Re Sierra Nevada x 2, suggest the nags are (or should be) differentiated by pronouncing name of one in original, Spanish fashion ("Nev-aahh-da") and other in USA style ("Ne-vadd-a")
You mean I've been pronouncing it "wrong" all these years? Doh.
Almost as bad as St. Louis, Des Moines or Montpelier.
Alaska 2022 Special Congressional Election Primary - top four candidates advance to Aug 16 special (ranked choice) election (same day as regular Alaska primary):
Ballots counted = 67,650 as of 9.15pm Fri Alaska time (about half of what were returned as of Friday) > here are the current leaders so far:
Sara Palin (Republican) 23,844 (35.3%) > former governor & VP nomineee Nick Begich (Republican) 12,784 (18.9%) > member of prominent Alaska Democratic political family Al Gross 8,852 (Nonpartisan) 8,852 (13.1%) >Democratic US Senate nominee in 2020 Mary Peltola (Democratic) 4,609 (6.8%) > former state representative and inter-tribal fisheries commissioner Santa Claus (Undeclared) 3,074 (4.6%) > city councilman from North Pole (naturlly) and declared Democratic Socialist (ditto) Tara Sweeney (Republican) 2,324 (3.4%) > ex-asst sec. of Interior & head of Bureau of Indian affairs under Trump Joshua Revak (Republican) 1,218 (1.8%) > state senator
On basis of above, Palin clearly will advance to general election ballot, along with Begich, Gross and probably Peltola.
So as it's FPTP in the second round, we can look forward to Senator Palin?
My reading is that August vote will be AV (Hurrah) and it might be Congresswoman Palin (not Senator).
This plan to get agency staff for the Railways? AIUI, agency staff are in short supply everywhere. And they are turning down work right now. So. Where do they come from?
It shows how little they actual understand about the things they are supposedly in charge of.
I don’t believe there is such a thing as a qualified agency signalman and even if they did exist they won’t be qualified to run anything as all signal boxes require site specific knowledge that takes time to get
I am sure there are some non technical roles agency staff could do, but it seems a bit desperate.
Especially as one needs a certain minimum number of signalmen, for instance, to keep the railways running. And one can't simply make them work overtime. Classic disaster trigger (e.g. a signalling engineer caused a disaster by leaving some bare wiring in a signalbox as a result of being grossly overworked).
If I were a manager I wouldn't touch any derogation of regulations, either. That would be to accept liability for the ensuing crash.
Shades of Abermiwl, where untrained staff accidentally allowed a train onto a section which already contained an oncoming express, with disastrous consequences.
Quite (once I had worked out that this is the correct orthography for the location in question, which is better known in railway books by its anglicised version). But the problem remains, as with the signalling engineer incident (1988).
This threat to bring in blacklegs is so stupid, a few managers aside, that it must be a deliberate Tory attempt to inflame the strike and get better ratings for Big Dog.
It’s like an eighties greatest hits tour. We are already seeing pieces in big dog friendly papers about how labour MPs who support the strike have taken money from the Rail Unions.
Seventies, soon, with the power cuts and oil crisis.
Oh, "but the music".
For every magic memory by the Sex Pistols and The Clash there were ten by Joe Dolce, Paper Lace, Boney M, Rick Dees with his "Disco Duck"....
I think Rivers of Babylon is fab
And if that doesn't give you an earworm, Rasputin
Thinking about it they are the black Abba
They were the epitome of disco, criticism of Boney M is not allowed! Paper Lace can fuck off though. Nottingham Forest, Billy dont be a hero, orchestra/pop twats. That aside, every decade has its cheese. We will no doubt look back (or rather younger bears will) and cringe at todays novelty performers however much their teeny bopper fans think they are the absolute moon and cutting edge of cool.
This plan to get agency staff for the Railways? AIUI, agency staff are in short supply everywhere. And they are turning down work right now. So. Where do they come from?
It shows how little they actual understand about the things they are supposedly in charge of.
I don’t believe there is such a thing as a qualified agency signalman and even if they did exist they won’t be qualified to run anything as all signal boxes require site specific knowledge that takes time to get
It’s all to appear to be doing something.
Pretty much sums up Boris Johnson. No soul. No ideology. No coherence.
Just a muddled set of knee-jerk reactions to the latest crisis with the sole aim of holding onto power.
There is nothing that defines Johnson or his brand of conservativism. It’s power for the Sake of it with no aim or purpose.
Which is the point of being Oxford Union President, isn't it?
Rachel Reeves on Sunday morning with Sophie Raworth demonstrates just why labour are struggling
She couldn't give a straight answer to genuine questions and was evasive
Such as ?
We’re still in bed here.
Refused to say she would cancel the NI rise if they win in 24, but demands it is cancelled now
Refused to commit to a fuel duty reduction beyond the present 5p
Refused to say whether she backed the RMT strike
Stated she will outline policies nearer the election with no indication on tax and spend
Generally a sitting on the fence interview
Labour cant have policies until they know if they all get binned after Durham police confirm Starmer has stabbed himself into resignation with a poppadom shard
This plan to get agency staff for the Railways? AIUI, agency staff are in short supply everywhere. And they are turning down work right now. So. Where do they come from?
It shows how little they actual understand about the things they are supposedly in charge of.
I don’t believe there is such a thing as a qualified agency signalman and even if they did exist they won’t be qualified to run anything as all signal boxes require site specific knowledge that takes time to get
I am sure there are some non technical roles agency staff could do, but it seems a bit desperate.
Especially as one needs a certain minimum number of signalmen, for instance, to keep the railways running. And one can't simply make them work overtime. Classic disaster trigger (e.g. a signalling engineer caused a disaster by leaving some bare wiring in a signalbox as a result of being grossly overworked).
If I were a manager I wouldn't touch any derogation of regulations, either. That would be to accept liability for the ensuing crash.
Shades of Abermiwl, where untrained staff accidentally allowed a train onto a section which already contained an oncoming express, with disastrous consequences.
Quite (once I had worked out that this is the correct orthography for the location in question, which is better known in railway books by its anglicised version). But the problem remains, as with the signalling engineer incident (1988).
This threat to bring in blacklegs is so stupid, a few managers aside, that it must be a deliberate Tory attempt to inflame the strike and get better ratings for Big Dog.
It’s like an eighties greatest hits tour. We are already seeing pieces in big dog friendly papers about how labour MPs who support the strike have taken money from the Rail Unions.
Seventies, soon, with the power cuts and oil crisis.
Oh, "but the music".
For every magic memory by the Sex Pistols and The Clash there were ten by Joe Dolce, Paper Lace, Boney M, Rick Dees with his "Disco Duck"....
I think Rivers of Babylon is fab
And if that doesn't give you an earworm, Rasputin
Thinking about it they are the black Abba
They were the epitome of disco, criticism of Boney M is not allowed! Paper Lace can fuck off though. Nottingham Forest, Billy dont be a hero, orchestra/pop twats. That aside, every decade has its cheese. We will no doubt look back (or rather younger bears will) and cringe at todays novelty performers however much their teeny bopper fans think they are the absolute moon and cutting edge of cool.
Paper Lace only had the one big hit and a couple of minor ones. One of its former members wrote the opening credits music for Midlands today in the late eighties.
Boney M had far greater longevity and knocked out some belting tunes. Their cover of ‘Painter Man’ is a banger.
I fear the country is heading into a real fight with the unions v government arguing over who runs UK
I hope this does not descend into shades of the miners strike, but there are indicators it may be
Nandy and Streeting seem to have upset the apple cart by backing the strikes, while Starmer goes awol, and Reeves struggles on Sophie to answer the direct question on whether she would support the strike
I do not know if the conservatives will regain a poll lead, but the fact the question is even being asked seems extraordinary in view of the economic and political crisis engulfing our country and just why labour are not out of sight
I suspect the public may well consider labour do not have the answer either, other than to throw billions at it
Well, I won't be doing any overtime or vacancy cover if the 2% offer stands with 10% inflation.
On topic, there wil be a Tory poll lead about a fortnight after fuel duty gets suspended.
Hmmm. I'm still not sure you really get the national mood in your UAE hideaway.
I don't think any of us really 'get' the national mood. Few of us talk with wide swathes of the population, especially about politics. We have family and friends, often of similar backgrounds to our own, and many of us frequent comfortable echo chambers on the Internet.
Are discussions I have with parents in the schoolground whilst waiting for their kids to come out of class representative of a 'national mood' , or just ones of certain geographic and economic basis?
Then there's the issue of what you hear: if I am talking with someone who is very left-wing, I am unlikely to talk about privatisation unless I know them very well. I'm more likely just to nod and listen.
We can only see a tiny slice of that national mood.
I fear the country is heading into a real fight with the unions v government arguing over who runs UK
I hope this does not descend into shades of the miners strike, but there are indicators it may be
Nandy and Streeting seem to have upset the apple cart by backing the strikes, while Starmer goes awol, and Reeves struggles on Sophie to answer the direct question on whether she would support the strike
I do not know if the conservatives will regain a poll lead, but the fact the question is even being asked seems extraordinary in view of the economic and political crisis engulfing our country and just why labour are not out of sight
I suspect the public may well consider labour do not have the answer either, other than to throw billions at it
The only option for Labour is to adopt a consensual approach. Miliband's German-style "workers on boards" stance, also applied to a compromise, workers-and-bosses approach to several disputes taking place in the present. That's the only way they can outflank the Tories on their now supposed, and much-vaunted, working-class credibilty, without being seen to be too directly in the pocket of the unions. The tabloids are already trying to rev up this claim, as is traditionally, but I'm not sure they'll find post-Brexit C2DE voters as receptive to it as before. We've had five years of fairly shallow claims that Labour doesn't represent the working class, but the Tories do - and these may be about to be put to the test.
This plan to get agency staff for the Railways? AIUI, agency staff are in short supply everywhere. And they are turning down work right now. So. Where do they come from?
It shows how little they actual understand about the things they are supposedly in charge of.
I don’t believe there is such a thing as a qualified agency signalman and even if they did exist they won’t be qualified to run anything as all signal boxes require site specific knowledge that takes time to get
It’s all to appear to be doing something.
Pretty much sums up Boris Johnson. No soul. No ideology. No coherence.
Just a muddled set of knee-jerk reactions to the latest crisis with the sole aim of holding onto power.
There is nothing that defines Johnson or his brand of conservativism. It’s power for the Sake of it with no aim or purpose.
Which is the point of being Oxford Union President, isn't it?
On topic, there wil be a Tory poll lead about a fortnight after fuel duty gets suspended.
Hmmm. I'm still not sure you really get the national mood in your UAE hideaway.
I don't think any of us really 'get' the national mood. Few of us talk with wide swathes of the population, especially about politics. We have family and friends, often of similar backgrounds to our own, and many of us frequent comfortable echo chambers on the Internet.
Are discussions I have with parents in the schoolground whilst waiting for their kids to come out of class representative of a 'national mood' , or just ones of certain geographic and economic basis?
Then there's the issue of what you hear: if I am talking with someone who is very left-wing, I am unlikely to talk about privatisation unless I know them very well. I'm more likely just to nod and listen.
We can only see a tiny slice of that national mood.
I'd go further (having agreed with everything you posted) and ask if there is even such a thing as a "national mood" any more. We are more and more polarised and divided, and the government's only consistent policy is to fan these flames and makes us ever more so.
This plan to get agency staff for the Railways? AIUI, agency staff are in short supply everywhere. And they are turning down work right now. So. Where do they come from?
It shows how little they actual understand about the things they are supposedly in charge of.
I don’t believe there is such a thing as a qualified agency signalman and even if they did exist they won’t be qualified to run anything as all signal boxes require site specific knowledge that takes time to get
It’s all to appear to be doing something.
Pretty much sums up Boris Johnson. No soul. No ideology. No coherence.
Just a muddled set of knee-jerk reactions to the latest crisis with the sole aim of holding onto power.
There is nothing that defines Johnson or his brand of conservativism. It’s power for the Sake of it with no aim or purpose.
Which is the point of being Oxford Union President, isn't it?
I fear the country is heading into a real fight with the unions v government arguing over who runs UK
I hope this does not descend into shades of the miners strike, but there are indicators it may be
Nandy and Streeting seem to have upset the apple cart by backing the strikes, while Starmer goes awol, and Reeves struggles on Sophie to answer the direct question on whether she would support the strike
I do not know if the conservatives will regain a poll lead, but the fact the question is even being asked seems extraordinary in view of the economic and political crisis engulfing our country and just why labour are not out of sight
I suspect the public may well consider labour do not have the answer either, other than to throw billions at it
The only option for Labour is to adopt a consensual approach. Miliband's "workers on boards" stance also applied to a compromise, workers-and-bosses approach to several disputes in the present. That's the only way they can outflank the Tories on their now supposed, and much-vaunted, working-class credibilty, without being seen to be too directly in the pocket of the unions. The tabloids are already trying to rev up this claim, as is traditionally, but I'm not sure they'll find post-Brexit C2DE voters as receptive to it as before. We've had five years of fairly shallow claims that Labour doesn't represent the working-class, but the Tories do.
We would all benefit from the demolition of this "workers" vs "bosses" division. Sure, there are some people in both camps who give their side a bad name and a bad reputation with the other camp. But most? Business works best when everyone is trying to do the right thing for both the interests of the company and its employees having realised both go hand in hand.
Brandon Lewis clearly demonstrating that it’s not just Johnson who’s the problem but every member of his spineless cabinet who continue to repeat his lies & defend his law-breaking #SundayMorning #Raworth https://twitter.com/CarolineLucas/status/1535913881373114369
This plan to get agency staff for the Railways? AIUI, agency staff are in short supply everywhere. And they are turning down work right now. So. Where do they come from?
It shows how little they actual understand about the things they are supposedly in charge of.
I don’t believe there is such a thing as a qualified agency signalman and even if they did exist they won’t be qualified to run anything as all signal boxes require site specific knowledge that takes time to get
I am sure there are some non technical roles agency staff could do, but it seems a bit desperate.
Especially as one needs a certain minimum number of signalmen, for instance, to keep the railways running. And one can't simply make them work overtime. Classic disaster trigger (e.g. a signalling engineer caused a disaster by leaving some bare wiring in a signalbox as a result of being grossly overworked).
If I were a manager I wouldn't touch any derogation of regulations, either. That would be to accept liability for the ensuing crash.
Shades of Abermiwl, where untrained staff accidentally allowed a train onto a section which already contained an oncoming express, with disastrous consequences.
Quite (once I had worked out that this is the correct orthography for the location in question, which is better known in railway books by its anglicised version). But the problem remains, as with the signalling engineer incident (1988).
This threat to bring in blacklegs is so stupid, a few managers aside, that it must be a deliberate Tory attempt to inflame the strike and get better ratings for Big Dog.
It’s like an eighties greatest hits tour. We are already seeing pieces in big dog friendly papers about how labour MPs who support the strike have taken money from the Rail Unions.
Seventies, soon, with the power cuts and oil crisis.
Oh, "but the music".
For every magic memory by the Sex Pistols and The Clash there were ten by Joe Dolce, Paper Lace, Boney M, Rick Dees with his "Disco Duck"....
