Have I got this right: Tories are now against the windfall tax because it doesn't go far enough?
I think it's a moveable feast. They should be opposing it because its a stupid idea and a cop out from dealing with the systemic issues. Not because labour pushed one of their nuisance votes on it
Labour can’t win if voters think they will rely on the SNP.
Keir needs to go all out on them.
There is a problem here as things stand. If the Tories carry on committing suicide then SKS anti SNP stance may be possible. But assuming some sort of normal can break out in government, Labour will not be able to get to a majority without counting in the SNP in some form. They simply hold too many seats.
SKS may need us to believe something that he in fact does not. So we might not either.
Yes, it’s a problem or a paradox.
This is why I advocate a very public anti-SNP approach from Labour from now until the next election.
Vote SNP, get Tory.
That only applies in Scotland. Where Labour is pretty crap at present in MP terms. One almost Tory MP in Morningside of all places. And Labour victories over SNP do nothing to reduce the Tory majority. Plus at the same time, Slab is pretending not to ally with Tories but is doing so all over the country?
I don’t know why Labour are allying with the Tories in Scotland. It doesn’t make sense to me at all.
My enemy’s enemy …
Sort of on subject, how many million Union Jacks have Rangers fans taken to Seville?
Not all of their Union Jacks. They will have kept a few million at home for Orange Walks.
So which posters are rooting for Rangers tonight? And which rooting for the German side? Are you suspecting the majority of PBers cheering for Rangers, actually have English accents?
Since I was named Minister of Sport in PrImeminister TSE first PB cabinet, I’ve been taking my brief at least as seriously as Nadine Doris, my opposite number in government.
So Rangers Protestant, Celtic Catholic? Any type of Protestant including CoE, or a particular denomination? And then the Union Jacks - so typical Rangers fan so solid unionist does not vote SNP?
It’s like painting a picture of the Balkan’s 🫢
It’s the Huns v the Huns.
Absolutely supporting Rangers because they are a Scottish team and I will always support Scottish teams in Europe (unless they are playing Liverpool) because regardless of anything independence related they are part of our fabric - as a kid I marvelled over Grandstand teleprinter and the scores announcer saying mystical sounding Scottish teams results in the same way I marvelled at Tolkein- Queen of the South, Stenhousemuir, Alloa, Patrick Thistle. Wonderful. Jumpers for goalposts stuff. Forfar 5 - Fife 4.
Labour can’t win if voters think they will rely on the SNP.
Keir needs to go all out on them.
There is a problem here as things stand. If the Tories carry on committing suicide then SKS anti SNP stance may be possible. But assuming some sort of normal can break out in government, Labour will not be able to get to a majority without counting in the SNP in some form. They simply hold too many seats.
SKS may need us to believe something that he in fact does not. So we might not either.
Yes, it’s a problem or a paradox.
This is why I advocate a very public anti-SNP approach from Labour from now until the next election.
Vote SNP, get Tory.
It's not credible, though. The idea that the SNP would favour the Tories over Labour?
It is credible.
If Scotland still voted Labour, Keir’s mountain-to-climb would be more a gentle foot-hill.
SNP/Labour waverers are critical to the next election (one of five key profiles who are).
SNP MPs are just as reliable supporters of SKS over Boris as PM as Labour MPs are.
You (and other posters) are confusing separate issues.
To win, SKS needs to convince English voters that he will not be beholden to the SNP.
Therefore, he must campaign hard against the SNP, even if - within the Scottish context - it has minor electoral pay-off.
Anyway, he would be right to do so, as every Labour win against the SNP makes a Labour led government more likely because it *increases the Labour tally relatively* against the Tory tally.
I get the bit in the second paragraph, but the rest is still not credible.
Labour can’t win if voters think they will rely on the SNP.
Keir needs to go all out on them.
There is a problem here as things stand. If the Tories carry on committing suicide then SKS anti SNP stance may be possible. But assuming some sort of normal can break out in government, Labour will not be able to get to a majority without counting in the SNP in some form. They simply hold too many seats.
SKS may need us to believe something that he in fact does not. So we might not either.
Yes, it’s a problem or a paradox.
This is why I advocate a very public anti-SNP approach from Labour from now until the next election.
Vote SNP, get Tory.
That only applies in Scotland. Where Labour is pretty crap at present in MP terms. One almost Tory MP in Morningside of all places. And Labour victories over SNP do nothing to reduce the Tory majority. Plus at the same time, Slab is pretending not to ally with Tories but is doing so all over the country?
I don’t know why Labour are allying with the Tories in Scotland. It doesn’t make sense to me at all.
My enemy’s enemy …
Sort of on subject, how many million Union Jacks have Rangers fans taken to Seville?
Not all of their Union Jacks. They will have kept a few million at home for Orange Walks.
So which posters are rooting for Rangers tonight? And which rooting for the German side? Are you suspecting the majority of PBers cheering for Rangers, actually have English accents?
Since I was named Minister of Sport in PrImeminister TSE first PB cabinet, I’ve been taking my brief at least as seriously as Nadine Doris, my opposite number in government.
So Rangers Protestant, Celtic Catholic? Any type of Protestant including CoE, or a particular denomination? And then the Union Jacks - so typical Rangers fan so solid unionist does not vote SNP?
It’s like painting a picture of the Balkan’s 🫢
It’s the Huns v the Huns.
Absolutely supporting Rangers because they are a Scottish team and I will always support Scottish teams in Europe (unless they are playing Liverpool) because regardless of anything independence related they are part of our fabric - as a kid I marvelled over Grandstand teleprinter and the scores announcer saying mystical sounding Scottish teams results in the same way I marvelled at Tolkein- Queen of the South, Stenhousemuir, Alloa, Patrick Thistle. Wonderful. Jumpers for goalposts stuff. Forfar 5 - Fife 4.
Tolkien?
I was referring to a different writer, Bobby Tolkien, wrote a lot about Scottish football…….
As far as I can tell, Musk's plan for Twitter is genuinely:
1. Free speech 2. ? 3. Profit
The joke a month ago was, can Musk please buy Twitter and shut it down for the good of humanity?
I’m starting to be convinced that his plan isn’t a million miles away from that - he’s now got teams of experts, accountants and lawyers all over the company, and is going all in to show the company up as an algorithmic facade designed to generate hatred, where the public metrics of followers, likes and retweets, are mostly driven by computers rather than humans.
Has anyone else tried contacting HMRC recently? Tried three times today. Simply say they are too busy. Goodbye. Not even the joy of an hour on hold They've deducted me money for a tax credit overpayment completely without warning.
They’re all working from fucking home. We tried to tell you. It’s shit
You don't need to be sitting in an office to answer a phone. That's just an excuse.
The irony is that a call centre can actually fit really well with both WFH and flexible hours.
BUT, and it’s a big but, it needs the organisation to be structured differently to an in-person call centre, with processes to match. You need a larger group of both L2 technical agents and supervisors, and the managers need to take a different view of their metrics which requires modern phone and IT systems.
I get the impression that much of the public sector and quasi-public sector simply went home in March 2020, plugged their desk phone into a router, used their own laptop to connect to a VPN and a Citrix window, but the organisations never specifically set themselves up for WFH.
A call centre is also a training-heavy environment, and training / teambuilding exercises are best done in person to maintain consistency.
There were lots of call centres before the pandemic that used staff working from their own homes (with appropriate structures in place). It’s always been a job that is well suited to working from home and to employees wanting different working hours. It’s just we, the consumer, didn’t notice.
Labour can’t win if voters think they will rely on the SNP.
Keir needs to go all out on them.
There is a problem here as things stand. If the Tories carry on committing suicide then SKS anti SNP stance may be possible. But assuming some sort of normal can break out in government, Labour will not be able to get to a majority without counting in the SNP in some form. They simply hold too many seats.
SKS may need us to believe something that he in fact does not. So we might not either.
Yes, it’s a problem or a paradox.
This is why I advocate a very public anti-SNP approach from Labour from now until the next election.
Vote SNP, get Tory.
It's not credible, though. The idea that the SNP would favour the Tories over Labour?
It is credible.
If Scotland still voted Labour, Keir’s mountain-to-climb would be more a gentle foot-hill.
SNP/Labour waverers are critical to the next election (one of five key profiles who are).
SNP MPs are just as reliable supporters of SKS over Boris as PM as Labour MPs are.
You (and other posters) are confusing separate issues.
To win, SKS needs to convince English voters that he will not be beholden to the SNP.
Therefore, he must campaign hard against the SNP, even if - within the Scottish context - it has minor electoral pay-off.
Anyway, he would be right to do so, as every Labour win against the SNP makes a Labour led government more likely because it *increases the Labour tally relatively* against the Tory tally.
He needs the unionists in Scotland to flock to him. If he takes votes directly off the SNP then a standing still Scot Tory party would benefit before SLab start to - potentially in the 3 Ayrshire seats, Stirling etc. The Scottish Tories would probably settle for third in the popular vote (on say 20%) if the SNP decline into the 30s as they can come through the middle in a handful of seats
Fat chance , more likely Boris will tell the truth
Lolz, indeed. The Tories will take back Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock though. It is so written!
Why would anyone in that area want Tories back in , I can see part of Ayr/Doonfoot given the cash is all concentrated there but given the state of the rest it would be only the mentally deranged that would want Tories in. If so Scotland really is F***ed.
Because I think the Tories will hold their share, labour will make some(very limited) inroads into the SNP and the SNP will struggle with turnout next time. It's only a 2.5% swing, and I can see the ferry issue impacting Ayrshire generally as well as any failure to get a new referendum punished by turnout differential. That's why I think it's a potential gain.
Still amazes me it is even close but anything is possible here just now, it is going to the dogs and Tories and Labour are just cheeks of the same arse. PS: same London arse
You've still got a pretty good lock on seats Malcolm, but complete dominance can't go on forever, that unity in the Nat community like any other has to crack at times. I don't see drastic gains next time, a few possible for each of the arse cheeks but you'll be well ahead regardless. Somewhere between 2017 and 2019 is my guess. And, tbf, little of what the Scot Tories hold is guaranteed 'hold', they might even just churn 2 or 3 seats
Well I am pig sick of SNP leadership cabal so they have lost my vote , but there are no alternatives, I will not vote for cretinous lickspittle London puppet parties who have no interest whatsoever in Scotland. I will not be back till Sturgeon and her acolytes are purged.
Ah, I see. Well I hope you get back a party you can vote for. I find the situation similar. Utter garbage everywhere.
Glass half empty then? Every party's got its idiots, but there are good people there too. I don't understand why people are so down about politicians in general. There are several parties I could vote for.
Apart from SNP there are no Scottish parties, Greens are morons. The rest are a ragbag of lickspittle wasters tagged onto London parties in the hope they can join the gravy train at Westminster and then HOL. I could not retain my principles and morals and vote for these types. Currently SNP have lost their way due to the crooks running the show and so I am left with zero palatable options.
Labour can’t win if voters think they will rely on the SNP.
Keir needs to go all out on them.
There is a problem here as things stand. If the Tories carry on committing suicide then SKS anti SNP stance may be possible. But assuming some sort of normal can break out in government, Labour will not be able to get to a majority without counting in the SNP in some form. They simply hold too many seats.
SKS may need us to believe something that he in fact does not. So we might not either.
Yes, it’s a problem or a paradox.
This is why I advocate a very public anti-SNP approach from Labour from now until the next election.
Vote SNP, get Tory.
That only applies in Scotland. Where Labour is pretty crap at present in MP terms. One almost Tory MP in Morningside of all places. And Labour victories over SNP do nothing to reduce the Tory majority. Plus at the same time, Slab is pretending not to ally with Tories but is doing so all over the country?
I don’t know why Labour are allying with the Tories in Scotland. It doesn’t make sense to me at all.
My enemy’s enemy …
Sort of on subject, how many million Union Jacks have Rangers fans taken to Seville?
Not all of their Union Jacks. They will have kept a few million at home for Orange Walks.
So which posters are rooting for Rangers tonight? And which rooting for the German side? Are you suspecting the majority of PBers cheering for Rangers, actually have English accents?
Since I was named Minister of Sport in PrImeminister TSE first PB cabinet, I’ve been taking my brief at least as seriously as Nadine Doris, my opposite number in government.
So Rangers Protestant, Celtic Catholic? Any type of Protestant including CoE, or a particular denomination? And then the Union Jacks - so typical Rangers fan so solid unionist does not vote SNP?
It’s like painting a picture of the Balkan’s 🫢
It’s the Huns v the Huns.
Absolutely supporting Rangers because they are a Scottish team and I will always support Scottish teams in Europe (unless they are playing Liverpool) because regardless of anything independence related they are part of our fabric - as a kid I marvelled over Grandstand teleprinter and the scores announcer saying mystical sounding Scottish teams results in the same way I marvelled at Tolkein- Queen of the South, Stenhousemuir, Alloa, Patrick Thistle. Wonderful. Jumpers for goalposts stuff. Forfar 5 - Fife 4.
Has anyone else tried contacting HMRC recently? Tried three times today. Simply say they are too busy. Goodbye. Not even the joy of an hour on hold They've deducted me money for a tax credit overpayment completely without warning.
They’re all working from fucking home. We tried to tell you. It’s shit
You don't need to be sitting in an office to answer a phone. That's just an excuse.
But this is why this shit is happening. It is a disaster for the British economy, if it continues
As an international flintic dildo maker and salesman, I can say it is clearly impacting my industry (seriously). The people that are back in the office are On their Game, they respond quickly, they do their job. The people who are WFH reply much slower, they are less alert in general, and less aware of industry news and gossip, and they are hard to hear on phone calls (“Oh sorry that’s my husband slapping the dog” - GO BACK TO THE FUCKING OFFICE THEN)
I reckon we are about to discover there is a reason we have big cities and complex offices, and the cities and offices that function properly will entirely out-compete the people sitting in their stupid gardens. This is not an invention of the Tory party because of its commercial property owning donors
I moderately agree with this.
Some sectors are coping well with WFH, Others, not. Customer service generally is down, not just in the public sector.
My view is that people who need constant supervision lest they muck around in the office muck around at home.
Those that work hard in the office and have busy and demanding jobs work just as hard (if not more so) from home.
But, if you're over 60 and of a different generation you struggle to understand why any of it isn't a skive. Remote teaming and cloud technologies are just alien to you.
Julia Hartley-Brewer @JuliaHB1 · 43m Well, at least he's got lots of experience organising illegal clandestine boozy parties, eh? That'll come in handy in Saudi Arabia.
With Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate primary still deadlocked on Wednesday, attention turned to uncounted ballots, including potentially tens of thousands of mail-in votes. Dr. Mehmet Oz was clinging to a small lead of about 2,500 votes, or 0.2 percent, over David McCormick, which could trigger a recount.
Former President Trump is urging celebrity physician Mehmet Oz to declare victory in Pennsylvania’s GOP Senate primary even as the race remains too close to call.
Labour can’t win if voters think they will rely on the SNP.
Keir needs to go all out on them.
There is a problem here as things stand. If the Tories carry on committing suicide then SKS anti SNP stance may be possible. But assuming some sort of normal can break out in government, Labour will not be able to get to a majority without counting in the SNP in some form. They simply hold too many seats.
SKS may need us to believe something that he in fact does not. So we might not either.
Yes, it’s a problem or a paradox.
This is why I advocate a very public anti-SNP approach from Labour from now until the next election.
Vote SNP, get Tory.
That only applies in Scotland. Where Labour is pretty crap at present in MP terms. One almost Tory MP in Morningside of all places. And Labour victories over SNP do nothing to reduce the Tory majority. Plus at the same time, Slab is pretending not to ally with Tories but is doing so all over the country?
I don’t know why Labour are allying with the Tories in Scotland. It doesn’t make sense to me at all.
My enemy’s enemy …
Sort of on subject, how many million Union Jacks have Rangers fans taken to Seville?
Not all of their Union Jacks. They will have kept a few million at home for Orange Walks.
So which posters are rooting for Rangers tonight? And which rooting for the German side? Are you suspecting the majority of PBers cheering for Rangers, actually have English accents?
Since I was named Minister of Sport in PrImeminister TSE first PB cabinet, I’ve been taking my brief at least as seriously as Nadine Doris, my opposite number in government.
So Rangers Protestant, Celtic Catholic? Any type of Protestant including CoE, or a particular denomination? And then the Union Jacks - so typical Rangers fan so solid unionist does not vote SNP?
It’s like painting a picture of the Balkan’s 🫢
It’s the Huns v the Huns.
Absolutely supporting Rangers because they are a Scottish team and I will always support Scottish teams in Europe (unless they are playing Liverpool) because regardless of anything independence related they are part of our fabric - as a kid I marvelled over Grandstand teleprinter and the scores announcer saying mystical sounding Scottish teams results in the same way I marvelled at Tolkein- Queen of the South, Stenhousemuir, Alloa, Patrick Thistle. Wonderful. Jumpers for goalposts stuff. Forfar 5 - Fife 4.
Labour can’t win if voters think they will rely on the SNP.
Keir needs to go all out on them.
There is a problem here as things stand. If the Tories carry on committing suicide then SKS anti SNP stance may be possible. But assuming some sort of normal can break out in government, Labour will not be able to get to a majority without counting in the SNP in some form. They simply hold too many seats.
SKS may need us to believe something that he in fact does not. So we might not either.
Yes, it’s a problem or a paradox.
This is why I advocate a very public anti-SNP approach from Labour from now until the next election.
Vote SNP, get Tory.
That only applies in Scotland. Where Labour is pretty crap at present in MP terms. One almost Tory MP in Morningside of all places. And Labour victories over SNP do nothing to reduce the Tory majority. Plus at the same time, Slab is pretending not to ally with Tories but is doing so all over the country?
I don’t know why Labour are allying with the Tories in Scotland. It doesn’t make sense to me at all.
My enemy’s enemy …
Sort of on subject, how many million Union Jacks have Rangers fans taken to Seville?
Not all of their Union Jacks. They will have kept a few million at home for Orange Walks.
So which posters are rooting for Rangers tonight? And which rooting for the German side? Are you suspecting the majority of PBers cheering for Rangers, actually have English accents?
Since I was named Minister of Sport in PrImeminister TSE first PB cabinet, I’ve been taking my brief at least as seriously as Nadine Doris, my opposite number in government.
So Rangers Protestant, Celtic Catholic? Any type of Protestant including CoE, or a particular denomination? And then the Union Jacks - so typical Rangers fan so solid unionist does not vote SNP?
It’s like painting a picture of the Balkan’s 🫢
That is unadultered pish that only a Little Englander could come out with. Get an education.
