If Starmer is taking a neutral rather than Blair-era line on the RMT, as the Mail seems to be reporting, it's very likely to be researched on working-class voters in key constituencies, and to be good politics. Note the Tories' recent hollow rhetoric after the public backlash against P&O. Much of the public has realised that the pendulum was swung too far from one extreme to another, from excessive union power to excessive employer power. He may even understand that Britain's economy, and arguably that of America too, cannot even be successfully rebalanced without at least some limited shift of bargaining power back to the forces of labour. Biden understands this too, as an old union man.
Well exactly. A lot of the muck throwing directed at the rail unions is all about train drivers' pay and how they ought to be delighted to accept below inflation settlements because they already get a generous wage (this argument being particularly popular amongst elderly Conservatives who would throw an Earth shaking tantrum if their state pension rises were capped at inflation for over a decade, never mind the real terms decreases that a lot of workers have had to put up with since the banking crisis.)
Seldom does anyone stop to ask why it is that rail workers do comparatively well with their pay settlements. It is, of course, because they have the instrument of collective action available to them. Workers in those industries and sectors where employees retain the power to kick stingy or downright rapacious bosses in the nuts are bound to do better, if only they have the will to resort to the tactic (and, if that causes collateral damage, in the form of nuisance to third parties, then that's just hard luck - what are they meant to do otherwise, roll over all the time?) Frankly I'm surprised that the likes of nurses and teachers don't do it more often.
At the end of the day, both Government and private enterprise is full of organisations that are well capable of paying decent wages but constantly plead poverty to avoid doing so - and the inflationary environment is always weaponised as an excuse. If inflation is low then wage settlements should be crap, because what do people need the extra money for and asking for it is greedy. If inflation is high then wage settlements should still be crap, because wage-price spiral. It's bollocks.
If Government really wants to up the remuneration of poorly compensated public sector workers then it can do it by raising taxes on the better off. If businesses, or at the very least the large fraction of them that are still doing well, want to pay their poorly compensated workers a better wage then they can do it by making slightly smaller profits or paying out a bit less in dividends to the shareholders.
The common theme in all of this is that squeezing the wages of ordinary workers is entirely about upwards redistribution: ensuring that a bigger slice of the cake can be enjoyed by the rich. The rich can fuck off.
It’s more that they have a monopoly both of service to customers and employees for the producers that gives them the power. Unions are just a way to organise it. As you saw with the Reagan ATC decision a bold government can counter that
I would be very careful when it comes to commenting on the wages of railway workers.
While Train Drivers are incredibly well paid (but not compared to pilots and the job is way, way harder than most people will think it is) most other rail staff really aren't that well paid...
On fuel, a reduction in VAT to 5% would be a better move for the treasury than a big duty cut. Certain people and companies can get the VAT back, absolutely no-one reclaims duty. It'd be the equivalent of a 27p duty cut and would send the green lobby bananas creating the perfect opponents for the government as an added bonus
If it gets much worse I think the government is going to have to do far more with free school meals, food banks and fuel subsidies.
We're not far off quasi-war time conditions and the usual rules of free market economics don't deliver the goods for everyone in such circumstances.
A stat that put it in perspective for me was 10m Brits skipped a meal in April, a rise of 60% from January. 2.4m adults skipped food for a whole day because of finances!
Come this winter costs will have risen significantly again, any savings further depleted and ability for the poorest to credit decreased. It is going to be a really tough winter for not just a few but the poorest quarter to a third in the country.
Things like the return of the £20 UC uplift are a no brainer, and will happen, although probably rebadged as something else to avoid claims of a u-turn.
If the government persists with its 2% pay offer for NHS medical staff in a time of 10% inflation, then I expect to be in industrial dispute by the autumn. With current staff vacancies a ban on voluntary overtime would collapse the system in days.
A difference I noticed in Denmark where my son lives is the number of driverless trains. Scandinavia isn't renowned for right-wing excesses, but they don't regard this as abnormal.
Unions exist to boost the pay of workers. The leaders may be left-wing sometimes, but they know which side their bread is buttered. Keep the numbers up and the pay rises coming and they can support North Korea if they like.
So he lives in Copenhagen that has a completely new network that is utterly separated from human beings. My go to pointer for that argument is
Which basically says you can do automated trains only if you are start afresh from now and you don't have any network at human accessible (ground level).
On fuel, a reduction in VAT to 5% would be a better move for the treasury than a big duty cut. Certain people and companies can get the VAT back, absolutely no-one reclaims duty. It'd be the equivalent of a 27p duty cut and would send the green lobby bananas creating the perfect opponents for the government as an added bonus
If it gets much worse I think the government is going to have to do far more with free school meals, food banks and fuel subsidies.
We're not far off quasi-war time conditions and the usual rules of free market economics don't deliver the goods for everyone in such circumstances.
A stat that put it in perspective for me was 10m Brits skipped a meal in April, a rise of 60% from January. 2.4m adults skipped food for a whole day because of finances!
Come this winter costs will have risen significantly again, any savings further depleted and ability for the poorest to credit decreased. It is going to be a really tough winter for not just a few but the poorest quarter to a third in the country.
Things like the return of the £20 UC uplift are a no brainer, and will happen, although probably rebadged as something else to avoid claims of a u-turn.
Yes, I live in a very prosperous area, but chatted with two separate people at the town fair on Saturday who came specifically to ask advice - one is sofa-surfing and has been told he's not been in our area long enough to qualify to go on the waiting list for housing; the other is only eating one meal a day to get by. Not an immigration issue - both as English as I am - and neither was angry or bitter, just worried. (I'm looking into the specific cases.)
Anecdata, but if that's popping up here, what can it be like in poorer areas?
I accept Boris is a deeply flawed PM but he does have charisma and "boosterism" which I think all the alternatives lack. Some may be quite competent but it's not obvious to me that that is the case. Who would you make the case for on the grounds of competence or better still ability?
That's really not the question, though. Boris is a slow poison both to his arty and his country.
I‘m glad he won, for the simple reason that, if he had lost, it would have been very negative ramifications for what’s happening in the Ukraine:
1. Russia would have seen it as a major boost and would boost their likelihood of thinking they can grind out a victory by wearing down the West’s resolve;
2. Conversely, losing him would have hit Ukraine’s confidence about Western support. Zelensky didn’t comment until after the result came out but it was clear from his comments he was relieved. Ditto for the Central / Eastern Europeans (ex-Hungary) and the Baltics;
3. Whatever you think of him domestically, he has been the most steadfast of the major western powers in pushing back against Putin and supporting Ukraine. The US has wobbled alarmingly on more than one occasion (the fighter jets being the obvious one) and we all know about France and Germany. It’s fair to say that the U.K. has been the glue for a lot of the support to the Ukraine. And, if he had gone, the likes of Macron and Scholz would have been pushing more for “accommodation” with Russia;
4. I don’t think any of his likely successors would have the same influence on Western policy direction. Wallace, obviously, would continue the policy and would have been the best bet. I could see Truss, Raab or Patel also been quite steely but, again all of the above, would have been coming in as a new PM and so with less influence. Hunt would have been a disaster - while he would have trotted out the smooth, silky lines, in reality he would be edging the U.K. to be taking more of a stance with France and Germany.
Utter bollox of the highest order, another spineless Tory boy willing to accept mediocrity and no principles, morals , etc.
There is always going to be an excuse for these people not to get rid of the useless liar.
If it wasn't Ukraine it would be something else. He needs to go for the sake of the UK and for the Govt.
Do people seriously believe getting rid of this clown would be bad for Ukraine or the conflict. The next British PM will be just as likely to be as supportive.
Morning Taz, these butt lickers would make you vomit, pathetic spineless creatures.
On fuel, a reduction in VAT to 5% would be a better move for the treasury than a big duty cut. Certain people and companies can get the VAT back, absolutely no-one reclaims duty. It'd be the equivalent of a 27p duty cut and would send the green lobby bananas creating the perfect opponents for the government as an added bonus
If it gets much worse I think the government is going to have to do far more with free school meals, food banks and fuel subsidies.
We're not far off quasi-war time conditions and the usual rules of free market economics don't deliver the goods for everyone in such circumstances.
It is going to get much worse: War in Ukraine going on and on. A complete redrawing of supply routes for hydrocarbons is ongoing which is driving costs upwards. No let up in sight for oil price rises say analysts. Gas price has dropped but we can't benefit as we shut down our storage facilities for private profit. So we're having to dump much of the cheap gas into Europe FX really not helping as cable is pro dollah and anti sterling Food ingredient supply is a mess (not just Ukraine) and again shows little sign of slowing down. As an example the retail price of rapeseed oil has doubled. Shipping costs are crazy - largely driven by oil prices - which means all that stuff we import from far away is lots more to make due to all of the above then lots more to ship
And I could go on. You mention quasi-wartime conditions and I agree, But despite the very genuine distress that so many are already in like the phony war of late 1939 we haven't really got started yet.
I agree with the suggestions about VAT cuts. It is a regressive tax which hits the poorest hardest. We can both make bills cheaper for them AND drive consumption which itself drives jobs which t=drives tax receipts to make up the lost VAT revenue.
I accept Boris is a deeply flawed PM but he does have charisma and "boosterism" which I think all the alternatives lack. Some may be quite competent but it's not obvious to me that that is the case. Who would you make the case for on the grounds of competence or better still ability?
I've already said that I think Hunt is the best bet, but I'm not really fussed too much. There are a few people I think would be worse, but anyone ANYONE will do.
I don't want charisma. That's for game show hosts. I want someone who can do the job. We need to quit this destructive pattern of thinking that says politics is entertainment.
How about Theresa May?
Theresa May shows why charisma is a part of the job.
Its not just relevant at election time, its also about being able to connect with others in order to get them to get the job done in Parliament and elsewhere by passing votes etc
Theresa May was the worst PM in centuries and was utterly unable to get her flagship policy through Parliament despite it being the one thing she spent her premiership working on for years and spending months trying to ram it through Parliament.
Modern Prime Ministers who have been able to get stuff done have all had charisma, different types of charisma, but they've all had it.
You need both integrity and charisma. May was bad, Boris is worse.
You need to be a pretty straight sort of guy?
Definitely. A vast improvement.
Give over. I voted for Blair in 2001, despite the flagrant corruption of Blair and Ecclestone etc he still seemed like the better PM than Hague would have been at the time.
I've said for a long time Boris should go but lets not rewrite history, if you think Blair's blatant corruption, the cash for honours and most seriously of all taking us to war by misleading Parliament with a sexed up dossier all shows more integrity than Boris getting fined for this then you might be being just the slightest bit partisan.
If Starmer is taking a neutral rather than Blair-era line on the RMT, as the Mail seems to be reporting, it's very likely to be researched on working-class voters in key constituencies, and to be good politics. Note the Tories' recent hollow rhetoric after the public backlash against P&O. Much of the public has realised that the pendulum was swung too far from one extreme to another, from excessive union power to excessive employer power. He may even understand that Britain's economy, and arguably that of America too, cannot even be successfully rebalanced without at least some limited shift of bargaining power back to the forces of labour. Biden understands this too, as an old union man.
Well exactly. A lot of the muck throwing directed at the rail unions is all about train drivers' pay and how they ought to be delighted to accept below inflation settlements because they already get a generous wage (this argument being particularly popular amongst elderly Conservatives who would throw an Earth shaking tantrum if their state pension rises were capped at inflation for over a decade, never mind the real terms decreases that a lot of workers have had to put up with since the banking crisis.)
Seldom does anyone stop to ask why it is that rail workers do comparatively well with their pay settlements. It is, of course, because they have the instrument of collective action available to them. Workers in those industries and sectors where employees retain the power to kick stingy or downright rapacious bosses in the nuts are bound to do better, if only they have the will to resort to the tactic (and, if that causes collateral damage, in the form of nuisance to third parties, then that's just hard luck - what are they meant to do otherwise, roll over all the time?) Frankly I'm surprised that the likes of nurses and teachers don't do it more often.
At the end of the day, both Government and private enterprise is full of organisations that are well capable of paying decent wages but constantly plead poverty to avoid doing so - and the inflationary environment is always weaponised as an excuse. If inflation is low then wage settlements should be crap, because what do people need the extra money for and asking for it is greedy. If inflation is high then wage settlements should still be crap, because wage-price spiral. It's bollocks.
If Government really wants to up the remuneration of poorly compensated public sector workers then it can do it by raising taxes on the better off. If businesses, or at the very least the large fraction of them that are still doing well, want to pay their poorly compensated workers a better wage then they can do it by making slightly smaller profits or paying out a bit less in dividends to the shareholders.
The common theme in all of this is that squeezing the wages of ordinary workers is entirely about upwards redistribution: ensuring that a bigger slice of the cake can be enjoyed by the rich. The rich can fuck off.
It’s more that they have a monopoly both of service to customers and employees for the producers that gives them the power. Unions are just a way to organise it. As you saw with the Reagan ATC decision a bold government can counter that
I would be very careful when it comes to commenting on the wages of railway workers.
While Train Drivers are incredibly well paid (but not compared to pilots and the job is way, way harder than most people will think it is) most other rail staff really aren't that well paid...
How hard can it be , you watch for green or red light and turn a little handle one way to speed up and the other way to slow down whilst having sometimes to use one foot to press a brake pedal.
A difference I noticed in Denmark where my son lives is the number of driverless trains. Scandinavia isn't renowned for right-wing excesses, but they don't regard this as abnormal.
Unions exist to boost the pay of workers. The leaders may be left-wing sometimes, but they know which side their bread is buttered. Keep the numbers up and the pay rises coming and they can support North Korea if they like.
You can have driverless systems when they are built that way - we have several. But the "sack the drivers and make them driverless" line is about as practical as Musk demanding that all cars drive themselves all the time.
I accept Boris is a deeply flawed PM but he does have charisma and "boosterism" which I think all the alternatives lack. Some may be quite competent but it's not obvious to me that that is the case. Who would you make the case for on the grounds of competence or better still ability?
That's really not the question, though. Boris is a slow poison both to his arty and his country.
I‘m glad he won, for the simple reason that, if he had lost, it would have been very negative ramifications for what’s happening in the Ukraine:
1. Russia would have seen it as a major boost and would boost their likelihood of thinking they can grind out a victory by wearing down the West’s resolve;
2. Conversely, losing him would have hit Ukraine’s confidence about Western support. Zelensky didn’t comment until after the result came out but it was clear from his comments he was relieved. Ditto for the Central / Eastern Europeans (ex-Hungary) and the Baltics;
3. Whatever you think of him domestically, he has been the most steadfast of the major western powers in pushing back against Putin and supporting Ukraine. The US has wobbled alarmingly on more than one occasion (the fighter jets being the obvious one) and we all know about France and Germany. It’s fair to say that the U.K. has been the glue for a lot of the support to the Ukraine. And, if he had gone, the likes of Macron and Scholz would have been pushing more for “accommodation” with Russia;
4. I don’t think any of his likely successors would have the same influence on Western policy direction. Wallace, obviously, would continue the policy and would have been the best bet. I could see Truss, Raab or Patel also been quite steely but, again all of the above, would have been coming in as a new PM and so with less influence. Hunt would have been a disaster - while he would have trotted out the smooth, silky lines, in reality he would be edging the U.K. to be taking more of a stance with France and Germany.
That's just your prejudices talking, I think. The likelihood of any substantive change in UK policy should Boris get his deserts is extremely low, whoever replaces him.
If Starmer is taking a neutral rather than Blair-era line on the RMT, as the Mail seems to be reporting, it's very likely to be researched on working-class voters in key constituencies, and to be good politics. Note the Tories' recent hollow rhetoric after the public backlash against P&O. Much of the public has realised that the pendulum was swung too far from one extreme to another, from excessive union power to excessive employer power. He may even understand that Britain's economy, and arguably that of America too, cannot even be successfully rebalanced without at least some limited shift of bargaining power back to the forces of labour. Biden understands this too, as an old union man.
Well exactly. A lot of the muck throwing directed at the rail unions is all about train drivers' pay and how they ought to be delighted to accept below inflation settlements because they already get a generous wage (this argument being particularly popular amongst elderly Conservatives who would throw an Earth shaking tantrum if their state pension rises were capped at inflation for over a decade, never mind the real terms decreases that a lot of workers have had to put up with since the banking crisis.)
Seldom does anyone stop to ask why it is that rail workers do comparatively well with their pay settlements. It is, of course, because they have the instrument of collective action available to them. Workers in those industries and sectors where employees retain the power to kick stingy or downright rapacious bosses in the nuts are bound to do better, if only they have the will to resort to the tactic (and, if that causes collateral damage, in the form of nuisance to third parties, then that's just hard luck - what are they meant to do otherwise, roll over all the time?) Frankly I'm surprised that the likes of nurses and teachers don't do it more often.
At the end of the day, both Government and private enterprise is full of organisations that are well capable of paying decent wages but constantly plead poverty to avoid doing so - and the inflationary environment is always weaponised as an excuse. If inflation is low then wage settlements should be crap, because what do people need the extra money for and asking for it is greedy. If inflation is high then wage settlements should still be crap, because wage-price spiral. It's bollocks.
If Government really wants to up the remuneration of poorly compensated public sector workers then it can do it by raising taxes on the better off. If businesses, or at the very least the large fraction of them that are still doing well, want to pay their poorly compensated workers a better wage then they can do it by making slightly smaller profits or paying out a bit less in dividends to the shareholders.
The common theme in all of this is that squeezing the wages of ordinary workers is entirely about upwards redistribution: ensuring that a bigger slice of the cake can be enjoyed by the rich. The rich can fuck off.
It’s more that they have a monopoly both of service to customers and employees for the producers that gives them the power. Unions are just a way to organise it. As you saw with the Reagan ATC decision a bold government can counter that
I would be very careful when it comes to commenting on the wages of railway workers.
While Train Drivers are incredibly well paid (but not compared to pilots and the job is way, way harder than most people will think it is) most other rail staff really aren't that well paid...
How hard can it be , you watch for green or red light and turn a little handle one way to speed up and the other way to slow down whilst having sometimes to use one foot to press a brake pedal.
Your train takes 1 mile to stop and you can only see 1/2 a mile ahead - so you need to be able to remember exactly where you are at any time and know what is coming up...
I accept Boris is a deeply flawed PM but he does have charisma and "boosterism" which I think all the alternatives lack. Some may be quite competent but it's not obvious to me that that is the case. Who would you make the case for on the grounds of competence or better still ability?
I've already said that I think Hunt is the best bet, but I'm not really fussed too much. There are a few people I think would be worse, but anyone ANYONE will do.
I don't want charisma. That's for game show hosts. I want someone who can do the job. We need to quit this destructive pattern of thinking that says politics is entertainment.
How about Theresa May?
