Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
What things shouldn't be automatic?
As little as possible shouldn’t be automatic. McDonalds are replacing order-takers with computers, although I’ve not yet seen a pub with an automatic beer-dispensing machine. That should only be a matter of time, if they can’t find staff.
It all depends what you want to achieve. If the objective is maximising human happiness there are lots of things that could be automated that make people feel less happy. Like all sorts of personal services in hospitality and other spheres.
There is a lot of loneliness in maximal efficiency. Sometimes to replace the person behind the bar with an automatic beer dispenser may be as useful as replacing the customer with an automatic drinker. Happiness can consist in production as well as consumption.
The blind pursuit of ever higher productivity is madness. It's the goal of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Not at all.
In the long run, it’s only productivity that pays the baker for his bread.
What we choose to do with productivity is up to us.
How did the baker get paid for his bread during former times of lower productivity?
I'm not saying automation hasn't been a good thing; I am merely saying it should not be the be-all and end-all. We lose sight of the things money cannot buy.
Here's a question. If we assume the population has a range of abilities from quite low to genius over-achievers, given automation tends to take out the simpler jobs what do those people a the lower end of the ability spectrum do?
Answer, they end up existing on benefits with unless they are lucky enough to find undemanding jobs that haven't yet been automated.
Making a universal basic income funded by a robot tax inevitable
Lol - GE32 slogan: 'Tax the robots'!
Won't those robots want a vote if we start taxing them?
If I recall my Futurama the first robot president struck a chord with voters by pledging not to go on a killing spree. Sadly he did not live up to that pledge.
Nevertheless, perhaps robots would be more efficient at making shit political choices, so we should leave it to them
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
Once again, most (but not all) economists believe that migration increases productivity.
UK productivity is a v interesting topic.
There’s a paper just published which suggests that issues have been largely in finance and the oil energy (post the financial crash), and long-term underperformance in manufacturing.
The car wash anecdote doesn’t really cut it.
It seems to me that British firms serially under invest in capital goods for reasons that have very little to do with migration. Probably taking their lead from the UK government which spends considerably less than OECD peers on R&D…
France has much bigger tax allowances etc for investment in machinery.
Hence even a small, domestic, building site in France generally starts with the setting up of a mini-crane. On a UK site....
In finance, I have spent a good deal of my professional career on automating jobs out of existence, there. The number of people who copy & pasta from one system into Excel, do some fiddling and pasta the result to another system....
To be specific, the productivity problems in finance are basically about reduced output caused by loss of demand / market share after the financial crisis rather than what the everyday person would call “lack of productivity”.
There are quite a few banks that still have floors of people doing these kind of jobs - you'd think that automated flows would have been bought in, but no....
Shame however the banks are not able to still retain a branch in every high street if they wish to stay traditional
Their lunch is being eaten by the alt-banks. Who are 100% online - often mobile only, now.
On alt-bank (consumer) I worked with had a single system. For the entire bank. An equivalent high street bank has 100s. Which don't talk to each other properly.
Still not great for the elderly and pensioners in particular who want a local branch, it is also easier to discuss complex matters in branches than on the phone
As one of the resident OAPs I can do all the banking I need to on line, topped up with a very occasional phone call. I can pay in, on the rare occasions I need to, via the Post Office. Longer hours, too. When, a few years ago, I was Secretary of a u3a, dealing with their on-the-ground bankers was a total pain.
Anyone posting on here is, by definition, reasonably computer literate. In contrast, my 90 year old father-in-law has never touched a computer in his life, my late mum was the same.
They could learn of course (well not my mum anymore obvs!) but they lack the confidence, and perhaps at 90, the motivation or the learning ability.
There's no real solution beyond waiting for that generation to die out.
What will be the equivalent for my generation I wonder?
Quite. It's perhaps not so much the simple mechanics of the task but understanding how fraud can happen, the need to buy a new phone every few years, the need even to realise there is such a thing as a virus etc checker ... and don't forget that being hard of hearing can be a big turnoff for someone thinking about a mobile. As can be the tiny keys.
It's also what happens when there are problems, the bank wants to see original documents ... think about some of the stories that have emerged re HMG and its way of dealing with elderly immigrants wh o have lived in the UK almosat as long as we have but have not got round to becoming UK subjects.
I don't know what our generation's problem will be (assuming you are in the 60s) though I sometimes think it will be attitudes to sex and gender. Or indeed the notion of having a permanent 9-5 job of any kind. Friend of miner was made redundant from his job about 10 years back - not his fault, major reorganization and outsourcing - and he was surprised at the hostility from some of the older [but, at that time, surely retired] relatives who blamed him for not having a job - though he remedied that situation pretty promptly, he found this feeling very disconcerting.
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
Interesting.
1. Would you favour the state forcing the last bank in any given locality to stay open? If not, why not? If you would, then why hasn't the Conservative Government done this? 2. Would you apply the same logic to youth clubs? The national network of those has been butchered in the last decade as well.
1 As I said I would fine banks that shut too many branches
2 Youth clubs depend on volunteers, I am for the big society
Why not fine buildings that don't employ lift operators?
As pressing one button to use a lift is not the same thing as having someone in person you can chat to at your bank in your own town!!
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
Once again, most (but not all) economists believe that migration increases productivity.
UK productivity is a v interesting topic.
There’s a paper just published which suggests that issues have been largely in finance and the oil energy (post the financial crash), and long-term underperformance in manufacturing.
The car wash anecdote doesn’t really cut it.
It seems to me that British firms serially under invest in capital goods for reasons that have very little to do with migration. Probably taking their lead from the UK government which spends considerably less than OECD peers on R&D…
France has much bigger tax allowances etc for investment in machinery.
Hence even a small, domestic, building site in France generally starts with the setting up of a mini-crane. On a UK site....
In finance, I have spent a good deal of my professional career on automating jobs out of existence, there. The number of people who copy & pasta from one system into Excel, do some fiddling and pasta the result to another system....
To be specific, the productivity problems in finance are basically about reduced output caused by loss of demand / market share after the financial crisis rather than what the everyday person would call “lack of productivity”.
There are quite a few banks that still have floors of people doing these kind of jobs - you'd think that automated flows would have been bought in, but no....
Shame however the banks are not able to still retain a branch in every high street if they wish to stay traditional
Their lunch is being eaten by the alt-banks. Who are 100% online - often mobile only, now.
On alt-bank (consumer) I worked with had a single system. For the entire bank. An equivalent high street bank has 100s. Which don't talk to each other properly.
Still not great for the elderly and pensioners in particular who want a local branch, it is also easier to discuss complex matters in branches than on the phone
As one of the resident OAPs I can do all the banking I need to on line, topped up with a very occasional phone call. I can pay in, on the rare occasions I need to, via the Post Office. Longer hours, too. When, a few years ago, I was Secretary of a u3a, dealing with their on-the-ground bankers was a total pain.
Anyone posting on here is, by definition, reasonably computer literate. In contrast, my 90 year old father-in-law has never touched a computer in his life, my late mum was the same.
They could learn of course (well not my mum anymore obvs!) but they lack the confidence, and perhaps at 90, the motivation or the learning ability.
There's no real solution beyond waiting for that generation to die out.
What will be the equivalent for my generation I wonder?
It must be close to died out already. Computer literacy as an essential for existence in society has been unarguable for at least 15 years, and almost anyone who lacked the learning ability then will no longer be with us.
You need kit to do it. One issue that was emerging well before covid shook things up was the simple need for access to a PC, printer, scanner, etc. Very difficult for the poor and unemployed - especially when councils started closing libraries, and when HMG started demanding 'proof' of internet searches, job applications, etc.
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
That seems rather doubtful to me, if you are a low paid person trying to buy services which are no longer available or only at increased prices.
Low paid people dont, buy services, they dont hire nannies, they dont hire plumbers or electricians
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
You espouse socialism.
No traditional Conservativism ie respect for tradition and the local community. I am not proposing nationalising all the banks permanently which a socialist would do
Traditional Conservatism is all about letting businesses operate without needless interference from the state.
No, that is traditional classical liberalism, hence you now vote LD not Tory
Beautiful! M. Macron has some taste in some areas.
President Macron is trolling us. Remember the French puppy incident in Yes, Prime Minister (that could not be accepted owing to quarantine regulations, and was a device to secure concessions in negotiations over the Channel Tunnel). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DERkHtpgRgE
Given that the issues are on the EU side of the border, it should be us that gets Macron something nice that falls foul, on his next big celebration. Can't be long till Bridget's 70th.
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
Interesting.
1. Would you favour the state forcing the last bank in any given locality to stay open? If not, why not? If you would, then why hasn't the Conservative Government done this? 2. Would you apply the same logic to youth clubs? The national network of those has been butchered in the last decade as well.
1 As I said I would fine banks that shut too many branches
2 Youth clubs depend on volunteers, I am for the big society
Why not fine buildings that don't employ lift operators?
As pressing one button to use a lift is not the same thing as having someone in person you can chat to at your bank in your own town!!
For a certain generation it was very disconcerting to have to operate machinery themselves.
Why is doing your banking on a screen any different?
Note that many surviving bank branches have rows of self service screens, with one or 2 actual staff in attendance.
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
Interesting.
1. Would you favour the state forcing the last bank in any given locality to stay open? If not, why not? If you would, then why hasn't the Conservative Government done this? 2. Would you apply the same logic to youth clubs? The national network of those has been butchered in the last decade as well.
1 As I said I would fine banks that shut too many branches
2 Youth clubs depend on volunteers, I am for the big society
Why not fine buildings that don't employ lift operators?
I would make it mandatory to allow Post offices in an area which has lost it's bank branches to offer basic banking at the cost of the banks. The financial sector and governments has effectively moved all pay and salaries to BACs forcing people to use banks. They then started introducing ordinary account fees to handle our money, making overnight interest on the resulting vast amounts of our money and not paying anything back to us. They even changed the agreed overdraft interest rates to match the unagreed, making so much more money out of us. The final insult is to close the branches.
Does she also get the strapping, young (I think) dragoon?
He wouldn't understand the orders. Come to think of it, the nag won't either. I have no idea how much of a problem this is with horses - does one have to translate the orders, or am I being too influenced by collies?
One of the pivotal moments in the Near Future will come thusly: when one of the competing great powers, China, USA, Russia, Mighty Puissant Albion, realises that you get much much better military results if you hand the strategising to a computer, and sack the human generals
Computers are already way better than humans at Go and Chess. Which are allegorical forms of warfare on a board. So computers will be hugely better at waging and winning wars. For the same reason
Picture the Kremlin in 20 years. Vladimir Putin 3.1 gets his briefing from GPT7. it doesn’t lie to him, it doesn’t skim off billions in spending to go live in a yacht. All it wants to do is serve the Russian Leader, and advance the military cause, and it can absorb quintillion bytes of logistical information in a second, and autocomplete the Ukrainians’ next move to the exact millimetre
Whichever country does this first, wins. It won’t be the Russians. My bet is China
Is food still more expensive in the UK than in the US? (It was when last I visited, but that was many years ago.)
Food inflation has hit here, as well as almost everywhere else in the world, but it's my impression that food costs are still low here, compared to most other nations. (And probably much lower for the poor, thanks to what we still call "food stamps".)
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
Interesting.
1. Would you favour the state forcing the last bank in any given locality to stay open? If not, why not? If you would, then why hasn't the Conservative Government done this? 2. Would you apply the same logic to youth clubs? The national network of those has been butchered in the last decade as well.
1 As I said I would fine banks that shut too many branches
2 Youth clubs depend on volunteers, I am for the big society
Why not fine buildings that don't employ lift operators?
I would make it mandatory to allow Post offices in an area which has lost it's bank branches to offer basic banking at the cost of the banks. The financial sector and governments has effectively moved all pay and salaries to BACs forcing people to use banks. They then started introducing ordinary account fees to handle our money, making overnight interest on the resulting vast amounts of our money and not paying anything back to us. They even changed the agreed overdraft interest rates to match the unagreed, making so much more money out of us. The final insult is to close the branches.
(off topic btw)
Depending on what you describe as basic banking, that's pretty much the situation already;
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
Interesting.
1. Would you favour the state forcing the last bank in any given locality to stay open? If not, why not? If you would, then why hasn't the Conservative Government done this? 2. Would you apply the same logic to youth clubs? The national network of those has been butchered in the last decade as well.
1 As I said I would fine banks that shut too many branches
2 Youth clubs depend on volunteers, I am for the big society
Why not fine buildings that don't employ lift operators?
I would make it mandatory to allow Post offices in an area which has lost it's bank branches to offer basic banking at the cost of the banks. The financial sector and governments has effectively moved all pay and salaries to BACs forcing people to use banks. They then started introducing ordinary account fees to handle our money, making overnight interest on the resulting vast amounts of our money and not paying anything back to us. They even changed the agreed overdraft interest rates to match the unagreed, making so much more money out of us. The final insult is to close the branches.
(off topic btw)
Depending on what you describe as basic banking, that's pretty much the situation already;
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
Interesting.
1. Would you favour the state forcing the last bank in any given locality to stay open? If not, why not? If you would, then why hasn't the Conservative Government done this? 2. Would you apply the same logic to youth clubs? The national network of those has been butchered in the last decade as well.
1 As I said I would fine banks that shut too many branches
2 Youth clubs depend on volunteers, I am for the big society
Youth clubs, like bank branches, need money. The money has to come from somewhere.
You suggest penalising banks by using the threat of fines to cajole them into keeping unprofitable, underused branches open. OK. In that case, who are you going to force to cough up the money to keep the youth clubs open, and to restore those in areas where provision has already been eradicated?
If it were as easy as falling back on volunteers to provide local services and funds out of the kindness of their hearts then why do we not stop shelling out for old age pensions and social care from tax receipts, and fund them by community whip round instead? Answer: because that's no basis on which to fund things that are (a) societally essential and (b) expensive.
Therefore, according to your logic, one of two things must be true. Firstly, youth clubs (presumably because they are used by teenagers and not pensioners) are an unnecessary luxury that society can therefore afford to allow to die out (because, unlike cutesy puppies and country houses, fourteen year olds don't have a huge, wealthy national charity to look out for them.) Or, secondly, they are necessary, in which case the people responsible for funding them - in this instance, local authorities - must be forced to cough up the money.
In short: if you're going to force banks to keep branches open for the convenience of computer illiterate octogenarians then you should also be in favour of forcing councils to keep their youth services running. Indeed, young people - especially poor or troubled young people - arguably need those services a Hell of a lot more than doddery Doris needs to be able to speak to a bank cashier once every couple of years. What's sauce for the goose, etc, etc.
Old Tbilisi is misnamed. It is actually an insane collision between Old and New
Eg I am basically living in a tumbledown 18th century quasi-Persian tenement, complete with families gossiping from their balconies to each other, like in Tudor London. It makes central Palermo look organised, modern and well-maintained
And yet with an app (Wolt or Grovo) I can order any meal I like from any restaurant in central Tbilisi (they are generally great) and it arrives within 20 minutes, delivered by a nice friendly Georgian kid on a bicycle, and it is hot and tasty. They also deliver, within minutes, groceries, hardware, booze, whatever. Bolt also works phenomenally well here. You get a cab in a couple of minutes and they go anywhere and bingo
It’s simultaneously like inhabiting a sultry medieval Paris and a vision of the world 10-15 years in the future
Is food still more expensive in the UK than in the US? (It was when last I visited, but that was many years ago.)
Food inflation has hit here, as well as almost everywhere else in the world, but it's my impression that food costs are still low here, compared to most other nations. (And probably much lower for the poor, thanks to what we still call "food stamps".)
(I haven't seen numbers but food costs for most items are probably a little higher in the greater Seattle area than in most of the US.)
On holiday we always notice things which are much more or less expensive. My US examples are bread ($3 for a cheap sliced loaf, $5 for the decent stuff. Compare 80p / £1.60) and biscuits (300g bourbon creams 45p at Tesco, $2.79 for own-brand oreo equivalents).
But looking at the flyer you link, it looks pretty cheap overall.
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
Interesting.
1. Would you favour the state forcing the last bank in any given locality to stay open? If not, why not? If you would, then why hasn't the Conservative Government done this? 2. Would you apply the same logic to youth clubs? The national network of those has been butchered in the last decade as well.