Those are actual questions to get an education. I’m aware football allegiance Spain is very political. The only two things i know of in England remotely like that, people of a certain religious persuasion like, or feel they should support, Tottenham* And enmity between West Ham and Millwall could be something to do with not supporting a dockyard strike?
The Rangers with Union Jacks. Does that mean they don’t vote SNP? are they hard bitten unionists with no truck for independence, if they happy to drape in that flag?
If So, does it mean they get fans from far afield, not just Glasgow, on basis it’s the Union team?
Was it ever that sectarian between the supporters of Celtic and Rangers, or more to do with districts of town grew up in. Or even, historically, are there clear Catholic and Protestant areas of town?
Genuine questions, possibly better answered on PB than Google.
By all means educate me.
*Nb doesn’t mean Arsenal thus attract Arabs and NAZI’s! Though Osama Bin Laden attended Arsenal games. Didn’t he?
Has anyone else tried contacting HMRC recently? Tried three times today. Simply say they are too busy. Goodbye. Not even the joy of an hour on hold They've deducted me money for a tax credit overpayment completely without warning.
They’re all working from fucking home. We tried to tell you. It’s shit
You don't need to be sitting in an office to answer a phone. That's just an excuse.
But this is why this shit is happening. It is a disaster for the British economy, if it continues
As an international flintic dildo maker and salesman, I can say it is clearly impacting my industry (seriously). The people that are back in the office are On their Game, they respond quickly, they do their job. The people who are WFH reply much slower, they are less alert in general, and less aware of industry news and gossip, and they are hard to hear on phone calls (“Oh sorry that’s my husband slapping the dog” - GO BACK TO THE FUCKING OFFICE THEN)
I reckon we are about to discover there is a reason we have big cities and complex offices, and the cities and offices that function properly will entirely out-compete the people sitting in their stupid gardens. This is not an invention of the Tory party because of its commercial property owning donors
I moderately agree with this.
Some sectors are coping well with WFH, Others, not. Customer service generally is down, not just in the public sector.
My view is that people who need constant supervision lest they muck around in the office muck around at home.
Those that work hard in the office and have busy and demanding jobs work just as hard (if not more so) from home.
But, if you're over 60 and of a different generation you struggle to understand why any of it isn't a skive. Remote teaming and cloud technologies are just alien to you.
Thinking back to when my late father had WFH days because of rail strikes. Sure, he could bring home a load of files to read, he could make notes, he could do sums on a Sinclair scientific calculator. But that was about it.
The realisation of how much Office Stuff can now be done at home, or in a coffee shop, with a laptop and wifi simply wouldn't have occured to him. And Covid is an awfully convenient excuse if a customer starts complaining about rubbish service.
Labour can’t win if voters think they will rely on the SNP.
Keir needs to go all out on them.
There is a problem here as things stand. If the Tories carry on committing suicide then SKS anti SNP stance may be possible. But assuming some sort of normal can break out in government, Labour will not be able to get to a majority without counting in the SNP in some form. They simply hold too many seats.
SKS may need us to believe something that he in fact does not. So we might not either.
Yes, it’s a problem or a paradox.
This is why I advocate a very public anti-SNP approach from Labour from now until the next election.
Vote SNP, get Tory.
That only applies in Scotland. Where Labour is pretty crap at present in MP terms. One almost Tory MP in Morningside of all places. And Labour victories over SNP do nothing to reduce the Tory majority. Plus at the same time, Slab is pretending not to ally with Tories but is doing so all over the country?
I don’t know why Labour are allying with the Tories in Scotland. It doesn’t make sense to me at all.
My enemy’s enemy …
Sort of on subject, how many million Union Jacks have Rangers fans taken to Seville?
Not all of their Union Jacks. They will have kept a few million at home for Orange Walks.
So which posters are rooting for Rangers tonight? And which rooting for the German side? Are you suspecting the majority of PBers cheering for Rangers, actually have English accents?
Since I was named Minister of Sport in PrImeminister TSE first PB cabinet, I’ve been taking my brief at least as seriously as Nadine Doris, my opposite number in government.
So Rangers Protestant, Celtic Catholic? Any type of Protestant including CoE, or a particular denomination? And then the Union Jacks - so typical Rangers fan so solid unionist does not vote SNP?
It’s like painting a picture of the Balkan’s 🫢
It’s the Huns v the Huns.
Absolutely supporting Rangers because they are a Scottish team and I will always support Scottish teams in Europe (unless they are playing Liverpool) because regardless of anything independence related they are part of our fabric - as a kid I marvelled over Grandstand teleprinter and the scores announcer saying mystical sounding Scottish teams results in the same way I marvelled at Tolkein- Queen of the South, Stenhousemuir, Alloa, Patrick Thistle. Wonderful. Jumpers for goalposts stuff. Forfar 5 - Fife 4.
We are the same generation. Whenever I heard the phrase “Queen of the South” pronounced by Frank Bough I imagined some amazing team of red haired Vikings literally playing on the one patch of flat grass twixt granite peaks, with sporrans on their heads and some kind of blood oath related to the royal family, where they all died if the monarch got a cold
As for HEARTS OF MIDLOTHIAN they felt like the football equivalent of Rimbaud and Baudelaire
Having now been to these places, I see the reality is a tiny bit different. Nonetheless as long as Scotland remains a part of our United Kingdom, they are my teams
Has anyone else tried contacting HMRC recently? Tried three times today. Simply say they are too busy. Goodbye. Not even the joy of an hour on hold They've deducted me money for a tax credit overpayment completely without warning.
They’re all working from fucking home. We tried to tell you. It’s shit
You don't need to be sitting in an office to answer a phone. That's just an excuse.
The irony is that a call centre can actually fit really well with both WFH and flexible hours.
BUT, and it’s a big but, it needs the organisation to be structured differently to an in-person call centre, with processes to match. You need a larger group of both L2 technical agents and supervisors, and the managers need to take a different view of their metrics which requires modern phone and IT systems.
I get the impression that much of the public sector and quasi-public sector simply went home in March 2020, plugged their desk phone into a router, used their own laptop to connect to a VPN and a Citrix window, but the organisations never specifically set themselves up for WFH.
A call centre is also a training-heavy environment, and training / teambuilding exercises are best done in person to maintain consistency.
There were lots of call centres before the pandemic that used staff working from their own homes (with appropriate structures in place). It’s always been a job that is well suited to working from home and to employees wanting different working hours. It’s just we, the consumer, didn’t notice.
The problem is that private call centres operate on a principle that they need to work effectively or they don't get business so they don't get paid, so they make sure their operations work.
Public ones - not so much.
I had a rather worrying encounter a few months ago with the Council for a home I used to live in but moved out of in 2019. I'd paid my Council Tax in full by Direct Debit and had notified them when I moved homes and set up a Direct Debit for my new home but then a few years later got a "final demand" letter for overdue Council Tax for 2020-21. I called them and spoke to someone who was working from home and said that I had moved out before this period so it wasn't me who owed the tax, he told me not to worry, promised to get it resolved and would put a hold on the account until they could figure out what had gone wrong.
Two months later I got a Court Summons for unpaid Council Tax, with a court date set for what was then 3 weeks time. I tried calling the Council again but after pressing all the relevant options got a message "our queue is full please try again later". That kept happening again and again for two weeks. Tried emailing them, got an autoreply saying they're currently taking an average of 6 weeks to respond to emails, but the Court Summons was for 3 weeks time.
After a few weeks of calling them every day I eventually got in the queue and through to a human who found my email to them and accepted the proof that I wasn't living at that address for the time in question and the Council had been informed of that. But utterly remarkable that they could take six weeks to respond to an email, but have Court Summons issued for 3 weeks, and the queue 'full'.
If you call a company like Sky you'll get through to someone probably working from home - but at least you'll get through to someone and they take your issue seriously. At least if you threaten to cancel your contract they do.
Labour can’t win if voters think they will rely on the SNP.
Keir needs to go all out on them.
There is a problem here as things stand. If the Tories carry on committing suicide then SKS anti SNP stance may be possible. But assuming some sort of normal can break out in government, Labour will not be able to get to a majority without counting in the SNP in some form. They simply hold too many seats.
SKS may need us to believe something that he in fact does not. So we might not either.
Yes, it’s a problem or a paradox.
This is why I advocate a very public anti-SNP approach from Labour from now until the next election.
Vote SNP, get Tory.
That only applies in Scotland. Where Labour is pretty crap at present in MP terms. One almost Tory MP in Morningside of all places. And Labour victories over SNP do nothing to reduce the Tory majority. Plus at the same time, Slab is pretending not to ally with Tories but is doing so all over the country?
I don’t know why Labour are allying with the Tories in Scotland. It doesn’t make sense to me at all.
My enemy’s enemy …
Sort of on subject, how many million Union Jacks have Rangers fans taken to Seville?
Not all of their Union Jacks. They will have kept a few million at home for Orange Walks.
So which posters are rooting for Rangers tonight? And which rooting for the German side? Are you suspecting the majority of PBers cheering for Rangers, actually have English accents?
Since I was named Minister of Sport in PrImeminister TSE first PB cabinet, I’ve been taking my brief at least as seriously as Nadine Doris, my opposite number in government.
So Rangers Protestant, Celtic Catholic? Any type of Protestant including CoE, or a particular denomination? And then the Union Jacks - so typical Rangers fan so solid unionist does not vote SNP?
It’s like painting a picture of the Balkan’s 🫢
That is unadultered pish that only a Little Englander could come out with. Get an education.
Those are actual questions to get an education. I’m aware football allegiance Spain is very political. The only two things i know of in England remotely like that, people of a certain religious persuasion like, or feel they should support, Tottenham. And enmity between West Ham and Millwall could be something to do with not supporting a dockyard strike?
The Rangers with Union Jacks. Does that mean they don’t vote SNP? are they hard bitten unionists with no truck for independence, if they happy to drape in that flag?
If So, does it mean they get fans from far afield, not just Glasgow, on basis it’s the Union team?
Was it ever that sectarian between the supporters of Celtic and Rangers, or more to do with districts of town grew up in. Or even, historically, are there clear Catholic and Protestant areas of town?
Genuine questions, possibly better answered on PB than Google.
By all means educate me.
Glasgow football is very sectarian, more than anywhere else in GB. The Rangers fans are Protestants and the Celtic fans Catholics.
Come on Rangers. Fuck these Scouse c*nts and traitors who BOO BEAUTY. Let Real Madrid hammer them
But loyal, sober Unionists and royalists? Go, lads
I am somewhat surprised how personally you have taken Liverpool fans booing at Wembley on Saturday. I truly thought you would love the madness, the anti-establishment chaos and rebellion. The “fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” behaviour.
It’s all part of life’s rich pageant and amazed you are bent out of shape by it.
I’m a monarchist conservative and it really doesn’t bother me at all - it’s just jolly japes at a football match.
If they annoyed you by being controversialist then it’s getting very Meta!!
What next - demanding seats rather than pit at a Metallica concert? Cocoa rather than Cognac before bed? Tsk Tsk.
Labour can’t win if voters think they will rely on the SNP.
Keir needs to go all out on them.
There is a problem here as things stand. If the Tories carry on committing suicide then SKS anti SNP stance may be possible. But assuming some sort of normal can break out in government, Labour will not be able to get to a majority without counting in the SNP in some form. They simply hold too many seats.
SKS may need us to believe something that he in fact does not. So we might not either.
Yes, it’s a problem or a paradox.
This is why I advocate a very public anti-SNP approach from Labour from now until the next election.
Vote SNP, get Tory.
That only applies in Scotland. Where Labour is pretty crap at present in MP terms. One almost Tory MP in Morningside of all places. And Labour victories over SNP do nothing to reduce the Tory majority. Plus at the same time, Slab is pretending not to ally with Tories but is doing so all over the country?
I don’t know why Labour are allying with the Tories in Scotland. It doesn’t make sense to me at all.
My enemy’s enemy …
Sort of on subject, how many million Union Jacks have Rangers fans taken to Seville?
Not all of their Union Jacks. They will have kept a few million at home for Orange Walks.
So which posters are rooting for Rangers tonight? And which rooting for the German side? Are you suspecting the majority of PBers cheering for Rangers, actually have English accents?
Since I was named Minister of Sport in PrImeminister TSE first PB cabinet, I’ve been taking my brief at least as seriously as Nadine Doris, my opposite number in government.
So Rangers Protestant, Celtic Catholic? Any type of Protestant including CoE, or a particular denomination? And then the Union Jacks - so typical Rangers fan so solid unionist does not vote SNP?
It’s like painting a picture of the Balkan’s 🫢
It’s the Huns v the Huns.
Absolutely supporting Rangers because they are a Scottish team and I will always support Scottish teams in Europe (unless they are playing Liverpool) because regardless of anything independence related they are part of our fabric - as a kid I marvelled over Grandstand teleprinter and the scores announcer saying mystical sounding Scottish teams results in the same way I marvelled at Tolkein- Queen of the South, Stenhousemuir, Alloa, Patrick Thistle. Wonderful. Jumpers for goalposts stuff. Forfar 5 - Fife 4.
Tolkien?
I was referring to a different writer, Bobby Tolkien, wrote a lot about Scottish football…….
Darn site more relevant than writing about nothing but elves. 🙂
Labour can’t win if voters think they will rely on the SNP.
Keir needs to go all out on them.
There is a problem here as things stand. If the Tories carry on committing suicide then SKS anti SNP stance may be possible. But assuming some sort of normal can break out in government, Labour will not be able to get to a majority without counting in the SNP in some form. They simply hold too many seats.
SKS may need us to believe something that he in fact does not. So we might not either.
Yes, it’s a problem or a paradox.
This is why I advocate a very public anti-SNP approach from Labour from now until the next election.
Vote SNP, get Tory.
That only applies in Scotland. Where Labour is pretty crap at present in MP terms. One almost Tory MP in Morningside of all places. And Labour victories over SNP do nothing to reduce the Tory majority. Plus at the same time, Slab is pretending not to ally with Tories but is doing so all over the country?
I don’t know why Labour are allying with the Tories in Scotland. It doesn’t make sense to me at all.
My enemy’s enemy …
Sort of on subject, how many million Union Jacks have Rangers fans taken to Seville?
Not all of their Union Jacks. They will have kept a few million at home for Orange Walks.
So which posters are rooting for Rangers tonight? And which rooting for the German side? Are you suspecting the majority of PBers cheering for Rangers, actually have English accents?
Since I was named Minister of Sport in PrImeminister TSE first PB cabinet, I’ve been taking my brief at least as seriously as Nadine Doris, my opposite number in government.
So Rangers Protestant, Celtic Catholic? Any type of Protestant including CoE, or a particular denomination? And then the Union Jacks - so typical Rangers fan so solid unionist does not vote SNP?
It’s like painting a picture of the Balkan’s 🫢
It’s the Huns v the Huns.
Absolutely supporting Rangers because they are a Scottish team and I will always support Scottish teams in Europe (unless they are playing Liverpool) because regardless of anything independence related they are part of our fabric - as a kid I marvelled over Grandstand teleprinter and the scores announcer saying mystical sounding Scottish teams results in the same way I marvelled at Tolkein- Queen of the South, Stenhousemuir, Alloa, Patrick Thistle. Wonderful. Jumpers for goalposts stuff. Forfar 5 - Fife 4.
Is Scotland the only country with a league team whose name is (consciously) a quotation from the Bible (Jesus no less!) - Matthew 12.42?
LOL, G you cannot persuade anyone that that is in any way even remotely as a bad as a Tory, they are real criminals, the guy had a couple of Nurofen in his pocket.
Agree with you here Malc, this is a squirrel story and actually makes the allegations against 'whomever' starkly worse looking
Which side of the bed will Big G get out of tomorow? The right? Or the moderate centre right? 🙂
You can rest assured it will never be the right and anyway you said you loved me ?
Of course I ❤️ you. You do sound a bit het up by it all today though?
Was politics in the old days before I came along all about how many investigations you can get you opponents under, or is this a new phase that is a bit, not quite the point of politics really?
I posted clip of Lady Thatcher at PMQs in recent thread - she’s is just simply explaining the difference in her philosophy and policies in regards theirs. That just made politics simple, explain your point of view.
And they were all terribly polite and respectful to each other as they done it.
"An audit of ex-President Donald Trump's archived presidential account, @POTUS45, shows that 42.4 percent of his followers are fake Almost half of President Biden's Twitter followers are fake, audit reveals as Elon Musk puts deal to buy Big Tech giant on hold over bots Just over 49% of Twitter followers of the official @POTUS account are fake The same analysis found that more than 14 million accounts who follow Biden's personal @JoeBiden handle are also either fake or insufficiently active It comes as Elon Musk took shots at Biden and Twitter at a Miami conference The Tesla billionaire accused Twitter's CEO of lying about the company's claim that less than 5% of its more than 200 million accounts are fake"
Has anyone else tried contacting HMRC recently? Tried three times today. Simply say they are too busy. Goodbye. Not even the joy of an hour on hold They've deducted me money for a tax credit overpayment completely without warning.
They’re all working from fucking home. We tried to tell you. It’s shit
You don't need to be sitting in an office to answer a phone. That's just an excuse.
But this is why this shit is happening. It is a disaster for the British economy, if it continues
As an international flintic dildo maker and salesman, I can say it is clearly impacting my industry (seriously). The people that are back in the office are On their Game, they respond quickly, they do their job. The people who are WFH reply much slower, they are less alert in general, and less aware of industry news and gossip, and they are hard to hear on phone calls (“Oh sorry that’s my husband slapping the dog” - GO BACK TO THE FUCKING OFFICE THEN)
I reckon we are about to discover there is a reason we have big cities and complex offices, and the cities and offices that function properly will entirely out-compete the people sitting in their stupid gardens. This is not an invention of the Tory party because of its commercial property owning donors
I moderately agree with this.
Some sectors are coping well with WFH, Others, not. Customer service generally is down, not just in the public sector.
This should come as a surprise to no-one. Who would want to work in a call centre-type occupation - whether office or home based - if they had a better alternative? And, in a low unemployment environment, better alternatives (consisting of practically every other kind of job imaginable) are easier than usual to come by.
Then, of course, the harder businesses find it to recruit workers willing to put up with a constant barrage of shouting from enraged customers, the smaller the available pool of call handlers, the worse the service becomes, the more rage the remaining staff have to put up with, and the more likely they are to get out as soon as they can find another minimum wage crap job that's less liable to cause them to have a nervous breakdown.
It's the sort of vicious cycle that can only be broken by a spike in joblessness that forces workers to endure the misery, for want of anywhere else to go.
