I agree with StillWaters here (a rare event). I think most people would define "corruption" as receiving money personally in return for political actions. To be fair, Bob Seely hasn't done that. If we accuse people of nasty things that they haven't done, we undermine outrage at the real crimes (which corruption is). He's made an unedifying deal, no more and no less.
It is corruption of the process. We either make evidence-based decisions or we don't. We know the Tories have corrupted this process because we have got levelling-up money being promised to rich areas that just happen to be Tory battlegrounds like Yarm.
Horse trading goes on - of course it does. But to openly talk about it this way is daft - especially when you are believing a promise made by Boris Johnson's government...
Mr. Boy, the other side got a hearing in accordance with the law in this country providing equal amounts of coverage.
The obvious, and right, response to the infamous bus was to highlight the trade benefits, and then lead into broader economic pros. The strange, and chosen, response was to argue a massive figure was illegitimate because it was net, which put two cost figures (both enormous) into the public's mind without the other side of the scales (economic advantages).
You obviously remember the campaign differently from me. The Remain side said a lot about the economic downsides. Leave said it was all "project fear" and told us that we would be flooded by Turks. Leave won. The bus has become part of the mythology on both sides, but was less central than many remember. Anyway, the important thing is not how we got into this mess but how we get out of it.
Both campaigns were pisspoor, and there was no real canvassing or street level campaigning, but rather just media stunts.
The economic case for Remain was made, and dismissed by the electorate, but what the Remain campaign failed on was engaging people emotionally with the European project. In part this was because the whole campaign was controlled by different Tory factions and the other parties sidelined, Corbyn being notably uninterested in the issue. The Tory campaign was an internal battle between emotional Brexiteers and transactional Remainers.
The massive groundswell of emotional bonds to a European identity only came after the vote, in the million strong marches. It needed to be a a year or two earlier, but that emotional attachment to Europe for many of us is still present, which why the issue will resurface at some point, and will not go away.
It can't go away until all parties see that geography, politics and history form the present and its problems. Particular situations require particular solutions (as with Switzerland).
Secondly, and here there is an exact parallel with the SNP (everyone is in denial about this inconvenient truth), Brexit is two quite separate questions.
The first is: What shall be out constitutional foundations (which Ref2016 decided).
The second is: How well shall the UK be run politically and economically. What direction, how competent.
Any Scot, post future independence, may well say 'Glad we are an independent sovereign state, and BTW our current government is rubbish'.
That's where we are with Brexit. Many would say: 'Glad we did it. BTW our government is rubbish. Time for a change'.
Why are people getting uppity about train drivers not wanting a, god forbid, real terms pay cut?
I got 5% and I am having to reign in almost all discretionary spending.
The strike is not by the drivers - though no doubt that will come some way down the line... Much lower paid workers, who've had a pay freeze for the last couple of years.
According the the management representative yesterday, they can't negotiate, since government has yet to tell them what are their funding constraints. And of course their revenue is down by a quarter compared to pre- pandemic.
This one is very much down to government, who ought to have seen it coming. If they hadn't been so preoccupied with Big Dog's navel.
If the staff don't want to provide their labour then that's their prerogative. Nobody is forced to work for an employer they don't want to work for, anyone can resign if they aren't happy with terms and conditions.
Why are people getting uppity about train drivers not wanting a, god forbid, real terms pay cut?
I got 5% and I am having to reign in almost all discretionary spending.
The strike is not by the drivers - though no doubt that will come some way down the line... Much lower paid workers, who've had a pay freeze for the last couple of years.
According the the management representative yesterday, they can't negotiate, since government has yet to tell them what are their funding constraints. And of course their revenue is down by a quarter compared to pre- pandemic.
This one is very much down to government, who ought to have seen it coming. If they hadn't been so preoccupied with Big Dog's navel.
If the staff don't want to provide their labour then that's their prerogative. Nobody is forced to work for an employer they don't want to work for, anyone can resign if they aren't happy with terms and conditions.
Or they can strike, until the government decides to outlaw it. That is also their prerogative.
The point you seem to have missed is that all if this might have been prevented, has management's hands not been tied. At the moment, they can't negotiate at all.
Were you the one arguing a few days back that inflation didn't really matter ? This kind of mess is the inevitable consequence of high inflation. Groups with the power to cause disruption will use that to protect their real wages. Getting it under control is a long and painful process.
Why are management's hands tied? They have income, they have expenditure, they need to balance the two. That's what they're bloody paid to do.
If they can't balance the two, then the company should go bankrupt and close down and then everyone gets fired anyway.
Management need to do their bloody jobs.
Because they are both government controlled and government subsidised. The subsidy represents a significant part of their income - much higher thanks to the pandemic - and they are still waiting for government guidance for the future. Without which they have no basis to negotiate.
ics works. But it IS corruption. Do x for cash y. And he posted it on his own website. Bit silly really.
It’s not corruption. It’s a representative fighting for his turf. He is trading something of value (a vote for Boris) which he judges is less important to the south islanders than a better government settlement
Unedifying, yes. Never pleasant to watch sausages being made. But not corruption.
It’s just the Seely seelying like they’ve done for the last 150 years
Fighting for your turf? Absolutely fine. If you vote for the boss we may give your turf a bag of cash out of cycle that our review said it wasn't due? Corruption. What I'm not doing here is blaming Seely. He as you say is fighting for cash for his constituents. Its the *offer* that is corrupt. He has done us a public service in highlighting exactly how this government works.
I agree with StillWaters here (a rare event). I think most people would define "corruption" as receiving money personally in return for political actions. To be fair, Bob Seely hasn't done that. If we accuse people of nasty things that they haven't done, we undermine outrage at the real crimes (which corruption is). He's made an unedifying deal, no more and no less.
There’s been a few times recently Nick. I still have hope we may bring you over to the dark side 😜
How are you btw? Long time since we last saw each other
Mr. Boy, the other side got a hearing in accordance with the law in this country providing equal amounts of coverage.
The obvious, and right, response to the infamous bus was to highlight the trade benefits, and then lead into broader economic pros. The strange, and chosen, response was to argue a massive figure was illegitimate because it was net, which put two cost figures (both enormous) into the public's mind without the other side of the scales (economic advantages).
You obviously remember the campaign differently from me. The Remain side said a lot about the economic downsides. Leave said it was all "project fear" and told us that we would be flooded by Turks. Leave won. The bus has become part of the mythology on both sides, but was less central than many remember. Anyway, the important thing is not how we got into this mess but how we get out of it.
Both campaigns were pisspoor, and there was no real canvassing or street level campaigning, but rather just media stunts.
The economic case for Remain was made, and dismissed by the electorate, but what the Remain campaign failed on was engaging people emotionally with the European project. In part this was because the whole campaign was controlled by different Tory factions and the other parties sidelined, Corbyn being notably uninterested in the issue. The Tory campaign was an internal battle between emotional Brexiteers and transactional Remainers.
The massive groundswell of emotional bonds to a European identity only came after the vote, in the million strong marches. It needed to be a a year or two earlier, but that emotional attachment to Europe for many of us is still present, which why the issue will resurface at some point, and will not go away.
It can't go away until all parties see that geography, politics and history form the present and its problems. Particular situations require particular solutions (as with Switzerland).
Secondly, and here there is an exact parallel with the SNP (everyone is in denial about this inconvenient truth), Brexit is two quite separate questions.
The first is: What shall be out constitutional foundations (which Ref2016 decided).
The second is: How well shall the UK be run politically and economically. What direction, how competent.
Any Scot, post future independence, may well say 'Glad we are an independent sovereign state, and BTW our current government is rubbish'.
That's where we are with Brexit. Many would say: 'Glad we did it. BTW our government is rubbish. Time for a change'.
Whilst I agree with the principles laid out, the practice is very different. Apparently we can't discuss how the UK will be run economically because to recognise the problem - our horrendous trading relationship with the EEA - or to suggest that we fix it is seen as a threat to the new constitutional foundations.
All that does is highlight that the ultras don't actually understand what those are. "Should Britain leave the EU" is not a mandate to leave the EEA, become a 3rd country, impose one-sided sanctions on ourselves etc etc.
We left the EU. There is still time to regain our sanity and start trading effectively with the EEA.
Why are people getting uppity about train drivers not wanting a, god forbid, real terms pay cut?
I got 5% and I am having to reign in almost all discretionary spending.
Because they are not railway staff (and non-driver staff are paid a lot less).
A large part of the Brexit vote came from Working Class voters wanting secure jobs with a living wage. That is what they want from "levelling up".
The RMT is now fighting for those workers. The government is wanting the operating companies to contine to pay bonuses to management and dividends to foreign owners.
Actually I think the issue is that strike action causes massive disruption and collateral damage to ordinary folk. Are you surprised with people being pushed off with those who they see as the proximate cause of the issue especially when - in most cases - the railway drivers will be better paid than those suffering the disruption
As I pointed out, in yesterday's Yougov it was38% support the workers, 49% support the management, but it was the under 65s who were most supportive of the Union. My opinion on this is not as unusual as you seem to think.
Both sides need to get real and that includes EU fanatics who shout "unicorns" or "cherrypicking" at anything that looks like a flexed model.
Brexit is a binary choice.
We are in, or out.
There is no flex. That is a unicorn.
We have a flexed model, we have a free trade agreement.
What more do you want?
We do not have a free trade agreement. Completion of and inspection thereof of reams of paperwork to confirm that these products have zero tariff and zero quota, then inspection of said goods to confirm they comply with the exact same standards used on both sides of the customs border is not free trade.
Why are people getting uppity about train drivers not wanting a, god forbid, real terms pay cut?
I got 5% and I am having to reign in almost all discretionary spending.
The strike is not by the drivers - though no doubt that will come some way down the line... Much lower paid workers, who've had a pay freeze for the last couple of years.
According the the management representative yesterday, they can't negotiate, since government has yet to tell them what are their funding constraints. And of course their revenue is down by a quarter compared to pre- pandemic.
This one is very much down to government, who ought to have seen it coming. If they hadn't been so preoccupied with Big Dog's navel.
If the staff don't want to provide their labour then that's their prerogative. Nobody is forced to work for an employer they don't want to work for, anyone can resign if they aren't happy with terms and conditions.
Or they can strike, until the government decides to outlaw it. That is also their prerogative.
The point you seem to have missed is that all if this might have been prevented, has management's hands not been tied. At the moment, they can't negotiate at all.
Were you the one arguing a few days back that inflation didn't really matter ? This kind of mess is the inevitable consequence of high inflation. Groups with the power to cause disruption will use that to protect their real wages. Getting it under control is a long and painful process.
Why are management's hands tied? They have income, they have expenditure, they need to balance the two. That's what they're bloody paid to do.
If they can't balance the two, then the company should go bankrupt and close down and then everyone gets fired anyway.
Management need to do their bloody jobs.
Because they are both government controlled and government subsidised. The subsidy represents a significant part of their income - much higher thanks to the pandemic - and they are still waiting for government guidance for the future. Without which they have no basis to negotiate.
Government first needs to do its bloody job.
The pandemic is over. The Government should withdraw its subsidy entirely.
I couldn't care less what the rail staff make, they should get the fair market value for their labour. If that's £20k per annum then fine, if its £100k per annum then fine.
But every single penny of their wages should be paid from money their employers make from their customers. If the staff want more wages then either the employer needs more customers, so give good customer service etc to ensure customers keep using you, or the same amount of customers but increased revenue per customer, so either 'upsell' additional products to the same customers or in this case pass on any wages via increased fares.
The staff should get whatever the customers they're serving are prepared to pay for. Every penny should come from customers.
Why are people getting uppity about train drivers not wanting a, god forbid, real terms pay cut?
I got 5% and I am having to reign in almost all discretionary spending.
Because they are not railway staff (and non-driver staff are paid a lot less).
A large part of the Brexit vote came from Working Class voters wanting secure jobs with a living wage. That is what they want from "levelling up".
The RMT is now fighting for those workers. The government is wanting the operating companies to contine to pay bonuses to management and dividends to foreign owners.
Actually I think the issue is that strike action causes massive disruption and collateral damage to ordinary folk. Are you surprised with people being pushed off with those who they see as the proximate cause of the issue especially when - in most cases - the railway drivers will be better paid than those suffering the disruption
As I pointed out, in yesterday's Yougov it was38% support the workers, 49% support the management, but it was the under 65s who were most supportive of the Union. My opinion on this is not as unusual as you seem to think.
I agree with StillWaters here (a rare event). I think most people would define "corruption" as receiving money personally in return for political actions. To be fair, Bob Seely hasn't done that. If we accuse people of nasty things that they haven't done, we undermine outrage at the real crimes (which corruption is). He's made an unedifying deal, no more and no less.
It is corruption of the process. We either make evidence-based decisions or we don't. We know the Tories have corrupted this process because we have got levelling-up money being promised to rich areas that just happen to be Tory battlegrounds like Yarm.
Horse trading goes on - of course it does. But to openly talk about it this way is daft - especially when you are believing a promise made by Boris Johnson's government...
I suspect the reality is that he was trying to cover himself from criticism from some of the upstanding islanders unhappy at all the clown's goings-on, and didn't think it through. It's not as if this is a new promise, after all; he's been waiting three years already, as I said.
I'm reading through the text of the Bribery Act 2010 and so far I'm failing to see why this Isle of Wight business doesn't fall foul of its provisions.
Both sides need to get real and that includes EU fanatics who shout "unicorns" or "cherrypicking" at anything that looks like a flexed model.
Brexit is a binary choice.
We are in, or out.
There is no flex. That is a unicorn.
Then, there will be no sustainable settlement.
You can't win the argument by holding a gun to people's heads.
What's unsustainable about the TCA?
The NI situation is a mess and needs resolving, but that was always meant to be revisited once we have a trade agreement, only now the EU aren't upholding their end of the bargain. But other than that, we have free trade and are outside the customs union, that's what we chose to go for and its perfectly sustainable.
Good morning. I gaze with amazement at the area now known as Leigh Sports Village. Which mysteriously sprang up replete with excellent road links when Andy Burnham was MP. Do I doubt this happens regularly? No. I'm not naïve. Do MP's regularly boast about the precise nature of the transactional cynicism on their blog? Not often. Even if he gets anything, which seems improbable now it will be pored over, it's going to be tainted. Seely is a buffoon.
Both sides need to get real and that includes EU fanatics who shout "unicorns" or "cherrypicking" at anything that looks like a flexed model.
Brexit is a binary choice.
We are in, or out.
There is no flex. That is a unicorn.
We have a flexed model, we have a free trade agreement.
What more do you want?
We do not have a free trade agreement. Completion of and inspection thereof of reams of paperwork to confirm that these products have zero tariff and zero quota, then inspection of said goods to confirm they comply with the exact same standards used on both sides of the customs border is not free trade.
True, but it's also true that the EU (particularly France) are "working to rule" with us on the TCA in a way they don't bother to do even for China.
Both sides need to get real and that includes EU fanatics who shout "unicorns" or "cherrypicking" at anything that looks like a flexed model.
Brexit is a binary choice.
We are in, or out.
There is no flex. That is a unicorn.
We have a flexed model, we have a free trade agreement.
What more do you want?
We do not have a free trade agreement. Completion of and inspection thereof of reams of paperwork to confirm that these products have zero tariff and zero quota, then inspection of said goods to confirm they comply with the exact same standards used on both sides of the customs border is not free trade.
It is free trade, its how free trade agreements operate the world over.
Its not a customs union. If you want a customs union then argue for that, not a free trade agreement which we have.
Both sides need to get real and that includes EU fanatics who shout "unicorns" or "cherrypicking" at anything that looks like a flexed model.
Brexit is a binary choice.
We are in, or out.
There is no flex. That is a unicorn.
Then, there will be no sustainable settlement.
You can't win the argument by holding a gun to people's heads.
What's unsustainable about the TCA?
The NI situation is a mess and needs resolving, but that was always meant to be revisited once we have a trade agreement, only now the EU aren't upholding their end of the bargain. But other than that, we have free trade and are outside the customs union, that's what we chose to go for and its perfectly sustainable.
It doesn't command broad enough support amongst a wide enough segment of the British electorate.
If pro-EU voices had spent more time on the economic case (trade especially) for the EU rather than trying to claim a gross rather than net massive figure was unfair, they may well have won the referendum.
Whatever the figure ( gross or net) it would have been claimed to be a Project Fear lie.
PB Brexiteers with the exception of Richard Tyndall assured us there was no economic downside. Richard to be fair, accepted the economic loss to be worth the sovereignty gain. I disagreed but at least he was truthful. The rest of you claimed all gain and no pain.
The Farage line was that Belgians would continue selling chocolates, the Germans selling us cars and the French wine... God it was heard to drown out that snake oil salesman (Farage).......and as for that bloody bus, talk about a distraction.