1 As I said I would fine banks that shut too many branches
2 Youth clubs depend on volunteers, I am for the big society
Youth clubs, like bank branches, need money. The money has to come from somewhere.
You suggest penalising banks by using the threat of fines to cajole them into keeping unprofitable, underused branches open. OK. In that case, who are you going to force to cough up the money to keep the youth clubs open, and to restore those in areas where provision has already been eradicated?
If it were as easy as falling back on volunteers to provide local services and funds out of the kindness of their hearts then why do we not stop shelling out for old age pensions and social care from tax receipts, and fund them by community whip round instead? Answer: because that's no basis on which to fund things that are (a) societally essential and (b) expensive.
Therefore, according to your logic, one of two things must be true. Firstly, youth clubs (presumably because they are used by teenagers and not pensioners) are an unnecessary luxury that society can therefore afford to allow to die out (because, unlike cutesy puppies and country houses, fourteen year olds don't have a huge, wealthy national charity to look out for them.) Or, secondly, they are necessary, in which case the people responsible for funding them - in this instance, local authorities - must be forced to cough up the money.
In short: if you're going to force banks to keep branches open for the convenience of computer illiterate octogenarians then you should also be in favour of forcing councils to keep their youth services running. Indeed, young people - especially poor or troubled young people - arguably need those services a Hell of a lot more than doddery Doris needs to be able to speak to a bank cashier once every couple of years. What's sauce for the goose, etc, etc.
I would be quite happy giving some of the funds from fined banks for branch closures to councils to help keep youth clubs open
One of the pivotal moments in the Near Future will come thusly: when one of the competing great powers, China, USA, Russia, Mighty Puissant Albion, realises that you get much much better military results if you hand the strategising to a computer, and sack the human generals
Computers are already way better than humans at Go and Chess. Which are allegorical forms of warfare on a board. So computers will be hugely better at waging and winning wars. For the same reason
Picture the Kremlin in 20 years. Vladimir Putin 3.1 gets his briefing from GPT7. it doesn’t lie to him, it doesn’t skim off billions in spending to go live in a yacht. All it wants to do is serve the Russian Leader, and advance the military cause, and it can absorb quintillion bytes of logistical information in a second, and autocomplete the Ukrainians’ next move to the exact millimetre
Whichever country does this first, wins. It won’t be the Russians. My bet is China
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
You espouse socialism.
No traditional Conservativism ie respect for tradition and the local community. I am not proposing nationalising all the banks permanently which a socialist would do
Traditional Conservatism is all about letting businesses operate without needless interference from the state.
No, that is traditional classical liberalism, hence you now vote LD not Tory
Liberalism is not rooted in economics. It's rooted in opposition to absolute rule and slavery.
TSE seems to be thinking of late 20th century Toryism.
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
What things shouldn't be automatic?
As little as possible shouldn’t be automatic. McDonalds are replacing order-takers with computers, although I’ve not yet seen a pub with an automatic beer-dispensing machine. That should only be a matter of time, if they can’t find staff.
It all depends what you want to achieve. If the objective is maximising human happiness there are lots of things that could be automated that make people feel less happy. Like all sorts of personal services in hospitality and other spheres.
There is a lot of loneliness in maximal efficiency. Sometimes to replace the person behind the bar with an automatic beer dispenser may be as useful as replacing the customer with an automatic drinker. Happiness can consist in production as well as consumption.
The blind pursuit of ever higher productivity is madness. It's the goal of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Not at all.
In the long run, it’s only productivity that pays the baker for his bread.
What we choose to do with productivity is up to us.
How did the baker get paid for his bread during former times of lower productivity?
I'm not saying automation hasn't been a good thing; I am merely saying it should not be the be-all and end-all. We lose sight of the things money cannot buy.
Here's a question. If we assume the population has a range of abilities from quite low to genius over-achievers, given automation tends to take out the simpler jobs what do those people a the lower end of the ability spectrum do?
Answer, they end up existing on benefits with unless they are lucky enough to find undemanding jobs that haven't yet been automated.
DALLE-3 and GPT4 are going to take away ALL the jobs of everyone; brace
Not in our lifetimes, nor our children's or grandchildren's.
The @Benpointer dishwasher test is still waiting for a challenger.
I could also add the 'cook-a-meal-for-four-using-whatever-is-in-the-cupboard' test. Or the 'do-the-gardening' test... etc.
But, QED
Your claim was “automation tends to take out the simpler jobs”
This is my argument just expressed differently, I’m just extrapolating trends. Automation took out the simpler jobs until about 20 years ago, that has been less true for a while, and going forwards it will be the opposite of the case. It will be the brainier jobs, from journalist to solicitor to doctor to graphic designer to illustrator to pilot to lawyer to general to surgeon - which get taken out, from now on
Note the jobs you say can’t be replaced. Dishwasher stacker, spontaneous house chef, basic gardener?
These are the low IQ but high human contact jobs which might survive, because it will take a long time for robots to achieve the extremely fine motor skills to do them. But even they might go, in the end
HOW DARE YOU suggest loading the dishwasher is a low IQ activity!
Mrs P. might have seen that post and then where would I be?
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
Interesting.
1. Would you favour the state forcing the last bank in any given locality to stay open? If not, why not? If you would, then why hasn't the Conservative Government done this? 2. Would you apply the same logic to youth clubs? The national network of those has been butchered in the last decade as well.
1 As I said I would fine banks that shut too many branches
2 Youth clubs depend on volunteers, I am for the big society
Why not fine buildings that don't employ lift operators?
As pressing one button to use a lift is not the same thing as having someone in person you can chat to at your bank in your own town!!
For a certain generation it was very disconcerting to have to operate machinery themselves.
Why is doing your banking on a screen any different?
Note that many surviving bank branches have rows of self service screens, with one or 2 actual staff in attendance.
Which is still better than no in person staff and also offers a means to draw cash out unlike online
Sandpit seems to know a hell of a lot about the carwash business.
I watched Breaking Bad.
More seriously, in 2000, there were almost no hand car washes in the UK, except at the top end of car detailers, and petrol stations were buying expensive capital equipment to wash cars.
15 years later, every supermarket had a bunch of hand washers in the car park.
Is food still more expensive in the UK than in the US? (It was when last I visited, but that was many years ago.)
Food inflation has hit here, as well as almost everywhere else in the world, but it's my impression that food costs are still low here, compared to most other nations. (And probably much lower for the poor, thanks to what we still call "food stamps".)
(I haven't seen numbers but food costs for most items are probably a little higher in the greater Seattle area than in most of the US.)
On holiday we always notice things which are much more or less expensive. My US examples are bread ($3 for a cheap sliced loaf, $5 for the decent stuff. Compare 80p / £1.60) and biscuits (300g bourbon creams 45p at Tesco, $2.79 for own-brand oreo equivalents).
But looking at the flyer you link, it looks pretty cheap overall.
The overall cost of living is roughly similar in Seattle and London, but food is quite a bit cheaper in London.
Is food still more expensive in the UK than in the US? (It was when last I visited, but that was many years ago.)
Food inflation has hit here, as well as almost everywhere else in the world, but it's my impression that food costs are still low here, compared to most other nations. (And probably much lower for the poor, thanks to what we still call "food stamps".)
Sandpit seems to know a hell of a lot about the carwash business.
I watched Breaking Bad.
More seriously, in 2000, there were almost no hand car washes in the UK, except at the top end of car detailers, and petrol stations were buying expensive capital equipment to wash cars.
15 years later, every supermarket had a bunch of hand washers in the car park.
Why did this regression occur?
Did it only happen in the UK?
Or has it happened more generally? What has happened to global sales of automated car washing machines?
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
You espouse socialism.
No traditional Conservativism ie respect for tradition and the local community. I am not proposing nationalising all the banks permanently which a socialist would do
Traditional Conservatism is all about letting businesses operate without needless interference from the state.
No, that is traditional classical liberalism, hence you now vote LD not Tory
Liberalism is not rooted in economics. It's rooted in opposition to absolute rule and slavery.
TSE seems to be thinking of late 20th century Toryism.
Classical liberalism is rooted in free market economics, Thatcher was in some ways more a Gladstone Liberal than Disraeli Tory. Boris more in the Disraeli mould
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
Interesting.
1. Would you favour the state forcing the last bank in any given locality to stay open? If not, why not? If you would, then why hasn't the Conservative Government done this? 2. Would you apply the same logic to youth clubs? The national network of those has been butchered in the last decade as well.
1 As I said I would fine banks that shut too many branches
2 Youth clubs depend on volunteers, I am for the big society
Why not fine buildings that don't employ lift operators?
I would make it mandatory to allow Post offices in an area which has lost it's bank branches to offer basic banking at the cost of the banks. The financial sector and governments has effectively moved all pay and salaries to BACs forcing people to use banks. They then started introducing ordinary account fees to handle our money, making overnight interest on the resulting vast amounts of our money and not paying anything back to us. They even changed the agreed overdraft interest rates to match the unagreed, making so much more money out of us. The final insult is to close the branches.
(off topic btw)
Depending on what you describe as basic banking, that's pretty much the situation already;
A real problem givcen that POs are vanishing themselves. And related to the use of cash.
The various alt-banks will set up an account, very rapidly, and don’t charge for most things.
Consumer banking is not a profit centre for many of the traditional banks. I expect some to leave the sector, a few to reinvent themselves as alt-banks.
Sandpit seems to know a hell of a lot about the carwash business.
I watched Breaking Bad.
More seriously, in 2000, there were almost no hand car washes in the UK, except at the top end of car detailers, and petrol stations were buying expensive capital equipment to wash cars.
15 years later, every supermarket had a bunch of hand washers in the car park.
Why did this regression occur?
Yes, it was quite sudden too. Round my way shortly after the first hand car wash appeared they were suddenly everywhere, including the supermarket car parks, but now it seems to be back to the original one only again, although it is an expanded operation.
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
Interesting.
1. Would you favour the state forcing the last bank in any given locality to stay open? If not, why not? If you would, then why hasn't the Conservative Government done this? 2. Would you apply the same logic to youth clubs? The national network of those has been butchered in the last decade as well.
1 As I said I would fine banks that shut too many branches
2 Youth clubs depend on volunteers, I am for the big society
Youth clubs, like bank branches, need money. The money has to come from somewhere.
You suggest penalising banks by using the threat of fines to cajole them into keeping unprofitable, underused branches open. OK. In that case, who are you going to force to cough up the money to keep the youth clubs open, and to restore those in areas where provision has already been eradicated?
If it were as easy as falling back on volunteers to provide local services and funds out of the kindness of their hearts then why do we not stop shelling out for old age pensions and social care from tax receipts, and fund them by community whip round instead? Answer: because that's no basis on which to fund things that are (a) societally essential and (b) expensive.
Therefore, according to your logic, one of two things must be true. Firstly, youth clubs (presumably because they are used by teenagers and not pensioners) are an unnecessary luxury that society can therefore afford to allow to die out (because, unlike cutesy puppies and country houses, fourteen year olds don't have a huge, wealthy national charity to look out for them.) Or, secondly, they are necessary, in which case the people responsible for funding them - in this instance, local authorities - must be forced to cough up the money.
In short: if you're going to force banks to keep branches open for the convenience of computer illiterate octogenarians then you should also be in favour of forcing councils to keep their youth services running. Indeed, young people - especially poor or troubled young people - arguably need those services a Hell of a lot more than doddery Doris needs to be able to speak to a bank cashier once every couple of years. What's sauce for the goose, etc, etc.
I would be quite happy giving some of the funds from fined banks for branch closures to councils to help keep youth clubs open
Sounds like something Richard Burgon would come up with.
One of the pivotal moments in the Near Future will come thusly: when one of the competing great powers, China, USA, Russia, Mighty Puissant Albion, realises that you get much much better military results if you hand the strategising to a computer, and sack the human generals
Computers are already way better than humans at Go and Chess. Which are allegorical forms of warfare on a board. So computers will be hugely better at waging and winning wars. For the same reason
Picture the Kremlin in 20 years. Vladimir Putin 3.1 gets his briefing from GPT7. it doesn’t lie to him, it doesn’t skim off billions in spending to go live in a yacht. All it wants to do is serve the Russian Leader, and advance the military cause, and it can absorb quintillion bytes of logistical information in a second, and autocomplete the Ukrainians’ next move to the exact millimetre
Whichever country does this first, wins. It won’t be the Russians. My bet is China
If one does they all would
Of course they all will in the end, But the first mover will have the crucial advantage. This is an unarguable extrapolation. This is not a prediction. This will happen. Computers will make better generals for a trillion reasons. Cold, unemotional, logical, super intelligent, not biddable or bribable, don’t need sleep, have a total grasp of unimaginably vast swathes of data. Computers will make the ULTIMATE generals
In the next few years Xi Jinping or a successor will prompt GPT 13 with the words “How do we conquer Taiwan” and the best computer in the world will spit out the answer, and it will be right
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
What things shouldn't be automatic?
As little as possible shouldn’t be automatic. McDonalds are replacing order-takers with computers, although I’ve not yet seen a pub with an automatic beer-dispensing machine. That should only be a matter of time, if they can’t find staff.
It all depends what you want to achieve. If the objective is maximising human happiness there are lots of things that could be automated that make people feel less happy. Like all sorts of personal services in hospitality and other spheres.
There is a lot of loneliness in maximal efficiency. Sometimes to replace the person behind the bar with an automatic beer dispenser may be as useful as replacing the customer with an automatic drinker. Happiness can consist in production as well as consumption.
The blind pursuit of ever higher productivity is madness. It's the goal of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Not at all.
In the long run, it’s only productivity that pays the baker for his bread.
What we choose to do with productivity is up to us.
How did the baker get paid for his bread during former times of lower productivity?
I'm not saying automation hasn't been a good thing; I am merely saying it should not be the be-all and end-all. We lose sight of the things money cannot buy.
Here's a question. If we assume the population has a range of abilities from quite low to genius over-achievers, given automation tends to take out the simpler jobs what do those people a the lower end of the ability spectrum do?
Answer, they end up existing on benefits with unless they are lucky enough to find undemanding jobs that haven't yet been automated.
DALLE-3 and GPT4 are going to take away ALL the jobs of everyone; brace
Not in our lifetimes, nor our children's or grandchildren's.
The @Benpointer dishwasher test is still waiting for a challenger.
I could also add the 'cook-a-meal-for-four-using-whatever-is-in-the-cupboard' test. Or the 'do-the-gardening' test... etc.
But, QED
Your claim was “automation tends to take out the simpler jobs”
This is my argument just expressed differently, I’m just extrapolating trends. Automation took out the simpler jobs until about 20 years ago, that has been less true for a while, and going forwards it will be the opposite of the case. It will be the brainier jobs, from journalist to solicitor to doctor to graphic designer to illustrator to pilot to lawyer to general to surgeon - which get taken out, from now on
Note the jobs you say can’t be replaced. Dishwasher stacker, spontaneous house chef, basic gardener?
These are the low IQ but high human contact jobs which might survive, because it will take a long time for robots to achieve the extremely fine motor skills to do them. But even they might go, in the end
I tend to agree with this: it's accountants, solicitors, lower end computer programmers, etc., that are going to be hammered by the combination of globalisation and AI.
Those people are going to need to work somewhere, so it's a good thing that hand car washes are booming.
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
Interesting.
1. Would you favour the state forcing the last bank in any given locality to stay open? If not, why not? If you would, then why hasn't the Conservative Government done this? 2. Would you apply the same logic to youth clubs? The national network of those has been butchered in the last decade as well.
The second though is not necessarily down to funding. I used to volunteer at a youth club for example and would do so again but now its "we dont believe you arent a pervert so prove it first" to which my responses is fuck off then I will go do something else. A DBS check wouldn't find anything on me as had a couple for places I have worked....but the clue is there....places I worked and was paid to be.....not going to bother for somewhere I am doing a favour
Sandpit seems to know a hell of a lot about the carwash business.
I watched Breaking Bad.
More seriously, in 2000, there were almost no hand car washes in the UK, except at the top end of car detailers, and petrol stations were buying expensive capital equipment to wash cars.