Has anyone else tried contacting HMRC recently? Tried three times today. Simply say they are too busy. Goodbye. Not even the joy of an hour on hold They've deducted me money for a tax credit overpayment completely without warning.
They’re all working from fucking home. We tried to tell you. It’s shit
You don't need to be sitting in an office to answer a phone. That's just an excuse.
But this is why this shit is happening. It is a disaster for the British economy, if it continues
As an international flintic dildo maker and salesman, I can say it is clearly impacting my industry (seriously). The people that are back in the office are On their Game, they respond quickly, they do their job. The people who are WFH reply much slower, they are less alert in general, and less aware of industry news and gossip, and they are hard to hear on phone calls (“Oh sorry that’s my husband slapping the dog” - GO BACK TO THE FUCKING OFFICE THEN)
I reckon we are about to discover there is a reason we have big cities and complex offices, and the cities and offices that function properly will entirely out-compete the people sitting in their stupid gardens. This is not an invention of the Tory party because of its commercial property owning donors
I moderately agree with this.
Some sectors are coping well with WFH, Others, not. Customer service generally is down, not just in the public sector.
This should come as a surprise to no-one. Who would want to work in a call centre-type occupation - whether office or home based - if they had a better alternative? And, in a low unemployment environment, better alternatives (consisting of practically every other kind of job imaginable) are easier than usual to come by.
Then, of course, the harder businesses find it to recruit workers willing to put up with a constant barrage of shouting from enraged customers, the smaller the available pool of call handlers, the worse the service becomes, the more rage the remaining staff have to put up with, and the more likely they are to get out as soon as they can find another minimum wage crap job that's less liable to cause them to have a nervous breakdown.
It's the sort of vicious cycle that can only be broken by a spike in joblessness that forces workers to endure the misery, for want of anywhere else to go.
Part of the problem is being behind with technology investment.
I spent an hour on phone waiting in a queue for a major insurance company earlier this week, merely to update my debit card details, as the card had expired.
Come on Rangers. Fuck these Scouse c*nts and traitors who BOO BEAUTY. Let Real Madrid hammer them
But loyal, sober Unionists and royalists? Go, lads
I am somewhat surprised how personally you have taken Liverpool fans booing at Wembley on Saturday. I truly thought you would love the madness, the anti-establishment chaos and rebellion. The “fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” behaviour.
It’s all part of life’s rich pageant and amazed you are bent out of shape by it.
I’m a monarchist conservative and it really doesn’t bother me at all - it’s just jolly japes at a football match.
If they annoyed you by being controversialist then it’s getting very Meta!!
What next - demanding seats rather than pit at a Metallica concert? Cocoa rather than Cognac before bed? Tsk Tsk.
No, it makes me puke. Because I know where it comes from
By all means Boo the National Anthem. Boo Prince William. Hurl your turds at Princess Kate, Whatever, you sad tattoeed fat fucks
But booing ABIDE WITH ME??
That is pure vandalism, it is the degradation of the human soul and the hatred of loveliness, in the most ugly way. It is something very Liverpudlian - a diseased city - but it spreads like a fungus. Fuck them all.
Come on Rangers. Fuck these Scouse c*nts and traitors who BOO BEAUTY. Let Real Madrid hammer them
But loyal, sober Unionists and royalists? Go, lads
I am somewhat surprised how personally you have taken Liverpool fans booing at Wembley on Saturday. I truly thought you would love the madness, the anti-establishment chaos and rebellion. The “fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” behaviour.
It’s all part of life’s rich pageant and amazed you are bent out of shape by it.
I’m a monarchist conservative and it really doesn’t bother me at all - it’s just jolly japes at a football match.
If they annoyed you by being controversialist then it’s getting very Meta!!
What next - demanding seats rather than pit at a Metallica concert? Cocoa rather than Cognac before bed? Tsk Tsk.
No, it makes me puke. Because I know where it comes from
By all means Boo the National Anthem. Boo Prince William. Hurl your turds at Princess Kate, Whatever, you sad tattoeed fat fucks
But booing ABIDE WITH ME??
That is pure vandalism, it is the degradation of the human soul and the hatred of loveliness, in the most ugly way. It is something very Liverpudlian - a diseased city - but it spreads like a fungus. Fuck them all.
Remember Heysel
If Liverpool fans are tarred by Heysel then what are you and I tarred with by virtue of being English?
Has anyone else tried contacting HMRC recently? Tried three times today. Simply say they are too busy. Goodbye. Not even the joy of an hour on hold They've deducted me money for a tax credit overpayment completely without warning.
They’re all working from fucking home. We tried to tell you. It’s shit
You don't need to be sitting in an office to answer a phone. That's just an excuse.
The irony is that a call centre can actually fit really well with both WFH and flexible hours.
BUT, and it’s a big but, it needs the organisation to be structured differently to an in-person call centre, with processes to match. You need a larger group of both L2 technical agents and supervisors, and the managers need to take a different view of their metrics which requires modern phone and IT systems.
I get the impression that much of the public sector and quasi-public sector simply went home in March 2020, plugged their desk phone into a router, used their own laptop to connect to a VPN and a Citrix window, but the organisations never specifically set themselves up for WFH.
A call centre is also a training-heavy environment, and training / teambuilding exercises are best done in person to maintain consistency.
There were lots of call centres before the pandemic that used staff working from their own homes (with appropriate structures in place). It’s always been a job that is well suited to working from home and to employees wanting different working hours. It’s just we, the consumer, didn’t notice.
The problem is that private call centres operate on a principle that they need to work effectively or they don't get business so they don't get paid, so they make sure their operations work.
Public ones - not so much.
I had a rather worrying encounter a few months ago with the Council for a home I used to live in but moved out of in 2019. I'd paid my Council Tax in full by Direct Debit and had notified them when I moved homes and set up a Direct Debit for my new home but then a few years later got a "final demand" letter for overdue Council Tax for 2020-21. I called them and spoke to someone who was working from home and said that I had moved out before this period so it wasn't me who owed the tax, he told me not to worry, promised to get it resolved and would put a hold on the account until they could figure out what had gone wrong.
Two months later I got a Court Summons for unpaid Council Tax, with a court date set for what was then 3 weeks time. I tried calling the Council again but after pressing all the relevant options got a message "our queue is full please try again later". That kept happening again and again for two weeks. Tried emailing them, got an autoreply saying they're currently taking an average of 6 weeks to respond to emails, but the Court Summons was for 3 weeks time.
After a few weeks of calling them every day I eventually got in the queue and through to a human who found my email to them and accepted the proof that I wasn't living at that address for the time in question and the Council had been informed of that. But utterly remarkable that they could take six weeks to respond to an email, but have Court Summons issued for 3 weeks, and the queue 'full'.
If you call a company like Sky you'll get through to someone probably working from home - but at least you'll get through to someone and they take your issue seriously. At least if you threaten to cancel your contract they do.
Some truth in that, the pressures in the public sector are different. There's not much reward to be had by improving customer service (Yourtown Council isn't going to get any more customers), so the only success metric is to cut costs. And beyond a certain point, that means cutting services. Which, to a large extent, is what has happened.
Now, there are private sector firms that take customer service seriously. John Lewis, Timpsons, Richer Sounds. They do a great job, acceptable face of capitalism and all that. But they tend (not exclusively, but as a tendency) to be pitched a bit above the mass market. Good customer service costs, and a lot of us have been unwilling to pay that necessary cost. Which is fine, until everything goes pearshaped.
Come on Rangers. Fuck these Scouse c*nts and traitors who BOO BEAUTY. Let Real Madrid hammer them
But loyal, sober Unionists and royalists? Go, lads
I am somewhat surprised how personally you have taken Liverpool fans booing at Wembley on Saturday. I truly thought you would love the madness, the anti-establishment chaos and rebellion. The “fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” behaviour.
It’s all part of life’s rich pageant and amazed you are bent out of shape by it.
I’m a monarchist conservative and it really doesn’t bother me at all - it’s just jolly japes at a football match.
If they annoyed you by being controversialist then it’s getting very Meta!!
What next - demanding seats rather than pit at a Metallica concert? Cocoa rather than Cognac before bed? Tsk Tsk.
No, it makes me puke. Because I know where it comes from
By all means Boo the National Anthem. Boo Prince William. Hurl your turds at Princess Kate, Whatever, you sad tattoeed fat fucks
But booing ABIDE WITH ME??
That is pure vandalism, it is the degradation of the human soul and the hatred of loveliness, in the most ugly way. It is something very Liverpudlian - a diseased city - but it spreads like a fungus. Fuck them all.
Remember Heysel
If Liverpool fans are tarred by Heysel then what are you and I tarred with by virtue of being English?
Is this even serious?
We conquered the world. And it was mainly good. We didn’t push over a wall and kill some Italian teens during a football match. Get a grip
Labour can’t win if voters think they will rely on the SNP.
Keir needs to go all out on them.
There is a problem here as things stand. If the Tories carry on committing suicide then SKS anti SNP stance may be possible. But assuming some sort of normal can break out in government, Labour will not be able to get to a majority without counting in the SNP in some form. They simply hold too many seats.
SKS may need us to believe something that he in fact does not. So we might not either.
Yes, it’s a problem or a paradox.
This is why I advocate a very public anti-SNP approach from Labour from now until the next election.
Vote SNP, get Tory.
That only applies in Scotland. Where Labour is pretty crap at present in MP terms. One almost Tory MP in Morningside of all places. And Labour victories over SNP do nothing to reduce the Tory majority. Plus at the same time, Slab is pretending not to ally with Tories but is doing so all over the country?
I don’t know why Labour are allying with the Tories in Scotland. It doesn’t make sense to me at all.
My enemy’s enemy …
Sort of on subject, how many million Union Jacks have Rangers fans taken to Seville?
Not all of their Union Jacks. They will have kept a few million at home for Orange Walks.
So which posters are rooting for Rangers tonight? And which rooting for the German side? Are you suspecting the majority of PBers cheering for Rangers, actually have English accents?
Since I was named Minister of Sport in PrImeminister TSE first PB cabinet, I’ve been taking my brief at least as seriously as Nadine Doris, my opposite number in government.
So Rangers Protestant, Celtic Catholic? Any type of Protestant including CoE, or a particular denomination? And then the Union Jacks - so typical Rangers fan so solid unionist does not vote SNP?
It’s like painting a picture of the Balkan’s 🫢
That is unadultered pish that only a Little Englander could come out with. Get an education.
Those are actual questions to get an education. I’m aware football allegiance Spain is very political. The only two things i know of in England remotely like that, people of a certain religious persuasion like, or feel they should support, Tottenham. And enmity between West Ham and Millwall could be something to do with not supporting a dockyard strike?
The Rangers with Union Jacks. Does that mean they don’t vote SNP? are they hard bitten unionists with no truck for independence, if they happy to drape in that flag?
If So, does it mean they get fans from far afield, not just Glasgow, on basis it’s the Union team?
Was it ever that sectarian between the supporters of Celtic and Rangers, or more to do with districts of town grew up in. Or even, historically, are there clear Catholic and Protestant areas of town?
Genuine questions, possibly better answered on PB than Google.
By all means educate me.
Glasgow football is very sectarian, more than anywhere else in GB. The Rangers fans are Protestants and the Celtic fans Catholics.
Is there any similar thing between the Liverpool sides? Or the Edinburgh teams?
Has anyone else tried contacting HMRC recently? Tried three times today. Simply say they are too busy. Goodbye. Not even the joy of an hour on hold They've deducted me money for a tax credit overpayment completely without warning.
They’re all working from fucking home. We tried to tell you. It’s shit
You don't need to be sitting in an office to answer a phone. That's just an excuse.
The irony is that a call centre can actually fit really well with both WFH and flexible hours.
BUT, and it’s a big but, it needs the organisation to be structured differently to an in-person call centre, with processes to match. You need a larger group of both L2 technical agents and supervisors, and the managers need to take a different view of their metrics which requires modern phone and IT systems.
I get the impression that much of the public sector and quasi-public sector simply went home in March 2020, plugged their desk phone into a router, used their own laptop to connect to a VPN and a Citrix window, but the organisations never specifically set themselves up for WFH.
A call centre is also a training-heavy environment, and training / teambuilding exercises are best done in person to maintain consistency.
There were lots of call centres before the pandemic that used staff working from their own homes (with appropriate structures in place). It’s always been a job that is well suited to working from home and to employees wanting different working hours. It’s just we, the consumer, didn’t notice.
The problem is that private call centres operate on a principle that they need to work effectively or they don't get business so they don't get paid, so they make sure their operations work.
Public ones - not so much.
I had a rather worrying encounter a few months ago with the Council for a home I used to live in but moved out of in 2019. I'd paid my Council Tax in full by Direct Debit and had notified them when I moved homes and set up a Direct Debit for my new home but then a few years later got a "final demand" letter for overdue Council Tax for 2020-21. I called them and spoke to someone who was working from home and said that I had moved out before this period so it wasn't me who owed the tax, he told me not to worry, promised to get it resolved and would put a hold on the account until they could figure out what had gone wrong.
Two months later I got a Court Summons for unpaid Council Tax, with a court date set for what was then 3 weeks time. I tried calling the Council again but after pressing all the relevant options got a message "our queue is full please try again later". That kept happening again and again for two weeks. Tried emailing them, got an autoreply saying they're currently taking an average of 6 weeks to respond to emails, but the Court Summons was for 3 weeks time.
After a few weeks of calling them every day I eventually got in the queue and through to a human who found my email to them and accepted the proof that I wasn't living at that address for the time in question and the Council had been informed of that. But utterly remarkable that they could take six weeks to respond to an email, but have Court Summons issued for 3 weeks, and the queue 'full'.
If you call a company like Sky you'll get through to someone probably working from home - but at least you'll get through to someone and they take your issue seriously. At least if you threaten to cancel your contract they do.
Some truth in that, the pressures in the public sector are different. There's not much reward to be had by improving customer service (Yourtown Council isn't going to get any more customers), so the only success metric is to cut costs. And beyond a certain point, that means cutting services. Which, to a large extent, is what has happened.
Now, there are private sector firms that take customer service seriously. John Lewis, Timpsons, Richer Sounds. They do a great job, acceptable face of capitalism and all that. But they tend (not exclusively, but as a tendency) to be pitched a bit above the mass market. Good customer service costs, and a lot of us have been unwilling to pay that necessary cost. Which is fine, until everything goes pearshaped.
Even mass market companies know they need customers. Amazon are good for it.
LOL, G you cannot persuade anyone that that is in any way even remotely as a bad as a Tory, they are real criminals, the guy had a couple of Nurofen in his pocket.
Agree with you here Malc, this is a squirrel story and actually makes the allegations against 'whomever' starkly worse looking
Which side of the bed will Big G get out of tomorow? The right? Or the moderate centre right? 🙂
You can rest assured it will never be the right and anyway you said you loved me ?
Of course I ❤️ you. You do sound a bit het up by it all today though?
Was politics in the old days before I came along all about how many investigations you can get you opponents under, or is this a new phase that is a bit, not quite the point of politics really?
I posted clip of Lady Thatcher at PMQs in recent thread - she’s is just simply explaining the difference in her philosophy and policies in regards theirs. That just made politics simple, explain your point of view.
And they were all terribly polite and respectful to each other as they done it.
To be honest I am not the least het up but as my beloved will affirm I have this tendency to enjoy winding people up and maybe on occasions it shows
It is fair to say that politics is more tribal and at times just nasty but as far as I am concerned I want Boris to go so I can rejoin the party as I really fear a Starmer led labour party would borrow far too much and I am not convinced they would restrict public sector pay including doctors and nurses as would be necessary
Well, he's not wrong that Yale is stuffed full of radical leftists. That's not even news.
Which are the right-wing universities?
Where indeed are they. That's the question.
Yes, at all times and all places it seems that right wing pundits have attacked universities for being left wing. There must be something about education in general and higher education in particular that they hate.
No I think it's just that youngsters tend to be more radical and university lecturers tend to the leftwards politically. Right wing thought tends to come from elsewhere. Those with leftward views will be positive about some of the stuff that comes out of unis, those more small c conservative find it too radical and are (in my case as an example) put off by the attachment of some weird and unearned sense of moral superiority to leftist social views. I find the further left social policy is the more morally repugnant I find it. Economics is different. All directions bear some fruit
I think it is more fundamental than that. Social conservatives don't want their young learning anything not taught at their home, immediate locality or place of worship, with the exception of technological skills nessecary to support the existing social structures. It is the same for the American home schoolers on the praire or the Taliban. Indeed Boko Haram translates as "Western Education is forbidden".
Has anyone else tried contacting HMRC recently? Tried three times today. Simply say they are too busy. Goodbye. Not even the joy of an hour on hold They've deducted me money for a tax credit overpayment completely without warning.
They’re all working from fucking home. We tried to tell you. It’s shit
You don't need to be sitting in an office to answer a phone. That's just an excuse.
But this is why this shit is happening. It is a disaster for the British economy, if it continues
As an international flintic dildo maker and salesman, I can say it is clearly impacting my industry (seriously). The people that are back in the office are On their Game, they respond quickly, they do their job. The people who are WFH reply much slower, they are less alert in general, and less aware of industry news and gossip, and they are hard to hear on phone calls (“Oh sorry that’s my husband slapping the dog” - GO BACK TO THE FUCKING OFFICE THEN)
I reckon we are about to discover there is a reason we have big cities and complex offices, and the cities and offices that function properly will entirely out-compete the people sitting in their stupid gardens. This is not an invention of the Tory party because of its commercial property owning donors
I moderately agree with this.
Some sectors are coping well with WFH, Others, not. Customer service generally is down, not just in the public sector.
This should come as a surprise to no-one. Who would want to work in a call centre-type occupation - whether office or home based - if they had a better alternative? And, in a low unemployment environment, better alternatives (consisting of practically every other kind of job imaginable) are easier than usual to come by.
Then, of course, the harder businesses find it to recruit workers willing to put up with a constant barrage of shouting from enraged customers, the smaller the available pool of call handlers, the worse the service becomes, the more rage the remaining staff have to put up with, and the more likely they are to get out as soon as they can find another minimum wage crap job that's less liable to cause them to have a nervous breakdown.
It's the sort of vicious cycle that can only be broken by a spike in joblessness that forces workers to endure the misery, for want of anywhere else to go.
Part of the problem is being behind with technology investment.
I spent an hour on phone waiting in a queue for a major insurance company earlier this week, merely to update my debit card details, as the card had expired.
This could be done online.
Yep. Not just online technology either, the phone systems they are running are often a couple of generations out of date too.
