Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. Sign in or register to get started.

Can that elusive CON poll lead come in June or July? – politicalbetting.com

123468

Comments

  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited June 2022
    Encrochat hack strikes again...

    Ryan Palin was involved in a conspiracy to supply 700kg of cocaine

    Palin was identified as the man behind 'Titch.com' by the Conor McGregor mural, painted at his home address in Mereworth, Caldy, after detectives found pictures of it on his EncroChat device.

    https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/cocaine-kingpin-brought-down-conor-24270189
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206
    Ghedebrav said:

    Leon said:

    The Oldham grooming report is out. Pretty grim


    https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/sexually-exploited-children-oldham-were-24270470


    If you read the actual report, there are two striking things (amongst others).

    1. The council tried to cover up the use of "shisha bars" for exploitation, and told a BBC journalist not to write about it, because of the "Lee Rigby murder" and the way the news might be used by "far right groups". So the pubic were not alerted to the danger of these places

    2. When confronted by their failings (such as this) Oldham Council's excuse is often "Well we're nowhere near as bad as other northern towns around us". No joke, that's what they say

    Not a fun story

    I lived in Bradford in the early 2000s and this report (and the events that prompted the report) have not been a surprise at any stage. Fact is that poor white kids from marginal/chaotic backgrounds were disgracefully let down out of fear of being seen as racist. I'd guess that the cases that have made court are the tip of the iceberg.

    This was never going to help the genuinely important work of community cohesion - rather it created a kind of Streisand-Effect-ish sort of factor where the right wing groups the LAs were afraid of actually got more mileage out of this, in particular affirming the complicity of the authorities.

    In a completely different way, like the postmaster scandal it illustrates the crucial importance of whistleblowing and open culture in big organisations (and, as an aside, the way the public sector manages internal promotion generally quite badly, incentivising the rise of non-operational types who are typically good at parroting culture but bad at actual work).
    Coz I is bored in my ugly overcast Armenian town I have actually just read the entire report. It's difficult to know what was in the heads of these people in authority in 2010-14.


    There was probably a fear of being seen as racist, but the sense I get - and it is just a sense - is more of inertia, cowardice and complacency. It's too much hassle to go into it deeply, the girls are all drunk, who needs the grief of Tommy Robinson coming to town, can't we just move on, etc

    Once the first mistakes are made THEN it becomes an exercise in arse-covering, from the council and the police. They're not covering up the crimes, per se - more their own total failure to deal with them
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 3,054


    Wes Streeting would like to toy with your emotions. To me this is the most disturbing one because it’s just so weird. What kind of mind thinks this stuff up?
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,956
    I guess the government will abolish/suspend the triple lock again and make sure pensioners experience what the average worker is going through?

    Am I right?
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279

    The train operators are beyond useless, as proved by their amateurishness in this dispute. DavidL is right.

    The franchises cannot go soon enough. Some credit has to go to Grant Shapps / Michael Green for finally having the cojones to abolish this utterly stupid system.

    Meanwhile, that famous leftwinger Peter Hitchens is calling for full blown renationalisation.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10921277/PETER-HITCHENS-stupidity-ministers-train-firms-wrecked-railways-not-unions.html

    Excerpt:

    "People now don’t believe me when I say that on the Oxford to Paddington Express, every weekday morning, you could once get a beautifully cooked bacon, egg, sausage and mushroom breakfast, with good coffee, freshly-made toast and an actual jar of Cooper’s Oxford Marmalade ready for use on the crisp white tablecloth.

    More recently, the trains still had convivial buffet cars, where you could go for a drink, a sandwich or a chat. Almost all of these are now gone. But there have been deeper blows than these. Near my Oxford home — and this is typical of most parts of the country — there are now several, sizeable market towns with no rail service at all. These are handsome, flourishing places where people like to live. But if they want to come and go by train, they must drive miles to a distant station."
  • Sandpit said:

    TimS said:

    Andy_JS said:

    If everyone demands inflation-style pay rises the country will go bankrupt.

    No, the businesses they employ will either pay them if they can afford it (which will put more money into consumer spending and income tax) or if they can't, they won't - and will lose staff and be forced to make the overdue investments in efficiency and automation the economy is crying out for.

    One of the very few things I agreed with Brexiteers on was the need for the UK to become a higher wage economy where not every business problem is solved by amassing vast amounts of cheap unskilled labour. Yet it seems the prominent Brexiteers are at the forefront of demands for pay restraint.
    The demands for pay restraint are specifically for public sector pay, excessive rises in which inevitably lead to taxes going up for everyone else.

    Private sector companies are, of course, free to pay whatever they can agree with their employees. It’s good to note, especially at the minimum-wage end of the market, that the NMW is no longer seen as a maximum by employers used to unlimited supply of labour. The increased NI and income tax payments are to be welcomed by the government.
    The public sector has been ran at a deficit for twenty years now. A few years of public sector pay and pensions going up by less than inflation would help to restore balance to the finances, and if anyone doesn't like it they ought to be able to try to find a job elsewhere that pays better.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,956

    Encrochat hack strikes again...

    Ryan Palin was involved in a conspiracy to supply 700kg of cocaine

    Palin was identified as the man behind 'Titch.com' by the Conor McGregor mural, painted at his home address in Mereworth, Caldy, after detectives found pictures of it on his EncroChat device.

    https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/cocaine-kingpin-brought-down-conor-24270189

    For a moment I thought, oh God, what have Sarah Palin's kids been up to now?
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797


    The public will back them when they realise rapes, sexual assaults, and serious assault cases from 2019 are now being listed for trial in 2024.

    Yet even though anyone paying attention has known about this for years (heck I remember a conversation about this with my former MP back in 2018) it never seems to make the national news in a way that people notice it...

    I guess part of the reason is that if a case gets any traction in the press - it gets fast tracked while other cases linger...
  • NorthofStokeNorthofStoke Posts: 1,758
    RobD said:

    Andy_JS said:

    If everyone demands inflation-style pay rises the country will go bankrupt.

    You could equate it to a 10% rise in the day-to-day spending of the government, so about £40bn. Hardly bankruptcy territory.
    But on top of all the other increased expenditure.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited June 2022
    It turns out that Brown’s phrase, “never spent anything”, actually amounted to a whopping £103,284 spent by him and Sarah between 2007 and 2010. Additionally awkward for Brown is the revelation that the only years a PM actually spent no public cash renovating their flat were under his Tory successors, in 2012-13, 14-15 and 17-18.

    https://order-order.com/2022/06/20/browns-no-10-renovation-memory-loss/

    Seems like the amount of money tarting up #10 flats over the past 20 years you could have built a mansion.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    Andy_JS said:

    The train operators are beyond useless, as proved by their amateurishness in this dispute. DavidL is right.

    The franchises cannot go soon enough. Some credit has to go to Grant Shapps / Michael Green for finally having the cojones to abolish this utterly stupid system.

    Meanwhile, that famous leftwinger Peter Hitchens is calling for full blown renationalisation.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10921277/PETER-HITCHENS-stupidity-ministers-train-firms-wrecked-railways-not-unions.html

    Excerpt:

    "People now don’t believe me when I say that on the Oxford to Paddington Express, every weekday morning, you could once get a beautifully cooked bacon, egg, sausage and mushroom breakfast, with good coffee, freshly-made toast and an actual jar of Cooper’s Oxford Marmalade ready for use on the crisp white tablecloth.

    More recently, the trains still had convivial buffet cars, where you could go for a drink, a sandwich or a chat. Almost all of these are now gone. But there have been deeper blows than these. Near my Oxford home — and this is typical of most parts of the country — there are now several, sizeable market towns with no rail service at all. These are handsome, flourishing places where people like to live. But if they want to come and go by train, they must drive miles to a distant station."
    Well, the first paragraph is debateable, and a mile away from the experience of most of the plebs who travelled by rail under BR.

    The second is nothing to do with privatisation: in fact those flourishing places might well have lost their rail services under BR.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    HYUFD said:

    Interesting take from Tory candidate in Wakefield. "Nadeem Ahmed, the Tory candidate for Wakefield, argued that although he is a Conservative, voters "should still choose me – after all people still trust GPs despite Harold Shipman".

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/06/19/do-trust-boris-johnson-could-lose-two-key-by-elections-week/

    !! Is that the best comparison he could come up with?
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,578
    Leon said:

    Ghedebrav said:

    Leon said:

    The Oldham grooming report is out. Pretty grim


    https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/sexually-exploited-children-oldham-were-24270470


    If you read the actual report, there are two striking things (amongst others).

    1. The council tried to cover up the use of "shisha bars" for exploitation, and told a BBC journalist not to write about it, because of the "Lee Rigby murder" and the way the news might be used by "far right groups". So the pubic were not alerted to the danger of these places

    2. When confronted by their failings (such as this) Oldham Council's excuse is often "Well we're nowhere near as bad as other northern towns around us". No joke, that's what they say

    Not a fun story

    I lived in Bradford in the early 2000s and this report (and the events that prompted the report) have not been a surprise at any stage. Fact is that poor white kids from marginal/chaotic backgrounds were disgracefully let down out of fear of being seen as racist. I'd guess that the cases that have made court are the tip of the iceberg.

    This was never going to help the genuinely important work of community cohesion - rather it created a kind of Streisand-Effect-ish sort of factor where the right wing groups the LAs were afraid of actually got more mileage out of this, in particular affirming the complicity of the authorities.