I think Rivers of Babylon is fab
And if that doesn't give you an earworm, Rasputin
Thinking about it they are the black Abba
They were the epitome of disco, criticism of Boney M is not allowed! Paper Lace can fuck off though. Nottingham Forest, Billy dont be a hero, orchestra/pop twats. That aside, every decade has its cheese. We will no doubt look back (or rather younger bears will) and cringe at todays novelty performers however much their teeny bopper fans think they are the absolute moon and cutting edge of cool.
Paper Lace only had the one big hit and a couple of minor ones. One of its former members wrote the opening credits music for Midlands today in the late eighties.
Boney M had far greater longevity and knocked out some belting tunes. Their cover of ‘Painter Man’ is a banger.
Of course famously there are currently more versions of Boney M touring than grains of sand in the world. They toured the USSR and had some of the best selling singles of the 70s, when it meant something. Legends.
On topic, there wil be a Tory poll lead about a fortnight after fuel duty gets suspended.
Hmmm. I'm still not sure you really get the national mood in your UAE hideaway.
I don't think any of us really 'get' the national mood. Few of us talk with wide swathes of the population, especially about politics. We have family and friends, often of similar backgrounds to our own, and many of us frequent comfortable echo chambers on the Internet.
Are discussions I have with parents in the schoolground whilst waiting for their kids to come out of class representative of a 'national mood' , or just ones of certain geographic and economic basis?
Then there's the issue of what you hear: if I am talking with someone who is very left-wing, I am unlikely to talk about privatisation unless I know them very well. I'm more likely just to nod and listen.
We can only see a tiny slice of that national mood.
I'd go further (having agreed with everything you posted) and ask if there is even such a thing as a "national mood" any more. We are more and more polarised and divided, and the government's only consistent policy is to fan these flames and makes us ever more so.
I'd suggest that last weekend was a prime example of us having a 'national mood'. Millions of people having a good time and getting to know each other on a rather spurious basis.
Then there's the question of whether there was ever really a 'national mood'. Even during World War II there were plenty of dissenting voices and moods that varied from: "Let's go and kill all the vile Hun!" through "Let's just go, get the job done and get home," to "We shouldn't fight, war's bad". Then there were the black marketeers and strikers who were not exactly fitting in with what we see as the mood at the time.
Rachel Reeves on Sunday morning with Sophie Raworth demonstrates just why labour are struggling
She couldn't give a straight answer to genuine questions and was evasive
Such as ?
We’re still in bed here.
Refused to say she would cancel the NI rise if they win in 24, but demands it is cancelled now
Refused to commit to a fuel duty reduction beyond the present 5p
Refused to say whether she backed the RMT strike
Stated she will outline policies nearer the election with no indication on tax and spend
Generally a sitting on the fence interview
Labour cant have policies until they know if they all get binned after Durham police confirm Starmer has stabbed himself into resignation with a poppadom shard
Should have used the excuse his nan made him do it.....
Rachel Reeves on Sunday morning with Sophie Raworth demonstrates just why labour are struggling
She couldn't give a straight answer to genuine questions and was evasive
Such as ?
We’re still in bed here.
Refused to say she would cancel the NI rise if they win in 24, but demands it is cancelled now
Refused to commit to a fuel duty reduction beyond the present 5p
Refused to say whether she backed the RMT strike
Stated she will outline policies nearer the election with no indication on tax and spend
Generally a sitting on the fence interview
Labour cant have policies until they know if they all get binned after Durham police confirm Starmer has stabbed himself into resignation with a poppadom shard
Nope . There is zero reason for having policies now because Bozo will just steal them and it’s impossible to tell what Government finances will look like in 2 years time.
This plan to get agency staff for the Railways? AIUI, agency staff are in short supply everywhere. And they are turning down work right now. So. Where do they come from?
Category error. The purpose of the plan is not to break the strike, but to avoid responsibility for the consequences, or just to look like they are doing something about it for a few minutes.
It's a very post-modern government. Actually achieving things is irrelevant. The key thing is to be in favour of simple solutions and against bad things.
So the Tories implement the policy and allow agency workers to be used.
There is a second round of strikes after the law change yet no agency workers man the signal boxes.
Who would get the blame because Bozo has seemingly fixed the issue by changing the law.
Rachel Reeves on Sunday morning with Sophie Raworth demonstrates just why labour are struggling
She couldn't give a straight answer to genuine questions and was evasive
Such as ?
We’re still in bed here.
Refused to say she would cancel the NI rise if they win in 24, but demands it is cancelled now
Refused to commit to a fuel duty reduction beyond the present 5p
Refused to say whether she backed the RMT strike
Stated she will outline policies nearer the election with no indication on tax and spend
Generally a sitting on the fence interview
Labour cant have policies until they know if they all get binned after Durham police confirm Starmer has stabbed himself into resignation with a poppadom shard
Should have used the excuse his nan made him do it.....
Zoink. Curry night with the Foymeister. Legendary.
This plan to get agency staff for the Railways? AIUI, agency staff are in short supply everywhere. And they are turning down work right now. So. Where do they come from?
It shows how little they actual understand about the things they are supposedly in charge of.
I don’t believe there is such a thing as a qualified agency signalman and even if they did exist they won’t be qualified to run anything as all signal boxes require site specific knowledge that takes time to get
I am sure there are some non technical roles agency staff could do, but it seems a bit desperate.
Especially as one needs a certain minimum number of signalmen, for instance, to keep the railways running. And one can't simply make them work overtime. Classic disaster trigger (e.g. a signalling engineer caused a disaster by leaving some bare wiring in a signalbox as a result of being grossly overworked).
If I were a manager I wouldn't touch any derogation of regulations, either. That would be to accept liability for the ensuing crash.
Shades of Abermiwl, where untrained staff accidentally allowed a train onto a section which already contained an oncoming express, with disastrous consequences.
Quite (once I had worked out that this is the correct orthography for the location in question, which is better known in railway books by its anglicised version). But the problem remains, as with the signalling engineer incident (1988).
This threat to bring in blacklegs is so stupid, a few managers aside, that it must be a deliberate Tory attempt to inflame the strike and get better ratings for Big Dog.
It’s like an eighties greatest hits tour. We are already seeing pieces in big dog friendly papers about how labour MPs who support the strike have taken money from the Rail Unions.
Seventies, soon, with the power cuts and oil crisis.
Oh, "but the music".
For every magic memory by the Sex Pistols and The Clash there were ten by Joe Dolce, Paper Lace, Boney M, Rick Dees with his "Disco Duck"....
I think Rivers of Babylon is fab
And if that doesn't give you an earworm, Rasputin
Thinking about it they are the black Abba
I know it is all a matter of taste and at risk of @TheScreamingEagles banning me from PB all this lot (Boney M, Abba, etc) just drive me potty, mainly because I hate them, but then can't get the tunes out of my head, but then I like blues based music. Give me Cream or the Allman Brothers any day of the week.
This plan to get agency staff for the Railways? AIUI, agency staff are in short supply everywhere. And they are turning down work right now. So. Where do they come from?
It shows how little they actual understand about the things they are supposedly in charge of.
I don’t believe there is such a thing as a qualified agency signalman and even if they did exist they won’t be qualified to run anything as all signal boxes require site specific knowledge that takes time to get
I am sure there are some non technical roles agency staff could do, but it seems a bit desperate.
Especially as one needs a certain minimum number of signalmen, for instance, to keep the railways running. And one can't simply make them work overtime. Classic disaster trigger (e.g. a signalling engineer caused a disaster by leaving some bare wiring in a signalbox as a result of being grossly overworked).
If I were a manager I wouldn't touch any derogation of regulations, either. That would be to accept liability for the ensuing crash.
Shades of Abermiwl, where untrained staff accidentally allowed a train onto a section which already contained an oncoming express, with disastrous consequences.
Quite (once I had worked out that this is the correct orthography for the location in question, which is better known in railway books by its anglicised version). But the problem remains, as with the signalling engineer incident (1988).
This threat to bring in blacklegs is so stupid, a few managers aside, that it must be a deliberate Tory attempt to inflame the strike and get better ratings for Big Dog.
It’s like an eighties greatest hits tour. We are already seeing pieces in big dog friendly papers about how labour MPs who support the strike have taken money from the Rail Unions.
Seventies, soon, with the power cuts and oil crisis.
Oh, "but the music".
For every magic memory by the Sex Pistols and The Clash there were ten by Joe Dolce, Paper Lace, Boney M, Rick Dees with his "Disco Duck"....
I think Rivers of Babylon is fab
And if that doesn't give you an earworm, Rasputin
Thinking about it they are the black Abba
I used to go to Sana'a in Yemen (in the time before the Saudis and Iranians decided to flatten, it as a neutral venue for a proxy war). One of the more surreal experiences was being woken by the call to prayers starting with the central Rasputin theme played on what I can only think was a Rolf Harris Stylophone.
I relayed this to a very skeptical colleague, who at that point had not visited. But once he did "Bloody hell.....Ra-ra-rasputin at some ungodly hour....why???"
I do miss stuff like that, not having travelled abroad now for 3 years.
Brandon Lewis clearly demonstrating that it’s not just Johnson who’s the problem but every member of his spineless cabinet who continue to repeat his lies & defend his law-breaking #SundayMorning #Raworth https://twitter.com/CarolineLucas/status/1535913881373114369
Lots of personal reputations in the Cabinet being Ratnerised on the alter of Boris's legacy.
Re the NI change from HMG website which sees a £330 pa tax cut from the 1st July
National insurance (NI) bills, which were pushed up by higher rates from April, are set to go down again in July when the NI repayment threshold is increased. The impact of this see-saw on your finances will depend on how much you earn. Those on lower incomes will make some welcome savings from July, while higher earners will fork out more compared to 2021.
At the start of the new tax year on Wednesday 6 April, workers started paying more national insurance. The rate at which you pay national insurance has increased by 1.25 percentage points. This means that from 6 April workers saw their national insurance contributions rise from 12% to 13.25%. Earnings above £4,189 a month (£50,270 per year) are usually subject to national insurance deductions of 2%. But from 6 April this increased to 3.25%.
The good news is that for most workers this increase in national insurance will only last until June. This is because most of us will start paying less national insurance from July as the national insurance threshold increases.
From July the NICs threshold will be the same as the income tax threshold (known as the personal allowance).
It means you won’t pay national insurance or income tax if you earn below £12,570 a year. If you earn more than this, you will still feel the benefit as you will pay less national insurance overall due to the higher threshold.
The change will save each employee an average of £330 in national insurance a year.
About 2.2 million will no longer pay national insurance at all.
This plan to get agency staff for the Railways? AIUI, agency staff are in short supply everywhere. And they are turning down work right now. So. Where do they come from?
It shows how little they actual understand about the things they are supposedly in charge of.
I don’t believe there is such a thing as a qualified agency signalman and even if they did exist they won’t be qualified to run anything as all signal boxes require site specific knowledge that takes time to get
I am sure there are some non technical roles agency staff could do, but it seems a bit desperate.
Especially as one needs a certain minimum number of signalmen, for instance, to keep the railways running. And one can't simply make them work overtime. Classic disaster trigger (e.g. a signalling engineer caused a disaster by leaving some bare wiring in a signalbox as a result of being grossly overworked).
If I were a manager I wouldn't touch any derogation of regulations, either. That would be to accept liability for the ensuing crash.
Shades of Abermiwl, where untrained staff accidentally allowed a train onto a section which already contained an oncoming express, with disastrous consequences.
Quite (once I had worked out that this is the correct orthography for the location in question, which is better known in railway books by its anglicised version). But the problem remains, as with the signalling engineer incident (1988).
This threat to bring in blacklegs is so stupid, a few managers aside, that it must be a deliberate Tory attempt to inflame the strike and get better ratings for Big Dog.
It’s like an eighties greatest hits tour. We are already seeing pieces in big dog friendly papers about how labour MPs who support the strike have taken money from the Rail Unions.
Seventies, soon, with the power cuts and oil crisis.
Oh, "but the music".
For every magic memory by the Sex Pistols and The Clash there were ten by Joe Dolce, Paper Lace, Boney M, Rick Dees with his "Disco Duck"....
I think Rivers of Babylon is fab
And if that doesn't give you an earworm, Rasputin
Thinking about it they are the black Abba
I used to go to Sana'a in Yemen (in the time before the Saudis and Iranians decided to flatten, it as a neutral venue for a proxy war). One of the more surreal experiences was being woken by the call to prayers starting with the central Rasputin theme played on what I can only think was a Rolf Harris Stylophone.
I relayed this to a very skeptical colleague, who at that point had not visited. But once he did "Bloody hell.....Ra-ra-rasputin at some ungodly hour....why???"
I do miss stuff like that, not having travelled abroad now for 3 years.
Sicily is 3 hours and £60 quid away
Sitting in the piazza del Duomo in Ortygia, thinking the world really is Italy, and the rest
Rachel Reeves on Sunday morning with Sophie Raworth demonstrates just why labour are struggling
She couldn't give a straight answer to genuine questions and was evasive
Such as ?
We’re still in bed here.
Refused to say she would cancel the NI rise if they win in 24, but demands it is cancelled now
Refused to commit to a fuel duty reduction beyond the present 5p
Refused to say whether she backed the RMT strike
Stated she will outline policies nearer the election with no indication on tax and spend
Generally a sitting on the fence interview
Labour cant have policies until they know if they all get binned after Durham police confirm Starmer has stabbed himself into resignation with a poppadom shard
Nope . There is zero reason for having policies now because Bozo will just steal them and it’s impossible to tell what Government finances will look like in 2 years time.
Then they can't moan when the electorate shy away from them when they dont know what they stand for. At present they are presenting themselves as her majesty's loyal and permanent opposition, not a government in waiting. As usual.
Exactly. As a card-carrying Abba fan since before they even formed up, I really like Boney M too. Going beyond the "I like X, your taste is rubbish" exchanges, has anyone done any scientific study on why different types of people like certain types of music?
Closest I can get to it for myself is that I approach life with a cheery clear-eyed optimism bordering on reckless innocence, and bouncy, upbeat music reinforces that. I think if one saw life in a more cynical and worldly-wise way, they'd be quite irritating.
This plan to get agency staff for the Railways? AIUI, agency staff are in short supply everywhere. And they are turning down work right now. So. Where do they come from?
It shows how little they actual understand about the things they are supposedly in charge of.
I don’t believe there is such a thing as a qualified agency signalman and even if they did exist they won’t be qualified to run anything as all signal boxes require site specific knowledge that takes time to get
I am sure there are some non technical roles agency staff could do, but it seems a bit desperate.
Especially as one needs a certain minimum number of signalmen, for instance, to keep the railways running. And one can't simply make them work overtime. Classic disaster trigger (e.g. a signalling engineer caused a disaster by leaving some bare wiring in a signalbox as a result of being grossly overworked).
If I were a manager I wouldn't touch any derogation of regulations, either. That would be to accept liability for the ensuing crash.
Shades of Abermiwl, where untrained staff accidentally allowed a train onto a section which already contained an oncoming express, with disastrous consequences.
Quite (once I had worked out that this is the correct orthography for the location in question, which is better known in railway books by its anglicised version). But the problem remains, as with the signalling engineer incident (1988).
This threat to bring in blacklegs is so stupid, a few managers aside, that it must be a deliberate Tory attempt to inflame the strike and get better ratings for Big Dog.