The issue is, that for larger companies these projects run to millions of currency units and take years to bring to fruition. There’s not room for an agile (small a) solution that can be up and running in weeks, as we saw during the pandemic - when there was a big difference between companies and organisations that could step outside the box in an emergency, and those constrained by their own bureaucracy that needed to be bypassed.
Labour can’t win if voters think they will rely on the SNP.
Keir needs to go all out on them.
There is a problem here as things stand. If the Tories carry on committing suicide then SKS anti SNP stance may be possible. But assuming some sort of normal can break out in government, Labour will not be able to get to a majority without counting in the SNP in some form. They simply hold too many seats.
SKS may need us to believe something that he in fact does not. So we might not either.
Yes, it’s a problem or a paradox.
This is why I advocate a very public anti-SNP approach from Labour from now until the next election.
Vote SNP, get Tory.
That only applies in Scotland. Where Labour is pretty crap at present in MP terms. One almost Tory MP in Morningside of all places. And Labour victories over SNP do nothing to reduce the Tory majority. Plus at the same time, Slab is pretending not to ally with Tories but is doing so all over the country?
I don’t know why Labour are allying with the Tories in Scotland. It doesn’t make sense to me at all.
My enemy’s enemy …
Sort of on subject, how many million Union Jacks have Rangers fans taken to Seville?
Not all of their Union Jacks. They will have kept a few million at home for Orange Walks.
So which posters are rooting for Rangers tonight? And which rooting for the German side? Are you suspecting the majority of PBers cheering for Rangers, actually have English accents?
Since I was named Minister of Sport in PrImeminister TSE first PB cabinet, I’ve been taking my brief at least as seriously as Nadine Doris, my opposite number in government.
So Rangers Protestant, Celtic Catholic? Any type of Protestant including CoE, or a particular denomination? And then the Union Jacks - so typical Rangers fan so solid unionist does not vote SNP?
It’s like painting a picture of the Balkan’s 🫢
That is unadultered pish that only a Little Englander could come out with. Get an education.
Those are actual questions to get an education. I’m aware football allegiance Spain is very political. The only two things i know of in England remotely like that, people of a certain religious persuasion like, or feel they should support, Tottenham. And enmity between West Ham and Millwall could be something to do with not supporting a dockyard strike?
The Rangers with Union Jacks. Does that mean they don’t vote SNP? are they hard bitten unionists with no truck for independence, if they happy to drape in that flag?
If So, does it mean they get fans from far afield, not just Glasgow, on basis it’s the Union team?
Was it ever that sectarian between the supporters of Celtic and Rangers, or more to do with districts of town grew up in. Or even, historically, are there clear Catholic and Protestant areas of town?
Genuine questions, possibly better answered on PB than Google.
By all means educate me.
Glasgow football is very sectarian, more than anywhere else in GB. The Rangers fans are Protestants and the Celtic fans Catholics.
Is there any similar thing between the Liverpool sides? Or the Edinburgh teams?
Weirdly, I was always taught that Liverpool WAS a divided city - like Glasgow - but that Everton was the Catholic side and Liverpool was the Proddy side. I have no idea if this is true. It certainly doesn’t square with their identities now
Some sectors are coping well with WFH, Others, not. Customer service generally is down, not just in the public sector.
My view is that people who need constant supervision lest they muck around in the office muck around at home.
Those that work hard in the office and have busy and demanding jobs work just as hard (if not more so) from home.
But, if you're over 60 and of a different generation you struggle to understand why any of it isn't a skive. Remote teaming and cloud technologies are just alien to you.
I'm one of life's self-motivated introverts so I just crack on and get the work done - I'm quite happy not to speak to a colleague for a day if that means I get done what needs to be done. That's not to say I don't enjoy the social aspects of meetings and team meetings but the notion "you have to be in the office to reconnect" is pure unadulterated nonsense (at least for me).
And that's the thing - there's no "one size fits all" approach to this. Each individual and each organisation's culture is different and said individuals and organisations need to make it work for them rather than having the Prime Minister wade in with his ill-thought nonsense.
I suspect we are also seeing staff shortages bump up against increased demand - more people at home usually means more calls to organisations, companies and Government departments. That was a foreseeable consequence of lockdown yet it was not prepared for by some.
Just as a restaurant can't function if it doesn't have the staff to cook the food and wait tables so organisations who cannot get enough people to answer the phone will suffer a deterioration in customer service with all the attendant reputational impacts.
Have the likes of EDF, Scottish Power and British Gas taken on additional staff to deal with the concerns of customers of the defunct small energy companies (for example)? I suspect not.
LOL, G you cannot persuade anyone that that is in any way even remotely as a bad as a Tory, they are real criminals, the guy had a couple of Nurofen in his pocket.
Agree with you here Malc, this is a squirrel story and actually makes the allegations against 'whomever' starkly worse looking
Which side of the bed will Big G get out of tomorow? The right? Or the moderate centre right? 🙂
You can rest assured it will never be the right and anyway you said you loved me ?
Of course I ❤️ you. You do sound a bit het up by it all today though?
Was politics in the old days before I came along all about how many investigations you can get you opponents under, or is this a new phase that is a bit, not quite the point of politics really?
I posted clip of Lady Thatcher at PMQs in recent thread - she’s is just simply explaining the difference in her philosophy and policies in regards theirs. That just made politics simple, explain your point of view.
And they were all terribly polite and respectful to each other as they done it.
To be honest I am not the least het up but as my beloved will affirm I have this tendency to enjoy winding people up and maybe on occasions it shows
It is fair to say that politics is more tribal and at times just nasty but as far as I am concerned I want Boris to go so I can rejoin the party as I really fear a Starmer led labour party would borrow far too much and I am not convinced they would restrict public sector pay including doctors and nurses as would be necessary
Christ on a bike Big G, the Tories have been running Britain into an early grave consistently for the last 12 years and all you can say is "I'm worried that Labour might give nurses a pay rise"?
Come on Rangers. Fuck these Scouse c*nts and traitors who BOO BEAUTY. Let Real Madrid hammer them
But loyal, sober Unionists and royalists? Go, lads
I am somewhat surprised how personally you have taken Liverpool fans booing at Wembley on Saturday. I truly thought you would love the madness, the anti-establishment chaos and rebellion. The “fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” behaviour.
It’s all part of life’s rich pageant and amazed you are bent out of shape by it.
I’m a monarchist conservative and it really doesn’t bother me at all - it’s just jolly japes at a football match.
If they annoyed you by being controversialist then it’s getting very Meta!!
What next - demanding seats rather than pit at a Metallica concert? Cocoa rather than Cognac before bed? Tsk Tsk.
No, it makes me puke. Because I know where it comes from
By all means Boo the National Anthem. Boo Prince William. Hurl your turds at Princess Kate, Whatever, you sad tattoeed fat fucks
But booing ABIDE WITH ME??
That is pure vandalism, it is the degradation of the human soul and the hatred of loveliness, in the most ugly way. It is something very Liverpudlian - a diseased city - but it spreads like a fungus. Fuck them all.
Remember Heysel
If Liverpool fans are tarred by Heysel then what are you and I tarred with by virtue of being English?
Is this even serious?
We conquered the world. And it was mainly good. We didn’t push over a wall and kill some Italian teens during a football match. Get a grip
Instead you killed loads of Civilians in places like Amritsar and Derry...
Well, he's not wrong that Yale is stuffed full of radical leftists. That's not even news.
Which are the right-wing universities?
Where indeed are they. That's the question.
Yes, at all times and all places it seems that right wing pundits have attacked universities for being left wing. There must be something about education in general and higher education in particular that they hate.
No I think it's just that youngsters tend to be more radical and university lecturers tend to the leftwards politically. Right wing thought tends to come from elsewhere. Those with leftward views will be positive about some of the stuff that comes out of unis, those more small c conservative find it too radical and are (in my case as an example) put off by the attachment of some weird and unearned sense of moral superiority to leftist social views. I find the further left social policy is the more morally repugnant I find it. Economics is different. All directions bear some fruit
I think it is more fundamental than that. Social conservatives don't want their young learning anything not taught at their home, immediate locality or place of worship, with the exception of technological skills nessecary to support the existing social structures. It is the same for the American home schoolers on the praire or the Taliban. Indeed Boko Haram translates as "Western Education is forbidden".
It's more likely that social conservatives didn't mind young people learning things at university when there were a fair number of social conservatives teaching at those institutions.
Well, he's not wrong that Yale is stuffed full of radical leftists. That's not even news.
Which are the right-wing universities?
Where indeed are they. That's the question.
Yes, at all times and all places it seems that right wing pundits have attacked universities for being left wing. There must be something about education in general and higher education in particular that they hate.
No I think it's just that youngsters tend to be more radical and university lecturers tend to the leftwards politically. Right wing thought tends to come from elsewhere. Those with leftward views will be positive about some of the stuff that comes out of unis, those more small c conservative find it too radical and are (in my case as an example) put off by the attachment of some weird and unearned sense of moral superiority to leftist social views. I find the further left social policy is the more morally repugnant I find it. Economics is different. All directions bear some fruit
I think it is more fundamental than that. Social conservatives don't want their young learning anything not taught at their home, immediate locality or place of worship, with the exception of technological skills nessecary to support the existing social structures. It is the same for the American home schoolers on the praire or the Taliban. Indeed Boko Haram translates as "Western Education is forbidden".
Come on Rangers. Fuck these Scouse c*nts and traitors who BOO BEAUTY. Let Real Madrid hammer them
But loyal, sober Unionists and royalists? Go, lads
I am somewhat surprised how personally you have taken Liverpool fans booing at Wembley on Saturday. I truly thought you would love the madness, the anti-establishment chaos and rebellion. The “fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” behaviour.
It’s all part of life’s rich pageant and amazed you are bent out of shape by it.
I’m a monarchist conservative and it really doesn’t bother me at all - it’s just jolly japes at a football match.
If they annoyed you by being controversialist then it’s getting very Meta!!
What next - demanding seats rather than pit at a Metallica concert? Cocoa rather than Cognac before bed? Tsk Tsk.
No, it makes me puke. Because I know where it comes from
By all means Boo the National Anthem. Boo Prince William. Hurl your turds at Princess Kate, Whatever, you sad tattoeed fat fucks
But booing ABIDE WITH ME??
That is pure vandalism, it is the degradation of the human soul and the hatred of loveliness, in the most ugly way. It is something very Liverpudlian - a diseased city - but it spreads like a fungus. Fuck them all.
Remember Heysel
If Liverpool fans are tarred by Heysel then what are you and I tarred with by virtue of being English?
Is this even serious?
We conquered the world. And it was mainly good. We didn’t push over a wall and kill some Italian teens during a football match. Get a grip
Ok. Fair enough - if we are going simplistic (it wasn’t just Italian teens and it wasn’t just a simple case of some Liverpool fans pushing over a wall out of nothing).
Amritsar - we just controlled a riot as quickly as possible - naughty Indian teens….
Thing is you are probably the poster I agree most with on here for my sins but I’m staggered how miffed you have been by booing a pretty rubbish hymn - if it had been “I vow to thee my country” then I would be in my tank towards Anfield Road but really, perspective?
Has anyone else tried contacting HMRC recently? Tried three times today. Simply say they are too busy. Goodbye. Not even the joy of an hour on hold They've deducted me money for a tax credit overpayment completely without warning.
They’re all working from fucking home. We tried to tell you. It’s shit
You don't need to be sitting in an office to answer a phone. That's just an excuse.
But this is why this shit is happening. It is a disaster for the British economy, if it continues
As an international flintic dildo maker and salesman, I can say it is clearly impacting my industry (seriously). The people that are back in the office are On their Game, they respond quickly, they do their job. The people who are WFH reply much slower, they are less alert in general, and less aware of industry news and gossip, and they are hard to hear on phone calls (“Oh sorry that’s my husband slapping the dog” - GO BACK TO THE FUCKING OFFICE THEN)
I reckon we are about to discover there is a reason we have big cities and complex offices, and the cities and offices that function properly will entirely out-compete the people sitting in their stupid gardens. This is not an invention of the Tory party because of its commercial property owning donors
I moderately agree with this.
Some sectors are coping well with WFH, Others, not. Customer service generally is down, not just in the public sector.
This should come as a surprise to no-one. Who would want to work in a call centre-type occupation - whether office or home based - if they had a better alternative? And, in a low unemployment environment, better alternatives (consisting of practically every other kind of job imaginable) are easier than usual to come by.
Then, of course, the harder businesses find it to recruit workers willing to put up with a constant barrage of shouting from enraged customers, the smaller the available pool of call handlers, the worse the service becomes, the more rage the remaining staff have to put up with, and the more likely they are to get out as soon as they can find another minimum wage crap job that's less liable to cause them to have a nervous breakdown.
It's the sort of vicious cycle that can only be broken by a spike in joblessness that forces workers to endure the misery, for want of anywhere else to go.
Part of the problem is being behind with technology investment.
I spent an hour on phone waiting in a queue for a major insurance company earlier this week, merely to update my debit card details, as the card had expired.
This could be done online.
Yep. Not just online technology either, the phone systems they are running are often a couple of generations out of date too.
The issue is, that for larger companies these projects run to millions of currency units and take years to bring to fruition. There’s not room for an agile (small a) solution that can be up and running in weeks, as we saw during the pandemic - when there was a big difference between companies and organisations that could step outside the box in an emergency, and those constrained by their own bureaucracy that needed to be bypassed.
Interesting. This could be part of the public inquiry perhaps. The supermarkets did a superb job transforming within weeks. Lessons?
I think Musk is slightly barking and I'd hate to work for him but it doesn't mean he isn't onto something with the Woke mind virus.
I wouldn't agree, as you'd expect. But FWIW my cousin's son does work in his organisation (and has for a couple of years) and finds him OK. The lad basically designs satellites and Musk encourages him to design more, so they're both quite happy. I suspect Musk is fine if you deliver the goods, terrible if you don't.
Labour can’t win if voters think they will rely on the SNP.
Keir needs to go all out on them.
There is a problem here as things stand. If the Tories carry on committing suicide then SKS anti SNP stance may be possible. But assuming some sort of normal can break out in government, Labour will not be able to get to a majority without counting in the SNP in some form. They simply hold too many seats.
SKS may need us to believe something that he in fact does not. So we might not either.
Yes, it’s a problem or a paradox.
This is why I advocate a very public anti-SNP approach from Labour from now until the next election.
Vote SNP, get Tory.
That only applies in Scotland. Where Labour is pretty crap at present in MP terms. One almost Tory MP in Morningside of all places. And Labour victories over SNP do nothing to reduce the Tory majority. Plus at the same time, Slab is pretending not to ally with Tories but is doing so all over the country?
I don’t know why Labour are allying with the Tories in Scotland. It doesn’t make sense to me at all.
My enemy’s enemy …
Sort of on subject, how many million Union Jacks have Rangers fans taken to Seville?
Not all of their Union Jacks. They will have kept a few million at home for Orange Walks.
So which posters are rooting for Rangers tonight? And which rooting for the German side? Are you suspecting the majority of PBers cheering for Rangers, actually have English accents?
Since I was named Minister of Sport in PrImeminister TSE first PB cabinet, I’ve been taking my brief at least as seriously as Nadine Doris, my opposite number in government.
So Rangers Protestant, Celtic Catholic? Any type of Protestant including CoE, or a particular denomination? And then the Union Jacks - so typical Rangers fan so solid unionist does not vote SNP?
It’s like painting a picture of the Balkan’s 🫢
That is unadultered pish that only a Little Englander could come out with. Get an education.
Those are actual questions to get an education. I’m aware football allegiance Spain is very political. The only two things i know of in England remotely like that, people of a certain religious persuasion like, or feel they should support, Tottenham. And enmity between West Ham and Millwall could be something to do with not supporting a dockyard strike?
The Rangers with Union Jacks. Does that mean they don’t vote SNP? are they hard bitten unionists with no truck for independence, if they happy to drape in that flag?
If So, does it mean they get fans from far afield, not just Glasgow, on basis it’s the Union team?
Was it ever that sectarian between the supporters of Celtic and Rangers, or more to do with districts of town grew up in. Or even, historically, are there clear Catholic and Protestant areas of town?
Genuine questions, possibly better answered on PB than Google.
By all means educate me.
Glasgow football is very sectarian, more than anywhere else in GB. The Rangers fans are Protestants and the Celtic fans Catholics.
Is there any similar thing between the Liverpool sides? Or the Edinburgh teams?
I had a season ticket for Hibs in the early sixties and while there was rivalry it was nothing compared to Rangers v Celtic
Labour can’t win if voters think they will rely on the SNP.
Keir needs to go all out on them.
There is a problem here as things stand. If the Tories carry on committing suicide then SKS anti SNP stance may be possible. But assuming some sort of normal can break out in government, Labour will not be able to get to a majority without counting in the SNP in some form. They simply hold too many seats.
SKS may need us to believe something that he in fact does not. So we might not either.
Yes, it’s a problem or a paradox.
This is why I advocate a very public anti-SNP approach from Labour from now until the next election.
Vote SNP, get Tory.
That only applies in Scotland. Where Labour is pretty crap at present in MP terms. One almost Tory MP in Morningside of all places. And Labour victories over SNP do nothing to reduce the Tory majority. Plus at the same time, Slab is pretending not to ally with Tories but is doing so all over the country?
I don’t know why Labour are allying with the Tories in Scotland. It doesn’t make sense to me at all.
My enemy’s enemy …
Sort of on subject, how many million Union Jacks have Rangers fans taken to Seville?
Not all of their Union Jacks. They will have kept a few million at home for Orange Walks.
So which posters are rooting for Rangers tonight? And which rooting for the German side? Are you suspecting the majority of PBers cheering for Rangers, actually have English accents?
Since I was named Minister of Sport in PrImeminister TSE first PB cabinet, I’ve been taking my brief at least as seriously as Nadine Doris, my opposite number in government.
So Rangers Protestant, Celtic Catholic? Any type of Protestant including CoE, or a particular denomination? And then the Union Jacks - so typical Rangers fan so solid unionist does not vote SNP?
It’s like painting a picture of the Balkan’s 🫢
That is unadultered pish that only a Little Englander could come out with. Get an education.
Those are actual questions to get an education. I’m aware football allegiance Spain is very political. The only two things i know of in England remotely like that, people of a certain religious persuasion like, or feel they should support, Tottenham. And enmity between West Ham and Millwall could be something to do with not supporting a dockyard strike?
The Rangers with Union Jacks. Does that mean they don’t vote SNP? are they hard bitten unionists with no truck for independence, if they happy to drape in that flag?
If So, does it mean they get fans from far afield, not just Glasgow, on basis it’s the Union team?