    In a completely different way, like the postmaster scandal it illustrates the crucial importance of whistleblowing and open culture in big organisations (and, as an aside, the way the public sector manages internal promotion generally quite badly, incentivising the rise of non-operational types who are typically good at parroting culture but bad at actual work).
    Coz I is bored in my ugly overcast Armenian town I have actually just read the entire report. It's difficult to know what was in the heads of these people in authority in 2010-14.


    There was probably a fear of being seen as racist, but the sense I get - and it is just a sense - is more of inertia, cowardice and complacency. It's too much hassle to go into it deeply, the girls are all drunk, who needs the grief of Tommy Robinson coming to town, can't we just move on, etc

    Once the first mistakes are made THEN it becomes an exercise in arse-covering, from the council and the police. They're not covering up the crimes, per se - more their own total failure to deal with them
    Winston Smith, the blogger who worked in care homes for children, told us what was happening a long time back. Down to the issue of taxi drivers….

    From the care home side, the replacement of the old borstal semi-prisons was a system where little or no control was *allowed* to be carried out by staff.
  • MightyAlexMightyAlex Posts: 1,410

    Sandpit said:

    TimS said:

    Andy_JS said:

    If everyone demands inflation-style pay rises the country will go bankrupt.

    No, the businesses they employ will either pay them if they can afford it (which will put more money into consumer spending and income tax) or if they can't, they won't - and will lose staff and be forced to make the overdue investments in efficiency and automation the economy is crying out for.

    One of the very few things I agreed with Brexiteers on was the need for the UK to become a higher wage economy where not every business problem is solved by amassing vast amounts of cheap unskilled labour. Yet it seems the prominent Brexiteers are at the forefront of demands for pay restraint.
    The demands for pay restraint are specifically for public sector pay, excessive rises in which inevitably lead to taxes going up for everyone else.

    Private sector companies are, of course, free to pay whatever they can agree with their employees. It’s good to note, especially at the minimum-wage end of the market, that the NMW is no longer seen as a maximum by employers used to unlimited supply of labour. The increased NI and income tax payments are to be welcomed by the government.
    The public sector has been ran at a deficit for twenty years now. A few years of public sector pay and pensions going up by less than inflation would help to restore balance to the finances, and if anyone doesn't like it they ought to be able to try to find a job elsewhere that pays better.
    You might want to look at the levels of debt private companies are holding. Its not all austere financial probity.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,956
    eek said:


    The public will back them when they realise rapes, sexual assaults, and serious assault cases from 2019 are now being listed for trial in 2024.

    Yet even though anyone paying attention has known about this for years (heck I remember a conversation about this with my former MP back in 2018) it never seems to make the national news in a way that people notice it...

    I guess part of the reason is that if a case gets any traction in the press - it gets fast tracked while other cases linger...
    The pandemic was the tipping point.

    The other problem often not discussed is the CPS just cannot cope.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    edited June 2022

    Sandpit said:

    TimS said:

    Andy_JS said:

    If everyone demands inflation-style pay rises the country will go bankrupt.

    No, the businesses they employ will either pay them if they can afford it (which will put more money into consumer spending and income tax) or if they can't, they won't - and will lose staff and be forced to make the overdue investments in efficiency and automation the economy is crying out for.

    One of the very few things I agreed with Brexiteers on was the need for the UK to become a higher wage economy where not every business problem is solved by amassing vast amounts of cheap unskilled labour. Yet it seems the prominent Brexiteers are at the forefront of demands for pay restraint.
    The demands for pay restraint are specifically for public sector pay, excessive rises in which inevitably lead to taxes going up for everyone else.

    Private sector companies are, of course, free to pay whatever they can agree with their employees. It’s good to note, especially at the minimum-wage end of the market, that the NMW is no longer seen as a maximum by employers used to unlimited supply of labour. The increased NI and income tax payments are to be welcomed by the government.
    The public sector has been ran at a deficit for twenty years now. A few years of public sector pay and pensions going up by less than inflation would help to restore balance to the finances, and if anyone doesn't like it they ought to be able to try to find a job elsewhere that pays better.
    Not really - the biggest reason why we've run a deficit for 20 odd years is the rise in subsidies to low paid workers via Tax Credits and Housing Benefit.

    I'm sorry the government as a whole shouldn't be paying money out to people aged 20-60 years old who are in work...
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,786
    carnforth said:



    Wes Streeting would like to toy with your emotions. To me this is the most disturbing one because it’s just so weird. What kind of mind thinks this stuff up?

    A less weird one, but another sign he likes the thought of violence:

    image
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,835
    eek said:

    TimS said:

    Andy_JS said:

    If everyone demands inflation-style pay rises the country will go bankrupt.

    No, the businesses they employ will either pay them if they can afford it (which will put more money into consumer spending and income tax) or if they can't, they won't - and will lose staff and be forced to make the overdue investments in efficiency and automation the economy is crying out for.

    One of the very few things I agreed with Brexiteers on was the need for the UK to become a higher wage economy where not every business problem is solved by amassing vast amounts of cheap unskilled labour. Yet it seems the prominent Brexiteers are at the forefront of demands for pay restraint.
    The prominent Brexiteers don't want people to have a decent standard of living they want Singapore on sea where cheap (easily replaced) labour can be hired and fired at whim.
    Hold on, didn't you vote for Brexit ?
    What sort of Brexit did you want ?
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    Has he *still* not deleted his Twitter history from 2009?

    Tw@.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited June 2022
    Sandpit said:

    Has he *still* not deleted his Twitter history from 2009?

    Tw@.

    Given there are automated systems for this, I have no idea why public figures wouldn't just set such a thing up. Even if some saddo screen caps it and then tries to use it against you years down the line you can just say well it was deleted years ago, it was a poorly worded tweet, end of story (unless you literally have 100s of the clearly problematic tweets + real life behaviour i.e. Jared O'Mara).
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,727
    No 10 admits pressuring The Times to drop Carrie Johnson story https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-carriegate-times-story-b2105025.html
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    RobD said:

    Andy_JS said:

    If everyone demands inflation-style pay rises the country will go bankrupt.

    You could equate it to a 10% rise in the day-to-day spending of the government, so about £40bn. Hardly bankruptcy territory.
    But on top of all the other increased expenditure.
    Still, nowhere near bankruptcy territory.
  • Tap in and out already exists on SWR, even at unmanned stations
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,706
    edited June 2022

    I guess the government will abolish/suspend the triple lock again and make sure pensioners experience what the average worker is going through?

    Am I right?

    The average private sector worker is getting a bigger increase this year than the average pensioner with only a state pension, especially in the City of London, it is the public sector where pay rises are well below inflation
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,138
    Sandpit said:

    TimS said:

    Andy_JS said:

    If everyone demands inflation-style pay rises the country will go bankrupt.

    No, the businesses they employ will either pay them if they can afford it (which will put more money into consumer spending and income tax) or if they can't, they won't - and will lose staff and be forced to make the overdue investments in efficiency and automation the economy is crying out for.

    One of the very few things I agreed with Brexiteers on was the need for the UK to become a higher wage economy where not every business problem is solved by amassing vast amounts of cheap unskilled labour. Yet it seems the prominent Brexiteers are at the forefront of demands for pay restraint.
    The demands for pay restraint are specifically for public sector pay, excessive rises in which inevitably lead to taxes going up for everyone else.

    Private sector companies are, of course, free to pay whatever they can agree with their employees. It’s good to note, especially at the minimum-wage end of the market, that the NMW is no longer seen as a maximum by employers used to unlimited supply of labour. The increased NI and income tax payments are to be welcomed by the government.
    The public sector is operating in the context of a capitalist economy with a flexible labour market. If they don't pay well they will lose people, the quality of staff will decline, and service levels will decline. And quite possibly, in the long term, the actual cost of delivering the services will rise.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,956

    It turns out that Brown’s phrase, “never spent anything”, actually amounted to a whopping £103,284 spent by him and Sarah between 2007 and 2010. Additionally awkward for Brown is the revelation that the only years a PM actually spent no public cash renovating their flat were under his Tory successors, in 2012-13, 14-15 and 17-18.

    https://order-order.com/2022/06/20/browns-no-10-renovation-memory-loss/

    Seems like the amount of money tarting up #10 flats over the past 20 years you could have built a mansion.

    It's a dump, it really is.

    I think prior to Blair it was a 150 years since a sitting PM had a new baby, now we've three in the last 20 years, it really isn't fit for purpose.

    Don't even get me started on the number of mice I saw on my visits to Number 10/11.
  • eek said:

    Sandpit said:

    TimS said:

    Andy_JS said:

    If everyone demands inflation-style pay rises the country will go bankrupt.

    No, the businesses they employ will either pay them if they can afford it (which will put more money into consumer spending and income tax) or if they can't, they won't - and will lose staff and be forced to make the overdue investments in efficiency and automation the economy is crying out for.

    One of the very few things I agreed with Brexiteers on was the need for the UK to become a higher wage economy where not every business problem is solved by amassing vast amounts of cheap unskilled labour. Yet it seems the prominent Brexiteers are at the forefront of demands for pay restraint.
    The demands for pay restraint are specifically for public sector pay, excessive rises in which inevitably lead to taxes going up for everyone else.