It’s like an eighties greatest hits tour. We are already seeing pieces in big dog friendly papers about how labour MPs who support the strike have taken money from the Rail Unions.
Seventies, soon, with the power cuts and oil crisis.
Oh, "but the music".
For every magic memory by the Sex Pistols and The Clash there were ten by Joe Dolce, Paper Lace, Boney M, Rick Dees with his "Disco Duck"....
I think Rivers of Babylon is fab
And if that doesn't give you an earworm, Rasputin
Thinking about it they are the black Abba
I used to go to Sana'a in Yemen (in the time before the Saudis and Iranians decided to flatten, it as a neutral venue for a proxy war). One of the more surreal experiences was being woken by the call to prayers starting with the central Rasputin theme played on what I can only think was a Rolf Harris Stylophone.
I relayed this to a very skeptical colleague, who at that point had not visited. But once he did "Bloody hell.....Ra-ra-rasputin at some ungodly hour....why???"
I do miss stuff like that, not having travelled abroad now for 3 years.
Sicily is 3 hours and £60 quid away
Sitting in the piazza del Duomo in Ortygia, thinking the world really is Italy, and the rest
We have been to Sicily three times but not by plane
Re the NI change from HMG website which sees a £330 pa tax cut from the 1st July
National insurance (NI) bills, which were pushed up by higher rates from April, are set to go down again in July when the NI repayment threshold is increased. The impact of this see-saw on your finances will depend on how much you earn. Those on lower incomes will make some welcome savings from July, while higher earners will fork out more compared to 2021.
At the start of the new tax year on Wednesday 6 April, workers started paying more national insurance. The rate at which you pay national insurance has increased by 1.25 percentage points. This means that from 6 April workers saw their national insurance contributions rise from 12% to 13.25%. Earnings above £4,189 a month (£50,270 per year) are usually subject to national insurance deductions of 2%. But from 6 April this increased to 3.25%.
The good news is that for most workers this increase in national insurance will only last until June. This is because most of us will start paying less national insurance from July as the national insurance threshold increases.
From July the NICs threshold will be the same as the income tax threshold (known as the personal allowance).
It means you won’t pay national insurance or income tax if you earn below £12,570 a year. If you earn more than this, you will still feel the benefit as you will pay less national insurance overall due to the higher threshold.
The change will save each employee an average of £330 in national insurance a year.
About 2.2 million will no longer pay national insurance at all.
Exactly. As a card-carrying Abba fan since before they even formed up, I really like Boney M too. Going beyond the "I like X, your taste is rubbish" exchanges, has anyone done any scientific study on why different types of people like certain types of music?
Closest I can get to it for myself is that I approach life with a cheery clear-eyed optimism bordering on reckless innocence, and bouncy, upbeat music reinforces that. I think if one saw life in a more cynical and worldly-wise way, they'd be quite irritating.
I've liked Nick, because I really do, even though I want to say 'your taste is rubbish'.
Re the NI change from HMG website which sees a £330 pa tax cut from the 1st July
National insurance (NI) bills, which were pushed up by higher rates from April, are set to go down again in July when the NI repayment threshold is increased. The impact of this see-saw on your finances will depend on how much you earn. Those on lower incomes will make some welcome savings from July, while higher earners will fork out more compared to 2021.
At the start of the new tax year on Wednesday 6 April, workers started paying more national insurance. The rate at which you pay national insurance has increased by 1.25 percentage points. This means that from 6 April workers saw their national insurance contributions rise from 12% to 13.25%. Earnings above £4,189 a month (£50,270 per year) are usually subject to national insurance deductions of 2%. But from 6 April this increased to 3.25%.
The good news is that for most workers this increase in national insurance will only last until June. This is because most of us will start paying less national insurance from July as the national insurance threshold increases.
From July the NICs threshold will be the same as the income tax threshold (known as the personal allowance).
It means you won’t pay national insurance or income tax if you earn below £12,570 a year. If you earn more than this, you will still feel the benefit as you will pay less national insurance overall due to the higher threshold.
The change will save each employee an average of £330 in national insurance a year.
About 2.2 million will no longer pay national insurance at all.
For those with the capacity to work from home, the forthcoming train strikes (if they happen) will be a mild inconvenience at best and if the weather's nice and the garden is available, a nice lunch outdoors may not seem wholly unattractive.
For all too many, that's not going to be an option and they will have to do the best they can. The most inconvenienced will tend to be Conservative-inclined these days while the least will not so the strikes will enhance polarisation rather than weaken it.
They will also obscure the serious and overdue debate about the medium and long term questions of public transport in this country. It's another one of those subjects where the pandemic and politics have prevented a proper and rigorous debate about what kind of systems do we want, need, what can support sustainability and allow for (where practical) a reduction in road transport (so it's as much about things as people if not more so).
Bellicose anti-union rantings play well in the media but Johnson was once a cannier operator than he seems now. Once of his big messages when he as campaigning to become London mayor was a pledge to "take on" Bob Crow and the RMT who had plagued Livingstone with intermittent and effective strikes on the Underground in the 2000s.
I thought there would be a big showdown between Johnson and Crow but there wasn't. Crow was too clever to fall into the elephant trap and Johnson quickly recognised that. Crow would pick his battles carefully arguing for greater passenger safety rather than just in pecuniary terms for his members. In the end, I believe there was considerable mutual respect and I recall Johnson being fulsome in his tribute when Crow died in 2014.
I suspect the current RMT leadership aren't in Crow's class and arguing the economics when we are all feeling the pinch seems selfish in extremis. That being said, the emphasis then was on the drivers who are well paid (though not as well paid as some think) but a lot of other RMT members (especially station staff) aren't well paid.
Fare evasion in my part of London is endemic among young males in particular and I'd much rather see some decent liberal authoritarianism with more BTP and revenue collection staff and public horse-whipping of those caught trying to avoid paying (yes, I know the last is a shade draconian and you'll never get it past the namby-pamby, nanny State, cancel culture, woke snowflake Conservatives but it's worth a try).
Re the NI change from HMG website which sees a £330 pa tax cut from the 1st July
National insurance (NI) bills, which were pushed up by higher rates from April, are set to go down again in July when the NI repayment threshold is increased. The impact of this see-saw on your finances will depend on how much you earn. Those on lower incomes will make some welcome savings from July, while higher earners will fork out more compared to 2021.
At the start of the new tax year on Wednesday 6 April, workers started paying more national insurance. The rate at which you pay national insurance has increased by 1.25 percentage points. This means that from 6 April workers saw their national insurance contributions rise from 12% to 13.25%. Earnings above £4,189 a month (£50,270 per year) are usually subject to national insurance deductions of 2%. But from 6 April this increased to 3.25%.
The good news is that for most workers this increase in national insurance will only last until June. This is because most of us will start paying less national insurance from July as the national insurance threshold increases.
From July the NICs threshold will be the same as the income tax threshold (known as the personal allowance).
It means you won’t pay national insurance or income tax if you earn below £12,570 a year. If you earn more than this, you will still feel the benefit as you will pay less national insurance overall due to the higher threshold.
The change will save each employee an average of £330 in national insurance a year.
About 2.2 million will no longer pay national insurance at all.
Just over three tanks of petrol a year
What's that saying, 'every little helps'
What would actually help is above inflation pay rises but for some reason that isn’t being encouraged anymore.
Rachel Reeves on Sunday morning with Sophie Raworth demonstrates just why labour are struggling
She couldn't give a straight answer to genuine questions and was evasive
Such as ?
We’re still in bed here.
Refused to say she would cancel the NI rise if they win in 24, but demands it is cancelled now
Refused to commit to a fuel duty reduction beyond the present 5p
Refused to say whether she backed the RMT strike
Stated she will outline policies nearer the election with no indication on tax and spend
Generally a sitting on the fence interview
Labour cant have policies until they know if they all get binned after Durham police confirm Starmer has stabbed himself into resignation with a poppadom shard
Nope . There is zero reason for having policies now because Bozo will just steal them and it’s impossible to tell what Government finances will look like in 2 years time.
Then they can't moan when the electorate shy away from them when they dont know what they stand for. At present they are presenting themselves as her majesty's loyal and permanent opposition, not a government in waiting. As usual.
I don’t think SKS and co are moaning - they know it’s a long term game and the only poll that matters is the actual election.
Completely off topic but this story about Tesla attempting to avoid liability for autopilot crashes is epic
On Thursday, NHTSA said it had discovered in 16 separate instances when this occurred that Autopilot "aborted vehicle control less than one second prior to the first impact," suggesting the driver was not prepared to assume full control over the vehicle. CEO Elon Musk has often claimed that accidents cannot be the fault of the company, as data it extracted invariably showed Autopilot was not active in the moment of the collision. While anything that might indicate the system was designed to shut off when it sensed an imminent accident might damage Tesla's image, legally the company would be a difficult target. All of Tesla's current autonomous features, including its vaunted Full Self- Driving tech, currently in beta testing, are deemed assistance systems in which the driver is liable at all times rather than the manufacturer.
On topic, there wil be a Tory poll lead about a fortnight after fuel duty gets suspended.
Hmmm. I'm still not sure you really get the national mood in your UAE hideaway.
I don't think any of us really 'get' the national mood. Few of us talk with wide swathes of the population, especially about politics. We have family and friends, often of similar backgrounds to our own, and many of us frequent comfortable echo chambers on the Internet.
Are discussions I have with parents in the schoolground whilst waiting for their kids to come out of class representative of a 'national mood' , or just ones of certain geographic and economic basis?
Then there's the issue of what you hear: if I am talking with someone who is very left-wing, I am unlikely to talk about privatisation unless I know them very well. I'm more likely just to nod and listen.
We can only see a tiny slice of that national mood.
I'd go further (having agreed with everything you posted) and ask if there is even such a thing as a "national mood" any more. We are more and more polarised and divided, and the government's only consistent policy is to fan these flames and makes us ever more so.
I'd suggest that last weekend was a prime example of us having a 'national mood'. Millions of people having a good time and getting to know each other on a rather spurious basis.
Then there's the question of whether there was ever really a 'national mood'. Even during World War II there were plenty of dissenting voices and moods that varied from: "Let's go and kill all the vile Hun!" through "Let's just go, get the job done and get home," to "We shouldn't fight, war's bad". Then there were the black marketeers and strikers who were not exactly fitting in with what we see as the mood at the time.
Then they can't moan when the electorate shy away from them when they dont know what they stand for. At present they are presenting themselves as her majesty's loyal and permanent opposition, not a government in waiting. As usual.
Labour are playing the long game as any sensible Opposition would be in a hugely volatile and fast-changing environment. There was a time when windfall taxes were out of the question and then they weren't.
The idea is to develop solutions to tomorrow's problems as well as to today's. The current Government is like a pinball being flipped round bouncing from one thing to another, incoherent and out of control of events and it's the perception of the latter which is the most damaging.
As to Rachel Reeves, I suppose when I get to the stage when I've nothing better to do with a sunny Sunday morning than listen to a politician on Sky News, fine but sometimes the best option is to say nothing. After all, Reeves isn't the Government any more than I am - ultimately, it's better not to give your opponent a stick with which to beat you even if it looks as though you've not got a stick yourself.
I suspect Reeves is probably glad not to be in No.11 currently and she will be as aware as Sunak of the economic "bleak midwinter" approaching - what price oil if we get a cold Northern Hemisphere winter and what price a kilowatt hour of electricity in January 2023? That's what I would be thinking about now rather than worrying about how I look on Sky News.
Completely off topic but this story about Tesla attempting to avoid liability for autopilot crashes is epic
On Thursday, NHTSA said it had discovered in 16 separate instances when this occurred that Autopilot "aborted vehicle control less than one second prior to the first impact," suggesting the driver was not prepared to assume full control over the vehicle. CEO Elon Musk has often claimed that accidents cannot be the fault of the company, as data it extracted invariably showed Autopilot was not active in the moment of the collision. While anything that might indicate the system was designed to shut off when it sensed an imminent accident might damage Tesla's image, legally the company would be a difficult target. All of Tesla's current autonomous features, including its vaunted Full Self- Driving tech, currently in beta testing, are deemed assistance systems in which the driver is liable at all times rather than the manufacturer.
Rachel Reeves on Sunday morning with Sophie Raworth demonstrates just why labour are struggling
She couldn't give a straight answer to genuine questions and was evasive
Such as ?
We’re still in bed here.
Refused to say she would cancel the NI rise if they win in 24, but demands it is cancelled now
Refused to commit to a fuel duty reduction beyond the present 5p
Refused to say whether she backed the RMT strike
Stated she will outline policies nearer the election with no indication on tax and spend
Generally a sitting on the fence interview
Labour cant have policies until they know if they all get binned after Durham police confirm Starmer has stabbed himself into resignation with a poppadom shard
Nope . There is zero reason for having policies now because Bozo will just steal them and it’s impossible to tell what Government finances will look like in 2 years time.
Then they can't moan when the electorate shy away from them when they dont know what they stand for. At present they are presenting themselves as her majesty's loyal and permanent opposition, not a government in waiting. As usual.
I don’t think SKS and co are moaning - they know it’s a long term game and the only poll that matters is the actual election.
No, but they will if they lose the election because the electorate dont like the last minute offer. Up to them but very high risk when they could play low risk and drip out policy tailoring to what is working and saunter in in 2024.
On topic, there wil be a Tory poll lead about a fortnight after fuel duty gets suspended.
Hmmm. I'm still not sure you really get the national mood in your UAE hideaway.
I don't think any of us really 'get' the national mood. Few of us talk with wide swathes of the population, especially about politics. We have family and friends, often of similar backgrounds to our own, and many of us frequent comfortable echo chambers on the Internet.
Are discussions I have with parents in the schoolground whilst waiting for their kids to come out of class representative of a 'national mood' , or just ones of certain geographic and economic basis?
Then there's the issue of what you hear: if I am talking with someone who is very left-wing, I am unlikely to talk about privatisation unless I know them very well. I'm more likely just to nod and listen.
We can only see a tiny slice of that national mood.
I'd go further (having agreed with everything you posted) and ask if there is even such a thing as a "national mood" any more. We are more and more polarised and divided, and the government's only consistent policy is to fan these flames and makes us ever more so.
I'd suggest that last weekend was a prime example of us having a 'national mood'. Millions of people having a good time and getting to know each other on a rather spurious basis.
Then there's the question of whether there was ever really a 'national mood'. Even during World War II there were plenty of dissenting voices and moods that varied from: "Let's go and kill all the vile Hun!" through "Let's just go, get the job done and get home," to "We shouldn't fight, war's bad". Then there were the black marketeers and strikers who were not exactly fitting in with what we see as the mood at the time.
Indeed. I think Angus Calder's 'The people's war' was quite a shock at the time of publication in 1969, for its revisionist take, though (slightly surprisingly) I haven't read his later 'Myth of the Blitz'.
Then they can't moan when the electorate shy away from them when they dont know what they stand for. At present they are presenting themselves as her majesty's loyal and permanent opposition, not a government in waiting. As usual.
Labour are playing the long game as any sensible Opposition would be in a hugely volatile and fast-changing environment. There was a time when windfall taxes were out of the question and then they weren't.