Was it ever that sectarian between the supporters of Celtic and Rangers, or more to do with districts of town grew up in. Or even, historically, are there clear Catholic and Protestant areas of town?
Genuine questions, possibly better answered on PB than Google.
By all means educate me.
Glasgow football is very sectarian, more than anywhere else in GB. The Rangers fans are Protestants and the Celtic fans Catholics.
Is there any similar thing between the Liverpool sides? Or the Edinburgh teams?
Not in Liverpool for sure, they’re reasonably friendly for next door neighbours. Can’t say I know too much about Hearts and Hibs though.
Rangers and Celtic always play each other at midday on Saturday these days, after some silly TV company once thought that a 19:45 kickoff would be great for the schedule. Except that half of Glasgow city centre got trashed that night.
Labour can’t win if voters think they will rely on the SNP.
Keir needs to go all out on them.
There is a problem here as things stand. If the Tories carry on committing suicide then SKS anti SNP stance may be possible. But assuming some sort of normal can break out in government, Labour will not be able to get to a majority without counting in the SNP in some form. They simply hold too many seats.
SKS may need us to believe something that he in fact does not. So we might not either.
Yes, it’s a problem or a paradox.
This is why I advocate a very public anti-SNP approach from Labour from now until the next election.
Vote SNP, get Tory.
That only applies in Scotland. Where Labour is pretty crap at present in MP terms. One almost Tory MP in Morningside of all places. And Labour victories over SNP do nothing to reduce the Tory majority. Plus at the same time, Slab is pretending not to ally with Tories but is doing so all over the country?
I don’t know why Labour are allying with the Tories in Scotland. It doesn’t make sense to me at all.
My enemy’s enemy …
Sort of on subject, how many million Union Jacks have Rangers fans taken to Seville?
Not all of their Union Jacks. They will have kept a few million at home for Orange Walks.
So which posters are rooting for Rangers tonight? And which rooting for the German side? Are you suspecting the majority of PBers cheering for Rangers, actually have English accents?
Since I was named Minister of Sport in PrImeminister TSE first PB cabinet, I’ve been taking my brief at least as seriously as Nadine Doris, my opposite number in government.
So Rangers Protestant, Celtic Catholic? Any type of Protestant including CoE, or a particular denomination? And then the Union Jacks - so typical Rangers fan so solid unionist does not vote SNP?
It’s like painting a picture of the Balkan’s 🫢
That is unadultered pish that only a Little Englander could come out with. Get an education.
Those are actual questions to get an education. I’m aware football allegiance Spain is very political. The only two things i know of in England remotely like that, people of a certain religious persuasion like, or feel they should support, Tottenham. And enmity between West Ham and Millwall could be something to do with not supporting a dockyard strike?
The Rangers with Union Jacks. Does that mean they don’t vote SNP? are they hard bitten unionists with no truck for independence, if they happy to drape in that flag?
If So, does it mean they get fans from far afield, not just Glasgow, on basis it’s the Union team?
Was it ever that sectarian between the supporters of Celtic and Rangers, or more to do with districts of town grew up in. Or even, historically, are there clear Catholic and Protestant areas of town?
Genuine questions, possibly better answered on PB than Google.
By all means educate me.
Glasgow football is very sectarian, more than anywhere else in GB. The Rangers fans are Protestants and the Celtic fans Catholics.
Is there any similar thing between the Liverpool sides? Or the Edinburgh teams?
Weirdly, I was always taught that Liverpool WAS a divided city - like Glasgow - but that Everton was the Catholic side and Liverpool was the Proddy side. I have no idea if this is true. It certainly doesn’t square with their identities now
There was an Irish Nationalist MP for the Liverpool Scotland seat from 1885 to 1929:
LOL, G you cannot persuade anyone that that is in any way even remotely as a bad as a Tory, they are real criminals, the guy had a couple of Nurofen in his pocket.
Agree with you here Malc, this is a squirrel story and actually makes the allegations against 'whomever' starkly worse looking
Which side of the bed will Big G get out of tomorow? The right? Or the moderate centre right? 🙂
You can rest assured it will never be the right and anyway you said you loved me ?
Of course I ❤️ you. You do sound a bit het up by it all today though?
Was politics in the old days before I came along all about how many investigations you can get you opponents under, or is this a new phase that is a bit, not quite the point of politics really?
I posted clip of Lady Thatcher at PMQs in recent thread - she’s is just simply explaining the difference in her philosophy and policies in regards theirs. That just made politics simple, explain your point of view.
And they were all terribly polite and respectful to each other as they done it.
To be honest I am not the least het up but as my beloved will affirm I have this tendency to enjoy winding people up and maybe on occasions it shows
It is fair to say that politics is more tribal and at times just nasty but as far as I am concerned I want Boris to go so I can rejoin the party as I really fear a Starmer led labour party would borrow far too much and I am not convinced they would restrict public sector pay including doctors and nurses as would be necessary
Christ on a bike Big G, the Tories have been running Britain into an early grave consistently for the last 12 years and all you can say is "I'm worried that Labour might give nurses a pay rise"?
I did not say that, but unrestricted public sector pay rises to match inflation and similar pension and benefit rises are unsustainable
Well, he's not wrong that Yale is stuffed full of radical leftists. That's not even news.
Which are the right-wing universities?
Where indeed are they. That's the question.
Yes, at all times and all places it seems that right wing pundits have attacked universities for being left wing. There must be something about education in general and higher education in particular that they hate.
No I think it's just that youngsters tend to be more radical and university lecturers tend to the leftwards politically. Right wing thought tends to come from elsewhere. Those with leftward views will be positive about some of the stuff that comes out of unis, those more small c conservative find it too radical and are (in my case as an example) put off by the attachment of some weird and unearned sense of moral superiority to leftist social views. I find the further left social policy is the more morally repugnant I find it. Economics is different. All directions bear some fruit
I think it is more fundamental than that. Social conservatives don't want their young learning anything not taught at their home, immediate locality or place of worship, with the exception of technological skills nessecary to support the existing social structures. It is the same for the American home schoolers on the praire or the Taliban. Indeed Boko Haram translates as "Western Education is forbidden".
The counterpoint being the more radical left dont want their views tolerated, they want forced acceptance of their worldview, compulsory adulation of it. They seem utterly unprepared to accept that other views are available and the further down the left rabbit hole you go the more they are convinced anyone 1 degree or more to their right is made of pure distilled evil. I find nothing more disgusting than these self declarations, be it of moral superiority, integrity or whatever. And it's something I have found more a problem the further into the social left you travel.
Well, he's not wrong that Yale is stuffed full of radical leftists. That's not even news.
Which are the right-wing universities?
Where indeed are they. That's the question.
Yes, at all times and all places it seems that right wing pundits have attacked universities for being left wing. There must be something about education in general and higher education in particular that they hate.
No I think it's just that youngsters tend to be more radical and university lecturers tend to the leftwards politically. Right wing thought tends to come from elsewhere. Those with leftward views will be positive about some of the stuff that comes out of unis, those more small c conservative find it too radical and are (in my case as an example) put off by the attachment of some weird and unearned sense of moral superiority to leftist social views. I find the further left social policy is the more morally repugnant I find it. Economics is different. All directions bear some fruit
I think it is more fundamental than that. Social conservatives don't want their young learning anything not taught at their home, immediate locality or place of worship, with the exception of technological skills nessecary to support the existing social structures. It is the same for the American home schoolers on the praire or the Taliban. Indeed Boko Haram translates as "Western Education is forbidden".
That strikes me as an improbably simplistic and all encompassing explanation. Wary of anecdote though we rightly are how many people have any of us come across who 'don't want their young learning anything not taught at their home, immediate locality or place of worship'? And for the sole purpose of maintaining social structures no less, a curiously specific goal.
The 'evil commie insider' trope may not be massively compelling but I don't think that's much of a retort.
Besides, everyone knows that centrists have all the answers, except the answer of how to win electoral support.
LOL, G you cannot persuade anyone that that is in any way even remotely as a bad as a Tory, they are real criminals, the guy had a couple of Nurofen in his pocket.
Agree with you here Malc, this is a squirrel story and actually makes the allegations against 'whomever' starkly worse looking
Which side of the bed will Big G get out of tomorow? The right? Or the moderate centre right? 🙂
You can rest assured it will never be the right and anyway you said you loved me ?
Of course I ❤️ you. You do sound a bit het up by it all today though?
Was politics in the old days before I came along all about how many investigations you can get you opponents under, or is this a new phase that is a bit, not quite the point of politics really?
I posted clip of Lady Thatcher at PMQs in recent thread - she’s is just simply explaining the difference in her philosophy and policies in regards theirs. That just made politics simple, explain your point of view.
And they were all terribly polite and respectful to each other as they done it.
To be honest I am not the least het up but as my beloved will affirm I have this tendency to enjoy winding people up and maybe on occasions it shows
It is fair to say that politics is more tribal and at times just nasty but as far as I am concerned I want Boris to go so I can rejoin the party as I really fear a Starmer led labour party would borrow far too much and I am not convinced they would restrict public sector pay including doctors and nurses as would be necessary
Christ on a bike Big G, the Tories have been running Britain into an early grave consistently for the last 12 years and all you can say is "I'm worried that Labour might give nurses a pay rise"?
LOL, G you cannot persuade anyone that that is in any way even remotely as a bad as a Tory, they are real criminals, the guy had a couple of Nurofen in his pocket.
Agree with you here Malc, this is a squirrel story and actually makes the allegations against 'whomever' starkly worse looking
Which side of the bed will Big G get out of tomorow? The right? Or the moderate centre right? 🙂
You can rest assured it will never be the right and anyway you said you loved me ?
Of course I ❤️ you. You do sound a bit het up by it all today though?
Was politics in the old days before I came along all about how many investigations you can get you opponents under, or is this a new phase that is a bit, not quite the point of politics really?
I posted clip of Lady Thatcher at PMQs in recent thread - she’s is just simply explaining the difference in her philosophy and policies in regards theirs. That just made politics simple, explain your point of view.
And they were all terribly polite and respectful to each other as they done it.
To be honest I am not the least het up but as my beloved will affirm I have this tendency to enjoy winding people up and maybe on occasions it shows
It is fair to say that politics is more tribal and at times just nasty but as far as I am concerned I want Boris to go so I can rejoin the party as I really fear a Starmer led labour party would borrow far too much and I am not convinced they would restrict public sector pay including doctors and nurses as would be necessary
Christ on a bike Big G, the Tories have been running Britain into an early grave consistently for the last 12 years and all you can say is "I'm worried that Labour might give nurses a pay rise"?
SKS is still proposing a minimum wage of £10 less than the Tories I think
Come on Rangers. Fuck these Scouse c*nts and traitors who BOO BEAUTY. Let Real Madrid hammer them
But loyal, sober Unionists and royalists? Go, lads
I am somewhat surprised how personally you have taken Liverpool fans booing at Wembley on Saturday. I truly thought you would love the madness, the anti-establishment chaos and rebellion. The “fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” behaviour.
It’s all part of life’s rich pageant and amazed you are bent out of shape by it.
I’m a monarchist conservative and it really doesn’t bother me at all - it’s just jolly japes at a football match.
If they annoyed you by being controversialist then it’s getting very Meta!!
What next - demanding seats rather than pit at a Metallica concert? Cocoa rather than Cognac before bed? Tsk Tsk.
No, it makes me puke. Because I know where it comes from
By all means Boo the National Anthem. Boo Prince William. Hurl your turds at Princess Kate, Whatever, you sad tattoeed fat fucks
But booing ABIDE WITH ME??
That is pure vandalism, it is the degradation of the human soul and the hatred of loveliness, in the most ugly way. It is something very Liverpudlian - a diseased city - but it spreads like a fungus. Fuck them all.
Remember Heysel
If Liverpool fans are tarred by Heysel then what are you and I tarred with by virtue of being English?
Is this even serious?
We conquered the world. And it was mainly good. We didn’t push over a wall and kill some Italian teens during a football match. Get a grip
Ok. Fair enough - if we are going simplistic (it wasn’t just Italian teens and it wasn’t just a simple case of some Liverpool fans pushing over a wall out of nothing).
Amritsar - we just controlled a riot as quickly as possible - naughty Indian teens….
Thing is you are probably the poster I agree most with on here for my sins but I’m staggered how miffed you have been by booing a pretty rubbish hymn - if it had been “I vow to thee my country” then I would be in my tank towards Anfield Road but really, perspective?
I hear you.
Maybe I always had this secret Simon Heffer-esque contempt for ugly, contemptible, obese, do-nothing Liverpool? But I hid it. OK, they booed our 96-year Queen during the year of her Platinum Jubilee, and a year or two after our widowhood. Maybe I could have contained myself, if they had done only that. But booing a beautiful religious hymn with the most profound lyrics ever written about humanity yielding with grace to mortality, WTAF??
They are monkeys. They are an element in working class British culture - fat, wanky, ugly, dumb, inadequate, Philistine, pathetic and gruesomely proud of it - which I utterly despise. Let them sink into the Irish Sea. Millwall have more nobility
Have been trying to catch a photo of the lightning in a very weird thunderstorm where packs of clouds keep passing throwing out their tricks but failed. Looks suitably moody anyway!
LOL, G you cannot persuade anyone that that is in any way even remotely as a bad as a Tory, they are real criminals, the guy had a couple of Nurofen in his pocket.
Agree with you here Malc, this is a squirrel story and actually makes the allegations against 'whomever' starkly worse looking
Which side of the bed will Big G get out of tomorow? The right? Or the moderate centre right? 🙂
You can rest assured it will never be the right and anyway you said you loved me ?
Of course I ❤️ you. You do sound a bit het up by it all today though?
Was politics in the old days before I came along all about how many investigations you can get you opponents under, or is this a new phase that is a bit, not quite the point of politics really?
I posted clip of Lady Thatcher at PMQs in recent thread - she’s is just simply explaining the difference in her philosophy and policies in regards theirs. That just made politics simple, explain your point of view.
And they were all terribly polite and respectful to each other as they done it.
To be honest I am not the least het up but as my beloved will affirm I have this tendency to enjoy winding people up and maybe on occasions it shows
It is fair to say that politics is more tribal and at times just nasty but as far as I am concerned I want Boris to go so I can rejoin the party as I really fear a Starmer led labour party would borrow far too much and I am not convinced they would restrict public sector pay including doctors and nurses as would be necessary
Amongst the many things I looked at today, I see the government bringing a lot of Indian nurses in to fill a hole.
It could be moving to where government insist Brexit working well, Brexit supporters, such as on PB say it’s working well, no problem here - yet as they say this there is this growing and active special measures clause in which the economy and increasingly frustrated business can fill skill gaps it’s crying out for, proper skill gaps not just carrying out food and wiping tables, but being able to operate a lot of the machinery in factory, or chef, or nurse or doctor, that is negating exactly what many voted for that got Brexit over the line.
You voted Remain. But Brexit is done now, so we all park it and move on?
But as time passes, it’s looking like Brexit isn’t really done, at what point do we re-examine our position and start arguing there’s plenty here to sort out?
Labour can’t win if voters think they will rely on the SNP.
Keir needs to go all out on them.
There is a problem here as things stand. If the Tories carry on committing suicide then SKS anti SNP stance may be possible. But assuming some sort of normal can break out in government, Labour will not be able to get to a majority without counting in the SNP in some form. They simply hold too many seats.
SKS may need us to believe something that he in fact does not. So we might not either.
Yes, it’s a problem or a paradox.
This is why I advocate a very public anti-SNP approach from Labour from now until the next election.
Vote SNP, get Tory.
That only applies in Scotland. Where Labour is pretty crap at present in MP terms. One almost Tory MP in Morningside of all places. And Labour victories over SNP do nothing to reduce the Tory majority. Plus at the same time, Slab is pretending not to ally with Tories but is doing so all over the country?
I don’t know why Labour are allying with the Tories in Scotland. It doesn’t make sense to me at all.
My enemy’s enemy …
Sort of on subject, how many million Union Jacks have Rangers fans taken to Seville?
Not all of their Union Jacks. They will have kept a few million at home for Orange Walks.
So which posters are rooting for Rangers tonight? And which rooting for the German side? Are you suspecting the majority of PBers cheering for Rangers, actually have English accents?
Since I was named Minister of Sport in PrImeminister TSE first PB cabinet, I’ve been taking my brief at least as seriously as Nadine Doris, my opposite number in government.
So Rangers Protestant, Celtic Catholic? Any type of Protestant including CoE, or a particular denomination? And then the Union Jacks - so typical Rangers fan so solid unionist does not vote SNP?
It’s like painting a picture of the Balkan’s 🫢
That is unadultered pish that only a Little Englander could come out with. Get an education.
Those are actual questions to get an education. I’m aware football allegiance Spain is very political. The only two things i know of in England remotely like that, people of a certain religious persuasion like, or feel they should support, Tottenham. And enmity between West Ham and Millwall could be something to do with not supporting a dockyard strike?
The Rangers with Union Jacks. Does that mean they don’t vote SNP? are they hard bitten unionists with no truck for independence, if they happy to drape in that flag?
If So, does it mean they get fans from far afield, not just Glasgow, on basis it’s the Union team?
Was it ever that sectarian between the supporters of Celtic and Rangers, or more to do with districts of town grew up in. Or even, historically, are there clear Catholic and Protestant areas of town?
Genuine questions, possibly better answered on PB than Google.
By all means educate me.
Glasgow football is very sectarian, more than anywhere else in GB. The Rangers fans are Protestants and the Celtic fans Catholics.
Is there any similar thing between the Liverpool sides? Or the Edinburgh teams?
Weirdly, I was always taught that Liverpool WAS a divided city - like Glasgow - but that Everton was the Catholic side and Liverpool was the Proddy side. I have no idea if this is true. It certainly doesn’t square with their identities now
This article doesn't explicitly say that's wrong, but implies it with the movements it states following the violence.
"Sectarian violence in Liverpool
On 20 June 1909 Liverpool experienced its worst outbreak of sectarian trouble when Catholics and Protestants violently clashed in the streets.
A proposed march from a local Catholic church ended in riots with police when members of the Protestant community tried to block the route.
The sectarian violence led to the city being dubbed the 'Belfast of England'.
snip
"A Father Fitzgerald gave evidence," Professor Neal says
"He claimed 3,200 Catholics had to leave Everton and move in to safe areas."
"The commission also heard that a number of Protestant families had to leave the dock areas".""
News from elsewhere - in Slovenia, as his party hits 44% in the latest poll, Robert Golob looks set to become prime minister of a coalition of Svoboda, Social Democrats and the Left which will have 55 of 96 seats in the new Parliament.