    Private sector companies are, of course, free to pay whatever they can agree with their employees. It’s good to note, especially at the minimum-wage end of the market, that the NMW is no longer seen as a maximum by employers used to unlimited supply of labour. The increased NI and income tax payments are to be welcomed by the government.
    The public sector has been ran at a deficit for twenty years now. A few years of public sector pay and pensions going up by less than inflation would help to restore balance to the finances, and if anyone doesn't like it they ought to be able to try to find a job elsewhere that pays better.
    Not really - the biggest reason why we've run a deficit for 20 odd years is the rise in subsidies to low paid workers via Tax Credits and Housing Benefit.

    I'm sorry the government as a whole shouldn't be paying money out to people aged 20-60 years old who are in work...
    I've long advocated an abolition of tax credits and housing benefit, and merging it into the tax system instead, but the idea that pensions and wages etc aren't a cost to the taxpayer either is just absurd.

    Even if every penny of tax credits and housing benefit were abolished the state would have still run a deficit some years, that's how bad the problem has been.
  • Just wondering if those anti the strikes also oppose pensioners getting an above inflation rise
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    Andy_JS said:

    The train operators are beyond useless, as proved by their amateurishness in this dispute. DavidL is right.

    The franchises cannot go soon enough. Some credit has to go to Grant Shapps / Michael Green for finally having the cojones to abolish this utterly stupid system.

    Meanwhile, that famous leftwinger Peter Hitchens is calling for full blown renationalisation.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10921277/PETER-HITCHENS-stupidity-ministers-train-firms-wrecked-railways-not-unions.html

    Excerpt:

    "People now don’t believe me when I say that on the Oxford to Paddington Express, every weekday morning, you could once get a beautifully cooked bacon, egg, sausage and mushroom breakfast, with good coffee, freshly-made toast and an actual jar of Cooper’s Oxford Marmalade ready for use on the crisp white tablecloth.

    More recently, the trains still had convivial buffet cars, where you could go for a drink, a sandwich or a chat. Almost all of these are now gone. But there have been deeper blows than these. Near my Oxford home — and this is typical of most parts of the country — there are now several, sizeable market towns with no rail service at all. These are handsome, flourishing places where people like to live. But if they want to come and go by train, they must drive miles to a distant station."
    Well, the first paragraph is debateable, and a mile away from the experience of most of the plebs who travelled by rail under BR.

    The second is nothing to do with privatisation: in fact those flourishing places might well have lost their rail services under BR.
    On Friday I had a rather nice Salmon followed by cheese and biscuits washed down by 3 large G&Ts on my journey from London to Darlington.

    All for £40 more than the cheap standard class ticket I originally bought and far less than the first class ticket would have cost me if I bought it directly. Seatfrog is quite good for bargain upgrades.
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 20,433
    RobD said:

    Andy_JS said:

    If everyone demands inflation-style pay rises the country will go bankrupt.

    You could equate it to a 10% rise in the day-to-day spending of the government, so about £40bn. Hardly bankruptcy territory.
    Discounted heavily by higher tax take and lower in work benefits.

    Realistically pay settlements should clear somewhere around 4-7% this year. If a union are asking for 7% and the employers (proxy for the govt) 0% it is fairly obvious where the fault lies.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206

    Leon said:

    Ghedebrav said:

    Leon said:

    The Oldham grooming report is out. Pretty grim


    https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/sexually-exploited-children-oldham-were-24270470


    If you read the actual report, there are two striking things (amongst others).

    1. The council tried to cover up the use of "shisha bars" for exploitation, and told a BBC journalist not to write about it, because of the "Lee Rigby murder" and the way the news might be used by "far right groups". So the pubic were not alerted to the danger of these places

    2. When confronted by their failings (such as this) Oldham Council's excuse is often "Well we're nowhere near as bad as other northern towns around us". No joke, that's what they say

    Not a fun story

    I lived in Bradford in the early 2000s and this report (and the events that prompted the report) have not been a surprise at any stage. Fact is that poor white kids from marginal/chaotic backgrounds were disgracefully let down out of fear of being seen as racist. I'd guess that the cases that have made court are the tip of the iceberg.

    This was never going to help the genuinely important work of community cohesion - rather it created a kind of Streisand-Effect-ish sort of factor where the right wing groups the LAs were afraid of actually got more mileage out of this, in particular affirming the complicity of the authorities.

    In a completely different way, like the postmaster scandal it illustrates the crucial importance of whistleblowing and open culture in big organisations (and, as an aside, the way the public sector manages internal promotion generally quite badly, incentivising the rise of non-operational types who are typically good at parroting culture but bad at actual work).
    Coz I is bored in my ugly overcast Armenian town I have actually just read the entire report. It's difficult to know what was in the heads of these people in authority in 2010-14.


    There was probably a fear of being seen as racist, but the sense I get - and it is just a sense - is more of inertia, cowardice and complacency. It's too much hassle to go into it deeply, the girls are all drunk, who needs the grief of Tommy Robinson coming to town, can't we just move on, etc

    Once the first mistakes are made THEN it becomes an exercise in arse-covering, from the council and the police. They're not covering up the crimes, per se - more their own total failure to deal with them
    Winston Smith, the blogger who worked in care homes for children, told us what was happening a long time back. Down to the issue of taxi drivers….

    From the care home side, the replacement of the old borstal semi-prisons was a system where little or no control was *allowed* to be carried out by staff.
    Yes, the repeated pattern is quite conspicuous


    Taxis, takeaways, care homes, and now "private" shisha bars. And this happened for decades in dozens of UK cities

    Bit mind-numbing.

    I wonder if this is why the story never explodes quite as it should (given the scale). It is TOO big to really comprehend. The brain stops working. Cf Catholic church sex abuse, on a similar scale, which was also mentally airbrushed for a long long time
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Mr. Battery, yep.

    Give everyone above inflation pay rises and the sky high inflation will not get better.
  • GhedebravGhedebrav Posts: 2,995
    Leon said:

    Ghedebrav said:

    Leon said:

    The Oldham grooming report is out. Pretty grim


    https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/sexually-exploited-children-oldham-were-24270470


    If you read the actual report, there are two striking things (amongst others).

    1. The council tried to cover up the use of "shisha bars" for exploitation, and told a BBC journalist not to write about it, because of the "Lee Rigby murder" and the way the news might be used by "far right groups". So the pubic were not alerted to the danger of these places

    2. When confronted by their failings (such as this) Oldham Council's excuse is often "Well we're nowhere near as bad as other northern towns around us". No joke, that's what they say

    Not a fun story

    I lived in Bradford in the early 2000s and this report (and the events that prompted the report) have not been a surprise at any stage. Fact is that poor white kids from marginal/chaotic backgrounds were disgracefully let down out of fear of being seen as racist. I'd guess that the cases that have made court are the tip of the iceberg.

    This was never going to help the genuinely important work of community cohesion - rather it created a kind of Streisand-Effect-ish sort of factor where the right wing groups the LAs were afraid of actually got more mileage out of this, in particular affirming the complicity of the authorities.

    In a completely different way, like the postmaster scandal it illustrates the crucial importance of whistleblowing and open culture in big organisations (and, as an aside, the way the public sector manages internal promotion generally quite badly, incentivising the rise of non-operational types who are typically good at parroting culture but bad at actual work).
    Coz I is bored in my ugly overcast Armenian town I have actually just read the entire report. It's difficult to know what was in the heads of these people in authority in 2010-14.


    There was probably a fear of being seen as racist, but the sense I get - and it is just a sense - is more of inertia, cowardice and complacency. It's too much hassle to go into it deeply, the girls are all drunk, who needs the grief of Tommy Robinson coming to town, can't we just move on, etc

    Once the first mistakes are made THEN it becomes an exercise in arse-covering, from the council and the police. They're not covering up the crimes, per se - more their own total failure to deal with them
    Slightly different context, but my dad was a social worker in from the seventies through to the early 2000s and he was constantly frustrated at the spoiling tactics of council managers looking to avoid headaches, always at the expense of vulnerable kids - or failing that, just good old fashioned incompetence, often derived from a lack of contextual understanding/experience. So much so that he moved on from casework and completely eschewed management to become an on-duty social worker, where he felt like he could actually help people.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,138

    Sandpit said:

    Has he *still* not deleted his Twitter history from 2009?

    Tw@.

    Given there are automated systems for this, I have no idea why public figures wouldn't just set such a thing up. Even if some saddo screen caps it and then tries to use it against you years down the line you can just say well it was deleted years ago, it was a poorly worded tweet, end of story (unless you literally have 100s of the clearly problematic tweets + real life behaviour i.e. Jared O'Mara).
    It really should be the first thing you do when entering politics. Delete any dodgy tweets or other social media well before anyone comes looking for them. Even more so if you're a front bencher. It's a really bizarre omission.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited June 2022
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Ghedebrav said:

    Leon said:

    The Oldham grooming report is out. Pretty grim


    https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/sexually-exploited-children-oldham-were-24270470


    If you read the actual report, there are two striking things (amongst others).

    1. The council tried to cover up the use of "shisha bars" for exploitation, and told a BBC journalist not to write about it, because of the "Lee Rigby murder" and the way the news might be used by "far right groups". So the pubic were not alerted to the danger of these places

    2. When confronted by their failings (such as this) Oldham Council's excuse is often "Well we're nowhere near as bad as other northern towns around us". No joke, that's what they say

    Not a fun story

    I lived in Bradford in the early 2000s and this report (and the events that prompted the report) have not been a surprise at any stage. Fact is that poor white kids from marginal/chaotic backgrounds were disgracefully let down out of fear of being seen as racist. I'd guess that the cases that have made court are the tip of the iceberg.