Theresa May shows why charisma is a part of the job.
Its not just relevant at election time, its also about being able to connect with others in order to get them to get the job done in Parliament and elsewhere by passing votes etc
Theresa May was the worst PM in centuries and was utterly unable to get her flagship policy through Parliament despite it being the one thing she spent her premiership working on for years and spending months trying to ram it through Parliament.
Modern Prime Ministers who have been able to get stuff done have all had charisma, different types of charisma, but they've all had it.
You need both integrity and charisma. May was bad, Boris is worse.
You need to be a pretty straight sort of guy?
Definitely. A vast improvement.
Give over. I voted for Blair in 2001, despite the flagrant corruption of Blair and Ecclestone etc he still seemed like the better PM than Hague would have been at the time.
I've said for a long time Boris should go but lets not rewrite history, if you think Blair's blatant corruption, the cash for honours and most seriously of all taking us to war by misleading Parliament with a sexed up dossier all shows more integrity than Boris getting fined for this then you might be being just the slightest bit partisan.
Partisan, definitely! Just like you and pretty much everyone here. Even, so in every respect Blair was a more successful PM than Boris. Give me Blair over this lot any day.
On fuel, a reduction in VAT to 5% would be a better move for the treasury than a big duty cut. Certain people and companies can get the VAT back, absolutely no-one reclaims duty. It'd be the equivalent of a 27p duty cut and would send the green lobby bananas creating the perfect opponents for the government as an added bonus
If it gets much worse I think the government is going to have to do far more with free school meals, food banks and fuel subsidies.
We're not far off quasi-war time conditions and the usual rules of free market economics don't deliver the goods for everyone in such circumstances.
It is going to get much worse: War in Ukraine going on and on. A complete redrawing of supply routes for hydrocarbons is ongoing which is driving costs upwards. No let up in sight for oil price rises say analysts. Gas price has dropped but we can't benefit as we shut down our storage facilities for private profit. So we're having to dump much of the cheap gas into Europe FX really not helping as cable is pro dollah and anti sterling Food ingredient supply is a mess (not just Ukraine) and again shows little sign of slowing down. As an example the retail price of rapeseed oil has doubled. Shipping costs are crazy - largely driven by oil prices - which means all that stuff we import from far away is lots more to make due to all of the above then lots more to ship
And I could go on. You mention quasi-wartime conditions and I agree, But despite the very genuine distress that so many are already in like the phony war of late 1939 we haven't really got started yet.
I agree with the suggestions about VAT cuts. It is a regressive tax which hits the poorest hardest. We can both make bills cheaper for them AND drive consumption which itself drives jobs which t=drives tax receipts to make up the lost VAT revenue.
BiB: Isn't rapeseed due to Ukraine? My local Sainsbury's has a massive A-board sign at its entrance saying that due to the war in Ukraine recipes that normally contain sunflower oil may contain rapeseed oil instead.
On fuel, a reduction in VAT to 5% would be a better move for the treasury than a big duty cut. Certain people and companies can get the VAT back, absolutely no-one reclaims duty. It'd be the equivalent of a 27p duty cut and would send the green lobby bananas creating the perfect opponents for the government as an added bonus
If it gets much worse I think the government is going to have to do far more with free school meals, food banks and fuel subsidies.
We're not far off quasi-war time conditions and the usual rules of free market economics don't deliver the goods for everyone in such circumstances.
A stat that put it in perspective for me was 10m Brits skipped a meal in April, a rise of 60% from January. 2.4m adults skipped food for a whole day because of finances!
Come this winter costs will have risen significantly again, any savings further depleted and ability for the poorest to credit decreased. It is going to be a really tough winter for not just a few but the poorest quarter to a third in the country.
Things like the return of the £20 UC uplift are a no brainer, and will happen, although probably rebadged as something else to avoid claims of a u-turn.
Yes, I live in a very prosperous area, but chatted with two separate people at the town fair on Saturday who came specifically to ask advice - one is sofa-surfing and has been told he's not been in our area long enough to qualify to go on the waiting list for housing; the other is only eating one meal a day to get by. Not an immigration issue - both as English as I am - and neither was angry or bitter, just worried. (I'm looking into the specific cases.)
Anecdata, but if that's popping up here, what can it be like in poorer areas?
Logically it is not surprising, but to those of us fortunate to have a reasonable safety cushion it still comes as a shock.
We know lots of society lived unable to save and one unexpected bill away from financial problems. Doubling and tripling energy bills, removing £1k a year in UC, inflation rising sharply (and for the poorest even more so as the value brands get removed from the supermarkets), more housing stock converted to air bnb for staycations, and it was inevitable that we hit a real and significant crisis with many simply unable to cope.
A difference I noticed in Denmark where my son lives is the number of driverless trains. Scandinavia isn't renowned for right-wing excesses, but they don't regard this as abnormal.
Unions exist to boost the pay of workers. The leaders may be left-wing sometimes, but they know which side their bread is buttered. Keep the numbers up and the pay rises coming and they can support North Korea if they like.
So he lives in Copenhagen that has a completely new network that is utterly separated from human beings. My go to pointer for that argument is
Which basically says you can do automated trains only if you are start afresh from now and you don't have any network at human accessible (ground level).
Several stations in the Copenhagen Metro are above ground. Access to the platform is restricted by barriers, which are not a technical challenge to install.
Unless I've missed one I don't think there are any Copenhagen Metro stations on the ground - I think those above ground are on viaducts with walkways underneath - although granted the route I used most was the M1 Vestamager to Kongens Nytorv
I accept Boris is a deeply flawed PM but he does have charisma and "boosterism" which I think all the alternatives lack. Some may be quite competent but it's not obvious to me that that is the case. Who would you make the case for on the grounds of competence or better still ability?
I've already said that I think Hunt is the best bet, but I'm not really fussed too much. There are a few people I think would be worse, but anyone ANYONE will do.
I don't want charisma. That's for game show hosts. I want someone who can do the job. We need to quit this destructive pattern of thinking that says politics is entertainment.
How about Theresa May?
Theresa May shows why charisma is a part of the job.
Its not just relevant at election time, its also about being able to connect with others in order to get them to get the job done in Parliament and elsewhere by passing votes etc
Theresa May was the worst PM in centuries and was utterly unable to get her flagship policy through Parliament despite it being the one thing she spent her premiership working on for years and spending months trying to ram it through Parliament.
Modern Prime Ministers who have been able to get stuff done have all had charisma, different types of charisma, but they've all had it.
You need both integrity and charisma. May was bad, Boris is worse.
You need to be a pretty straight sort of guy?
Definitely. A vast improvement.
Give over. I voted for Blair in 2001, despite the flagrant corruption of Blair and Ecclestone etc he still seemed like the better PM than Hague would have been at the time.
I've said for a long time Boris should go but lets not rewrite history, if you think Blair's blatant corruption, the cash for honours and most seriously of all taking us to war by misleading Parliament with a sexed up dossier all shows more integrity than Boris getting fined for this then you might be being just the slightest bit partisan.
Partisan, definitely! Just like you and pretty much everyone here. Even, so in every respect Blair was a more successful PM than Boris. Give me Blair over this lot any day.
So what you're saying is blatant corruption and misleading Parliament to take the country to war is OK so long as you get what you want politically?
I accept Boris is a deeply flawed PM but he does have charisma and "boosterism" which I think all the alternatives lack. Some may be quite competent but it's not obvious to me that that is the case. Who would you make the case for on the grounds of competence or better still ability?
That's really not the question, though. Boris is a slow poison both to his arty and his country.
I‘m glad he won, for the simple reason that, if he had lost, it would have been very negative ramifications for what’s happening in the Ukraine:
1. Russia would have seen it as a major boost and would boost their likelihood of thinking they can grind out a victory by wearing down the West’s resolve;
2. Conversely, losing him would have hit Ukraine’s confidence about Western support. Zelensky didn’t comment until after the result came out but it was clear from his comments he was relieved. Ditto for the Central / Eastern Europeans (ex-Hungary) and the Baltics;
3. Whatever you think of him domestically, he has been the most steadfast of the major western powers in pushing back against Putin and supporting Ukraine. The US has wobbled alarmingly on more than one occasion (the fighter jets being the obvious one) and we all know about France and Germany. It’s fair to say that the U.K. has been the glue for a lot of the support to the Ukraine. And, if he had gone, the likes of Macron and Scholz would have been pushing more for “accommodation” with Russia;
4. I don’t think any of his likely successors would have the same influence on Western policy direction. Wallace, obviously, would continue the policy and would have been the best bet. I could see Truss, Raab or Patel also been quite steely but, again all of the above, would have been coming in as a new PM and so with less influence. Hunt would have been a disaster - while he would have trotted out the smooth, silky lines, in reality he would be edging the U.K. to be taking more of a stance with France and Germany.
That's just your prejudices talking, I think. The likelihood of any substantive change in UK policy should Boris get his deserts is extremely low, whoever replaces him.
None of the Tory rivals would be softer on supporting Ukraine, and Truss would be recklessly supporting. None of the opposition parties would be less supportive either.
Meanwhile Johnson is a mendacious POS who would shaft anyone, including Ukraine, if he thought it would keep him in power.
I accept Boris is a deeply flawed PM but he does have charisma and "boosterism" which I think all the alternatives lack. Some may be quite competent but it's not obvious to me that that is the case. Who would you make the case for on the grounds of competence or better still ability?
I've already said that I think Hunt is the best bet, but I'm not really fussed too much. There are a few people I think would be worse, but anyone ANYONE will do.
I don't want charisma. That's for game show hosts. I want someone who can do the job. We need to quit this destructive pattern of thinking that says politics is entertainment.
How about Theresa May?
Theresa May shows why charisma is a part of the job.
Its not just relevant at election time, its also about being able to connect with others in order to get them to get the job done in Parliament and elsewhere by passing votes etc
Theresa May was the worst PM in centuries and was utterly unable to get her flagship policy through Parliament despite it being the one thing she spent her premiership working on for years and spending months trying to ram it through Parliament.
Modern Prime Ministers who have been able to get stuff done have all had charisma, different types of charisma, but they've all had it.
Although I don't disagree with that at all and it was certainly true during the election where it really counts her biggest flaw was her stubbornness in my opinion. As far as being the worst I think Brown competes with her.
On fuel, a reduction in VAT to 5% would be a better move for the treasury than a big duty cut. Certain people and companies can get the VAT back, absolutely no-one reclaims duty. It'd be the equivalent of a 27p duty cut and would send the green lobby bananas creating the perfect opponents for the government as an added bonus
If it gets much worse I think the government is going to have to do far more with free school meals, food banks and fuel subsidies.
We're not far off quasi-war time conditions and the usual rules of free market economics don't deliver the goods for everyone in such circumstances.
A stat that put it in perspective for me was 10m Brits skipped a meal in April, a rise of 60% from January. 2.4m adults skipped food for a whole day because of finances!
Come this winter costs will have risen significantly again, any savings further depleted and ability for the poorest to credit decreased. It is going to be a really tough winter for not just a few but the poorest quarter to a third in the country.
Things like the return of the £20 UC uplift are a no brainer, and will happen, although probably rebadged as something else to avoid claims of a u-turn.
Yes, I live in a very prosperous area, but chatted with two separate people at the town fair on Saturday who came specifically to ask advice - one is sofa-surfing and has been told he's not been in our area long enough to qualify to go on the waiting list for housing; the other is only eating one meal a day to get by. Not an immigration issue - both as English as I am - and neither was angry or bitter, just worried. (I'm looking into the specific cases.)
Anecdata, but if that's popping up here, what can it be like in poorer areas?
I really fear for the poor and lower paid and HMG has to address this challenge for them
Asda have just notified me that their milk has gone upto £1.35 when it wasn't so long ago it was £1.09. We can afford it but this is only one of many essential food items, and of course fuel is astronomic and I read earlier that it could rise to £2.30 a litre
On 5 live business this morning an economist said that for every 10 dollar increase in oil the world loses half a percent on gdp, and once you buy a tank of petrol/diesel for over £100, when it was £60 a few months ago, then £40 cannot be spent on something else
Forget Boris and Starmer, this is a crisis like no other we have witnessed since WW11 and I have no idea how any politician can mitigate the effects for so many
We are all going to be poorer and buy less and of course recession is virtually guaranteed, sadly
On fuel, a reduction in VAT to 5% would be a better move for the treasury than a big duty cut. Certain people and companies can get the VAT back, absolutely no-one reclaims duty. It'd be the equivalent of a 27p duty cut and would send the green lobby bananas creating the perfect opponents for the government as an added bonus
If it gets much worse I think the government is going to have to do far more with free school meals, food banks and fuel subsidies.
We're not far off quasi-war time conditions and the usual rules of free market economics don't deliver the goods for everyone in such circumstances.
It is going to get much worse: War in Ukraine going on and on. A complete redrawing of supply routes for hydrocarbons is ongoing which is driving costs upwards. No let up in sight for oil price rises say analysts. Gas price has dropped but we can't benefit as we shut down our storage facilities for private profit. So we're having to dump much of the cheap gas into Europe FX really not helping as cable is pro dollah and anti sterling Food ingredient supply is a mess (not just Ukraine) and again shows little sign of slowing down. As an example the retail price of rapeseed oil has doubled. Shipping costs are crazy - largely driven by oil prices - which means all that stuff we import from far away is lots more to make due to all of the above then lots more to ship
And I could go on. You mention quasi-wartime conditions and I agree, But despite the very genuine distress that so many are already in like the phony war of late 1939 we haven't really got started yet.
I agree with the suggestions about VAT cuts. It is a regressive tax which hits the poorest hardest. We can both make bills cheaper for them AND drive consumption which itself drives jobs which t=drives tax receipts to make up the lost VAT revenue.
Wait, so creating a whole new trading stance is costly? If only someone had said something!
People did say something, but sanctioning Russia was still necessary post-invasion. Would you have had us do elsewise?
That's why German car makers are doing their typical mercantilist thing and pressuring the German government to end the sanctions, and why Germany and France are the weak link in maintaining the sanctions, due to the power of the German car makers etc - thankfully Britain is providing the backbone amongst western Europe, and Eastern Europe and the USA are too.
Mr Eek, You make some good points, and I generally agree.
However ... My son did live in Copenhagen, although he's moved to the sticks now. But Copenhagen was last flattened by war in 1807. An excellent piece of town-planning if I may say so.
We do things here by attaching lego pieces to the existing structures. Ironically, Denmark didn't.
I remember moving from the pharmaceutical industry to the civil service and being shocked by the somewhat old-fashioned union attitudes. Don't touch that PC, the jobs of the typing pool girls must be protected. Would we have gone on strike? That was possibly a step too far, but it's a good example.
I was a union rep, and people misunderstand your aims sometimes. We were there for a reason. Second-guessing the future isn't one of them.
If Starmer is taking a neutral rather than Blair-era line on the RMT, as the Mail seems to be reporting, it's very likely to be researched on working-class voters in key constituencies, and to be good politics. Note the Tories' recent hollow rhetoric after the public backlash against P&O. Much of the public has realised that the pendulum was swung too far from one extreme to another, from excessive union power to excessive employer power. He may even understand that Britain's economy, and arguably that of America too, cannot even be successfully rebalanced without at least some limited shift of bargaining power back to the forces of labour. Biden understands this too, as an old union man.
Well exactly. A lot of the muck throwing directed at the rail unions is all about train drivers' pay and how they ought to be delighted to accept below inflation settlements because they already get a generous wage (this argument being particularly popular amongst elderly Conservatives who would throw an Earth shaking tantrum if their state pension rises were capped at inflation for over a decade, never mind the real terms decreases that a lot of workers have had to put up with since the banking crisis.)
Seldom does anyone stop to ask why it is that rail workers do comparatively well with their pay settlements. It is, of course, because they have the instrument of collective action available to them. Workers in those industries and sectors where employees retain the power to kick stingy or downright rapacious bosses in the nuts are bound to do better, if only they have the will to resort to the tactic (and, if that causes collateral damage, in the form of nuisance to third parties, then that's just hard luck - what are they meant to do otherwise, roll over all the time?) Frankly I'm surprised that the likes of nurses and teachers don't do it more often.
At the end of the day, both Government and private enterprise is full of organisations that are well capable of paying decent wages but constantly plead poverty to avoid doing so - and the inflationary environment is always weaponised as an excuse. If inflation is low then wage settlements should be crap, because what do people need the extra money for and asking for it is greedy. If inflation is high then wage settlements should still be crap, because wage-price spiral. It's bollocks.
If Government really wants to up the remuneration of poorly compensated public sector workers then it can do it by raising taxes on the better off. If businesses, or at the very least the large fraction of them that are still doing well, want to pay their poorly compensated workers a better wage then they can do it by making slightly smaller profits or paying out a bit less in dividends to the shareholders.
The common theme in all of this is that squeezing the wages of ordinary workers is entirely about upwards redistribution: ensuring that a bigger slice of the cake can be enjoyed by the rich. The rich can fuck off.
This might be a convincing argument if it weren't for the fact that the RMT, and other unions you described, had regularly gone on strike for more pay over the last 20 years regardless of the rate of inflation.
It's another example of the tragedy of the commons: if the whole public and private sector was heavily unionised as you describe then the entire country would grind to a halt with strikes and we'd enter an inflationary spiral, just as we did in the 1970s.
Well, it's the first major RMT action since 1989, so I don't know how you define "regularly"? (Perhaps you're thinking of ASLEF?) I heard Lynch on Radio 4 and he sounded reasonable to me - they've had a pay freeze for 3 years, and are told mass redundancies are coming and the conditions of service are being unilaterally revised, so they're having some intermittent strikes to object. IMO It would be peculiar if they didn't.
He wasn't entirely critical of the companies, since he said Sunak had cut the subsidy by £2 billion and companies were having to deal with that, but he noted that dividends are still flowing out, and he argued that the staff needed to be considered too. By implication an agreement not to have compulsory redundancies this year and a reasonable pay rise to reduce the loss to inflation would be an acceptable outcome for now.
As others have said, in the long run, automation is no doubt coming. But people currently working in the sector need fair consideration, and it's the RMT job to try to ensure they get it. As Still Waters observes, Ronald Reagan showed that it's possible to break a union. But that doesn't mean it's a good thing to do, since most employers like to have a reasonably satisfied workforce.
I accept Boris is a deeply flawed PM but he does have charisma and "boosterism" which I think all the alternatives lack. Some may be quite competent but it's not obvious to me that that is the case. Who would you make the case for on the grounds of competence or better still ability?
I've already said that I think Hunt is the best bet, but I'm not really fussed too much. There are a few people I think would be worse, but anyone ANYONE will do.
I don't want charisma. That's for game show hosts. I want someone who can do the job. We need to quit this destructive pattern of thinking that says politics is entertainment.