The idea is to develop solutions to tomorrow's problems as well as to today's. The current Government is like a pinball being flipped round bouncing from one thing to another, incoherent and out of control of events and it's the perception of the latter which is the most damaging.
As to Rachel Reeves, I suppose when I get to the stage when I've nothing better to do with a sunny Sunday morning than listen to a politician on Sky News, fine but sometimes the best option is to say nothing. After all, Reeves isn't the Government any more than I am - ultimately, it's better not to give your opponent a stick with which to beat you even if it looks as though you've not got a stick yourself.
I suspect Reeves is probably glad not to be in No.11 currently and she will be as aware as Sunak of the economic "bleak midwinter" approaching - what price oil if we get a cold Northern Hemisphere winter and what price a kilowatt hour of electricity in January 2023? That's what I would be thinking about now rather than worrying about how I look on Sky News.
If you can find time to spit out four finely crafted paras for pb can you really be sniffy about having things to do on Sunday mornings
Then they can't moan when the electorate shy away from them when they dont know what they stand for. At present they are presenting themselves as her majesty's loyal and permanent opposition, not a government in waiting. As usual.
Labour are playing the long game as any sensible Opposition would be in a hugely volatile and fast-changing environment. There was a time when windfall taxes were out of the question and then they weren't.
The idea is to develop solutions to tomorrow's problems as well as to today's. The current Government is like a pinball being flipped round bouncing from one thing to another, incoherent and out of control of events and it's the perception of the latter which is the most damaging.
As to Rachel Reeves, I suppose when I get to the stage when I've nothing better to do with a sunny Sunday morning than listen to a politician on Sky News, fine but sometimes the best option is to say nothing. After all, Reeves isn't the Government any more than I am - ultimately, it's better not to give your opponent a stick with which to beat you even if it looks as though you've not got a stick yourself.
I suspect Reeves is probably glad not to be in No.11 currently and she will be as aware as Sunak of the economic "bleak midwinter" approaching - what price oil if we get a cold Northern Hemisphere winter and what price a kilowatt hour of electricity in January 2023? That's what I would be thinking about now rather than worrying about how I look on Sky News.
If that works then the approach will be vindicated. If they are still in opposition in 2025 then Reeves etc will all be yesterdays failed opposition big beasts.
Then they can't moan when the electorate shy away from them when they dont know what they stand for. At present they are presenting themselves as her majesty's loyal and permanent opposition, not a government in waiting. As usual.
Labour are playing the long game as any sensible Opposition would be in a hugely volatile and fast-changing environment. There was a time when windfall taxes were out of the question and then they weren't.
The idea is to develop solutions to tomorrow's problems as well as to today's. The current Government is like a pinball being flipped round bouncing from one thing to another, incoherent and out of control of events and it's the perception of the latter which is the most damaging.
As to Rachel Reeves, I suppose when I get to the stage when I've nothing better to do with a sunny Sunday morning than listen to a politician on Sky News, fine but sometimes the best option is to say nothing. After all, Reeves isn't the Government any more than I am - ultimately, it's better not to give your opponent a stick with which to beat you even if it looks as though you've not got a stick yourself.
I suspect Reeves is probably glad not to be in No.11 currently and she will be as aware as Sunak of the economic "bleak midwinter" approaching - what price oil if we get a cold Northern Hemisphere winter and what price a kilowatt hour of electricity in January 2023? That's what I would be thinking about now rather than worrying about how I look on Sky News.
Just a point of order but the interview I referred to was Reeves on Sophie Raworth on BBC, not Sky, and as far as nothing else to do on a Sunday morning I really 'pine' for the days I played golf every Sunday morning and were more active, but sadly by mobility issues stopped my golf 14 years ago and my aging has seemingly arrived unfortunately, tempus fugit as they say
This plan to get agency staff for the Railways? AIUI, agency staff are in short supply everywhere. And they are turning down work right now. So. Where do they come from?
It shows how little they actual understand about the things they are supposedly in charge of.
I don’t believe there is such a thing as a qualified agency signalman and even if they did exist they won’t be qualified to run anything as all signal boxes require site specific knowledge that takes time to get
I am sure there are some non technical roles agency staff could do, but it seems a bit desperate.
Especially as one needs a certain minimum number of signalmen, for instance, to keep the railways running. And one can't simply make them work overtime. Classic disaster trigger (e.g. a signalling engineer caused a disaster by leaving some bare wiring in a signalbox as a result of being grossly overworked).
If I were a manager I wouldn't touch any derogation of regulations, either. That would be to accept liability for the ensuing crash.
Shades of Abermiwl, where untrained staff accidentally allowed a train onto a section which already contained an oncoming express, with disastrous consequences.
Quite (once I had worked out that this is the correct orthography for the location in question, which is better known in railway books by its anglicised version). But the problem remains, as with the signalling engineer incident (1988).
This threat to bring in blacklegs is so stupid, a few managers aside, that it must be a deliberate Tory attempt to inflame the strike and get better ratings for Big Dog.
It’s like an eighties greatest hits tour. We are already seeing pieces in big dog friendly papers about how labour MPs who support the strike have taken money from the Rail Unions.
Seventies, soon, with the power cuts and oil crisis.
Oh, "but the music".
For every magic memory by the Sex Pistols and The Clash there were ten by Joe Dolce, Paper Lace, Boney M, Rick Dees with his "Disco Duck"....
I remember a student friend coming back from a SP concert and rhapsodising about the spitting ...
People power, once again, prevents a person being taken away for alleged immigration related offences. This is a good thing. Expect more direct action like this and expect it to be co ordinated. People have had enough,
So rule of law should be ignored? What price democracy?
The Police folded like a pack of cards. How can you uphold democracy when the Police are so spineless.
That’s a different point (although the police should be upholding the law not democracy)
It’s not a good thing that a mob intervenes to obstruct the police in the lawful execution of their duties
Laws are selectively enforced all the bloody time
But not by mobs preventing the rule of law.
If you disagree with the law get it changed
What’s the difference?
Because the police and CPS are employed to enforce the laws without fear or favour. If they do not they are failing in their jobs and should be treated accordingly.
A mob preventing the exercise of that role: (i) undermines the exercise of lawful authority; and (ii) indicates that force and/or the fear of force are acceptable alternatives to the democratic process.
A better analogy is the recent decision by Cineworld to pull a movie because of threats of violence. I can understand why they did so, but not why the person behind the threats hasn’t been charged for instigation
This plan to get agency staff for the Railways? AIUI, agency staff are in short supply everywhere. And they are turning down work right now. So. Where do they come from?
It shows how little they actual understand about the things they are supposedly in charge of.
I don’t believe there is such a thing as a qualified agency signalman and even if they did exist they won’t be qualified to run anything as all signal boxes require site specific knowledge that takes time to get
I am sure there are some non technical roles agency staff could do, but it seems a bit desperate.
Especially as one needs a certain minimum number of signalmen, for instance, to keep the railways running. And one can't simply make them work overtime. Classic disaster trigger (e.g. a signalling engineer caused a disaster by leaving some bare wiring in a signalbox as a result of being grossly overworked).
If I were a manager I wouldn't touch any derogation of regulations, either. That would be to accept liability for the ensuing crash.
Shades of Abermiwl, where untrained staff accidentally allowed a train onto a section which already contained an oncoming express, with disastrous consequences.
Quite (once I had worked out that this is the correct orthography for the location in question, which is better known in railway books by its anglicised version). But the problem remains, as with the signalling engineer incident (1988).
This threat to bring in blacklegs is so stupid, a few managers aside, that it must be a deliberate Tory attempt to inflame the strike and get better ratings for Big Dog.
It’s like an eighties greatest hits tour. We are already seeing pieces in big dog friendly papers about how labour MPs who support the strike have taken money from the Rail Unions.
Seventies, soon, with the power cuts and oil crisis.
Oh, "but the music".
For every magic memory by the Sex Pistols and The Clash there were ten by Joe Dolce, Paper Lace, Boney M, Rick Dees with his "Disco Duck"....
I think Rivers of Babylon is fab
And if that doesn't give you an earworm, Rasputin
Thinking about it they are the black Abba
They were the epitome of disco, criticism of Boney M is not allowed! Paper Lace can fuck off though. Nottingham Forest, Billy dont be a hero, orchestra/pop twats. That aside, every decade has its cheese. We will no doubt look back (or rather younger bears will) and cringe at todays novelty performers however much their teeny bopper fans think they are the absolute moon and cutting edge of cool.
Paper Lace only had the one big hit and a couple of minor ones. One of its former members wrote the opening credits music for Midlands today in the late eighties.
Boney M had far greater longevity and knocked out some belting tunes. Their cover of ‘Painter Man’ is a banger.
Of course famously there are currently more versions of Boney M touring than grains of sand in the world. They toured the USSR and had some of the best selling singles of the 70s, when it meant something. Legends.
Talking of grains of sand it is estimated for every grain of sand on earth there are 10,000 stars in the universe.
This plan to get agency staff for the Railways? AIUI, agency staff are in short supply everywhere. And they are turning down work right now. So. Where do they come from?
It shows how little they actual understand about the things they are supposedly in charge of.
I don’t believe there is such a thing as a qualified agency signalman and even if they did exist they won’t be qualified to run anything as all signal boxes require site specific knowledge that takes time to get
It’s all to appear to be doing something.
Pretty much sums up Boris Johnson. No soul. No ideology. No coherence.
Just a muddled set of knee-jerk reactions to the latest crisis with the sole aim of holding onto power.
There is nothing that defines Johnson or his brand of conservativism. It’s power for the Sake of it with no aim or purpose.
Which is the point of being Oxford Union President, isn't it?
There are very few future PMs there. It's more Jeremy Thorpe and Gyles Brandreth than Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher.
Might be a reason for that.
Certainly at least one Oxford Union President on that least who became PM other than Johnson, Edward Heath in 1938.
A few Presidents who nearly made it too, Michael Heseltine, Tony Benn and William Hague and one President, Philip May, who married a future PM
Here is Edward Heath giving evidence to a Select Committee on PMQs. At 43 minutes, he mentions the Oxford Union as a training ground. https://youtu.be/FcKxJZZP2Z4?t=2581s
People power, once again, prevents a person being taken away for alleged immigration related offences. This is a good thing. Expect more direct action like this and expect it to be co ordinated. People have had enough,
The highly anticipated judgment in the libel action brought by multimillionaire Brexit backer Arron Banks against the Observer and Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr will be handed down this week. The landmark verdict will potentially have huge ramifications for press freedom and investigative reporting.
Mrs Justice Steyn will deliver her judgment by email on Monday morning. The decision will be the culmination of an often rancorous three-year legal battle and could send a chilling effect throughout British journalism.
Labour are playing the long game as any sensible Opposition would be in a hugely volatile and fast-changing environment. There was a time when windfall taxes were out of the question and then they weren't.
The idea is to develop solutions to tomorrow's problems as well as to today's. The current Government is like a pinball being flipped round bouncing from one thing to another, incoherent and out of control of events and it's the perception of the latter which is the most damaging.
As to Rachel Reeves, I suppose when I get to the stage when I've nothing better to do with a sunny Sunday morning than listen to a politician on Sky News, fine but sometimes the best option is to say nothing. After all, Reeves isn't the Government any more than I am - ultimately, it's better not to give your opponent a stick with which to beat you even if it looks as though you've not got a stick yourself.
I suspect Reeves is probably glad not to be in No.11 currently and she will be as aware as Sunak of the economic "bleak midwinter" approaching - what price oil if we get a cold Northern Hemisphere winter and what price a kilowatt hour of electricity in January 2023? That's what I would be thinking about now rather than worrying about how I look on Sky News.
Just a point of order but the interview I referred to was Reeves on Sophie Raworth on BBC, not Sky, and as far as nothing else to do on a Sunday morning I really 'pine' for the days I played golf every Sunday morning and were more active, but sadly by mobility issues stopped my golf 14 years ago and my aging has seemingly arrived unfortunately, tempus fugit as they say
Apologies, I sit corrected. I thought you and your good lady had a fine vista out across the North Wales coast and would be enjoying an al fresco breakfast - bit more than I can manage in East London.
As a working man, I find my weekend time too precious to be indulging in Sky News - in truth, apart from being on here and offering a few dubious nuggets of insight, I'm looking at the final declarations for Ascot on Tuesday. Again, I wish I could enjoy that but work, as ever, intervenes.
People ask me when I'm going to retire and the answer is when Mrs Stodge lets me !!
Then they can't moan when the electorate shy away from them when they dont know what they stand for. At present they are presenting themselves as her majesty's loyal and permanent opposition, not a government in waiting. As usual.
Labour are playing the long game as any sensible Opposition would be in a hugely volatile and fast-changing environment. There was a time when windfall taxes were out of the question and then they weren't.
The idea is to develop solutions to tomorrow's problems as well as to today's. The current Government is like a pinball being flipped round bouncing from one thing to another, incoherent and out of control of events and it's the perception of the latter which is the most damaging.
As to Rachel Reeves, I suppose when I get to the stage when I've nothing better to do with a sunny Sunday morning than listen to a politician on Sky News, fine but sometimes the best option is to say nothing. After all, Reeves isn't the Government any more than I am - ultimately, it's better not to give your opponent a stick with which to beat you even if it looks as though you've not got a stick yourself.
I suspect Reeves is probably glad not to be in No.11 currently and she will be as aware as Sunak of the economic "bleak midwinter" approaching - what price oil if we get a cold Northern Hemisphere winter and what price a kilowatt hour of electricity in January 2023? That's what I would be thinking about now rather than worrying about how I look on Sky News.
Just a point of order but the interview I referred to was Reeves on Sophie Raworth on BBC, not Sky, and as far as nothing else to do on a Sunday morning I really 'pine' for the days I played golf every Sunday morning and were more active, but sadly by mobility issues stopped my golf 14 years ago and my aging has seemingly arrived unfortunately, tempus fugit as they say
While I've never been a golfer, I too pine for the days when I could set out for a walk on a Sunday. Or any other day.
This plan to get agency staff for the Railways? AIUI, agency staff are in short supply everywhere. And they are turning down work right now. So. Where do they come from?
It shows how little they actual understand about the things they are supposedly in charge of.
I don’t believe there is such a thing as a qualified agency signalman and even if they did exist they won’t be qualified to run anything as all signal boxes require site specific knowledge that takes time to get
I am sure there are some non technical roles agency staff could do, but it seems a bit desperate.
Especially as one needs a certain minimum number of signalmen, for instance, to keep the railways running. And one can't simply make them work overtime. Classic disaster trigger (e.g. a signalling engineer caused a disaster by leaving some bare wiring in a signalbox as a result of being grossly overworked).
If I were a manager I wouldn't touch any derogation of regulations, either. That would be to accept liability for the ensuing crash.
Shades of Abermiwl, where untrained staff accidentally allowed a train onto a section which already contained an oncoming express, with disastrous consequences.
Quite (once I had worked out that this is the correct orthography for the location in question, which is better known in railway books by its anglicised version). But the problem remains, as with the signalling engineer incident (1988).
This threat to bring in blacklegs is so stupid, a few managers aside, that it must be a deliberate Tory attempt to inflame the strike and get better ratings for Big Dog.