    This was never going to help the genuinely important work of community cohesion - rather it created a kind of Streisand-Effect-ish sort of factor where the right wing groups the LAs were afraid of actually got more mileage out of this, in particular affirming the complicity of the authorities.

    In a completely different way, like the postmaster scandal it illustrates the crucial importance of whistleblowing and open culture in big organisations (and, as an aside, the way the public sector manages internal promotion generally quite badly, incentivising the rise of non-operational types who are typically good at parroting culture but bad at actual work).
    Coz I is bored in my ugly overcast Armenian town I have actually just read the entire report. It's difficult to know what was in the heads of these people in authority in 2010-14.


    There was probably a fear of being seen as racist, but the sense I get - and it is just a sense - is more of inertia, cowardice and complacency. It's too much hassle to go into it deeply, the girls are all drunk, who needs the grief of Tommy Robinson coming to town, can't we just move on, etc

    Once the first mistakes are made THEN it becomes an exercise in arse-covering, from the council and the police. They're not covering up the crimes, per se - more their own total failure to deal with them
    Winston Smith, the blogger who worked in care homes for children, told us what was happening a long time back. Down to the issue of taxi drivers….

    From the care home side, the replacement of the old borstal semi-prisons was a system where little or no control was *allowed* to be carried out by staff.
    Yes, the repeated pattern is quite conspicuous


    Taxis, takeaways, care homes, and now "private" shisha bars. And this happened for decades in dozens of UK cities

    Bit mind-numbing.

    I wonder if this is why the story never explodes quite as it should (given the scale). It is TOO big to really comprehend. The brain stops working. Cf Catholic church sex abuse, on a similar scale, which was also mentally airbrushed for a long long time
    I remember the Times journalist who eventually wrote about this repeatedly getting smeared as racist.
  • Mr. Battery, yep.

    Give everyone above inflation pay rises and the sky high inflation will not get better.

    It will for the people who are working for a living.

    Sucks for those who aren't. Oh well, too bad, so sad.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    Just wondering if those anti the strikes also oppose pensioners getting an above inflation rise

    The pension is a pittance, it should be going up.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,836
    HYUFD said:

    See Macron lost his majority in the French Parliament last night and becomes the first French President since Chirac to not have a majority for his party in the National Assembly. Looks like he will have to do a deal with Les Republicains and the centre right to get most legislation through and avoid having to deal with Melenchon and Le Pen's blocks

    I wonder how the Presidential run-off would have gone if it'd have been Macron v Melenchon?
  • RobD said:

    Just wondering if those anti the strikes also oppose pensioners getting an above inflation rise

    The pension is a pittance, it should be going up.
    The pension is unfunded and wasn't saved for, it should be going down and getting both forms of NI applied to it.

    It can go up, once its been saved for, it wasn't.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    Pulpstar said:

    eek said:

    TimS said:

    Andy_JS said:

    If everyone demands inflation-style pay rises the country will go bankrupt.

    No, the businesses they employ will either pay them if they can afford it (which will put more money into consumer spending and income tax) or if they can't, they won't - and will lose staff and be forced to make the overdue investments in efficiency and automation the economy is crying out for.

    One of the very few things I agreed with Brexiteers on was the need for the UK to become a higher wage economy where not every business problem is solved by amassing vast amounts of cheap unskilled labour. Yet it seems the prominent Brexiteers are at the forefront of demands for pay restraint.
    The prominent Brexiteers don't want people to have a decent standard of living they want Singapore on sea where cheap (easily replaced) labour can be hired and fired at whim.
    Hold on, didn't you vote for Brexit ?
    What sort of Brexit did you want ?
    EEA membership as a minimum - because the issue I had with the EU was their desire for great political unity...
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited June 2022
    TimS said:

    Sandpit said:

    Has he *still* not deleted his Twitter history from 2009?

    Tw@.

    Given there are automated systems for this, I have no idea why public figures wouldn't just set such a thing up. Even if some saddo screen caps it and then tries to use it against you years down the line you can just say well it was deleted years ago, it was a poorly worded tweet, end of story (unless you literally have 100s of the clearly problematic tweets + real life behaviour i.e. Jared O'Mara).
    It really should be the first thing you do when entering politics. Delete any dodgy tweets or other social media well before anyone comes looking for them. Even more so if you're a front bencher. It's a really bizarre omission.
    To be honest, if you are really active on social media full stop probably a sensible thing to be doing these things. Who knows what you might have said which was fine at the time or a very poor taste joke (or even genuinely bad things to say, but was a one off), and it gets used against you.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,835
    TimS said:

    Sandpit said:

    Has he *still* not deleted his Twitter history from 2009?

    Tw@.

    Given there are automated systems for this, I have no idea why public figures wouldn't just set such a thing up. Even if some saddo screen caps it and then tries to use it against you years down the line you can just say well it was deleted years ago, it was a poorly worded tweet, end of story (unless you literally have 100s of the clearly problematic tweets + real life behaviour i.e. Jared O'Mara).
    It really should be the first thing you do when entering politics. Delete any dodgy tweets or other social media well before anyone comes looking for them. Even more so if you're a front bencher. It's a really bizarre omission.
    Why should Wes bother now though ? Someone will have screenshotted his entire history already.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,578

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Ghedebrav said:

    Leon said:

    The Oldham grooming report is out. Pretty grim


    https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/sexually-exploited-children-oldham-were-24270470


    If you read the actual report, there are two striking things (amongst others).

    1. The council tried to cover up the use of "shisha bars" for exploitation, and told a BBC journalist not to write about it, because of the "Lee Rigby murder" and the way the news might be used by "far right groups". So the pubic were not alerted to the danger of these places

    2. When confronted by their failings (such as this) Oldham Council's excuse is often "Well we're nowhere near as bad as other northern towns around us". No joke, that's what they say

    Not a fun story

    I lived in Bradford in the early 2000s and this report (and the events that prompted the report) have not been a surprise at any stage. Fact is that poor white kids from marginal/chaotic backgrounds were disgracefully let down out of fear of being seen as racist. I'd guess that the cases that have made court are the tip of the iceberg.

    This was never going to help the genuinely important work of community cohesion - rather it created a kind of Streisand-Effect-ish sort of factor where the right wing groups the LAs were afraid of actually got more mileage out of this, in particular affirming the complicity of the authorities.

    In a completely different way, like the postmaster scandal it illustrates the crucial importance of whistleblowing and open culture in big organisations (and, as an aside, the way the public sector manages internal promotion generally quite badly, incentivising the rise of non-operational types who are typically good at parroting culture but bad at actual work).
    Coz I is bored in my ugly overcast Armenian town I have actually just read the entire report. It's difficult to know what was in the heads of these people in authority in 2010-14.


    There was probably a fear of being seen as racist, but the sense I get - and it is just a sense - is more of inertia, cowardice and complacency. It's too much hassle to go into it deeply, the girls are all drunk, who needs the grief of Tommy Robinson coming to town, can't we just move on, etc

    Once the first mistakes are made THEN it becomes an exercise in arse-covering, from the council and the police. They're not covering up the crimes, per se - more their own total failure to deal with them
    Winston Smith, the blogger who worked in care homes for children, told us what was happening a long time back. Down to the issue of taxi drivers….

    From the care home side, the replacement of the old borstal semi-prisons was a system where little or no control was *allowed* to be carried out by staff.
    Yes, the repeated pattern is quite conspicuous


    Taxis, takeaways, care homes, and now "private" shisha bars. And this happened for decades in dozens of UK cities

    Bit mind-numbing.

    I wonder if this is why the story never explodes quite as it should (given the scale). It is TOO big to really comprehend. The brain stops working. Cf Catholic church sex abuse, on a similar scale, which was also mentally airbrushed for a long long time
    I remember the Times journalist who eventually wrote about this repeatedly getting smeared as racist.
    Without wishing to get Mike in trouble….

    NSPCC is the next one, I reckon
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Ghedebrav said:

    Leon said:

    The Oldham grooming report is out. Pretty grim


    https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/sexually-exploited-children-oldham-were-24270470


    If you read the actual report, there are two striking things (amongst others).

    1. The council tried to cover up the use of "shisha bars" for exploitation, and told a BBC journalist not to write about it, because of the "Lee Rigby murder" and the way the news might be used by "far right groups". So the pubic were not alerted to the danger of these places

    2. When confronted by their failings (such as this) Oldham Council's excuse is often "Well we're nowhere near as bad as other northern towns around us". No joke, that's what they say

    Not a fun story

    I lived in Bradford in the early 2000s and this report (and the events that prompted the report) have not been a surprise at any stage. Fact is that poor white kids from marginal/chaotic backgrounds were disgracefully let down out of fear of being seen as racist. I'd guess that the cases that have made court are the tip of the iceberg.

    This was never going to help the genuinely important work of community cohesion - rather it created a kind of Streisand-Effect-ish sort of factor where the right wing groups the LAs were afraid of actually got more mileage out of this, in particular affirming the complicity of the authorities.