He was right - they are still selling those things. At a higher price. They on the other hand are buying less of our things because we're expensive and difficult for them to export to.
A series of ONS stats out on Twitter showing just how badly both our economy and performance metrics like labour are tanking. The front page of The Times showing our performance is now worst in the G20 bar Russia.
So we really have shit the bed here. And the tragedy is the government - aided and abetted by pliant lickspittles - keep denying this reality because the facts get in the way of their beliefs. So we can't do anything about it as the situation just gets worse.
Its predicted performace for 2023, this year we are expected to grow the most of any G7 Country.
Economic predictions are normally nonsense
Sentence 1: an economic prediction Sentence 2: "economic predictions are nonsense"
Surely that was his point? That the economic predictions are all over the place year on year, so you can select whichever you like, and on any case are likely to be wrong to boot.
Mr. Boy, the other side got a hearing in accordance with the law in this country providing equal amounts of coverage.
The obvious, and right, response to the infamous bus was to highlight the trade benefits, and then lead into broader economic pros. The strange, and chosen, response was to argue a massive figure was illegitimate because it was net, which put two cost figures (both enormous) into the public's mind without the other side of the scales (economic advantages).
You obviously remember the campaign differently from me. The Remain side said a lot about the economic downsides. Leave said it was all "project fear" and told us that we would be flooded by Turks. Leave won. The bus has become part of the mythology on both sides, but was less central than many remember. Anyway, the important thing is not how we got into this mess but how we get out of it.
Both campaigns were pisspoor, and there was no real canvassing or street level campaigning, but rather just media stunts.
The economic case for Remain was made, and dismissed by the electorate, but what the Remain campaign failed on was engaging people emotionally with the European project. In part this was because the whole campaign was controlled by different Tory factions and the other parties sidelined, Corbyn being notably uninterested in the issue. The Tory campaign was an internal battle between emotional Brexiteers and transactional Remainers.
The massive groundswell of emotional bonds to a European identity only came after the vote, in the million strong marches. It needed to be a a year or two earlier, but that emotional attachment to Europe for many of us is still present, which why the issue will resurface at some point, and will not go away.
However long it takes, I think it's Britain destiny to remain half-European and half-Atlantic in some form, economically and culturally. The current government attempts to defy economic and cultural gravity, and a millennium of history, with nonsense about being a Pacific country for trade, and having little connection with Europe for cultural exchange, and by comparison this very recent project will never hold.
Excellent post. To suggest that we can cooperate fully with the Pacific countries but not with the ones nearest to us is insane.
And good morning everyone; nice and bright and sunny here today.
And yet no one is suggesting we don't cooperate with them. It is perfectly possible to cooperate very closely with the countries of Europe without being subsumed into a political edifice. It bears repeating that, no matter how much its supporters might try to claim otherwise, the EU is not Europe. It is a political project that we have chosen not to be part of.
Mr. Boy, the other side got a hearing in accordance with the law in this country providing equal amounts of coverage.
The obvious, and right, response to the infamous bus was to highlight the trade benefits, and then lead into broader economic pros. The strange, and chosen, response was to argue a massive figure was illegitimate because it was net, which put two cost figures (both enormous) into the public's mind without the other side of the scales (economic advantages).
You obviously remember the campaign differently from me. The Remain side said a lot about the economic downsides. Leave said it was all "project fear" and told us that we would be flooded by Turks. Leave won. The bus has become part of the mythology on both sides, but was less central than many remember. Anyway, the important thing is not how we got into this mess but how we get out of it.
Both campaigns were pisspoor, and there was no real canvassing or street level campaigning, but rather just media stunts.
The economic case for Remain was made, and dismissed by the electorate, but what the Remain campaign failed on was engaging people emotionally with the European project. In part this was because the whole campaign was controlled by different Tory factions and the other parties sidelined, Corbyn being notably uninterested in the issue. The Tory campaign was an internal battle between emotional Brexiteers and transactional Remainers.
The massive groundswell of emotional bonds to a European identity only came after the vote, in the million strong marches. It needed to be a a year or two earlier, but that emotional attachment to Europe for many of us is still present, which why the issue will resurface at some point, and will not go away.
For a lot of voters in their forties or younger the EU was just something they grew up with. We were European but it was just in the background, a set of rights and an identity that didn't matter much until it was taken away. We took it for granted. I didn't feel passionately European until it was ripped away from me against my will by a bunch of ignorant English nationalist twats. That's a feeling of loss that will never go away. So no, this issue is definitely not settled, not by a long way. And if we get the upper hand again, I am sure we will show the same spirit of compromise and generosity as the Leavers have since 2016.
Mr. Boy, the other side got a hearing in accordance with the law in this country providing equal amounts of coverage.
The obvious, and right, response to the infamous bus was to highlight the trade benefits, and then lead into broader economic pros. The strange, and chosen, response was to argue a massive figure was illegitimate because it was net, which put two cost figures (both enormous) into the public's mind without the other side of the scales (economic advantages).
You obviously remember the campaign differently from me. The Remain side said a lot about the economic downsides. Leave said it was all "project fear" and told us that we would be flooded by Turks. Leave won. The bus has become part of the mythology on both sides, but was less central than many remember. Anyway, the important thing is not how we got into this mess but how we get out of it.
Both campaigns were pisspoor, and there was no real canvassing or street level campaigning, but rather just media stunts.
The economic case for Remain was made, and dismissed by the electorate, but what the Remain campaign failed on was engaging people emotionally with the European project. In part this was because the whole campaign was controlled by different Tory factions and the other parties sidelined, Corbyn being notably uninterested in the issue. The Tory campaign was an internal battle between emotional Brexiteers and transactional Remainers.
The massive groundswell of emotional bonds to a European identity only came after the vote, in the million strong marches. It needed to be a a year or two earlier, but that emotional attachment to Europe for many of us is still present, which why the issue will resurface at some point, and will not go away.
That wouldn't have worked, and, in fact, would have depressed the Remain vote even further. Leave would have had an even bigger win.
Most people don't feel an emotional attachment to the European project. What you describe is of passionate interest to perhaps 10-15% of the population, mainly internationalists in metropolitan areas, but they are highly unrepresentative of the broader electorate.
Par for our European relationship has been, and remains, membership of a broader "common market" for trade, with a say in its technical rules, but respecting our traditions and sensitivities, a level of reciprocal free movement for work - but with clear limits to it and a brake if excessive - and absolutely no part in political, social, fiscal or economic union.
Rejoiners have no better answers as they simply hope that Brexit will fail and vindicate them so we can go back "all in" but that won't be the basis of a sustainable settlement - it will just trade one set of problems for another.
Both sides need to get real and that includes EU fanatics who shout "unicorns" or "cherrypicking" at anything that looks like a flexed model.
'Both sides' doesn't really reflect the reality, though. 'Rejoiners' have little or no influence in the opposition parties - even the Lib Dems are fairly realistic about that.
The majority of those who voted remain take a far more pragmatic view of future relations with the EU than do the Leavers who are in government.
ics works. But it IS corruption. Do x for cash y. And he posted it on his own website. Bit silly really.
It’s not corruption. It’s a representative fighting for his turf. He is trading something of value (a vote for Boris) which he judges is less important to the south islanders than a better government settlement
Unedifying, yes. Never pleasant to watch sausages being made. But not corruption.
It’s just the Seely seelying like they’ve done for the last 150 years
Fighting for your turf? Absolutely fine. If you vote for the boss we may give your turf a bag of cash out of cycle that our review said it wasn't due? Corruption. What I'm not doing here is blaming Seely. He as you say is fighting for cash for his constituents. Its the *offer* that is corrupt. He has done us a public service in highlighting exactly how this government works.
I agree with StillWaters here (a rare event). I think most people would define "corruption" as receiving money personally in return for political actions. To be fair, Bob Seely hasn't done that. If we accuse people of nasty things that they haven't done, we undermine outrage at the real crimes (which corruption is). He's made an unedifying deal, no more and no less.
There’s been a few times recently Nick. I still have hope we may bring you over to the dark side 😜
How are you btw? Long time since we last saw each other
I'm flourishing, thanks! Indian summer of my life. Naturally curious about who you are - drop me a note to (nickmp1 at aol.com) if you like? Discretion assured - I have lots of Tory friends who I am very careful not to embarrass by advertising their dubious contact. And politics isn't quite as tribal as it used to be, though you wouldn't always think so here.
Both sides need to get real and that includes EU fanatics who shout "unicorns" or "cherrypicking" at anything that looks like a flexed model.
Brexit is a binary choice.
We are in, or out.
There is no flex. That is a unicorn.
We have a flexed model, we have a free trade agreement.
What more do you want?
We do not have a free trade agreement. Completion of and inspection thereof of reams of paperwork to confirm that these products have zero tariff and zero quota, then inspection of said goods to confirm they comply with the exact same standards used on both sides of the customs border is not free trade.
It is free trade, its how free trade agreements operate the world over.
Its not a customs union. If you want a customs union then argue for that, not a free trade agreement which we have.
Err, no - thats a very narrow definition of an FTA; you're positing one that deals with tariffs only. FTAs have the object of reducing all barriers to trade, not just tariffs, and commonly cover a wide variety of other issues including common (or mutual recognition of) standards, etc.
Mr. Boy, the other side got a hearing in accordance with the law in this country providing equal amounts of coverage.
The obvious, and right, response to the infamous bus was to highlight the trade benefits, and then lead into broader economic pros. The strange, and chosen, response was to argue a massive figure was illegitimate because it was net, which put two cost figures (both enormous) into the public's mind without the other side of the scales (economic advantages).
You obviously remember the campaign differently from me. The Remain side said a lot about the economic downsides. Leave said it was all "project fear" and told us that we would be flooded by Turks. Leave won. The bus has become part of the mythology on both sides, but was less central than many remember. Anyway, the important thing is not how we got into this mess but how we get out of it.
Both campaigns were pisspoor, and there was no real canvassing or street level campaigning, but rather just media stunts.
The economic case for Remain was made, and dismissed by the electorate, but what the Remain campaign failed on was engaging people emotionally with the European project. In part this was because the whole campaign was controlled by different Tory factions and the other parties sidelined, Corbyn being notably uninterested in the issue. The Tory campaign was an internal battle between emotional Brexiteers and transactional Remainers.
The massive groundswell of emotional bonds to a European identity only came after the vote, in the million strong marches. It needed to be a a year or two earlier, but that emotional attachment to Europe for many of us is still present, which why the issue will resurface at some point, and will not go away.
However long it takes, I think it's Britain destiny to remain half-European and half-Atlantic in some form, economically and culturally. The current government attempts to defy economic and cultural gravity, and a millennium of history, with nonsense about being a Pacific country for trade, and having little connection with Europe for cultural exchange, and by comparison this very recent project will never hold.
Excellent post. To suggest that we can cooperate fully with the Pacific countries but not with the ones nearest to us is insane.
And good morning everyone; nice and bright and sunny here today.
And yet no one is suggesting we don't cooperate with them. It is perfectly possible to cooperate very closely with the countries of Europe without being subsumed into a political edifice. It bears repeating that, no matter how much its supporters might try to claim otherwise, the EU is not Europe. It is a political project that we have chosen not to be part of.
In effect, cutting your nose off to spite your face.
If pro-EU voices had spent more time on the economic case (trade especially) for the EU rather than trying to claim a gross rather than net massive figure was unfair, they may well have won the referendum.
Whatever the figure ( gross or net) it would have been claimed to be a Project Fear lie.
PB Brexiteers with the exception of Richard Tyndall assured us there was no economic downside. Richard to be fair, accepted the economic loss to be worth the sovereignty gain. I disagreed but at least he was truthful. The rest of you claimed all gain and no pain.
The Farage line was that Belgians would continue selling chocolates, the Germans selling us cars and the French wine... God it was heard to drown out that snake oil salesman (Farage).......and as for that bloody bus, talk about a distraction.
He was right - they are still selling those things. At a higher price. They on the other hand are buying less of our things because we're expensive and difficult for them to export to.
A series of ONS stats out on Twitter showing just how badly both our economy and performance metrics like labour are tanking. The front page of The Times showing our performance is now worst in the G20 bar Russia.
So we really have shit the bed here. And the tragedy is the government - aided and abetted by pliant lickspittles - keep denying this reality because the facts get in the way of their beliefs. So we can't do anything about it as the situation just gets worse.
Its predicted performace for 2023, this year we are expected to grow the most of any G7 Country.
Economic predictions are normally nonsense
Sentence 1: an economic prediction Sentence 2: "economic predictions are nonsense"
Surely that was his point? That the economic predictions are all over the place year on year, so you can select whichever you like, and on any case are likely to be wrong to boot.
In which case simply ignore the predictions and look at the live ONS data showing the same. Our economy is in the shit according to the government's statisticians. No wonder ONS keep writing to the Big Dog to point out that his statements about how marvellous our economy is performing is not true.
Mr. Boy, the other side got a hearing in accordance with the law in this country providing equal amounts of coverage.
The obvious, and right, response to the infamous bus was to highlight the trade benefits, and then lead into broader economic pros. The strange, and chosen, response was to argue a massive figure was illegitimate because it was net, which put two cost figures (both enormous) into the public's mind without the other side of the scales (economic advantages).
You obviously remember the campaign differently from me. The Remain side said a lot about the economic downsides. Leave said it was all "project fear" and told us that we would be flooded by Turks. Leave won. The bus has become part of the mythology on both sides, but was less central than many remember. Anyway, the important thing is not how we got into this mess but how we get out of it.
Both campaigns were pisspoor, and there was no real canvassing or street level campaigning, but rather just media stunts.
The economic case for Remain was made, and dismissed by the electorate, but what the Remain campaign failed on was engaging people emotionally with the European project. In part this was because the whole campaign was controlled by different Tory factions and the other parties sidelined, Corbyn being notably uninterested in the issue. The Tory campaign was an internal battle between emotional Brexiteers and transactional Remainers.
The massive groundswell of emotional bonds to a European identity only came after the vote, in the million strong marches. It needed to be a a year or two earlier, but that emotional attachment to Europe for many of us is still present, which why the issue will resurface at some point, and will not go away.
However long it takes, I think it's Britain destiny to remain half-European and half-Atlantic in some form, economically and culturally. The current government attempts to defy economic and cultural gravity, and a millennium of history, with nonsense about being a Pacific country for trade, and having little connection with Europe for cultural exchange, and by comparison this very recent project will never hold.
Excellent post. To suggest that we can cooperate fully with the Pacific countries but not with the ones nearest to us is insane.
And good morning everyone; nice and bright and sunny here today.
And yet no one is suggesting we don't cooperate with them. It is perfectly possible to cooperate very closely with the countries of Europe without being subsumed into a political edifice. It bears repeating that, no matter how much its supporters might try to claim otherwise, the EU is not Europe. It is a political project that we have chosen not to be part of.
And the EU - the political project - is not the EEA - the free trade area. We said we don't want the politics, just the trade. And then withdrew from both.
Why are people getting uppity about train drivers not wanting a, god forbid, real terms pay cut?
I got 5% and I am having to reign in almost all discretionary spending.
The strike is not by the drivers - though no doubt that will come some way down the line... Much lower paid workers, who've had a pay freeze for the last couple of years.
According the the management representative yesterday, they can't negotiate, since government has yet to tell them what are their funding constraints. And of course their revenue is down by a quarter compared to pre- pandemic.
This one is very much down to government, who ought to have seen it coming. If they hadn't been so preoccupied with Big Dog's navel.
If the staff don't want to provide their labour then that's their prerogative. Nobody is forced to work for an employer they don't want to work for, anyone can resign if they aren't happy with terms and conditions.
Or they can strike, until the government decides to outlaw it. That is also their prerogative.
The point you seem to have missed is that all if this might have been prevented, has management's hands not been tied. At the moment, they can't negotiate at all.
Were you the one arguing a few days back that inflation didn't really matter ? This kind of mess is the inevitable consequence of high inflation. Groups with the power to cause disruption will use that to protect their real wages. Getting it under control is a long and painful process.
Why are management's hands tied? They have income, they have expenditure, they need to balance the two. That's what they're bloody paid to do.
If they can't balance the two, then the company should go bankrupt and close down and then everyone gets fired anyway.
Management need to do their bloody jobs.
Because they are both government controlled and government subsidised. The subsidy represents a significant part of their income - much higher thanks to the pandemic - and they are still waiting for government guidance for the future. Without which they have no basis to negotiate.
Government first needs to do its bloody job.
The pandemic is over. The Government should withdraw its subsidy entirely.
I couldn't care less what the rail staff make, they should get the fair market value for their labour. If that's £20k per annum then fine, if its £100k per annum then fine.
