. Need to see a dentist? Swap for wine.
Shortly after the 1971 Bangladeshi war of independence, my father was in the country to provide emergency obstetric and gynaecological care. He rings my Mum up back in London. “What drugs should I send?” she asks. “Insulin,” he says. “What do you want insulin for? You’re not a diabetologist!?” “It’s the best drug to use in bartering.”
In 1945, just after war, my father, a pipe-smoker, was in the RAF in Denmark and wrote home to my mother asking for cigarettes. She sent some and asked why. He told her; barter.
Am I the only one who wishes they’d just get on with it and reunify Ireland so we can be free of endless retweets from Scott about the Northern Ireland Protocol and unflinching unionist posts from HYFUD?
The last minute or so is the anchor, Olga Skabeyeva, with her mad and rather chilling summary - "We were forced into this. We cannot surrender. We cannot talk to anyone. We must fight until the end. We will get there; our great country will win"
Part of the problem seems to be that Russians conflate prior USSR successes with Russian ones
And also overplay their role.
I listened to an interview with David Dimbleby yesterday, where he basically said that the Russians won the war, and that our contribution was minor. It was bullsh*t. Yes, the Russians fought their way into Germany. Yes, the Russians kept a million or more German troops occupied.
But it ignores two facts: *) For two years, Russia was on Germany's side. *) The massive amount of financial and material aid the US (and us, to a lesser extent) gave Russia. The US alone gave 400,000 jeeps and trucks, 14,000 planes, millions of tons of fuel, millions of tons of food, and everything else an army requires. Without this, Russia would have been defeated.
Whilst we tend to overplay our role, we at least generally acknowledge the Yanks, Canadians, Russians, Poles et al who fought alongside us (*). The Second World War was won by a collaboration, with each major power giving what they could. Without any of them, the war could have ended very differently.
The Russians see it as 'their' victory, apparently with the roles of other countries whitewashed. Whilst we also suffer from this, there does not appear to be quite the same mythos over it.
(*) Not Indians though, sadly. Their contribution to the war effort is often forgotten.
A general number I have in my head is that Western Allies supplied 30% or so of war materiel used by Russia in WW2.
One thing I have picked up on recently is that the routes through Persia and the Northern Pacific were as significant as the Arctic Convoy route.
This is American numbers, but British Empire supplies roughly balance all 3 afaics.
Comments
Having cash transactions and people coming and going at all hours must be useful for many criminal activities.
They fired missiles, shot 157 cows, blew up his buildings.
Now — defiantly — he's rebuilding.
This is his harrowing story — and why it matters to the world.
https://twitter.com/EddyWax/status/1526469235832246274
Remarkable since they seem to do almost no business.
Maybe it should?
And then someone else rents it and opens as...a cafe.
I often wonder why these people don't do some basic research before setting up.
Thankfully she has used all her holiday up so it won't be this year.
https://www.politico.eu/article/brussels-masterplan-to-get-ukraine-grain-moving/
Though that may change in time.
...Looking further ahead, the Commission is thinking about expanding its strategic infrastructure corridors, dubbed TEN-T, into Ukraine. Such an initiative won't have an immediate impact, but it will make European gauge railways in Ukraine and Moldova eligible for billions in EU funding....
For now, there's only three months to solve the problem of creating room to store this year's harvest.
Once that's done, we can move forwards. That's how the 80 seat majority was won.
I'm not too bothered by Americanisms - the language moves as it will, like a river stealthily infiltrating the woods. But I do resist bad spelling in public documents. My council is currently examining an extremely glossy 20-pages analysis of housing projects from a professional UK consultancy that do nothing but this sort of thing. The document repeatedly refers to "appartments" with two p's, which isn't just American but wrong even in American English. It's like a Jaguar salesman referring to his product as a "Jagguar". Brrrr.
Yeah, sign me up for the Old Fogey club.
UK unemployment rate now 3.8%
UK unemployment rate December 2019 3.9%
Proportionately more people are employed now than then. Yes quite a few people have retired during the pandemic, but we have never, ever classed the retired within employed/unemployed discussions.
Anyway having been given permission to throw away the crutches and orthopaedic boot at my discretion I of course did both immediately. Walking without crutches is easy peasy. Without the boot not so much. Bloody painful actually.
They did another similar annoying cardinal sin the other day, for which the details have fortunately faded. It may have been "less" and "fewer".
Only the DUP would consider making Boris PM again and only if he removed the Irish Sea border. Boris also needs his backbenchers back on board to secure his leadership and premiership
One thing I have picked up on recently is that the routes through Persia and the Northern Pacific were as significant as the Arctic Convoy route.
This is American numbers, but British Empire supplies roughly balance all 3 afaics.