    In a completely different way, like the postmaster scandal it illustrates the crucial importance of whistleblowing and open culture in big organisations (and, as an aside, the way the public sector manages internal promotion generally quite badly, incentivising the rise of non-operational types who are typically good at parroting culture but bad at actual work).
    Coz I is bored in my ugly overcast Armenian town I have actually just read the entire report. It's difficult to know what was in the heads of these people in authority in 2010-14.


    There was probably a fear of being seen as racist, but the sense I get - and it is just a sense - is more of inertia, cowardice and complacency. It's too much hassle to go into it deeply, the girls are all drunk, who needs the grief of Tommy Robinson coming to town, can't we just move on, etc

    Once the first mistakes are made THEN it becomes an exercise in arse-covering, from the council and the police. They're not covering up the crimes, per se - more their own total failure to deal with them
    Winston Smith, the blogger who worked in care homes for children, told us what was happening a long time back. Down to the issue of taxi drivers….

    From the care home side, the replacement of the old borstal semi-prisons was a system where little or no control was *allowed* to be carried out by staff.
    Yes, the repeated pattern is quite conspicuous


    Taxis, takeaways, care homes, and now "private" shisha bars. And this happened for decades in dozens of UK cities

    Bit mind-numbing.

    I wonder if this is why the story never explodes quite as it should (given the scale). It is TOO big to really comprehend. The brain stops working. Cf Catholic church sex abuse, on a similar scale, which was also mentally airbrushed for a long long time
    I remember the Times journalist who eventually wrote about this repeatedly getting smeared as racist.
    Andrew Norfolk from the Times, rightly given several journalistic awards for his stories from Rotherham.

    It took a lot of guts from the editor to run that story on the front page, at a time when the only other people talking about it were the BNP.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,835
    eek said:

    Pulpstar said:

    eek said:

    TimS said:

    Andy_JS said:

    If everyone demands inflation-style pay rises the country will go bankrupt.

    No, the businesses they employ will either pay them if they can afford it (which will put more money into consumer spending and income tax) or if they can't, they won't - and will lose staff and be forced to make the overdue investments in efficiency and automation the economy is crying out for.

    One of the very few things I agreed with Brexiteers on was the need for the UK to become a higher wage economy where not every business problem is solved by amassing vast amounts of cheap unskilled labour. Yet it seems the prominent Brexiteers are at the forefront of demands for pay restraint.
    The prominent Brexiteers don't want people to have a decent standard of living they want Singapore on sea where cheap (easily replaced) labour can be hired and fired at whim.
    Hold on, didn't you vote for Brexit ?
    What sort of Brexit did you want ?
    EEA membership as a minimum - because the issue I had with the EU was their desire for great political unity...
    Oh my sweet summer child..
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 14,911
    Andy_JS said:

    MISTY said:

    franklyn said:

    Rail staff are hastening their own demise.
    Ticket offices will be closing from September (as they have done years ago on the London Underground). Driverless trains are perfectly viable, as on the Docklands Light Railway, which has never had a fatality.
    The present system is massively overstaffed and full of restrictive practices. Staffing costs inflate fares which in turn deter customers.
    The unions are totally short-sighted and clearly need to be reminded of Scargill

    A fellow on the radio over the week-end was talking about restrictive practices he experienced at British Leyland in the 1970s.

    Took me back...
    Workers got a much bigger slice of the economic pie in the 1970s, though, so they must have been doing something right.
    20% inflation as well.
    And 30% pay rises.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    RobD said:

    Just wondering if those anti the strikes also oppose pensioners getting an above inflation rise

    The pension is a pittance, it should be going up.
    The pension is unfunded and wasn't saved for, it should be going down and getting both forms of NI applied to it.

    It can go up, once its been saved for, it wasn't.
    People who were able to save are doing OK. Those who couldn’t, less so.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    TimS said:

    Sandpit said:

    Has he *still* not deleted his Twitter history from 2009?

    Tw@.

    Given there are automated systems for this, I have no idea why public figures wouldn't just set such a thing up. Even if some saddo screen caps it and then tries to use it against you years down the line you can just say well it was deleted years ago, it was a poorly worded tweet, end of story (unless you literally have 100s of the clearly problematic tweets + real life behaviour i.e. Jared O'Mara).
    It really should be the first thing you do when entering politics. Delete any dodgy tweets or other social media well before anyone comes looking for them. Even more so if you're a front bencher. It's a really bizarre omission.
    To be honest, if you are really active on social media full stop probably a sensible thing to be doing these things. Who knows what you might have said which was fine at the time or a very poor taste joke (or even genuinely bad things to say, but was a one off), and it gets used against you.
    Never say it in the first place. There are plenty of products that allow me to rapidly collect and archive social media posts well before the poster gets round to deleting them..

    As I said before Social Media is one of the reasons no one sane goes into Politics anymore. There are way easier ways to earn money or do public good without the hassle of people expecting 24/7 access to you.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Ghedebrav said:

    Leon said:

    The Oldham grooming report is out. Pretty grim


    https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/sexually-exploited-children-oldham-were-24270470


    If you read the actual report, there are two striking things (amongst others).

    1. The council tried to cover up the use of "shisha bars" for exploitation, and told a BBC journalist not to write about it, because of the "Lee Rigby murder" and the way the news might be used by "far right groups". So the pubic were not alerted to the danger of these places

    2. When confronted by their failings (such as this) Oldham Council's excuse is often "Well we're nowhere near as bad as other northern towns around us". No joke, that's what they say

    Not a fun story

    I lived in Bradford in the early 2000s and this report (and the events that prompted the report) have not been a surprise at any stage. Fact is that poor white kids from marginal/chaotic backgrounds were disgracefully let down out of fear of being seen as racist. I'd guess that the cases that have made court are the tip of the iceberg.

    This was never going to help the genuinely important work of community cohesion - rather it created a kind of Streisand-Effect-ish sort of factor where the right wing groups the LAs were afraid of actually got more mileage out of this, in particular affirming the complicity of the authorities.

    In a completely different way, like the postmaster scandal it illustrates the crucial importance of whistleblowing and open culture in big organisations (and, as an aside, the way the public sector manages internal promotion generally quite badly, incentivising the rise of non-operational types who are typically good at parroting culture but bad at actual work).
    Coz I is bored in my ugly overcast Armenian town I have actually just read the entire report. It's difficult to know what was in the heads of these people in authority in 2010-14.


    There was probably a fear of being seen as racist, but the sense I get - and it is just a sense - is more of inertia, cowardice and complacency. It's too much hassle to go into it deeply, the girls are all drunk, who needs the grief of Tommy Robinson coming to town, can't we just move on, etc

    Once the first mistakes are made THEN it becomes an exercise in arse-covering, from the council and the police. They're not covering up the crimes, per se - more their own total failure to deal with them
    Winston Smith, the blogger who worked in care homes for children, told us what was happening a long time back. Down to the issue of taxi drivers….

    From the care home side, the replacement of the old borstal semi-prisons was a system where little or no control was *allowed* to be carried out by staff.
    Yes, the repeated pattern is quite conspicuous


    Taxis, takeaways, care homes, and now "private" shisha bars. And this happened for decades in dozens of UK cities

    Bit mind-numbing.

    I wonder if this is why the story never explodes quite as it should (given the scale). It is TOO big to really comprehend. The brain stops working. Cf Catholic church sex abuse, on a similar scale, which was also mentally airbrushed for a long long time
    I remember the Times journalist who eventually wrote about this repeatedly getting smeared as racist.
    Andrew Norfolk. Yes, he was shamelessly smeared by the Guardian, when he first ran with the story. See here from 2011:


    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/jan/07/grooming-racialising-crime-tradition


    By 2014, after his Paul Foot award, they were printing adulatory profiles of him


    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/sep/28/rotherham-child-sex-scandal-andrew-norfolk


    Incredible
  • Daveyboy1961Daveyboy1961 Posts: 3,333
    edited June 2022
    kle4 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Interesting take from Tory candidate in Wakefield. "Nadeem Ahmed, the Tory candidate for Wakefield, argued that although he is a Conservative, voters "should still choose me – after all people still trust GPs despite Harold Shipman".

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/06/19/do-trust-boris-johnson-could-lose-two-key-by-elections-week/

    !! Is that the best comparison he could come up with?
    I saw the clip of the Tory woman for T+H yesterday. I think her manner betrays her years as a headteacher. She also reminds me in attitude of Natalie Elphicke. I ahven't seen the Libdem man yet, so can't compare them, but I suspect the result on Thursday will be very close. I wonder how many early print editions of the Times got to Devon? Our copy in West Wales definitely had it in...

  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,598

    Andy_JS said:

    The train operators are beyond useless, as proved by their amateurishness in this dispute. DavidL is right.

    The franchises cannot go soon enough. Some credit has to go to Grant Shapps / Michael Green for finally having the cojones to abolish this utterly stupid system.

    Meanwhile, that famous leftwinger Peter Hitchens is calling for full blown renationalisation.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10921277/PETER-HITCHENS-stupidity-ministers-train-firms-wrecked-railways-not-unions.html

    Excerpt:

    "People now don’t believe me when I say that on the Oxford to Paddington Express, every weekday morning, you could once get a beautifully cooked bacon, egg, sausage and mushroom breakfast, with good coffee, freshly-made toast and an actual jar of Cooper’s Oxford Marmalade ready for use on the crisp white tablecloth.