But every single penny of their wages should be paid from money their employers make from their customers. If the staff want more wages then either the employer needs more customers, so give good customer service etc to ensure customers keep using you, or the same amount of customers but increased revenue per customer, so either 'upsell' additional products to the same customers or in this case pass on any wages via increased fares.
The staff should get whatever the customers they're serving are prepared to pay for. Every penny should come from customers.
Shutting down the railways is perhaps the libertarian view, but I doubt you'd have the support of more than a handful of fellow eccentrics.
Mr. Boy, the other side got a hearing in accordance with the law in this country providing equal amounts of coverage.
The obvious, and right, response to the infamous bus was to highlight the trade benefits, and then lead into broader economic pros. The strange, and chosen, response was to argue a massive figure was illegitimate because it was net, which put two cost figures (both enormous) into the public's mind without the other side of the scales (economic advantages).
You obviously remember the campaign differently from me. The Remain side said a lot about the economic downsides. Leave said it was all "project fear" and told us that we would be flooded by Turks. Leave won. The bus has become part of the mythology on both sides, but was less central than many remember. Anyway, the important thing is not how we got into this mess but how we get out of it.
Both campaigns were pisspoor, and there was no real canvassing or street level campaigning, but rather just media stunts.
The economic case for Remain was made, and dismissed by the electorate, but what the Remain campaign failed on was engaging people emotionally with the European project. In part this was because the whole campaign was controlled by different Tory factions and the other parties sidelined, Corbyn being notably uninterested in the issue. The Tory campaign was an internal battle between emotional Brexiteers and transactional Remainers.
The massive groundswell of emotional bonds to a European identity only came after the vote, in the million strong marches. It needed to be a a year or two earlier, but that emotional attachment to Europe for many of us is still present, which why the issue will resurface at some point, and will not go away.
That wouldn't have worked, and, in fact, would have depressed the Remain vote even further. Leave would have had an even bigger win.
Most people don't feel an emotional attachment to the European project. What you describe is of passionate interest to perhaps 10-15% of the population, mainly internationalists in metropolitan areas, but they are highly unrepresentative of the broader electorate.
Par for our European relationship has been, and remains, membership of a broader "common market" for trade, with a say in its technical rules, but respecting our traditions and sensitivities, a level of reciprocal free movement for work - but with clear limits to it and a brake if excessive - and absolutely no part in political, social, fiscal or economic union.
Rejoiners have no better answers as they simply hope that Brexit will fail and vindicate them so we can go back "all in" but that won't be the basis of a sustainable settlement - it will just trade one set of problems for another.
Both sides need to get real and that includes EU fanatics who shout "unicorns" or "cherrypicking" at anything that looks like a flexed model.
'Both sides' doesn't really reflect the reality, though. 'Rejoiners' have little or no influence in the opposition parties - even the Lib Dems are fairly realistic about that.
The majority of those who voted remain take a far more pragmatic view of future relations with the EU than do the Leavers who are in government.
I think it will come out pretty rapidly once Lib/Lab regain office, to be honest.
Cameron started in 2010 with "we won't let matters rest there".
Mr. Boy, the other side got a hearing in accordance with the law in this country providing equal amounts of coverage.
The obvious, and right, response to the infamous bus was to highlight the trade benefits, and then lead into broader economic pros. The strange, and chosen, response was to argue a massive figure was illegitimate because it was net, which put two cost figures (both enormous) into the public's mind without the other side of the scales (economic advantages).
You obviously remember the campaign differently from me. The Remain side said a lot about the economic downsides. Leave said it was all "project fear" and told us that we would be flooded by Turks. Leave won. The bus has become part of the mythology on both sides, but was less central than many remember. Anyway, the important thing is not how we got into this mess but how we get out of it.
Both campaigns were pisspoor, and there was no real canvassing or street level campaigning, but rather just media stunts.
The economic case for Remain was made, and dismissed by the electorate, but what the Remain campaign failed on was engaging people emotionally with the European project. In part this was because the whole campaign was controlled by different Tory factions and the other parties sidelined, Corbyn being notably uninterested in the issue. The Tory campaign was an internal battle between emotional Brexiteers and transactional Remainers.
The massive groundswell of emotional bonds to a European identity only came after the vote, in the million strong marches. It needed to be a a year or two earlier, but that emotional attachment to Europe for many of us is still present, which why the issue will resurface at some point, and will not go away.
However long it takes, I think it's Britain destiny to remain half-European and half-Atlantic in some form, economically and culturally. The current government attempts to defy economic and cultural gravity, and a millennium of history, with nonsense about being a Pacific country for trade, and having little connection with Europe for cultural exchange, and by comparison this very recent project will never hold.
Excellent post. To suggest that we can cooperate fully with the Pacific countries but not with the ones nearest to us is insane.
And good morning everyone; nice and bright and sunny here today.
And yet no one is suggesting we don't cooperate with them. It is perfectly possible to cooperate very closely with the countries of Europe without being subsumed into a political edifice. It bears repeating that, no matter how much its supporters might try to claim otherwise, the EU is not Europe. It is a political project that we have chosen not to be part of.
And the EU - the political project - is not the EEA - the free trade area. We said we don't want the politics, just the trade. And then withdrew from both.
Because we couldn't have the trade without freedom of movement and freedom of movement (into the UK) was the reason why Brexit won in the first place.
Why are people getting uppity about train drivers not wanting a, god forbid, real terms pay cut?
I got 5% and I am having to reign in almost all discretionary spending.
The strike is not by the drivers - though no doubt that will come some way down the line... Much lower paid workers, who've had a pay freeze for the last couple of years.
According the the management representative yesterday, they can't negotiate, since government has yet to tell them what are their funding constraints. And of course their revenue is down by a quarter compared to pre- pandemic.
This one is very much down to government, who ought to have seen it coming. If they hadn't been so preoccupied with Big Dog's navel.
If the staff don't want to provide their labour then that's their prerogative. Nobody is forced to work for an employer they don't want to work for, anyone can resign if they aren't happy with terms and conditions.
Or they can strike, until the government decides to outlaw it. That is also their prerogative.
The point you seem to have missed is that all if this might have been prevented, has management's hands not been tied. At the moment, they can't negotiate at all.
Were you the one arguing a few days back that inflation didn't really matter ? This kind of mess is the inevitable consequence of high inflation. Groups with the power to cause disruption will use that to protect their real wages. Getting it under control is a long and painful process.
Why are management's hands tied? They have income, they have expenditure, they need to balance the two. That's what they're bloody paid to do.
If they can't balance the two, then the company should go bankrupt and close down and then everyone gets fired anyway.
Management need to do their bloody jobs.
Because they are both government controlled and government subsidised. The subsidy represents a significant part of their income - much higher thanks to the pandemic - and they are still waiting for government guidance for the future. Without which they have no basis to negotiate.
Government first needs to do its bloody job.
The pandemic is over. The Government should withdraw its subsidy entirely.
I couldn't care less what the rail staff make, they should get the fair market value for their labour. If that's £20k per annum then fine, if its £100k per annum then fine.
But every single penny of their wages should be paid from money their employers make from their customers. If the staff want more wages then either the employer needs more customers, so give good customer service etc to ensure customers keep using you, or the same amount of customers but increased revenue per customer, so either 'upsell' additional products to the same customers or in this case pass on any wages via increased fares.
The staff should get whatever the customers they're serving are prepared to pay for. Every penny should come from customers.
Shutting down the railways is perhaps the libertarian view, but I doubt you'd have the support of more than a handful of fellow eccentrics.
I have no problem with BR having libertarian market-uber-alles views. But as you say they are hardly mainstream. Yet he posts them in this absolutist haughty manner like anyone who isn't libertarian is stupid.
I know that he isn't trying to gain converts on here, but if he's the same in the real world its hardly a sane approach to win friends and influence people. Especially when your opinions are a bit specialist...
Mr. Boy, the other side got a hearing in accordance with the law in this country providing equal amounts of coverage.
The obvious, and right, response to the infamous bus was to highlight the trade benefits, and then lead into broader economic pros. The strange, and chosen, response was to argue a massive figure was illegitimate because it was net, which put two cost figures (both enormous) into the public's mind without the other side of the scales (economic advantages).
You obviously remember the campaign differently from me. The Remain side said a lot about the economic downsides. Leave said it was all "project fear" and told us that we would be flooded by Turks. Leave won. The bus has become part of the mythology on both sides, but was less central than many remember. Anyway, the important thing is not how we got into this mess but how we get out of it.
Both campaigns were pisspoor, and there was no real canvassing or street level campaigning, but rather just media stunts.
The economic case for Remain was made, and dismissed by the electorate, but what the Remain campaign failed on was engaging people emotionally with the European project. In part this was because the whole campaign was controlled by different Tory factions and the other parties sidelined, Corbyn being notably uninterested in the issue. The Tory campaign was an internal battle between emotional Brexiteers and transactional Remainers.
The massive groundswell of emotional bonds to a European identity only came after the vote, in the million strong marches. It needed to be a a year or two earlier, but that emotional attachment to Europe for many of us is still present, which why the issue will resurface at some point, and will not go away.
However long it takes, I think it's Britain destiny to remain half-European and half-Atlantic in some form, economically and culturally. The current government attempts to defy economic and cultural gravity, and a millennium of history, with nonsense about being a Pacific country for trade, and having little connection with Europe for cultural exchange, and by comparison this very recent project will never hold.
Excellent post. To suggest that we can cooperate fully with the Pacific countries but not with the ones nearest to us is insane.
And good morning everyone; nice and bright and sunny here today.
Who is suggesting we don't cooperate with ones nearest to us?
We literally already have a trade and cooperation agreement to cover both trade and cooperation.
How do you think we will be cooperating more with Pacific than European nations?
Both sides need to get real and that includes EU fanatics who shout "unicorns" or "cherrypicking" at anything that looks like a flexed model.
Brexit is a binary choice.
We are in, or out.
There is no flex. That is a unicorn.
We have a flexed model, we have a free trade agreement.
What more do you want?
We do not have a free trade agreement. Completion of and inspection thereof of reams of paperwork to confirm that these products have zero tariff and zero quota, then inspection of said goods to confirm they comply with the exact same standards used on both sides of the customs border is not free trade.
It is free trade, its how free trade agreements operate the world over.
Its not a customs union. If you want a customs union then argue for that, not a free trade agreement which we have.
Err, no - thats a very narrow definition of an FTA; you're positing one that deals with tariffs only. FTAs have the object of reducing all barriers to trade, not just tariffs, and commonly cover a wide variety of other issues including common (or mutual recognition of) standards, etc.
Yes, FTAs commonly include mutual recognition, or equivalence, of standards. For reasons known only to themselves, the EU is refusing to do this in the case of the UK.
A chunk of Shanghai has gone back into lockdown: meanwhile…
“China is building hundreds of thousands of permanent coronavirus testing facilities and expanding quarantine centres across many of its biggest cities as part of its zero-Covid policy, despite the economic and human toll on the world’s most populous country”
Mr. Boy, the other side got a hearing in accordance with the law in this country providing equal amounts of coverage.
The obvious, and right, response to the infamous bus was to highlight the trade benefits, and then lead into broader economic pros. The strange, and chosen, response was to argue a massive figure was illegitimate because it was net, which put two cost figures (both enormous) into the public's mind without the other side of the scales (economic advantages).
You obviously remember the campaign differently from me. The Remain side said a lot about the economic downsides. Leave said it was all "project fear" and told us that we would be flooded by Turks. Leave won. The bus has become part of the mythology on both sides, but was less central than many remember. Anyway, the important thing is not how we got into this mess but how we get out of it.
Both campaigns were pisspoor, and there was no real canvassing or street level campaigning, but rather just media stunts.
The economic case for Remain was made, and dismissed by the electorate, but what the Remain campaign failed on was engaging people emotionally with the European project. In part this was because the whole campaign was controlled by different Tory factions and the other parties sidelined, Corbyn being notably uninterested in the issue. The Tory campaign was an internal battle between emotional Brexiteers and transactional Remainers.
The massive groundswell of emotional bonds to a European identity only came after the vote, in the million strong marches. It needed to be a a year or two earlier, but that emotional attachment to Europe for many of us is still present, which why the issue will resurface at some point, and will not go away.
However long it takes, I think it's Britain destiny to remain half-European and half-Atlantic in some form, economically and culturally. The current government attempts to defy economic and cultural gravity, and a millennium of history, with nonsense about being a Pacific country for trade, and having little connection with Europe for cultural exchange, and by comparison this very recent project will never hold.
Excellent post. To suggest that we can cooperate fully with the Pacific countries but not with the ones nearest to us is insane.
And good morning everyone; nice and bright and sunny here today.
And yet no one is suggesting we don't cooperate with them. It is perfectly possible to cooperate very closely with the countries of Europe without being subsumed into a political edifice. It bears repeating that, no matter how much its supporters might try to claim otherwise, the EU is not Europe. It is a political project that we have chosen not to be part of.
And the EU - the political project - is not the EEA - the free trade area. We said we don't want the politics, just the trade. And then withdrew from both.
Well as you know I am a massive advocate for the EEA so I am not going to argue about the stupidity of that decision. Leaving the EU was absolutely the right thing to do. Not at least trying to join the EEA via EFTA was just daft. Something that I hope will be corrected with time.
Why are people getting uppity about train drivers not wanting a, god forbid, real terms pay cut?
I got 5% and I am having to reign in almost all discretionary spending.
The strike is not by the drivers - though no doubt that will come some way down the line... Much lower paid workers, who've had a pay freeze for the last couple of years.
According the the management representative yesterday, they can't negotiate, since government has yet to tell them what are their funding constraints. And of course their revenue is down by a quarter compared to pre- pandemic.
This one is very much down to government, who ought to have seen it coming. If they hadn't been so preoccupied with Big Dog's navel.
If the staff don't want to provide their labour then that's their prerogative. Nobody is forced to work for an employer they don't want to work for, anyone can resign if they aren't happy with terms and conditions.
Or they can strike, until the government decides to outlaw it. That is also their prerogative.
The point you seem to have missed is that all if this might have been prevented, has management's hands not been tied. At the moment, they can't negotiate at all.
Were you the one arguing a few days back that inflation didn't really matter ? This kind of mess is the inevitable consequence of high inflation. Groups with the power to cause disruption will use that to protect their real wages. Getting it under control is a long and painful process.
Why are management's hands tied? They have income, they have expenditure, they need to balance the two. That's what they're bloody paid to do.
If they can't balance the two, then the company should go bankrupt and close down and then everyone gets fired anyway.
Management need to do their bloody jobs.
Because they are both government controlled and government subsidised. The subsidy represents a significant part of their income - much higher thanks to the pandemic - and they are still waiting for government guidance for the future. Without which they have no basis to negotiate.
Government first needs to do its bloody job.
The rail strikes are the first of many coming down the track (ha) as public sector unions (and, as you point out, the railways, to the extent that they are not back in public ownership are completely dependent on the public teat) flex their strength to try and protect their members from the severe drop in their standard of living caused by inflation. This is a part of the price the government has to pay for the incompetence of the monetary policy committee of the BoE in not only failing to foresee this inflation but also aggravating it by failing to increase interest rates soon enough, weakening Sterling and thus importing yet more inflation as a result.
The government will inevitably have to give way when the NHS staff, teachers and others do the same. Its going to cost a lot of money, something those screaming for a reduction in taxes seem reluctant to acknowledge.
A chunk of Shanghai has gone back into lockdown: meanwhile…
“China is building hundreds of thousands of permanent coronavirus testing facilities and expanding quarantine centres across many of its biggest cities as part of its zero-Covid policy, despite the economic and human toll on the world’s most populous country”
FT: ££
Not madness, just the regime exerting control over its population. Showing them who's boss.
Why are people getting uppity about train drivers not wanting a, god forbid, real terms pay cut?
I got 5% and I am having to reign in almost all discretionary spending.
The strike is not by the drivers - though no doubt that will come some way down the line... Much lower paid workers, who've had a pay freeze for the last couple of years.
According the the management representative yesterday, they can't negotiate, since government has yet to tell them what are their funding constraints. And of course their revenue is down by a quarter compared to pre- pandemic.
This one is very much down to government, who ought to have seen it coming. If they hadn't been so preoccupied with Big Dog's navel.
If the staff don't want to provide their labour then that's their prerogative. Nobody is forced to work for an employer they don't want to work for, anyone can resign if they aren't happy with terms and conditions.
Or they can strike, until the government decides to outlaw it. That is also their prerogative.
The point you seem to have missed is that all if this might have been prevented, has management's hands not been tied. At the moment, they can't negotiate at all.
Were you the one arguing a few days back that inflation didn't really matter ? This kind of mess is the inevitable consequence of high inflation. Groups with the power to cause disruption will use that to protect their real wages. Getting it under control is a long and painful process.
Why are management's hands tied? They have income, they have expenditure, they need to balance the two. That's what they're bloody paid to do.