It’s like an eighties greatest hits tour. We are already seeing pieces in big dog friendly papers about how labour MPs who support the strike have taken money from the Rail Unions.
Seventies, soon, with the power cuts and oil crisis.
Oh, "but the music".
For every magic memory by the Sex Pistols and The Clash there were ten by Joe Dolce, Paper Lace, Boney M, Rick Dees with his "Disco Duck"....
I think Rivers of Babylon is fab
And if that doesn't give you an earworm, Rasputin
Thinking about it they are the black Abba
They were the epitome of disco, criticism of Boney M is not allowed! Paper Lace can fuck off though. Nottingham Forest, Billy dont be a hero, orchestra/pop twats. That aside, every decade has its cheese. We will no doubt look back (or rather younger bears will) and cringe at todays novelty performers however much their teeny bopper fans think they are the absolute moon and cutting edge of cool.
Paper Lace only had the one big hit and a couple of minor ones. One of its former members wrote the opening credits music for Midlands today in the late eighties.
Boney M had far greater longevity and knocked out some belting tunes. Their cover of ‘Painter Man’ is a banger.
Of course famously there are currently more versions of Boney M touring than grains of sand in the world. They toured the USSR and had some of the best selling singles of the 70s, when it meant something. Legends.
Talking of grains of sand it is estimated for every grain of sand on earth there are 10,000 stars in the universe.
This plan to get agency staff for the Railways? AIUI, agency staff are in short supply everywhere. And they are turning down work right now. So. Where do they come from?
It shows how little they actual understand about the things they are supposedly in charge of.
I don’t believe there is such a thing as a qualified agency signalman and even if they did exist they won’t be qualified to run anything as all signal boxes require site specific knowledge that takes time to get
I am sure there are some non technical roles agency staff could do, but it seems a bit desperate.
Especially as one needs a certain minimum number of signalmen, for instance, to keep the railways running. And one can't simply make them work overtime. Classic disaster trigger (e.g. a signalling engineer caused a disaster by leaving some bare wiring in a signalbox as a result of being grossly overworked).
If I were a manager I wouldn't touch any derogation of regulations, either. That would be to accept liability for the ensuing crash.
Shades of Abermiwl, where untrained staff accidentally allowed a train onto a section which already contained an oncoming express, with disastrous consequences.
Quite (once I had worked out that this is the correct orthography for the location in question, which is better known in railway books by its anglicised version). But the problem remains, as with the signalling engineer incident (1988).
This threat to bring in blacklegs is so stupid, a few managers aside, that it must be a deliberate Tory attempt to inflame the strike and get better ratings for Big Dog.
It’s like an eighties greatest hits tour. We are already seeing pieces in big dog friendly papers about how labour MPs who support the strike have taken money from the Rail Unions.
Seventies, soon, with the power cuts and oil crisis.
Oh, "but the music".
For every magic memory by the Sex Pistols and The Clash there were ten by Joe Dolce, Paper Lace, Boney M, Rick Dees with his "Disco Duck"....
I think Rivers of Babylon is fab
And if that doesn't give you an earworm, Rasputin
Thinking about it they are the black Abba
They were the epitome of disco, criticism of Boney M is not allowed! Paper Lace can fuck off though. Nottingham Forest, Billy dont be a hero, orchestra/pop twats. That aside, every decade has its cheese. We will no doubt look back (or rather younger bears will) and cringe at todays novelty performers however much their teeny bopper fans think they are the absolute moon and cutting edge of cool.
Paper Lace only had the one big hit and a couple of minor ones. One of its former members wrote the opening credits music for Midlands today in the late eighties.
Boney M had far greater longevity and knocked out some belting tunes. Their cover of ‘Painter Man’ is a banger.
Of course famously there are currently more versions of Boney M touring than grains of sand in the world. They toured the USSR and had some of the best selling singles of the 70s, when it meant something. Legends.
Talking of grains of sand it is estimated for every grain of sand on earth there are 10,000 stars in the universe.
I think Abba have gone from underrated to overrated. Boney M for me are still in underrated territory. Very much so in fact. I recently wrote a spoof song "Mad Bad Vlad Putin" to the tune of Ra Ra Rasputin which involved listening to the original several times and left me thinking, gosh great song actually (theirs not mine) and which then took me down a rabbit hole of other stuff by them. Some minor gems! To mention just 2: Belfast, a punchy protest about the Troubles that you could dance to, and a more than passable disco ballady treatment of Neil Young's Heart Of Gold which had me smiling and thinking where has THAT been all my life? Big stage presence too, the live versions often better than the record. So, yes, Boney M rocked. Course they will one day get discovered again by opinion formers and then it'll swing the other way and they'll get ridiculously overrated like Abba. But until then I'm a fan.
The highly anticipated judgment in the libel action brought by multimillionaire Brexit backer Arron Banks against the Observer and Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr will be handed down this week. The landmark verdict will potentially have huge ramifications for press freedom and investigative reporting.
Mrs Justice Steyn will deliver her judgment by email on Monday morning. The decision will be the culmination of an often rancorous three-year legal battle and could send a chilling effect throughout British journalism.
The highly anticipated judgment in the libel action brought by multimillionaire Brexit backer Arron Banks against the Observer and Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr will be handed down this week. The landmark verdict will potentially have huge ramifications for press freedom and investigative reporting.
Mrs Justice Steyn will deliver her judgment by email on Monday morning. The decision will be the culmination of an often rancorous three-year legal battle and could send a chilling effect throughout British journalism.
I wonder if the Guardian will be reporting objectively on this one .
Personally I am hoping it will have ramifications for journalistic competence (see the industrial scale production of corrections following CC's articles).
This plan to get agency staff for the Railways? AIUI, agency staff are in short supply everywhere. And they are turning down work right now. So. Where do they come from?
It shows how little they actual understand about the things they are supposedly in charge of.
I don’t believe there is such a thing as a qualified agency signalman and even if they did exist they won’t be qualified to run anything as all signal boxes require site specific knowledge that takes time to get
I am sure there are some non technical roles agency staff could do, but it seems a bit desperate.
Especially as one needs a certain minimum number of signalmen, for instance, to keep the railways running. And one can't simply make them work overtime. Classic disaster trigger (e.g. a signalling engineer caused a disaster by leaving some bare wiring in a signalbox as a result of being grossly overworked).
If I were a manager I wouldn't touch any derogation of regulations, either. That would be to accept liability for the ensuing crash.
Shades of Abermiwl, where untrained staff accidentally allowed a train onto a section which already contained an oncoming express, with disastrous consequences.
Quite (once I had worked out that this is the correct orthography for the location in question, which is better known in railway books by its anglicised version). But the problem remains, as with the signalling engineer incident (1988).
This threat to bring in blacklegs is so stupid, a few managers aside, that it must be a deliberate Tory attempt to inflame the strike and get better ratings for Big Dog.
It’s like an eighties greatest hits tour. We are already seeing pieces in big dog friendly papers about how labour MPs who support the strike have taken money from the Rail Unions.
Seventies, soon, with the power cuts and oil crisis.
Oh, "but the music".
For every magic memory by the Sex Pistols and The Clash there were ten by Joe Dolce, Paper Lace, Boney M, Rick Dees with his "Disco Duck"....
I think Rivers of Babylon is fab
And if that doesn't give you an earworm, Rasputin
Thinking about it they are the black Abba
They were the epitome of disco, criticism of Boney M is not allowed! Paper Lace can fuck off though. Nottingham Forest, Billy dont be a hero, orchestra/pop twats. That aside, every decade has its cheese. We will no doubt look back (or rather younger bears will) and cringe at todays novelty performers however much their teeny bopper fans think they are the absolute moon and cutting edge of cool.
Paper Lace only had the one big hit and a couple of minor ones. One of its former members wrote the opening credits music for Midlands today in the late eighties.
Boney M had far greater longevity and knocked out some belting tunes. Their cover of ‘Painter Man’ is a banger.
Of course famously there are currently more versions of Boney M touring than grains of sand in the world. They toured the USSR and had some of the best selling singles of the 70s, when it meant something. Legends.
Talking of grains of sand it is estimated for every grain of sand on earth there are 10,000 stars in the universe.
The highly anticipated judgment in the libel action brought by multimillionaire Brexit backer Arron Banks against the Observer and Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr will be handed down this week. The landmark verdict will potentially have huge ramifications for press freedom and investigative reporting.
Mrs Justice Steyn will deliver her judgment by email on Monday morning. The decision will be the culmination of an often rancorous three-year legal battle and could send a chilling effect throughout British journalism.
I wonder if the Guardian will be reporting objectively on this one .
Personally I am hoping it will have ramifications for journalistic competence (see the industrial scale production of corrections following CC's articles).
Labour are playing the long game as any sensible Opposition would be in a hugely volatile and fast-changing environment. There was a time when windfall taxes were out of the question and then they weren't.
The idea is to develop solutions to tomorrow's problems as well as to today's. The current Government is like a pinball being flipped round bouncing from one thing to another, incoherent and out of control of events and it's the perception of the latter which is the most damaging.
As to Rachel Reeves, I suppose when I get to the stage when I've nothing better to do with a sunny Sunday morning than listen to a politician on Sky News, fine but sometimes the best option is to say nothing. After all, Reeves isn't the Government any more than I am - ultimately, it's better not to give your opponent a stick with which to beat you even if it looks as though you've not got a stick yourself.
I suspect Reeves is probably glad not to be in No.11 currently and she will be as aware as Sunak of the economic "bleak midwinter" approaching - what price oil if we get a cold Northern Hemisphere winter and what price a kilowatt hour of electricity in January 2023? That's what I would be thinking about now rather than worrying about how I look on Sky News.
If you can find time to spit out four finely crafted paras for pb can you really be sniffy about having things to do on Sunday mornings
"Finely Crafted"? I'm overcome - my Boss would be so proud. It's what I do for a living (well, sometimes) . As I've responded to @Big_G_NorthWales. I'm multi-tasking this with form study for Ascot on Tuesday, mid morning coffee and I'm sizing up Mrs Stodge's Brunch order of smoked salmon and scrambled eggs on brioche toast with her fruit bowl accompanying.
The highly anticipated judgment in the libel action brought by multimillionaire Brexit backer Arron Banks against the Observer and Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr will be handed down this week. The landmark verdict will potentially have huge ramifications for press freedom and investigative reporting.
Mrs Justice Steyn will deliver her judgment by email on Monday morning. The decision will be the culmination of an often rancorous three-year legal battle and could send a chilling effect throughout British journalism.
I wonder if the Guardian will be reporting objectively on this one .
Personally I am hoping it will have ramifications for journalistic competence (see the industrial scale production of corrections following CC's articles).
Do journalists take out professional indemnity insurance? Perhaps they should.
So this is where the Spartans and Syracusans build a boom in aug sept 413 trapping the Athenian fleet in the great harbour to the right and destroying them. All because that muppet Nicias thought lunar eclipses were messages from the gods.
This plan to get agency staff for the Railways? AIUI, agency staff are in short supply everywhere. And they are turning down work right now. So. Where do they come from?
It shows how little they actual understand about the things they are supposedly in charge of.
I don’t believe there is such a thing as a qualified agency signalman and even if they did exist they won’t be qualified to run anything as all signal boxes require site specific knowledge that takes time to get
I am sure there are some non technical roles agency staff could do, but it seems a bit desperate.
Especially as one needs a certain minimum number of signalmen, for instance, to keep the railways running. And one can't simply make them work overtime. Classic disaster trigger (e.g. a signalling engineer caused a disaster by leaving some bare wiring in a signalbox as a result of being grossly overworked).
If I were a manager I wouldn't touch any derogation of regulations, either. That would be to accept liability for the ensuing crash.
Shades of Abermiwl, where untrained staff accidentally allowed a train onto a section which already contained an oncoming express, with disastrous consequences.
Quite (once I had worked out that this is the correct orthography for the location in question, which is better known in railway books by its anglicised version). But the problem remains, as with the signalling engineer incident (1988).
This threat to bring in blacklegs is so stupid, a few managers aside, that it must be a deliberate Tory attempt to inflame the strike and get better ratings for Big Dog.
It’s like an eighties greatest hits tour. We are already seeing pieces in big dog friendly papers about how labour MPs who support the strike have taken money from the Rail Unions.
Seventies, soon, with the power cuts and oil crisis.
Oh, "but the music".
For every magic memory by the Sex Pistols and The Clash there were ten by Joe Dolce, Paper Lace, Boney M, Rick Dees with his "Disco Duck"....
I think Rivers of Babylon is fab
And if that doesn't give you an earworm, Rasputin
Thinking about it they are the black Abba
They were the epitome of disco, criticism of Boney M is not allowed! Paper Lace can fuck off though. Nottingham Forest, Billy dont be a hero, orchestra/pop twats. That aside, every decade has its cheese. We will no doubt look back (or rather younger bears will) and cringe at todays novelty performers however much their teeny bopper fans think they are the absolute moon and cutting edge of cool.
Paper Lace only had the one big hit and a couple of minor ones. One of its former members wrote the opening credits music for Midlands today in the late eighties.
Boney M had far greater longevity and knocked out some belting tunes. Their cover of ‘Painter Man’ is a banger.
Of course famously there are currently more versions of Boney M touring than grains of sand in the world. They toured the USSR and had some of the best selling singles of the 70s, when it meant something. Legends.
Talking of grains of sand it is estimated for every grain of sand on earth there are 10,000 stars in the universe.
Known universe(s)....
In some universes in our multiverse Keir, Angie and Mary Foy really were working on curry 'n beer with the lads night.#eventhemostunlikelyuniversesexist
Labour are playing the long game as any sensible Opposition would be in a hugely volatile and fast-changing environment. There was a time when windfall taxes were out of the question and then they weren't.
The idea is to develop solutions to tomorrow's problems as well as to today's. The current Government is like a pinball being flipped round bouncing from one thing to another, incoherent and out of control of events and it's the perception of the latter which is the most damaging.
As to Rachel Reeves, I suppose when I get to the stage when I've nothing better to do with a sunny Sunday morning than listen to a politician on Sky News, fine but sometimes the best option is to say nothing. After all, Reeves isn't the Government any more than I am - ultimately, it's better not to give your opponent a stick with which to beat you even if it looks as though you've not got a stick yourself.
I suspect Reeves is probably glad not to be in No.11 currently and she will be as aware as Sunak of the economic "bleak midwinter" approaching - what price oil if we get a cold Northern Hemisphere winter and what price a kilowatt hour of electricity in January 2023? That's what I would be thinking about now rather than worrying about how I look on Sky News.
Just a point of order but the interview I referred to was Reeves on Sophie Raworth on BBC, not Sky, and as far as nothing else to do on a Sunday morning I really 'pine' for the days I played golf every Sunday morning and were more active, but sadly by mobility issues stopped my golf 14 years ago and my aging has seemingly arrived unfortunately, tempus fugit as they say
Apologies, I sit corrected. I thought you and your good lady had a fine vista out across the North Wales coast and would be enjoying an al fresco breakfast - bit more than I can manage in East London.
As a working man, I find my weekend time too precious to be indulging in Sky News - in truth, apart from being on here and offering a few dubious nuggets of insight, I'm looking at the final declarations for Ascot on Tuesday. Again, I wish I could enjoy that but work, as ever, intervenes.