Interesting polling from France for the legislative election as NUPES advances into a narrow lead. NUPES is basically to France what Golob's coalition is to Slovenia. NUPES is Melenchon's party joined with the Greens , Socialists, Communists and a few others. In the old National Assembly, they had 58 seats between them but could now win 160-185 seats.
Ensemble! is Macron's LREM party plus a couple of others.
The latest poll as follows (changes from 2017):
NUPES: 27.5% (+2.5) Ensemble!: 27% (-5) National Rally: 21% (+8) Les Republicans: 10% (-12) Reconquete: 5% (+5)
Despite that, Ensemble! could win a narrow overall majority with National Rally and NUPES making gains and Les Republicans taking big losses.
Have been trying to catch a photo of the lightning in a very weird thunderstorm where packs of clouds keep passing throwing out their tricks but failed. Looks suitably moody anyway!
Have I got this right: Tories are now against the windfall tax because it doesn't go far enough?
Charitable view: fast moving economic crisis which the system hasn't had to deal with for at least 40 years.
Alternative view: You can see the whites of all the rabbits' eyes in the piercing beam of the highlights.
I imagine that some of the less imbecilic Tories have taken Martin Lewis' recent remarks about the possibility of civil unrest onboard - especially once we get into Winter and anything up to half the population really begins to struggle to service mortgage debt or rents, credit card and loan debt, transport costs, home energy costs and food prices all at the same time when all of those bills are climbing relentlessly in lockstep.
They can't borrow their way out of trouble because the public debt is already gigantic and the cost of servicing it will be climbing as well. They can't tax the poor because they've nothing left to give. To a great extent they can't tax businesses either because, certain special exceptions like the oil and gas sector aside, a lot of them are struggling with the consequences of inflation themselves, along with plummeting consumer confidence. They can scrabble around for more cuts, but the days when you could make meaningful savings by firing district council LGBT inclusion officers and streamlining procurement processes are long gone, if they were ever there to begin with.
The best way to raise large sums of money quickly and reliably is through measures targeting the assets of the remaining fraction of the populace that remains comfortably off, principally through raising taxes on their homes and other investments, and much more substantial death duties - i.e. to squeeze the Tory core vote until it screams in agony. And they know it. They're in something of a bind.
Come on Rangers. Fuck these Scouse c*nts and traitors who BOO BEAUTY. Let Real Madrid hammer them
But loyal, sober Unionists and royalists? Go, lads
I am somewhat surprised how personally you have taken Liverpool fans booing at Wembley on Saturday. I truly thought you would love the madness, the anti-establishment chaos and rebellion. The “fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” behaviour.
It’s all part of life’s rich pageant and amazed you are bent out of shape by it.
I’m a monarchist conservative and it really doesn’t bother me at all - it’s just jolly japes at a football match.
If they annoyed you by being controversialist then it’s getting very Meta!!
What next - demanding seats rather than pit at a Metallica concert? Cocoa rather than Cognac before bed? Tsk Tsk.
No, it makes me puke. Because I know where it comes from
By all means Boo the National Anthem. Boo Prince William. Hurl your turds at Princess Kate, Whatever, you sad tattoeed fat fucks
But booing ABIDE WITH ME??
That is pure vandalism, it is the degradation of the human soul and the hatred of loveliness, in the most ugly way. It is something very Liverpudlian - a diseased city - but it spreads like a fungus. Fuck them all.
Remember Heysel
If Liverpool fans are tarred by Heysel then what are you and I tarred with by virtue of being English?
The evil of the British Empire for one. A scar on us for time immemorial..
Come on Rangers. Fuck these Scouse c*nts and traitors who BOO BEAUTY. Let Real Madrid hammer them
But loyal, sober Unionists and royalists? Go, lads
I am somewhat surprised how personally you have taken Liverpool fans booing at Wembley on Saturday. I truly thought you would love the madness, the anti-establishment chaos and rebellion. The “fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” behaviour.
It’s all part of life’s rich pageant and amazed you are bent out of shape by it.
I’m a monarchist conservative and it really doesn’t bother me at all - it’s just jolly japes at a football match.
If they annoyed you by being controversialist then it’s getting very Meta!!
What next - demanding seats rather than pit at a Metallica concert? Cocoa rather than Cognac before bed? Tsk Tsk.
No, it makes me puke. Because I know where it comes from
By all means Boo the National Anthem. Boo Prince William. Hurl your turds at Princess Kate, Whatever, you sad tattoeed fat fucks
But booing ABIDE WITH ME??
That is pure vandalism, it is the degradation of the human soul and the hatred of loveliness, in the most ugly way. It is something very Liverpudlian - a diseased city - but it spreads like a fungus. Fuck them all.
Remember Heysel
If Liverpool fans are tarred by Heysel then what are you and I tarred with by virtue of being English?
Is this even serious?
We conquered the world. And it was mainly good. We didn’t push over a wall and kill some Italian teens during a football match. Get a grip
Ok. Fair enough - if we are going simplistic (it wasn’t just Italian teens and it wasn’t just a simple case of some Liverpool fans pushing over a wall out of nothing).
Amritsar - we just controlled a riot as quickly as possible - naughty Indian teens….
Thing is you are probably the poster I agree most with on here for my sins but I’m staggered how miffed you have been by booing a pretty rubbish hymn - if it had been “I vow to thee my country” then I would be in my tank towards Anfield Road but really, perspective?
I hear you.
Maybe I always had this secret Simon Heffer-esque contempt for ugly, contemptible, obese, do-nothing Liverpool? But I hid it. OK, they booed our 96-year Queen during the year of her Platinum Jubilee, and a year or two after our widowhood. Maybe I could have contained myself, if they had done only that. But booing a beautiful religious hymn with the most profound lyrics ever written about humanity yielding with grace to mortality, WTAF??
They are monkeys. They are an element in working class British culture - fat, wanky, ugly, dumb, inadequate, Philistine, pathetic and gruesomely proud of it - which I utterly despise. Let them sink into the Irish Sea. Millwall have more nobility
I get you but you are in danger of going full-Roger…..
LOL, G you cannot persuade anyone that that is in any way even remotely as a bad as a Tory, they are real criminals, the guy had a couple of Nurofen in his pocket.
Agree with you here Malc, this is a squirrel story and actually makes the allegations against 'whomever' starkly worse looking
Which side of the bed will Big G get out of tomorow? The right? Or the moderate centre right? 🙂
You can rest assured it will never be the right and anyway you said you loved me ?
Of course I ❤️ you. You do sound a bit het up by it all today though?
Was politics in the old days before I came along all about how many investigations you can get you opponents under, or is this a new phase that is a bit, not quite the point of politics really?
I posted clip of Lady Thatcher at PMQs in recent thread - she’s is just simply explaining the difference in her philosophy and policies in regards theirs. That just made politics simple, explain your point of view.
And they were all terribly polite and respectful to each other as they done it.
To be honest I am not the least het up but as my beloved will affirm I have this tendency to enjoy winding people up and maybe on occasions it shows
It is fair to say that politics is more tribal and at times just nasty but as far as I am concerned I want Boris to go so I can rejoin the party as I really fear a Starmer led labour party would borrow far too much and I am not convinced they would restrict public sector pay including doctors and nurses as would be necessary
Amongst the many things I looked at today, I see the government bringing a lot of Indian nurses in to fill a hole.
It could be moving to where government insist Brexit working well, Brexit supporters, such as on PB say it’s working well, no problem here - yet as they say this there is this growing and active special measures clause in which the economy and increasingly frustrated business can fill skill gaps it’s crying out for, proper skill gaps not just carrying out food and wiping tables, but being able to operate a lot of the machinery in factory, or chef, or nurse or doctor, that is negating exactly what many voted for that got Brexit over the line.
You voted Remain. But Brexit is done now, so we all park it and move on?
But as time passes, it’s looking like Brexit isn’t really done, at what point do we re-examine our position and start arguing there’s plenty here to sort out?
Brexit is not the final destination yet and needs work over the months and years ahead but I do not see it as number one in people's minds
Labour can’t win if voters think they will rely on the SNP.
Keir needs to go all out on them.
There is a problem here as things stand. If the Tories carry on committing suicide then SKS anti SNP stance may be possible. But assuming some sort of normal can break out in government, Labour will not be able to get to a majority without counting in the SNP in some form. They simply hold too many seats.
SKS may need us to believe something that he in fact does not. So we might not either.
Yes, it’s a problem or a paradox.
This is why I advocate a very public anti-SNP approach from Labour from now until the next election.
Vote SNP, get Tory.
That only applies in Scotland. Where Labour is pretty crap at present in MP terms. One almost Tory MP in Morningside of all places. And Labour victories over SNP do nothing to reduce the Tory majority. Plus at the same time, Slab is pretending not to ally with Tories but is doing so all over the country?
I don’t know why Labour are allying with the Tories in Scotland. It doesn’t make sense to me at all.
My enemy’s enemy …
Sort of on subject, how many million Union Jacks have Rangers fans taken to Seville?
Not all of their Union Jacks. They will have kept a few million at home for Orange Walks.
So which posters are rooting for Rangers tonight? And which rooting for the German side? Are you suspecting the majority of PBers cheering for Rangers, actually have English accents?
Since I was named Minister of Sport in PrImeminister TSE first PB cabinet, I’ve been taking my brief at least as seriously as Nadine Doris, my opposite number in government.
So Rangers Protestant, Celtic Catholic? Any type of Protestant including CoE, or a particular denomination? And then the Union Jacks - so typical Rangers fan so solid unionist does not vote SNP?
It’s like painting a picture of the Balkan’s 🫢
That is unadultered pish that only a Little Englander could come out with. Get an education.
Those are actual questions to get an education. I’m aware football allegiance Spain is very political. The only two things i know of in England remotely like that, people of a certain religious persuasion like, or feel they should support, Tottenham. And enmity between West Ham and Millwall could be something to do with not supporting a dockyard strike?
The Rangers with Union Jacks. Does that mean they don’t vote SNP? are they hard bitten unionists with no truck for independence, if they happy to drape in that flag?
If So, does it mean they get fans from far afield, not just Glasgow, on basis it’s the Union team?
Was it ever that sectarian between the supporters of Celtic and Rangers, or more to do with districts of town grew up in. Or even, historically, are there clear Catholic and Protestant areas of town?
Genuine questions, possibly better answered on PB than Google.
By all means educate me.
Glasgow football is very sectarian, more than anywhere else in GB. The Rangers fans are Protestants and the Celtic fans Catholics.
Is there any similar thing between the Liverpool sides? Or the Edinburgh teams?
Weirdly, I was always taught that Liverpool WAS a divided city - like Glasgow - but that Everton was the Catholic side and Liverpool was the Proddy side. I have no idea if this is true. It certainly doesn’t square with their identities now
This article doesn't explicitly say that's wrong, but implies it with the movements it states following the violence.
"Sectarian violence in Liverpool
On 20 June 1909 Liverpool experienced its worst outbreak of sectarian trouble when Catholics and Protestants violently clashed in the streets.
A proposed march from a local Catholic church ended in riots with police when members of the Protestant community tried to block the route.
The sectarian violence led to the city being dubbed the 'Belfast of England'.
snip
"A Father Fitzgerald gave evidence," Professor Neal says
"He claimed 3,200 Catholics had to leave Everton and move in to safe areas."
"The commission also heard that a number of Protestant families had to leave the dock areas".""
LOL, G you cannot persuade anyone that that is in any way even remotely as a bad as a Tory, they are real criminals, the guy had a couple of Nurofen in his pocket.
Agree with you here Malc, this is a squirrel story and actually makes the allegations against 'whomever' starkly worse looking
Which side of the bed will Big G get out of tomorow? The right? Or the moderate centre right? 🙂
You can rest assured it will never be the right and anyway you said you loved me ?
Of course I ❤️ you. You do sound a bit het up by it all today though?
Was politics in the old days before I came along all about how many investigations you can get you opponents under, or is this a new phase that is a bit, not quite the point of politics really?
I posted clip of Lady Thatcher at PMQs in recent thread - she’s is just simply explaining the difference in her philosophy and policies in regards theirs. That just made politics simple, explain your point of view.
And they were all terribly polite and respectful to each other as they done it.
To be honest I am not the least het up but as my beloved will affirm I have this tendency to enjoy winding people up and maybe on occasions it shows
It is fair to say that politics is more tribal and at times just nasty but as far as I am concerned I want Boris to go so I can rejoin the party as I really fear a Starmer led labour party would borrow far too much and I am not convinced they would restrict public sector pay including doctors and nurses as would be necessary
Christ on a bike Big G, the Tories have been running Britain into an early grave consistently for the last 12 years and all you can say is "I'm worried that Labour might give nurses a pay rise"?
LOL, G you cannot persuade anyone that that is in any way even remotely as a bad as a Tory, they are real criminals, the guy had a couple of Nurofen in his pocket.
Agree with you here Malc, this is a squirrel story and actually makes the allegations against 'whomever' starkly worse looking
Which side of the bed will Big G get out of tomorow? The right? Or the moderate centre right? 🙂
You can rest assured it will never be the right and anyway you said you loved me ?
Of course I ❤️ you. You do sound a bit het up by it all today though?
Was politics in the old days before I came along all about how many investigations you can get you opponents under, or is this a new phase that is a bit, not quite the point of politics really?
I posted clip of Lady Thatcher at PMQs in recent thread - she’s is just simply explaining the difference in her philosophy and policies in regards theirs. That just made politics simple, explain your point of view.
And they were all terribly polite and respectful to each other as they done it.
To be honest I am not the least het up but as my beloved will affirm I have this tendency to enjoy winding people up and maybe on occasions it shows
It is fair to say that politics is more tribal and at times just nasty but as far as I am concerned I want Boris to go so I can rejoin the party as I really fear a Starmer led labour party would borrow far too much and I am not convinced they would restrict public sector pay including doctors and nurses as would be necessary
Christ on a bike Big G, the Tories have been running Britain into an early grave consistently for the last 12 years and all you can say is "I'm worried that Labour might give nurses a pay rise"?
SKS is still proposing a minimum wage of £10 less than the Tories I think
Have been trying to catch a photo of the lightning in a very weird thunderstorm where packs of clouds keep passing throwing out their tricks but failed. Looks suitably moody anyway!
Edit - sorry it’s the wrong way round.
That's a Vanilla bug!
Ok - tried taking a photo in landscape to see if it comes out the right way. Just missed more random lightning sadly.
LOL, G you cannot persuade anyone that that is in any way even remotely as a bad as a Tory, they are real criminals, the guy had a couple of Nurofen in his pocket.
Agree with you here Malc, this is a squirrel story and actually makes the allegations against 'whomever' starkly worse looking
Which side of the bed will Big G get out of tomorow? The right? Or the moderate centre right? 🙂
You can rest assured it will never be the right and anyway you said you loved me ?
Of course I ❤️ you. You do sound a bit het up by it all today though?
Was politics in the old days before I came along all about how many investigations you can get you opponents under, or is this a new phase that is a bit, not quite the point of politics really?
I posted clip of Lady Thatcher at PMQs in recent thread - she’s is just simply explaining the difference in her philosophy and policies in regards theirs. That just made politics simple, explain your point of view.
And they were all terribly polite and respectful to each other as they done it.
To be honest I am not the least het up but as my beloved will affirm I have this tendency to enjoy winding people up and maybe on occasions it shows
It is fair to say that politics is more tribal and at times just nasty but as far as I am concerned I want Boris to go so I can rejoin the party as I really fear a Starmer led labour party would borrow far too much and I am not convinced they would restrict public sector pay including doctors and nurses as would be necessary
Christ on a bike Big G, the Tories have been running Britain into an early grave consistently for the last 12 years and all you can say is "I'm worried that Labour might give nurses a pay rise"?
I did not say that, but unrestricted public sector pay rises to match inflation and similar pension and benefit rises are unsustainable
Prices getting out ahead of the wages of the poorest -- THAT is unsustainable. For the poor, that is. But they probably don't count.
Have been trying to catch a photo of the lightning in a very weird thunderstorm where packs of clouds keep passing throwing out their tricks but failed. Looks suitably moody anyway!
Edit - sorry it’s the wrong way round.
That's a Vanilla bug!
Ok - tried taking a photo in landscape to see if it comes out the right way. Just missed more random lightning sadly.
His dogs have 25k twitter followers. He wears Carhartt workwear. He would legalise weed.
Welcome to the second decade of the 21st century kids.
I was surprised in a BBC story earlier to see him described as a 'hulking' 6ft 8in. The word seems to carry negative connotations to me when just describing his height would go just fine.
It was admittedly in the context of a historic incident where he pursued an innocent jogger with his shotgun though.
To get iphone photos posted the right way up, I found that editing the photo and realigning it didn't help. I had to realign it and then crop a tiny bit off to get it to then save with the alignment I wanted in a way recognised by vanilla. It's a bit of a pain in the arse, but better than posting wonky photos!
Labour can’t win if voters think they will rely on the SNP.
Keir needs to go all out on them.
There is a problem here as things stand. If the Tories carry on committing suicide then SKS anti SNP stance may be possible. But assuming some sort of normal can break out in government, Labour will not be able to get to a majority without counting in the SNP in some form. They simply hold too many seats.
SKS may need us to believe something that he in fact does not. So we might not either.
Yes, it’s a problem or a paradox.
This is why I advocate a very public anti-SNP approach from Labour from now until the next election.
Vote SNP, get Tory.
It's not credible, though. The idea that the SNP would favour the Tories over Labour?
It is credible.
If Scotland still voted Labour, Keir’s mountain-to-climb would be more a gentle foot-hill.
SNP/Labour waverers are critical to the next election (one of five key profiles who are).
SNP MPs are just as reliable supporters of SKS over Boris as PM as Labour MPs are.
You (and other posters) are confusing separate issues.
To win, SKS needs to convince English voters that he will not be beholden to the SNP.
Therefore, he must campaign hard against the SNP, even if - within the Scottish context - it has minor electoral pay-off.
Anyway, he would be right to do so, as every Labour win against the SNP makes a Labour led government more likely because it *increases the Labour tally relatively* against the Tory tally.
He needs the unionists in Scotland to flock to him. If he takes votes directly off the SNP then a standing still Scot Tory party would benefit before SLab start to - potentially in the 3 Ayrshire seats, Stirling etc. The Scottish Tories would probably settle for third in the popular vote (on say 20%) if the SNP decline into the 30s as they can come through the middle in a handful of seats
Fat chance , more likely Boris will tell the truth
Lolz, indeed. The Tories will take back Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock though. It is so written!