If they can't balance the two, then the company should go bankrupt and close down and then everyone gets fired anyway.
Management need to do their bloody jobs.
Because they are both government controlled and government subsidised. The subsidy represents a significant part of their income - much higher thanks to the pandemic - and they are still waiting for government guidance for the future. Without which they have no basis to negotiate.
Government first needs to do its bloody job.
The pandemic is over. The Government should withdraw its subsidy entirely.
I couldn't care less what the rail staff make, they should get the fair market value for their labour. If that's £20k per annum then fine, if its £100k per annum then fine.
But every single penny of their wages should be paid from money their employers make from their customers. If the staff want more wages then either the employer needs more customers, so give good customer service etc to ensure customers keep using you, or the same amount of customers but increased revenue per customer, so either 'upsell' additional products to the same customers or in this case pass on any wages via increased fares.
The staff should get whatever the customers they're serving are prepared to pay for. Every penny should come from customers.
Shutting down the railways is perhaps the libertarian view, but I doubt you'd have the support of more than a handful of fellow eccentrics.
I don't suggest shutting down the railways, I suggest letting the market resolve prices.
Aren't we told the railways are in high demand? How often have people complained you can't get a seat? If so, why can it not be self funding?
Railways should find a market equilibrium where their revenues and expenditure matches, which means charging customers whatever it takes to pay the staff.
If you want to pay staff more then great, but your customers have to pay for that. If you want to charge your customers less then great, but you have less revenue for staff wages.
A chunk of Shanghai has gone back into lockdown: meanwhile…
“China is building hundreds of thousands of permanent coronavirus testing facilities and expanding quarantine centres across many of its biggest cities as part of its zero-Covid policy, despite the economic and human toll on the world’s most populous country”
FT: ££
Not madness, just the regime exerting control over its population. Showing them who's boss.
You can't win the argument by holding a gun to people's heads.
There are 2 sustainable positions.
We had one. We threw it away.
We are now in the other, and Brexiteers have noticed it's shit.
Except it wasn't sustainable because a majority of our population voted to leave. They did so because of concerns over unrestricted and high levels of immigration and the political union and federalist vision written into the Lisbon Treaty, neither of which was solved in the "renegotiation".
If you want people to rejoin the EU and to settle the matter once and for all you are going to have to answer that question in a new accession treaty, and/or with changes to the EU's founding treaties, that allows it to give more flexibility to those who don't want to go all in.
Otherwise, even if you won a Rejoin referendum 54%-46% in 2028, say, it would soon become a UK political issue again as people remembered all the things they didn't like about it before and got carried along on the conveyor belt to ever closer union.
Mr. Boy, the other side got a hearing in accordance with the law in this country providing equal amounts of coverage.
The obvious, and right, response to the infamous bus was to highlight the trade benefits, and then lead into broader economic pros. The strange, and chosen, response was to argue a massive figure was illegitimate because it was net, which put two cost figures (both enormous) into the public's mind without the other side of the scales (economic advantages).
You obviously remember the campaign differently from me. The Remain side said a lot about the economic downsides. Leave said it was all "project fear" and told us that we would be flooded by Turks. Leave won. The bus has become part of the mythology on both sides, but was less central than many remember. Anyway, the important thing is not how we got into this mess but how we get out of it.
Both campaigns were pisspoor, and there was no real canvassing or street level campaigning, but rather just media stunts.
The economic case for Remain was made, and dismissed by the electorate, but what the Remain campaign failed on was engaging people emotionally with the European project. In part this was because the whole campaign was controlled by different Tory factions and the other parties sidelined, Corbyn being notably uninterested in the issue. The Tory campaign was an internal battle between emotional Brexiteers and transactional Remainers.
The massive groundswell of emotional bonds to a European identity only came after the vote, in the million strong marches. It needed to be a a year or two earlier, but that emotional attachment to Europe for many of us is still present, which why the issue will resurface at some point, and will not go away.
However long it takes, I think it's Britain destiny to remain half-European and half-Atlantic in some form, economically and culturally. The current government attempts to defy economic and cultural gravity, and a millennium of history, with nonsense about being a Pacific country for trade, and having little connection with Europe for cultural exchange, and by comparison this very recent project will never hold.
The clue there is half-Atlantic and half-European.
A one-size-fits-all EU model was never going to work for Britain and that's what they insisted on providing through the Lisbon Treaty (yes, I know Maastricht opt-out on the euro - not enough) and wanted to take it even further through further social, fiscal and political union in future.
Have they learned any lessons? Would they be willing to flex?
If they're not going to flex, which I doubt in the near future, some major politician or other is going to have be brave enough to tell people that we will all suffer economically substantially, over a long period, unless free movement returns to allow us to join EFTA/EEA. An unenviable situation, but entirely self-created by the Tories terror of demagogues like Farage, creating impossible expectations of zero immigration and maximum growth.
A chunk of Shanghai has gone back into lockdown: meanwhile…
“China is building hundreds of thousands of permanent coronavirus testing facilities and expanding quarantine centres across many of its biggest cities as part of its zero-Covid policy, despite the economic and human toll on the world’s most populous country”
FT: ££
Not madness, just the regime exerting control over its population. Showing them who's boss.
You can't win the argument by holding a gun to people's heads.
There are 2 sustainable positions.
We had one. We threw it away.
We are now in the other, and Brexiteers have noticed it's shit.
Except it wasn't sustainable because a majority of our population voted to leave. They did so because of concerns over unrestricted and high levels of immigration and the political union and federalist vision written into the Lisbon Treaty, neither of which was solved in the "renegotiation".
If you want people to rejoin the EU and to settle the matter once and for all you are going to have to answer that question in a new accession treaty, and/or with changes to the EU's founding treaties, that allows it to give more flexibility to those who don't want to go all in.
Otherwise, even if you won a Rejoin referendum 54%-46% in 2028, say, it would soon become a UK political issue again as people remembered all the things they didn't like about it before and got carried along on the conveyor belt to ever closer union.
No, no, no Casino - leave won because of all the racists. That's what I keep hearing.
Why are people getting uppity about train drivers not wanting a, god forbid, real terms pay cut?
I got 5% and I am having to reign in almost all discretionary spending.
The strike is not by the drivers - though no doubt that will come some way down the line... Much lower paid workers, who've had a pay freeze for the last couple of years.
According the the management representative yesterday, they can't negotiate, since government has yet to tell them what are their funding constraints. And of course their revenue is down by a quarter compared to pre- pandemic.
This one is very much down to government, who ought to have seen it coming. If they hadn't been so preoccupied with Big Dog's navel.
If the staff don't want to provide their labour then that's their prerogative. Nobody is forced to work for an employer they don't want to work for, anyone can resign if they aren't happy with terms and conditions.
Or they can strike, until the government decides to outlaw it. That is also their prerogative.
The point you seem to have missed is that all if this might have been prevented, has management's hands not been tied. At the moment, they can't negotiate at all.
Were you the one arguing a few days back that inflation didn't really matter ? This kind of mess is the inevitable consequence of high inflation. Groups with the power to cause disruption will use that to protect their real wages. Getting it under control is a long and painful process.
Why are management's hands tied? They have income, they have expenditure, they need to balance the two. That's what they're bloody paid to do.
If they can't balance the two, then the company should go bankrupt and close down and then everyone gets fired anyway.
Management need to do their bloody jobs.
Because they are both government controlled and government subsidised. The subsidy represents a significant part of their income - much higher thanks to the pandemic - and they are still waiting for government guidance for the future. Without which they have no basis to negotiate.
Government first needs to do its bloody job.
The pandemic is over. The Government should withdraw its subsidy entirely.
I couldn't care less what the rail staff make, they should get the fair market value for their labour. If that's £20k per annum then fine, if its £100k per annum then fine.
But every single penny of their wages should be paid from money their employers make from their customers. If the staff want more wages then either the employer needs more customers, so give good customer service etc to ensure customers keep using you, or the same amount of customers but increased revenue per customer, so either 'upsell' additional products to the same customers or in this case pass on any wages via increased fares.
The staff should get whatever the customers they're serving are prepared to pay for. Every penny should come from customers.
Shutting down the railways is perhaps the libertarian view, but I doubt you'd have the support of more than a handful of fellow eccentrics.
I don't suggest shutting down the railways, I suggest letting the market resolve prices.
Aren't we told the railways are in high demand? How often have people complained you can't get a seat? If so, why can it not be self funding?
Railways should find a market equilibrium where their revenues and expenditure matches, which means charging customers whatever it takes to pay the staff.
If you want to pay staff more then great, but your customers have to pay for that. If you want to charge your customers less then great, but you have less revenue for staff wages.
The problem with this is that in most parts of the country one railway company has a complete monopoly so there's no incentive to be price competitive. I need to go to London to work and there's no other way to get there so Thameslink can charge me whatever ridiculous price they like (and they do). I don't know what the solution is but it's deeply frustrating.
If pro-EU voices had spent more time on the economic case (trade especially) for the EU rather than trying to claim a gross rather than net massive figure was unfair, they may well have won the referendum.
Whatever the figure ( gross or net) it would have been claimed to be a Project Fear lie.
PB Brexiteers with the exception of Richard Tyndall assured us there was no economic downside. Richard to be fair, accepted the economic loss to be worth the sovereignty gain. I disagreed but at least he was truthful. The rest of you claimed all gain and no pain.
That is categorically untrue.
I always said that it would be economically disruptive, but I think it will be worth it in the long run.
The disruption though is up front, while the benefits are for the long term. Like a "hockey stick" chart.
Sean made an analogy of it being painful "like childbirth".
In fact the only people I've ever seen repeat a claim there'd be no pain, is Remainers talking to themselves about fictional windmill Leavers they're tilting at.
Do you really think if this hockey stick view hadn't been suppressed the people would have voted for it? The lies and duplicity of some organisations never cease to amaze me. Even now they are blaming remainers for defeat when they told the truth about the economy.
What do you mean suppressed? I've openly had the same view all along.
They didn't tell the truth on the economy, the Remain campaign was a pack of economically illiterate lies. Where is the massive surge of unemployment that was predicted? Instead people are crying havoc that they can't find staff, where was that predicted?
I never said you suppressed. I was talking about the leave campaign et al. Do you rejoice in having a low growth hi cost economy with high inflation and energy bills? As a country we are heading up shit Street without a paddle. Unless people start running 2 or 3 jobs they will go under.
Why are people getting uppity about train drivers not wanting a, god forbid, real terms pay cut?
I got 5% and I am having to reign in almost all discretionary spending.
The strike is not by the drivers - though no doubt that will come some way down the line... Much lower paid workers, who've had a pay freeze for the last couple of years.
According the the management representative yesterday, they can't negotiate, since government has yet to tell them what are their funding constraints. And of course their revenue is down by a quarter compared to pre- pandemic.
This one is very much down to government, who ought to have seen it coming. If they hadn't been so preoccupied with Big Dog's navel.
If the staff don't want to provide their labour then that's their prerogative. Nobody is forced to work for an employer they don't want to work for, anyone can resign if they aren't happy with terms and conditions.
Or they can strike, until the government decides to outlaw it. That is also their prerogative.
The point you seem to have missed is that all if this might have been prevented, has management's hands not been tied. At the moment, they can't negotiate at all.
Were you the one arguing a few days back that inflation didn't really matter ? This kind of mess is the inevitable consequence of high inflation. Groups with the power to cause disruption will use that to protect their real wages. Getting it under control is a long and painful process.
Why are management's hands tied? They have income, they have expenditure, they need to balance the two. That's what they're bloody paid to do.
If they can't balance the two, then the company should go bankrupt and close down and then everyone gets fired anyway.
Management need to do their bloody jobs.
Because they are both government controlled and government subsidised. The subsidy represents a significant part of their income - much higher thanks to the pandemic - and they are still waiting for government guidance for the future. Without which they have no basis to negotiate.
Government first needs to do its bloody job.
The pandemic is over. The Government should withdraw its subsidy entirely.
I couldn't care less what the rail staff make, they should get the fair market value for their labour. If that's £20k per annum then fine, if its £100k per annum then fine.
But every single penny of their wages should be paid from money their employers make from their customers. If the staff want more wages then either the employer needs more customers, so give good customer service etc to ensure customers keep using you, or the same amount of customers but increased revenue per customer, so either 'upsell' additional products to the same customers or in this case pass on any wages via increased fares.
The staff should get whatever the customers they're serving are prepared to pay for. Every penny should come from customers.
Shutting down the railways is perhaps the libertarian view, but I doubt you'd have the support of more than a handful of fellow eccentrics.
I don't suggest shutting down the railways, I suggest letting the market resolve prices.
Aren't we told the railways are in high demand? How often have people complained you can't get a seat? If so, why can it not be self funding?
Railways should find a market equilibrium where their revenues and expenditure matches, which means charging customers whatever it takes to pay the staff.
If you want to pay staff more then great, but your customers have to pay for that. If you want to charge your customers less then great, but you have less revenue for staff wages.
The problem with this is that in most parts of the country one railway company has a complete monopoly so there's no incentive to be price competitive. I need to go to London to work and there's no other way to get there so Thameslink can charge me whatever ridiculous price they like (and they do). I don't know what the solution is but it's deeply frustrating.
The solution, as with most contexts where the free market can’t work, is some degree of state intervention. This is what we see in nearly every country in the world. Which is why I feel BR’s position is eccentric.
Why are people getting uppity about train drivers not wanting a, god forbid, real terms pay cut?
I got 5% and I am having to reign in almost all discretionary spending.
The strike is not by the drivers - though no doubt that will come some way down the line... Much lower paid workers, who've had a pay freeze for the last couple of years.
According the the management representative yesterday, they can't negotiate, since government has yet to tell them what are their funding constraints. And of course their revenue is down by a quarter compared to pre- pandemic.
This one is very much down to government, who ought to have seen it coming. If they hadn't been so preoccupied with Big Dog's navel.
If the staff don't want to provide their labour then that's their prerogative. Nobody is forced to work for an employer they don't want to work for, anyone can resign if they aren't happy with terms and conditions.
Or they can strike, until the government decides to outlaw it. That is also their prerogative.
The point you seem to have missed is that all if this might have been prevented, has management's hands not been tied. At the moment, they can't negotiate at all.
Were you the one arguing a few days back that inflation didn't really matter ? This kind of mess is the inevitable consequence of high inflation. Groups with the power to cause disruption will use that to protect their real wages. Getting it under control is a long and painful process.
Why are management's hands tied? They have income, they have expenditure, they need to balance the two. That's what they're bloody paid to do.
If they can't balance the two, then the company should go bankrupt and close down and then everyone gets fired anyway.
Management need to do their bloody jobs.
Because they are both government controlled and government subsidised. The subsidy represents a significant part of their income - much higher thanks to the pandemic - and they are still waiting for government guidance for the future. Without which they have no basis to negotiate.
Government first needs to do its bloody job.
The rail strikes are the first of many coming down the track (ha) as public sector unions (and, as you point out, the railways, to the extent that they are not back in public ownership are completely dependent on the public teat) flex their strength to try and protect their members from the severe drop in their standard of living caused by inflation. This is a part of the price the government has to pay for the incompetence of the monetary policy committee of the BoE in not only failing to foresee this inflation but also aggravating it by failing to increase interest rates soon enough, weakening Sterling and thus importing yet more inflation as a result.
The government will inevitably have to give way when the NHS staff, teachers and others do the same. Its going to cost a lot of money, something those screaming for a reduction in taxes seem reluctant to acknowledge.
I don't think you can really blame the BoE. Sure they might have done a bit more on interest rates, but the significant decisions which affect fiscal and monetary conditions are very much in the hands of government.
Why are people getting uppity about train drivers not wanting a, god forbid, real terms pay cut?
I got 5% and I am having to reign in almost all discretionary spending.
The strike is not by the drivers - though no doubt that will come some way down the line... Much lower paid workers, who've had a pay freeze for the last couple of years.
According the the management representative yesterday, they can't negotiate, since government has yet to tell them what are their funding constraints. And of course their revenue is down by a quarter compared to pre- pandemic.
This one is very much down to government, who ought to have seen it coming. If they hadn't been so preoccupied with Big Dog's navel.
If the staff don't want to provide their labour then that's their prerogative. Nobody is forced to work for an employer they don't want to work for, anyone can resign if they aren't happy with terms and conditions.
Or they can strike, until the government decides to outlaw it. That is also their prerogative.
The point you seem to have missed is that all if this might have been prevented, has management's hands not been tied. At the moment, they can't negotiate at all.
Were you the one arguing a few days back that inflation didn't really matter ? This kind of mess is the inevitable consequence of high inflation. Groups with the power to cause disruption will use that to protect their real wages. Getting it under control is a long and painful process.
Why are management's hands tied? They have income, they have expenditure, they need to balance the two. That's what they're bloody paid to do.