15 years later, every supermarket had a bunch of hand washers in the car park.
Why did this regression occur?
Did it only happen in the UK?
Or has it happened more generally? What has happened to global sales of automated car washing machines?
They are all in on a giant tip somewhere, along with Betamax VCRs and Corby trouser presses.
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
Interesting.
1. Would you favour the state forcing the last bank in any given locality to stay open? If not, why not? If you would, then why hasn't the Conservative Government done this? 2. Would you apply the same logic to youth clubs? The national network of those has been butchered in the last decade as well.
1 As I said I would fine banks that shut too many branches
2 Youth clubs depend on volunteers, I am for the big society
Youth clubs, like bank branches, need money. The money has to come from somewhere.
You suggest penalising banks by using the threat of fines to cajole them into keeping unprofitable, underused branches open. OK. In that case, who are you going to force to cough up the money to keep the youth clubs open, and to restore those in areas where provision has already been eradicated?
If it were as easy as falling back on volunteers to provide local services and funds out of the kindness of their hearts then why do we not stop shelling out for old age pensions and social care from tax receipts, and fund them by community whip round instead? Answer: because that's no basis on which to fund things that are (a) societally essential and (b) expensive.
Therefore, according to your logic, one of two things must be true. Firstly, youth clubs (presumably because they are used by teenagers and not pensioners) are an unnecessary luxury that society can therefore afford to allow to die out (because, unlike cutesy puppies and country houses, fourteen year olds don't have a huge, wealthy national charity to look out for them.) Or, secondly, they are necessary, in which case the people responsible for funding them - in this instance, local authorities - must be forced to cough up the money.
In short: if you're going to force banks to keep branches open for the convenience of computer illiterate octogenarians then you should also be in favour of forcing councils to keep their youth services running. Indeed, young people - especially poor or troubled young people - arguably need those services a Hell of a lot more than doddery Doris needs to be able to speak to a bank cashier once every couple of years. What's sauce for the goose, etc, etc.
I would be quite happy giving some of the funds from fined banks for branch closures to councils to help keep youth clubs open
Funding for youth services from local authorities in England and Wales declined by approximately two-thirds in the period between 2010 and 2019. That's £1bn per year you've got to find out of fining the banks.
Faced with that kind of punishment they'll probably keep the branches open, so no fines.
Next question: where does the £1bn come from instead?
Is food still more expensive in the UK than in the US? (It was when last I visited, but that was many years ago.)
Food inflation has hit here, as well as almost everywhere else in the world, but it's my impression that food costs are still low here, compared to most other nations. (And probably much lower for the poor, thanks to what we still call "food stamps".)
(I haven't seen numbers but food costs for most items are probably a little higher in the greater Seattle area than in most of the US.)
On holiday we always notice things which are much more or less expensive. My US examples are bread ($3 for a cheap sliced loaf, $5 for the decent stuff. Compare 80p / £1.60) and biscuits (300g bourbon creams 45p at Tesco, $2.79 for own-brand oreo equivalents).
But looking at the flyer you link, it looks pretty cheap overall.
The overall cost of living is roughly similar in Seattle and London, but food is quite a bit cheaper in London.
I always remember food being cheaper in America, when I was young. Certainly in supermarkets (not NYC restaurants)
Definitely not true now, And the quality in America is seriously inferior
Eg my attempted picnic in New Orleans, which I mentioned on here, in a high end but not insanely posh supermarket. $50 for basics - nice cheese, nice bread, nice salami, etc
America is still maybe cheaper if your want to buy 30 tonnes of purple Cheddar balls or a vast amount of crappy beer, but even then I’m not sure
Cutting 30,000 public sector jobs would be "unsustainable", a union leader has warned.
It comes after the Scottish government set out its plans at Holyrood on Tuesday to reform public services in the face of a £3.5bn funding gap. Linda Sommerville, of the Scottish Trade Unions Congress, said the review had "set alarm bells ringing".
She added that the pay bill was to be held down over the next five years by job losses across the public sector. "There are estimates of up to 30,000 job losses which is unsustainable," adding that services were already stretched.
Ms Sommerville added that there was nothing in the statement on the long-term investment needed to rebuild the economy.
She told BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland programme that the economy had been harmed not just by Covid and Brexit but also by "years of austerity before that".
Unison, Scotland's largest union which represents public service workers, said there would be "catastrophic consequences", and that public services had already been "cut to the bone".
The union's Scottish secretary, Tracey Dalling, said: "The pandemic has shown us who really are the essential workers. It's the people who've looked after our elderly relatives, cared for our sick and dying in hospitals, the workers that deliver our housing, our education and social care, among others."
The cuts were not inevitable and were "a political choice by an out-of-touch Scottish government," she said.
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
Is food still more expensive in the UK than in the US? (It was when last I visited, but that was many years ago.)
Food inflation has hit here, as well as almost everywhere else in the world, but it's my impression that food costs are still low here, compared to most other nations. (And probably much lower for the poor, thanks to what we still call "food stamps".)
(I haven't seen numbers but food costs for most items are probably a little higher in the greater Seattle area than in most of the US.)
On holiday we always notice things which are much more or less expensive. My US examples are bread ($3 for a cheap sliced loaf, $5 for the decent stuff. Compare 80p / £1.60) and biscuits (300g bourbon creams 45p at Tesco, $2.79 for own-brand oreo equivalents).
But looking at the flyer you link, it looks pretty cheap overall.
The overall cost of living is roughly similar in Seattle and London, but food is quite a bit cheaper in London.
I always remember food being cheaper in America, when I was young. Certainly in supermarkets (not NYC restaurants)
Definitely not true now, And the quality in America is seriously inferior
Eg my attempted picnic in New Orleans, which I mentioned on here, in a high end but not insanely posh supermarket. $50 for basics - nice cheese, nice bread, nice salami, etc
America is still maybe cheaper if your want to buy 30 tonnes of purple Cheddar balls or a vast amount of crappy beer, but even then I’m not sure
I too remember those heady days. Yeah the food here is expensive shite.
On the other hand, you can get no-preservatives-added carrot juice. Which I love.
You can’t get it in the UK for some reason. Comes with some acidic stabiliser.
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
You espouse socialism.
No traditional Conservativism ie respect for tradition and the local community. I am not proposing nationalising all the banks permanently which a socialist would do
Traditional Conservatism is all about letting businesses operate without needless interference from the state.
No, that is traditional classical liberalism, hence you now vote LD not Tory
I think you should consider yourself put in your place now @TheScreamingEagles
Typical gotcha question from the team that ambushed Gordon Brown by asking what is his favourite biscuit.
It'll have 100,000 'likes' by the end of today. The man's a c*nt and the world knows it. Ask anyone at the airport who they blame. A pity we can't do a solvite ad with him stuck on the side of the Bus.
The train drivers' union Aslef has rejected the latest 4.2% pay deal from ScotRail. The union's national executive said it would ballot for industrial action unless ScotRail offered further talks. Many drivers have been refusing to work overtime or on rest days during the pay dispute. The driver shortage has led to the now-nationalised train operator cutting a third of services under a temporary timetable.
Transport Scotland said it was disappointed that Aslef had rejected a deal which it described as "both fair and affordable".
Scotland's Transport Minister Jenny Gilruth had said earlier this week she was hopeful the 4.2% pay offer would resolve the dispute. However, it was turned down by a meeting of Aslef's national executive committee on Wednesday.
Scottish organiser Kevin Lindsay said: "Aslef wants to negotiate a fair deal for our members, we are once again calling on ScotRail to return to the talks, so we can negotiate a fair pay offer that we can put to our members."
ScotRail introduced an emergency timetable last month to give customers a degree of certainty about services after being hit by numerous cancellations.
But the timetable involved almost 700 fewer services a day, with many later trains no longer running.
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
You espouse socialism.
No traditional Conservativism ie respect for tradition and the local community. I am not proposing nationalising all the banks permanently which a socialist would do
Traditional Conservatism is all about letting businesses operate without needless interference from the state.
No, that is traditional classical liberalism, hence you now vote LD not Tory
Liberalism is not rooted in economics. It's rooted in opposition to absolute rule and slavery.
TSE seems to be thinking of late 20th century Toryism.
Classical liberalism is rooted in free market economics, Thatcher was in some ways more a Gladstone Liberal than Disraeli Tory. Boris more in the Disraeli mould
Is food still more expensive in the UK than in the US? (It was when last I visited, but that was many years ago.)
Food inflation has hit here, as well as almost everywhere else in the world, but it's my impression that food costs are still low here, compared to most other nations. (And probably much lower for the poor, thanks to what we still call "food stamps".)
(I haven't seen numbers but food costs for most items are probably a little higher in the greater Seattle area than in most of the US.)
On holiday we always notice things which are much more or less expensive. My US examples are bread ($3 for a cheap sliced loaf, $5 for the decent stuff. Compare 80p / £1.60) and biscuits (300g bourbon creams 45p at Tesco, $2.79 for own-brand oreo equivalents).
But looking at the flyer you link, it looks pretty cheap overall.
The overall cost of living is roughly similar in Seattle and London, but food is quite a bit cheaper in London.
I always remember food being cheaper in America, when I was young. Certainly in supermarkets (not NYC restaurants)
Definitely not true now, And the quality in America is seriously inferior
Eg my attempted picnic in New Orleans, which I mentioned on here, in a high end but not insanely posh supermarket. $50 for basics - nice cheese, nice bread, nice salami, etc
America is still maybe cheaper if your want to buy 30 tonnes of purple Cheddar balls or a vast amount of crappy beer, but even then I’m not sure
I too remember those heady days. Yeah the food here is expensive shite.
On the other hand, you can get no-preservatives-added carrot juice. Which I love.
You can’t get it in the UK for some reason. Comes with some acidic stabiliser.
I don’t understand WHY it is more expensive and yet worse?
America is a naturally wealthy country - enormously wealthy. It is a huge and dynamic capitalist economy. It is green and fertile and produces everything it needs and beyond, from wine to wheat, from Florida citrus fruit to New England lobster, it has vast natural resources and a wealthy populace willing to spend
Yet… the supermarket food is often shite. AND costly. What’s going on?
And this isn’t a distance and tiny towns thing. This was also true in New Orleans and Nashville on my latest visit. Big cities in fertile areas with wealthy people
it is some deeper dysfunction, which I don’t quite grasp
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
Once again, most (but not all) economists believe that migration increases productivity.
UK productivity is a v interesting topic.
There’s a paper just published which suggests that issues have been largely in finance and the oil energy (post the financial crash), and long-term underperformance in manufacturing.
The car wash anecdote doesn’t really cut it.
It seems to me that British firms serially under invest in capital goods for reasons that have very little to do with migration. Probably taking their lead from the UK government which spends considerably less than OECD peers on R&D…
France has much bigger tax allowances etc for investment in machinery.
Hence even a small, domestic, building site in France generally starts with the setting up of a mini-crane. On a UK site....
In finance, I have spent a good deal of my professional career on automating jobs out of existence, there. The number of people who copy & pasta from one system into Excel, do some fiddling and pasta the result to another system....
To be specific, the productivity problems in finance are basically about reduced output caused by loss of demand / market share after the financial crisis rather than what the everyday person would call “lack of productivity”.
There are quite a few banks that still have floors of people doing these kind of jobs - you'd think that automated flows would have been bought in, but no....
Shame however the banks are not able to still retain a branch in every high street if they wish to stay traditional
Their lunch is being eaten by the alt-banks. Who are 100% online - often mobile only, now.
On alt-bank (consumer) I worked with had a single system. For the entire bank. An equivalent high street bank has 100s. Which don't talk to each other properly.
Still not great for the elderly and pensioners in particular who want a local branch, it is also easier to discuss complex matters in branches than on the phone
As one of the resident OAPs I can do all the banking I need to on line, topped up with a very occasional phone call. I can pay in, on the rare occasions I need to, via the Post Office. Longer hours, too. When, a few years ago, I was Secretary of a u3a, dealing with their on-the-ground bankers was a total pain.
Anyone posting on here is, by definition, reasonably computer literate. In contrast, my 90 year old father-in-law has never touched a computer in his life, my late mum was the same.
They could learn of course (well not my mum anymore obvs!) but they lack the confidence, and perhaps at 90, the motivation or the learning ability.
There's no real solution beyond waiting for that generation to die out.
What will be the equivalent for my generation I wonder?
Fairy ‘nuff of course.
My maternal grandfather, a farmer who died in 1936, never drove a car and had to be persuaded to let his son, who was taking over the farm, buy a tractor. Uncle promptly drove the tractor into a ditch which, apparently my grandfather took as proving his point!
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
You espouse socialism.
No traditional Conservativism ie respect for tradition and the local community. I am not proposing nationalising all the banks permanently which a socialist would do
Traditional Conservatism is all about letting businesses operate without needless interference from the state.
No, that is traditional classical liberalism, hence you now vote LD not Tory
I think you should consider yourself put in your place now @TheScreamingEagles
The funny thing is that if Boris Johnson is replaced in the next few weeks and the new leader goes for my kind of policies then HYUFD will reboot and declare those policies true Conservatism.
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
You espouse socialism.
No traditional Conservativism ie respect for tradition and the local community. I am not proposing nationalising all the banks permanently which a socialist would do
Traditional Conservatism is all about letting businesses operate without needless interference from the state.
No, that is traditional classical liberalism, hence you now vote LD not Tory
I think you should consider yourself put in your place now @TheScreamingEagles
The funny thing is that if Boris Johnson is replaced in the next few weeks and the new leader goes for my kind of policies then HYUFD will reboot and declare those policies true Conservatism.
After 15 years in government, the SNP remain the most trusted party across a range of issues: * 38% trust the SNP most to grow Scotland’s economy (Conservatives 18%, Labour 16%) * 37% trust the SNP most to manage the NHS in Scotland (Labour 20%, Conservatives 13%) * 36% trust the SNP most to manage education and schools in Scotland (Labour 19%, Conservatives 15%) * 33% trust the SNP most to tackle the cost of living crisis (Labour 20%, Conservatives 12%).
Emily Gray, Managing Director of Ipsos in Scotland, commented: “Boris Johnson has never received positive ratings in Scotland, but these latest Ipsos and STV News findings are a new low for the Prime Minister. Although the SNP continues to dominate voting intentions, there are tentative signs of a recovery for Scottish Labour, with continued positive ratings for Anas Sarwar, and Labour ahead of the Conservatives on Westminster voting intention. However, the scale of the challenge facing Labour is underlined by the fact that after 15 years in government the SNP remains the most trusted party across a wide range of policy areas. This includes the cost of living – which the public say is the most important issue facing Scotland at present.”
Perhaps the ridiculous @Gardenwalker, who is convinced that Brexit is to blame for everything, including Barbary slavers and execrable Georgian supermarket tonic water, might explain the frazzled and veteran Greek tour operator I met in preveza about ten days ago.
We sat down to chat all things travel over some tsiporou and after her third class she went into a very amusing rant about all her young staff - 100s of people - leaving her restaurants and hotels “because they got used to doing nothing during the plague and now they won’t work”
Brexit impact on her staff? Zero. She told me she doesn’t even get British tourists, her biz Is all Dutch and German. Yet somehow she had exactly the same staffing problem as everywhere else in the world, including Britain
I think you should go easy on calling people "ridiculous" or I may have to refer to psychological projection again.
Anyone who suggests that over half a million people leaving these islands has not created a labour shortage is either economically illiterate (you maybe), stupid (you are not) or as big a fibber as Boris Johnson (is such a thing possible?). Brexit has been a significant contributory factor to a labour shortage. Saying la la la I can't hear you does not change that.
Yes, Brexit has been a contributory factor to the labour shortage.
To millions of low-paid workers, and to the government paying in-work benefits, this is a good thing.
Forgive me, but that is somewhat simplistic. Many organisations will simply go for greater automation for low skills. It could easily have the opposite effect.
The UK productivity figures have been terrible for the past couple of decades, purely because labour was so cheap due to FoM.
Pity the guy who spent £200k on an automatic car wash two decades ago, who found his business screwed by teams of immigrants, many of dubious legal status, who would valet a car inside and out for a tenner.
Car washes should be automatic (as they were two decades ago!), so should fruit picking.