People ask me when I'm going to retire and the answer is when Mrs Stodge lets me !!
Hopefully you will ping me your tips stodge. I will have plenty time for horses this week. I am sitting thingy in hills. 25 miles North of Malaga. Beautiful day and views are gorgeous.@stodge
I think Abba have gone from underrated to overrated. Boney M for me are still in underrated territory. Very much so in fact. I recently wrote a spoof song "Mad Bad Vlad Putin" to the tune of Ra Ra Rasputin which involved listening to the original several times and left me thinking, gosh great song actually (theirs not mine) and which then took me down a rabbit hole of other stuff by them. Some minor gems! To mention just 2: Belfast, a punchy protest about the Troubles that you could dance to, and a more than passable disco ballady treatment of Neil Young's Heart Of Gold which had me smiling and thinking where has THAT been all my life? Big stage presence too, the live versions often better than the record. So, yes, Boney M rocked. Course they will one day get discovered again by opinion formers and then it'll swing the other way and they'll get ridiculously overrated like Abba. But until then I'm a fan.
Why would you stop being a fan just because others overrate them?
The highly anticipated judgment in the libel action brought by multimillionaire Brexit backer Arron Banks against the Observer and Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr will be handed down this week. The landmark verdict will potentially have huge ramifications for press freedom and investigative reporting.
Mrs Justice Steyn will deliver her judgment by email on Monday morning. The decision will be the culmination of an often rancorous three-year legal battle and could send a chilling effect throughout British journalism.
I wonder if the Guardian will be reporting objectively on this one .
Personally I am hoping it will have ramifications for journalistic competence (see the industrial scale production of corrections following CC's articles).
Do journalists take out professional indemnity insurance? Perhaps they should.
I wonder if the Guardian will bail her out if she does lose. Or does their support for her stop short of that?
The highly anticipated judgment in the libel action brought by multimillionaire Brexit backer Arron Banks against the Observer and Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr will be handed down this week. The landmark verdict will potentially have huge ramifications for press freedom and investigative reporting.
Mrs Justice Steyn will deliver her judgment by email on Monday morning. The decision will be the culmination of an often rancorous three-year legal battle and could send a chilling effect throughout British journalism.
Odious though AB might be, and responsible though he may be of many of the things of which he has been accused in the past, including some of those from CC, if he does win it *should* send a chill through the journalistic ranks. It in no way impedes their ability to conduct investigative journalism. It *does* discourage printing poorly sourced, badly evidenced extrapolations and hear-say.
CC has been a useful idiot to those on Banks's side, providing a welter of dismissible stories that can be used to snow the true ones. It needs to stop.
Waterloo and Rasputin are companion pieces, 2 sides of a diptych, etc as ludicrously batty disco treatments of key historical figures. Rasputin is certainly not inferior.
This plan to get agency staff for the Railways? AIUI, agency staff are in short supply everywhere. And they are turning down work right now. So. Where do they come from?
It shows how little they actual understand about the things they are supposedly in charge of.
I don’t believe there is such a thing as a qualified agency signalman and even if they did exist they won’t be qualified to run anything as all signal boxes require site specific knowledge that takes time to get
I am sure there are some non technical roles agency staff could do, but it seems a bit desperate.
Especially as one needs a certain minimum number of signalmen, for instance, to keep the railways running. And one can't simply make them work overtime. Classic disaster trigger (e.g. a signalling engineer caused a disaster by leaving some bare wiring in a signalbox as a result of being grossly overworked).
If I were a manager I wouldn't touch any derogation of regulations, either. That would be to accept liability for the ensuing crash.
Shades of Abermiwl, where untrained staff accidentally allowed a train onto a section which already contained an oncoming express, with disastrous consequences.
Quite (once I had worked out that this is the correct orthography for the location in question, which is better known in railway books by its anglicised version). But the problem remains, as with the signalling engineer incident (1988).
This threat to bring in blacklegs is so stupid, a few managers aside, that it must be a deliberate Tory attempt to inflame the strike and get better ratings for Big Dog.
It’s like an eighties greatest hits tour. We are already seeing pieces in big dog friendly papers about how labour MPs who support the strike have taken money from the Rail Unions.
Seventies, soon, with the power cuts and oil crisis.
Oh, "but the music".
For every magic memory by the Sex Pistols and The Clash there were ten by Joe Dolce, Paper Lace, Boney M, Rick Dees with his "Disco Duck"....
I think Rivers of Babylon is fab
And if that doesn't give you an earworm, Rasputin
Thinking about it they are the black Abba
They were the epitome of disco, criticism of Boney M is not allowed! Paper Lace can fuck off though. Nottingham Forest, Billy dont be a hero, orchestra/pop twats. That aside, every decade has its cheese. We will no doubt look back (or rather younger bears will) and cringe at todays novelty performers however much their teeny bopper fans think they are the absolute moon and cutting edge of cool.
Paper Lace only had the one big hit and a couple of minor ones. One of its former members wrote the opening credits music for Midlands today in the late eighties.
Boney M had far greater longevity and knocked out some belting tunes. Their cover of ‘Painter Man’ is a banger.
Of course famously there are currently more versions of Boney M touring than grains of sand in the world. They toured the USSR and had some of the best selling singles of the 70s, when it meant something. Legends.
Talking of grains of sand it is estimated for every grain of sand on earth there are 10,000 stars in the universe.
Known universe(s)....
Yes. Remarkable to think we are celebrating the centenary of Opik's estimate of the distance to the Andromeda nebula. The first real proof of the existence of galaxies beyond our own. (Confirmed by Hubble's identification of individual Cepheids in Andromeda the following year).
The highly anticipated judgment in the libel action brought by multimillionaire Brexit backer Arron Banks against the Observer and Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr will be handed down this week. The landmark verdict will potentially have huge ramifications for press freedom and investigative reporting.
Mrs Justice Steyn will deliver her judgment by email on Monday morning. The decision will be the culmination of an often rancorous three-year legal battle and could send a chilling effect throughout British journalism.
I wonder if the Guardian will be reporting objectively on this one .
Personally I am hoping it will have ramifications for journalistic competence (see the industrial scale production of corrections following CC's articles).
Do journalists take out professional indemnity insurance? Perhaps they should.
I wonder if the Guardian will bail her out if she does lose. Or does their support for her stop short of that?
Arron Banks presumably hopes so. Whatever the merits, suing individual journalists rather than their publishers is surely a sinister development.
Labour are playing the long game as any sensible Opposition would be in a hugely volatile and fast-changing environment. There was a time when windfall taxes were out of the question and then they weren't.
The idea is to develop solutions to tomorrow's problems as well as to today's. The current Government is like a pinball being flipped round bouncing from one thing to another, incoherent and out of control of events and it's the perception of the latter which is the most damaging.
As to Rachel Reeves, I suppose when I get to the stage when I've nothing better to do with a sunny Sunday morning than listen to a politician on Sky News, fine but sometimes the best option is to say nothing. After all, Reeves isn't the Government any more than I am - ultimately, it's better not to give your opponent a stick with which to beat you even if it looks as though you've not got a stick yourself.
I suspect Reeves is probably glad not to be in No.11 currently and she will be as aware as Sunak of the economic "bleak midwinter" approaching - what price oil if we get a cold Northern Hemisphere winter and what price a kilowatt hour of electricity in January 2023? That's what I would be thinking about now rather than worrying about how I look on Sky News.
Just a point of order but the interview I referred to was Reeves on Sophie Raworth on BBC, not Sky, and as far as nothing else to do on a Sunday morning I really 'pine' for the days I played golf every Sunday morning and were more active, but sadly by mobility issues stopped my golf 14 years ago and my aging has seemingly arrived unfortunately, tempus fugit as they say
Apologies, I sit corrected. I thought you and your good lady had a fine vista out across the North Wales coast and would be enjoying an al fresco breakfast - bit more than I can manage in East London.
As a working man, I find my weekend time too precious to be indulging in Sky News - in truth, apart from being on here and offering a few dubious nuggets of insight, I'm looking at the final declarations for Ascot on Tuesday. Again, I wish I could enjoy that but work, as ever, intervenes.
People ask me when I'm going to retire and the answer is when Mrs Stodge lets me !!
Just a gentle chide, but yes we do look out over the Irish sea to the front, Snowdonia to the rear and have a secluded south facing garden
We are so blessed and do count our blessings every day, not least grandchild number 5 due on the 1st September as a complete surprise, and not least to the parents who already have two charming children and are both handfuls (10 and 8)
I think Abba have gone from underrated to overrated. Boney M for me are still in underrated territory. Very much so in fact. I recently wrote a spoof song "Mad Bad Vlad Putin" to the tune of Ra Ra Rasputin which involved listening to the original several times and left me thinking, gosh great song actually (theirs not mine) and which then took me down a rabbit hole of other stuff by them. Some minor gems! To mention just 2: Belfast, a punchy protest about the Troubles that you could dance to, and a more than passable disco ballady treatment of Neil Young's Heart Of Gold which had me smiling and thinking where has THAT been all my life? Big stage presence too, the live versions often better than the record. So, yes, Boney M rocked. Course they will one day get discovered again by opinion formers and then it'll swing the other way and they'll get ridiculously overrated like Abba. But until then I'm a fan.
Why would you stop being a fan just because others overrate them?
Labour are playing the long game as any sensible Opposition would be in a hugely volatile and fast-changing environment. There was a time when windfall taxes were out of the question and then they weren't.
The idea is to develop solutions to tomorrow's problems as well as to today's. The current Government is like a pinball being flipped round bouncing from one thing to another, incoherent and out of control of events and it's the perception of the latter which is the most damaging.
As to Rachel Reeves, I suppose when I get to the stage when I've nothing better to do with a sunny Sunday morning than listen to a politician on Sky News, fine but sometimes the best option is to say nothing. After all, Reeves isn't the Government any more than I am - ultimately, it's better not to give your opponent a stick with which to beat you even if it looks as though you've not got a stick yourself.
I suspect Reeves is probably glad not to be in No.11 currently and she will be as aware as Sunak of the economic "bleak midwinter" approaching - what price oil if we get a cold Northern Hemisphere winter and what price a kilowatt hour of electricity in January 2023? That's what I would be thinking about now rather than worrying about how I look on Sky News.
Just a point of order but the interview I referred to was Reeves on Sophie Raworth on BBC, not Sky, and as far as nothing else to do on a Sunday morning I really 'pine' for the days I played golf every Sunday morning and were more active, but sadly by mobility issues stopped my golf 14 years ago and my aging has seemingly arrived unfortunately, tempus fugit as they say
Apologies, I sit corrected. I thought you and your good lady had a fine vista out across the North Wales coast and would be enjoying an al fresco breakfast - bit more than I can manage in East London.
As a working man, I find my weekend time too precious to be indulging in Sky News - in truth, apart from being on here and offering a few dubious nuggets of insight, I'm looking at the final declarations for Ascot on Tuesday. Again, I wish I could enjoy that but work, as ever, intervenes.
People ask me when I'm going to retire and the answer is when Mrs Stodge lets me !!
Just a gentle chide, but yes we do look out over the Irish sea to the front, Snowdonia to the rear and have a secluded south facing garden
We are so blessed and do count our blessings every day, not least grandchild number 5 due on the 1st September as a complete surprise, and not least to the parents who already have two charming children and are both handfuls (10 and 8)
This plan to get agency staff for the Railways? AIUI, agency staff are in short supply everywhere. And they are turning down work right now. So. Where do they come from?
It shows how little they actual understand about the things they are supposedly in charge of.
I don’t believe there is such a thing as a qualified agency signalman and even if they did exist they won’t be qualified to run anything as all signal boxes require site specific knowledge that takes time to get
I am sure there are some non technical roles agency staff could do, but it seems a bit desperate.
Especially as one needs a certain minimum number of signalmen, for instance, to keep the railways running. And one can't simply make them work overtime. Classic disaster trigger (e.g. a signalling engineer caused a disaster by leaving some bare wiring in a signalbox as a result of being grossly overworked).
If I were a manager I wouldn't touch any derogation of regulations, either. That would be to accept liability for the ensuing crash.
Shades of Abermiwl, where untrained staff accidentally allowed a train onto a section which already contained an oncoming express, with disastrous consequences.
Quite (once I had worked out that this is the correct orthography for the location in question, which is better known in railway books by its anglicised version). But the problem remains, as with the signalling engineer incident (1988).
This threat to bring in blacklegs is so stupid, a few managers aside, that it must be a deliberate Tory attempt to inflame the strike and get better ratings for Big Dog.
It’s like an eighties greatest hits tour. We are already seeing pieces in big dog friendly papers about how labour MPs who support the strike have taken money from the Rail Unions.
Seventies, soon, with the power cuts and oil crisis.
Oh, "but the music".
For every magic memory by the Sex Pistols and The Clash there were ten by Joe Dolce, Paper Lace, Boney M, Rick Dees with his "Disco Duck"....
I think Rivers of Babylon is fab
And if that doesn't give you an earworm, Rasputin
Thinking about it they are the black Abba
They were the epitome of disco, criticism of Boney M is not allowed! Paper Lace can fuck off though. Nottingham Forest, Billy dont be a hero, orchestra/pop twats. That aside, every decade has its cheese. We will no doubt look back (or rather younger bears will) and cringe at todays novelty performers however much their teeny bopper fans think they are the absolute moon and cutting edge of cool.
Paper Lace only had the one big hit and a couple of minor ones. One of its former members wrote the opening credits music for Midlands today in the late eighties.
Boney M had far greater longevity and knocked out some belting tunes. Their cover of ‘Painter Man’ is a banger.
Of course famously there are currently more versions of Boney M touring than grains of sand in the world. They toured the USSR and had some of the best selling singles of the 70s, when it meant something. Legends.
Talking of grains of sand it is estimated for every grain of sand on earth there are 10,000 stars in the universe.
Known universe(s)....
In some universes in our multiverse Keir, Angie and Mary Foy really were working on curry 'n beer with the lads night.#eventhemostunlikelyuniversesexist
Could we postulate one in which Boris Johnson is hard-working, competent, honest and selflessly devoted to the welfare of the nation?
Labour are playing the long game as any sensible Opposition would be in a hugely volatile and fast-changing environment. There was a time when windfall taxes were out of the question and then they weren't.
The idea is to develop solutions to tomorrow's problems as well as to today's. The current Government is like a pinball being flipped round bouncing from one thing to another, incoherent and out of control of events and it's the perception of the latter which is the most damaging.
As to Rachel Reeves, I suppose when I get to the stage when I've nothing better to do with a sunny Sunday morning than listen to a politician on Sky News, fine but sometimes the best option is to say nothing. After all, Reeves isn't the Government any more than I am - ultimately, it's better not to give your opponent a stick with which to beat you even if it looks as though you've not got a stick yourself.
I suspect Reeves is probably glad not to be in No.11 currently and she will be as aware as Sunak of the economic "bleak midwinter" approaching - what price oil if we get a cold Northern Hemisphere winter and what price a kilowatt hour of electricity in January 2023? That's what I would be thinking about now rather than worrying about how I look on Sky News.