If they can't balance the two, then the company should go bankrupt and close down and then everyone gets fired anyway.
Management need to do their bloody jobs.
Because they are both government controlled and government subsidised. The subsidy represents a significant part of their income - much higher thanks to the pandemic - and they are still waiting for government guidance for the future. Without which they have no basis to negotiate.
Government first needs to do its bloody job.
The pandemic is over. The Government should withdraw its subsidy entirely.
I couldn't care less what the rail staff make, they should get the fair market value for their labour. If that's £20k per annum then fine, if its £100k per annum then fine.
But every single penny of their wages should be paid from money their employers make from their customers. If the staff want more wages then either the employer needs more customers, so give good customer service etc to ensure customers keep using you, or the same amount of customers but increased revenue per customer, so either 'upsell' additional products to the same customers or in this case pass on any wages via increased fares.
The staff should get whatever the customers they're serving are prepared to pay for. Every penny should come from customers.
Shutting down the railways is perhaps the libertarian view, but I doubt you'd have the support of more than a handful of fellow eccentrics.
I don't suggest shutting down the railways, I suggest letting the market resolve prices.
Aren't we told the railways are in high demand? How often have people complained you can't get a seat? If so, why can it not be self funding?
Railways should find a market equilibrium where their revenues and expenditure matches, which means charging customers whatever it takes to pay the staff.
If you want to pay staff more then great, but your customers have to pay for that. If you want to charge your customers less then great, but you have less revenue for staff wages.
The problem with this is that in most parts of the country one railway company has a complete monopoly so there's no incentive to be price competitive. I need to go to London to work and there's no other way to get there so Thameslink can charge me whatever ridiculous price they like (and they do). I don't know what the solution is but it's deeply frustrating.
The solution is to allow more competition on each line. That brings its own problems, such as peak hour frequency of service for each operator, but it does allow a choice for consumers.
The high levels of immigration people were most concerned about in 2015-2016 were in fact from further afield, in the context of the Mediterranean crisis. This is what saw Europe suddenly shoot up the list of voters' concerns, because it was very cannily manipulated by Farage and others into a European issue.
If any major Tory wants to make amends, they're also going to have be brave enough to tell people why and how they were misled on immigration and free movement.
Why are people getting uppity about train drivers not wanting a, god forbid, real terms pay cut?
I got 5% and I am having to reign in almost all discretionary spending.
The strike is not by the drivers - though no doubt that will come some way down the line... Much lower paid workers, who've had a pay freeze for the last couple of years.
According the the management representative yesterday, they can't negotiate, since government has yet to tell them what are their funding constraints. And of course their revenue is down by a quarter compared to pre- pandemic.
This one is very much down to government, who ought to have seen it coming. If they hadn't been so preoccupied with Big Dog's navel.
If the staff don't want to provide their labour then that's their prerogative. Nobody is forced to work for an employer they don't want to work for, anyone can resign if they aren't happy with terms and conditions.
Or they can strike, until the government decides to outlaw it. That is also their prerogative.
The point you seem to have missed is that all if this might have been prevented, has management's hands not been tied. At the moment, they can't negotiate at all.
Were you the one arguing a few days back that inflation didn't really matter ? This kind of mess is the inevitable consequence of high inflation. Groups with the power to cause disruption will use that to protect their real wages. Getting it under control is a long and painful process.
Why are management's hands tied? They have income, they have expenditure, they need to balance the two. That's what they're bloody paid to do.
If they can't balance the two, then the company should go bankrupt and close down and then everyone gets fired anyway.
Management need to do their bloody jobs.
Because they are both government controlled and government subsidised. The subsidy represents a significant part of their income - much higher thanks to the pandemic - and they are still waiting for government guidance for the future. Without which they have no basis to negotiate.
Government first needs to do its bloody job.
The rail strikes are the first of many coming down the track (ha) as public sector unions (and, as you point out, the railways, to the extent that they are not back in public ownership are completely dependent on the public teat) flex their strength to try and protect their members from the severe drop in their standard of living caused by inflation. This is a part of the price the government has to pay for the incompetence of the monetary policy committee of the BoE in not only failing to foresee this inflation but also aggravating it by failing to increase interest rates soon enough, weakening Sterling and thus importing yet more inflation as a result.
The government will inevitably have to give way when the NHS staff, teachers and others do the same. Its going to cost a lot of money, something those screaming for a reduction in taxes seem reluctant to acknowledge.
I don't think you can really blame the BoE. Sure they might have done a bit more on interest rates, but the significant decisions which affect fiscal and monetary conditions are very much in the hands of government.
The BoE have been less aggressive than the US Fed in raising rates, which has caused currency depreciation against the reserve currency for most commodity imports. Which adds to the inflation. Rates really need to quickly go up to 2% or thereabouts.
Why are people getting uppity about train drivers not wanting a, god forbid, real terms pay cut?
I got 5% and I am having to reign in almost all discretionary spending.
The strike is not by the drivers - though no doubt that will come some way down the line... Much lower paid workers, who've had a pay freeze for the last couple of years.
According the the management representative yesterday, they can't negotiate, since government has yet to tell them what are their funding constraints. And of course their revenue is down by a quarter compared to pre- pandemic.
This one is very much down to government, who ought to have seen it coming. If they hadn't been so preoccupied with Big Dog's navel.
If the staff don't want to provide their labour then that's their prerogative. Nobody is forced to work for an employer they don't want to work for, anyone can resign if they aren't happy with terms and conditions.
Or they can strike, until the government decides to outlaw it. That is also their prerogative.
The point you seem to have missed is that all if this might have been prevented, has management's hands not been tied. At the moment, they can't negotiate at all.
Were you the one arguing a few days back that inflation didn't really matter ? This kind of mess is the inevitable consequence of high inflation. Groups with the power to cause disruption will use that to protect their real wages. Getting it under control is a long and painful process.
Why are management's hands tied? They have income, they have expenditure, they need to balance the two. That's what they're bloody paid to do.
If they can't balance the two, then the company should go bankrupt and close down and then everyone gets fired anyway.
Management need to do their bloody jobs.
Because they are both government controlled and government subsidised. The subsidy represents a significant part of their income - much higher thanks to the pandemic - and they are still waiting for government guidance for the future. Without which they have no basis to negotiate.
Government first needs to do its bloody job.
The pandemic is over. The Government should withdraw its subsidy entirely.
I couldn't care less what the rail staff make, they should get the fair market value for their labour. If that's £20k per annum then fine, if its £100k per annum then fine.
But every single penny of their wages should be paid from money their employers make from their customers. If the staff want more wages then either the employer needs more customers, so give good customer service etc to ensure customers keep using you, or the same amount of customers but increased revenue per customer, so either 'upsell' additional products to the same customers or in this case pass on any wages via increased fares.
The staff should get whatever the customers they're serving are prepared to pay for. Every penny should come from customers.
Shutting down the railways is perhaps the libertarian view, but I doubt you'd have the support of more than a handful of fellow eccentrics.
I don't suggest shutting down the railways, I suggest letting the market resolve prices.
Aren't we told the railways are in high demand? How often have people complained you can't get a seat? If so, why can it not be self funding?
Railways should find a market equilibrium where their revenues and expenditure matches, which means charging customers whatever it takes to pay the staff.
If you want to pay staff more then great, but your customers have to pay for that. If you want to charge your customers less then great, but you have less revenue for staff wages.
The problem with this is that in most parts of the country one railway company has a complete monopoly so there's no incentive to be price competitive. I need to go to London to work and there's no other way to get there so Thameslink can charge me whatever ridiculous price they like (and they do). I don't know what the solution is but it's deeply frustrating.
If you need to go to London then you should pay whatever you need to do so in order to fund that. If I need to go to Manchester then I pay whatever I need to in order to fund that.
It may be frustrating but its your transport, you should pay for it. RMT staff should be paid from your expenditure, just as petrol forecourt staff are paid by my expenditure.
If the cost of going into London becomes too much then you will ultimately decide either that you don't need to go into London anymore afterall, or find alternative transport.
You can't win the argument by holding a gun to people's heads.
There are 2 sustainable positions.
We had one. We threw it away.
We are now in the other, and Brexiteers have noticed it's shit.
Except it wasn't sustainable because a majority of our population voted to leave. They did so because of concerns over unrestricted and high levels of immigration and the political union and federalist vision written into the Lisbon Treaty, neither of which was solved in the "renegotiation".
If you want people to rejoin the EU and to settle the matter once and for all you are going to have to answer that question in a new accession treaty, and/or with changes to the EU's founding treaties, that allows it to give more flexibility to those who don't want to go all in.
Otherwise, even if you won a Rejoin referendum 54%-46% in 2028, say, it would soon become a UK political issue again as people remembered all the things they didn't like about it before and got carried along on the conveyor belt to ever closer union.
I think different age cohorts have different views though. As the baby Boomer generation dies off anti-EU views will become much less prominent. I suppose there is the question of whether the EU is one of those issues where voters' opinions change over time - it certainly was for the baby boomers who voted yes in 1975. I don't detect a shift in view among people in their forties though, compared to their views in their twenties. And younger voters are very internationalist in their views. So I think in 10-20 years there will be a more sustainable pro-EU majority. Having said that, I agree with you that being at the very core of the EU is not a good fit for us with our history and geography. If the EU can develop an inner core and outer periphery then our place is probably in the latter. What is not sustainable is the current setup, which has weakened us economically and divided us politically. And, let us not forget, it has caused huge problems in NI, which is in the midst of a political crisis caused entirely by Brexit.
People seem to support the concept of striking until people actually do it then they are opposed. I wonder what sort of strike people would support.
These of course will be the same people that drone on about cancel culture and freedom of speech
I have no qualms whatsoever with the RMT striking. If they want more money and can get it then you as a farepayer should be paying for it, but don't you complain that your fares are too much already?
It isn't me threatening to shut the rails down, its the RMT. The RMT could become a modern day NUM and go on strike for a year and a half as far as I'm concerned. Let them shut down the rails indefinitely just as the miners did, people will find alternative transport and that will be the end of railways, I couldn't care less.
Why are people getting uppity about train drivers not wanting a, god forbid, real terms pay cut?
I got 5% and I am having to reign in almost all discretionary spending.
The strike is not by the drivers - though no doubt that will come some way down the line... Much lower paid workers, who've had a pay freeze for the last couple of years.
According the the management representative yesterday, they can't negotiate, since government has yet to tell them what are their funding constraints. And of course their revenue is down by a quarter compared to pre- pandemic.
This one is very much down to government, who ought to have seen it coming. If they hadn't been so preoccupied with Big Dog's navel.
If the staff don't want to provide their labour then that's their prerogative. Nobody is forced to work for an employer they don't want to work for, anyone can resign if they aren't happy with terms and conditions.
Or they can strike, until the government decides to outlaw it. That is also their prerogative.
The point you seem to have missed is that all if this might have been prevented, has management's hands not been tied. At the moment, they can't negotiate at all.
Were you the one arguing a few days back that inflation didn't really matter ? This kind of mess is the inevitable consequence of high inflation. Groups with the power to cause disruption will use that to protect their real wages. Getting it under control is a long and painful process.
Why are management's hands tied? They have income, they have expenditure, they need to balance the two. That's what they're bloody paid to do.
If they can't balance the two, then the company should go bankrupt and close down and then everyone gets fired anyway.
Management need to do their bloody jobs.
Because they are both government controlled and government subsidised. The subsidy represents a significant part of their income - much higher thanks to the pandemic - and they are still waiting for government guidance for the future. Without which they have no basis to negotiate.
Government first needs to do its bloody job.
The rail strikes are the first of many coming down the track (ha) as public sector unions (and, as you point out, the railways, to the extent that they are not back in public ownership are completely dependent on the public teat) flex their strength to try and protect their members from the severe drop in their standard of living caused by inflation. This is a part of the price the government has to pay for the incompetence of the monetary policy committee of the BoE in not only failing to foresee this inflation but also aggravating it by failing to increase interest rates soon enough, weakening Sterling and thus importing yet more inflation as a result.
The government will inevitably have to give way when the NHS staff, teachers and others do the same. Its going to cost a lot of money, something those screaming for a reduction in taxes seem reluctant to acknowledge.
I don't think you can really blame the BoE. Sure they might have done a bit more on interest rates, but the significant decisions which affect fiscal and monetary conditions are very much in the hands of government.
I am not saying it is exclusively their fault but the Treasury make their decisions in the context of the models and forecasts of the BoE and the OBR and they were both seriously wrong, as many monetarists were pointing out a year ago.
The government should not have been increasing taxes on wages when we were going into an inflation storm. That only increased existing wage pressures. They should have focused on steps to reduce price increases whilst acknowledging that this would only help at the margins.
Pumping all that extra money into the economy to help everyone with fuel bills was like putting petrol on your BBQ. It boosts the quantity of money in circulation. It does nothing to restrain prices. It would have been much better to help those most vulmerable and otherwise reduce the proportion of our fuel bills made up in taxes. Our policies generally are not helping us deal with the very serious problems we have. Our politics is completely dominated by stupid little parties 2 years ago now and the lies told about them. We urgently need a government that is focused on working the problem, not its own survival. An opposition with something to say about this would be a welcome bonus too.
Why are people getting uppity about train drivers not wanting a, god forbid, real terms pay cut?
I got 5% and I am having to reign in almost all discretionary spending.
The strike is not by the drivers - though no doubt that will come some way down the line... Much lower paid workers, who've had a pay freeze for the last couple of years.
According the the management representative yesterday, they can't negotiate, since government has yet to tell them what are their funding constraints. And of course their revenue is down by a quarter compared to pre- pandemic.
This one is very much down to government, who ought to have seen it coming. If they hadn't been so preoccupied with Big Dog's navel.
If the staff don't want to provide their labour then that's their prerogative. Nobody is forced to work for an employer they don't want to work for, anyone can resign if they aren't happy with terms and conditions.
Or they can strike, until the government decides to outlaw it. That is also their prerogative.
The point you seem to have missed is that all if this might have been prevented, has management's hands not been tied. At the moment, they can't negotiate at all.
Were you the one arguing a few days back that inflation didn't really matter ? This kind of mess is the inevitable consequence of high inflation. Groups with the power to cause disruption will use that to protect their real wages. Getting it under control is a long and painful process.
Why are management's hands tied? They have income, they have expenditure, they need to balance the two. That's what they're bloody paid to do.
If they can't balance the two, then the company should go bankrupt and close down and then everyone gets fired anyway.
Management need to do their bloody jobs.
Because they are both government controlled and government subsidised. The subsidy represents a significant part of their income - much higher thanks to the pandemic - and they are still waiting for government guidance for the future. Without which they have no basis to negotiate.
Government first needs to do its bloody job.
The pandemic is over. The Government should withdraw its subsidy entirely.
I couldn't care less what the rail staff make, they should get the fair market value for their labour. If that's £20k per annum then fine, if its £100k per annum then fine.
But every single penny of their wages should be paid from money their employers make from their customers. If the staff want more wages then either the employer needs more customers, so give good customer service etc to ensure customers keep using you, or the same amount of customers but increased revenue per customer, so either 'upsell' additional products to the same customers or in this case pass on any wages via increased fares.
The staff should get whatever the customers they're serving are prepared to pay for. Every penny should come from customers.
Shutting down the railways is perhaps the libertarian view, but I doubt you'd have the support of more than a handful of fellow eccentrics.
I don't suggest shutting down the railways, I suggest letting the market resolve prices.
Aren't we told the railways are in high demand? How often have people complained you can't get a seat? If so, why can it not be self funding?
Railways should find a market equilibrium where their revenues and expenditure matches, which means charging customers whatever it takes to pay the staff.
If you want to pay staff more then great, but your customers have to pay for that. If you want to charge your customers less then great, but you have less revenue for staff wages.
The problem with this is that in most parts of the country one railway company has a complete monopoly so there's no incentive to be price competitive. I need to go to London to work and there's no other way to get there so Thameslink can charge me whatever ridiculous price they like (and they do). I don't know what the solution is but it's deeply frustrating.
The solution, as with most contexts where the free market can’t work, is some degree of state intervention. This is what we see in nearly every country in the world. Which is why I feel BR’s position is eccentric.
The free market can work. We're constantly told that you can't get a seat, that HS2 needs building as the rails are running at capacity etc
If the railways can't be self-funding despite all that, then perhaps its railways that don't work. Or perhaps staff are being paid too much and customers are not paying enough, because the state is bailing them out and that is distorting the market. End the subsidy and let the staff wages and customers fares come into whatever is the equilibrium.
Mr. Boy, the other side got a hearing in accordance with the law in this country providing equal amounts of coverage.