Why would anyone in that area want Tories back in , I can see part of Ayr/Doonfoot given the cash is all concentrated there but given the state of the rest it would be only the mentally deranged that would want Tories in. If so Scotland really is F***ed.
Because I think the Tories will hold their share, labour will make some(very limited) inroads into the SNP and the SNP will struggle with turnout next time. It's only a 2.5% swing, and I can see the ferry issue impacting Ayrshire generally as well as any failure to get a new referendum punished by turnout differential. That's why I think it's a potential gain.
Still amazes me it is even close but anything is possible here just now, it is going to the dogs and Tories and Labour are just cheeks of the same arse. PS: same London arse
You've still got a pretty good lock on seats Malcolm, but complete dominance can't go on forever, that unity in the Nat community like any other has to crack at times. I don't see drastic gains next time, a few possible for each of the arse cheeks but you'll be well ahead regardless. Somewhere between 2017 and 2019 is my guess. And, tbf, little of what the Scot Tories hold is guaranteed 'hold', they might even just churn 2 or 3 seats
Well I am pig sick of SNP leadership cabal so they have lost my vote , but there are no alternatives, I will not vote for cretinous lickspittle London puppet parties who have no interest whatsoever in Scotland. I will not be back till Sturgeon and her acolytes are purged.
Ah, I see. Well I hope you get back a party you can vote for. I find the situation similar. Utter garbage everywhere.
Glass half empty then? Every party's got its idiots, but there are good people there too. I don't understand why people are so down about politicians in general. There are several parties I could vote for.
Apart from SNP there are no Scottish parties, Greens are morons. The rest are a ragbag of lickspittle wasters tagged onto London parties in the hope they can join the gravy train at Westminster and then HOL. I could not retain my principles and morals and vote for these types. Currently SNP have lost their way due to the crooks running the show and so I am left with zero palatable options.
That's less "glass half empty" and more glass is empty, and broken, and the broken shards are in my dinner and I'm crunching grimly through it.
LOL, G you cannot persuade anyone that that is in any way even remotely as a bad as a Tory, they are real criminals, the guy had a couple of Nurofen in his pocket.
Agree with you here Malc, this is a squirrel story and actually makes the allegations against 'whomever' starkly worse looking
Which side of the bed will Big G get out of tomorow? The right? Or the moderate centre right? 🙂
You can rest assured it will never be the right and anyway you said you loved me ?
Of course I ❤️ you. You do sound a bit het up by it all today though?
Was politics in the old days before I came along all about how many investigations you can get you opponents under, or is this a new phase that is a bit, not quite the point of politics really?
I posted clip of Lady Thatcher at PMQs in recent thread - she’s is just simply explaining the difference in her philosophy and policies in regards theirs. That just made politics simple, explain your point of view.
And they were all terribly polite and respectful to each other as they done it.
To be honest I am not the least het up but as my beloved will affirm I have this tendency to enjoy winding people up and maybe on occasions it shows
It is fair to say that politics is more tribal and at times just nasty but as far as I am concerned I want Boris to go so I can rejoin the party as I really fear a Starmer led labour party would borrow far too much and I am not convinced they would restrict public sector pay including doctors and nurses as would be necessary
Christ on a bike Big G, the Tories have been running Britain into an early grave consistently for the last 12 years and all you can say is "I'm worried that Labour might give nurses a pay rise"?
I did not say that, but unrestricted public sector pay rises to match inflation and similar pension and benefit rises are unsustainable
Prices getting out ahead of the wages of the poorest -- THAT is unsustainable. For the poor, that is. But they probably don't count.
The poor are actually not that poor. Poverty seems now to be defined as you can't afford a hundred quid a month for sky sports.
LOL, G you cannot persuade anyone that that is in any way even remotely as a bad as a Tory, they are real criminals, the guy had a couple of Nurofen in his pocket.
Agree with you here Malc, this is a squirrel story and actually makes the allegations against 'whomever' starkly worse looking
Which side of the bed will Big G get out of tomorow? The right? Or the moderate centre right? 🙂
You can rest assured it will never be the right and anyway you said you loved me ?
Of course I ❤️ you. You do sound a bit het up by it all today though?
Was politics in the old days before I came along all about how many investigations you can get you opponents under, or is this a new phase that is a bit, not quite the point of politics really?
I posted clip of Lady Thatcher at PMQs in recent thread - she’s is just simply explaining the difference in her philosophy and policies in regards theirs. That just made politics simple, explain your point of view.
And they were all terribly polite and respectful to each other as they done it.
To be honest I am not the least het up but as my beloved will affirm I have this tendency to enjoy winding people up and maybe on occasions it shows
It is fair to say that politics is more tribal and at times just nasty but as far as I am concerned I want Boris to go so I can rejoin the party as I really fear a Starmer led labour party would borrow far too much and I am not convinced they would restrict public sector pay including doctors and nurses as would be necessary
Christ on a bike Big G, the Tories have been running Britain into an early grave consistently for the last 12 years and all you can say is "I'm worried that Labour might give nurses a pay rise"?
I did not say that, but unrestricted public sector pay rises to match inflation and similar pension and benefit rises are unsustainable
Prices getting out ahead of the wages of the poorest -- THAT is unsustainable. For the poor, that is. But they probably don't count.
They really do and that is where the help should be concentrated
Labour can’t win if voters think they will rely on the SNP.
Keir needs to go all out on them.
There is a problem here as things stand. If the Tories carry on committing suicide then SKS anti SNP stance may be possible. But assuming some sort of normal can break out in government, Labour will not be able to get to a majority without counting in the SNP in some form. They simply hold too many seats.
SKS may need us to believe something that he in fact does not. So we might not either.
Yes, it’s a problem or a paradox.
This is why I advocate a very public anti-SNP approach from Labour from now until the next election.
Vote SNP, get Tory.
That only applies in Scotland. Where Labour is pretty crap at present in MP terms. One almost Tory MP in Morningside of all places. And Labour victories over SNP do nothing to reduce the Tory majority. Plus at the same time, Slab is pretending not to ally with Tories but is doing so all over the country?
I don’t know why Labour are allying with the Tories in Scotland. It doesn’t make sense to me at all.
My enemy’s enemy …
Sort of on subject, how many million Union Jacks have Rangers fans taken to Seville?
Not all of their Union Jacks. They will have kept a few million at home for Orange Walks.
So which posters are rooting for Rangers tonight? And which rooting for the German side? Are you suspecting the majority of PBers cheering for Rangers, actually have English accents?
Since I was named Minister of Sport in PrImeminister TSE first PB cabinet, I’ve been taking my brief at least as seriously as Nadine Doris, my opposite number in government.
So Rangers Protestant, Celtic Catholic? Any type of Protestant including CoE, or a particular denomination? And then the Union Jacks - so typical Rangers fan so solid unionist does not vote SNP?
It’s like painting a picture of the Balkan’s 🫢
That is unadultered pish that only a Little Englander could come out with. Get an education.
Those are actual questions to get an education. I’m aware football allegiance Spain is very political. The only two things i know of in England remotely like that, people of a certain religious persuasion like, or feel they should support, Tottenham. And enmity between West Ham and Millwall could be something to do with not supporting a dockyard strike?
The Rangers with Union Jacks. Does that mean they don’t vote SNP? are they hard bitten unionists with no truck for independence, if they happy to drape in that flag?
If So, does it mean they get fans from far afield, not just Glasgow, on basis it’s the Union team?
Was it ever that sectarian between the supporters of Celtic and Rangers, or more to do with districts of town grew up in. Or even, historically, are there clear Catholic and Protestant areas of town?
Genuine questions, possibly better answered on PB than Google.
By all means educate me.
Glasgow football is very sectarian, more than anywhere else in GB. The Rangers fans are Protestants and the Celtic fans Catholics.
Is there any similar thing between the Liverpool sides? Or the Edinburgh teams?
Edinburgh fans generally grew out of that thinking some decades back, compared to Glasgow, though there are traces - if only in the very name and strip of Hibernian FC.
But originally the sectarianism was rooted in social structure - nativist Protestant Scots vs incoming RC Irish immigrants (though the split is not neat: consider the Irish Presbyterians). The RC Irish got the crap jobs until relatively recently, the decent jobs being kept for Protestant working classes. "What school did you go to?" was an absolute killer question in a job interview.
The Scottish Tories were originally the Unionist Party - unionist in the Irish sense in politics and attitudes. Labour grew out of a self-defence party for the RC Irish underdogs.
One of the signs of the end days as far as Slab is concerned is the rapprochement some time ago between the SNP (as itis called now) and the RC hierarchy. That is, yet again, the SNP stealing the birthright of Slab as far as Slab are concerned. It is also very odd, to somone of my age, to see Slab trying to make overtures to the Orange Order, and even offer grants to Orange Walks on at least one occasion (that was very quickly reverse-ferreted, but in the old days ...)
The reason that most religious schools today in Scotland are RC is because in the old days the default option for ordinary was C of S - but that has withered away in recent decades, leaving the RCs and the odd Episcopalian, but RC rolls are declining, but pressure on budgets is always there ... There was a LA some years back, which pointedly built two new high schools together, RC and non RC, absolute mirror images, the hall on each side and so on separated only by a non-structural wall, easily demolished. Their view was that they couldn't afford the inefficiency much longer and so were dam' well going to prepare for when they had to close down one more RC school.
Edit: this depended very much on area. West Central Belt, hellish. Others, not so much. Friend of mine came from a Fife coal mining community. Ther was a huge culture shock on both sides when the NCB imported WCB miners from failing pits to help staff the new superpits in Fife. The locals made it very clear to the incomers that down the pit everyone had to look out for each other and there was going to be no room for division in their place.
LOL, G you cannot persuade anyone that that is in any way even remotely as a bad as a Tory, they are real criminals, the guy had a couple of Nurofen in his pocket.
Agree with you here Malc, this is a squirrel story and actually makes the allegations against 'whomever' starkly worse looking
Which side of the bed will Big G get out of tomorow? The right? Or the moderate centre right? 🙂
You can rest assured it will never be the right and anyway you said you loved me ?
Of course I ❤️ you. You do sound a bit het up by it all today though?
Was politics in the old days before I came along all about how many investigations you can get you opponents under, or is this a new phase that is a bit, not quite the point of politics really?
I posted clip of Lady Thatcher at PMQs in recent thread - she’s is just simply explaining the difference in her philosophy and policies in regards theirs. That just made politics simple, explain your point of view.
And they were all terribly polite and respectful to each other as they done it.
To be honest I am not the least het up but as my beloved will affirm I have this tendency to enjoy winding people up and maybe on occasions it shows
It is fair to say that politics is more tribal and at times just nasty but as far as I am concerned I want Boris to go so I can rejoin the party as I really fear a Starmer led labour party would borrow far too much and I am not convinced they would restrict public sector pay including doctors and nurses as would be necessary
Christ on a bike Big G, the Tories have been running Britain into an early grave consistently for the last 12 years and all you can say is "I'm worried that Labour might give nurses a pay rise"?
I did not say that, but unrestricted public sector pay rises to match inflation and similar pension and benefit rises are unsustainable
I think this is basically going to be Tory party orthodoxy for the foreseeable future.
“Pay rises to match inflation…. are unsustainable”
Labour can’t win if voters think they will rely on the SNP.
Keir needs to go all out on them.
There is a problem here as things stand. If the Tories carry on committing suicide then SKS anti SNP stance may be possible. But assuming some sort of normal can break out in government, Labour will not be able to get to a majority without counting in the SNP in some form. They simply hold too many seats.
SKS may need us to believe something that he in fact does not. So we might not either.
Yes, it’s a problem or a paradox.
This is why I advocate a very public anti-SNP approach from Labour from now until the next election.
Vote SNP, get Tory.
That only applies in Scotland. Where Labour is pretty crap at present in MP terms. One almost Tory MP in Morningside of all places. And Labour victories over SNP do nothing to reduce the Tory majority. Plus at the same time, Slab is pretending not to ally with Tories but is doing so all over the country?
I don’t know why Labour are allying with the Tories in Scotland. It doesn’t make sense to me at all.
My enemy’s enemy …
Sort of on subject, how many million Union Jacks have Rangers fans taken to Seville?
Not all of their Union Jacks. They will have kept a few million at home for Orange Walks.
So which posters are rooting for Rangers tonight? And which rooting for the German side? Are you suspecting the majority of PBers cheering for Rangers, actually have English accents?
Since I was named Minister of Sport in PrImeminister TSE first PB cabinet, I’ve been taking my brief at least as seriously as Nadine Doris, my opposite number in government.
So Rangers Protestant, Celtic Catholic? Any type of Protestant including CoE, or a particular denomination? And then the Union Jacks - so typical Rangers fan so solid unionist does not vote SNP?
It’s like painting a picture of the Balkan’s 🫢
That is unadultered pish that only a Little Englander could come out with. Get an education.
Those are actual questions to get an education. I’m aware football allegiance Spain is very political. The only two things i know of in England remotely like that, people of a certain religious persuasion like, or feel they should support, Tottenham. And enmity between West Ham and Millwall could be something to do with not supporting a dockyard strike?
The Rangers with Union Jacks. Does that mean they don’t vote SNP? are they hard bitten unionists with no truck for independence, if they happy to drape in that flag?
If So, does it mean they get fans from far afield, not just Glasgow, on basis it’s the Union team?
Was it ever that sectarian between the supporters of Celtic and Rangers, or more to do with districts of town grew up in. Or even, historically, are there clear Catholic and Protestant areas of town?
Genuine questions, possibly better answered on PB than Google.
By all means educate me.
Glasgow football is very sectarian, more than anywhere else in GB. The Rangers fans are Protestants and the Celtic fans Catholics.
Is there any similar thing between the Liverpool sides? Or the Edinburgh teams?
Weirdly, I was always taught that Liverpool WAS a divided city - like Glasgow - but that Everton was the Catholic side and Liverpool was the Proddy side. I have no idea if this is true. It certainly doesn’t square with their identities now
This article doesn't explicitly say that's wrong, but implies it with the movements it states following the violence.
"Sectarian violence in Liverpool
On 20 June 1909 Liverpool experienced its worst outbreak of sectarian trouble when Catholics and Protestants violently clashed in the streets.
A proposed march from a local Catholic church ended in riots with police when members of the Protestant community tried to block the route.
The sectarian violence led to the city being dubbed the 'Belfast of England'.
snip
"A Father Fitzgerald gave evidence," Professor Neal says
"He claimed 3,200 Catholics had to leave Everton and move in to safe areas."
"The commission also heard that a number of Protestant families had to leave the dock areas".""
Traditionally, Everton was the Catholic side. In Edinburgh, Hearts and Hibs were also traditionally split Protestant/Catholic. Historically, Mancunian Catholics are more likely to support United, though the split in Manchester owes more to geography (note the concentration of Irish descendents in SW Manchester, which is where Old Trafford is). I know of no religious or political reasons why one would support one team or other in Bristol, Nottingham, Dundee, Stoke or Falkirk. Nottingham and Dundee are the most interesting of these as the grounds are so close so presumably the geographical impact is slight. There was a religious aspect
LOL, G you cannot persuade anyone that that is in any way even remotely as a bad as a Tory, they are real criminals, the guy had a couple of Nurofen in his pocket.
Agree with you here Malc, this is a squirrel story and actually makes the allegations against 'whomever' starkly worse looking
Which side of the bed will Big G get out of tomorow? The right? Or the moderate centre right? 🙂
You can rest assured it will never be the right and anyway you said you loved me ?
Of course I ❤️ you. You do sound a bit het up by it all today though?
Was politics in the old days before I came along all about how many investigations you can get you opponents under, or is this a new phase that is a bit, not quite the point of politics really?
I posted clip of Lady Thatcher at PMQs in recent thread - she’s is just simply explaining the difference in her philosophy and policies in regards theirs. That just made politics simple, explain your point of view.
And they were all terribly polite and respectful to each other as they done it.
To be honest I am not the least het up but as my beloved will affirm I have this tendency to enjoy winding people up and maybe on occasions it shows
It is fair to say that politics is more tribal and at times just nasty but as far as I am concerned I want Boris to go so I can rejoin the party as I really fear a Starmer led labour party would borrow far too much and I am not convinced they would restrict public sector pay including doctors and nurses as would be necessary
Christ on a bike Big G, the Tories have been running Britain into an early grave consistently for the last 12 years and all you can say is "I'm worried that Labour might give nurses a pay rise"?
I did not say that, but unrestricted public sector pay rises to match inflation and similar pension and benefit rises are unsustainable
I think this is basically going to be Tory party orthodoxy for the foreseeable future.
“Pay rises to match inflation…. are unsustainable”
LOL, G you cannot persuade anyone that that is in any way even remotely as a bad as a Tory, they are real criminals, the guy had a couple of Nurofen in his pocket.
Agree with you here Malc, this is a squirrel story and actually makes the allegations against 'whomever' starkly worse looking
Which side of the bed will Big G get out of tomorow? The right? Or the moderate centre right? 🙂
You can rest assured it will never be the right and anyway you said you loved me ?
Of course I ❤️ you. You do sound a bit het up by it all today though?
Was politics in the old days before I came along all about how many investigations you can get you opponents under, or is this a new phase that is a bit, not quite the point of politics really?
I posted clip of Lady Thatcher at PMQs in recent thread - she’s is just simply explaining the difference in her philosophy and policies in regards theirs. That just made politics simple, explain your point of view.
And they were all terribly polite and respectful to each other as they done it.
To be honest I am not the least het up but as my beloved will affirm I have this tendency to enjoy winding people up and maybe on occasions it shows
It is fair to say that politics is more tribal and at times just nasty but as far as I am concerned I want Boris to go so I can rejoin the party as I really fear a Starmer led labour party would borrow far too much and I am not convinced they would restrict public sector pay including doctors and nurses as would be necessary
Amongst the many things I looked at today, I see the government bringing a lot of Indian nurses in to fill a hole.
It could be moving to where government insist Brexit working well, Brexit supporters, such as on PB say it’s working well, no problem here - yet as they say this there is this growing and active special measures clause in which the economy and increasingly frustrated business can fill skill gaps it’s crying out for, proper skill gaps not just carrying out food and wiping tables, but being able to operate a lot of the machinery in factory, or chef, or nurse or doctor, that is negating exactly what many voted for that got Brexit over the line.
You voted Remain. But Brexit is done now, so we all park it and move on?
But as time passes, it’s looking like Brexit isn’t really done, at what point do we re-examine our position and start arguing there’s plenty here to sort out?