God no, automatic car wash machines leave scratches.
Handwashing is the best.
Yes, of course the hand wash is the superior product. There was no reason why it suddenly became cheaper than the automatic wash, as it did 15 years ago.
Really? The guys that do the hand car wash near me charged me £30 today (all furriners I am afraid), whereas the scratchy automatic one owned by poor old BP down the road only costs £5 to strip the top layers of paint off very efficiently.
Okay. £30 for a car wash. £25 + VAT.
How many man-hours are involved in that car wash? 1.5 maybe?
If each person is earning minimum wage of £9.50, and their employer is paying Employer NI, rent on their space, cost of materials, costs of business, and profits to the shareholders, either they have a bunch of 16 year olds (paid a lesser wage) working for them, or they’re not working legally.
Most likely, as with farmers, they’ll say the staff are being paid minimum wage, with extensive and expensive documentation to back that up, but you’ll find that the staff are paying £200 a week for a bunk bed in the business owner’s house several miles away, from which the bus to work leaves every day.
£30 manual car valets are not a good thing.
They did it in 30 mins. I still can't quite tell the central thrust of your argument. Fundamentally it is a business. I suspect they are all family members. They are not going to get rich, but they are industrious and seem to be happy. Who are you to look down on them?
Here in the Flatlands it was nowhere near £30.
I have never used one, because it always seemed _too_ cheap and almost certainly exploitative somewhere along the way.
If the staff were being paid minimum wage it can't possibly have been economic.
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
You espouse socialism.
No traditional Conservativism ie respect for tradition and the local community. I am not proposing nationalising all the banks permanently which a socialist would do
Traditional Conservatism is all about letting businesses operate without needless interference from the state.
No, that is traditional classical liberalism, hence you now vote LD not Tory
I think you should consider yourself put in your place now @TheScreamingEagles
The funny thing is that if Boris Johnson is replaced in the next few weeks and the new leader goes for my kind of policies then HYUFD will reboot and declare those policies true Conservatism.
That is a certainty
The exact same can be said of @NickPalmer, who has managed to be a sworn Blairite and a faithful Corbynite
PB has its party loyalists, who always salute the flag. There is possibly something noble in it
Is food still more expensive in the UK than in the US? (It was when last I visited, but that was many years ago.)
Food inflation has hit here, as well as almost everywhere else in the world, but it's my impression that food costs are still low here, compared to most other nations. (And probably much lower for the poor, thanks to what we still call "food stamps".)
(I haven't seen numbers but food costs for most items are probably a little higher in the greater Seattle area than in most of the US.)
On holiday we always notice things which are much more or less expensive. My US examples are bread ($3 for a cheap sliced loaf, $5 for the decent stuff. Compare 80p / £1.60) and biscuits (300g bourbon creams 45p at Tesco, $2.79 for own-brand oreo equivalents).
But looking at the flyer you link, it looks pretty cheap overall.
The overall cost of living is roughly similar in Seattle and London, but food is quite a bit cheaper in London.
I always remember food being cheaper in America, when I was young. Certainly in supermarkets (not NYC restaurants)
Definitely not true now, And the quality in America is seriously inferior
Eg my attempted picnic in New Orleans, which I mentioned on here, in a high end but not insanely posh supermarket. $50 for basics - nice cheese, nice bread, nice salami, etc
America is still maybe cheaper if your want to buy 30 tonnes of purple Cheddar balls or a vast amount of crappy beer, but even then I’m not sure
I too remember those heady days. Yeah the food here is expensive shite.
On the other hand, you can get no-preservatives-added carrot juice. Which I love.
You can’t get it in the UK for some reason. Comes with some acidic stabiliser.
I don’t understand WHY it is more expensive and yet worse?
America is a naturally wealthy country - enormously wealthy. It is a huge and dynamic capitalist economy. It is green and fertile and produces everything it needs and beyond, from wine to wheat, from Florida citrus fruit to New England lobster, it has vast natural resources and a wealthy populace willing to spend
Yet… the supermarket food is often shite. AND costly. What’s going on?
And this isn’t a distance and tiny towns thing. This was also true in New Orleans and Nashville on my latest visit. Big cities in fertile areas with wealthy people
it is some deeper dysfunction, which I don’t quite grasp
This was also my question. (Living over here is great in the sense it raises so many questions like this).
I think we discussed it a few weeks ago.
The reason seems to be:
1. US customers demand crap 2. It is also more efficient for “big agri” to churn out crap.
You see it even in the weirdest details. Even my 7 year old says,
“Daddy, why do the ice creams not come in many flavours, but you can choose so many different types of topping?”
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
You espouse socialism.
No traditional Conservativism ie respect for tradition and the local community. I am not proposing nationalising all the banks permanently which a socialist would do
Traditional Conservatism is all about letting businesses operate without needless interference from the state.
No, that is traditional classical liberalism, hence you now vote LD not Tory
I think you should consider yourself put in your place now @TheScreamingEagles
The funny thing is that if Boris Johnson is replaced in the next few weeks and the new leader goes for my kind of policies then HYUFD will reboot and declare those policies true Conservatism.
That is a certainty
We should test this hypothesis...give jeremy corbyn an honourary member then make him leader of the conservatives (next time they are in opposition naturally) then watch hyufd's mental contortions
The train drivers' union Aslef has rejected the latest 4.2% pay deal from ScotRail. The union's national executive said it would ballot for industrial action unless ScotRail offered further talks. Many drivers have been refusing to work overtime or on rest days during the pay dispute. The driver shortage has led to the now-nationalised train operator cutting a third of services under a temporary timetable.
Transport Scotland said it was disappointed that Aslef had rejected a deal which it described as "both fair and affordable".
Scotland's Transport Minister Jenny Gilruth had said earlier this week she was hopeful the 4.2% pay offer would resolve the dispute. However, it was turned down by a meeting of Aslef's national executive committee on Wednesday.
Scottish organiser Kevin Lindsay said: "Aslef wants to negotiate a fair deal for our members, we are once again calling on ScotRail to return to the talks, so we can negotiate a fair pay offer that we can put to our members."
ScotRail introduced an emergency timetable last month to give customers a degree of certainty about services after being hit by numerous cancellations.
But the timetable involved almost 700 fewer services a day, with many later trains no longer running.
The SNP won 48 seats at the last UK General Election.
What do we think about next time - higher or lower?
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
You espouse socialism.
No traditional Conservativism ie respect for tradition and the local community. I am not proposing nationalising all the banks permanently which a socialist would do
Traditional Conservatism is all about letting businesses operate without needless interference from the state.
No, that is traditional classical liberalism, hence you now vote LD not Tory
I think you should consider yourself put in your place now @TheScreamingEagles
The funny thing is that if Boris Johnson is replaced in the next few weeks and the new leader goes for my kind of policies then HYUFD will reboot and declare those policies true Conservatism.
That is a certainty
The exact same can be said of @NickPalmer, who has managed to be a sworn Blairite and a faithful Corbynite
PB has its party loyalists, who always salute the flag. There is possibly something noble in it
Parties reboot, in the space of a decade we went from the Tory leadership still supporting section 28 and opposing same sex adoption to introducing same sex marriage.
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
You espouse socialism.
No traditional Conservativism ie respect for tradition and the local community. I am not proposing nationalising all the banks permanently which a socialist would do
Traditional Conservatism is all about letting businesses operate without needless interference from the state.
No, that is traditional classical liberalism, hence you now vote LD not Tory
Liberalism is not rooted in economics. It's rooted in opposition to absolute rule and slavery.
TSE seems to be thinking of late 20th century Toryism.
Classical liberalism is rooted in free market economics, Thatcher was in some ways more a Gladstone Liberal than Disraeli Tory. Boris more in the Disraeli mould
This is true, Thatcher was a neoliberal (and was relatively socially liberal too when she was younger, eg on gay rights where she was ahead of most Tories in the 60s). Traditional Toryism is all about landowners, tradition and knowing your place. Thatcher tore that up. I don't think the Conservatives have any governing ideology anymore. It's just Johnsonian chaos plus ex post rationalisation of Brexit.
Applicant said: "First thing that jumped off the page for me on that was the 16.9floz/500ml Coke bottles - $12 for 4 - this is supposed to be a discount?"
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
You espouse socialism.
No traditional Conservativism ie respect for tradition and the local community. I am not proposing nationalising all the banks permanently which a socialist would do
Traditional Conservatism is all about letting businesses operate without needless interference from the state.
No, that is traditional classical liberalism, hence you now vote LD not Tory
I think you should consider yourself put in your place now @TheScreamingEagles
The funny thing is that if Boris Johnson is replaced in the next few weeks and the new leader goes for my kind of policies then HYUFD will reboot and declare those policies true Conservatism.
They won't if they want to keep the redwall and win another majority.
The Conservative Party has been a coalition of free market liberals and traditional conservatives since universal suffrage and the rise of Labour and the need for a centre right force to keep them out.
However traditional conservatives have longer history in the party than free market liberals, many of whose predecessors were Whigs or Liberals not Tories
Applicant said: "First thing that jumped off the page for me on that was the 16.9floz/500ml Coke bottles - $12 for 4 - this is supposed to be a discount?"
On topic. “ My own view is that those opposed to the incumbent PM would be better off delaying a move until after the June 23rd by-elections “
the insincerity of Boris interview today must surely convince MPs he is not capable of digging the Tories out of this hole? He was doubling down on the fact he has done nothing wrong, ambushed by a cake at a work event and shouldn’t have got an FPN for that. He linked his critics out to get him to remainers. Does anyone think these answers are going to work?
Is food still more expensive in the UK than in the US? (It was when last I visited, but that was many years ago.)
Food inflation has hit here, as well as almost everywhere else in the world, but it's my impression that food costs are still low here, compared to most other nations. (And probably much lower for the poor, thanks to what we still call "food stamps".)
(I haven't seen numbers but food costs for most items are probably a little higher in the greater Seattle area than in most of the US.)
On holiday we always notice things which are much more or less expensive. My US examples are bread ($3 for a cheap sliced loaf, $5 for the decent stuff. Compare 80p / £1.60) and biscuits (300g bourbon creams 45p at Tesco, $2.79 for own-brand oreo equivalents).
But looking at the flyer you link, it looks pretty cheap overall.
The overall cost of living is roughly similar in Seattle and London, but food is quite a bit cheaper in London.
I always remember food being cheaper in America, when I was young. Certainly in supermarkets (not NYC restaurants)
Definitely not true now, And the quality in America is seriously inferior
Eg my attempted picnic in New Orleans, which I mentioned on here, in a high end but not insanely posh supermarket. $50 for basics - nice cheese, nice bread, nice salami, etc
America is still maybe cheaper if your want to buy 30 tonnes of purple Cheddar balls or a vast amount of crappy beer, but even then I’m not sure
I too remember those heady days. Yeah the food here is expensive shite.
On the other hand, you can get no-preservatives-added carrot juice. Which I love.
You can’t get it in the UK for some reason. Comes with some acidic stabiliser.
I don’t understand WHY it is more expensive and yet worse?
America is a naturally wealthy country - enormously wealthy. It is a huge and dynamic capitalist economy. It is green and fertile and produces everything it needs and beyond, from wine to wheat, from Florida citrus fruit to New England lobster, it has vast natural resources and a wealthy populace willing to spend
Yet… the supermarket food is often shite. AND costly. What’s going on?
And this isn’t a distance and tiny towns thing. This was also true in New Orleans and Nashville on my latest visit. Big cities in fertile areas with wealthy people
it is some deeper dysfunction, which I don’t quite grasp
This was also my question. (Living over here is great in the sense it raises so many questions like this).
I think we discussed it a few weeks ago.
The reason seems to be:
1. US customers demand crap 2. It is also more efficient for “big agri” to churn out crap.
You see it even in the weirdest details. Even my 7 year old says,
“Daddy, why do the ice creams not come in many flavours, but you can choose so many different types of topping?”
Have you been to Australia?
That provides a fascinating counter example which is not Europe or America
Somehow Australia has gone the way of Europe. Not the USA. in the big Aussie cities you can go to a supermarket and get good cheese, bread, wines, meats, charcuterie, seafood, fruit, veggies, and it won’t bankrupt you as it is not seen as “posh” it is just what customers expect. OK it won’t be quite as good as Carrefour in France or M&S in the UK but it will be good
And Australia wrestles with the same distance problems as the USA (indeed much worse, as the population is so scattered)
So I think you’re right. Part of the problem is the CUSTOMERS, not the suppliers
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
Interesting.
1. Would you favour the state forcing the last bank in any given locality to stay open? If not, why not? If you would, then why hasn't the Conservative Government done this? 2. Would you apply the same logic to youth clubs? The national network of those has been butchered in the last decade as well.
1 As I said I would fine banks that shut too many branches
2 Youth clubs depend on volunteers, I am for the big society
Why not fine buildings that don't employ lift operators?
I would make it mandatory to allow Post offices in an area which has lost it's bank branches to offer basic banking at the cost of the banks. The financial sector and governments has effectively moved all pay and salaries to BACs forcing people to use banks. They then started introducing ordinary account fees to handle our money, making overnight interest on the resulting vast amounts of our money and not paying anything back to us. They even changed the agreed overdraft interest rates to match the unagreed, making so much more money out of us. The final insult is to close the branches.
(off topic btw)
Depending on what you describe as basic banking, that's pretty much the situation already;
A real problem givcen that POs are vanishing themselves. And related to the use of cash.
The various alt-banks will set up an account, very rapidly, and don’t charge for most things.
Consumer banking is not a profit centre for many of the traditional banks. I expect some to leave the sector, a few to reinvent themselves as alt-banks.
Quite so. But it leaves many people and many places high and dry.
Is food still more expensive in the UK than in the US? (It was when last I visited, but that was many years ago.)
Food inflation has hit here, as well as almost everywhere else in the world, but it's my impression that food costs are still low here, compared to most other nations. (And probably much lower for the poor, thanks to what we still call "food stamps".)
(I haven't seen numbers but food costs for most items are probably a little higher in the greater Seattle area than in most of the US.)
On holiday we always notice things which are much more or less expensive. My US examples are bread ($3 for a cheap sliced loaf, $5 for the decent stuff. Compare 80p / £1.60) and biscuits (300g bourbon creams 45p at Tesco, $2.79 for own-brand oreo equivalents).
But looking at the flyer you link, it looks pretty cheap overall.
The overall cost of living is roughly similar in Seattle and London, but food is quite a bit cheaper in London.
I always remember food being cheaper in America, when I was young. Certainly in supermarkets (not NYC restaurants)
Definitely not true now, And the quality in America is seriously inferior
Eg my attempted picnic in New Orleans, which I mentioned on here, in a high end but not insanely posh supermarket. $50 for basics - nice cheese, nice bread, nice salami, etc
America is still maybe cheaper if your want to buy 30 tonnes of purple Cheddar balls or a vast amount of crappy beer, but even then I’m not sure
I too remember those heady days. Yeah the food here is expensive shite.
On the other hand, you can get no-preservatives-added carrot juice. Which I love.
You can’t get it in the UK for some reason. Comes with some acidic stabiliser.
I don’t understand WHY it is more expensive and yet worse?
America is a naturally wealthy country - enormously wealthy. It is a huge and dynamic capitalist economy. It is green and fertile and produces everything it needs and beyond, from wine to wheat, from Florida citrus fruit to New England lobster, it has vast natural resources and a wealthy populace willing to spend
Yet… the supermarket food is often shite. AND costly. What’s going on?
And this isn’t a distance and tiny towns thing. This was also true in New Orleans and Nashville on my latest visit. Big cities in fertile areas with wealthy people
it is some deeper dysfunction, which I don’t quite grasp
This was also my question. (Living over here is great in the sense it raises so many questions like this).
I think we discussed it a few weeks ago.
The reason seems to be:
1. US customers demand crap 2. It is also more efficient for “big agri” to churn out crap.
You see it even in the weirdest details. Even my 7 year old says,
“Daddy, why do the ice creams not come in many flavours, but you can choose so many different types of topping?”
Have you been to Australia?