The obvious, and right, response to the infamous bus was to highlight the trade benefits, and then lead into broader economic pros. The strange, and chosen, response was to argue a massive figure was illegitimate because it was net, which put two cost figures (both enormous) into the public's mind without the other side of the scales (economic advantages).
You obviously remember the campaign differently from me. The Remain side said a lot about the economic downsides. Leave said it was all "project fear" and told us that we would be flooded by Turks. Leave won. The bus has become part of the mythology on both sides, but was less central than many remember. Anyway, the important thing is not how we got into this mess but how we get out of it.
Both campaigns were pisspoor, and there was no real canvassing or street level campaigning, but rather just media stunts.
The economic case for Remain was made, and dismissed by the electorate, but what the Remain campaign failed on was engaging people emotionally with the European project. In part this was because the whole campaign was controlled by different Tory factions and the other parties sidelined, Corbyn being notably uninterested in the issue. The Tory campaign was an internal battle between emotional Brexiteers and transactional Remainers.
The massive groundswell of emotional bonds to a European identity only came after the vote, in the million strong marches. It needed to be a a year or two earlier, but that emotional attachment to Europe for many of us is still present, which why the issue will resurface at some point, and will not go away.
It can't go away until all parties see that geography, politics and history form the present and its problems. Particular situations require particular solutions (as with Switzerland).
Secondly, and here there is an exact parallel with the SNP (everyone is in denial about this inconvenient truth), Brexit is two quite separate questions.
The first is: What shall be out constitutional foundations (which Ref2016 decided).
The second is: How well shall the UK be run politically and economically. What direction, how competent.
Any Scot, post future independence, may well say 'Glad we are an independent sovereign state, and BTW our current government is rubbish'.
That's where we are with Brexit. Many would say: 'Glad we did it. BTW our government is rubbish. Time for a change'.
More than half say we shouldn't have done it.
Which is why you can't run a country by the variableness of opinion polls. When elections and referendums happen everyone knows they are for the long term.
Both sides need to get real and that includes EU fanatics who shout "unicorns" or "cherrypicking" at anything that looks like a flexed model.
Brexit is a binary choice.
We are in, or out.
There is no flex. That is a unicorn.
Then, there will be no sustainable settlement.
You can't win the argument by holding a gun to people's heads.
The sustainable settlement is out. There will be minor adjustments here and there to the current arrangements, but I think we're at the end and people just don't realise it yet.
Pro-EU campaigners still haven't come up with a better argument for rejoining than that we're not able to survive outside the EU. Until they have an argument that is rooted in self-confidence and respect there is no long-term future for the UK in the EU. Whenever we regained our confidence as a country in the future we'd be wanting to leave again.
I deeply regret this, but there's no use denying it.
Why are people getting uppity about train drivers not wanting a, god forbid, real terms pay cut?
I got 5% and I am having to reign in almost all discretionary spending.
The strike is not by the drivers - though no doubt that will come some way down the line... Much lower paid workers, who've had a pay freeze for the last couple of years.
According the the management representative yesterday, they can't negotiate, since government has yet to tell them what are their funding constraints. And of course their revenue is down by a quarter compared to pre- pandemic.
This one is very much down to government, who ought to have seen it coming. If they hadn't been so preoccupied with Big Dog's navel.
If the staff don't want to provide their labour then that's their prerogative. Nobody is forced to work for an employer they don't want to work for, anyone can resign if they aren't happy with terms and conditions.
Or they can strike, until the government decides to outlaw it. That is also their prerogative.
The point you seem to have missed is that all if this might have been prevented, has management's hands not been tied. At the moment, they can't negotiate at all.
Were you the one arguing a few days back that inflation didn't really matter ? This kind of mess is the inevitable consequence of high inflation. Groups with the power to cause disruption will use that to protect their real wages. Getting it under control is a long and painful process.
Why are management's hands tied? They have income, they have expenditure, they need to balance the two. That's what they're bloody paid to do.
If they can't balance the two, then the company should go bankrupt and close down and then everyone gets fired anyway.
Management need to do their bloody jobs.
Because they are both government controlled and government subsidised. The subsidy represents a significant part of their income - much higher thanks to the pandemic - and they are still waiting for government guidance for the future. Without which they have no basis to negotiate.
Government first needs to do its bloody job.
The pandemic is over. The Government should withdraw its subsidy entirely.
I couldn't care less what the rail staff make, they should get the fair market value for their labour. If that's £20k per annum then fine, if its £100k per annum then fine.
But every single penny of their wages should be paid from money their employers make from their customers. If the staff want more wages then either the employer needs more customers, so give good customer service etc to ensure customers keep using you, or the same amount of customers but increased revenue per customer, so either 'upsell' additional products to the same customers or in this case pass on any wages via increased fares.
The staff should get whatever the customers they're serving are prepared to pay for. Every penny should come from customers.
Shutting down the railways is perhaps the libertarian view, but I doubt you'd have the support of more than a handful of fellow eccentrics.
I don't suggest shutting down the railways, I suggest letting the market resolve prices.
Aren't we told the railways are in high demand? How often have people complained you can't get a seat? If so, why can it not be self funding?
Railways should find a market equilibrium where their revenues and expenditure matches, which means charging customers whatever it takes to pay the staff.
If you want to pay staff more then great, but your customers have to pay for that. If you want to charge your customers less then great, but you have less revenue for staff wages.
The problem with this is that in most parts of the country one railway company has a complete monopoly so there's no incentive to be price competitive. I need to go to London to work and there's no other way to get there so Thameslink can charge me whatever ridiculous price they like (and they do). I don't know what the solution is but it's deeply frustrating.
You know that the government - not Thameslink et al - set the fares...?
Mr. Boy, the other side got a hearing in accordance with the law in this country providing equal amounts of coverage.
The obvious, and right, response to the infamous bus was to highlight the trade benefits, and then lead into broader economic pros. The strange, and chosen, response was to argue a massive figure was illegitimate because it was net, which put two cost figures (both enormous) into the public's mind without the other side of the scales (economic advantages).
You obviously remember the campaign differently from me. The Remain side said a lot about the economic downsides. Leave said it was all "project fear" and told us that we would be flooded by Turks. Leave won. The bus has become part of the mythology on both sides, but was less central than many remember. Anyway, the important thing is not how we got into this mess but how we get out of it.
Both campaigns were pisspoor, and there was no real canvassing or street level campaigning, but rather just media stunts.
The economic case for Remain was made, and dismissed by the electorate, but what the Remain campaign failed on was engaging people emotionally with the European project. In part this was because the whole campaign was controlled by different Tory factions and the other parties sidelined, Corbyn being notably uninterested in the issue. The Tory campaign was an internal battle between emotional Brexiteers and transactional Remainers.
The massive groundswell of emotional bonds to a European identity only came after the vote, in the million strong marches. It needed to be a a year or two earlier, but that emotional attachment to Europe for many of us is still present, which why the issue will resurface at some point, and will not go away.
It can't go away until all parties see that geography, politics and history form the present and its problems. Particular situations require particular solutions (as with Switzerland).
Secondly, and here there is an exact parallel with the SNP (everyone is in denial about this inconvenient truth), Brexit is two quite separate questions.
The first is: What shall be out constitutional foundations (which Ref2016 decided).
The second is: How well shall the UK be run politically and economically. What direction, how competent.
Any Scot, post future independence, may well say 'Glad we are an independent sovereign state, and BTW our current government is rubbish'.
That's where we are with Brexit. Many would say: 'Glad we did it. BTW our government is rubbish. Time for a change'.
Mr. Boy, the other side got a hearing in accordance with the law in this country providing equal amounts of coverage.
The obvious, and right, response to the infamous bus was to highlight the trade benefits, and then lead into broader economic pros. The strange, and chosen, response was to argue a massive figure was illegitimate because it was net, which put two cost figures (both enormous) into the public's mind without the other side of the scales (economic advantages).
You obviously remember the campaign differently from me. The Remain side said a lot about the economic downsides. Leave said it was all "project fear" and told us that we would be flooded by Turks. Leave won. The bus has become part of the mythology on both sides, but was less central than many remember. Anyway, the important thing is not how we got into this mess but how we get out of it.
Both campaigns were pisspoor, and there was no real canvassing or street level campaigning, but rather just media stunts.
The economic case for Remain was made, and dismissed by the electorate, but what the Remain campaign failed on was engaging people emotionally with the European project. In part this was because the whole campaign was controlled by different Tory factions and the other parties sidelined, Corbyn being notably uninterested in the issue. The Tory campaign was an internal battle between emotional Brexiteers and transactional Remainers.
The massive groundswell of emotional bonds to a European identity only came after the vote, in the million strong marches. It needed to be a a year or two earlier, but that emotional attachment to Europe for many of us is still present, which why the issue will resurface at some point, and will not go away.
It can't go away until all parties see that geography, politics and history form the present and its problems. Particular situations require particular solutions (as with Switzerland).
Secondly, and here there is an exact parallel with the SNP (everyone is in denial about this inconvenient truth), Brexit is two quite separate questions.
The first is: What shall be out constitutional foundations (which Ref2016 decided).
The second is: How well shall the UK be run politically and economically. What direction, how competent.
Any Scot, post future independence, may well say 'Glad we are an independent sovereign state, and BTW our current government is rubbish'.
That's where we are with Brexit. Many would say: 'Glad we did it. BTW our government is rubbish. Time for a change'.
More than half say we shouldn't have done it.
Which is why you can't run a country by the variableness of opinion polls. When elections and referendums happen everyone knows they are for the long term.
It was already six years ago. And a week is a long time in politics.
Why are people getting uppity about train drivers not wanting a, god forbid, real terms pay cut?
I got 5% and I am having to reign in almost all discretionary spending.
The strike is not by the drivers - though no doubt that will come some way down the line... Much lower paid workers, who've had a pay freeze for the last couple of years.
According the the management representative yesterday, they can't negotiate, since government has yet to tell them what are their funding constraints. And of course their revenue is down by a quarter compared to pre- pandemic.
This one is very much down to government, who ought to have seen it coming. If they hadn't been so preoccupied with Big Dog's navel.
If the staff don't want to provide their labour then that's their prerogative. Nobody is forced to work for an employer they don't want to work for, anyone can resign if they aren't happy with terms and conditions.
Or they can strike, until the government decides to outlaw it. That is also their prerogative.
The point you seem to have missed is that all if this might have been prevented, has management's hands not been tied. At the moment, they can't negotiate at all.
Were you the one arguing a few days back that inflation didn't really matter ? This kind of mess is the inevitable consequence of high inflation. Groups with the power to cause disruption will use that to protect their real wages. Getting it under control is a long and painful process.
Why are management's hands tied? They have income, they have expenditure, they need to balance the two. That's what they're bloody paid to do.
If they can't balance the two, then the company should go bankrupt and close down and then everyone gets fired anyway.
Management need to do their bloody jobs.
Because they are both government controlled and government subsidised. The subsidy represents a significant part of their income - much higher thanks to the pandemic - and they are still waiting for government guidance for the future. Without which they have no basis to negotiate.
Government first needs to do its bloody job.
The rail strikes are the first of many coming down the track (ha) as public sector unions (and, as you point out, the railways, to the extent that they are not back in public ownership are completely dependent on the public teat) flex their strength to try and protect their members from the severe drop in their standard of living caused by inflation. This is a part of the price the government has to pay for the incompetence of the monetary policy committee of the BoE in not only failing to foresee this inflation but also aggravating it by failing to increase interest rates soon enough, weakening Sterling and thus importing yet more inflation as a result.
The government will inevitably have to give way when the NHS staff, teachers and others do the same. Its going to cost a lot of money, something those screaming for a reduction in taxes seem reluctant to acknowledge.
I don't think you can really blame the BoE. Sure they might have done a bit more on interest rates, but the significant decisions which affect fiscal and monetary conditions are very much in the hands of government.
I am not saying it is exclusively their fault but the Treasury make their decisions in the context of the models and forecasts of the BoE and the OBR and they were both seriously wrong, as many monetarists were pointing out a year ago.
The government should not have been increasing taxes on wages when we were going into an inflation storm. That only increased existing wage pressures. They should have focused on steps to reduce price increases whilst acknowledging that this would only help at the margins.
Pumping all that extra money into the economy to help everyone with fuel bills was like putting petrol on your BBQ. It boosts the quantity of money in circulation. It does nothing to restrain prices. It would have been much better to help those most vulmerable and otherwise reduce the proportion of our fuel bills made up in taxes. Our policies generally are not helping us deal with the very serious problems we have. Our politics is completely dominated by stupid little parties 2 years ago now and the lies told about them. We urgently need a government that is focused on working the problem, not its own survival. An opposition with something to say about this would be a welcome bonus too.
I don't really disagree - just that I place much of the blame with government.
Why are people getting uppity about train drivers not wanting a, god forbid, real terms pay cut?
I got 5% and I am having to reign in almost all discretionary spending.
The strike is not by the drivers - though no doubt that will come some way down the line... Much lower paid workers, who've had a pay freeze for the last couple of years.
According the the management representative yesterday, they can't negotiate, since government has yet to tell them what are their funding constraints. And of course their revenue is down by a quarter compared to pre- pandemic.
This one is very much down to government, who ought to have seen it coming. If they hadn't been so preoccupied with Big Dog's navel.
If the staff don't want to provide their labour then that's their prerogative. Nobody is forced to work for an employer they don't want to work for, anyone can resign if they aren't happy with terms and conditions.
Or they can strike, until the government decides to outlaw it. That is also their prerogative.
The point you seem to have missed is that all if this might have been prevented, has management's hands not been tied. At the moment, they can't negotiate at all.
Were you the one arguing a few days back that inflation didn't really matter ? This kind of mess is the inevitable consequence of high inflation. Groups with the power to cause disruption will use that to protect their real wages. Getting it under control is a long and painful process.
Why are management's hands tied? They have income, they have expenditure, they need to balance the two. That's what they're bloody paid to do.
If they can't balance the two, then the company should go bankrupt and close down and then everyone gets fired anyway.
Management need to do their bloody jobs.
Because they are both government controlled and government subsidised. The subsidy represents a significant part of their income - much higher thanks to the pandemic - and they are still waiting for government guidance for the future. Without which they have no basis to negotiate.
Government first needs to do its bloody job.
The pandemic is over. The Government should withdraw its subsidy entirely.
I couldn't care less what the rail staff make, they should get the fair market value for their labour. If that's £20k per annum then fine, if its £100k per annum then fine.
But every single penny of their wages should be paid from money their employers make from their customers. If the staff want more wages then either the employer needs more customers, so give good customer service etc to ensure customers keep using you, or the same amount of customers but increased revenue per customer, so either 'upsell' additional products to the same customers or in this case pass on any wages via increased fares.
The staff should get whatever the customers they're serving are prepared to pay for. Every penny should come from customers.
Shutting down the railways is perhaps the libertarian view, but I doubt you'd have the support of more than a handful of fellow eccentrics.
I don't suggest shutting down the railways, I suggest letting the market resolve prices.
Aren't we told the railways are in high demand? How often have people complained you can't get a seat? If so, why can it not be self funding?
Railways should find a market equilibrium where their revenues and expenditure matches, which means charging customers whatever it takes to pay the staff.
If you want to pay staff more then great, but your customers have to pay for that. If you want to charge your customers less then great, but you have less revenue for staff wages.
The problem with this is that in most parts of the country one railway company has a complete monopoly so there's no incentive to be price competitive. I need to go to London to work and there's no other way to get there so Thameslink can charge me whatever ridiculous price they like (and they do). I don't know what the solution is but it's deeply frustrating.
The solution, as with most contexts where the free market can’t work, is some degree of state intervention. This is what we see in nearly every country in the world. Which is why I feel BR’s position is eccentric.
The free market can work. We're constantly told that you can't get a seat, that HS2 needs building as the rails are running at capacity etc
If the railways can't be self-funding despite all that, then perhaps its railways that don't work. Or perhaps staff are being paid too much and customers are not paying enough, because the state is bailing them out and that is distorting the market. End the subsidy and let the staff wages and customers fares come into whatever is the equilibrium.
The railways can work - just not in the form they are currently mismanaged in. Create StateCoRail - owned by the government but run commercially. Able to borrow money at state rates to invest. With railway professionals making the decisions not DfT micro managers. And we can have a railway company as successful as the Germans, Dutch, Italians etc etc
Yesterday’s Conservative motion that the Scottish Parliament cancel the second independence referendum failed:
For cancellation 53 Against cancellation 67 Abstention 1
The Unionists are running out of road.
They aren't as even if 100% of MSPs voted for it this UK government would still refuse it
What the Scottish government is saying is that it is more important that their fantasies and dreams of a second referendum are kept alive than our train service is kept running by paying a sensible increase to those working on it*. Or wage increases for those saints that work in the NHS. Or teachers. Etc. It is a hostage to fortune and will be brought up on each and every occasion the Scottish government says that there is not enough money. The yes vote looks set to continue its 6 month decline.