How about Theresa May?
Theresa May shows why charisma is a part of the job.
Its not just relevant at election time, its also about being able to connect with others in order to get them to get the job done in Parliament and elsewhere by passing votes etc
Theresa May was the worst PM in centuries and was utterly unable to get her flagship policy through Parliament despite it being the one thing she spent her premiership working on for years and spending months trying to ram it through Parliament.
Modern Prime Ministers who have been able to get stuff done have all had charisma, different types of charisma, but they've all had it.
You need both integrity and charisma. May was bad, Boris is worse.
The fact May couldn’t pass Brexit had as much to do with integrity free Boris manipulating the situation for a run at no10 than it did Mays lack of charisma.
And you don't get to the top with no charisma at all. Think of 1992 Major, May telling the Conservatives uncomfortable truths about their Nasty Party reputation. Brown in full-on Son of the Manse mode.
They didn't have enough charisma to win, because they ended up against Blair, Johnson, Cameron and Events (dear boy), but that's a slightly different matter. Any of us condemning them for being uncharismatic would be like a Sunday footballer telling an England player that they're rubbish.
Besides, if we have moved from a world where charisma is an important thing, to a certain kind of charisma being the determining thing, that's not good.
If Starmer is taking a neutral rather than Blair-era line on the RMT, as the Mail seems to be reporting, it's very likely to be researched on working-class voters in key constituencies, and to be good politics. Note the Tories' recent hollow rhetoric after the public backlash against P&O. Much of the public has realised that the pendulum was swung too far from one extreme to another, from excessive union power to excessive employer power. He may even understand that Britain's economy, and arguably that of America too, cannot even be successfully rebalanced without at least some limited shift of bargaining power back to the forces of labour. Biden understands this too, as an old union man.
Well exactly. A lot of the muck throwing directed at the rail unions is all about train drivers' pay and how they ought to be delighted to accept below inflation settlements because they already get a generous wage (this argument being particularly popular amongst elderly Conservatives who would throw an Earth shaking tantrum if their state pension rises were capped at inflation for over a decade, never mind the real terms decreases that a lot of workers have had to put up with since the banking crisis.)
Seldom does anyone stop to ask why it is that rail workers do comparatively well with their pay settlements. It is, of course, because they have the instrument of collective action available to them. Workers in those industries and sectors where employees retain the power to kick stingy or downright rapacious bosses in the nuts are bound to do better, if only they have the will to resort to the tactic (and, if that causes collateral damage, in the form of nuisance to third parties, then that's just hard luck - what are they meant to do otherwise, roll over all the time?) Frankly I'm surprised that the likes of nurses and teachers don't do it more often.
At the end of the day, both Government and private enterprise is full of organisations that are well capable of paying decent wages but constantly plead poverty to avoid doing so - and the inflationary environment is always weaponised as an excuse. If inflation is low then wage settlements should be crap, because what do people need the extra money for and asking for it is greedy. If inflation is high then wage settlements should still be crap, because wage-price spiral. It's bollocks.
If Government really wants to up the remuneration of poorly compensated public sector workers then it can do it by raising taxes on the better off. If businesses, or at the very least the large fraction of them that are still doing well, want to pay their poorly compensated workers a better wage then they can do it by making slightly smaller profits or paying out a bit less in dividends to the shareholders.
The common theme in all of this is that squeezing the wages of ordinary workers is entirely about upwards redistribution: ensuring that a bigger slice of the cake can be enjoyed by the rich. The rich can fuck off.
It’s more that they have a monopoly both of service to customers and employees for the producers that gives them the power. Unions are just a way to organise it. As you saw with the Reagan ATC decision a bold government can counter that
I would be very careful when it comes to commenting on the wages of railway workers.
While Train Drivers are incredibly well paid (but not compared to pilots and the job is way, way harder than most people will think it is) most other rail staff really aren't that well paid...
How hard can it be , you watch for green or red light and turn a little handle one way to speed up and the other way to slow down whilst having sometimes to use one foot to press a brake pedal.
Your train takes 1 mile to stop and you can only see 1/2 a mile ahead - so you need to be able to remember exactly where you are at any time and know what is coming up...
Mr. NorthWales, those who have shifted to working from home rather than commuting may be glad of the shift given price hikes and the unions doing their best to hold people to ransom.
If Starmer is taking a neutral rather than Blair-era line on the RMT, as the Mail seems to be reporting, it's very likely to be researched on working-class voters in key constituencies, and to be good politics. Note the Tories' recent hollow rhetoric after the public backlash against P&O. Much of the public has realised that the pendulum was swung too far from one extreme to another, from excessive union power to excessive employer power. He may even understand that Britain's economy, and arguably that of America too, cannot even be successfully rebalanced without at least some limited shift of bargaining power back to the forces of labour. Biden understands this too, as an old union man.
Well exactly. A lot of the muck throwing directed at the rail unions is all about train drivers' pay and how they ought to be delighted to accept below inflation settlements because they already get a generous wage (this argument being particularly popular amongst elderly Conservatives who would throw an Earth shaking tantrum if their state pension rises were capped at inflation for over a decade, never mind the real terms decreases that a lot of workers have had to put up with since the banking crisis.)
Seldom does anyone stop to ask why it is that rail workers do comparatively well with their pay settlements. It is, of course, because they have the instrument of collective action available to them. Workers in those industries and sectors where employees retain the power to kick stingy or downright rapacious bosses in the nuts are bound to do better, if only they have the will to resort to the tactic (and, if that causes collateral damage, in the form of nuisance to third parties, then that's just hard luck - what are they meant to do otherwise, roll over all the time?) Frankly I'm surprised that the likes of nurses and teachers don't do it more often.
At the end of the day, both Government and private enterprise is full of organisations that are well capable of paying decent wages but constantly plead poverty to avoid doing so - and the inflationary environment is always weaponised as an excuse. If inflation is low then wage settlements should be crap, because what do people need the extra money for and asking for it is greedy. If inflation is high then wage settlements should still be crap, because wage-price spiral. It's bollocks.
If Government really wants to up the remuneration of poorly compensated public sector workers then it can do it by raising taxes on the better off. If businesses, or at the very least the large fraction of them that are still doing well, want to pay their poorly compensated workers a better wage then they can do it by making slightly smaller profits or paying out a bit less in dividends to the shareholders.
The common theme in all of this is that squeezing the wages of ordinary workers is entirely about upwards redistribution: ensuring that a bigger slice of the cake can be enjoyed by the rich. The rich can fuck off.
It’s more that they have a monopoly both of service to customers and employees for the producers that gives them the power. Unions are just a way to organise it. As you saw with the Reagan ATC decision a bold government can counter that
I would be very careful when it comes to commenting on the wages of railway workers.
While Train Drivers are incredibly well paid (but not compared to pilots and the job is way, way harder than most people will think it is) most other rail staff really aren't that well paid...
How hard can it be , you watch for green or red light and turn a little handle one way to speed up and the other way to slow down whilst having sometimes to use one foot to press a brake pedal.
Your train takes 1 mile to stop and you can only see 1/2 a mile ahead - so you need to be able to remember exactly where you are at any time and know what is coming up...
Don't they have any signalling to advise that? Seems rather dangerous to rely upon memory instead of signalling.
They do - but signalling isn't fool proof and while a bus accident may make the local news, even a minor train crash has a habit of making (inter)national headlines...
Remember that we saw news about an rail accident in Germany over the weekend.
I accept Boris is a deeply flawed PM but he does have charisma and "boosterism" which I think all the alternatives lack. Some may be quite competent but it's not obvious to me that that is the case. Who would you make the case for on the grounds of competence or better still ability?
I've already said that I think Hunt is the best bet, but I'm not really fussed too much. There are a few people I think would be worse, but anyone ANYONE will do.
I don't want charisma. That's for game show hosts. I want someone who can do the job. We need to quit this destructive pattern of thinking that says politics is entertainment.
How about Theresa May?
Theresa May shows why charisma is a part of the job.
Its not just relevant at election time, its also about being able to connect with others in order to get them to get the job done in Parliament and elsewhere by passing votes etc
Theresa May was the worst PM in centuries and was utterly unable to get her flagship policy through Parliament despite it being the one thing she spent her premiership working on for years and spending months trying to ram it through Parliament.
Modern Prime Ministers who have been able to get stuff done have all had charisma, different types of charisma, but they've all had it.
You need both integrity and charisma. May was bad, Boris is worse.
You need to be a pretty straight sort of guy?
Definitely. A vast improvement.
Give over. I voted for Blair in 2001, despite the flagrant corruption of Blair and Ecclestone etc he still seemed like the better PM than Hague would have been at the time.
I've said for a long time Boris should go but lets not rewrite history, if you think Blair's blatant corruption, the cash for honours and most seriously of all taking us to war by misleading Parliament with a sexed up dossier all shows more integrity than Boris getting fined for this then you might be being just the slightest bit partisan.
Partisan, definitely! Just like you and pretty much everyone here. Even, so in every respect Blair was a more successful PM than Boris. Give me Blair over this lot any day.
So what you're saying is blatant corruption and misleading Parliament to take the country to war is OK so long as you get what you want politically?
That is how much you value "integrity"?
Bless. That old chestnut. I understand why you prefer to talk about events 20 years ago than grapple with today, I really do. You remind me of old Trots going on about Fatcha. I hope it makes you feel better.
On fuel, a reduction in VAT to 5% would be a better move for the treasury than a big duty cut. Certain people and companies can get the VAT back, absolutely no-one reclaims duty. It'd be the equivalent of a 27p duty cut and would send the green lobby bananas creating the perfect opponents for the government as an added bonus
If it gets much worse I think the government is going to have to do far more with free school meals, food banks and fuel subsidies.
We're not far off quasi-war time conditions and the usual rules of free market economics don't deliver the goods for everyone in such circumstances.
A stat that put it in perspective for me was 10m Brits skipped a meal in April, a rise of 60% from January. 2.4m adults skipped food for a whole day because of finances!
Come this winter costs will have risen significantly again, any savings further depleted and ability for the poorest to credit decreased. It is going to be a really tough winter for not just a few but the poorest quarter to a third in the country.
Things like the return of the £20 UC uplift are a no brainer, and will happen, although probably rebadged as something else to avoid claims of a u-turn.
Yes, I live in a very prosperous area, but chatted with two separate people at the town fair on Saturday who came specifically to ask advice - one is sofa-surfing and has been told he's not been in our area long enough to qualify to go on the waiting list for housing; the other is only eating one meal a day to get by. Not an immigration issue - both as English as I am - and neither was angry or bitter, just worried. (I'm looking into the specific cases.)
Anecdata, but if that's popping up here, what can it be like in poorer areas?
I really fear for the poor and lower paid and HMG has to address this challenge for them
Asda have just notified me that their milk has gone upto £1.35 when it wasn't so long ago it was £1.09. We can afford it but this is only one of many essential food items, and of course fuel is astronomic and I read earlier that it could rise to £2.30 a litre
On 5 live business this morning an economist said that for every 10 dollar increase in oil the world loses half a percent on gdp, and once you buy a tank of petrol/diesel for over £100, when it was £60 a few months ago, then £40 cannot be spent on something else
Forget Boris and Starmer, this is a crisis like no other we have witnessed since WW11 and I have no idea how any politician can mitigate the effects for so many
We are all going to be poorer and buy less and of course recession is virtually guaranteed, sadly
And good morning
Yep, there’s a good reason that oil shocks have accompanied many recessions in the last half a century. High fuel prices affect the price of everything else, and suck money out of the economy in the process.
The Chancellor will soon have little option but to drop fuel duty on petrol and diesel, if he wants to keep the wheels of the economy turning. Personally, I’d scrap it completely while the oil price remains above $100, even if it does cost a couple of billion a month.
If Starmer is taking a neutral rather than Blair-era line on the RMT, as the Mail seems to be reporting, it's very likely to be researched on working-class voters in key constituencies, and to be good politics. Note the Tories' recent hollow rhetoric after the public backlash against P&O. Much of the public has realised that the pendulum was swung too far from one extreme to another, from excessive union power to excessive employer power. He may even understand that Britain's economy, and arguably that of America too, cannot even be successfully rebalanced without at least some limited shift of bargaining power back to the forces of labour. Biden understands this too, as an old union man.
Well exactly. A lot of the muck throwing directed at the rail unions is all about train drivers' pay and how they ought to be delighted to accept below inflation settlements because they already get a generous wage (this argument being particularly popular amongst elderly Conservatives who would throw an Earth shaking tantrum if their state pension rises were capped at inflation for over a decade, never mind the real terms decreases that a lot of workers have had to put up with since the banking crisis.)
Seldom does anyone stop to ask why it is that rail workers do comparatively well with their pay settlements. It is, of course, because they have the instrument of collective action available to them. Workers in those industries and sectors where employees retain the power to kick stingy or downright rapacious bosses in the nuts are bound to do better, if only they have the will to resort to the tactic (and, if that causes collateral damage, in the form of nuisance to third parties, then that's just hard luck - what are they meant to do otherwise, roll over all the time?) Frankly I'm surprised that the likes of nurses and teachers don't do it more often.
At the end of the day, both Government and private enterprise is full of organisations that are well capable of paying decent wages but constantly plead poverty to avoid doing so - and the inflationary environment is always weaponised as an excuse. If inflation is low then wage settlements should be crap, because what do people need the extra money for and asking for it is greedy. If inflation is high then wage settlements should still be crap, because wage-price spiral. It's bollocks.
If Government really wants to up the remuneration of poorly compensated public sector workers then it can do it by raising taxes on the better off. If businesses, or at the very least the large fraction of them that are still doing well, want to pay their poorly compensated workers a better wage then they can do it by making slightly smaller profits or paying out a bit less in dividends to the shareholders.
The common theme in all of this is that squeezing the wages of ordinary workers is entirely about upwards redistribution: ensuring that a bigger slice of the cake can be enjoyed by the rich. The rich can fuck off.
It’s more that they have a monopoly both of service to customers and employees for the producers that gives them the power. Unions are just a way to organise it. As you saw with the Reagan ATC decision a bold government can counter that
I would be very careful when it comes to commenting on the wages of railway workers.
While Train Drivers are incredibly well paid (but not compared to pilots and the job is way, way harder than most people will think it is) most other rail staff really aren't that well paid...
How hard can it be , you watch for green or red light and turn a little handle one way to speed up and the other way to slow down whilst having sometimes to use one foot to press a brake pedal.
Your train takes 1 mile to stop and you can only see 1/2 a mile ahead - so you need to be able to remember exactly where you are at any time and know what is coming up...
Don't they have any signalling to advise that? Seems rather dangerous to rely upon memory instead of signalling.
They do - but signalling isn't fool proof and while a bus accident may make the local news, even a minor train crash has a habit of making (inter)national headlines...
Remember that we saw news about an rail accident in Germany over the weekend.
Yes its like the madness with airplanes. Any air incident makes the news, so people act like airlines aren't safe, despite it being the safest way to travel.
I accept Boris is a deeply flawed PM but he does have charisma and "boosterism" which I think all the alternatives lack. Some may be quite competent but it's not obvious to me that that is the case. Who would you make the case for on the grounds of competence or better still ability?
I've already said that I think Hunt is the best bet, but I'm not really fussed too much. There are a few people I think would be worse, but anyone ANYONE will do.
I don't want charisma. That's for game show hosts. I want someone who can do the job. We need to quit this destructive pattern of thinking that says politics is entertainment.
How about Theresa May?
Theresa May shows why charisma is a part of the job.
Its not just relevant at election time, its also about being able to connect with others in order to get them to get the job done in Parliament and elsewhere by passing votes etc
Theresa May was the worst PM in centuries and was utterly unable to get her flagship policy through Parliament despite it being the one thing she spent her premiership working on for years and spending months trying to ram it through Parliament.
Modern Prime Ministers who have been able to get stuff done have all had charisma, different types of charisma, but they've all had it.
You need both integrity and charisma. May was bad, Boris is worse.
You need to be a pretty straight sort of guy?
Definitely. A vast improvement.
Give over. I voted for Blair in 2001, despite the flagrant corruption of Blair and Ecclestone etc he still seemed like the better PM than Hague would have been at the time.
I've said for a long time Boris should go but lets not rewrite history, if you think Blair's blatant corruption, the cash for honours and most seriously of all taking us to war by misleading Parliament with a sexed up dossier all shows more integrity than Boris getting fined for this then you might be being just the slightest bit partisan.
Partisan, definitely! Just like you and pretty much everyone here. Even, so in every respect Blair was a more successful PM than Boris. Give me Blair over this lot any day.
So what you're saying is blatant corruption and misleading Parliament to take the country to war is OK so long as you get what you want politically?
That is how much you value "integrity"?
Notwithstanding the dodgy dossier and Ecclestone's million which of course were accepted then repaid under Blair, your boy has taken lies and corruption to industrial levels.
Let's not forget all the Kremlin backed oligarch donations to the Conservative Party on Johnson's watch that remain unrepaid. We can also consider a report of direct Russian involvement in UK politics, which has been conveniently suppressed. Another big story excused by the pro-Johnsonian press is the Mafia scale appropriation of public funds during the early days of the Pandemic. The list goes on and on.
So Johnson hasn't engaged in a spurious and potentially illegal war yet, but give him time.
"The first duty of Government is to uphold the law. If it tries to bob and weave and duck around that duty when it's inconvenient, if government does that, then so will the governed, and then nothing is safe—not home, not liberty, not life itself."
That was the question I was asking last night. Your position is absolutely right in the context of domestic law, passed or authorised by parliament.
To the extent that international “law” is not actually a law but a set of guidelines and conventions this is not the case. There is clearly a cost to breaking a treaty or convention but it’s not something that a government should never do as a point of principle
Mr. NorthWales, those who have shifted to working from home rather than commuting may be glad of the shift given price hikes and the unions doing their best to hold people to ransom.
Indeed - the irony cannot be lost by all those demanding working from home of the direct impact on railways, their incomes, and their future
Mind you if I could work from home with the present fuel costs and rail ticket fares I really would want to
I accept Boris is a deeply flawed PM but he does have charisma and "boosterism" which I think all the alternatives lack. Some may be quite competent but it's not obvious to me that that is the case. Who would you make the case for on the grounds of competence or better still ability?
I've already said that I think Hunt is the best bet, but I'm not really fussed too much. There are a few people I think would be worse, but anyone ANYONE will do.
I don't want charisma. That's for game show hosts. I want someone who can do the job. We need to quit this destructive pattern of thinking that says politics is entertainment.
How about Theresa May?
Theresa May shows why charisma is a part of the job.