That provides a fascinating counter example which is not Europe or America
Somehow Australia has gone the way of Europe. Not the USA. in the big Aussie cities you can go to a supermarket and get good cheese, bread, wines, meats, charcuterie, seafood, fruit, veggies, and it won’t bankrupt you as it is not seen as “posh” it is just what customers expect. OK it won’t be quite as good as Carrefour in France or M&S in the UK but it will be good
And Australia wrestles with the same distance problems as the USA (indeed much worse, as the population is so scattered)
So I think you’re right. Part of the problem is the CUSTOMERS, not the suppliers
Americans did invent the twinkie, aerosol cheese and eat chocolate from hersheys...enough said?
As I read the ad again, I noticed that the price was quoted for "six-packs", too, so the regular price for six standard bottles would be $5.49, which sounds about right to me. But, as I said, I haven't bought the stuff for years.
How do we stop Russia from occupying Ukrainian territory? The most obvious answer is for them to be forced out militarily and I think some are a bit too quick to rule this out entirely. Russia could find themselves hopelessly outnumbered in a matter of months and the Ukrainians are being given much more precise artillery from the west. Even so that might not be enough to get Russian troops off Ukrainian soil, particularly the Crimean peninsula.
One suggested solution to stop the fighting is that Ukraine concede some territory as a way to bring about peace. The assumption is that would be a problem for Ukraine but would gaining some territory actually be in Russia's interests? It would amount to less that 1% of Russia's 17 million square kilometres. Much of it ruined and possibly uninhabitable. Ukraine may agree to it under duress but relations between the countries would be ruined and what remains of Russia's brother country would be permanently facing westwards in a state of understandable resentment. The anger at Russia from much of the western world be it commercial, cultural, political would not suddenly disappear. Surely Russia's long term interest is better served by withdrawing its forces, agreeing to a political solution for Crimea and hoping for a gradual repairing of its relations with its western neighbours.
It's hard to see how that could be in Putin's interests though. Indeed it is hard to see how he could survive it. But the message to the Russian elite should be clear. The longer the war goes on the more damage Russia is doing to itself. The pain suffered by the west is nothing in comparison. If you want to make Russia great again you need to withdraw your troops, get sanctions removed and start treating your neighbours with respect. That is at least how I feel it ought to be but I can't shake off a certain doubt that in some influential European capitals the necessary resolve may still be lacking.
The train drivers' union Aslef has rejected the latest 4.2% pay deal from ScotRail. The union's national executive said it would ballot for industrial action unless ScotRail offered further talks. Many drivers have been refusing to work overtime or on rest days during the pay dispute. The driver shortage has led to the now-nationalised train operator cutting a third of services under a temporary timetable.
Transport Scotland said it was disappointed that Aslef had rejected a deal which it described as "both fair and affordable".
Scotland's Transport Minister Jenny Gilruth had said earlier this week she was hopeful the 4.2% pay offer would resolve the dispute. However, it was turned down by a meeting of Aslef's national executive committee on Wednesday.
Scottish organiser Kevin Lindsay said: "Aslef wants to negotiate a fair deal for our members, we are once again calling on ScotRail to return to the talks, so we can negotiate a fair pay offer that we can put to our members."
ScotRail introduced an emergency timetable last month to give customers a degree of certainty about services after being hit by numerous cancellations.
But the timetable involved almost 700 fewer services a day, with many later trains no longer running.
The SNP won 48 seats at the last UK General Election.
What do we think about next time - higher or lower?
The train drivers' union Aslef has rejected the latest 4.2% pay deal from ScotRail. The union's national executive said it would ballot for industrial action unless ScotRail offered further talks. Many drivers have been refusing to work overtime or on rest days during the pay dispute. The driver shortage has led to the now-nationalised train operator cutting a third of services under a temporary timetable.
Transport Scotland said it was disappointed that Aslef had rejected a deal which it described as "both fair and affordable".
Scotland's Transport Minister Jenny Gilruth had said earlier this week she was hopeful the 4.2% pay offer would resolve the dispute. However, it was turned down by a meeting of Aslef's national executive committee on Wednesday.
Scottish organiser Kevin Lindsay said: "Aslef wants to negotiate a fair deal for our members, we are once again calling on ScotRail to return to the talks, so we can negotiate a fair pay offer that we can put to our members."
ScotRail introduced an emergency timetable last month to give customers a degree of certainty about services after being hit by numerous cancellations.
But the timetable involved almost 700 fewer services a day, with many later trains no longer running.
I look forward to you personally blaming Boris Johnson for the rail strikes in England, some of which involve also nationalised operators (and Railtrack of course).
On topic. “ My own view is that those opposed to the incumbent PM would be better off delaying a move until after the June 23rd by-elections “
the insincerity of Boris interview today must surely convince MPs he is not capable of digging the Tories out of this hole? He was doubling down on the fact he has done nothing wrong, ambushed by a cake at a work event and shouldn’t have got an FPN for that. He linked his critics out to get him to remainers. Does anyone think these answers are going to work.
There is always going to be something looming on the horizon which we can exhort MPs to await before making their minds up. geidt, privileges committee, another kiddy fiddler inspired by election doubtless gonna crop up shortly. There comes a time you just gotta say fuck it, let's do it, we have enough material. That time is now.
Is food still more expensive in the UK than in the US? (It was when last I visited, but that was many years ago.)
Food inflation has hit here, as well as almost everywhere else in the world, but it's my impression that food costs are still low here, compared to most other nations. (And probably much lower for the poor, thanks to what we still call "food stamps".)
(I haven't seen numbers but food costs for most items are probably a little higher in the greater Seattle area than in most of the US.)
On holiday we always notice things which are much more or less expensive. My US examples are bread ($3 for a cheap sliced loaf, $5 for the decent stuff. Compare 80p / £1.60) and biscuits (300g bourbon creams 45p at Tesco, $2.79 for own-brand oreo equivalents).
But looking at the flyer you link, it looks pretty cheap overall.
The overall cost of living is roughly similar in Seattle and London, but food is quite a bit cheaper in London.
I always remember food being cheaper in America, when I was young. Certainly in supermarkets (not NYC restaurants)
Definitely not true now, And the quality in America is seriously inferior
Eg my attempted picnic in New Orleans, which I mentioned on here, in a high end but not insanely posh supermarket. $50 for basics - nice cheese, nice bread, nice salami, etc
America is still maybe cheaper if your want to buy 30 tonnes of purple Cheddar balls or a vast amount of crappy beer, but even then I’m not sure
I too remember those heady days. Yeah the food here is expensive shite.
On the other hand, you can get no-preservatives-added carrot juice. Which I love.
You can’t get it in the UK for some reason. Comes with some acidic stabiliser.
I don’t understand WHY it is more expensive and yet worse?
America is a naturally wealthy country - enormously wealthy. It is a huge and dynamic capitalist economy. It is green and fertile and produces everything it needs and beyond, from wine to wheat, from Florida citrus fruit to New England lobster, it has vast natural resources and a wealthy populace willing to spend
Yet… the supermarket food is often shite. AND costly. What’s going on?
And this isn’t a distance and tiny towns thing. This was also true in New Orleans and Nashville on my latest visit. Big cities in fertile areas with wealthy people
it is some deeper dysfunction, which I don’t quite grasp
This was also my question. (Living over here is great in the sense it raises so many questions like this).
I think we discussed it a few weeks ago.
The reason seems to be:
1. US customers demand crap 2. It is also more efficient for “big agri” to churn out crap.
You see it even in the weirdest details. Even my 7 year old says,
“Daddy, why do the ice creams not come in many flavours, but you can choose so many different types of topping?”
Have you been to Australia?
That provides a fascinating counter example which is not Europe or America
Somehow Australia has gone the way of Europe. Not the USA. in the big Aussie cities you can go to a supermarket and get good cheese, bread, wines, meats, charcuterie, seafood, fruit, veggies, and it won’t bankrupt you as it is not seen as “posh” it is just what customers expect. OK it won’t be quite as good as Carrefour in France or M&S in the UK but it will be good
And Australia wrestles with the same distance problems as the USA (indeed much worse, as the population is so scattered)
So I think you’re right. Part of the problem is the CUSTOMERS, not the suppliers
NZ too, although NZ is a v small market and the supermarket industry is effectively a duopoly. But I think we get many of our food trends from Australia.
Australia benefited of course from high Italian/Greek migration.
But America is hardly a migration free zone.
And none of this explains why it’s so damn EXPENSIVE.
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
Interesting.
1. Would you favour the state forcing the last bank in any given locality to stay open? If not, why not? If you would, then why hasn't the Conservative Government done this? 2. Would you apply the same logic to youth clubs? The national network of those has been butchered in the last decade as well.
1 As I said I would fine banks that shut too many branches
2 Youth clubs depend on volunteers, I am for the big society
Youth clubs, like bank branches, need money. The money has to come from somewhere.
You suggest penalising banks by using the threat of fines to cajole them into keeping unprofitable, underused branches open. OK. In that case, who are you going to force to cough up the money to keep the youth clubs open, and to restore those in areas where provision has already been eradicated?
If it were as easy as falling back on volunteers to provide local services and funds out of the kindness of their hearts then why do we not stop shelling out for old age pensions and social care from tax receipts, and fund them by community whip round instead? Answer: because that's no basis on which to fund things that are (a) societally essential and (b) expensive.
Therefore, according to your logic, one of two things must be true. Firstly, youth clubs (presumably because they are used by teenagers and not pensioners) are an unnecessary luxury that society can therefore afford to allow to die out (because, unlike cutesy puppies and country houses, fourteen year olds don't have a huge, wealthy national charity to look out for them.) Or, secondly, they are necessary, in which case the people responsible for funding them - in this instance, local authorities - must be forced to cough up the money.
In short: if you're going to force banks to keep branches open for the convenience of computer illiterate octogenarians then you should also be in favour of forcing councils to keep their youth services running. Indeed, young people - especially poor or troubled young people - arguably need those services a Hell of a lot more than doddery Doris needs to be able to speak to a bank cashier once every couple of years. What's sauce for the goose, etc, etc.
I would be quite happy giving some of the funds from fined banks for branch closures to councils to help keep youth clubs open
Funding for youth services from local authorities in England and Wales declined by approximately two-thirds in the period between 2010 and 2019. That's £1bn per year you've got to find out of fining the banks.
Faced with that kind of punishment they'll probably keep the branches open, so no fines.
Next question: where does the £1bn come from instead?
And my question is: are youth services, and specifically youth clubs, statutory spending, like social care, education and libraries are? If not, then forget it, I presume?
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
Interesting.
1. Would you favour the state forcing the last bank in any given locality to stay open? If not, why not? If you would, then why hasn't the Conservative Government done this? 2. Would you apply the same logic to youth clubs? The national network of those has been butchered in the last decade as well.
The second though is not necessarily down to funding. I used to volunteer at a youth club for example and would do so again but now its "we dont believe you arent a pervert so prove it first" to which my responses is fuck off then I will go do something else. A DBS check wouldn't find anything on me as had a couple for places I have worked....but the clue is there....places I worked and was paid to be.....not going to bother for somewhere I am doing a favour
On topic. “ My own view is that those opposed to the incumbent PM would be better off delaying a move until after the June 23rd by-elections “
the insincerity of Boris interview today must surely convince MPs he is not capable of digging the Tories out of this hole? He was doubling down on the fact he has done nothing wrong, ambushed by a cake at a work event and shouldn’t have got an FPN for that. He linked his critics out to get him to remainers. Does anyone think these answers are going to work?
The momentum is for next week and time to get on with it
Also the 28 dissidents were made up of 13 leavers and 15 remainers and from all parts of the party
Two more critics today just adding to the direction of travel and we haven't had the weekend papers yet
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
Interesting.
1. Would you favour the state forcing the last bank in any given locality to stay open? If not, why not? If you would, then why hasn't the Conservative Government done this? 2. Would you apply the same logic to youth clubs? The national network of those has been butchered in the last decade as well.
1 As I said I would fine banks that shut too many branches
2 Youth clubs depend on volunteers, I am for the big society
Youth clubs, like bank branches, need money. The money has to come from somewhere.
You suggest penalising banks by using the threat of fines to cajole them into keeping unprofitable, underused branches open. OK. In that case, who are you going to force to cough up the money to keep the youth clubs open, and to restore those in areas where provision has already been eradicated?
If it were as easy as falling back on volunteers to provide local services and funds out of the kindness of their hearts then why do we not stop shelling out for old age pensions and social care from tax receipts, and fund them by community whip round instead? Answer: because that's no basis on which to fund things that are (a) societally essential and (b) expensive.
Therefore, according to your logic, one of two things must be true. Firstly, youth clubs (presumably because they are used by teenagers and not pensioners) are an unnecessary luxury that society can therefore afford to allow to die out (because, unlike cutesy puppies and country houses, fourteen year olds don't have a huge, wealthy national charity to look out for them.) Or, secondly, they are necessary, in which case the people responsible for funding them - in this instance, local authorities - must be forced to cough up the money.
In short: if you're going to force banks to keep branches open for the convenience of computer illiterate octogenarians then you should also be in favour of forcing councils to keep their youth services running. Indeed, young people - especially poor or troubled young people - arguably need those services a Hell of a lot more than doddery Doris needs to be able to speak to a bank cashier once every couple of years. What's sauce for the goose, etc, etc.
I would be quite happy giving some of the funds from fined banks for branch closures to councils to help keep youth clubs open
Funding for youth services from local authorities in England and Wales declined by approximately two-thirds in the period between 2010 and 2019. That's £1bn per year you've got to find out of fining the banks.
Faced with that kind of punishment they'll probably keep the branches open, so no fines.
Next question: where does the £1bn come from instead?
And my question is: are youth services, and specifically youth clubs, statutory spending, like social care, education and libraries are? If not, then forget it, I presume?
Youth clubs should have nothing to do with governement spending either nationally or locally. When I was a kid and when I volunteered to work at one it was totally a local effort funded by the local community. It was there kids and there community so that seems fitting
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
You espouse socialism.
No traditional Conservativism ie respect for tradition and the local community. I am not proposing nationalising all the banks permanently which a socialist would do
Traditional Conservatism is all about letting businesses operate without needless interference from the state.
No, that is traditional classical liberalism, hence you now vote LD not Tory
Liberalism is not rooted in economics. It's rooted in opposition to absolute rule and slavery.
TSE seems to be thinking of late 20th century Toryism.
Classical liberalism is rooted in free market economics, Thatcher was in some ways more a Gladstone Liberal than Disraeli Tory. Boris more in the Disraeli mould
Are you claiming thatcher wasn't a tory now? Wow
Not wishing to agree with @HYUFD, but in many ways she was a traditional Gladstonian liberal of Methodist origins.
Is food still more expensive in the UK than in the US? (It was when last I visited, but that was many years ago.)
Food inflation has hit here, as well as almost everywhere else in the world, but it's my impression that food costs are still low here, compared to most other nations. (And probably much lower for the poor, thanks to what we still call "food stamps".)
(I haven't seen numbers but food costs for most items are probably a little higher in the greater Seattle area than in most of the US.)
On holiday we always notice things which are much more or less expensive. My US examples are bread ($3 for a cheap sliced loaf, $5 for the decent stuff. Compare 80p / £1.60) and biscuits (300g bourbon creams 45p at Tesco, $2.79 for own-brand oreo equivalents).
But looking at the flyer you link, it looks pretty cheap overall.
The overall cost of living is roughly similar in Seattle and London, but food is quite a bit cheaper in London.
I always remember food being cheaper in America, when I was young. Certainly in supermarkets (not NYC restaurants)
Definitely not true now, And the quality in America is seriously inferior
Eg my attempted picnic in New Orleans, which I mentioned on here, in a high end but not insanely posh supermarket. $50 for basics - nice cheese, nice bread, nice salami, etc
America is still maybe cheaper if your want to buy 30 tonnes of purple Cheddar balls or a vast amount of crappy beer, but even then I’m not sure
I too remember those heady days. Yeah the food here is expensive shite.
On the other hand, you can get no-preservatives-added carrot juice. Which I love.
You can’t get it in the UK for some reason. Comes with some acidic stabiliser.
I don’t understand WHY it is more expensive and yet worse?