Of course £20m is not enough to sort any of these problems but it is the principle of the thing. Self indulgent nonsense against real world priorities.
Why are people getting uppity about train drivers not wanting a, god forbid, real terms pay cut?
I got 5% and I am having to reign in almost all discretionary spending.
The strike is not by the drivers - though no doubt that will come some way down the line... Much lower paid workers, who've had a pay freeze for the last couple of years.
According the the management representative yesterday, they can't negotiate, since government has yet to tell them what are their funding constraints. And of course their revenue is down by a quarter compared to pre- pandemic.
This one is very much down to government, who ought to have seen it coming. If they hadn't been so preoccupied with Big Dog's navel.
If the staff don't want to provide their labour then that's their prerogative. Nobody is forced to work for an employer they don't want to work for, anyone can resign if they aren't happy with terms and conditions.
Or they can strike, until the government decides to outlaw it. That is also their prerogative.
The point you seem to have missed is that all if this might have been prevented, has management's hands not been tied. At the moment, they can't negotiate at all.
Were you the one arguing a few days back that inflation didn't really matter ? This kind of mess is the inevitable consequence of high inflation. Groups with the power to cause disruption will use that to protect their real wages. Getting it under control is a long and painful process.
Why are management's hands tied? They have income, they have expenditure, they need to balance the two. That's what they're bloody paid to do.
If they can't balance the two, then the company should go bankrupt and close down and then everyone gets fired anyway.
Management need to do their bloody jobs.
Because they are both government controlled and government subsidised. The subsidy represents a significant part of their income - much higher thanks to the pandemic - and they are still waiting for government guidance for the future. Without which they have no basis to negotiate.
Government first needs to do its bloody job.
The rail strikes are the first of many coming down the track (ha) as public sector unions (and, as you point out, the railways, to the extent that they are not back in public ownership are completely dependent on the public teat) flex their strength to try and protect their members from the severe drop in their standard of living caused by inflation. This is a part of the price the government has to pay for the incompetence of the monetary policy committee of the BoE in not only failing to foresee this inflation but also aggravating it by failing to increase interest rates soon enough, weakening Sterling and thus importing yet more inflation as a result.
The government will inevitably have to give way when the NHS staff, teachers and others do the same. Its going to cost a lot of money, something those screaming for a reduction in taxes seem reluctant to acknowledge.
I don't think you can really blame the BoE. Sure they might have done a bit more on interest rates, but the significant decisions which affect fiscal and monetary conditions are very much in the hands of government.
I am not saying it is exclusively their fault but the Treasury make their decisions in the context of the models and forecasts of the BoE and the OBR and they were both seriously wrong, as many monetarists were pointing out a year ago.
The government should not have been increasing taxes on wages when we were going into an inflation storm. That only increased existing wage pressures. They should have focused on steps to reduce price increases whilst acknowledging that this would only help at the margins.
Pumping all that extra money into the economy to help everyone with fuel bills was like putting petrol on your BBQ. It boosts the quantity of money in circulation. It does nothing to restrain prices. It would have been much better to help those most vulmerable and otherwise reduce the proportion of our fuel bills made up in taxes. Our policies generally are not helping us deal with the very serious problems we have. Our politics is completely dominated by stupid little parties 2 years ago now and the lies told about them. We urgently need a government that is focused on working the problem, not its own survival. An opposition with something to say about this would be a welcome bonus too.
I don't really disagree - just that I place much of the blame with government.
I think we are in total agreement then. So do I, as I set out in my last paragraph.
Why are people getting uppity about train drivers not wanting a, god forbid, real terms pay cut?
I got 5% and I am having to reign in almost all discretionary spending.
The strike is not by the drivers - though no doubt that will come some way down the line... Much lower paid workers, who've had a pay freeze for the last couple of years.
According the the management representative yesterday, they can't negotiate, since government has yet to tell them what are their funding constraints. And of course their revenue is down by a quarter compared to pre- pandemic.
This one is very much down to government, who ought to have seen it coming. If they hadn't been so preoccupied with Big Dog's navel.
If the staff don't want to provide their labour then that's their prerogative. Nobody is forced to work for an employer they don't want to work for, anyone can resign if they aren't happy with terms and conditions.
Or they can strike, until the government decides to outlaw it. That is also their prerogative.
The point you seem to have missed is that all if this might have been prevented, has management's hands not been tied. At the moment, they can't negotiate at all.
Were you the one arguing a few days back that inflation didn't really matter ? This kind of mess is the inevitable consequence of high inflation. Groups with the power to cause disruption will use that to protect their real wages. Getting it under control is a long and painful process.
Why are management's hands tied? They have income, they have expenditure, they need to balance the two. That's what they're bloody paid to do.
If they can't balance the two, then the company should go bankrupt and close down and then everyone gets fired anyway.
Management need to do their bloody jobs.
Because they are both government controlled and government subsidised. The subsidy represents a significant part of their income - much higher thanks to the pandemic - and they are still waiting for government guidance for the future. Without which they have no basis to negotiate.
Government first needs to do its bloody job.
The pandemic is over. The Government should withdraw its subsidy entirely.
I couldn't care less what the rail staff make, they should get the fair market value for their labour. If that's £20k per annum then fine, if its £100k per annum then fine.
But every single penny of their wages should be paid from money their employers make from their customers. If the staff want more wages then either the employer needs more customers, so give good customer service etc to ensure customers keep using you, or the same amount of customers but increased revenue per customer, so either 'upsell' additional products to the same customers or in this case pass on any wages via increased fares.
The staff should get whatever the customers they're serving are prepared to pay for. Every penny should come from customers.
Shutting down the railways is perhaps the libertarian view, but I doubt you'd have the support of more than a handful of fellow eccentrics.
I don't suggest shutting down the railways, I suggest letting the market resolve prices.
Aren't we told the railways are in high demand? How often have people complained you can't get a seat? If so, why can it not be self funding?
Railways should find a market equilibrium where their revenues and expenditure matches, which means charging customers whatever it takes to pay the staff.
If you want to pay staff more then great, but your customers have to pay for that. If you want to charge your customers less then great, but you have less revenue for staff wages.
The problem with this is that in most parts of the country one railway company has a complete monopoly so there's no incentive to be price competitive. I need to go to London to work and there's no other way to get there so Thameslink can charge me whatever ridiculous price they like (and they do). I don't know what the solution is but it's deeply frustrating.
The solution, as with most contexts where the free market can’t work, is some degree of state intervention. This is what we see in nearly every country in the world. Which is why I feel BR’s position is eccentric.
The free market can work. We're constantly told that you can't get a seat, that HS2 needs building as the rails are running at capacity etc
If the railways can't be self-funding despite all that, then perhaps its railways that don't work. Or perhaps staff are being paid too much and customers are not paying enough, because the state is bailing them out and that is distorting the market. End the subsidy and let the staff wages and customers fares come into whatever is the equilibrium.
The railways can work - just not in the form they are currently mismanaged in. Create StateCoRail - owned by the government but run commercially. Able to borrow money at state rates to invest. With railway professionals making the decisions not DfT micro managers. And we can have a railway company as successful as the Germans, Dutch, Italians etc etc
If you're prepared to say that StateCoRail operates without subsidy, generates its money from customers, will never be bailed out and the state will have no say in how its working and despite it being a StateCo then that could potentially work. Oh and you'd need to be prepared to say that if the StateCoRail runs out of money then StateCoRail shuts down and the rail ceases to operate anymore.
However it won't solve any of the present problems, it'd make them worse instead. If fares can't go up to the appropriate market rate to pay staff wages due to politics, and if wages go up despite fares not covering wages again due to politics, then StateCo won't be generating its money or successful we'll just have yet another failed StateCo.
We need to take the politics out of railways. Have politicians nowhere near either wages or fares, only then will wages and fares be able to be in equilibrium whether it be ran by PrivateCoRail or StateCoRail.
Mr. Boy, the other side got a hearing in accordance with the law in this country providing equal amounts of coverage.
The obvious, and right, response to the infamous bus was to highlight the trade benefits, and then lead into broader economic pros. The strange, and chosen, response was to argue a massive figure was illegitimate because it was net, which put two cost figures (both enormous) into the public's mind without the other side of the scales (economic advantages).
You obviously remember the campaign differently from me. The Remain side said a lot about the economic downsides. Leave said it was all "project fear" and told us that we would be flooded by Turks. Leave won. The bus has become part of the mythology on both sides, but was less central than many remember. Anyway, the important thing is not how we got into this mess but how we get out of it.
Both campaigns were pisspoor, and there was no real canvassing or street level campaigning, but rather just media stunts.
The economic case for Remain was made, and dismissed by the electorate, but what the Remain campaign failed on was engaging people emotionally with the European project. In part this was because the whole campaign was controlled by different Tory factions and the other parties sidelined, Corbyn being notably uninterested in the issue. The Tory campaign was an internal battle between emotional Brexiteers and transactional Remainers.
The massive groundswell of emotional bonds to a European identity only came after the vote, in the million strong marches. It needed to be a a year or two earlier, but that emotional attachment to Europe for many of us is still present, which why the issue will resurface at some point, and will not go away.
It can't go away until all parties see that geography, politics and history form the present and its problems. Particular situations require particular solutions (as with Switzerland).
Secondly, and here there is an exact parallel with the SNP (everyone is in denial about this inconvenient truth), Brexit is two quite separate questions.
The first is: What shall be out constitutional foundations (which Ref2016 decided).
The second is: How well shall the UK be run politically and economically. What direction, how competent.
Any Scot, post future independence, may well say 'Glad we are an independent sovereign state, and BTW our current government is rubbish'.
That's where we are with Brexit. Many would say: 'Glad we did it. BTW our government is rubbish. Time for a change'.
More than half say we shouldn't have done it.
Where is the polling with rejoin the EU over 50%?
I am referring to Brexit: right or wrong, not rejoin. Hence what I said: more than half say we shouldn't have done it. I am excluding don't knows. Latest YouGov 43/57 right/wrong. Including DK 37/49/14. Brexit is not popular. You are kidding yourself if you think this issue is settled.
Why are people getting uppity about train drivers not wanting a, god forbid, real terms pay cut?
I got 5% and I am having to reign in almost all discretionary spending.
The strike is not by the drivers - though no doubt that will come some way down the line... Much lower paid workers, who've had a pay freeze for the last couple of years.
According the the management representative yesterday, they can't negotiate, since government has yet to tell them what are their funding constraints. And of course their revenue is down by a quarter compared to pre- pandemic.
This one is very much down to government, who ought to have seen it coming. If they hadn't been so preoccupied with Big Dog's navel.
If the staff don't want to provide their labour then that's their prerogative. Nobody is forced to work for an employer they don't want to work for, anyone can resign if they aren't happy with terms and conditions.
Or they can strike, until the government decides to outlaw it. That is also their prerogative.
The point you seem to have missed is that all if this might have been prevented, has management's hands not been tied. At the moment, they can't negotiate at all.
Were you the one arguing a few days back that inflation didn't really matter ? This kind of mess is the inevitable consequence of high inflation. Groups with the power to cause disruption will use that to protect their real wages. Getting it under control is a long and painful process.
Why are management's hands tied? They have income, they have expenditure, they need to balance the two. That's what they're bloody paid to do.
If they can't balance the two, then the company should go bankrupt and close down and then everyone gets fired anyway.
Management need to do their bloody jobs.
Because they are both government controlled and government subsidised. The subsidy represents a significant part of their income - much higher thanks to the pandemic - and they are still waiting for government guidance for the future. Without which they have no basis to negotiate.
Government first needs to do its bloody job.
The pandemic is over. The Government should withdraw its subsidy entirely.
I couldn't care less what the rail staff make, they should get the fair market value for their labour. If that's £20k per annum then fine, if its £100k per annum then fine.
But every single penny of their wages should be paid from money their employers make from their customers. If the staff want more wages then either the employer needs more customers, so give good customer service etc to ensure customers keep using you, or the same amount of customers but increased revenue per customer, so either 'upsell' additional products to the same customers or in this case pass on any wages via increased fares.
The staff should get whatever the customers they're serving are prepared to pay for. Every penny should come from customers.
Shutting down the railways is perhaps the libertarian view, but I doubt you'd have the support of more than a handful of fellow eccentrics.
I don't suggest shutting down the railways, I suggest letting the market resolve prices....
Transport infrastructure, rail included, is both a public good and almost impossible to leave to the free market in any advanced economy. Rail included; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_subsidies
Why are people getting uppity about train drivers not wanting a, god forbid, real terms pay cut?
I got 5% and I am having to reign in almost all discretionary spending.
The strike is not by the drivers - though no doubt that will come some way down the line... Much lower paid workers, who've had a pay freeze for the last couple of years.
According the the management representative yesterday, they can't negotiate, since government has yet to tell them what are their funding constraints. And of course their revenue is down by a quarter compared to pre- pandemic.
This one is very much down to government, who ought to have seen it coming. If they hadn't been so preoccupied with Big Dog's navel.
If the staff don't want to provide their labour then that's their prerogative. Nobody is forced to work for an employer they don't want to work for, anyone can resign if they aren't happy with terms and conditions.
Or they can strike, until the government decides to outlaw it. That is also their prerogative.
The point you seem to have missed is that all if this might have been prevented, has management's hands not been tied. At the moment, they can't negotiate at all.
Were you the one arguing a few days back that inflation didn't really matter ? This kind of mess is the inevitable consequence of high inflation. Groups with the power to cause disruption will use that to protect their real wages. Getting it under control is a long and painful process.
Why are management's hands tied? They have income, they have expenditure, they need to balance the two. That's what they're bloody paid to do.
If they can't balance the two, then the company should go bankrupt and close down and then everyone gets fired anyway.
Management need to do their bloody jobs.
Because they are both government controlled and government subsidised. The subsidy represents a significant part of their income - much higher thanks to the pandemic - and they are still waiting for government guidance for the future. Without which they have no basis to negotiate.
Government first needs to do its bloody job.
The pandemic is over. The Government should withdraw its subsidy entirely.
I couldn't care less what the rail staff make, they should get the fair market value for their labour. If that's £20k per annum then fine, if its £100k per annum then fine.
But every single penny of their wages should be paid from money their employers make from their customers. If the staff want more wages then either the employer needs more customers, so give good customer service etc to ensure customers keep using you, or the same amount of customers but increased revenue per customer, so either 'upsell' additional products to the same customers or in this case pass on any wages via increased fares.
The staff should get whatever the customers they're serving are prepared to pay for. Every penny should come from customers.
Shutting down the railways is perhaps the libertarian view, but I doubt you'd have the support of more than a handful of fellow eccentrics.
I don't suggest shutting down the railways, I suggest letting the market resolve prices....
Transport infrastructure, rail included, is both a public good and almost impossible to leave to the free market in any advanced economy. Rail included; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_subsidies
You're suggesting we indulge your fantasy.
The USA is a humongous continent-spanning country with a massive railway network and freight rail doesn't get a penny of taxpayer support and Amtrak receives less taxpayer support than the UK gives railways.
The government makes a profit not a loss on road transport as fuel and road tax/VED much more than cover road infrastructure, so we're self-funding too.
Both sides need to get real and that includes EU fanatics who shout "unicorns" or "cherrypicking" at anything that looks like a flexed model.
Brexit is a binary choice.
We are in, or out.
There is no flex. That is a unicorn.
Then, there will be no sustainable settlement.
You can't win the argument by holding a gun to people's heads.
The sustainable settlement is out. There will be minor adjustments here and there to the current arrangements, but I think we're at the end and people just don't realise it yet.
Pro-EU campaigners still haven't come up with a better argument for rejoining than that we're not able to survive outside the EU. Until they have an argument that is rooted in self-confidence and respect there is no long-term future for the UK in the EU. Whenever we regained our confidence as a country in the future we'd be wanting to leave again.
I deeply regret this, but there's no use denying it.
I have to say I wouldn't really agree there. The increasing doubts and momentum seem to be coming from the Brexiter side, not the Remainers. Look at Iain Martin and Hannan yesterday - formerly the deal was perfect, amazing, a "feat" which gave us "total freedom", and now it's suddenly no good and insufficient.
Why are people getting uppity about train drivers not wanting a, god forbid, real terms pay cut?
I got 5% and I am having to reign in almost all discretionary spending.
The strike is not by the drivers - though no doubt that will come some way down the line... Much lower paid workers, who've had a pay freeze for the last couple of years.
According the the management representative yesterday, they can't negotiate, since government has yet to tell them what are their funding constraints. And of course their revenue is down by a quarter compared to pre- pandemic.
This one is very much down to government, who ought to have seen it coming. If they hadn't been so preoccupied with Big Dog's navel.