Just a point of order but the interview I referred to was Reeves on Sophie Raworth on BBC, not Sky, and as far as nothing else to do on a Sunday morning I really 'pine' for the days I played golf every Sunday morning and were more active, but sadly by mobility issues stopped my golf 14 years ago and my aging has seemingly arrived unfortunately, tempus fugit as they say
Apologies, I sit corrected. I thought you and your good lady had a fine vista out across the North Wales coast and would be enjoying an al fresco breakfast - bit more than I can manage in East London.
As a working man, I find my weekend time too precious to be indulging in Sky News - in truth, apart from being on here and offering a few dubious nuggets of insight, I'm looking at the final declarations for Ascot on Tuesday. Again, I wish I could enjoy that but work, as ever, intervenes.
People ask me when I'm going to retire and the answer is when Mrs Stodge lets me !!
Just a gentle chide, but yes we do look out over the Irish sea to the front, Snowdonia to the rear and have a secluded south facing garden
We are so blessed and do count our blessings every day, not least grandchild number 5 due on the 1st September as a complete surprise, and not least to the parents who already have two charming children and are both handfuls (10 and 8)
Do they not know what caused it?
I am sure they do, but sometimes maybe a 'wee' bit of alcohol may just have an effect
I think Abba have gone from underrated to overrated. Boney M for me are still in underrated territory. Very much so in fact. I recently wrote a spoof song "Mad Bad Vlad Putin" to the tune of Ra Ra Rasputin which involved listening to the original several times and left me thinking, gosh great song actually (theirs not mine) and which then took me down a rabbit hole of other stuff by them. Some minor gems! To mention just 2: Belfast, a punchy protest about the Troubles that you could dance to, and a more than passable disco ballady treatment of Neil Young's Heart Of Gold which had me smiling and thinking where has THAT been all my life? Big stage presence too, the live versions often better than the record. So, yes, Boney M rocked. Course they will one day get discovered again by opinion formers and then it'll swing the other way and they'll get ridiculously overrated like Abba. But until then I'm a fan.
Why would you stop being a fan just because others overrate them?
An excellent question.
One just does
My Italian waiter has arbitrarily decided I am French and I have managed to keep up the act for so far 4 interactions with him (he is speaking English to the next table). Inexplicably pleased about this
This plan to get agency staff for the Railways? AIUI, agency staff are in short supply everywhere. And they are turning down work right now. So. Where do they come from?
It shows how little they actual understand about the things they are supposedly in charge of.
I don’t believe there is such a thing as a qualified agency signalman and even if they did exist they won’t be qualified to run anything as all signal boxes require site specific knowledge that takes time to get
I am sure there are some non technical roles agency staff could do, but it seems a bit desperate.
Especially as one needs a certain minimum number of signalmen, for instance, to keep the railways running. And one can't simply make them work overtime. Classic disaster trigger (e.g. a signalling engineer caused a disaster by leaving some bare wiring in a signalbox as a result of being grossly overworked).
If I were a manager I wouldn't touch any derogation of regulations, either. That would be to accept liability for the ensuing crash.
Shades of Abermiwl, where untrained staff accidentally allowed a train onto a section which already contained an oncoming express, with disastrous consequences.
Quite (once I had worked out that this is the correct orthography for the location in question, which is better known in railway books by its anglicised version). But the problem remains, as with the signalling engineer incident (1988).
This threat to bring in blacklegs is so stupid, a few managers aside, that it must be a deliberate Tory attempt to inflame the strike and get better ratings for Big Dog.
It’s like an eighties greatest hits tour. We are already seeing pieces in big dog friendly papers about how labour MPs who support the strike have taken money from the Rail Unions.
Seventies, soon, with the power cuts and oil crisis.
Oh, "but the music".
For every magic memory by the Sex Pistols and The Clash there were ten by Joe Dolce, Paper Lace, Boney M, Rick Dees with his "Disco Duck"....
I think Rivers of Babylon is fab
And if that doesn't give you an earworm, Rasputin
Thinking about it they are the black Abba
They were the epitome of disco, criticism of Boney M is not allowed! Paper Lace can fuck off though. Nottingham Forest, Billy dont be a hero, orchestra/pop twats. That aside, every decade has its cheese. We will no doubt look back (or rather younger bears will) and cringe at todays novelty performers however much their teeny bopper fans think they are the absolute moon and cutting edge of cool.
Paper Lace only had the one big hit and a couple of minor ones. One of its former members wrote the opening credits music for Midlands today in the late eighties.
Boney M had far greater longevity and knocked out some belting tunes. Their cover of ‘Painter Man’ is a banger.
Of course famously there are currently more versions of Boney M touring than grains of sand in the world. They toured the USSR and had some of the best selling singles of the 70s, when it meant something. Legends.
Talking of grains of sand it is estimated for every grain of sand on earth there are 10,000 stars in the universe.
Known universe(s)....
In some universes in our multiverse Keir, Angie and Mary Foy really were working on curry 'n beer with the lads night.#eventhemostunlikelyuniversesexist
Could we postulate one in which Boris Johnson is hard-working, competent, honest and selflessly devoted to the welfare of the nation?
The highly anticipated judgment in the libel action brought by multimillionaire Brexit backer Arron Banks against the Observer and Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr will be handed down this week. The landmark verdict will potentially have huge ramifications for press freedom and investigative reporting.
Mrs Justice Steyn will deliver her judgment by email on Monday morning. The decision will be the culmination of an often rancorous three-year legal battle and could send a chilling effect throughout British journalism.
I wonder if the Guardian will be reporting objectively on this one .
Personally I am hoping it will have ramifications for journalistic competence (see the industrial scale production of corrections following CC's articles).
Do journalists take out professional indemnity insurance? Perhaps they should.
I wonder if the Guardian will bail her out if she does lose. Or does their support for her stop short of that?
Arron Banks presumably hopes so. Whatever the merits, suing individual journalists rather than their publishers is surely a sinister development.
Normally you sue the individual/organisation with the deepest pockets. But given Banks's wealth, I assume he thought it more amusing to sue Cadwalladr personally.
The highly anticipated judgment in the libel action brought by multimillionaire Brexit backer Arron Banks against the Observer and Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr will be handed down this week. The landmark verdict will potentially have huge ramifications for press freedom and investigative reporting.
Mrs Justice Steyn will deliver her judgment by email on Monday morning. The decision will be the culmination of an often rancorous three-year legal battle and could send a chilling effect throughout British journalism.
I wonder if the Guardian will be reporting objectively on this one .
Personally I am hoping it will have ramifications for journalistic competence (see the industrial scale production of corrections following CC's articles).
Do journalists take out professional indemnity insurance? Perhaps they should.
I wonder if the Guardian will bail her out if she does lose. Or does their support for her stop short of that?
I think Abba have gone from underrated to overrated. Boney M for me are still in underrated territory. Very much so in fact. I recently wrote a spoof song "Mad Bad Vlad Putin" to the tune of Ra Ra Rasputin which involved listening to the original several times and left me thinking, gosh great song actually (theirs not mine) and which then took me down a rabbit hole of other stuff by them. Some minor gems! To mention just 2: Belfast, a punchy protest about the Troubles that you could dance to, and a more than passable disco ballady treatment of Neil Young's Heart Of Gold which had me smiling and thinking where has THAT been all my life? Big stage presence too, the live versions often better than the record. So, yes, Boney M rocked. Course they will one day get discovered again by opinion formers and then it'll swing the other way and they'll get ridiculously overrated like Abba. But until then I'm a fan.
With Abba, I think it's just over-familiarity. By chance I discovered that they recorded a lot of their songs in Spanish and it was like listening to them with fresh ears.
I think Abba have gone from underrated to overrated. Boney M for me are still in underrated territory. Very much so in fact. I recently wrote a spoof song "Mad Bad Vlad Putin" to the tune of Ra Ra Rasputin which involved listening to the original several times and left me thinking, gosh great song actually (theirs not mine) and which then took me down a rabbit hole of other stuff by them. Some minor gems! To mention just 2: Belfast, a punchy protest about the Troubles that you could dance to, and a more than passable disco ballady treatment of Neil Young's Heart Of Gold which had me smiling and thinking where has THAT been all my life? Big stage presence too, the live versions often better than the record. So, yes, Boney M rocked. Course they will one day get discovered again by opinion formers and then it'll swing the other way and they'll get ridiculously overrated like Abba. But until then I'm a fan.
Why would you stop being a fan just because others overrate them?
An excellent question.
One just does
My Italian waiter has arbitrarily decided I am French and I have managed to keep up the act for so far 4 interactions with him (he is speaking English to the next table). Inexplicably pleased about this
I don't. I like what I like, and I couldn't give even the tiniest of shits whether that puts me in a minority of one, or whether it puts me in with the Guardian readers, the lumpen proles, Hitler, or anyone else. I can't imagine being so ludicrously weak minded and insecure as to stop liking something because of the others who liked or disliked it.
The highly anticipated judgment in the libel action brought by multimillionaire Brexit backer Arron Banks against the Observer and Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr will be handed down this week. The landmark verdict will potentially have huge ramifications for press freedom and investigative reporting.
Mrs Justice Steyn will deliver her judgment by email on Monday morning. The decision will be the culmination of an often rancorous three-year legal battle and could send a chilling effect throughout British journalism.
I wonder if the Guardian will be reporting objectively on this one .
Personally I am hoping it will have ramifications for journalistic competence (see the industrial scale production of corrections following CC's articles).
Do journalists take out professional indemnity insurance? Perhaps they should.
I wonder if the Guardian will bail her out if she does lose. Or does their support for her stop short of that?
Arron Banks presumably hopes so. Whatever the merits, suing individual journalists rather than their publishers is surely a sinister development.
Normally you sue the individual/organisation with the deepest pockets. But given Banks's wealth, I assume he thought it more amusing to sue Cadwalladr personally.
"Do journalists take out professional indemnity insurance"
This plan to get agency staff for the Railways? AIUI, agency staff are in short supply everywhere. And they are turning down work right now. So. Where do they come from?
It shows how little they actual understand about the things they are supposedly in charge of.
I don’t believe there is such a thing as a qualified agency signalman and even if they did exist they won’t be qualified to run anything as all signal boxes require site specific knowledge that takes time to get
I am sure there are some non technical roles agency staff could do, but it seems a bit desperate.
Especially as one needs a certain minimum number of signalmen, for instance, to keep the railways running. And one can't simply make them work overtime. Classic disaster trigger (e.g. a signalling engineer caused a disaster by leaving some bare wiring in a signalbox as a result of being grossly overworked).
If I were a manager I wouldn't touch any derogation of regulations, either. That would be to accept liability for the ensuing crash.
Shades of Abermiwl, where untrained staff accidentally allowed a train onto a section which already contained an oncoming express, with disastrous consequences.
Quite (once I had worked out that this is the correct orthography for the location in question, which is better known in railway books by its anglicised version). But the problem remains, as with the signalling engineer incident (1988).
This threat to bring in blacklegs is so stupid, a few managers aside, that it must be a deliberate Tory attempt to inflame the strike and get better ratings for Big Dog.
It’s like an eighties greatest hits tour. We are already seeing pieces in big dog friendly papers about how labour MPs who support the strike have taken money from the Rail Unions.
Seventies, soon, with the power cuts and oil crisis.
Oh, "but the music".
For every magic memory by the Sex Pistols and The Clash there were ten by Joe Dolce, Paper Lace, Boney M, Rick Dees with his "Disco Duck"....
I think Rivers of Babylon is fab
And if that doesn't give you an earworm, Rasputin
Thinking about it they are the black Abba
They were the epitome of disco, criticism of Boney M is not allowed! Paper Lace can fuck off though. Nottingham Forest, Billy dont be a hero, orchestra/pop twats. That aside, every decade has its cheese. We will no doubt look back (or rather younger bears will) and cringe at todays novelty performers however much their teeny bopper fans think they are the absolute moon and cutting edge of cool.
Paper Lace only had the one big hit and a couple of minor ones. One of its former members wrote the opening credits music for Midlands today in the late eighties.
Boney M had far greater longevity and knocked out some belting tunes. Their cover of ‘Painter Man’ is a banger.
Of course famously there are currently more versions of Boney M touring than grains of sand in the world. They toured the USSR and had some of the best selling singles of the 70s, when it meant something. Legends.
Talking of grains of sand it is estimated for every grain of sand on earth there are 10,000 stars in the universe.
Known universe(s)....
In some universes in our multiverse Keir, Angie and Mary Foy really were working on curry 'n beer with the lads night.#eventhemostunlikelyuniversesexist
Could we postulate one in which Boris Johnson is hard-working, competent, honest and selflessly devoted to the welfare of the nation?
You see thats the one that breaks the whole multiverse theory #oneuniverseitis
On topic, there wil be a Tory poll lead about a fortnight after fuel duty gets suspended.
Hmmm. I'm still not sure you really get the national mood in your UAE hideaway.
I don't think any of us really 'get' the national mood. Few of us talk with wide swathes of the population, especially about politics. We have family and friends, often of similar backgrounds to our own, and many of us frequent comfortable echo chambers on the Internet.
Are discussions I have with parents in the schoolground whilst waiting for their kids to come out of class representative of a 'national mood' , or just ones of certain geographic and economic basis?
Then there's the issue of what you hear: if I am talking with someone who is very left-wing, I am unlikely to talk about privatisation unless I know them very well. I'm more likely just to nod and listen.
We can only see a tiny slice of that national mood.
I'd go further (having agreed with everything you posted) and ask if there is even such a thing as a "national mood" any more. We are more and more polarised and divided, and the government's only consistent policy is to fan these flames and makes us ever more so.
I'd suggest that last weekend was a prime example of us having a 'national mood'. Millions of people having a good time and getting to know each other on a rather spurious basis.
Then there's the question of whether there was ever really a 'national mood'. Even during World War II there were plenty of dissenting voices and moods that varied from: "Let's go and kill all the vile Hun!" through "Let's just go, get the job done and get home," to "We shouldn't fight, war's bad". Then there were the black marketeers and strikers who were not exactly fitting in with what we see as the mood at the time.
Indeed. I think Angus Calder's 'The people's war' was quite a shock at the time of publication in 1969, for its revisionist take, though (slightly surprisingly) I haven't read his later 'Myth of the Blitz'.
For all the beating that social media gets it’s decent at dispelling the national myth stuff. Last weekend I was surprised at just how much genuine participation in the royal jamboree there was south of Gretna and how much genuine indifference there was north of it. If we’d only had the media package available in say 1977, ie a fawning BBC and deranged tabloids, the myth of an all consuming national Platty Joobs would be well on its way to be established. We wouldn’t have royalists gloomily prognosticating about what a disaster King Charles will be within a week of the Windsorgasm either.
I think Abba have gone from underrated to overrated. Boney M for me are still in underrated territory. Very much so in fact. I recently wrote a spoof song "Mad Bad Vlad Putin" to the tune of Ra Ra Rasputin which involved listening to the original several times and left me thinking, gosh great song actually (theirs not mine) and which then took me down a rabbit hole of other stuff by them. Some minor gems! To mention just 2: Belfast, a punchy protest about the Troubles that you could dance to, and a more than passable disco ballady treatment of Neil Young's Heart Of Gold which had me smiling and thinking where has THAT been all my life? Big stage presence too, the live versions often better than the record. So, yes, Boney M rocked. Course they will one day get discovered again by opinion formers and then it'll swing the other way and they'll get ridiculously overrated like Abba. But until then I'm a fan.