America is a naturally wealthy country - enormously wealthy. It is a huge and dynamic capitalist economy. It is green and fertile and produces everything it needs and beyond, from wine to wheat, from Florida citrus fruit to New England lobster, it has vast natural resources and a wealthy populace willing to spend
Yet… the supermarket food is often shite. AND costly. What’s going on?
And this isn’t a distance and tiny towns thing. This was also true in New Orleans and Nashville on my latest visit. Big cities in fertile areas with wealthy people
it is some deeper dysfunction, which I don’t quite grasp
This was also my question. (Living over here is great in the sense it raises so many questions like this).
I think we discussed it a few weeks ago.
The reason seems to be:
1. US customers demand crap 2. It is also more efficient for “big agri” to churn out crap.
You see it even in the weirdest details. Even my 7 year old says,
“Daddy, why do the ice creams not come in many flavours, but you can choose so many different types of topping?”
Have you been to Australia?
That provides a fascinating counter example which is not Europe or America
Somehow Australia has gone the way of Europe. Not the USA. in the big Aussie cities you can go to a supermarket and get good cheese, bread, wines, meats, charcuterie, seafood, fruit, veggies, and it won’t bankrupt you as it is not seen as “posh” it is just what customers expect. OK it won’t be quite as good as Carrefour in France or M&S in the UK but it will be good
And Australia wrestles with the same distance problems as the USA (indeed much worse, as the population is so scattered)
So I think you’re right. Part of the problem is the CUSTOMERS, not the suppliers
NZ too, although NZ is a v small market and the supermarket industry is effectively a duopoly. But I think we get many of our food trends from Australia.
Australia benefited of course from high Italian/Greek migration.
But America is hardly a migration free zone.
And none of this explains why it’s so damn EXPENSIVE.
It’s a puzzler.
Oz also benefited from major immigration from Vietnam, Thailand, Korea, HK, Malaysia
If you want to speedily improve your food culture, import people from those places, because they have maybe the best food in the world, and they also know how to do it cheaply
This still doesn’t explain why mediocre American supermarket food and bev is actually quite pricey
And here’s another thing. American wine is expensive in America. WTF is that about?
You can go into a supermarket in, say, New Orleans and decent wine from Chile, South Africa or Argentine will be very competitively priced against wine from California or Oregon or wherever, if not actually much cheaper
I’m used to good American wine being expensive in the UK, but in the USA?
The train drivers' union Aslef has rejected the latest 4.2% pay deal from ScotRail. The union's national executive said it would ballot for industrial action unless ScotRail offered further talks. Many drivers have been refusing to work overtime or on rest days during the pay dispute. The driver shortage has led to the now-nationalised train operator cutting a third of services under a temporary timetable.
Transport Scotland said it was disappointed that Aslef had rejected a deal which it described as "both fair and affordable".
Scotland's Transport Minister Jenny Gilruth had said earlier this week she was hopeful the 4.2% pay offer would resolve the dispute. However, it was turned down by a meeting of Aslef's national executive committee on Wednesday.
Scottish organiser Kevin Lindsay said: "Aslef wants to negotiate a fair deal for our members, we are once again calling on ScotRail to return to the talks, so we can negotiate a fair pay offer that we can put to our members."
ScotRail introduced an emergency timetable last month to give customers a degree of certainty about services after being hit by numerous cancellations.
But the timetable involved almost 700 fewer services a day, with many later trains no longer running.
I look forward to you personally blaming Boris Johnson for the rail strikes in England, some of which involve also nationalised operators (and Railtrack of course).
I hope the conservative party whoever leads them resists the RMT
Is food still more expensive in the UK than in the US? (It was when last I visited, but that was many years ago.)
Food inflation has hit here, as well as almost everywhere else in the world, but it's my impression that food costs are still low here, compared to most other nations. (And probably much lower for the poor, thanks to what we still call "food stamps".)
(I haven't seen numbers but food costs for most items are probably a little higher in the greater Seattle area than in most of the US.)
On holiday we always notice things which are much more or less expensive. My US examples are bread ($3 for a cheap sliced loaf, $5 for the decent stuff. Compare 80p / £1.60) and biscuits (300g bourbon creams 45p at Tesco, $2.79 for own-brand oreo equivalents).
But looking at the flyer you link, it looks pretty cheap overall.
The overall cost of living is roughly similar in Seattle and London, but food is quite a bit cheaper in London.
I always remember food being cheaper in America, when I was young. Certainly in supermarkets (not NYC restaurants)
Definitely not true now, And the quality in America is seriously inferior
Eg my attempted picnic in New Orleans, which I mentioned on here, in a high end but not insanely posh supermarket. $50 for basics - nice cheese, nice bread, nice salami, etc
America is still maybe cheaper if your want to buy 30 tonnes of purple Cheddar balls or a vast amount of crappy beer, but even then I’m not sure
I too remember those heady days. Yeah the food here is expensive shite.
On the other hand, you can get no-preservatives-added carrot juice. Which I love.
You can’t get it in the UK for some reason. Comes with some acidic stabiliser.
I don’t understand WHY it is more expensive and yet worse?
America is a naturally wealthy country - enormously wealthy. It is a huge and dynamic capitalist economy. It is green and fertile and produces everything it needs and beyond, from wine to wheat, from Florida citrus fruit to New England lobster, it has vast natural resources and a wealthy populace willing to spend
Yet… the supermarket food is often shite. AND costly. What’s going on?
And this isn’t a distance and tiny towns thing. This was also true in New Orleans and Nashville on my latest visit. Big cities in fertile areas with wealthy people
it is some deeper dysfunction, which I don’t quite grasp
Well, you can get exceptional supermarket food in the US. But you will pay through the absolute nose for it. Erewhon - here in Los Angeles - is craptacularly expensive, but they have outstanding bread, salami, cheese etc.
Ralph's or Von's, which are not inexpensive general supermarkets, are both worse than Tesco's and more expensive.
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
Interesting.
1. Would you favour the state forcing the last bank in any given locality to stay open? If not, why not? If you would, then why hasn't the Conservative Government done this? 2. Would you apply the same logic to youth clubs? The national network of those has been butchered in the last decade as well.
The second though is not necessarily down to funding. I used to volunteer at a youth club for example and would do so again but now its "we dont believe you arent a pervert so prove it first" to which my responses is fuck off then I will go do something else. A DBS check wouldn't find anything on me as had a couple for places I have worked....but the clue is there....places I worked and was paid to be.....not going to bother for somewhere I am doing a favour
OTOH Dunblane.
Was the guy in dunblane in anyway for his crime going to come under dbs vetting? No he wasn't. He didnt have reason to be at the school for a start so no dbs there. He was a holder of a firearms license however so was some vetting though don't know if it was DBS....wow it failed to catch him....what a surprise.
I suspect for every single person put off because of vetting they have probably lost 20 people who might have actually bothered to volunteer....indeed a lot of clubs shut down youth membership because people went fuck off to vetting
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
Interesting.
1. Would you favour the state forcing the last bank in any given locality to stay open? If not, why not? If you would, then why hasn't the Conservative Government done this? 2. Would you apply the same logic to youth clubs? The national network of those has been butchered in the last decade as well.
1 As I said I would fine banks that shut too many branches
2 Youth clubs depend on volunteers, I am for the big society
Youth clubs, like bank branches, need money. The money has to come from somewhere.
You suggest penalising banks by using the threat of fines to cajole them into keeping unprofitable, underused branches open. OK. In that case, who are you going to force to cough up the money to keep the youth clubs open, and to restore those in areas where provision has already been eradicated?
If it were as easy as falling back on volunteers to provide local services and funds out of the kindness of their hearts then why do we not stop shelling out for old age pensions and social care from tax receipts, and fund them by community whip round instead? Answer: because that's no basis on which to fund things that are (a) societally essential and (b) expensive.
Therefore, according to your logic, one of two things must be true. Firstly, youth clubs (presumably because they are used by teenagers and not pensioners) are an unnecessary luxury that society can therefore afford to allow to die out (because, unlike cutesy puppies and country houses, fourteen year olds don't have a huge, wealthy national charity to look out for them.) Or, secondly, they are necessary, in which case the people responsible for funding them - in this instance, local authorities - must be forced to cough up the money.
In short: if you're going to force banks to keep branches open for the convenience of computer illiterate octogenarians then you should also be in favour of forcing councils to keep their youth services running. Indeed, young people - especially poor or troubled young people - arguably need those services a Hell of a lot more than doddery Doris needs to be able to speak to a bank cashier once every couple of years. What's sauce for the goose, etc, etc.
I would be quite happy giving some of the funds from fined banks for branch closures to councils to help keep youth clubs open
Funding for youth services from local authorities in England and Wales declined by approximately two-thirds in the period between 2010 and 2019. That's £1bn per year you've got to find out of fining the banks.
Faced with that kind of punishment they'll probably keep the branches open, so no fines.
Next question: where does the £1bn come from instead?
And my question is: are youth services, and specifically youth clubs, statutory spending, like social care, education and libraries are? If not, then forget it, I presume?
I don't believe so, which is how come some councils have completely axed them already.
The broader point was, of course, to question why banks ought to be forced to provide branches for the occasional benefit of (predominantly elderly) technophobes, whereas youth services in their entirety are to be regarded as an expendable frippery. If the state can't be arsed to provide important services for young people then it certainly shouldn't be attempting to force private enterprises into retaining loss making, surplus facilities so that pensioners can visit them to ask questions about their bills once every couple of years.
As was briefly discussed, I don't remember a rise in inflation automatically meaning the government must do something about it by shovelling money at the voters. It might be good politics, but there's now an assumption it's the voters' right not to be inconvenienced
When were the holiday companies taken into public ownership? They used to be private companies as were the airlines. Now the government is responsible for hiring and firing.
I went to Denmark a few weeks ago, and Manchester airport was chaos. What passes for management then said it wouldn't be solved in a few weeks, it would take months. It obviously would.
Is it nostalgia on my part? When adults were adults, and six-year-olds were treated as children. What bigots we once were. No wonder everyone has mental health issues. So many rights and no one ever grows up.
Great post, its sad how people expect the Government to resolve everything for them There have been calls on here today for the Government to "sort out"the issues at the airports this week which have been casued by the travel companies and airlines. I wonder what they think the government can do.
What is Government for if not to solve big, structural problems?
I don't expect the Government to resolve the wiring problem in my hall. I don't expect the Government to resolve the problem I'm having making a graph look pretty in Excel. I don't expect the Government to resolve the problem with my second cousin not paying her debt to my late mother.
But I do expect the Government to steer the economy, to the extent that it can, which includes acting to prevent wide-scale failures in a particular sector.
So what could it have done to solve this weeks problems??
Surely Easy Jet and TUI should have not sold so many seats when they did not have the facility to carry everyone.
Its like my firm promising to do the work of 100 electricians when it only has access to 50.
I'm not an expert in the topic, so I don't know that I have solutions. But governments can generally do short-term things (e.g., dealing with the delays in vetting procedures for staff), including through "soft power" (making very clear to the relevant companies that they need to do better), and they can do long-term things through legislation (the Conservatives have proposed various legislative checks on unions and on protesters on the grounds that we need to protect transport infrastructure, so what about proposing requirements on the companies concerned to have better contingencies) or other means, like international agreements (building a good relationship with the EU built on cooperation to reduce red tape).
Mrs May, who has a lot of constituents who work at LHR pointed out to Shapps that the industry would need several months notice to ramp up again - you can’t turn it on and turn it off like a tap. The airports - and some of the airlines in particular - treated their employees poorly and as they sowed so are they reaping.
This is not a UK specific problem.
The Chief Executive of [Dublin] airport operator daa has said that its predictions on the rate of recovery post-pandemic were "wildly wrong".
Appearing before the Oireachtas Committee on Transport and Communications, Dalton Philips said that the rate of passenger increases from March of this year "took off" at a level that "we were not expecting".
Mr Philips told Committee Chair Kieran O'Donnell that the airport let too many people go during the height of the pandemic.
% Cancelled El Al 7% Austrian 6% KLM 5% Qantas 5% IcelandAir 3% EasyJet 2%
Why did you choose those statistics? The six airports with the biggest delays out of well over fifty were ones in the UK. Your post is completely skewing the facts. Do you always do this?.
Is food still more expensive in the UK than in the US? (It was when last I visited, but that was many years ago.)
Food inflation has hit here, as well as almost everywhere else in the world, but it's my impression that food costs are still low here, compared to most other nations. (And probably much lower for the poor, thanks to what we still call "food stamps".)
(I haven't seen numbers but food costs for most items are probably a little higher in the greater Seattle area than in most of the US.)
On holiday we always notice things which are much more or less expensive. My US examples are bread ($3 for a cheap sliced loaf, $5 for the decent stuff. Compare 80p / £1.60) and biscuits (300g bourbon creams 45p at Tesco, $2.79 for own-brand oreo equivalents).
But looking at the flyer you link, it looks pretty cheap overall.
The overall cost of living is roughly similar in Seattle and London, but food is quite a bit cheaper in London.
I always remember food being cheaper in America, when I was young. Certainly in supermarkets (not NYC restaurants)
Definitely not true now, And the quality in America is seriously inferior
Eg my attempted picnic in New Orleans, which I mentioned on here, in a high end but not insanely posh supermarket. $50 for basics - nice cheese, nice bread, nice salami, etc
America is still maybe cheaper if your want to buy 30 tonnes of purple Cheddar balls or a vast amount of crappy beer, but even then I’m not sure
I too remember those heady days. Yeah the food here is expensive shite.
On the other hand, you can get no-preservatives-added carrot juice. Which I love.
You can’t get it in the UK for some reason. Comes with some acidic stabiliser.
I don’t understand WHY it is more expensive and yet worse?
America is a naturally wealthy country - enormously wealthy. It is a huge and dynamic capitalist economy. It is green and fertile and produces everything it needs and beyond, from wine to wheat, from Florida citrus fruit to New England lobster, it has vast natural resources and a wealthy populace willing to spend
Yet… the supermarket food is often shite. AND costly. What’s going on?
And this isn’t a distance and tiny towns thing. This was also true in New Orleans and Nashville on my latest visit. Big cities in fertile areas with wealthy people
it is some deeper dysfunction, which I don’t quite grasp
This was also my question. (Living over here is great in the sense it raises so many questions like this).
I think we discussed it a few weeks ago.
The reason seems to be:
1. US customers demand crap 2. It is also more efficient for “big agri” to churn out crap.
You see it even in the weirdest details. Even my 7 year old says,
“Daddy, why do the ice creams not come in many flavours, but you can choose so many different types of topping?”
Have you been to Australia?
That provides a fascinating counter example which is not Europe or America
Somehow Australia has gone the way of Europe. Not the USA. in the big Aussie cities you can go to a supermarket and get good cheese, bread, wines, meats, charcuterie, seafood, fruit, veggies, and it won’t bankrupt you as it is not seen as “posh” it is just what customers expect. OK it won’t be quite as good as Carrefour in France or M&S in the UK but it will be good
And Australia wrestles with the same distance problems as the USA (indeed much worse, as the population is so scattered)
So I think you’re right. Part of the problem is the CUSTOMERS, not the suppliers
NZ too, although NZ is a v small market and the supermarket industry is effectively a duopoly. But I think we get many of our food trends from Australia.
Australia benefited of course from high Italian/Greek migration.
But America is hardly a migration free zone.
And none of this explains why it’s so damn EXPENSIVE.
It’s a puzzler.
Maybe businesses try to rip off customers in the United States, in the sense of charging too much for poor products. It could be that they rely on the fact that Americans never like to complain about price because they fear it makes them sound like someone with money problems which is the worst possible thing to admit to in the United States. Everyone has to pretend to have loads of money. Therefore the prices stay high, with everyone paying too much for rubbish products, but refusing to complain about them.
The train drivers' union Aslef has rejected the latest 4.2% pay deal from ScotRail. The union's national executive said it would ballot for industrial action unless ScotRail offered further talks. Many drivers have been refusing to work overtime or on rest days during the pay dispute. The driver shortage has led to the now-nationalised train operator cutting a third of services under a temporary timetable.
Transport Scotland said it was disappointed that Aslef had rejected a deal which it described as "both fair and affordable".