If the staff don't want to provide their labour then that's their prerogative. Nobody is forced to work for an employer they don't want to work for, anyone can resign if they aren't happy with terms and conditions.
Or they can strike, until the government decides to outlaw it. That is also their prerogative.
The point you seem to have missed is that all if this might have been prevented, has management's hands not been tied. At the moment, they can't negotiate at all.
Were you the one arguing a few days back that inflation didn't really matter ? This kind of mess is the inevitable consequence of high inflation. Groups with the power to cause disruption will use that to protect their real wages. Getting it under control is a long and painful process.
Why are management's hands tied? They have income, they have expenditure, they need to balance the two. That's what they're bloody paid to do.
If they can't balance the two, then the company should go bankrupt and close down and then everyone gets fired anyway.
Management need to do their bloody jobs.
Because they are both government controlled and government subsidised. The subsidy represents a significant part of their income - much higher thanks to the pandemic - and they are still waiting for government guidance for the future. Without which they have no basis to negotiate.
Government first needs to do its bloody job.
The pandemic is over. The Government should withdraw its subsidy entirely.
I couldn't care less what the rail staff make, they should get the fair market value for their labour. If that's £20k per annum then fine, if its £100k per annum then fine.
But every single penny of their wages should be paid from money their employers make from their customers. If the staff want more wages then either the employer needs more customers, so give good customer service etc to ensure customers keep using you, or the same amount of customers but increased revenue per customer, so either 'upsell' additional products to the same customers or in this case pass on any wages via increased fares.
The staff should get whatever the customers they're serving are prepared to pay for. Every penny should come from customers.
Shutting down the railways is perhaps the libertarian view, but I doubt you'd have the support of more than a handful of fellow eccentrics.
I don't suggest shutting down the railways, I suggest letting the market resolve prices.
Aren't we told the railways are in high demand? How often have people complained you can't get a seat? If so, why can it not be self funding?
Railways should find a market equilibrium where their revenues and expenditure matches, which means charging customers whatever it takes to pay the staff.
If you want to pay staff more then great, but your customers have to pay for that. If you want to charge your customers less then great, but you have less revenue for staff wages.
The problem with this is that in most parts of the country one railway company has a complete monopoly so there's no incentive to be price competitive. I need to go to London to work and there's no other way to get there so Thameslink can charge me whatever ridiculous price they like (and they do). I don't know what the solution is but it's deeply frustrating.
The solution is to allow more competition on each line. That brings its own problems, such as peak hour frequency of service for each operator, but it does allow a choice for consumers.
Mr. Boy, the other side got a hearing in accordance with the law in this country providing equal amounts of coverage.
The obvious, and right, response to the infamous bus was to highlight the trade benefits, and then lead into broader economic pros. The strange, and chosen, response was to argue a massive figure was illegitimate because it was net, which put two cost figures (both enormous) into the public's mind without the other side of the scales (economic advantages).
You obviously remember the campaign differently from me. The Remain side said a lot about the economic downsides. Leave said it was all "project fear" and told us that we would be flooded by Turks. Leave won. The bus has become part of the mythology on both sides, but was less central than many remember. Anyway, the important thing is not how we got into this mess but how we get out of it.
Both campaigns were pisspoor, and there was no real canvassing or street level campaigning, but rather just media stunts.
The economic case for Remain was made, and dismissed by the electorate, but what the Remain campaign failed on was engaging people emotionally with the European project. In part this was because the whole campaign was controlled by different Tory factions and the other parties sidelined, Corbyn being notably uninterested in the issue. The Tory campaign was an internal battle between emotional Brexiteers and transactional Remainers.
The massive groundswell of emotional bonds to a European identity only came after the vote, in the million strong marches. It needed to be a a year or two earlier, but that emotional attachment to Europe for many of us is still present, which why the issue will resurface at some point, and will not go away.
It can't go away until all parties see that geography, politics and history form the present and its problems. Particular situations require particular solutions (as with Switzerland).
Secondly, and here there is an exact parallel with the SNP (everyone is in denial about this inconvenient truth), Brexit is two quite separate questions.
The first is: What shall be out constitutional foundations (which Ref2016 decided).
The second is: How well shall the UK be run politically and economically. What direction, how competent.
Any Scot, post future independence, may well say 'Glad we are an independent sovereign state, and BTW our current government is rubbish'.
That's where we are with Brexit. Many would say: 'Glad we did it. BTW our government is rubbish. Time for a change'.
More than half say we shouldn't have done it.
Where is the polling with rejoin the EU over 50%?
I am referring to Brexit: right or wrong, not rejoin. Hence what I said: more than half say we shouldn't have done it. I am excluding don't knows. Latest YouGov 43/57 right/wrong. Including DK 37/49/14. Brexit is not popular. You are kidding yourself if you think this issue is settled.
So even then including DK only 49% think Brexit was wrong, ie just 1% more than the 48% who voted Remain in 2016
Japan The privatized rail network in Japan requires few subsidies. The three biggest companies, JR East, JR Central and JR-West (which account for 60% of the passenger market) receive no state subsidy.[22]
Another area where we should be more like the Pacific and not like Europe it seems. And if you've ever been to Japan you'll know they have a very functional rail network there.
Why are people getting uppity about train drivers not wanting a, god forbid, real terms pay cut?
I got 5% and I am having to reign in almost all discretionary spending.
Because most people are getting zero per cent and aren't going on strike.
Is that the case?
Don't the stats show that private sector workers are getting fairly chunky pay rises (roughly inflation matching?) whilst public sector workers are on 0-2%?
Nobody likes paying more to get a job done, but staff cost what they cost.
Mr. Boy, the other side got a hearing in accordance with the law in this country providing equal amounts of coverage.
The obvious, and right, response to the infamous bus was to highlight the trade benefits, and then lead into broader economic pros. The strange, and chosen, response was to argue a massive figure was illegitimate because it was net, which put two cost figures (both enormous) into the public's mind without the other side of the scales (economic advantages).
You obviously remember the campaign differently from me. The Remain side said a lot about the economic downsides. Leave said it was all "project fear" and told us that we would be flooded by Turks. Leave won. The bus has become part of the mythology on both sides, but was less central than many remember. Anyway, the important thing is not how we got into this mess but how we get out of it.
Both campaigns were pisspoor, and there was no real canvassing or street level campaigning, but rather just media stunts.
The economic case for Remain was made, and dismissed by the electorate, but what the Remain campaign failed on was engaging people emotionally with the European project. In part this was because the whole campaign was controlled by different Tory factions and the other parties sidelined, Corbyn being notably uninterested in the issue. The Tory campaign was an internal battle between emotional Brexiteers and transactional Remainers.
The massive groundswell of emotional bonds to a European identity only came after the vote, in the million strong marches. It needed to be a a year or two earlier, but that emotional attachment to Europe for many of us is still present, which why the issue will resurface at some point, and will not go away.
It can't go away until all parties see that geography, politics and history form the present and its problems. Particular situations require particular solutions (as with Switzerland).
Secondly, and here there is an exact parallel with the SNP (everyone is in denial about this inconvenient truth), Brexit is two quite separate questions.
The first is: What shall be out constitutional foundations (which Ref2016 decided).
The second is: How well shall the UK be run politically and economically. What direction, how competent.
Any Scot, post future independence, may well say 'Glad we are an independent sovereign state, and BTW our current government is rubbish'.
That's where we are with Brexit. Many would say: 'Glad we did it. BTW our government is rubbish. Time for a change'.
More than half say we shouldn't have done it.
Where is the polling with rejoin the EU over 50%?
I am referring to Brexit: right or wrong, not rejoin. Hence what I said: more than half say we shouldn't have done it. I am excluding don't knows. Latest YouGov 43/57 right/wrong. Including DK 37/49/14. Brexit is not popular. You are kidding yourself if you think this issue is settled.
So even then including DK only 49% think Brexit was wrong, ie just 1% more than the 48% who voted Remain in 2016
And those who think it was right is 37%, down 15pp or almost a third on the 52% who voted to leave. That doesn't look like a ringing endorsement does it? Don't we normally drop the DKs from polling discussions? We certainly do for VI polls, right? You are the polling expert though, not me.
Comments
Horse trading goes on - of course it does. But to openly talk about it this way is daft - especially when you are believing a promise made by Boris Johnson's government...
Government first needs to do its bloody job.
What more do you want?
There’s been a few times recently Nick. I still have hope we may bring you over to the dark side 😜
How are you btw? Long time since we last saw each other
All that does is highlight that the ultras don't actually understand what those are. "Should Britain leave the EU" is not a mandate to leave the EEA, become a 3rd country, impose one-sided sanctions on ourselves etc etc.
We left the EU. There is still time to regain our sanity and start trading effectively with the EEA.
I couldn't care less what the rail staff make, they should get the fair market value for their labour. If that's £20k per annum then fine, if its £100k per annum then fine.
But every single penny of their wages should be paid from money their employers make from their customers. If the staff want more wages then either the employer needs more customers, so give good customer service etc to ensure customers keep using you, or the same amount of customers but increased revenue per customer, so either 'upsell' additional products to the same customers or in this case pass on any wages via increased fares.
The staff should get whatever the customers they're serving are prepared to pay for. Every penny should come from customers.
You can't win the argument by holding a gun to people's heads.
Any lawyers want to comment on this?
The NI situation is a mess and needs resolving, but that was always meant to be revisited once we have a trade agreement, only now the EU aren't upholding their end of the bargain. But other than that, we have free trade and are outside the customs union, that's what we chose to go for and its perfectly sustainable.
I gaze with amazement at the area now known as Leigh Sports Village. Which mysteriously sprang up replete with excellent road links when Andy Burnham was MP.
Do I doubt this happens regularly?
No. I'm not naïve.
Do MP's regularly boast about the precise nature of the transactional cynicism on their blog?
Not often. Even if he gets anything, which seems improbable now it will be pored over, it's going to be tainted.
Seely is a buffoon.
They are doing it to make a point.
Its not a customs union. If you want a customs union then argue for that, not a free trade agreement which we have.
https://twitter.com/Dalle2Pics/status/1534718838377529344
It's a politically sustainable question.
So no, this issue is definitely not settled, not by a long way. And if we get the upper hand again, I am sure we will show the same spirit of compromise and generosity as the Leavers have since 2016.
The majority of those who voted remain take a far more pragmatic view of future relations with the EU than do the Leavers who are in government.
How are you btw? Long time since we last saw each other
I'm flourishing, thanks! Indian summer of my life. Naturally curious about who you are - drop me a note to (nickmp1 at aol.com) if you like? Discretion assured - I have lots of Tory friends who I am very careful not to embarrass by advertising their dubious contact. And politics isn't quite as tribal as it used to be, though you wouldn't always think so here.
We had one. We threw it away.
We are now in the other, and Brexiteers have noticed it's shit.
Guardian reports Sharma is considering an approach about the UN climate change role which becomes vacant next month.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/08/alok-sharma-in-running-to-be-uns-global-climate-chief?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Cameron started in 2010 with "we won't let matters rest there".
One of the rare ones too.
Eloquent and on top of his brief. No wonder he's looking for the escape hatch.
I know that he isn't trying to gain converts on here, but if he's the same in the real world its hardly a sane approach to win friends and influence people. Especially when your opinions are a bit specialist...
We literally already have a trade and cooperation agreement to cover both trade and cooperation.
How do you think we will be cooperating more with Pacific than European nations?
A chunk of Shanghai has gone back into lockdown: meanwhile…
“China is building hundreds of thousands of permanent coronavirus testing facilities and expanding quarantine centres across many of its biggest cities as part of its zero-Covid policy, despite the economic and human toll on the world’s most populous country”
FT: ££
The government will inevitably have to give way when the NHS staff, teachers and others do the same. Its going to cost a lot of money, something those screaming for a reduction in taxes seem reluctant to acknowledge.
Aren't we told the railways are in high demand? How often have people complained you can't get a seat? If so, why can it not be self funding?
Railways should find a market equilibrium where their revenues and expenditure matches, which means charging customers whatever it takes to pay the staff.
If you want to pay staff more then great, but your customers have to pay for that. If you want to charge your customers less then great, but you have less revenue for staff wages.
Economically and socially crazy
If you want people to rejoin the EU and to settle the matter once and for all you are going to have to answer that question in a new accession treaty, and/or with changes to the EU's founding treaties, that allows it to give more flexibility to those who don't want to go all in.
Otherwise, even if you won a Rejoin referendum 54%-46% in 2028, say, it would soon become a UK political issue again as people remembered all the things they didn't like about it before and got carried along on the conveyor belt to ever closer union.
These of course will be the same people that drone on about cancel culture and freedom of speech
It does happen in a couple of places, for example Lumo on the East Coast line. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-58992509
If any major Tory wants to make amends, they're also going to have be brave enough to tell people why and how they were misled on immigration and free movement.
It may be frustrating but its your transport, you should pay for it. RMT staff should be paid from your expenditure, just as petrol forecourt staff are paid by my expenditure.
If the cost of going into London becomes too much then you will ultimately decide either that you don't need to go into London anymore afterall, or find alternative transport.
Having said that, I agree with you that being at the very core of the EU is not a good fit for us with our history and geography. If the EU can develop an inner core and outer periphery then our place is probably in the latter. What is not sustainable is the current setup, which has weakened us economically and divided us politically. And, let us not forget, it has caused huge problems in NI, which is in the midst of a political crisis caused entirely by Brexit.
It isn't me threatening to shut the rails down, its the RMT. The RMT could become a modern day NUM and go on strike for a year and a half as far as I'm concerned. Let them shut down the rails indefinitely just as the miners did, people will find alternative transport and that will be the end of railways, I couldn't care less.
https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salary/London-Underground-Train-Driver-Salaries-E36810_D_KO19,31.htm#:~:text=How much does a Train,57,665 - £62,103 per year.
The government should not have been increasing taxes on wages when we were going into an inflation storm. That only increased existing wage pressures. They should have focused on steps to reduce price increases whilst acknowledging that this would only help at the margins.
Pumping all that extra money into the economy to help everyone with fuel bills was like putting petrol on your BBQ. It boosts the quantity of money in circulation. It does nothing to restrain prices. It would have been much better to help those most vulmerable and otherwise reduce the proportion of our fuel bills made up in taxes. Our policies generally are not helping us deal with the very serious problems we have. Our politics is completely dominated by stupid little parties 2 years ago now and the lies told about them. We urgently need a government that is focused on working the problem, not its own survival. An opposition with something to say about this would be a welcome bonus too.
If the railways can't be self-funding despite all that, then perhaps its railways that don't work. Or perhaps staff are being paid too much and customers are not paying enough, because the state is bailing them out and that is distorting the market. End the subsidy and let the staff wages and customers fares come into whatever is the equilibrium.
Pro-EU campaigners still haven't come up with a better argument for rejoining than that we're not able to survive outside the EU. Until they have an argument that is rooted in self-confidence and respect there is no long-term future for the UK in the EU. Whenever we regained our confidence as a country in the future we'd be wanting to leave again.
I deeply regret this, but there's no use denying it.
Of course £20m is not enough to sort any of these problems but it is the principle of the thing. Self indulgent nonsense against real world priorities.
However it won't solve any of the present problems, it'd make them worse instead. If fares can't go up to the appropriate market rate to pay staff wages due to politics, and if wages go up despite fares not covering wages again due to politics, then StateCo won't be generating its money or successful we'll just have yet another failed StateCo.
We need to take the politics out of railways. Have politicians nowhere near either wages or fares, only then will wages and fares be able to be in equilibrium whether it be ran by PrivateCoRail or StateCoRail.
Rail included;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_subsidies
You're suggesting we indulge your fantasy.
The government makes a profit not a loss on road transport as fuel and road tax/VED much more than cover road infrastructure, so we're self-funding too.
Something's up, there.
Get rid.
We need an integrated system, not further fragmentation.
@Ukrzaliznytsia evacuates passengers, helps @BorisJohnson to come to Kyiv, transports grain to the global market, delivers weapons. russia bombs infra to stop all of these but we continue do it in time, as @AKamyshin says
https://twitter.com/Leshchenkos/status/1534636295443603456
https://twitter.com/JonnElledge/status/1534811876395302914?s=20&t=pHzaLWQx6TduWWZNVPahuQ
Japan
The privatized rail network in Japan requires few subsidies. The three biggest companies, JR East, JR Central and JR-West (which account for 60% of the passenger market) receive no state subsidy.[22]
Another area where we should be more like the Pacific and not like Europe it seems. And if you've ever been to Japan you'll know they have a very functional rail network there.
Don't the stats show that private sector workers are getting fairly chunky pay rises (roughly inflation matching?) whilst public sector workers are on 0-2%?
Nobody likes paying more to get a job done, but staff cost what they cost.
Don't we normally drop the DKs from polling discussions? We certainly do for VI polls, right? You are the polling expert though, not me.