Why would you stop being a fan just because others overrate them?
Because all is relative not absolute.
ie if I'm a fan but most are bigger fans I'm not a fan.
This plan to get agency staff for the Railways? AIUI, agency staff are in short supply everywhere. And they are turning down work right now. So. Where do they come from?
It shows how little they actual understand about the things they are supposedly in charge of.
I don’t believe there is such a thing as a qualified agency signalman and even if they did exist they won’t be qualified to run anything as all signal boxes require site specific knowledge that takes time to get
I am sure there are some non technical roles agency staff could do, but it seems a bit desperate.
Especially as one needs a certain minimum number of signalmen, for instance, to keep the railways running. And one can't simply make them work overtime. Classic disaster trigger (e.g. a signalling engineer caused a disaster by leaving some bare wiring in a signalbox as a result of being grossly overworked).
If I were a manager I wouldn't touch any derogation of regulations, either. That would be to accept liability for the ensuing crash.
Shades of Abermiwl, where untrained staff accidentally allowed a train onto a section which already contained an oncoming express, with disastrous consequences.
Quite (once I had worked out that this is the correct orthography for the location in question, which is better known in railway books by its anglicised version). But the problem remains, as with the signalling engineer incident (1988).
This threat to bring in blacklegs is so stupid, a few managers aside, that it must be a deliberate Tory attempt to inflame the strike and get better ratings for Big Dog.
It’s like an eighties greatest hits tour. We are already seeing pieces in big dog friendly papers about how labour MPs who support the strike have taken money from the Rail Unions.
Seventies, soon, with the power cuts and oil crisis.
Oh, "but the music".
For every magic memory by the Sex Pistols and The Clash there were ten by Joe Dolce, Paper Lace, Boney M, Rick Dees with his "Disco Duck"....
I think Rivers of Babylon is fab
And if that doesn't give you an earworm, Rasputin
Thinking about it they are the black Abba
They were the epitome of disco, criticism of Boney M is not allowed! Paper Lace can fuck off though. Nottingham Forest, Billy dont be a hero, orchestra/pop twats. That aside, every decade has its cheese. We will no doubt look back (or rather younger bears will) and cringe at todays novelty performers however much their teeny bopper fans think they are the absolute moon and cutting edge of cool.
Paper Lace only had the one big hit and a couple of minor ones. One of its former members wrote the opening credits music for Midlands today in the late eighties.
Boney M had far greater longevity and knocked out some belting tunes. Their cover of ‘Painter Man’ is a banger.
Of course famously there are currently more versions of Boney M touring than grains of sand in the world. They toured the USSR and had some of the best selling singles of the 70s, when it meant something. Legends.
Talking of grains of sand it is estimated for every grain of sand on earth there are 10,000 stars in the universe.
Known universe(s)....
In some universes in our multiverse Keir, Angie and Mary Foy really were working on curry 'n beer with the lads night.#eventhemostunlikelyuniversesexist
Could we postulate one in which Boris Johnson is hard-working, competent, honest and selflessly devoted to the welfare of the nation?
You see thats the one that breaks the whole multiverse theory #oneuniverseitis
On topic, there wil be a Tory poll lead about a fortnight after fuel duty gets suspended.
Hmmm. I'm still not sure you really get the national mood in your UAE hideaway.
I don't think any of us really 'get' the national mood. Few of us talk with wide swathes of the population, especially about politics. We have family and friends, often of similar backgrounds to our own, and many of us frequent comfortable echo chambers on the Internet.
Are discussions I have with parents in the schoolground whilst waiting for their kids to come out of class representative of a 'national mood' , or just ones of certain geographic and economic basis?
Then there's the issue of what you hear: if I am talking with someone who is very left-wing, I am unlikely to talk about privatisation unless I know them very well. I'm more likely just to nod and listen.
We can only see a tiny slice of that national mood.
I'd go further (having agreed with everything you posted) and ask if there is even such a thing as a "national mood" any more. We are more and more polarised and divided, and the government's only consistent policy is to fan these flames and makes us ever more so.
I'd suggest that last weekend was a prime example of us having a 'national mood'. Millions of people having a good time and getting to know each other on a rather spurious basis.
Then there's the question of whether there was ever really a 'national mood'. Even during World War II there were plenty of dissenting voices and moods that varied from: "Let's go and kill all the vile Hun!" through "Let's just go, get the job done and get home," to "We shouldn't fight, war's bad". Then there were the black marketeers and strikers who were not exactly fitting in with what we see as the mood at the time.
Indeed. I think Angus Calder's 'The people's war' was quite a shock at the time of publication in 1969, for its revisionist take, though (slightly surprisingly) I haven't read his later 'Myth of the Blitz'.
For all the beating that social media gets it’s decent at dispelling the national myth stuff. Last weekend I was surprised at just how much genuine participation in the royal jamboree there was south of Gretna and how much genuine indifference there was north of it. If we’d only had the media package available in say 1977, ie a fawning BBC and deranged tabloids, the myth of an all consuming national Platty Joobs would be well on its way to be established. We wouldn’t have royalists gloomily prognosticating about what a disaster King Charles will be within a week of the Windsorgasm either.
I was surprised on the upside at the levels of celebration I saw around Scotland. I suppose we all see what we're looking for.
Comments
She couldn't give a straight answer to genuine questions and was evasive
We’re still in bed here.
Almost as bad as St. Louis, Des Moines or Montpelier.
That aside, every decade has its cheese. We will no doubt look back (or rather younger bears will) and cringe at todays novelty performers however much their teeny bopper fans think they are the absolute moon and cutting edge of cool.
Refused to commit to a fuel duty reduction beyond the present 5p
Refused to say whether she backed the RMT strike
Stated she will outline policies nearer the election with no indication on tax and spend
Generally a sitting on the fence interview
I’m glad I was watching YouTube videos.
Looking at this list,
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_Oxford_Union
There are very few future PMs there. It's more Jeremy Thorpe and Gyles Brandreth than Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher.
Might be a reason for that.
Boney M had far greater longevity and knocked out some belting tunes. Their cover of ‘Painter Man’ is a banger.
Are discussions I have with parents in the schoolground whilst waiting for their kids to come out of class representative of a 'national mood' , or just ones of certain geographic and economic basis?
Then there's the issue of what you hear: if I am talking with someone who is very left-wing, I am unlikely to talk about privatisation unless I know them very well. I'm more likely just to nod and listen.
We can only see a tiny slice of that national mood.
It's not as if the Tories have come out with policies, other than performative cruelty to foreigners.
A few Presidents who nearly made it too, Michael Heseltine, Tony Benn and William Hague and one President, Philip May, who married a future PM
https://twitter.com/CarolineLucas/status/1535913881373114369
They toured the USSR and had some of the best selling singles of the 70s, when it meant something.
Legends.
Then there's the question of whether there was ever really a 'national mood'. Even during World War II there were plenty of dissenting voices and moods that varied from: "Let's go and kill all the vile Hun!" through "Let's just go, get the job done and get home," to "We shouldn't fight, war's bad". Then there were the black marketeers and strikers who were not exactly fitting in with what we see as the mood at the time.
There is a second round of strikes after the law change yet no agency workers man the signal boxes.
Who would get the blame because Bozo has seemingly fixed the issue by changing the law.
Curry night with the Foymeister. Legendary.
I relayed this to a very skeptical colleague, who at that point had not visited. But once he did "Bloody hell.....Ra-ra-rasputin at some ungodly hour....why???"
I do miss stuff like that, not having travelled abroad now for 3 years.
National insurance (NI) bills, which were pushed up by higher rates from April, are set to go down again in July when the NI repayment threshold is increased. The impact of this see-saw on your finances will depend on how much you earn. Those on lower incomes will make some welcome savings from July, while higher earners will fork out more compared to 2021.
At the start of the new tax year on Wednesday 6 April, workers started paying more national insurance. The rate at which you pay national insurance has increased by 1.25 percentage points. This means that from 6 April workers saw their national insurance contributions rise from 12% to 13.25%. Earnings above £4,189 a month (£50,270 per year) are usually subject to national insurance deductions of 2%. But from 6 April this increased to 3.25%.
The good news is that for most workers this increase in national insurance will only last until June. This is because most of us will start paying less national insurance from July as the national insurance threshold increases.
From July the NICs threshold will be the same as the income tax threshold (known as the personal allowance).
It means you won’t pay national insurance or income tax if you earn below £12,570 a year. If you earn more than this, you will still feel the benefit as you will pay less national insurance overall due to the higher threshold.
The change will save each employee an average of £330 in national insurance a year.
About 2.2 million will no longer pay national insurance at all.
Sitting in the piazza del Duomo in Ortygia, thinking the world really is Italy, and the rest
But of course that's why they were chosen by BoZo to be in his cabinet...
At present they are presenting themselves as her majesty's loyal and permanent opposition, not a government in waiting. As usual.
Closest I can get to it for myself is that I approach life with a cheery clear-eyed optimism bordering on reckless innocence, and bouncy, upbeat music reinforces that. I think if one saw life in a more cynical and worldly-wise way, they'd be quite irritating.
Once from Malta and twice on a cruise ship
For those with the capacity to work from home, the forthcoming train strikes (if they happen) will be a mild inconvenience at best and if the weather's nice and the garden is available, a nice lunch outdoors may not seem wholly unattractive.
For all too many, that's not going to be an option and they will have to do the best they can. The most inconvenienced will tend to be Conservative-inclined these days while the least will not so the strikes will enhance polarisation rather than weaken it.
They will also obscure the serious and overdue debate about the medium and long term questions of public transport in this country. It's another one of those subjects where the pandemic and politics have prevented a proper and rigorous debate about what kind of systems do we want, need, what can support sustainability and allow for (where practical) a reduction in road transport (so it's as much about things as people if not more so).
Bellicose anti-union rantings play well in the media but Johnson was once a cannier operator than he seems now. Once of his big messages when he as campaigning to become London mayor was a pledge to "take on" Bob Crow
and the RMT who had plagued Livingstone with intermittent and effective strikes on the Underground in the 2000s.
I thought there would be a big showdown between Johnson and Crow but there wasn't. Crow was too clever to fall into the elephant trap and Johnson quickly recognised that. Crow would pick his battles carefully arguing for greater passenger safety rather than just in pecuniary terms for his members. In the end, I believe there was considerable mutual respect and I recall Johnson being fulsome in his tribute when Crow died in 2014.
I suspect the current RMT leadership aren't in Crow's class and arguing the economics when we are all feeling the pinch seems selfish in extremis. That being said, the emphasis then was on the drivers who are well paid (though not as well paid as some think) but a lot of other RMT members (especially station staff) aren't well paid.
Fare evasion in my part of London is endemic among young males in particular and I'd much rather see some decent liberal authoritarianism with more BTP and revenue collection staff and public horse-whipping of those caught trying to avoid paying (yes, I know the last is a shade draconian and you'll never get it past the namby-pamby, nanny State, cancel culture, woke snowflake Conservatives but it's worth a try).
On Thursday, NHTSA said it had discovered in 16 separate instances when
this occurred that Autopilot "aborted vehicle control less than one second
prior to the first impact," suggesting the driver was not prepared to assume
full control over the vehicle.
CEO Elon Musk has often claimed that accidents cannot be the fault of the
company, as data it extracted invariably showed Autopilot was not active in
the moment of the collision.
While anything that might indicate the system was designed to shut off
when it sensed an imminent accident might damage Tesla's image, legally
the company would be a difficult target.
All of Tesla's current autonomous features, including its vaunted Full Self-
Driving tech, currently in beta testing, are deemed assistance systems in
which the driver is liable at all times rather than the manufacturer.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/nhtsa-upgrades-tesla-autopilot-probe-into-emergency-scene-crashes-11654789798
The idea is to develop solutions to tomorrow's problems as well as to today's. The current Government is like a pinball being flipped round bouncing from one thing to another, incoherent and out of control of events and it's the perception of the latter which is the most damaging.
As to Rachel Reeves, I suppose when I get to the stage when I've nothing better to do with a sunny Sunday morning than listen to a politician on Sky News, fine but sometimes the best option is to say nothing. After all, Reeves isn't the Government any more than I am - ultimately, it's better not to give your opponent a stick with which to beat you even if it looks as though you've not got a stick yourself.
I suspect Reeves is probably glad not to be in No.11 currently and she will be as aware as Sunak of the economic "bleak midwinter" approaching - what price oil if we get a cold Northern Hemisphere winter and what price a kilowatt hour of electricity in January 2023? That's what I would be thinking about now rather than worrying about how I look on Sky News.
Serious smoking gun
Here is a long and dull article that goes on about PR and AV and stuff.
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2022/05/30/french-legislative-elections-2022-how-does-this-post-presidential-election-work_5984994_8.html
A mob preventing the exercise of that role: (i) undermines the exercise of lawful authority; and (ii) indicates that force and/or the fear of force are acceptable alternatives to the democratic process.
A better analogy is the recent decision by Cineworld to pull a movie because of threats of violence. I can understand why they did so, but not why the person behind the threats hasn’t been charged for instigation
https://youtu.be/FcKxJZZP2Z4?t=2581s
The fact that the PM has accepted a FPN in no way undermines the importance of the rule of law
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/jun/12/carole-cadwalladr-arron-banks-defamation-verdict-press-freedom
The highly anticipated judgment in the libel action brought by multimillionaire Brexit backer Arron Banks against the Observer and Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr will be handed down this week. The landmark verdict will potentially have huge ramifications for press freedom and investigative reporting.
Mrs Justice Steyn will deliver her judgment by email on Monday morning. The decision will be the culmination of an often rancorous three-year legal battle and could send a chilling effect throughout British journalism.
As a working man, I find my weekend time too precious to be indulging in Sky News - in truth, apart from being on here and offering a few dubious nuggets of insight, I'm looking at the final declarations for Ascot on Tuesday. Again, I wish I could enjoy that but work, as ever, intervenes.
People ask me when I'm going to retire and the answer is when Mrs Stodge lets me !!
Yankee Doodle interviewee on the BBC World Service explaining how the invaders of Congress were all wearing 'cacky pants'.
How did that get through?
Personally I am hoping it will have ramifications for journalistic competence (see the industrial scale production of corrections following CC's articles).
And this is my quiet time !!
CC has been a useful idiot to those on Banks's side, providing a welter of dismissible stories that can be used to snow the true ones. It needs to stop.
Me living the life of a big ass flint knapper
Waterloo and Rasputin are companion pieces, 2 sides of a diptych, etc as ludicrously batty disco treatments of key historical figures. Rasputin is certainly not inferior.
The first real proof of the existence of galaxies beyond our own. (Confirmed by Hubble's identification of individual Cepheids in Andromeda the following year).
We are so blessed and do count our blessings every day, not least grandchild number 5 due on the 1st September as a complete surprise, and not least to the parents who already have two charming children and are both handfuls (10 and 8)
My Italian waiter has arbitrarily decided I am French and I have managed to keep up the act for so far 4 interactions with him (he is speaking English to the next table). Inexplicably pleased about this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Tisdall
Certainly should do if you are freelancer.
#oneuniverseitis
ie if I'm a fan but most are bigger fans I'm not a fan.