Its not just relevant at election time, its also about being able to connect with others in order to get them to get the job done in Parliament and elsewhere by passing votes etc
Theresa May was the worst PM in centuries and was utterly unable to get her flagship policy through Parliament despite it being the one thing she spent her premiership working on for years and spending months trying to ram it through Parliament.
Modern Prime Ministers who have been able to get stuff done have all had charisma, different types of charisma, but they've all had it.
You need both integrity and charisma. May was bad, Boris is worse.
The fact May couldn’t pass Brexit had as much to do with integrity free Boris manipulating the situation for a run at no10 than it did Mays lack of charisma.
Warning: the following comment might shock, offend and upset.
I quite liked Teresa May!
And I agree with Jonathan. I think her deal was probably as good as could have been achieved from where she started from and may well have got through parliament if Boris hadn't exploited the situation for his own ends.
Regarding the discussion on housing, what I am seeing is a major crisis unfolding because of build costs. The houses for sale for £40k in the north of England, or £85k for a city centre flat in Leicester, could not be built for anything close to these amounts, the build costs are coming through at £2-£3k per square metre. So, £150k+ to BUILD a bog standard 50sqm flat. That is before you buy the land. If you take a 20% profit margin, this means that no flats can be sold for less than £180k, and that is if the land was acquired for free. The whole industry could be forced to shut down in large parts of the country because development is no longer economic.
Is that correct for a flat?
I’d assume you may be double counting some of the foundational / utilities / structural work where a bunch of cost goes.
Yes, according to BCIS data. More regulation, soundproofing, fire safety etc, usually higher so more expensive to build upwards. Particularly when common parts are factored in. Usually cheapest to build terraces or semi detached housing. More efficient in terms of land use, but more expensive to build. Thats what I understand.
I accept Boris is a deeply flawed PM but he does have charisma and "boosterism" which I think all the alternatives lack. Some may be quite competent but it's not obvious to me that that is the case. Who would you make the case for on the grounds of competence or better still ability?
I've already said that I think Hunt is the best bet, but I'm not really fussed too much. There are a few people I think would be worse, but anyone ANYONE will do.
I don't want charisma. That's for game show hosts. I want someone who can do the job. We need to quit this destructive pattern of thinking that says politics is entertainment.
How about Theresa May?
Theresa May shows why charisma is a part of the job.
Its not just relevant at election time, its also about being able to connect with others in order to get them to get the job done in Parliament and elsewhere by passing votes etc
Theresa May was the worst PM in centuries and was utterly unable to get her flagship policy through Parliament despite it being the one thing she spent her premiership working on for years and spending months trying to ram it through Parliament.
Modern Prime Ministers who have been able to get stuff done have all had charisma, different types of charisma, but they've all had it.
You need both integrity and charisma. May was bad, Boris is worse.
You need to be a pretty straight sort of guy?
Definitely. A vast improvement.
Give over. I voted for Blair in 2001, despite the flagrant corruption of Blair and Ecclestone etc he still seemed like the better PM than Hague would have been at the time.
I've said for a long time Boris should go but lets not rewrite history, if you think Blair's blatant corruption, the cash for honours and most seriously of all taking us to war by misleading Parliament with a sexed up dossier all shows more integrity than Boris getting fined for this then you might be being just the slightest bit partisan.
Partisan, definitely! Just like you and pretty much everyone here. Even, so in every respect Blair was a more successful PM than Boris. Give me Blair over this lot any day.
So what you're saying is blatant corruption and misleading Parliament to take the country to war is OK so long as you get what you want politically?
That is how much you value "integrity"?
Bless. That old chestnut. I understand why you prefer to talk about events 20 years ago than grapple with today, I really do. You remind me of old Trots going on about Fatcha. I hope it makes you feel better.
Oh I don't normally talk about events of 20 years ago, I just brought it up because you started virtue signalling about integrity and then doubled down on claiming the pretty straight sort of guy was better.
We've got to the bottom of how much you value integrity. Misleading Parliament, taking us to war on false pretences and outright corruption is all A-OK with you so long as its your guy doing it. That's how important you value "integrity".
On fuel, a reduction in VAT to 5% would be a better move for the treasury than a big duty cut. Certain people and companies can get the VAT back, absolutely no-one reclaims duty. It'd be the equivalent of a 27p duty cut and would send the green lobby bananas creating the perfect opponents for the government as an added bonus
If it gets much worse I think the government is going to have to do far more with free school meals, food banks and fuel subsidies.
We're not far off quasi-war time conditions and the usual rules of free market economics don't deliver the goods for everyone in such circumstances.
A stat that put it in perspective for me was 10m Brits skipped a meal in April, a rise of 60% from January. 2.4m adults skipped food for a whole day because of finances!
Come this winter costs will have risen significantly again, any savings further depleted and ability for the poorest to credit decreased. It is going to be a really tough winter for not just a few but the poorest quarter to a third in the country.
Things like the return of the £20 UC uplift are a no brainer, and will happen, although probably rebadged as something else to avoid claims of a u-turn.
Yes, I live in a very prosperous area, but chatted with two separate people at the town fair on Saturday who came specifically to ask advice - one is sofa-surfing and has been told he's not been in our area long enough to qualify to go on the waiting list for housing; the other is only eating one meal a day to get by. Not an immigration issue - both as English as I am - and neither was angry or bitter, just worried. (I'm looking into the specific cases.)
Anecdata, but if that's popping up here, what can it be like in poorer areas?
I really fear for the poor and lower paid and HMG has to address this challenge for them
Asda have just notified me that their milk has gone upto £1.35 when it wasn't so long ago it was £1.09. We can afford it but this is only one of many essential food items, and of course fuel is astronomic and I read earlier that it could rise to £2.30 a litre
On 5 live business this morning an economist said that for every 10 dollar increase in oil the world loses half a percent on gdp, and once you buy a tank of petrol/diesel for over £100, when it was £60 a few months ago, then £40 cannot be spent on something else
Forget Boris and Starmer, this is a crisis like no other we have witnessed since WW11 and I have no idea how any politician can mitigate the effects for so many
We are all going to be poorer and buy less and of course recession is virtually guaranteed, sadly
And good morning
We are not all poorer G, the ones coining in the extra money for same products are doing very well indeed, ie oil companies and Governments taxing it.
I think that public sympathy for the rail unions won't be what it was for the P&O staff. Also now white collar working can be largely done remotely, the people who depend on the trains are more low paid 'in person' jobs.
Mr Eek, You make some good points, and I generally agree.
However ... My son did live in Copenhagen, although he's moved to the sticks now. But Copenhagen was last flattened by war in 1807. An excellent piece of town-planning if I may say so.
We do things here by attaching lego pieces to the existing structures. Ironically, Denmark didn't.
I remember moving from the pharmaceutical industry to the civil service and being shocked by the somewhat old-fashioned union attitudes. Don't touch that PC, the jobs of the typing pool girls must be protected. Would we have gone on strike? That was possibly a step too far, but it's a good example.
I was a union rep, and people misunderstand your aims sometimes. We were there for a reason. Second-guessing the future isn't one of them.
Copenhagens metro was first opened in 2002. Parts of the Northern line date back to 1890.
And the thing you will discover is that unless you are starting from nothing and intentionally designed things to keep human beings completely away you can't get any further than where the underground currently is with a driver in the cab in case things go wrong.
As for the rest - my job for the last 15 years has been to automate systems. I'm now very good at ensuring I carry the people impacted with me - this will save you time to do other things...
I accept Boris is a deeply flawed PM but he does have charisma and "boosterism" which I think all the alternatives lack. Some may be quite competent but it's not obvious to me that that is the case. Who would you make the case for on the grounds of competence or better still ability?
I've already said that I think Hunt is the best bet, but I'm not really fussed too much. There are a few people I think would be worse, but anyone ANYONE will do.
I don't want charisma. That's for game show hosts. I want someone who can do the job. We need to quit this destructive pattern of thinking that says politics is entertainment.
How about Theresa May?
Theresa May shows why charisma is a part of the job.
Its not just relevant at election time, its also about being able to connect with others in order to get them to get the job done in Parliament and elsewhere by passing votes etc
Theresa May was the worst PM in centuries and was utterly unable to get her flagship policy through Parliament despite it being the one thing she spent her premiership working on for years and spending months trying to ram it through Parliament.
Modern Prime Ministers who have been able to get stuff done have all had charisma, different types of charisma, but they've all had it.
You need both integrity and charisma. May was bad, Boris is worse.
The fact May couldn’t pass Brexit had as much to do with integrity free Boris manipulating the situation for a run at no10 than it did Mays lack of charisma.
Warning: the following comment might shock, offend and upset.
I quite liked Teresa May!
And I agree with Jonathan. I think her deal was probably as good as could have been achieved from where she started from and may well have got through parliament if Boris hadn't exploited the situation for his own ends.
I agree. She got the best deal out of a bad situation.
It should have been voted through. Labour are partly to blame for this. It's easy to forget we only joined the EU in the first place because sufficient Labour MPs were on board.
On fuel, a reduction in VAT to 5% would be a better move for the treasury than a big duty cut. Certain people and companies can get the VAT back, absolutely no-one reclaims duty. It'd be the equivalent of a 27p duty cut and would send the green lobby bananas creating the perfect opponents for the government as an added bonus
If it gets much worse I think the government is going to have to do far more with free school meals, food banks and fuel subsidies.
We're not far off quasi-war time conditions and the usual rules of free market economics don't deliver the goods for everyone in such circumstances.
It is going to get much worse: War in Ukraine going on and on. A complete redrawing of supply routes for hydrocarbons is ongoing which is driving costs upwards. No let up in sight for oil price rises say analysts. Gas price has dropped but we can't benefit as we shut down our storage facilities for private profit. So we're having to dump much of the cheap gas into Europe FX really not helping as cable is pro dollah and anti sterling Food ingredient supply is a mess (not just Ukraine) and again shows little sign of slowing down. As an example the retail price of rapeseed oil has doubled. Shipping costs are crazy - largely driven by oil prices - which means all that stuff we import from far away is lots more to make due to all of the above then lots more to ship
And I could go on. You mention quasi-wartime conditions and I agree, But despite the very genuine distress that so many are already in like the phony war of late 1939 we haven't really got started yet.
I agree with the suggestions about VAT cuts. It is a regressive tax which hits the poorest hardest. We can both make bills cheaper for them AND drive consumption which itself drives jobs which t=drives tax receipts to make up the lost VAT revenue.
Wait, so creating a whole new trading stance is costly? If only someone had said something!
People did say something, but sanctioning Russia was still necessary post-invasion. Would you have had us do elsewise?
That's why German car makers are doing their typical mercantilist thing and pressuring the German government to end the sanctions, and why Germany and France are the weak link in maintaining the sanctions, due to the power of the German car makers etc - thankfully Britain is providing the backbone amongst western Europe, and Eastern Europe and the USA are too.
Well, I would have had Western troops on the ground before the latest wave of invasion to deter Russia. At Ukraine's invitation, of course, if that was forthcoming. And yes, I said so back in January before it all kicked off again.
That said, we missed that chance so yes, sanctions. My point was more a barb at those who painted a rosy picture of just switching trade to the rest of the world post-Brexit, as if that was going to be an easy, painless, and cheap process. There were more than a few rose-tinted idiots who thought that a few hours of plumbing and a photo op with the junior trade minister of Lesotho was all that was needed to crack open a thousand new mysteriously untapped silk roads.
I understood the barb, which is why I snuck in my German car makers response while remaining on topic. 🤦♂️
The difference between the two is that while Russia is sanctioned, Europe and the UK are not. People can't import Russia products, they can still import European ones.
Yes expanding trade with the rest of the world is a good thing and an advantage for Brexit, while maintaining free trade which we have an agreement with Europe for and we always would have got a free trade agreement with Europe because of *drum roll* the same German car makers who are pressuring the German government to end sanctions on Russia.
"The first duty of Government is to uphold the law. If it tries to bob and weave and duck around that duty when it's inconvenient, if government does that, then so will the governed, and then nothing is safe—not home, not liberty, not life itself."
That was the question I was asking last night. Your position is absolutely right in the context of domestic law, passed or authorised by parliament.
To the extent that international “law” is not actually a law but a set of guidelines and conventions this is not the case. There is clearly a cost to breaking a treaty or convention but it’s not something that a government should never do as a point of principle
The principle being that Johnson lied about what the Northern Ireland Protocol meant when he signed it and now wants a distraction from his leadership woes?
On fuel, a reduction in VAT to 5% would be a better move for the treasury than a big duty cut. Certain people and companies can get the VAT back, absolutely no-one reclaims duty. It'd be the equivalent of a 27p duty cut and would send the green lobby bananas creating the perfect opponents for the government as an added bonus
If it gets much worse I think the government is going to have to do far more with free school meals, food banks and fuel subsidies.
We're not far off quasi-war time conditions and the usual rules of free market economics don't deliver the goods for everyone in such circumstances.
It is going to get much worse: War in Ukraine going on and on. A complete redrawing of supply routes for hydrocarbons is ongoing which is driving costs upwards. No let up in sight for oil price rises say analysts. Gas price has dropped but we can't benefit as we shut down our storage facilities for private profit. So we're having to dump much of the cheap gas into Europe FX really not helping as cable is pro dollah and anti sterling Food ingredient supply is a mess (not just Ukraine) and again shows little sign of slowing down. As an example the retail price of rapeseed oil has doubled. Shipping costs are crazy - largely driven by oil prices - which means all that stuff we import from far away is lots more to make due to all of the above then lots more to ship
And I could go on. You mention quasi-wartime conditions and I agree, But despite the very genuine distress that so many are already in like the phony war of late 1939 we haven't really got started yet.
I agree with the suggestions about VAT cuts. It is a regressive tax which hits the poorest hardest. We can both make bills cheaper for them AND drive consumption which itself drives jobs which t=drives tax receipts to make up the lost VAT revenue.
Wait, so creating a whole new trading stance is costly? If only someone had said something!
People did say something, but sanctioning Russia was still necessary post-invasion. Would you have had us do elsewise?
That's why German car makers are doing their typical mercantilist thing and pressuring the German government to end the sanctions, and why Germany and France are the weak link in maintaining the sanctions, due to the power of the German car makers etc - thankfully Britain is providing the backbone amongst western Europe, and Eastern Europe and the USA are too.
Backbone my arse, as ever we will be USA poodles, watch them and try to copy on a shoestring with lots of windbaggery for free.
If Starmer is taking a neutral rather than Blair-era line on the RMT, as the Mail seems to be reporting, it's very likely to be researched on working-class voters in key constituencies, and to be good politics. Note the Tories' recent hollow rhetoric after the public backlash against P&O. Much of the public has realised that the pendulum was swung too far from one extreme to another, from excessive union power to excessive employer power. He may even understand that Britain's economy, and arguably that of America too, cannot even be successfully rebalanced without at least some limited shift of bargaining power back to the forces of labour. Biden understands this too, as an old union man.
Well exactly. A lot of the muck throwing directed at the rail unions is all about train drivers' pay and how they ought to be delighted to accept below inflation settlements because they already get a generous wage (this argument being particularly popular amongst elderly Conservatives who would throw an Earth shaking tantrum if their state pension rises were capped at inflation for over a decade, never mind the real terms decreases that a lot of workers have had to put up with since the banking crisis.)
Seldom does anyone stop to ask why it is that rail workers do comparatively well with their pay settlements. It is, of course, because they have the instrument of collective action available to them. Workers in those industries and sectors where employees retain the power to kick stingy or downright rapacious bosses in the nuts are bound to do better, if only they have the will to resort to the tactic (and, if that causes collateral damage, in the form of nuisance to third parties, then that's just hard luck - what are they meant to do otherwise, roll over all the time?) Frankly I'm surprised that the likes of nurses and teachers don't do it more often.
At the end of the day, both Government and private enterprise is full of organisations that are well capable of paying decent wages but constantly plead poverty to avoid doing so - and the inflationary environment is always weaponised as an excuse. If inflation is low then wage settlements should be crap, because what do people need the extra money for and asking for it is greedy. If inflation is high then wage settlements should still be crap, because wage-price spiral. It's bollocks.
If Government really wants to up the remuneration of poorly compensated public sector workers then it can do it by raising taxes on the better off. If businesses, or at the very least the large fraction of them that are still doing well, want to pay their poorly compensated workers a better wage then they can do it by making slightly smaller profits or paying out a bit less in dividends to the shareholders.
The common theme in all of this is that squeezing the wages of ordinary workers is entirely about upwards redistribution: ensuring that a bigger slice of the cake can be enjoyed by the rich. The rich can fuck off.
It’s more that they have a monopoly both of service to customers and employees for the producers that gives them the power. Unions are just a way to organise it. As you saw with the Reagan ATC decision a bold government can counter that
I would be very careful when it comes to commenting on the wages of railway workers.
While Train Drivers are incredibly well paid (but not compared to pilots and the job is way, way harder than most people will think it is) most other rail staff really aren't that well paid...
How hard can it be , you watch for green or red light and turn a little handle one way to speed up and the other way to slow down whilst having sometimes to use one foot to press a brake pedal.
Your train takes 1 mile to stop and you can only see 1/2 a mile ahead - so you need to be able to remember exactly where you are at any time and know what is coming up...
Don't they have any signalling to advise that? Seems rather dangerous to rely upon memory instead of signalling.
They do have signalling, and modern trains have a GPS display showing where they are - but the drivers still have to be trained and validated both on the train type and the route travelled.
Long-distance trains often change driver during the journey. A driver on a London to Edinburgh train might get off at Darlington, and meet the train coming the other way to drive it back to London. The logistics of railways get very complicated!
Mr. NorthWales, those who have shifted to working from home rather than commuting may be glad of the shift given price hikes and the unions doing their best to hold people to ransom.
Indeed - the irony cannot be lost by all those demanding working from home of the direct impact on railways, their incomes, and their future
Mind you if I could work from home with the present fuel costs and rail ticket fares I really would want to
Railways are there to take people where they want to go. People aren't there to give railway workers jobs.
If people want to work from home, that's a valid wish. There are some people who seem to think that their choice is invalid because they ought to have a role as unwilling consumers of transport services.
I agree but there is an effect on railways and jobs as less use the services
On fuel, a reduction in VAT to 5% would be a better move for the treasury than a big duty cut. Certain people and companies can get the VAT back, absolutely no-one reclaims duty. It'd be the equivalent of a 27p duty cut and would send the green lobby bananas creating the perfect opponents for the government as an added bonus
If it gets much worse I think the government is going to have to do far more with free school meals, food banks and fuel subsidies.
We're not far off quasi-war time conditions and the usual rules of free market economics don't deliver the goods for everyone in such circumstances.
A stat that put it in perspective for me was 10m Brits skipped a meal in April, a rise of 60% from January. 2.4m adults skipped food for a whole day because of finances!