    More recently, the trains still had convivial buffet cars, where you could go for a drink, a sandwich or a chat. Almost all of these are now gone. But there have been deeper blows than these. Near my Oxford home — and this is typical of most parts of the country — there are now several, sizeable market towns with no rail service at all. These are handsome, flourishing places where people like to live. But if they want to come and go by train, they must drive miles to a distant station."
    Well, the first paragraph is debateable, and a mile away from the experience of most of the plebs who travelled by rail under BR.

    The second is nothing to do with privatisation: in fact those flourishing places might well have lost their rail services under BR.
    Maybe so, but given nothing is ever the fault of privatisation in your book, readers would be advised to take your analysis with a pinch of salt. It’s almost as if you still haven’t got over the fact that Shapps has finally done the nation’s bidding and abolished your beloved franchises after decades of farce.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880
    Scott_xP said:
    It's a salutary tribute to how far Johnson has moved the Overcrook Window that we basically don't give a fuck about this.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited June 2022
    eek said:

    TimS said:

    Sandpit said:

    Has he *still* not deleted his Twitter history from 2009?

    Tw@.

    Given there are automated systems for this, I have no idea why public figures wouldn't just set such a thing up. Even if some saddo screen caps it and then tries to use it against you years down the line you can just say well it was deleted years ago, it was a poorly worded tweet, end of story (unless you literally have 100s of the clearly problematic tweets + real life behaviour i.e. Jared O'Mara).
    It really should be the first thing you do when entering politics. Delete any dodgy tweets or other social media well before anyone comes looking for them. Even more so if you're a front bencher. It's a really bizarre omission.
    To be honest, if you are really active on social media full stop probably a sensible thing to be doing these things. Who knows what you might have said which was fine at the time or a very poor taste joke (or even genuinely bad things to say, but was a one off), and it gets used against you.
    Never say it in the first place. There are plenty of products that allow me to rapidly collect and archive social media posts well before the poster gets round to deleting them..

    As I said before Social Media is one of the reasons no one sane goes into Politics anymore. There are way easier ways to earn money or do public good without the hassle of people expecting 24/7 access to you.
    Well personally I don't really use social media and wouldn't, but it is really impossible to know what was fine then, but verboten now e.g. when I was at school, the utterances of "that's gay" was not thought of as homophobic, it just became the "in" word to use to deem it was naff or uncool.

    Now I can understand how people now would be offended by that, but people at the time weren't directly making that connection. I am sure 99% of my class mates uttered it at the time, including those who were gay, as teenagers it really wasn't seen as disparaging of gay people.

    I wouldn't judge anybody who used that then in context of today, unless it is a pattern that has continued as times as changed.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,956
    my estate agent just let me know that the landlord is putting up our rent from august by £400 a month

    cost of living and all that x


    https://twitter.com/AvaSantina/status/1538867925993627648
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,598
    eek said:

    Andy_JS said:

    The train operators are beyond useless, as proved by their amateurishness in this dispute. DavidL is right.

    The franchises cannot go soon enough. Some credit has to go to Grant Shapps / Michael Green for finally having the cojones to abolish this utterly stupid system.

    Meanwhile, that famous leftwinger Peter Hitchens is calling for full blown renationalisation.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10921277/PETER-HITCHENS-stupidity-ministers-train-firms-wrecked-railways-not-unions.html

    Excerpt:

    "People now don’t believe me when I say that on the Oxford to Paddington Express, every weekday morning, you could once get a beautifully cooked bacon, egg, sausage and mushroom breakfast, with good coffee, freshly-made toast and an actual jar of Cooper’s Oxford Marmalade ready for use on the crisp white tablecloth.

    More recently, the trains still had convivial buffet cars, where you could go for a drink, a sandwich or a chat. Almost all of these are now gone. But there have been deeper blows than these. Near my Oxford home — and this is typical of most parts of the country — there are now several, sizeable market towns with no rail service at all. These are handsome, flourishing places where people like to live. But if they want to come and go by train, they must drive miles to a distant station."
    Well, the first paragraph is debateable, and a mile away from the experience of most of the plebs who travelled by rail under BR.

    The second is nothing to do with privatisation: in fact those flourishing places might well have lost their rail services under BR.
    On Friday I had a rather nice Salmon followed by cheese and biscuits washed down by 3 large G&Ts on my journey from London to Darlington.

    All for £40 more than the cheap standard class ticket I originally bought and far less than the first class ticket would have cost me if I bought it directly. Seatfrog is quite good for bargain upgrades.
    Good for you. Assume that’s East Coast? A nationalised railway!
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    edited June 2022
    Pulpstar said:

    eek said:

    Pulpstar said:

    eek said:

    TimS said:

    Andy_JS said:

    If everyone demands inflation-style pay rises the country will go bankrupt.

    No, the businesses they employ will either pay them if they can afford it (which will put more money into consumer spending and income tax) or if they can't, they won't - and will lose staff and be forced to make the overdue investments in efficiency and automation the economy is crying out for.

    One of the very few things I agreed with Brexiteers on was the need for the UK to become a higher wage economy where not every business problem is solved by amassing vast amounts of cheap unskilled labour. Yet it seems the prominent Brexiteers are at the forefront of demands for pay restraint.
    The prominent Brexiteers don't want people to have a decent standard of living they want Singapore on sea where cheap (easily replaced) labour can be hired and fired at whim.
    Hold on, didn't you vote for Brexit ?
    What sort of Brexit did you want ?
    EEA membership as a minimum - because the issue I had with the EU was their desire for great political unity...
    Oh my sweet summer child..
    Hey everyone voted for their own personal unicorn and when I cast my postal vote (on the day it arrived) Remain was winning easily.

    It was only at lunchtime on the Thursday as my friend called me from a polling station in Leyland about the very brisk voting there (a story I've told many times before) that I thought Leave could win...
  • Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 4,784
    Just read chapter 1 of the Oldham report, 20 pages or so of key findings.

    It doesn't quite read to me as a the general cover up of Leon's summarising, but of a council post 2010 fighting the issue hard, on policy and operation fronts, actively trying to be upfront, but not always succeeding to turn the screw on the abusers tightly or quickly enough, or always managing to get the on the ground coordination right. It definitely highlights failures, very serious failures, especially in 2005-2010, but it doesn't read to me as a damning report on the post 2010 efforts of the council.

    Report link contained within this BBC article:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-61863603
  • RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Just wondering if those anti the strikes also oppose pensioners getting an above inflation rise

    The pension is a pittance, it should be going up.
    The pension is unfunded and wasn't saved for, it should be going down and getting both forms of NI applied to it.

    It can go up, once its been saved for, it wasn't.
    People who were able to save are doing OK. Those who couldn’t, less so.
    Then they should get a job.

    That generation, despite knowing the demographic timebomb they were bequeathing, chose to run a deficit while they were taxpayers to be paid by future taxpayers and left funding their pensions to future taxpayers too.

    Where is the money supposed to come from to pay for their pensions now. We should use whatever pension pots were set aside to pay for their pensions, which when it comes to the state is nothing. Sorry, but if you don't save for a pension when working, then you can't expect to live for decades with others paying for your bills when you didn't put anything to one side in the past, either as a generation or as an individual.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,706
    kinabalu said:

    HYUFD said:

    See Macron lost his majority in the French Parliament last night and becomes the first French President since Chirac to not have a majority for his party in the National Assembly. Looks like he will have to do a deal with Les Republicains and the centre right to get most legislation through and avoid having to deal with Melenchon and Le Pen's blocks

    I wonder how the Presidential run-off would have gone if it'd have been Macron v Melenchon?
    Probably about the same as v Le Pen, last 2 Macron v Melenchon polls before the first round were Macron 57% Melenchon 43% and Macron 59% Melenchon 41%.

    Pecresse voters would have voted even more strongly for Macron over Melenchon than Le Pen, Zemmour voters who voted for Le Pen would likely have voted for Macron or stayed home, Le Pen voters would have likely split about equally for both or stayed home

    http://harris-interactive.fr/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2022/04/FH7UQ71JHDQQ9.pdf

    https://www.ifop.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ROL22_2022.04.08.pdf

    The interesting thing from the legislative elections are that Macron will likely have to now govern from the centre right, despite being a former Finance Minister under socialist President Hollande. Given the left under Melenchon will be the main opposition group in the National Assembly to Macron's party and Macron won't touch Le Pen, Les Republicans have gone from being the main opposition in the legislature to now the Kingmakers Macron's party will need to get legislation through
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835

    Mr. Battery, yep.

    Give everyone above inflation pay rises and the sky high inflation will not get better.

    Who is getting above inflation pay rises?
    The argument is, in reality, about exactly how much below.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,835

    my estate agent just let me know that the landlord is putting up our rent from august by £400 a month

    cost of living and all that x


    https://twitter.com/AvaSantina/status/1538867925993627648

    Landlords are going to pass on those interest rate rises in full.

    The thing is I don't remember them reducing rents when interest rates fell. They're shits of the highest order and @MaxPB is spot on about most of them.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941
    edited June 2022

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Just wondering if those anti the strikes also oppose pensioners getting an above inflation rise

    The pension is a pittance, it should be going up.
    The pension is unfunded and wasn't saved for, it should be going down and getting both forms of NI applied to it.

    It can go up, once its been saved for, it wasn't.
    People who were able to save are doing OK. Those who couldn’t, less so.
    Then they should get a job.