Scotland's Transport Minister Jenny Gilruth had said earlier this week she was hopeful the 4.2% pay offer would resolve the dispute. However, it was turned down by a meeting of Aslef's national executive committee on Wednesday.
Scottish organiser Kevin Lindsay said: "Aslef wants to negotiate a fair deal for our members, we are once again calling on ScotRail to return to the talks, so we can negotiate a fair pay offer that we can put to our members."
ScotRail introduced an emergency timetable last month to give customers a degree of certainty about services after being hit by numerous cancellations.
But the timetable involved almost 700 fewer services a day, with many later trains no longer running.
I look forward to you personally blaming Boris Johnson for the rail strikes in England, some of which involve also nationalised operators (and Railtrack of course).
I hope the conservative party whoever leads them resists the RMT
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
Interesting.
1. Would you favour the state forcing the last bank in any given locality to stay open? If not, why not? If you would, then why hasn't the Conservative Government done this? 2. Would you apply the same logic to youth clubs? The national network of those has been butchered in the last decade as well.
1 As I said I would fine banks that shut too many branches
2 Youth clubs depend on volunteers, I am for the big society
Youth clubs, like bank branches, need money. The money has to come from somewhere.
You suggest penalising banks by using the threat of fines to cajole them into keeping unprofitable, underused branches open. OK. In that case, who are you going to force to cough up the money to keep the youth clubs open, and to restore those in areas where provision has already been eradicated?
If it were as easy as falling back on volunteers to provide local services and funds out of the kindness of their hearts then why do we not stop shelling out for old age pensions and social care from tax receipts, and fund them by community whip round instead? Answer: because that's no basis on which to fund things that are (a) societally essential and (b) expensive.
Therefore, according to your logic, one of two things must be true. Firstly, youth clubs (presumably because they are used by teenagers and not pensioners) are an unnecessary luxury that society can therefore afford to allow to die out (because, unlike cutesy puppies and country houses, fourteen year olds don't have a huge, wealthy national charity to look out for them.) Or, secondly, they are necessary, in which case the people responsible for funding them - in this instance, local authorities - must be forced to cough up the money.
In short: if you're going to force banks to keep branches open for the convenience of computer illiterate octogenarians then you should also be in favour of forcing councils to keep their youth services running. Indeed, young people - especially poor or troubled young people - arguably need those services a Hell of a lot more than doddery Doris needs to be able to speak to a bank cashier once every couple of years. What's sauce for the goose, etc, etc.
I would be quite happy giving some of the funds from fined banks for branch closures to councils to help keep youth clubs open
Funding for youth services from local authorities in England and Wales declined by approximately two-thirds in the period between 2010 and 2019. That's £1bn per year you've got to find out of fining the banks.
Faced with that kind of punishment they'll probably keep the branches open, so no fines.
Next question: where does the £1bn come from instead?
And my question is: are youth services, and specifically youth clubs, statutory spending, like social care, education and libraries are? If not, then forget it, I presume?
Youth clubs should have nothing to do with governement spending either nationally or locally. When I was a kid and when I volunteered to work at one it was totally a local effort funded by the local community. It was there kids and there community so that seems fitting
That's a legitimate view. The original issue was - assuming that the opposite is the case - whether it is the correct priority to spend public money on them, given the cuts in LG spending and the increasing statutory responsibilities (over the last decade at least) which mean an increasing focus on primary = statutory respoinsibilities. But, as I say, that makes an assumption you don't accept.
Is food still more expensive in the UK than in the US? (It was when last I visited, but that was many years ago.)
Food inflation has hit here, as well as almost everywhere else in the world, but it's my impression that food costs are still low here, compared to most other nations. (And probably much lower for the poor, thanks to what we still call "food stamps".)
(I haven't seen numbers but food costs for most items are probably a little higher in the greater Seattle area than in most of the US.)
On holiday we always notice things which are much more or less expensive. My US examples are bread ($3 for a cheap sliced loaf, $5 for the decent stuff. Compare 80p / £1.60) and biscuits (300g bourbon creams 45p at Tesco, $2.79 for own-brand oreo equivalents).
But looking at the flyer you link, it looks pretty cheap overall.
The overall cost of living is roughly similar in Seattle and London, but food is quite a bit cheaper in London.
I always remember food being cheaper in America, when I was young. Certainly in supermarkets (not NYC restaurants)
Definitely not true now, And the quality in America is seriously inferior
Eg my attempted picnic in New Orleans, which I mentioned on here, in a high end but not insanely posh supermarket. $50 for basics - nice cheese, nice bread, nice salami, etc
America is still maybe cheaper if your want to buy 30 tonnes of purple Cheddar balls or a vast amount of crappy beer, but even then I’m not sure
I too remember those heady days. Yeah the food here is expensive shite.
On the other hand, you can get no-preservatives-added carrot juice. Which I love.
You can’t get it in the UK for some reason. Comes with some acidic stabiliser.
I don’t understand WHY it is more expensive and yet worse?
America is a naturally wealthy country - enormously wealthy. It is a huge and dynamic capitalist economy. It is green and fertile and produces everything it needs and beyond, from wine to wheat, from Florida citrus fruit to New England lobster, it has vast natural resources and a wealthy populace willing to spend
Yet… the supermarket food is often shite. AND costly. What’s going on?
And this isn’t a distance and tiny towns thing. This was also true in New Orleans and Nashville on my latest visit. Big cities in fertile areas with wealthy people
it is some deeper dysfunction, which I don’t quite grasp
Well, you can get exceptional supermarket food in the US. But you will pay through the absolute nose for it. Erewhon - here in Los Angeles - is craptacularly expensive, but they have outstanding bread, salami, cheese etc.
Ralph's or Von's, which are not inexpensive general supermarkets, are both worse than Tesco's and more expensive.
America is a nation built for the welfare and happiness of the wealthiest 1%. Discuss
Applicant said: "First thing that jumped off the page for me on that was the 16.9floz/500ml Coke bottles - $12 for 4 - this is supposed to be a discount?"
But there's a reason Nicola Sturgeon is still all over SNP election leaflets, but Boris Johnson was missing from recent Tory election leaflets. One of them is an asset to their party's electoral prospects and the other a millstone.
Labour's rise in Scotland is very interesting and could yet have big implications come the General Election.
The weird dross running the SNP just now , colluding with the odious greens, are certainly doing their best to revive Labour. Given the Tories are hated and the Lib Dem's are a joke it is the only place you can go if sick of Sturgeon and her ragtag bunch of losers.
That was an excellent little survey of all the parties who [checks notes] beat Alba in the council elections.
And your point is , Alba is a few months old and nowhere to be seen. You think any of those London sockpuppets will get anywhere. Even with shit leadership the SNP will remain the largest party by a country mile. The regional office parties are shit and going nowhere
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
You espouse socialism.
No traditional Conservativism ie respect for tradition and the local community. I am not proposing nationalising all the banks permanently which a socialist would do
Traditional Conservatism is all about letting businesses operate without needless interference from the state.
No, that is traditional classical liberalism, hence you now vote LD not Tory
I think you should consider yourself put in your place now @TheScreamingEagles
The funny thing is that if Boris Johnson is replaced in the next few weeks and the new leader goes for my kind of policies then HYUFD will reboot and declare those policies true Conservatism.
That is a certainty
The exact same can be said of @NickPalmer, who has managed to be a sworn Blairite and a faithful Corbynite
PB has its party loyalists, who always salute the flag. There is possibly something noble in it
Parties reboot, in the space of a decade we went from the Tory leadership still supporting section 28 and opposing same sex adoption to introducing same sex marriage.
Of course, the Tories don't have any principles. They would just get in the way.
The train drivers' union Aslef has rejected the latest 4.2% pay deal from ScotRail. The union's national executive said it would ballot for industrial action unless ScotRail offered further talks. Many drivers have been refusing to work overtime or on rest days during the pay dispute. The driver shortage has led to the now-nationalised train operator cutting a third of services under a temporary timetable.
Transport Scotland said it was disappointed that Aslef had rejected a deal which it described as "both fair and affordable".
Scotland's Transport Minister Jenny Gilruth had said earlier this week she was hopeful the 4.2% pay offer would resolve the dispute. However, it was turned down by a meeting of Aslef's national executive committee on Wednesday.
Scottish organiser Kevin Lindsay said: "Aslef wants to negotiate a fair deal for our members, we are once again calling on ScotRail to return to the talks, so we can negotiate a fair pay offer that we can put to our members."
ScotRail introduced an emergency timetable last month to give customers a degree of certainty about services after being hit by numerous cancellations.
But the timetable involved almost 700 fewer services a day, with many later trains no longer running.
I look forward to you personally blaming Boris Johnson for the rail strikes in England, some of which involve also nationalised operators (and Railtrack of course).
I hope the conservative party whoever leads them resists the RMT
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
Interesting.
1. Would you favour the state forcing the last bank in any given locality to stay open? If not, why not? If you would, then why hasn't the Conservative Government done this? 2. Would you apply the same logic to youth clubs? The national network of those has been butchered in the last decade as well.
1 As I said I would fine banks that shut too many branches
2 Youth clubs depend on volunteers, I am for the big society
Youth clubs, like bank branches, need money. The money has to come from somewhere.
You suggest penalising banks by using the threat of fines to cajole them into keeping unprofitable, underused branches open. OK. In that case, who are you going to force to cough up the money to keep the youth clubs open, and to restore those in areas where provision has already been eradicated?
If it were as easy as falling back on volunteers to provide local services and funds out of the kindness of their hearts then why do we not stop shelling out for old age pensions and social care from tax receipts, and fund them by community whip round instead? Answer: because that's no basis on which to fund things that are (a) societally essential and (b) expensive.
Therefore, according to your logic, one of two things must be true. Firstly, youth clubs (presumably because they are used by teenagers and not pensioners) are an unnecessary luxury that society can therefore afford to allow to die out (because, unlike cutesy puppies and country houses, fourteen year olds don't have a huge, wealthy national charity to look out for them.) Or, secondly, they are necessary, in which case the people responsible for funding them - in this instance, local authorities - must be forced to cough up the money.
In short: if you're going to force banks to keep branches open for the convenience of computer illiterate octogenarians then you should also be in favour of forcing councils to keep their youth services running. Indeed, young people - especially poor or troubled young people - arguably need those services a Hell of a lot more than doddery Doris needs to be able to speak to a bank cashier once every couple of years. What's sauce for the goose, etc, etc.
I would be quite happy giving some of the funds from fined banks for branch closures to councils to help keep youth clubs open
Funding for youth services from local authorities in England and Wales declined by approximately two-thirds in the period between 2010 and 2019. That's £1bn per year you've got to find out of fining the banks.
Faced with that kind of punishment they'll probably keep the branches open, so no fines.
Next question: where does the £1bn come from instead?
And my question is: are youth services, and specifically youth clubs, statutory spending, like social care, education and libraries are? If not, then forget it, I presume?
Youth clubs should have nothing to do with governement spending either nationally or locally. When I was a kid and when I volunteered to work at one it was totally a local effort funded by the local community. It was there kids and there community so that seems fitting
That's a legitimate view. The original issue was - assuming that the opposite is the case - whether it is the correct priority to spend public money on them, given the cuts in LG spending and the increasing statutory responsibilities (over the last decade at least) which mean an increasing focus on primary = statutory respoinsibilities. But, as I say, that makes an assumption you don't accept.
I have long argued the country should be sitting down and having a what is essential conversation. Ok lets fund that fully. Then if money is left over say ok what is nice to have and what from it do we prioritise lets spend the remainder there
If you want personal banking, then you can always pay for it. People vote with their feet, for the cheaper option.
I've seen some stats, and 98% of in branch visits can be done over the phone or online.
Given how pre pandemic branch footfall has dropped, a branch may only have a dozen queries a week can be done in branch, that's uneconomical.
Post Offices are picking up the slack.
Plenty of elderly people are not online, especially those on lower incomes and after you have spent an age getting through bank phone security you waste double the time you could have spent had you actually spoken to someone in person at the bank
Tough, running branches costs money, if it is uneconomical then the banks will have to do what is best for them not for a handful of customers.
It is perfectly economical to have 1 bank branch in all reasonably sized towns. Epping only has 1 bank left and they are cutting them in Loughton too.
As a Conservative not a free market Libertarian like you the banks slashing their number of branches is something I firmly oppose
Interesting.
1. Would you favour the state forcing the last bank in any given locality to stay open? If not, why not? If you would, then why hasn't the Conservative Government done this? 2. Would you apply the same logic to youth clubs? The national network of those has been butchered in the last decade as well.
The second though is not necessarily down to funding. I used to volunteer at a youth club for example and would do so again but now its "we dont believe you arent a pervert so prove it first" to which my responses is fuck off then I will go do something else. A DBS check wouldn't find anything on me as had a couple for places I have worked....but the clue is there....places I worked and was paid to be.....not going to bother for somewhere I am doing a favour
OTOH Dunblane.
Was the guy in dunblane in anyway for his crime going to come under dbs vetting? No he wasn't. He didnt have reason to be at the school for a start so no dbs there. He was a holder of a firearms license however so was some vetting though don't know if it was DBS....wow it failed to catch him....what a surprise.
I suspect for every single person put off because of vetting they have probably lost 20 people who might have actually bothered to volunteer....indeed a lot of clubs shut down youth membership because people went fuck off to vetting
I thought CRB (precursor to DBS) was associated with Soham, not Dunblane. I also recall the surprise at how many volunteers there were and how many needed multiple checks, as originally CRB was not portable.
Is food still more expensive in the UK than in the US? (It was when last I visited, but that was many years ago.)
Food inflation has hit here, as well as almost everywhere else in the world, but it's my impression that food costs are still low here, compared to most other nations. (And probably much lower for the poor, thanks to what we still call "food stamps".)
(I haven't seen numbers but food costs for most items are probably a little higher in the greater Seattle area than in most of the US.)
On holiday we always notice things which are much more or less expensive. My US examples are bread ($3 for a cheap sliced loaf, $5 for the decent stuff. Compare 80p / £1.60) and biscuits (300g bourbon creams 45p at Tesco, $2.79 for own-brand oreo equivalents).
But looking at the flyer you link, it looks pretty cheap overall.
The overall cost of living is roughly similar in Seattle and London, but food is quite a bit cheaper in London.
I always remember food being cheaper in America, when I was young. Certainly in supermarkets (not NYC restaurants)
Definitely not true now, And the quality in America is seriously inferior
Eg my attempted picnic in New Orleans, which I mentioned on here, in a high end but not insanely posh supermarket. $50 for basics - nice cheese, nice bread, nice salami, etc
America is still maybe cheaper if your want to buy 30 tonnes of purple Cheddar balls or a vast amount of crappy beer, but even then I’m not sure
I too remember those heady days. Yeah the food here is expensive shite.
On the other hand, you can get no-preservatives-added carrot juice. Which I love.
You can’t get it in the UK for some reason. Comes with some acidic stabiliser.
I don’t understand WHY it is more expensive and yet worse?
America is a naturally wealthy country - enormously wealthy. It is a huge and dynamic capitalist economy. It is green and fertile and produces everything it needs and beyond, from wine to wheat, from Florida citrus fruit to New England lobster, it has vast natural resources and a wealthy populace willing to spend
Yet… the supermarket food is often shite. AND costly. What’s going on?
And this isn’t a distance and tiny towns thing. This was also true in New Orleans and Nashville on my latest visit. Big cities in fertile areas with wealthy people
it is some deeper dysfunction, which I don’t quite grasp
This was also my question. (Living over here is great in the sense it raises so many questions like this).
I think we discussed it a few weeks ago.
The reason seems to be:
1. US customers demand crap 2. It is also more efficient for “big agri” to churn out crap.
You see it even in the weirdest details. Even my 7 year old says,
“Daddy, why do the ice creams not come in many flavours, but you can choose so many different types of topping?”
Have you been to Australia?
That provides a fascinating counter example which is not Europe or America
Somehow Australia has gone the way of Europe. Not the USA. in the big Aussie cities you can go to a supermarket and get good cheese, bread, wines, meats, charcuterie, seafood, fruit, veggies, and it won’t bankrupt you as it is not seen as “posh” it is just what customers expect. OK it won’t be quite as good as Carrefour in France or M&S in the UK but it will be good
And Australia wrestles with the same distance problems as the USA (indeed much worse, as the population is so scattered)
So I think you’re right. Part of the problem is the CUSTOMERS, not the suppliers
NZ too, although NZ is a v small market and the supermarket industry is effectively a duopoly. But I think we get many of our food trends from Australia.