Come this winter costs will have risen significantly again, any savings further depleted and ability for the poorest to credit decreased. It is going to be a really tough winter for not just a few but the poorest quarter to a third in the country.
Things like the return of the £20 UC uplift are a no brainer, and will happen, although probably rebadged as something else to avoid claims of a u-turn.
Yes, I live in a very prosperous area, but chatted with two separate people at the town fair on Saturday who came specifically to ask advice - one is sofa-surfing and has been told he's not been in our area long enough to qualify to go on the waiting list for housing; the other is only eating one meal a day to get by. Not an immigration issue - both as English as I am - and neither was angry or bitter, just worried. (I'm looking into the specific cases.)
Anecdata, but if that's popping up here, what can it be like in poorer areas?
I really fear for the poor and lower paid and HMG has to address this challenge for them
Asda have just notified me that their milk has gone upto £1.35 when it wasn't so long ago it was £1.09. We can afford it but this is only one of many essential food items, and of course fuel is astronomic and I read earlier that it could rise to £2.30 a litre
On 5 live business this morning an economist said that for every 10 dollar increase in oil the world loses half a percent on gdp, and once you buy a tank of petrol/diesel for over £100, when it was £60 a few months ago, then £40 cannot be spent on something else
Forget Boris and Starmer, this is a crisis like no other we have witnessed since WW11 and I have no idea how any politician can mitigate the effects for so many
We are all going to be poorer and buy less and of course recession is virtually guaranteed, sadly
And good morning
We are not all poorer G, the ones coining in the extra money for same products are doing very well indeed, ie oil companies and Governments taxing it.
Hence windfall tax and all governments need taxes, never more so following covid and Ukraine
Rail seems like a perfect case study for an AI based driving system
It's the same as driverless cars - very easy to do if you can 100% remove all Human Beings from the track / road.
An awful lot harder if you can't.
Remember that all the AI experts on here say that driverless cars aren't the 90/99% problem that most people think they are. They are 99.9999% problems and until you get to 99.9999% no insurance company is going to touch them.
Trains are the same - the AI stuff is easy, removing any chance of a human being appearing on the track or another issue occurring is way harder.
Edit - and driverless cars are here - but only in places where no human beings randomly wander in the same place.
I accept Boris is a deeply flawed PM but he does have charisma and "boosterism" which I think all the alternatives lack. Some may be quite competent but it's not obvious to me that that is the case. Who would you make the case for on the grounds of competence or better still ability?
I've already said that I think Hunt is the best bet, but I'm not really fussed too much. There are a few people I think would be worse, but anyone ANYONE will do.
I don't want charisma. That's for game show hosts. I want someone who can do the job. We need to quit this destructive pattern of thinking that says politics is entertainment.
How about Theresa May?
Theresa May shows why charisma is a part of the job.
Its not just relevant at election time, its also about being able to connect with others in order to get them to get the job done in Parliament and elsewhere by passing votes etc
Theresa May was the worst PM in centuries and was utterly unable to get her flagship policy through Parliament despite it being the one thing she spent her premiership working on for years and spending months trying to ram it through Parliament.
Modern Prime Ministers who have been able to get stuff done have all had charisma, different types of charisma, but they've all had it.
You need both integrity and charisma. May was bad, Boris is worse.
You need to be a pretty straight sort of guy?
Definitely. A vast improvement.
Give over. I voted for Blair in 2001, despite the flagrant corruption of Blair and Ecclestone etc he still seemed like the better PM than Hague would have been at the time.
I've said for a long time Boris should go but lets not rewrite history, if you think Blair's blatant corruption, the cash for honours and most seriously of all taking us to war by misleading Parliament with a sexed up dossier all shows more integrity than Boris getting fined for this then you might be being just the slightest bit partisan.
Partisan, definitely! Just like you and pretty much everyone here. Even, so in every respect Blair was a more successful PM than Boris. Give me Blair over this lot any day.
So what you're saying is blatant corruption and misleading Parliament to take the country to war is OK so long as you get what you want politically?
That is how much you value "integrity"?
Bless. That old chestnut. I understand why you prefer to talk about events 20 years ago than grapple with today, I really do. You remind me of old Trots going on about Fatcha. I hope it makes you feel better.
Oh I don't normally talk about events of 20 years ago, I just brought it up because you started virtue signalling about integrity and then doubled down on claiming the pretty straight sort of guy was better.
We've got to the bottom of how much you value integrity. Misleading Parliament, taking us to war on false pretences and outright corruption is all A-OK with you so long as its your guy doing it. That's how important you value "integrity".
You’re so funny. I congratulate you on getting to the bottom. You’re like a forensic crossexaminer. Utterly devastating. 😂
Regardless of what you say, and what mental gymnastics you contort yourself with, the fact remains integrity matters in a PM and this PM uniquely has none.
On fuel, a reduction in VAT to 5% would be a better move for the treasury than a big duty cut. Certain people and companies can get the VAT back, absolutely no-one reclaims duty. It'd be the equivalent of a 27p duty cut and would send the green lobby bananas creating the perfect opponents for the government as an added bonus
If it gets much worse I think the government is going to have t
A difference I noticed in Denmark where my son lives is the number of driverless trains. Scandinavia isn't renowned for right-wing excesses, but they don't regard this as abnormal.
Unions exist to boost the pay of workers. The leaders may be left-wing sometimes, but they know which side their bread is buttered. Keep the numbers up and the pay rises coming and they can support North Korea if they like.
I think the sad truth is the network is going to need to be largely automated in the longer term - just as firemen, loco cleaners and signalmen went so will many drivers. This will need to be together with remote condition monitoring of assets using AI and more automated asset maintenance.
Staffing costs are phenomenally expensive.
Less than you’d think. A nine-coach IET needs one driver and (depending on union agreements) possibly one guard. Most of the southern commuter fleet just needs one driver. Even a ten-coach Voyager, among the most expensive type of train to operate, needs one driver and two guards.
There is some fat to be trimmed - I can’t see ticket offices surviving for long in all but the biggest stations. But train and station staff costs aren’t what are killing the railway.
The real problem is infrastructure. Track renewals and even the most modest enhancements are phenomenally expensive. A new basic station costs £14m absolute minimum. £14m!! For a concrete platform, an expanse of tarmac car park, and a little station building. It’s insane. The Northumberland Line reopening is costing £166m just to run slow passenger trains on existing tracks.
I accept Boris is a deeply flawed PM but he does have charisma and "boosterism" which I think all the alternatives lack. Some may be quite competent but it's not obvious to me that that is the case. Who would you make the case for on the grounds of competence or better still ability?
I've already said that I think Hunt is the best bet, but I'm not really fussed too much. There are a few people I think would be worse, but anyone ANYONE will do.
I don't want charisma. That's for game show hosts. I want someone who can do the job. We need to quit this destructive pattern of thinking that says politics is entertainment.
How about Theresa May?
Theresa May shows why charisma is a part of the job.
Its not just relevant at election time, its also about being able to connect with others in order to get them to get the job done in Parliament and elsewhere by passing votes etc
Theresa May was the worst PM in centuries and was utterly unable to get her flagship policy through Parliament despite it being the one thing she spent her premiership working on for years and spending months trying to ram it through Parliament.
Modern Prime Ministers who have been able to get stuff done have all had charisma, different types of charisma, but they've all had it.
You need both integrity and charisma. May was bad, Boris is worse.
The fact May couldn’t pass Brexit had as much to do with integrity free Boris manipulating the situation for a run at no10 than it did Mays lack of charisma.
And you don't get to the top with no charisma at all. Think of 1992 Major, May telling the Conservatives uncomfortable truths about their Nasty Party reputation. Brown in full-on Son of the Manse mode.
They didn't have enough charisma to win, because they ended up against Blair, Johnson, Cameron and Events (dear boy), but that's a slightly different matter. Any of us condemning them for being uncharismatic would be like a Sunday footballer telling an England player that they're rubbish.
Besides, if we have moved from a world where charisma is an important thing, to a certain kind of charisma being the determining thing, that's not good.
Although it obviously rained overnight, the sun is shining now so it looks quite a nice morning.
Surely part of Mrs May's problem was that she tried to be something she wasn't . If she'd been what she is, a somewhat schoolmistressy type, she might have been OK, but it was it was that appalling Dancing Queen bit that was really wrong.
That's not to say I'd have voted for her, of course!
Mr. eek, except that driverless trains already successful exist in any countries, right?
I agree driverless cars are not going to happen. They're the worst of all worlds. It's way easier to pay attention to a task for an hour than to do nothing but be ready to instantly act in case of an emergency.
I accept Boris is a deeply flawed PM but he does have charisma and "boosterism" which I think all the alternatives lack. Some may be quite competent but it's not obvious to me that that is the case. Who would you make the case for on the grounds of competence or better still ability?
That's really not the question, though. Boris is a slow poison both to his arty and his country.
I‘m glad he won, for the simple reason that, if he had lost, it would have been very negative ramifications for what’s happening in the Ukraine:
1. Russia would have seen it as a major boost and would boost their likelihood of thinking they can grind out a victory by wearing down the West’s resolve;
2. Conversely, losing him would have hit Ukraine’s confidence about Western support. Zelensky didn’t comment until after the result came out but it was clear from his comments he was relieved. Ditto for the Central / Eastern Europeans (ex-Hungary) and the Baltics;
3. Whatever you think of him domestically, he has been the most steadfast of the major western powers in pushing back against Putin and supporting Ukraine. The US has wobbled alarmingly on more than one occasion (the fighter jets being the obvious one) and we all know about France and Germany. It’s fair to say that the U.K. has been the glue for a lot of the support to the Ukraine. And, if he had gone, the likes of Macron and Scholz would have been pushing more for “accommodation” with Russia;
4. I don’t think any of his likely successors would have the same influence on Western policy direction. Wallace, obviously, would continue the policy and would have been the best bet. I could see Truss, Raab or Patel also been quite steely but, again all of the above, would have been coming in as a new PM and so with less influence. Hunt would have been a disaster - while he would have trotted out the smooth, silky lines, in reality he would be edging the U.K. to be taking more of a stance with France and Germany.
That's just your prejudices talking, I think. The likelihood of any substantive change in UK policy should Boris get his deserts is extremely low, whoever replaces him.
Yes, its understandable Zelensky was pleased, but he would find little change in support if it did happen. People are not looking to shift Boris because they think his policy on Ukraine was too supportive.
On fuel, a reduction in VAT to 5% would be a better move for the treasury than a big duty cut. Certain people and companies can get the VAT back, absolutely no-one reclaims duty. It'd be the equivalent of a 27p duty cut and would send the green lobby bananas creating the perfect opponents for the government as an added bonus
If it gets much worse I think the government is going to have t
A difference I noticed in Denmark where my son lives is the number of driverless trains. Scandinavia isn't renowned for right-wing excesses, but they don't regard this as abnormal.
Unions exist to boost the pay of workers. The leaders may be left-wing sometimes, but they know which side their bread is buttered. Keep the numbers up and the pay rises coming and they can support North Korea if they like.
I think the sad truth is the network is going to need to be largely automated in the longer term - just as firemen, loco cleaners and signalmen went so will many drivers. This will need to be together with remote condition monitoring of assets using AI and more automated asset maintenance.
Staffing costs are phenomenally expensive.
Less than you’d think. A nine-coach IET needs one driver and (depending on union agreements) possibly one guard. Most of the southern commuter fleet just needs one driver. Even a ten-coach Voyager, among the most expensive type of train to operate, needs one driver and two guards.
There is some fat to be trimmed - I can’t see ticket offices surviving for long in all but the biggest stations. But train and station staff costs aren’t what are killing the railway.
The real problem is infrastructure. Track renewals and even the most modest enhancements are phenomenally expensive. A new basic station costs £14m absolute minimum. £14m!! For a concrete platform, an expanse of tarmac car park, and a little station building. It’s insane. The Northumberland Line reopening is costing £166m just to run slow passenger trains on existing tracks.
Someone pointed out to me that the track bed between Northallerton and York needs to be repaired as its end of life (not surprising as it's been in use for 100+ years and trains are way heavier than they used to be).
I accept Boris is a deeply flawed PM but he does have charisma and "boosterism" which I think all the alternatives lack. Some may be quite competent but it's not obvious to me that that is the case. Who would you make the case for on the grounds of competence or better still ability?
That's really not the question, though. Boris is a slow poison both to his arty and his country.
I‘m glad he won, for the simple reason that, if he had lost, it would have been very negative ramifications for what’s happening in the Ukraine:
1. Russia would have seen it as a major boost and would boost their likelihood of thinking they can grind out a victory by wearing down the West’s resolve;
2. Conversely, losing him would have hit Ukraine’s confidence about Western support. Zelensky didn’t comment until after the result came out but it was clear from his comments he was relieved. Ditto for the Central / Eastern Europeans (ex-Hungary) and the Baltics;
3. Whatever you think of him domestically, he has been the most steadfast of the major western powers in pushing back against Putin and supporting Ukraine. The US has wobbled alarmingly on more than one occasion (the fighter jets being the obvious one) and we all know about France and Germany. It’s fair to say that the U.K. has been the glue for a lot of the support to the Ukraine. And, if he had gone, the likes of Macron and Scholz would have been pushing more for “accommodation” with Russia;
4. I don’t think any of his likely successors would have the same influence on Western policy direction. Wallace, obviously, would continue the policy and would have been the best bet. I could see Truss, Raab or Patel also been quite steely but, again all of the above, would have been coming in as a new PM and so with less influence. Hunt would have been a disaster - while he would have trotted out the smooth, silky lines, in reality he would be edging the U.K. to be taking more of a stance with France and Germany.
That's just your prejudices talking, I think. The likelihood of any substantive change in UK policy should Boris get his deserts is extremely low, whoever replaces him.
Yes, its understandable Zelensky was pleased, but he would find little change in support if it did happen. People are not looking to shift Boris because they think his policy on Ukraine was too supportive.
He would also have effusively slurped the ringpiece of whomever replaced Johnson. He knows what he's doing. The obsequious flattery costs him nothing.
Trivial Gossip Klaxon: If I have understood this correctly, the Leader of East Devon Council (which covers Tiv&Hon) who was elected as an Independent, has just joined the Lib Dems.
On fuel, a reduction in VAT to 5% would be a better move for the treasury than a big duty cut. Certain people and companies can get the VAT back, absolutely no-one reclaims duty. It'd be the equivalent of a 27p duty cut and would send the green lobby bananas creating the perfect opponents for the government as an added bonus
If it gets much worse I think the government is going to have to do far more with free school meals, food banks and fuel subsidies.
We're not far off quasi-war time conditions and the usual rules of free market economics don't deliver the goods for everyone in such circumstances.
It is going to get much worse: War in Ukraine going on and on. A complete redrawing of supply routes for hydrocarbons is ongoing which is driving costs upwards. No let up in sight for oil price rises say analysts. Gas price has dropped but we can't benefit as we shut down our storage facilities for private profit. So we're having to dump much of the cheap gas into Europe FX really not helping as cable is pro dollah and anti sterling Food ingredient supply is a mess (not just Ukraine) and again shows little sign of slowing down. As an example the retail price of rapeseed oil has doubled. Shipping costs are crazy - largely driven by oil prices - which means all that stuff we import from far away is lots more to make due to all of the above then lots more to ship
And I could go on. You mention quasi-wartime conditions and I agree, But despite the very genuine distress that so many are already in like the phony war of late 1939 we haven't really got started yet.
I agree with the suggestions about VAT cuts. It is a regressive tax which hits the poorest hardest. We can both make bills cheaper for them AND drive consumption which itself drives jobs which t=drives tax receipts to make up the lost VAT revenue.
Wait, so creating a whole new trading stance is costly? If only someone had said something!
People did say something, but sanctioning Russia was still necessary post-invasion. Would you have had us do elsewise?
That's why German car makers are doing their typical mercantilist thing and pressuring the German government to end the sanctions, and why Germany and France are the weak link in maintaining the sanctions, due to the power of the German car makers etc - thankfully Britain is providing the backbone amongst western Europe, and Eastern Europe and the USA are too.
Backbone my arse, as ever we will be USA poodles, watch them and try to copy on a shoestring with lots of windbaggery for free.
Rail seems like a perfect case study for an AI based driving system
It's the same as driverless cars - very easy to do if you can 100% remove all Human Beings from the track / road.
An awful lot harder if you can't.
Remember that all the AI experts on here say that driverless cars aren't the 90/99% problem that most people think they are. They are 99.9999% problems and until you get to 99.9999% no insurance company is going to touch them.
Trains are the same - the AI stuff is easy, removing any chance of a human being appearing on the track or another issue occurring is way harder.
Edit - and driverless cars are here - but only in places where no human beings randomly wander in the same place.
Absolutely. It’s been clear for several years that the way to do SD cars is to build a city around them. Which is why the first implementations will likely be in Arabia or China.
In the UK you’d need to build another Milton Keynes, with separate roads for SD and regular vehicles.
Rail seems like a perfect case study for an AI based driving system
It's the same as driverless cars - very easy to do if you can 100% remove all Human Beings from the track / road.
An awful lot harder if you can't.
Remember that all the AI experts on here say that driverless cars aren't the 90/99% problem that most people think they are. They are 99.9999% problems and until you get to 99.9999% no insurance company is going to touch them.
Trains are the same - the AI stuff is easy, removing any chance of a human being appearing on the track or another issue occurring is way harder.
Edit - and driverless cars are here - but only in places where no human beings randomly wander in the same place.
Mr. eek, except that driverless trains already successful exist in any countries, right?
I agree driverless cars are not going to happen. They're the worst of all worlds. It's way easier to pay attention to a task for an hour than to do nothing but be ready to instantly act in case of an emergency.
Once again - let me build you a completely new network and it can be driverless. But you can't retrofit it and there may be reasons why it's not worth the money.
Elizabeth line could be automated but it isn't because it reuses existing (ground level, so accessible) track in various places
Rail seems like a perfect case study for an AI based driving system
It's the same as driverless cars - very easy to do if you can 100% remove all Human Beings from the track / road.
An awful lot harder if you can't.
Remember that all the AI experts on here say that driverless cars aren't the 90/99% problem that most people think they are. They are 99.9999% problems and until you get to 99.9999% no insurance company is going to touch them.
Trains are the same - the AI stuff is easy, removing any chance of a human being appearing on the track or another issue occurring is way harder.
Edit - and driverless cars are here - but only in places where no human beings randomly wander in the same place.
(And that’s in the comparatively constrained environment of the London Underground. The mainline railway is a still more difficult problem.)
Yep I posted that link in my very first reply to this topic.
John Bull is very good at this stuff (especially given that it's a hobby for him and not his day job unlike say Gareth Dennis who does rail infrastructure for a living).