Brexit is not the final destination yet and needs work over the months and years ahead but I do not see it as number one in people's minds
I see no contradiction in Brexit and the nhs employing qualified professionals from overseas. Tbh the medical profession has always tended to underproduce staff (restricted training place) partly to keep wages high(definitely so for doctors). We have started training many more medics, but it takes time to get them through, plus Covid has been a road block. I believe the best solution is to train as many staff as we need, but at the moment we need more.
Come on Rangers. Fuck these Scouse c*nts and traitors who BOO BEAUTY. Let Real Madrid hammer them
But loyal, sober Unionists and royalists? Go, lads
I am somewhat surprised how personally you have taken Liverpool fans booing at Wembley on Saturday. I truly thought you would love the madness, the anti-establishment chaos and rebellion. The “fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” behaviour.
It’s all part of life’s rich pageant and amazed you are bent out of shape by it.
I’m a monarchist conservative and it really doesn’t bother me at all - it’s just jolly japes at a football match.
If they annoyed you by being controversialist then it’s getting very Meta!!
What next - demanding seats rather than pit at a Metallica concert? Cocoa rather than Cognac before bed? Tsk Tsk.
No, it makes me puke. Because I know where it comes from
By all means Boo the National Anthem. Boo Prince William. Hurl your turds at Princess Kate, Whatever, you sad tattoeed fat fucks
But booing ABIDE WITH ME??
That is pure vandalism, it is the degradation of the human soul and the hatred of loveliness, in the most ugly way. It is something very Liverpudlian - a diseased city - but it spreads like a fungus. Fuck them all.
Remember Heysel
If Liverpool fans are tarred by Heysel then what are you and I tarred with by virtue of being English?
Is this even serious?
We conquered the world. And it was mainly good. We didn’t push over a wall and kill some Italian teens during a football match. Get a grip
Ok. Fair enough - if we are going simplistic (it wasn’t just Italian teens and it wasn’t just a simple case of some Liverpool fans pushing over a wall out of nothing).
Amritsar - we just controlled a riot as quickly as possible - naughty Indian teens….
Thing is you are probably the poster I agree most with on here for my sins but I’m staggered how miffed you have been by booing a pretty rubbish hymn - if it had been “I vow to thee my country” then I would be in my tank towards Anfield Road but really, perspective?
I hear you.
Maybe I always had this secret Simon Heffer-esque contempt for ugly, contemptible, obese, do-nothing Liverpool? But I hid it. OK, they booed our 96-year Queen during the year of her Platinum Jubilee, and a year or two after our widowhood. Maybe I could have contained myself, if they had done only that. But booing a beautiful religious hymn with the most profound lyrics ever written about humanity yielding with grace to mortality, WTAF??
They are monkeys. They are an element in working class British culture - fat, wanky, ugly, dumb, inadequate, Philistine, pathetic and gruesomely proud of it - which I utterly despise. Let them sink into the Irish Sea. Millwall have more nobility
I get you but you are in danger of going full-Roger…..
What would Bill Shankly or Ian Paisley have thought of them booing the Queen, or booing the National Anthem, and then booing ABIDE WITH ME?
I do not think they would have expressed admiration. And their bewildered contempt would be justified. We have regressed as a nation and a culture and Liverpool fans are the pimply, wobbly, nihilistic cutting edge. Well done, lads
Have been trying to catch a photo of the lightning in a very weird thunderstorm where packs of clouds keep passing throwing out their tricks but failed. Looks suitably moody anyway!
Edit - sorry it’s the wrong way round.
That's a Vanilla bug!
Ok - tried taking a photo in landscape to see if it comes out the right way. Just missed more random lightning sadly.
His dogs have 25k twitter followers. He wears Carhartt workwear. He would legalise weed.
Welcome to the second decade of the 21st century kids.
I was surprised in a BBC story earlier to see him described as a 'hulking' 6ft 8in. The word seems to carry negative connotations to me when just describing his height would go just fine.
It was admittedly in the context of a historic incident where he pursued an innocent jogger with his shotgun though.
Have been trying to catch a photo of the lightning in a very weird thunderstorm where packs of clouds keep passing throwing out their tricks but failed. Looks suitably moody anyway!
Edit - sorry it’s the wrong way round.
That's a Vanilla bug!
Ok - tried taking a photo in landscape to see if it comes out the right way. Just missed more random lightning sadly.
Comments
They should be opposing it because its a stupid idea and a cop out from dealing with the systemic issues. Not because labour pushed one of their nuisance votes on it
I’m starting to be convinced that his plan isn’t a million miles away from that - he’s now got teams of experts, accountants and lawyers all over the company, and is going all in to show the company up as an algorithmic facade designed to generate hatred, where the public metrics of followers, likes and retweets, are mostly driven by computers rather than humans.
Currently SNP have lost their way due to the crooks running the show and so I am left with zero palatable options.
Those that work hard in the office and have busy and demanding jobs work just as hard (if not more so) from home.
But, if you're over 60 and of a different generation you struggle to understand why any of it isn't a skive. Remote teaming and cloud technologies are just alien to you.
But loyal, sober Unionists and royalists? Go, lads
Julia Hartley-Brewer
@JuliaHB1
·
43m
Well, at least he's got lots of experience organising illegal clandestine boozy parties, eh? That'll come in handy in Saudi Arabia.
https://twitter.com/JuliaHB1/status/1526987007536336896
NY Times blog
The Hill
https://scottishfootballmuseum.org.uk/resources/news/the-tale-of-third-lanark-ac/
The Rangers with Union Jacks. Does that mean they don’t vote SNP? are they hard bitten unionists with no truck for independence, if they happy to drape in that flag?
If So, does it mean they get fans from far afield, not just Glasgow, on basis it’s the Union team?
Was it ever that sectarian between the supporters of Celtic and Rangers, or more to do with districts of town grew up in. Or even, historically, are there clear Catholic and Protestant areas of town?
Genuine questions, possibly better answered on PB than Google.
By all means educate me.
*Nb doesn’t mean Arsenal thus attract Arabs and NAZI’s! Though Osama Bin Laden attended Arsenal games. Didn’t he?
The realisation of how much Office Stuff can now be done at home, or in a coffee shop, with a laptop and wifi simply wouldn't have occured to him. And Covid is an awfully convenient excuse if a customer starts complaining about rubbish service.
As for HEARTS OF MIDLOTHIAN they felt like the football equivalent of Rimbaud and Baudelaire
Having now been to these places, I see the reality is a tiny bit different. Nonetheless as long as Scotland remains a part of our United Kingdom, they are my teams
Fuck Liverpool
Public ones - not so much.
I had a rather worrying encounter a few months ago with the Council for a home I used to live in but moved out of in 2019. I'd paid my Council Tax in full by Direct Debit and had notified them when I moved homes and set up a Direct Debit for my new home but then a few years later got a "final demand" letter for overdue Council Tax for 2020-21. I called them and spoke to someone who was working from home and said that I had moved out before this period so it wasn't me who owed the tax, he told me not to worry, promised to get it resolved and would put a hold on the account until they could figure out what had gone wrong.
Two months later I got a Court Summons for unpaid Council Tax, with a court date set for what was then 3 weeks time. I tried calling the Council again but after pressing all the relevant options got a message "our queue is full please try again later". That kept happening again and again for two weeks. Tried emailing them, got an autoreply saying they're currently taking an average of 6 weeks to respond to emails, but the Court Summons was for 3 weeks time.
After a few weeks of calling them every day I eventually got in the queue and through to a human who found my email to them and accepted the proof that I wasn't living at that address for the time in question and the Council had been informed of that. But utterly remarkable that they could take six weeks to respond to an email, but have Court Summons issued for 3 weeks, and the queue 'full'.
If you call a company like Sky you'll get through to someone probably working from home - but at least you'll get through to someone and they take your issue seriously. At least if you threaten to cancel your contract they do.
It’s all part of life’s rich pageant and amazed you are bent out of shape by it.
I’m a monarchist conservative and it really doesn’t bother me at all - it’s just jolly japes at a football match.
If they annoyed you by being controversialist then it’s getting very Meta!!
What next - demanding seats rather than pit at a Metallica concert? Cocoa rather than Cognac before bed? Tsk Tsk.
Alternative view: You can see the whites of all the rabbits' eyes in the piercing beam of the highlights.
Was politics in the old days before I came along all about how many investigations you can get you opponents under, or is this a new phase that is a bit, not quite the point of politics really?
I posted clip of Lady Thatcher at PMQs in recent thread - she’s is just simply explaining the difference in her philosophy and policies in regards theirs. That just made politics simple, explain your point of view.
And they were all terribly polite and respectful to each other as they done it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q9vYjqQ5Ek
Then, of course, the harder businesses find it to recruit workers willing to put up with a constant barrage of shouting from enraged customers, the smaller the available pool of call handlers, the worse the service becomes, the more rage the remaining staff have to put up with, and the more likely they are to get out as soon as they can find another minimum wage crap job that's less liable to cause them to have a nervous breakdown.
It's the sort of vicious cycle that can only be broken by a spike in joblessness that forces workers to endure the misery, for want of anywhere else to go.
The Hill
Not sure this bodes well for November...
I spent an hour on phone waiting in a queue for a major insurance company earlier this week, merely to update my debit card details, as the card had expired.
This could be done online.
By all means Boo the National Anthem. Boo Prince William. Hurl your turds at Princess Kate, Whatever, you sad tattoeed fat fucks
But booing ABIDE WITH ME??
That is pure vandalism, it is the degradation of the human soul and the hatred of loveliness, in the most ugly way. It is something very Liverpudlian - a diseased city - but it spreads like a fungus. Fuck them all.
Remember Heysel
My train is just pulling in to Wakey Westgate. and none of those baling off look like rapid Yorkshire Party supporters to me.
(Waves out of train window to Mr Herdson!)
Now, there are private sector firms that take customer service seriously. John Lewis, Timpsons, Richer Sounds. They do a great job, acceptable face of capitalism and all that. But they tend (not exclusively, but as a tendency) to be pitched a bit above the mass market. Good customer service costs, and a lot of us have been unwilling to pay that necessary cost. Which is fine, until everything goes pearshaped.
We conquered the world. And it was mainly good. We didn’t push over a wall and kill some Italian teens during a football match. Get a grip
It is fair to say that politics is more tribal and at times just nasty but as far as I am concerned I want Boris to go so I can rejoin the party as I really fear a Starmer led labour party would borrow far too much and I am not convinced they would restrict public sector pay including doctors and nurses as would be necessary
The issue is, that for larger companies these projects run to millions of currency units and take years to bring to fruition. There’s not room for an agile (small a) solution that can be up and running in weeks, as we saw during the pandemic - when there was a big difference between companies and organisations that could step outside the box in an emergency, and those constrained by their own bureaucracy that needed to be bypassed.
I'm one of life's self-motivated introverts so I just crack on and get the work done - I'm quite happy not to speak to a colleague for a day if that means I get done what needs to be done. That's not to say I don't enjoy the social aspects of meetings and team meetings but the notion "you have to be in the office to reconnect" is pure unadulterated nonsense (at least for me).
And that's the thing - there's no "one size fits all" approach to this. Each individual and each organisation's culture is different and said individuals and organisations need to make it work for them rather than having the Prime Minister wade in with his ill-thought nonsense.
I suspect we are also seeing staff shortages bump up against increased demand - more people at home usually means more calls to organisations, companies and Government departments. That was a foreseeable consequence of lockdown yet it was not prepared for by some.
Just as a restaurant can't function if it doesn't have the staff to cook the food and wait tables so organisations who cannot get enough people to answer the phone will suffer a deterioration in customer service with all the attendant reputational impacts.
Have the likes of EDF, Scottish Power and British Gas taken on additional staff to deal with the concerns of customers of the defunct small energy companies (for example)? I suspect not.
Amritsar - we just controlled a riot as quickly as possible - naughty Indian teens….
Thing is you are probably the poster I agree most with on here for my sins but I’m staggered how miffed you have been by booing a pretty rubbish hymn - if it had been “I vow to thee my country” then I would be in my tank towards Anfield Road but really, perspective?
Rangers and Celtic always play each other at midday on Saturday these days, after some silly TV company once thought that a 19:45 kickoff would be great for the schedule. Except that half of Glasgow city centre got trashed that night.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._P._O'Connor
The 'evil commie insider' trope may not be massively compelling but I don't think that's much of a retort.
Besides, everyone knows that centrists have all the answers, except the answer of how to win electoral support.
Maybe I always had this secret Simon Heffer-esque contempt for ugly, contemptible, obese, do-nothing Liverpool? But I hid it. OK, they booed our 96-year Queen during the year of her Platinum Jubilee, and a year or two after our widowhood. Maybe I could have contained myself, if they had done only that. But booing a beautiful religious hymn with the most profound lyrics ever written about humanity yielding with grace to mortality, WTAF??
They are monkeys. They are an element in working class British culture - fat, wanky, ugly, dumb, inadequate, Philistine, pathetic and gruesomely proud of it - which I utterly despise. Let them sink into the Irish Sea. Millwall have more nobility
Edit - sorry it’s the wrong way round.
It could be moving to where government insist Brexit working well, Brexit supporters, such as on PB say it’s working well, no problem here - yet as they say this there is this growing and active special measures clause in which the economy and increasingly frustrated business can fill skill gaps it’s crying out for, proper skill gaps not just carrying out food and wiping tables, but being able to operate a lot of the machinery in factory, or chef, or nurse or doctor, that is negating exactly what many voted for that got Brexit over the line.
You voted Remain. But Brexit is done now, so we all park it and move on?
But as time passes, it’s looking like Brexit isn’t really done, at what point do we re-examine our position and start arguing there’s plenty here to sort out?
"Sectarian violence in Liverpool
On 20 June 1909 Liverpool experienced its worst outbreak of sectarian trouble when Catholics and Protestants violently clashed in the streets.
A proposed march from a local Catholic church ended in riots with police when members of the Protestant community tried to block the route.
The sectarian violence led to the city being dubbed the 'Belfast of England'.
snip
"A Father Fitzgerald gave evidence," Professor Neal says
"He claimed 3,200 Catholics had to leave Everton and move in to safe areas."
"The commission also heard that a number of Protestant families had to leave the dock areas".""
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/liverpool/hi/people_and_places/religion_and_ethics/newsid_8241000/8241927.stm
News from elsewhere - in Slovenia, as his party hits 44% in the latest poll, Robert Golob looks set to become prime minister of a coalition of Svoboda, Social Democrats and the Left which will have 55 of 96 seats in the new Parliament.
Interesting polling from France for the legislative election as NUPES advances into a narrow lead. NUPES is basically to France what Golob's coalition is to Slovenia. NUPES is Melenchon's party joined with the Greens , Socialists, Communists and a few others. In the old National Assembly, they had 58 seats between them but could now win 160-185 seats.
Ensemble! is Macron's LREM party plus a couple of others.
The latest poll as follows (changes from 2017):
NUPES: 27.5% (+2.5)
Ensemble!: 27% (-5)
National Rally: 21% (+8)
Les Republicans: 10% (-12)
Reconquete: 5% (+5)
Despite that, Ensemble! could win a narrow overall majority with National Rally and NUPES making gains and Les Republicans taking big losses.
They can't borrow their way out of trouble because the public debt is already gigantic and the cost of servicing it will be climbing as well. They can't tax the poor because they've nothing left to give. To a great extent they can't tax businesses either because, certain special exceptions like the oil and gas sector aside, a lot of them are struggling with the consequences of inflation themselves, along with plummeting consumer confidence. They can scrabble around for more cuts, but the days when you could make meaningful savings by firing district council LGBT inclusion officers and streamlining procurement processes are long gone, if they were ever there to begin with.
The best way to raise large sums of money quickly and reliably is through measures targeting the assets of the remaining fraction of the populace that remains comfortably off, principally through raising taxes on their homes and other investments, and much more substantial death duties - i.e. to squeeze the Tory core vote until it screams in agony. And they know it. They're in something of a bind.
Summat in the air today.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/18/opinion/john-fetterman-pennsylvania-democratic-party.html
His dogs have 25k twitter followers. He wears Carhartt workwear. He would legalise weed.
Welcome to the second decade of the 21st century kids.
God, let them lose to Real
(Seriously, I will NEVER NEVER NEVER vote Labour)
It was admittedly in the context of a historic incident where he pursued an innocent jogger with his shotgun though.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-61489046
But originally the sectarianism was rooted in social structure - nativist Protestant Scots vs incoming RC Irish immigrants (though the split is not neat: consider the Irish Presbyterians). The RC Irish got the crap jobs until relatively recently, the decent jobs being kept for Protestant working classes. "What school did you go to?" was an absolute killer question in a job interview.
The Scottish Tories were originally the Unionist Party - unionist in the Irish sense in politics and attitudes. Labour grew out of a self-defence party for the RC Irish underdogs.
One of the signs of the end days as far as Slab is concerned is the rapprochement some time ago between the SNP (as itis called now) and the RC hierarchy. That is, yet again, the SNP stealing the birthright of Slab as far as Slab are concerned. It is also very odd, to somone of my age, to see Slab trying to make overtures to the Orange Order, and even offer grants to Orange Walks on at least one occasion (that was very quickly reverse-ferreted, but in the old days ...)
The reason that most religious schools today in Scotland are RC is because in the old days the default option for ordinary was C of S - but that has withered away in recent decades, leaving the RCs and the odd Episcopalian, but RC rolls are declining, but pressure on budgets is always there ... There was a LA some years back, which pointedly built two new high schools together, RC and non RC, absolute mirror images, the hall on each side and so on separated only by a non-structural wall, easily demolished. Their view was that they couldn't afford the inefficiency much longer and so were dam' well going to prepare for when they had to close down one more RC school.
Edit: this depended very much on area. West Central Belt, hellish. Others, not so much. Friend of mine came from a Fife coal mining community. Ther was a huge culture shock on both sides when the NCB imported WCB miners from failing pits to help staff the new superpits in Fife. The locals made it very clear to the incomers that down the pit everyone had to look out for each other and there was going to be no room for division in their place.
“Pay rises to match inflation…. are unsustainable”
And it’s going to sink them.
In Edinburgh, Hearts and Hibs were also traditionally split Protestant/Catholic.
Historically, Mancunian Catholics are more likely to support United, though the split in Manchester owes more to geography (note the concentration of Irish descendents in SW Manchester, which is where Old Trafford is).
I know of no religious or political reasons why one would support one team or other in Bristol, Nottingham, Dundee, Stoke or Falkirk. Nottingham and Dundee are the most interesting of these as the grounds are so close so presumably the geographical impact is slight.
There was a religious aspect
I do not think they would have expressed admiration. And their bewildered contempt would be justified. We have regressed as a nation and a culture and Liverpool fans are the pimply, wobbly, nihilistic cutting edge. Well done, lads