    That generation, despite knowing the demographic timebomb they were bequeathing, chose to run a deficit while they were taxpayers to be paid by future taxpayers and left funding their pensions to future taxpayers too.

    Where is the money supposed to come from to pay for their pensions now. We should use whatever pension pots were set aside to pay for their pensions, which when it comes to the state is nothing. Sorry, but if you don't save for a pension when working, then you can't expect to live for decades with others paying for your bills when you didn't put anything to one side in the past, either as a generation or as an individual.
    The abolition of the state pension would be a brave decision, politically. But I am talking about the current system, where those pensioners at the very bottom are going to be hit hardest by not having their pensions frozen. I think I'm correct in saying the UK has one of the least generous pension schemes in Europe.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206
    Pro_Rata said:

    Just read chapter 1 of the Oldham report, 20 pages or so of key findings.

    It doesn't quite read to me as a the general cover up of Leon's summarising, but of a council post 2010 fighting the issue hard, on policy and operation fronts, actively trying to be upfront, but not always succeeding to turn the screw on the abusers tightly or quickly enough, or always managing to get the on the ground coordination right. It definitely highlights failures, very serious failures, especially in 2005-2010, but it doesn't read to me as a damning report on the post 2010 efforts of the council.

    Report link contained within this BBC article:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-61863603

    You need to read the whole thing. It gets worse as it goes into details, beyond the "key findings"


    Whether there was a cover up is really a matter of opinion. I'm not sure myself there was a GENERAL attempt to cover this up, quite possibly not

    There was gross incompetence, some obviously malign actors, and there were specific cover-ups (eg the shisha bars, it's all there in the documents adduced)
  • RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Just wondering if those anti the strikes also oppose pensioners getting an above inflation rise

    The pension is a pittance, it should be going up.
    The pension is unfunded and wasn't saved for, it should be going down and getting both forms of NI applied to it.

    It can go up, once its been saved for, it wasn't.
    People who were able to save are doing OK. Those who couldn’t, less so.
    Then they should get a job.

    That generation, despite knowing the demographic timebomb they were bequeathing, chose to run a deficit while they were taxpayers to be paid by future taxpayers and left funding their pensions to future taxpayers too.

    Where is the money supposed to come from to pay for their pensions now. We should use whatever pension pots were set aside to pay for their pensions, which when it comes to the state is nothing. Sorry, but if you don't save for a pension when working, then you can't expect to live for decades with others paying for your bills when you didn't put anything to one side in the past, either as a generation or as an individual.
    The abolition of the state pension would be a brave decision, politically. But I am talking about the current system, where those pensioners at the very bottom are going to be hit hardest by not having their pensions frozen. I think I'm correct in saying the UK has one of the least generous pension schemes in Europe.
    I'm not talking about abolishing the state pension, I'm talking about capping the state pension by putting it up by no more than wages.

    The first return for people working should be to the people who are working, after that any money available should go to those who aren't. If those who aren't don't like the situation, they should get a job or use their savings.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited June 2022
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Ghedebrav said:

    Leon said:

    The Oldham grooming report is out. Pretty grim


    https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/sexually-exploited-children-oldham-were-24270470


    If you read the actual report, there are two striking things (amongst others).

    1. The council tried to cover up the use of "shisha bars" for exploitation, and told a BBC journalist not to write about it, because of the "Lee Rigby murder" and the way the news might be used by "far right groups". So the pubic were not alerted to the danger of these places

    2. When confronted by their failings (such as this) Oldham Council's excuse is often "Well we're nowhere near as bad as other northern towns around us". No joke, that's what they say

    Not a fun story

    I lived in Bradford in the early 2000s and this report (and the events that prompted the report) have not been a surprise at any stage. Fact is that poor white kids from marginal/chaotic backgrounds were disgracefully let down out of fear of being seen as racist. I'd guess that the cases that have made court are the tip of the iceberg.

    This was never going to help the genuinely important work of community cohesion - rather it created a kind of Streisand-Effect-ish sort of factor where the right wing groups the LAs were afraid of actually got more mileage out of this, in particular affirming the complicity of the authorities.

    In a completely different way, like the postmaster scandal it illustrates the crucial importance of whistleblowing and open culture in big organisations (and, as an aside, the way the public sector manages internal promotion generally quite badly, incentivising the rise of non-operational types who are typically good at parroting culture but bad at actual work).
    Coz I is bored in my ugly overcast Armenian town I have actually just read the entire report. It's difficult to know what was in the heads of these people in authority in 2010-14.


    There was probably a fear of being seen as racist, but the sense I get - and it is just a sense - is more of inertia, cowardice and complacency. It's too much hassle to go into it deeply, the girls are all drunk, who needs the grief of Tommy Robinson coming to town, can't we just move on, etc

    Once the first mistakes are made THEN it becomes an exercise in arse-covering, from the council and the police. They're not covering up the crimes, per se - more their own total failure to deal with them
    Winston Smith, the blogger who worked in care homes for children, told us what was happening a long time back. Down to the issue of taxi drivers….

    From the care home side, the replacement of the old borstal semi-prisons was a system where little or no control was *allowed* to be carried out by staff.
    Yes, the repeated pattern is quite conspicuous


    Taxis, takeaways, care homes, and now "private" shisha bars. And this happened for decades in dozens of UK cities

    Bit mind-numbing.

    I wonder if this is why the story never explodes quite as it should (given the scale). It is TOO big to really comprehend. The brain stops working. Cf Catholic church sex abuse, on a similar scale, which was also mentally airbrushed for a long long time
    I remember the Times journalist who eventually wrote about this repeatedly getting smeared as racist.
    Andrew Norfolk. Yes, he was shamelessly smeared by the Guardian, when he first ran with the story. See here from 2011:


    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/jan/07/grooming-racialising-crime-tradition


    By 2014, after his Paul Foot award, they were printing adulatory profiles of him


    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/sep/28/rotherham-child-sex-scandal-andrew-norfolk


    Incredible
    Well we all know how the like of the Guardian thought Julian Assange and Edward Snowden were top notch blokes and breathlessly relayed their every utterance....not that they are agents of Russia.
  • RichardrRichardr Posts: 80
    Andy_JS said:

    The train operators are beyond useless, as proved by their amateurishness in this dispute. DavidL is right.

    The franchises cannot go soon enough. Some credit has to go to Grant Shapps / Michael Green for finally having the cojones to abolish this utterly stupid system.

    Meanwhile, that famous leftwinger Peter Hitchens is calling for full blown renationalisation.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10921277/PETER-HITCHENS-stupidity-ministers-train-firms-wrecked-railways-not-unions.html

    Excerpt:

    "People now don’t believe me when I say that on the Oxford to Paddington Express, every weekday morning, you could once get a beautifully cooked bacon, egg, sausage and mushroom breakfast, with good coffee, freshly-made toast and an actual jar of Cooper’s Oxford Marmalade ready for use on the crisp white tablecloth.

    More recently, the trains still had convivial buffet cars, where you could go for a drink, a sandwich or a chat. Almost all of these are now gone. But there have been deeper blows than these. Near my Oxford home — and this is typical of most parts of the country — there are now several, sizeable market towns with no rail service at all. These are handsome, flourishing places where people like to live. But if they want to come and go by train, they must drive miles to a distant station."
    Note that the number of rail passenger journeys just before Covid (in total, I haven't got specific for that line, but it will be in line) are three times as high as in 1982. We used to have a buffet trolley on my line - now the trains are much too busy for that, despite being a lot more frequent, and they are quicker. The rail passenger journeys in 2018/9 were even 50% more than in 1946, the post war previous high until recently. Something must have been working, and it is not clear to me why further government control is the answer to any question.

    The implication of that quote is that services to some towns in Oxfordshire have been closed since privatization. I may be wrong, but I can't think of anything significant since the early 1960s.
  • MISTYMISTY Posts: 1,594

    my estate agent just let me know that the landlord is putting up our rent from august by £400 a month

    cost of living and all that x


    https://twitter.com/AvaSantina/status/1538867925993627648

    Yeah but after Gove's reforms evictions will be much tougher?
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    eek said:

    TimS said:

    Sandpit said:

    Has he *still* not deleted his Twitter history from 2009?

    Tw@.

    Given there are automated systems for this, I have no idea why public figures wouldn't just set such a thing up. Even if some saddo screen caps it and then tries to use it against you years down the line you can just say well it was deleted years ago, it was a poorly worded tweet, end of story (unless you literally have 100s of the clearly problematic tweets + real life behaviour i.e. Jared O'Mara).
    It really should be the first thing you do when entering politics. Delete any dodgy tweets or other social media well before anyone comes looking for them. Even more so if you're a front bencher. It's a really bizarre omission.
    To be honest, if you are really active on social media full stop probably a sensible thing to be doing these things. Who knows what you might have said which was fine at the time or a very poor taste joke (or even genuinely bad things to say, but was a one off), and it gets used against you.
    Never say it in the first place. There are plenty of products that allow me to rapidly collect and archive social media posts well before the poster gets round to deleting them..

    As I said before Social Media is one of the reasons no one sane goes into Politics anymore. There are way easier ways to earn money or do public good without the hassle of people expecting 24/7 access to you.
    Well personally I don't really use social media and wouldn't, but it is really impossible to know what was fine then, but verboten now e.g. when I was at school, the utterances of "that's gay" was not thought of as homophobic, it just became the "in" word to use to deem it was naff or uncool.