Australia benefited of course from high Italian/Greek migration.
But America is hardly a migration free zone.
And none of this explains why it’s so damn EXPENSIVE.
It’s a puzzler.
Oz also benefited from major immigration from Vietnam, Thailand, Korea, HK, Malaysia
If you want to speedily improve your food culture, import people from those places, because they have maybe the best food in the world, and they also know how to do it cheaply
This still doesn’t explain why mediocre American supermarket food and bev is actually quite pricey
And here’s another thing. American wine is expensive in America. WTF is that about?
You can go into a supermarket in, say, New Orleans and decent wine from Chile, South Africa or Argentine will be very competitively priced against wine from California or Oregon or wherever, if not actually much cheaper
I’m used to good American wine being expensive in the UK, but in the USA?
Comments
Nevertheless, perhaps robots would be more efficient at making shit political choices, so we should leave it to them
It's also what happens when there are problems, the bank wants to see original documents ... think about some of the stories that have emerged re HMG and its way of dealing with elderly immigrants wh o have lived in the UK almosat as long as we have but have not got round to becoming UK subjects.
I don't know what our generation's problem will be (assuming you are in the 60s) though I sometimes think it will be attitudes to sex and gender. Or indeed the notion of having a permanent 9-5 job of any kind. Friend of miner was made redundant from his job about 10 years back - not his fault, major reorganization and outsourcing - and he was surprised at the hostility from some of the older [but, at that time, surely retired] relatives who blamed him for not having a job - though he remedied that situation pretty promptly, he found this feeling very disconcerting.
Jubilee display has scarecrow of the Queen sat on TOILET next to '70 years on the throne' banner
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10875339/Village-display-showing-scarecrow-Queen-sat-TOILET-set-torn-council.html?ito=social-twitter_mailonline
Why is doing your banking on a screen any different?
Note that many surviving bank branches have rows of self service screens, with one or 2 actual staff in attendance.
(off topic btw)
Computers are already way better than humans at Go and Chess. Which are allegorical forms of warfare on a board. So computers will be hugely better at waging and winning wars. For the same reason
Picture the Kremlin in 20 years. Vladimir Putin 3.1 gets his briefing from GPT7. it doesn’t lie to him, it doesn’t skim off billions in spending to go live in a yacht. All it wants to do is serve the Russian Leader, and advance the military cause, and it can absorb quintillion bytes of logistical information in a second, and autocomplete the Ukrainians’ next move to the exact millimetre
Whichever country does this first, wins. It won’t be the Russians. My bet is China
Food inflation has hit here, as well as almost everywhere else in the world, but it's my impression that food costs are still low here, compared to most other nations. (And probably much lower for the poor, thanks to what we still call "food stamps".)
Here's a weekly ad from a low-cost regional chain, if you want to make comparisons: https://www.fredmeyer.com/weeklyad
(I haven't seen numbers but food costs for most items are probably a little higher in the greater Seattle area than in most of the US.)
https://www.postoffice.co.uk/everydaybanking
A real problem givcen that POs are vanishing themselves. And related to the use of cash.
You suggest penalising banks by using the threat of fines to cajole them into keeping unprofitable, underused branches open. OK. In that case, who are you going to force to cough up the money to keep the youth clubs open, and to restore those in areas where provision has already been eradicated?
If it were as easy as falling back on volunteers to provide local services and funds out of the kindness of their hearts then why do we not stop shelling out for old age pensions and social care from tax receipts, and fund them by community whip round instead? Answer: because that's no basis on which to fund things that are (a) societally essential and (b) expensive.
Therefore, according to your logic, one of two things must be true. Firstly, youth clubs (presumably because they are used by teenagers and not pensioners) are an unnecessary luxury that society can therefore afford to allow to die out (because, unlike cutesy puppies and country houses, fourteen year olds don't have a huge, wealthy national charity to look out for them.) Or, secondly, they are necessary, in which case the people responsible for funding them - in this instance, local authorities - must be forced to cough up the money.
In short: if you're going to force banks to keep branches open for the convenience of computer illiterate octogenarians then you should also be in favour of forcing councils to keep their youth services running. Indeed, young people - especially poor or troubled young people - arguably need those services a Hell of a lot more than doddery Doris needs to be able to speak to a bank cashier once every couple of years. What's sauce for the goose, etc, etc.
Eg I am basically living in a tumbledown 18th century quasi-Persian tenement, complete with families gossiping from their balconies to each other, like in Tudor London. It makes central Palermo look organised, modern and well-maintained
And yet with an app (Wolt or Grovo) I can order any meal I like from any restaurant in central Tbilisi (they are generally great) and it arrives within 20 minutes, delivered by a nice friendly Georgian kid on a bicycle, and it is hot and tasty. They also deliver, within minutes, groceries, hardware, booze, whatever. Bolt also works phenomenally well here. You get a cab in a couple of minutes and they go anywhere and bingo
It’s simultaneously like inhabiting a sultry medieval Paris and a vision of the world 10-15 years in the future
But looking at the flyer you link, it looks pretty cheap overall.
TSE seems to be thinking of late 20th century Toryism.
Mrs P. might have seen that post and then where would I be?
More seriously, in 2000, there were almost no hand car washes in the UK, except at the top end of car detailers, and petrol stations were buying expensive capital equipment to wash cars.
15 years later, every supermarket had a bunch of hand washers in the car park.
Why did this regression occur?
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+Kingdom&country2=United+States&city1=London&city2=Seattle,+WA&tracking=getDispatchComparison
Or has it happened more generally? What has happened to global sales of automated car washing machines?
Consumer banking is not a profit centre for many of the traditional banks. I expect some to leave the sector, a few to reinvent themselves as alt-banks.
In the next few years Xi Jinping or a successor will prompt GPT 13 with the words “How do we conquer Taiwan” and the best computer in the world will spit out the answer, and it will be right
Those people are going to need to work somewhere, so it's a good thing that hand car washes are booming.
Faced with that kind of punishment they'll probably keep the branches open, so no fines.
Next question: where does the £1bn come from instead?
Definitely not true now, And the quality in America is seriously inferior
Eg my attempted picnic in New Orleans, which I mentioned on here, in a high end but not insanely posh supermarket. $50 for basics - nice cheese, nice bread, nice salami, etc
America is still maybe cheaper if your want to buy 30 tonnes of purple Cheddar balls or a vast amount of crappy beer, but even then I’m not sure
Scotland's spending review:
Union warns public sector job cuts unsustainable
Cutting 30,000 public sector jobs would be "unsustainable", a union leader has warned.
It comes after the Scottish government set out its plans at Holyrood on Tuesday to reform public services in the face of a £3.5bn funding gap. Linda Sommerville, of the Scottish Trade Unions Congress, said the review had "set alarm bells ringing".
She added that the pay bill was to be held down over the next five years by job losses across the public sector. "There are estimates of up to 30,000 job losses which is unsustainable," adding that services were already stretched.
Ms Sommerville added that there was nothing in the statement on the long-term investment needed to rebuild the economy.
She told BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland programme that the economy had been harmed not just by Covid and Brexit but also by "years of austerity before that".
Unison, Scotland's largest union which represents public service workers, said there would be "catastrophic consequences", and that public services had already been "cut to the bone".
The union's Scottish secretary, Tracey Dalling, said: "The pandemic has shown us who really are the essential workers. It's the people who've looked after our elderly relatives, cared for our sick and dying in hospitals, the workers that deliver our housing, our education and social care, among others."
The cuts were not inevitable and were "a political choice by an out-of-touch Scottish government," she said.
Yeah the food here is expensive shite.
On the other hand, you can get no-preservatives-added carrot juice.
Which I love.
You can’t get it in the UK for some reason. Comes with some acidic stabiliser.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h5mErP1E6A
The train drivers' union Aslef has rejected the latest 4.2% pay deal from ScotRail. The union's national executive said it would ballot for industrial action unless ScotRail offered further talks.
Many drivers have been refusing to work overtime or on rest days during the pay dispute.
The driver shortage has led to the now-nationalised train operator cutting a third of services under a temporary timetable.
Transport Scotland said it was disappointed that Aslef had rejected a deal which it described as "both fair and affordable".
Scotland's Transport Minister Jenny Gilruth had said earlier this week she was hopeful the 4.2% pay offer would resolve the dispute. However, it was turned down by a meeting of Aslef's national executive committee on Wednesday.
Scottish organiser Kevin Lindsay said: "Aslef wants to negotiate a fair deal for our members, we are once again calling on ScotRail to return to the talks, so we can negotiate a fair pay offer that we can put to our members."
ScotRail introduced an emergency timetable last month to give customers a degree of certainty about services after being hit by numerous cancellations.
But the timetable involved almost 700 fewer services a day, with many later trains no longer running.
America is a naturally wealthy country - enormously wealthy. It is a huge and dynamic capitalist economy. It is green and fertile and produces everything it needs and beyond, from wine to wheat, from Florida citrus fruit to New England lobster, it has vast natural resources and a wealthy populace willing to spend
Yet… the supermarket food is often shite. AND costly. What’s going on?
And this isn’t a distance and tiny towns thing. This was also true in New Orleans and Nashville on my latest visit. Big cities in fertile areas with wealthy people
it is some deeper dysfunction, which I don’t quite grasp
Must have been groundbreaking Gay Film for it’s time. Top Gun still a bit of a ground breaking Gay film today.
My maternal grandfather, a farmer who died in 1936, never drove a car and had to be persuaded to let his son, who was taking over the farm, buy a tractor.
Uncle promptly drove the tractor into a ditch which, apparently my grandfather took as proving his point!
23-29 May 2022
1,000
(This is the only Scottish survey by Ipsos since the 2019 GE, so comparison is with that GE)
SNP 44% (-1)
SLab 23% (+4%)
SCon 19% (-6%)
SLD 10% (nc)
Grn 3% (+2)
oth 2% (+1)
After 15 years in government, the SNP remain the most trusted party across a range of issues:
* 38% trust the SNP most to grow Scotland’s economy (Conservatives 18%, Labour 16%)
* 37% trust the SNP most to manage the NHS in Scotland (Labour 20%, Conservatives 13%)
* 36% trust the SNP most to manage education and schools in Scotland (Labour 19%, Conservatives 15%)
* 33% trust the SNP most to tackle the cost of living crisis (Labour 20%, Conservatives 12%).
Emily Gray, Managing Director of Ipsos in Scotland, commented:
“Boris Johnson has never received positive ratings in Scotland, but these latest Ipsos and STV News findings are a new low for the Prime Minister. Although the SNP continues to dominate voting intentions, there are tentative signs of a recovery for Scottish Labour, with continued positive ratings for Anas Sarwar, and Labour ahead of the Conservatives on Westminster voting intention. However, the scale of the challenge facing Labour is underlined by the fact that after 15 years in government the SNP remains the most trusted party across a wide range of policy areas. This includes the cost of living – which the public say is the most important issue facing Scotland at present.”
I have never used one, because it always seemed _too_ cheap and almost certainly exploitative somewhere along the way.
If the staff were being paid minimum wage it can't possibly have been economic.
If it was, why did various organisations set up apps specifically to report dodgy looking car wash businesses?
https://theclewerinitiative.org/campaigns/safe-car-wash
PB has its party loyalists, who always salute the flag. There is possibly something noble in it
(Living over here is great in the sense it raises so many questions like this).
I think we discussed it a few weeks ago.
The reason seems to be:
1. US customers demand crap
2. It is also more efficient for “big agri” to churn out crap.
You see it even in the weirdest details.
Even my 7 year old says,
“Daddy, why do the ice creams not come in many flavours, but you can choose so many different types of topping?”
What do we think about next time - higher or lower?
In some localities, including Seattle, sugary drinks have extra taxes to discourage people from buying them. This somewhat dated news article puts the tax at 1.75 cents an ounce. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/seattle-soda-tax-energy-drinks-sugary-beverages/
(I haven't bought any such drinks for many years, and so haven't paid any attention to what they cost.)
The Conservative Party has been a coalition of free market liberals and traditional conservatives since universal suffrage and the rise of Labour and the need for a centre right force to keep them out.
However traditional conservatives have longer history in the party than free market liberals, many of whose predecessors were Whigs or Liberals not Tories
the insincerity of Boris interview today must surely convince MPs he is not capable of digging the Tories out of this hole? He was doubling down on the fact he has done nothing wrong, ambushed by a cake at a work event and shouldn’t have got an FPN for that. He linked his critics out to get him to remainers. Does anyone think these answers are going to work?
That provides a fascinating counter example which is not Europe or America
Somehow Australia has gone the way of Europe. Not the USA. in the big Aussie cities you can go to a supermarket and get good cheese, bread, wines, meats, charcuterie, seafood, fruit, veggies, and it won’t bankrupt you as it is not seen as “posh” it is just what customers expect. OK it won’t be quite as good as Carrefour in France or M&S in the UK but it will be good
And Australia wrestles with the same distance problems as the USA (indeed much worse, as the population is so scattered)
So I think you’re right. Part of the problem is the CUSTOMERS, not the suppliers
One suggested solution to stop the fighting is that Ukraine concede some territory as a way to bring about peace. The assumption is that would be a problem for Ukraine but would gaining some territory actually be in Russia's interests? It would amount to less that 1% of Russia's 17 million square kilometres. Much of it ruined and possibly uninhabitable. Ukraine may agree to it under duress but relations between the countries would be ruined and what remains of Russia's brother country would be permanently facing westwards in a state of understandable resentment. The anger at Russia from much of the western world be it commercial, cultural, political would not suddenly disappear. Surely Russia's long term interest is better served by withdrawing its forces, agreeing to a political solution for Crimea and hoping for a gradual repairing of its relations with its western neighbours.
It's hard to see how that could be in Putin's interests though. Indeed it is hard to see how he could survive it. But the message to the Russian elite should be clear. The longer the war goes on the more damage Russia is doing to itself. The pain suffered by the west is nothing in comparison. If you want to make Russia great again you need to withdraw your troops, get sanctions removed and start treating your neighbours with respect. That is at least how I feel it ought to be but I can't shake off a certain doubt that in some influential European capitals the necessary resolve may still be lacking.
Australia benefited of course from high Italian/Greek migration.
But America is hardly a migration free zone.
And none of this explains why it’s so damn EXPENSIVE.
It’s a puzzler.
Also the 28 dissidents were made up of 13 leavers and 15 remainers and from all parts of the party
Two more critics today just adding to the direction of travel and we haven't had the weekend papers yet
If you want to speedily improve your food culture, import people from those places, because they have maybe the best food in the world, and they also know how to do it cheaply
This still doesn’t explain why mediocre American supermarket food and bev is actually quite pricey
And here’s another thing. American wine is expensive in America. WTF is that about?
You can go into a supermarket in, say, New Orleans and decent wine from Chile, South Africa or Argentine will be very competitively priced against wine from California or Oregon or wherever, if not actually much cheaper
I’m used to good American wine being expensive in the UK, but in the USA?
Completely mystifying
Ralph's or Von's, which are not inexpensive general supermarkets, are both worse than Tesco's and more expensive.
I suspect for every single person put off because of vetting they have probably lost 20 people who might have actually bothered to volunteer....indeed a lot of clubs shut down youth membership because people went fuck off to vetting
The broader point was, of course, to question why banks ought to be forced to provide branches for the occasional benefit of (predominantly elderly) technophobes, whereas youth services in their entirety are to be regarded as an expendable frippery. If the state can't be arsed to provide important services for young people then it certainly shouldn't be attempting to force private enterprises into retaining loss making, surplus facilities so that pensioners can visit them to ask questions about their bills once every couple of years.
Why out of 80odd Why did you choose those statistics? The six airports with the biggest delays out of well over fifty were ones in the UK. Your post is completely skewing the facts. Do you always do this?.
I also recall the surprise at how many volunteers there were and how many needed multiple checks, as originally CRB was not portable.