I accept Boris is a deeply flawed PM but he does have charisma and "boosterism" which I think all the alternatives lack. Some may be quite competent but it's not obvious to me that that is the case. Who would you make the case for on the grounds of competence or better still ability?
I've already said that I think Hunt is the best bet, but I'm not really fussed too much. There are a few people I think would be worse, but anyone ANYONE will do.
I don't want charisma. That's for game show hosts. I want someone who can do the job. We need to quit this destructive pattern of thinking that says politics is entertainment.
How about Theresa May?
Theresa May shows why charisma is a part of the job.
Its not just relevant at election time, its also about being able to connect with others in order to get them to get the job done in Parliament and elsewhere by passing votes etc
Theresa May was the worst PM in centuries and was utterly unable to get her flagship policy through Parliament despite it being the one thing she spent her premiership working on for years and spending months trying to ram it through Parliament.
Modern Prime Ministers who have been able to get stuff done have all had charisma, different types of charisma, but they've all had it.
You need both integrity and charisma. May was bad, Boris is worse.
The fact May couldn’t pass Brexit had as much to do with integrity free Boris manipulating the situation for a run at no10 than it did Mays lack of charisma.
And you don't get to the top with no charisma at all. Think of 1992 Major, May telling the Conservatives uncomfortable truths about their Nasty Party reputation. Brown in full-on Son of the Manse mode.
They didn't have enough charisma to win, because they ended up against Blair, Johnson, Cameron and Events (dear boy), but that's a slightly different matter. Any of us condemning them for being uncharismatic would be like a Sunday footballer telling an England player that they're rubbish.
Besides, if we have moved from a world where charisma is an important thing, to a certain kind of charisma being the determining thing, that's not good.
Although it obviously rained overnight, the sun is shining now so it looks quite a nice morning.
Surely part of Mrs May's problem was that she tried to be something she wasn't . If she'd been what she is, a somewhat schoolmistressy type, she might have been OK, but it was it was that appalling Dancing Queen bit that was really wrong.
That's not to say I'd have voted for her, of course!
Yes, it was Lynton Crosby who almost lost 2017 by campaigning as if May were David Cameron. Of course, Labour had done the same by trying to turn Gordon Brown into Tony Blair (and other stunts) instead of playing it straight. Doubtless when Boris is replaced, we shall see Jeremy Hunt or Liz Truss donning high-viz to hide in fridges.
I accept Boris is a deeply flawed PM but he does have charisma and "boosterism" which I think all the alternatives lack. Some may be quite competent but it's not obvious to me that that is the case. Who would you make the case for on the grounds of competence or better still ability?
That's really not the question, though. Boris is a slow poison both to his arty and his country.
I‘m glad he won, for the simple reason that, if he had lost, it would have been very negative ramifications for what’s happening in the Ukraine:
1. Russia would have seen it as a major boost and would boost their likelihood of thinking they can grind out a victory by wearing down the West’s resolve;
2. Conversely, losing him would have hit Ukraine’s confidence about Western support. Zelensky didn’t comment until after the result came out but it was clear from his comments he was relieved. Ditto for the Central / Eastern Europeans (ex-Hungary) and the Baltics;
3. Whatever you think of him domestically, he has been the most steadfast of the major western powers in pushing back against Putin and supporting Ukraine. The US has wobbled alarmingly on more than one occasion (the fighter jets being the obvious one) and we all know about France and Germany. It’s fair to say that the U.K. has been the glue for a lot of the support to the Ukraine. And, if he had gone, the likes of Macron and Scholz would have been pushing more for “accommodation” with Russia;
4. I don’t think any of his likely successors would have the same influence on Western policy direction. Wallace, obviously, would continue the policy and would have been the best bet. I could see Truss, Raab or Patel also been quite steely but, again all of the above, would have been coming in as a new PM and so with less influence. Hunt would have been a disaster - while he would have trotted out the smooth, silky lines, in reality he would be edging the U.K. to be taking more of a stance with France and Germany.
That's just your prejudices talking, I think. The likelihood of any substantive change in UK policy should Boris get his deserts is extremely low, whoever replaces him.
Yes, its understandable Zelensky was pleased, but he would find little change in support if it did happen. People are not looking to shift Boris because they think his policy on Ukraine was too supportive.
He would also have effusively slurped the ringpiece of whomever replaced Johnson. He knows what he's doing. The obsequious flattery costs him nothing.
Needs must in desperate times. That's why it has been interesting when he has mildly criticised some allies, since he needs all the help he can get and will say whatever is necessary, so in some cases must think a bit of critique will put pressure on those people from their own side.
He may also genuinely like Boris, many people do to start with in limited interactions, but it's not massively relevant even if he does.
I accept Boris is a deeply flawed PM but he does have charisma and "boosterism" which I think all the alternatives lack. Some may be quite competent but it's not obvious to me that that is the case. Who would you make the case for on the grounds of competence or better still ability?
I've already said that I think Hunt is the best bet, but I'm not really fussed too much. There are a few people I think would be worse, but anyone ANYONE will do.
I don't want charisma. That's for game show hosts. I want someone who can do the job. We need to quit this destructive pattern of thinking that says politics is entertainment.
How about Theresa May?
Theresa May shows why charisma is a part of the job.
Its not just relevant at election time, its also about being able to connect with others in order to get them to get the job done in Parliament and elsewhere by passing votes etc
Theresa May was the worst PM in centuries and was utterly unable to get her flagship policy through Parliament despite it being the one thing she spent her premiership working on for years and spending months trying to ram it through Parliament.
Modern Prime Ministers who have been able to get stuff done have all had charisma, different types of charisma, but they've all had it.
You need both integrity and charisma. May was bad, Boris is worse.
The fact May couldn’t pass Brexit had as much to do with integrity free Boris manipulating the situation for a run at no10 than it did Mays lack of charisma.
And you don't get to the top with no charisma at all. Think of 1992 Major, May telling the Conservatives uncomfortable truths about their Nasty Party reputation. Brown in full-on Son of the Manse mode.
They didn't have enough charisma to win, because they ended up against Blair, Johnson, Cameron and Events (dear boy), but that's a slightly different matter. Any of us condemning them for being uncharismatic would be like a Sunday footballer telling an England player that they're rubbish.
Besides, if we have moved from a world where charisma is an important thing, to a certain kind of charisma being the determining thing, that's not good.
Although it obviously rained overnight, the sun is shining now so it looks quite a nice morning.
Surely part of Mrs May's problem was that she tried to be something she wasn't . If she'd been what she is, a somewhat schoolmistressy type, she might have been OK, but it was it was that appalling Dancing Queen bit that was really wrong.
That's not to say I'd have voted for her, of course!
Yes, it was Lynton Crosby who almost lost 2017 by campaigning as if May were David Cameron. Of course, Labour had done the same by trying to turn Gordon Brown into Tony Blair (and other stunts) instead of playing it straight. Doubtless when Boris is replaced, we shall see Jeremy Hunt or Liz Truss donning high-viz to hide in fridges.
May lost by introducing a death tax within the campaign without the necessary x months of warming people up to the scale of the social care problem.
I accept Boris is a deeply flawed PM but he does have charisma and "boosterism" which I think all the alternatives lack. Some may be quite competent but it's not obvious to me that that is the case. Who would you make the case for on the grounds of competence or better still ability?
I've already said that I think Hunt is the best bet, but I'm not really fussed too much. There are a few people I think would be worse, but anyone ANYONE will do.
I don't want charisma. That's for game show hosts. I want someone who can do the job. We need to quit this destructive pattern of thinking that says politics is entertainment.
How about Theresa May?
Theresa May shows why charisma is a part of the job.
Its not just relevant at election time, its also about being able to connect with others in order to get them to get the job done in Parliament and elsewhere by passing votes etc
Theresa May was the worst PM in centuries and was utterly unable to get her flagship policy through Parliament despite it being the one thing she spent her premiership working on for years and spending months trying to ram it through Parliament.
Modern Prime Ministers who have been able to get stuff done have all had charisma, different types of charisma, but they've all had it.
You need both integrity and charisma. May was bad, Boris is worse.
The fact May couldn’t pass Brexit had as much to do with integrity free Boris manipulating the situation for a run at no10 than it did Mays lack of charisma.
Warning: the following comment might shock, offend and upset.
I quite liked Teresa May!
And I agree with Jonathan. I think her deal was probably as good as could have been achieved from where she started from and may well have got through parliament if Boris hadn't exploited the situation for his own ends.
I agree. She got the best deal out of a bad situation.
It should have been voted through. Labour are partly to blame for this. It's easy to forget we only joined the EU in the first place because sufficient Labour MPs were on board.
It didn't look like it at the time,and the fact that she kept putting the same unamended deal back to the HoC time and again was poor politics. With hindsight I'd have bitten her hand off.
Respect to Theresa for voting against Johnson in her ball gown. History will show her in a more favourable light than it will Johnson.
As I contemplate the commute from the coffee machine to the office, a thought to bring a few other strands together.
One of the things I learned about Boris Johnson quite early is he's not an idiot and he's risk averse.
When he became London Mayor in 2008, a big part of his campaigning was about how he was going to take on the RMT (led at the time by Bob Crow) who had blighted Ken Livingstone's tenure with periodic strikes out of which they (the union) had done pretty well.
I said on here there was going to be a big showdown between Johnson and Crow effectively on the central question of who runs London.
It never happened - indeed, the relationship between Johnson and Crow was surprisingly good and when Crow died, Johnson was quite fulsome in his tribute.
I think Johnson saw Crow as a much more formidable negotiator and political operator than he had expected. RMT did very well out of the Crow leadership - they would pick their fights carefully - often on issues of passenger safety whereby they would have a degree of public sympathy. The RMT got a good deal for drivers during the Olympics and for the launch of the Night Tube as well.
The current RMT leadership is, I suspect, not in Crow's class but Johnson learnt not to believe he would always be the best operator in the room and he recognises and respects those whom he regards as political equals. The problem with leadership is it's easy to conclude you are better than everyone else because you are the leader which is rarely the case.
Longevity enhances that hubristic notion of superiority and invincibility but it also accumulates the number of those who see their own career enhancement blocked by your continuation.
On the railways, the conclusion seems to be the old Irish one ... "If I were you, sir, I wouldn't start from here."
Being honest - that's true everywhere anytime I look at anything.
But it's way more fun trying to work out how to implement things that improve the current process rather than completely binning it and starting again (that just annoys the existing people who understand the current process).
I could develop cheaper solutions by binning everything and starting again but those systems will never be accepted by the current workers - if you want a successful project you iterate the current process annoyance by annoyance.
I accept Boris is a deeply flawed PM but he does have charisma and "boosterism" which I think all the alternatives lack. Some may be quite competent but it's not obvious to me that that is the case. Who would you make the case for on the grounds of competence or better still ability?
I've already said that I think Hunt is the best bet, but I'm not really fussed too much. There are a few people I think would be worse, but anyone ANYONE will do.
I don't want charisma. That's for game show hosts. I want someone who can do the job. We need to quit this destructive pattern of thinking that says politics is entertainment.
How about Theresa May?
Theresa May shows why charisma is a part of the job.
Its not just relevant at election time, its also about being able to connect with others in order to get them to get the job done in Parliament and elsewhere by passing votes etc
Theresa May was the worst PM in centuries and was utterly unable to get her flagship policy through Parliament despite it being the one thing she spent her premiership working on for years and spending months trying to ram it through Parliament.
Modern Prime Ministers who have been able to get stuff done have all had charisma, different types of charisma, but they've all had it.
You need both integrity and charisma. May was bad, Boris is worse.
The fact May couldn’t pass Brexit had as much to do with integrity free Boris manipulating the situation for a run at no10 than it did Mays lack of charisma.
And you don't get to the top with no charisma at all. Think of 1992 Major, May telling the Conservatives uncomfortable truths about their Nasty Party reputation. Brown in full-on Son of the Manse mode.
They didn't have enough charisma to win, because they ended up against Blair, Johnson, Cameron and Events (dear boy), but that's a slightly different matter. Any of us condemning them for being uncharismatic would be like a Sunday footballer telling an England player that they're rubbish.
Besides, if we have moved from a world where charisma is an important thing, to a certain kind of charisma being the determining thing, that's not good.
Although it obviously rained overnight, the sun is shining now so it looks quite a nice morning.
Surely part of Mrs May's problem was that she tried to be something she wasn't . If she'd been what she is, a somewhat schoolmistressy type, she might have been OK, but it was it was that appalling Dancing Queen bit that was really wrong.
That's not to say I'd have voted for her, of course!
Yes, it was Lynton Crosby who almost lost 2017 by campaigning as if May were David Cameron. Of course, Labour had done the same by trying to turn Gordon Brown into Tony Blair (and other stunts) instead of playing it straight. Doubtless when Boris is replaced, we shall see Jeremy Hunt or Liz Truss donning high-viz to hide in fridges.
May lost by introducing a death tax within the campaign without the necessary x months of warming people up to the scale of the social care problem.
May lost because of Lynton Crosby, and the two terrorist outrages during the campaign.
Rail seems like a perfect case study for an AI based driving system
It's the same as driverless cars - very easy to do if you can 100% remove all Human Beings from the track / road.
An awful lot harder if you can't.
Remember that all the AI experts on here say that driverless cars aren't the 90/99% problem that most people think they are. They are 99.9999% problems and until you get to 99.9999% no insurance company is going to touch them.
Trains are the same - the AI stuff is easy, removing any chance of a human being appearing on the track or another issue occurring is way harder.
Edit - and driverless cars are here - but only in places where no human beings randomly wander in the same place.
(And that’s in the comparatively constrained environment of the London Underground. The mainline railway is a still more difficult problem.)
Yep I posted that link in my very first reply to this topic.
John Bull is very good at this stuff (especially given that it's a hobby for him and not his day job unlike say Gareth Dennis who does rail infrastructure for a living).
It's always good, Mr eek, to read something from somebody who knows what they're talking about. Thank you!
As I contemplate the commute from the coffee machine to the office, a thought to bring a few other strands together.
One of the things I learned about Boris Johnson quite early is he's not an idiot and he's risk averse.
When he became London Mayor in 2008, a big part of his campaigning was about how he was going to take on the RMT (led at the time by Bob Crow) who had blighted Ken Livingstone's tenure with periodic strikes out of which they (the union) had done pretty well.
I said on here there was going to be a big showdown between Johnson and Crow effectively on the central question of who runs London.
It never happened - indeed, the relationship between Johnson and Crow was surprisingly good and when Crow died, Johnson was quite fulsome in his tribute.
I think Johnson saw Crow as a much more formidable negotiator and political operator than he had expected. RMT did very well out of the Crow leadership - they would pick their fights carefully - often on issues of passenger safety whereby they would have a degree of public sympathy. The RMT got a good deal for drivers during the Olympics and for the launch of the Night Tube as well.
The current RMT leadership is, I suspect, not in Crow's class but Johnson learnt not to believe he would always be the best operator in the room and he recognises and respects those whom he regards as political equals. The problem with leadership is it's easy to conclude you are better than everyone else because you are the leader which is rarely the case.
Longevity enhances that hubristic notion of superiority and invincibility but it also accumulates the number of those who see their own career enhancement blocked by your continuation.
There are a few who believe Boris's first Mayoral victory was due to the tube strikes that turned commuters against Ken.
On fuel, a reduction in VAT to 5% would be a better move for the treasury than a big duty cut. Certain people and companies can get the VAT back, absolutely no-one reclaims duty. It'd be the equivalent of a 27p duty cut and would send the green lobby bananas creating the perfect opponents for the government as an added bonus
If it gets much worse I think the government is going to have t
A difference I noticed in Denmark where my son lives is the number of driverless trains. Scandinavia isn't renowned for right-wing excesses, but they don't regard this as abnormal.
Unions exist to boost the pay of workers. The leaders may be left-wing sometimes, but they know which side their bread is buttered. Keep the numbers up and the pay rises coming and they can support North Korea if they like.
I think the sad truth is the network is going to need to be largely automated in the longer term - just as firemen, loco cleaners and signalmen went so will many drivers. This will need to be together with remote condition monitoring of assets using AI and more automated asset maintenance.
Staffing costs are phenomenally expensive.
Less than you’d think. A nine-coach IET needs one driver and (depending on union agreements) possibly one guard. Most of the southern commuter fleet just needs one driver. Even a ten-coach Voyager, among the most expensive type of train to operate, needs one driver and two guards.
There is some fat to be trimmed - I can’t see ticket offices surviving for long in all but the biggest stations. But train and station staff costs aren’t what are killing the railway.
The real problem is infrastructure. Track renewals and even the most modest enhancements are phenomenally expensive. A new basic station costs £14m absolute minimum. £14m!! For a concrete platform, an expanse of tarmac car park, and a little station building. It’s insane. The Northumberland Line reopening is costing £166m just to run slow passenger trains on existing tracks.
Someone pointed out to me that the track bed between Northallerton and York needs to be repaired as its end of life (not surprising as it's been in use for 100+ years and trains are way heavier than they used to be).
The cost is definitely Oh Boy...
One thing a certain billionaire is right about - unless we get a handle on reducing infrastructure costs, we are going to have less and less infrastructure. Not more.
Railways at a zillion pounds a mile are not sustainable.
Rail seems like a perfect case study for an AI based driving system
It's the same as driverless cars - very easy to do if you can 100% remove all Human Beings from the track / road.
An awful lot harder if you can't.
Remember that all the AI experts on here say that driverless cars aren't the 90/99% problem that most people think they are. They are 99.9999% problems and until you get to 99.9999% no insurance company is going to touch them.
Trains are the same - the AI stuff is easy, removing any chance of a human being appearing on the track or another issue occurring is way harder.
Edit - and driverless cars are here - but only in places where no human beings randomly wander in the same place.
(And that’s in the comparatively constrained environment of the London Underground. The mainline railway is a still more difficult problem.)
Imagine an AI train driver that was able to assimilate CCTV footage from the whole network. Someone's just run across the rails 18 miles up the track? The AI driver knows it's happening real time and can continuously monitor the situation unfolding before a decision needs to be made.
This is why AI will eventually replace all drivers. The capacity to consume huge amounts of data simultaneously will give them more than an edge, it'll blow humans out of the water. Humans are brilliant at narrow-focus tasks, but as soon as that gap is closed, and it will be, we won't look back.
Can I ask what you do for a living - because you clearly don't work in IT
Mr. Pete, one does wonder what was going through Labour's collective head on that.
Did they think if May got ousted the Conservatives would do anything but move in a more sceptical direction?
May's deal was the most pro-EU one they were going to get.
The alternate history where Labour abstained on Mrs May’s deal, probably now has Corbyn as PM, the Tories split in half, and the UK stuck in the backstop being told to bend over by Macron because he can.
I accept Boris is a deeply flawed PM but he does have charisma and "boosterism" which I think all the alternatives lack. Some may be quite competent but it's not obvious to me that that is the case. Who would you make the case for on the grounds of competence or better still ability?
I've already said that I think Hunt is the best bet, but I'm not really fussed too much. There are a few people I think would be worse, but anyone ANYONE will do.
I don't want charisma. That's for game show hosts. I want someone who can do the job. We need to quit this destructive pattern of thinking that says politics is entertainment.
How about Theresa May?
Theresa May shows why charisma is a part of the job.
Its not just relevant at election time, its also about being able to connect with others in order to get them to get the job done in Parliament and elsewhere by passing votes etc
Theresa May was the worst PM in centuries and was utterly unable to get her flagship policy through Parliament despite it being the one thing she spent her premiership working on for years and spending months trying to ram it through Parliament.
Modern Prime Ministers who have been able to get stuff done have all had charisma, different types of charisma, but they've all had it.
You need both integrity and charisma. May was bad, Boris is worse.
The fact May couldn’t pass Brexit had as much to do with integrity free Boris manipulating the situation for a run at no10 than it did Mays lack of charisma.
And you don't get to the top with no charisma at all. Think of 1992 Major, May telling the Conservatives uncomfortable truths about their Nasty Party reputation. Brown in full-on Son of the Manse mode.
They didn't have enough charisma to win, because they ended up against Blair, Johnson, Cameron and Events (dear boy), but that's a slightly different matter. Any of us condemning them for being uncharismatic would be like a Sunday footballer telling an England player that they're rubbish.
Besides, if we have moved from a world where charisma is an important thing, to a certain kind of charisma being the determining thing, that's not good.
Although it obviously rained overnight, the sun is shining now so it looks quite a nice morning.
Surely part of Mrs May's problem was that she tried to be something she wasn't . If she'd been what she is, a somewhat schoolmistressy type, she might have been OK, but it was it was that appalling Dancing Queen bit that was really wrong.
That's not to say I'd have voted for her, of course!
Yes, it was Lynton Crosby who almost lost 2017 by campaigning as if May were David Cameron. Of course, Labour had done the same by trying to turn Gordon Brown into Tony Blair (and other stunts) instead of playing it straight. Doubtless when Boris is replaced, we shall see Jeremy Hunt or Liz Truss donning high-viz to hide in fridges.
May lost by introducing a death tax within the campaign without the necessary x months of warming people up to the scale of the social care problem.
May lost because of Lynton Crosby, and the two terrorist outrages during the campaign.
May almost lost (she remained PM, she didn't lose) because she was crap. Lynton Crosby has a great track record, without him she may have actually managed to lose and we might have ended up with one of the greatest shocks of all time and PM Corbyn.
I accept Boris is a deeply flawed PM but he does have charisma and "boosterism" which I think all the alternatives lack. Some may be quite competent but it's not obvious to me that that is the case. Who would you make the case for on the grounds of competence or better still ability?
That's really not the question, though. Boris is a slow poison both to his arty and his country.
I‘m glad he won, for the simple reason that, if he had lost, it would have been very negative ramifications for what’s happening in the Ukraine:
1. Russia would have seen it as a major boost and would boost their likelihood of thinking they can grind out a victory by wearing down the West’s resolve;
2. Conversely, losing him would have hit Ukraine’s confidence about Western support. Zelensky didn’t comment until after the result came out but it was clear from his comments he was relieved. Ditto for the Central / Eastern Europeans (ex-Hungary) and the Baltics;
3. Whatever you think of him domestically, he has been the most steadfast of the major western powers in pushing back against Putin and supporting Ukraine. The US has wobbled alarmingly on more than one occasion (the fighter jets being the obvious one) and we all know about France and Germany. It’s fair to say that the U.K. has been the glue for a lot of the support to the Ukraine. And, if he had gone, the likes of Macron and Scholz would have been pushing more for “accommodation” with Russia;
4. I don’t think any of his likely successors would have the same influence on Western policy direction. Wallace, obviously, would continue the policy and would have been the best bet. I could see Truss, Raab or Patel also been quite steely but, again all of the above, would have been coming in as a new PM and so with less influence. Hunt would have been a disaster - while he would have trotted out the smooth, silky lines, in reality he would be edging the U.K. to be taking more of a stance with France and Germany.
That's just your prejudices talking, I think. The likelihood of any substantive change in UK policy should Boris get his deserts is extremely low, whoever replaces him.
None of the Tory rivals would be softer on supporting Ukraine, and Truss would be recklessly supporting. None of the opposition parties would be less supportive either.
Meanwhile Johnson is a mendacious POS who would shaft anyone, including Ukraine, if he thought it would keep him in power.
Irrespective of Boris' qualities, I don't think a change of government would make much difference to our policy, either. While there isn't completely 100% national consensus, there is very broad cross party support for Ukraine.
I accept Boris is a deeply flawed PM but he does have charisma and "boosterism" which I think all the alternatives lack. Some may be quite competent but it's not obvious to me that that is the case. Who would you make the case for on the grounds of competence or better still ability?
I've already said that I think Hunt is the best bet, but I'm not really fussed too much. There are a few people I think would be worse, but anyone ANYONE will do.
I don't want charisma. That's for game show hosts. I want someone who can do the job. We need to quit this destructive pattern of thinking that says politics is entertainment.
How about Theresa May?
Theresa May shows why charisma is a part of the job.
Its not just relevant at election time, its also about being able to connect with others in order to get them to get the job done in Parliament and elsewhere by passing votes etc
Theresa May was the worst PM in centuries and was utterly unable to get her flagship policy through Parliament despite it being the one thing she spent her premiership working on for years and spending months trying to ram it through Parliament.
Modern Prime Ministers who have been able to get stuff done have all had charisma, different types of charisma, but they've all had it.
You need both integrity and charisma. May was bad, Boris is worse.
The fact May couldn’t pass Brexit had as much to do with integrity free Boris manipulating the situation for a run at no10 than it did Mays lack of charisma.
And you don't get to the top with no charisma at all. Think of 1992 Major, May telling the Conservatives uncomfortable truths about their Nasty Party reputation. Brown in full-on Son of the Manse mode.
They didn't have enough charisma to win, because they ended up against Blair, Johnson, Cameron and Events (dear boy), but that's a slightly different matter. Any of us condemning them for being uncharismatic would be like a Sunday footballer telling an England player that they're rubbish.
Besides, if we have moved from a world where charisma is an important thing, to a certain kind of charisma being the determining thing, that's not good.
Although it obviously rained overnight, the sun is shining now so it looks quite a nice morning.
Surely part of Mrs May's problem was that she tried to be something she wasn't . If she'd been what she is, a somewhat schoolmistressy type, she might have been OK, but it was it was that appalling Dancing Queen bit that was really wrong.
That's not to say I'd have voted for her, of course!
Yes, it was Lynton Crosby who almost lost 2017 by campaigning as if May were David Cameron. Of course, Labour had done the same by trying to turn Gordon Brown into Tony Blair (and other stunts) instead of playing it straight. Doubtless when Boris is replaced, we shall see Jeremy Hunt or Liz Truss donning high-viz to hide in fridges.
May lost by introducing a death tax within the campaign without the necessary x months of warming people up to the scale of the social care problem.
Did May lose? I thought she formed a government after the election. If Starmer leads a coalition after the next election, or uses confidence and supply to do the same, will he have lost? She did not win a majority, but its surely not correct to say she lost.
On fuel, a reduction in VAT to 5% would be a better move for the treasury than a big duty cut. Certain people and companies can get the VAT back, absolutely no-one reclaims duty. It'd be the equivalent of a 27p duty cut and would send the green lobby bananas creating the perfect opponents for the government as an added bonus
If it gets much worse I think the government is going to have t
A difference I noticed in Denmark where my son lives is the number of driverless trains. Scandinavia isn't renowned for right-wing excesses, but they don't regard this as abnormal.
Unions exist to boost the pay of workers. The leaders may be left-wing sometimes, but they know which side their bread is buttered. Keep the numbers up and the pay rises coming and they can support North Korea if they like.
I think the sad truth is the network is going to need to be largely automated in the longer term - just as firemen, loco cleaners and signalmen went so will many drivers. This will need to be together with remote condition monitoring of assets using AI and more automated asset maintenance.
Staffing costs are phenomenally expensive.
Less than you’d think. A nine-coach IET needs one driver and (depending on union agreements) possibly one guard. Most of the southern commuter fleet just needs one driver. Even a ten-coach Voyager, among the most expensive type of train to operate, needs one driver and two guards.
There is some fat to be trimmed - I can’t see ticket offices surviving for long in all but the biggest stations. But train and station staff costs aren’t what are killing the railway.
The real problem is infrastructure. Track renewals and even the most modest enhancements are phenomenally expensive. A new basic station costs £14m absolute minimum. £14m!! For a concrete platform, an expanse of tarmac car park, and a little station building. It’s insane. The Northumberland Line reopening is costing £166m just to run slow passenger trains on existing tracks.
Someone pointed out to me that the track bed between Northallerton and York needs to be repaired as its end of life (not surprising as it's been in use for 100+ years and trains are way heavier than they used to be).
The cost is definitely Oh Boy...
One thing a certain billionaire is right about - unless we get a handle on reducing infrastructure costs, we are going to have less and less infrastructure. Not more.
Railways at a zillion pounds a mile are not sustainable.
HS2 is so costly because it was engineered to be cost safe by gold plating the design and doing everything including all risks upfront in a waterfall method.
The Elizabeth line is expensive because it's not completely new so needed to integrate with existing systems (never a great idea in the first place even worse when they are multiple existing systems).
Basically we are crap at doing these type of projects and the Treasury makes it worse by not accepting the risk of cost overruns and then scrapping stuff for no good reason. HS2E has cost over £1bn in waterfall development costs that will now need to be redone because of the delays..
Mr. Pete, one does wonder what was going through Labour's collective head on that.
Did they think if May got ousted the Conservatives would do anything but move in a more sceptical direction?
May's deal was the most pro-EU one they were going to get.
I was as guilty as anyone Morris, it looked like a poor deal to me and I was holding out for a best of three. I didn't regard that notion as "undemocratic", but once we had left that was that. There is no going back.
Mrs May's deal looked awful at the time, but with the benefit of hindsight, particularly in the light of Johnson's "oven ready" dog's breakfast, it was a work of genius.
Rail seems like a perfect case study for an AI based driving system
It's the same as driverless cars - very easy to do if you can 100% remove all Human Beings from the track / road.
An awful lot harder if you can't.
Remember that all the AI experts on here say that driverless cars aren't the 90/99% problem that most people think they are. They are 99.9999% problems and until you get to 99.9999% no insurance company is going to touch them.
Trains are the same - the AI stuff is easy, removing any chance of a human being appearing on the track or another issue occurring is way harder.
Edit - and driverless cars are here - but only in places where no human beings randomly wander in the same place.
(And that’s in the comparatively constrained environment of the London Underground. The mainline railway is a still more difficult problem.)
Imagine an AI train driver that was able to assimilate CCTV footage from the whole network. Someone's just run across the rails 18 miles up the track? The AI driver knows it's happening real time and can continuously monitor the situation unfolding before a decision needs to be made.
This is why AI will eventually replace all drivers. The capacity to consume huge amounts of data simultaneously will give them more than an edge, it'll blow humans out of the water. Humans are brilliant at narrow-focus tasks, but as soon as that gap is closed, and it will be, we won't look back.
Can I ask what you do for a living - because you clearly don't work in IT
Consider, for a moment, that I'm talking about how things are going to be rather than how things are right now.
Waymo has now driven I believe more than 1 million miles and simulated over 1 billion miles. Yet they still aren't allowed on roads outside a tiny defined area because the AI doesn't know what to do in most instances
Driverless cars is like Nuclear Fusion - allows x years away and unless someone comes up with a different approach (as first light seem to have done with Fusion) it will always be the same x years away.
Do we even need trains with all the whizzy electric cars we're going to be driving in the medium term ? They blow the "green" argument out the water I think.
Mr. Pete, one does wonder what was going through Labour's collective head on that.
Did they think if May got ousted the Conservatives would do anything but move in a more sceptical direction?
May's deal was the most pro-EU one they were going to get.
I was as guilty as anyone Morris, it looked like a poor deal to me and I was holding out for a best of three. I didn't regard that notion as "undemocratic", but once we had left that was that. There is no going back.
Mrs May's deal looked awful at the time, but with the benefit of hindsight, particularly in the light of Johnson's "oven ready" dog's breakfast, it was a work of genius.
It was utterly horrendous. It would have kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union via the backstop despite the fact we'd voted to Leave and we'd have no unilateral way out. No Article 50, no legal mechanism if you're bothered about International Law, we would need the EU's permission to ever leave the backstop.
Perhaps instead of fantasising about driverless trains and how a digital railway can fix infrastructure problems without construction, they might instead go and study why our railway system is so absurdly expensive.
It didn't used to be like this pre-privatisation. So its the change in structure - not ownership - which has driven this. A myriad of contracts and performance clauses and penalties. A "build it to withstand a direct nuclear strike and you are legally liable for it not getting nuked for the next 40 years" clause that exploded HS2 construction costs. Rolling stock that costs multiple times its real cost because in today's DfT dictated railway there is no guarantee your rolling stock will be used for more than a few years (yet another nearly new fleet just being parked up as we speak).
Instead of lazy war with the workers tropes, they should go to Germany. Italy. The Netherlands. See how they manage to do everything better for a lot less costs. Then do that.
Rail seems like a perfect case study for an AI based driving system
It's the same as driverless cars - very easy to do if you can 100% remove all Human Beings from the track / road.
An awful lot harder if you can't.
Remember that all the AI experts on here say that driverless cars aren't the 90/99% problem that most people think they are. They are 99.9999% problems and until you get to 99.9999% no insurance company is going to touch them.
Trains are the same - the AI stuff is easy, removing any chance of a human being appearing on the track or another issue occurring is way harder.
Edit - and driverless cars are here - but only in places where no human beings randomly wander in the same place.
(And that’s in the comparatively constrained environment of the London Underground. The mainline railway is a still more difficult problem.)
Imagine an AI train driver that was able to assimilate CCTV footage from the whole network. Someone's just run across the rails 18 miles up the track? The AI driver knows it's happening real time and can continuously monitor the situation unfolding before a decision needs to be made.
This is why AI will eventually replace all drivers. The capacity to consume huge amounts of data simultaneously will give them more than an edge, it'll blow humans out of the water. Humans are brilliant at narrow-focus tasks, but as soon as that gap is closed, and it will be, we won't look back.
Can I ask what you do for a living - because you clearly don't work in IT
I have worked in IT since the Flood. And I agree with this remark. Computers are pretty average for quite a lot of tasks.
AI doesn't work that way - among other things, "AI" as it is currently used is nothing to do with what humans regard as intelligence.
Some years ago, there was a documentary about life on a US aircraft carrier. Planning moving the planes around is a big issue - the carriers are quite congested and the planes are worth (collectively) billions.
In a compartment of the carrier, they have a model of the carrier, complete with die cast models of the aircraft. Grown men push the models around to check for clearance, layout etc.
When asked, the chap in charge agreed that yes, they could try and have a computer system. But that would mean "training" it in all the details of the carrier, the physics of 3D space, the shapes of the aircraft etc. This was cheaper, simpler, provable to be correct and never break down. Also they get to take the "spare" models home for the kids.
I accept Boris is a deeply flawed PM but he does have charisma and "boosterism" which I think all the alternatives lack. Some may be quite competent but it's not obvious to me that that is the case. Who would you make the case for on the grounds of competence or better still ability?
I've already said that I think Hunt is the best bet, but I'm not really fussed too much. There are a few people I think would be worse, but anyone ANYONE will do.
I don't want charisma. That's for game show hosts. I want someone who can do the job. We need to quit this destructive pattern of thinking that says politics is entertainment.
How about Theresa May?
Theresa May shows why charisma is a part of the job.
Its not just relevant at election time, its also about being able to connect with others in order to get them to get the job done in Parliament and elsewhere by passing votes etc
Theresa May was the worst PM in centuries and was utterly unable to get her flagship policy through Parliament despite it being the one thing she spent her premiership working on for years and spending months trying to ram it through Parliament.
Modern Prime Ministers who have been able to get stuff done have all had charisma, different types of charisma, but they've all had it.
You need both integrity and charisma. May was bad, Boris is worse.
The fact May couldn’t pass Brexit had as much to do with integrity free Boris manipulating the situation for a run at no10 than it did Mays lack of charisma.
And you don't get to the top with no charisma at all. Think of 1992 Major, May telling the Conservatives uncomfortable truths about their Nasty Party reputation. Brown in full-on Son of the Manse mode.
They didn't have enough charisma to win, because they ended up against Blair, Johnson, Cameron and Events (dear boy), but that's a slightly different matter. Any of us condemning them for being uncharismatic would be like a Sunday footballer telling an England player that they're rubbish.
Besides, if we have moved from a world where charisma is an important thing, to a certain kind of charisma being the determining thing, that's not good.
Although it obviously rained overnight, the sun is shining now so it looks quite a nice morning.
Surely part of Mrs May's problem was that she tried to be something she wasn't . If she'd been what she is, a somewhat schoolmistressy type, she might have been OK, but it was it was that appalling Dancing Queen bit that was really wrong.
That's not to say I'd have voted for her, of course!
Yes, it was Lynton Crosby who almost lost 2017 by campaigning as if May were David Cameron. Of course, Labour had done the same by trying to turn Gordon Brown into Tony Blair (and other stunts) instead of playing it straight. Doubtless when Boris is replaced, we shall see Jeremy Hunt or Liz Truss donning high-viz to hide in fridges.
May lost by introducing a death tax within the campaign without the necessary x months of warming people up to the scale of the social care problem.
Did May lose? I thought she formed a government after the election. If Starmer leads a coalition after the next election, or uses confidence and supply to do the same, will he have lost? She did not win a majority, but its surely not correct to say she lost.
Yes, I managed to "lose" that qualification when recasting the sentence so it did not look like I was saying Crosby was a terrorist.
Do we even need trains with all the whizzy electric cars we're going to be driving in the medium term ? They blow the "green" argument out the water I think.
Cars won't get 1 million people a day into central London (or however many currently commit in a few times a week). The car park space doesn't (and can't) exist.
And that's before we talk about the pollution from tyres and the upfront cost of an electric car.
Mr. Pete, one does wonder what was going through Labour's collective head on that.
Did they think if May got ousted the Conservatives would do anything but move in a more sceptical direction?
May's deal was the most pro-EU one they were going to get.
The alternate history where Labour abstained on Mrs May’s deal, probably now has Corbyn as PM, the Tories split in half, and the UK stuck in the backstop being told to bend over by Macron because he can.
I am almost liking your dystopian parallel universe. Did they miss the Covid Pandemic too?
Mr. Pete, one does wonder what was going through Labour's collective head on that.
Did they think if May got ousted the Conservatives would do anything but move in a more sceptical direction?
May's deal was the most pro-EU one they were going to get.
I was as guilty as anyone Morris, it looked like a poor deal to me and I was holding out for a best of three. I didn't regard that notion as "undemocratic", but once we had left that was that. There is no going back.
Mrs May's deal looked awful at the time, but with the benefit of hindsight, particularly in the light of Johnson's "oven ready" dog's breakfast, it was a work of genius.
It was utterly horrendous. It would have kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union via the backstop despite the fact we'd voted to Leave and we'd have no unilateral way out. No Article 50, no legal mechanism if you're bothered about International Law, we would need the EU's permission to ever leave the backstop.
I accept Boris is a deeply flawed PM but he does have charisma and "boosterism" which I think all the alternatives lack. Some may be quite competent but it's not obvious to me that that is the case. Who would you make the case for on the grounds of competence or better still ability?
I've already said that I think Hunt is the best bet, but I'm not really fussed too much. There are a few people I think would be worse, but anyone ANYONE will do.
I don't want charisma. That's for game show hosts. I want someone who can do the job. We need to quit this destructive pattern of thinking that says politics is entertainment.
How about Theresa May?
Theresa May shows why charisma is a part of the job.
Its not just relevant at election time, its also about being able to connect with others in order to get them to get the job done in Parliament and elsewhere by passing votes etc
Theresa May was the worst PM in centuries and was utterly unable to get her flagship policy through Parliament despite it being the one thing she spent her premiership working on for years and spending months trying to ram it through Parliament.
Modern Prime Ministers who have been able to get stuff done have all had charisma, different types of charisma, but they've all had it.
You need both integrity and charisma. May was bad, Boris is worse.
The fact May couldn’t pass Brexit had as much to do with integrity free Boris manipulating the situation for a run at no10 than it did Mays lack of charisma.
And you don't get to the top with no charisma at all. Think of 1992 Major, May telling the Conservatives uncomfortable truths about their Nasty Party reputation. Brown in full-on Son of the Manse mode.
They didn't have enough charisma to win, because they ended up against Blair, Johnson, Cameron and Events (dear boy), but that's a slightly different matter. Any of us condemning them for being uncharismatic would be like a Sunday footballer telling an England player that they're rubbish.
Besides, if we have moved from a world where charisma is an important thing, to a certain kind of charisma being the determining thing, that's not good.
Although it obviously rained overnight, the sun is shining now so it looks quite a nice morning.
Surely part of Mrs May's problem was that she tried to be something she wasn't . If she'd been what she is, a somewhat schoolmistressy type, she might have been OK, but it was it was that appalling Dancing Queen bit that was really wrong.
That's not to say I'd have voted for her, of course!
Yes, it was Lynton Crosby who almost lost 2017 by campaigning as if May were David Cameron. Of course, Labour had done the same by trying to turn Gordon Brown into Tony Blair (and other stunts) instead of playing it straight. Doubtless when Boris is replaced, we shall see Jeremy Hunt or Liz Truss donning high-viz to hide in fridges.
May lost by introducing a death tax within the campaign without the necessary x months of warming people up to the scale of the social care problem.
May lost because of Lynton Crosby, and the two terrorist outrages during the campaign.
May almost lost (she remained PM, she didn't lose) because she was crap. Lynton Crosby has a great track record, without him she may have actually managed to lose and we might have ended up with one of the greatest shocks of all time and PM Corbyn.
Crosby locked the Cabinet in a big fridge in order to have Theresa May front an ill-suited presidential campaign based round parroting "strong and stable" while U-turning. Not his best work.
Trivial Gossip Klaxon: If I have understood this correctly, the Leader of East Devon Council (which covers Tiv&Hon) who was elected as an Independent, has just joined the Lib Dems.
Hardly a fag paper between East Devon independents and the LibDems anyway. In East Devon, the Claire Wright Independents got 40% in 2019, the LibDems under 3%.
Comments
While Train Drivers are incredibly well paid (but not compared to pilots and the job is way, way harder than most people will think it is) most other rail staff really aren't that well paid...
https://www.londonreconnections.com/2021/the-political-myth-of-the-driverless-tube-train/
Which basically says you can do automated trains only if you are start afresh from now and you don't have any network at human accessible (ground level).
Anecdata, but if that's popping up here, what can it be like in poorer areas?
War in Ukraine going on and on. A complete redrawing of supply routes for hydrocarbons is ongoing which is driving costs upwards. No let up in sight for oil price rises say analysts.
Gas price has dropped but we can't benefit as we shut down our storage facilities for private profit. So we're having to dump much of the cheap gas into Europe
FX really not helping as cable is pro dollah and anti sterling
Food ingredient supply is a mess (not just Ukraine) and again shows little sign of slowing down. As an example the retail price of rapeseed oil has doubled.
Shipping costs are crazy - largely driven by oil prices - which means all that stuff we import from far away is lots more to make due to all of the above then lots more to ship
And I could go on. You mention quasi-wartime conditions and I agree, But despite the very genuine distress that so many are already in like the phony war of late 1939 we haven't really got started yet.
I agree with the suggestions about VAT cuts. It is a regressive tax which hits the poorest hardest. We can both make bills cheaper for them AND drive consumption which itself drives jobs which t=drives tax receipts to make up the lost VAT revenue.
I've said for a long time Boris should go but lets not rewrite history, if you think Blair's blatant corruption, the cash for honours and most seriously of all taking us to war by misleading Parliament with a sexed up dossier all shows more integrity than Boris getting fined for this then you might be being just the slightest bit partisan.
The likelihood of any substantive change in UK policy should Boris get his deserts is extremely low, whoever replaces him.
https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/route-knowledge.110729/ is the first google post the comes up highlighting the real reason why train drivers only know specific routes...
We know lots of society lived unable to save and one unexpected bill away from financial problems. Doubling and tripling energy bills, removing £1k a year in UC, inflation rising sharply (and for the poorest even more so as the value brands get removed from the supermarkets), more housing stock converted to air bnb for staycations, and it was inevitable that we hit a real and significant crisis with many simply unable to cope.
That is how much you value "integrity"?
Meanwhile Johnson is a mendacious POS who would shaft anyone, including Ukraine, if he thought it would keep him in power.
Asda have just notified me that their milk has gone upto £1.35 when it wasn't so long ago it was £1.09. We can afford it but this is only one of many essential food items, and of course fuel is astronomic and I read earlier that it could rise to £2.30 a litre
On 5 live business this morning an economist said that for every 10 dollar increase in oil the world loses half a percent on gdp, and once you buy a tank of petrol/diesel for over £100, when it was £60 a few months ago, then £40 cannot be spent on something else
Forget Boris and Starmer, this is a crisis like no other we have witnessed since WW11 and I have no idea how any politician can mitigate the effects for so many
We are all going to be poorer and buy less and of course recession is virtually guaranteed, sadly
And good morning
That's why German car makers are doing their typical mercantilist thing and pressuring the German government to end the sanctions, and why Germany and France are the weak link in maintaining the sanctions, due to the power of the German car makers etc - thankfully Britain is providing the backbone amongst western Europe, and Eastern Europe and the USA are too.
You make some good points, and I generally agree.
However ... My son did live in Copenhagen, although he's moved to the sticks now. But Copenhagen was last flattened by war in 1807. An excellent piece of town-planning if I may say so.
We do things here by attaching lego pieces to the existing structures. Ironically, Denmark didn't.
I remember moving from the pharmaceutical industry to the civil service and being shocked by the somewhat old-fashioned union attitudes. Don't touch that PC, the jobs of the typing pool girls must be protected. Would we have gone on strike? That was possibly a step too far, but it's a good example.
I was a union rep, and people misunderstand your aims sometimes. We were there for a reason. Second-guessing the future isn't one of them.
He wasn't entirely critical of the companies, since he said Sunak had cut the subsidy by £2 billion and companies were having to deal with that, but he noted that dividends are still flowing out, and he argued that the staff needed to be considered too. By implication an agreement not to have compulsory redundancies this year and a reasonable pay rise to reduce the loss to inflation would be an acceptable outcome for now.
As others have said, in the long run, automation is no doubt coming. But people currently working in the sector need fair consideration, and it's the RMT job to try to ensure they get it. As Still Waters observes, Ronald Reagan showed that it's possible to break a union. But that doesn't mean it's a good thing to do, since most employers like to have a reasonably satisfied workforce.
They didn't have enough charisma to win, because they ended up against Blair, Johnson, Cameron and Events (dear boy), but that's a slightly different matter. Any of us condemning them for being uncharismatic would be like a Sunday footballer telling an England player that they're rubbish.
Besides, if we have moved from a world where charisma is an important thing, to a certain kind of charisma being the determining thing, that's not good.
Mr. NorthWales, those who have shifted to working from home rather than commuting may be glad of the shift given price hikes and the unions doing their best to hold people to ransom.
Remember that we saw news about an rail accident in Germany over the weekend.
The Chancellor will soon have little option but to drop fuel duty on petrol and diesel, if he wants to keep the wheels of the economy turning. Personally, I’d scrap it completely while the oil price remains above $100, even if it does cost a couple of billion a month.
Let's not forget all the Kremlin backed oligarch donations to the Conservative Party on Johnson's watch that remain unrepaid. We can also consider a report of direct Russian involvement in UK politics, which has been conveniently suppressed. Another big story excused by the pro-Johnsonian press is the Mafia scale appropriation of public funds during the early days of the Pandemic. The list goes on and on.
So Johnson hasn't engaged in a spurious and potentially illegal war yet, but give him time.
To the extent that international “law” is not actually a law but a set of guidelines and conventions this is not the case. There is clearly a cost to breaking a treaty or convention but it’s not something that a government should never do as a point of principle
Mind you if I could work from home with the present fuel costs and rail ticket fares I really would want to
I quite liked Teresa May!
And I agree with Jonathan. I think her deal was probably as good as could have been achieved from where she started from and may well have got through parliament if Boris hadn't exploited the situation for his own ends.
We've got to the bottom of how much you value integrity. Misleading Parliament, taking us to war on false pretences and outright corruption is all A-OK with you so long as its your guy doing it. That's how important you value "integrity".
Also now white collar working can be largely done remotely, the people who depend on the trains are more low paid 'in person' jobs.
And the thing you will discover is that unless you are starting from nothing and intentionally designed things to keep human beings completely away you can't get any further than where the underground currently is with a driver in the cab in case things go wrong.
As for the rest - my job for the last 15 years has been to automate systems. I'm now very good at ensuring I carry the people impacted with me - this will save you time to do other things...
It should have been voted through. Labour are partly to blame for this. It's easy to forget we only joined the EU in the first place because sufficient Labour MPs were on board.
The difference between the two is that while Russia is sanctioned, Europe and the UK are not. People can't import Russia products, they can still import European ones.
Yes expanding trade with the rest of the world is a good thing and an advantage for Brexit, while maintaining free trade which we have an agreement with Europe for and we always would have got a free trade agreement with Europe because of *drum roll* the same German car makers who are pressuring the German government to end sanctions on Russia.
They suffered a lot during the height of the pandemic and commuting hasn't returned to prior levels. This is only going to make life worse for them.
Long-distance trains often change driver during the journey. A driver on a London to Edinburgh train might get off at Darlington, and meet the train coming the other way to drive it back to London. The logistics of railways get very complicated!
Levelling down
Is their view that striking should be illegal?
An awful lot harder if you can't.
Remember that all the AI experts on here say that driverless cars aren't the 90/99% problem that most people think they are. They are 99.9999% problems and until you get to 99.9999% no insurance company is going to touch them.
Trains are the same - the AI stuff is easy, removing any chance of a human being appearing on the track or another issue occurring is way harder.
Edit - and driverless cars are here - but only in places where no human beings randomly wander in the same place.
Regardless of what you say, and what mental gymnastics you contort yourself with, the fact remains integrity matters in a PM and this PM uniquely has none.
There is some fat to be trimmed - I can’t see ticket offices surviving for long in all but the biggest stations. But train and station staff costs aren’t what are killing the railway.
The real problem is infrastructure. Track renewals and even the most modest enhancements are phenomenally expensive. A new basic station costs £14m absolute minimum. £14m!! For a concrete platform, an expanse of tarmac car park, and a little station building. It’s insane. The Northumberland Line reopening is costing £166m just to run slow passenger trains on existing tracks.
Surely part of Mrs May's problem was that she tried to be something she wasn't . If she'd been what she is, a somewhat schoolmistressy type, she might have been OK, but it was it was that appalling Dancing Queen bit that was really wrong.
That's not to say I'd have voted for her, of course!
I agree driverless cars are not going to happen. They're the worst of all worlds. It's way easier to pay attention to a task for an hour than to do nothing but be ready to instantly act in case of an emergency.
It doesn't say on that article but the NIMBY Council Leader quoted in the article saying that he has been pushing for it to be scrapped is Labour not Tory. Remarkably he's been kept on by the Labour Party as the local Council leader despite facing trial for electoral malpractice: https://www.warringtonguardian.co.uk/news/19882246.council-leader-russ-bowden-trial-date-set-court/
The cost is definitely Oh Boy...
https://www.markpack.org.uk/169389/leader-of-east-devon-council-joins-liberal-democrats/
In the UK you’d need to build another Milton Keynes, with separate roads for SD and regular vehicles.
(And that’s in the comparatively constrained environment of the London Underground. The mainline railway is a still more difficult problem.)
Elizabeth line could be automated but it isn't because it reuses existing (ground level, so accessible) track in various places
John Bull is very good at this stuff (especially given that it's a hobby for him and not his day job unlike say Gareth Dennis who does rail infrastructure for a living).
He may also genuinely like Boris, many people do to start with in limited interactions, but it's not massively relevant even if he does.
On the railways, the conclusion seems to be the old Irish one ... "If I were you, sir, I wouldn't start from here."
Respect to Theresa for voting against Johnson in her ball gown. History will show her in a more favourable light than it will Johnson.
As I contemplate the commute from the coffee machine to the office, a thought to bring a few other strands together.
One of the things I learned about Boris Johnson quite early is he's not an idiot and he's risk averse.
When he became London Mayor in 2008, a big part of his campaigning was about how he was going to take on the RMT (led at the time by Bob Crow) who had blighted Ken Livingstone's tenure with periodic strikes out of which they (the union) had done pretty well.
I said on here there was going to be a big showdown between Johnson and Crow effectively on the central question of who runs London.
It never happened - indeed, the relationship between Johnson and Crow was surprisingly good and when Crow died, Johnson was quite fulsome in his tribute.
I think Johnson saw Crow as a much more formidable negotiator and political operator than he had expected. RMT did very well out of the Crow leadership - they would pick their fights carefully - often on issues of passenger safety whereby they would have a degree of public sympathy. The RMT got a good deal for drivers during the Olympics and for the launch of the Night Tube as well.
The current RMT leadership is, I suspect, not in Crow's class but Johnson learnt not to believe he would always be the best operator in the room and he recognises and respects those whom he regards as political equals. The problem with leadership is it's easy to conclude you are better than everyone else because you are the leader which is rarely the case.
Longevity enhances that hubristic notion of superiority and invincibility but it also accumulates the number of those who see their own career enhancement blocked by your continuation.
Did they think if May got ousted the Conservatives would do anything but move in a more sceptical direction?
May's deal was the most pro-EU one they were going to get.
But it's way more fun trying to work out how to implement things that improve the current process rather than completely binning it and starting again (that just annoys the existing people who understand the current process).
I could develop cheaper solutions by binning everything and starting again but those systems will never be accepted by the current workers - if you want a successful project you iterate the current process annoyance by annoyance.
How are you Horse? I'm catching the rays in Euroland, so life couldn't be better at this very moment.
Railways at a zillion pounds a mile are not sustainable.
While there isn't completely 100% national consensus, there is very broad cross party support for Ukraine.
She did not win a majority, but its surely not correct to say she lost.
The Elizabeth line is expensive because it's not completely new so needed to integrate with existing systems (never a great idea in the first place even worse when they are multiple existing systems).
Basically we are crap at doing these type of projects and the Treasury makes it worse by not accepting the risk of cost overruns and then scrapping stuff for no good reason. HS2E has cost over £1bn in waterfall development costs that will now need to be redone because of the delays..
The unions remain wretched.
Mr. Sandpit, and the leader after Corbyn might be proposing rejoining.
Not to mention we'd be in a far worse economic position as the pandemic started.
And Ukraine would have significantly less weaponry.
Mrs May's deal looked awful at the time, but with the benefit of hindsight, particularly in the light of Johnson's "oven ready" dog's breakfast, it was a work of genius.
Driverless cars is like Nuclear Fusion - allows x years away and unless someone comes up with a different approach (as first light seem to have done with Fusion) it will always be the same x years away.
They blow the "green" argument out the water I think.
How could that ever be "good"?
It didn't used to be like this pre-privatisation. So its the change in structure - not ownership - which has driven this. A myriad of contracts and performance clauses and penalties. A "build it to withstand a direct nuclear strike and you are legally liable for it not getting nuked for the next 40 years" clause that exploded HS2 construction costs. Rolling stock that costs multiple times its real cost because in today's DfT dictated railway there is no guarantee your rolling stock will be used for more than a few years (yet another nearly new fleet just being parked up as we speak).
Instead of lazy war with the workers tropes, they should go to Germany. Italy. The Netherlands. See how they manage to do everything better for a lot less costs. Then do that.
AI doesn't work that way - among other things, "AI" as it is currently used is nothing to do with what humans regard as intelligence.
Some years ago, there was a documentary about life on a US aircraft carrier. Planning moving the planes around is a big issue - the carriers are quite congested and the planes are worth (collectively) billions.
In a compartment of the carrier, they have a model of the carrier, complete with die cast models of the aircraft. Grown men push the models around to check for clearance, layout etc.
When asked, the chap in charge agreed that yes, they could try and have a computer system. But that would mean "training" it in all the details of the carrier, the physics of 3D space, the shapes of the aircraft etc. This was cheaper, simpler, provable to be correct and never break down. Also they get to take the "spare" models home for the kids.
And that's before we talk about the pollution from tyres and the upfront cost of an electric car.
@duponline @GeorgeWParker @clivecookson @BorisJohnson Instead Johnson gets:
a) a massive row with Brussels and looming threat of trade war
b) risks political backlash from One Nation grandees
c) continued shut-out of the one EU programme we wanted to join, the €95bn Horizon Europe prog /4
https://twitter.com/pmdfoster/status/1534445460441772032