    Now I can understand how people now would be offended by that, but people at the time weren't directly making that connection. I am sure 99% of my class mates uttered it at the time, including those who were gay, as teenagers it really wasn't seen as disparaging of gay people.

    I wouldn't judge anybody who used that then in context of today, unless it is a pattern that has continued as times as changed.
    Which is exactly why anyone running for office should delete everything they’ve ever written.

    Because people can, and do, judge words from a decade ago by the standards of today’s opposition activists.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,786
    Pulpstar said:

    my estate agent just let me know that the landlord is putting up our rent from august by £400 a month

    cost of living and all that x


    https://twitter.com/AvaSantina/status/1538867925993627648

    Landlords are going to pass on those interest rate rises in full.
    Housing demand is quite elastic so it will probably lead to more sharing to avoid rising costs.
  • MISTYMISTY Posts: 1,594
    Pulpstar said:

    my estate agent just let me know that the landlord is putting up our rent from august by £400 a month

    cost of living and all that x


    https://twitter.com/AvaSantina/status/1538867925993627648

    Landlords are going to pass on those interest rate rises in full.

    The thing is I don't remember them reducing rents when interest rates fell. They're shits of the highest order and @MaxPB is spot on about most of them.
    Gove's reforms knock the BTL landlord for six, from what I can see?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206
    Pro_Rata said:

    Just read chapter 1 of the Oldham report, 20 pages or so of key findings.

    It doesn't quite read to me as a the general cover up of Leon's summarising, but of a council post 2010 fighting the issue hard, on policy and operation fronts, actively trying to be upfront, but not always succeeding to turn the screw on the abusers tightly or quickly enough, or always managing to get the on the ground coordination right. It definitely highlights failures, very serious failures, especially in 2005-2010, but it doesn't read to me as a damning report on the post 2010 efforts of the council.

    Report link contained within this BBC article:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-61863603

    It's interesting that you're so keen to specifically exonerate Oldham Council from 2010 onwards, but heap blame on them over 2005-2010

    Of course this would have nothing to do with the Labour Leader of Oldham Council elected in 2011?

    That person being Jim McMahon, now Shadow Minister for DEFRA in Keir Starmer's Shadow Cabinet

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_McMahon_(politician)
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,543

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    I was deeply underwhelmed by the muppet representing the train operators on R4 this morning. Apparently, there is currently no wage offer on the table because any wage increase has to be tied to changes in working practices etc.

    I repeat, the day before a national rail strike, there is no offer on the table. ....

    Still can't quite believe it.

    Yes, I heard that - astonishing. The RMT have asked for 7% - high, but below inflation. The employers have refused to say what they will offer. It's hardly surprising that the union has not backed down, with nothing on the table.

    I reckon a settlement of around 5% could be agreed, not unreasonable. But for some reason neither the government nor the employers seem interested in a settlement.

    I'm old enough to remember the halcyon days when the government and its supporters were lauding the return of a high wage economy that would level up, post Brexit and Covid. However, that seems to have somewhat run out of steam once the lorry drivers and a few other groups had been paid off.
    Managers have to manage and if they think that they need to impose new work rosters on their staff that is fair enough. They should negotiate for a period of time to see if a mutually acceptable compromise can be reached and, if not, they should impose what they think is necessary for their business. I have no problem with this.

    What I do have a problem with is refusing to discuss a wage increase at a time of 9% inflation. That is just unacceptable. And to try to pretend that the Union is being unreasonable about this is just dishonest. A settlement between 5 and 7% in the present situation is there for the taking at which point the specific proposals for managing the business can be made.

    The government wants a fight. No other conclusion is possible. Shame on them.
    The government aren't involved, they aren't the management.

    If the unions want an agreement they should be talking to the management, not the government.

    Though perhaps the government should be saying that since the railways aren't operating or serving the purpose they're there for that the subsidies the taxpayers are paying will be reduced so there will be less money for pay settlements.
    I am pretty sure government would get involved were management to start closing the most unprofitable lines.

    What you're spouting is rhetoric rather than reality.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    Nigelb said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    I was deeply underwhelmed by the muppet representing the train operators on R4 this morning. Apparently, there is currently no wage offer on the table because any wage increase has to be tied to changes in working practices etc.

    I repeat, the day before a national rail strike, there is no offer on the table. ....

    Still can't quite believe it.

    Yes, I heard that - astonishing. The RMT have asked for 7% - high, but below inflation. The employers have refused to say what they will offer. It's hardly surprising that the union has not backed down, with nothing on the table.

    I reckon a settlement of around 5% could be agreed, not unreasonable. But for some reason neither the government nor the employers seem interested in a settlement.

    I'm old enough to remember the halcyon days when the government and its supporters were lauding the return of a high wage economy that would level up, post Brexit and Covid. However, that seems to have somewhat run out of steam once the lorry drivers and a few other groups had been paid off.
    Managers have to manage and if they think that they need to impose new work rosters on their staff that is fair enough. They should negotiate for a period of time to see if a mutually acceptable compromise can be reached and, if not, they should impose what they think is necessary for their business. I have no problem with this.

    What I do have a problem with is refusing to discuss a wage increase at a time of 9% inflation. That is just unacceptable. And to try to pretend that the Union is being unreasonable about this is just dishonest. A settlement between 5 and 7% in the present situation is there for the taking at which point the specific proposals for managing the business can be made.

    The government wants a fight. No other conclusion is possible. Shame on them.
    The government aren't involved, they aren't the management.

    If the unions want an agreement they should be talking to the management, not the government.

    Though perhaps the government should be saying that since the railways aren't operating or serving the purpose they're there for that the subsidies the taxpayers are paying will be reduced so there will be less money for pay settlements.
    I am pretty sure government would get involved were management to start closing the most unprofitable lines.

    What you're spouting is rhetoric rather than reality.
    Indeed. As noted upthread. There are plans afoot to open more unprofitable lines. Orchestrated by Tory MP's.
  • londonpubmanlondonpubman Posts: 3,151
    Richardr said:

    Andy_JS said:

    The train operators are beyond useless, as proved by their amateurishness in this dispute. DavidL is right.

    The franchises cannot go soon enough. Some credit has to go to Grant Shapps / Michael Green for finally having the cojones to abolish this utterly stupid system.

    Meanwhile, that famous leftwinger Peter Hitchens is calling for full blown renationalisation.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10921277/PETER-HITCHENS-stupidity-ministers-train-firms-wrecked-railways-not-unions.html

    Excerpt:

    "People now don’t believe me when I say that on the Oxford to Paddington Express, every weekday morning, you could once get a beautifully cooked bacon, egg, sausage and mushroom breakfast, with good coffee, freshly-made toast and an actual jar of Cooper’s Oxford Marmalade ready for use on the crisp white tablecloth.

    More recently, the trains still had convivial buffet cars, where you could go for a drink, a sandwich or a chat. Almost all of these are now gone. But there have been deeper blows than these. Near my Oxford home — and this is typical of most parts of the country — there are now several, sizeable market towns with no rail service at all. These are handsome, flourishing places where people like to live. But if they want to come and go by train, they must drive miles to a distant station."
    Note that the number of rail passenger journeys just before Covid (in total, I haven't got specific for that line, but it will be in line) are three times as high as in 1982. We used to have a buffet trolley on my line - now the trains are much too busy for that, despite being a lot more frequent, and they are quicker. The rail passenger journeys in 2018/9 were even 50% more than in 1946, the post war previous high until recently. Something must have been working, and it is not clear to me why further government control is the answer to any question.

    The implication of that quote is that services to some towns in Oxfordshire have been closed since privatization. I may be wrong, but I can't think of anything significant since the early 1960s.
    Most recent rail / station closures in Oxfordshire is 1968 closure Oxford to Bletchley which in any case has been partially reversed.
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 18,145
    edited June 2022
    Nigelb said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    I was deeply underwhelmed by the muppet representing the train operators on R4 this morning. Apparently, there is currently no wage offer on the table because any wage increase has to be tied to changes in working practices etc.

    I repeat, the day before a national rail strike, there is no offer on the table. ....

    Still can't quite believe it.

    Yes, I heard that - astonishing. The RMT have asked for 7% - high, but below inflation. The employers have refused to say what they will offer. It's hardly surprising that the union has not backed down, with nothing on the table.

    I reckon a settlement of around 5% could be agreed, not unreasonable. But for some reason neither the government nor the employers seem interested in a settlement.

    I'm old enough to remember the halcyon days when the government and its supporters were lauding the return of a high wage economy that would level up, post Brexit and Covid. However, that seems to have somewhat run out of steam once the lorry drivers and a few other groups had been paid off.
    Managers have to manage and if they think that they need to impose new work rosters on their staff that is fair enough. They should negotiate for a period of time to see if a mutually acceptable compromise can be reached and, if not, they should impose what they think is necessary for their business. I have no problem with this.

    What I do have a problem with is refusing to discuss a wage increase at a time of 9% inflation. That is just unacceptable. And to try to pretend that the Union is being unreasonable about this is just dishonest. A settlement between 5 and 7% in the present situation is there for the taking at which point the specific proposals for managing the business can be made.

    The government wants a fight. No other conclusion is possible. Shame on them.
    The government aren't involved, they aren't the management.

    If the unions want an agreement they should be talking to the management, not the government.

    Though perhaps the government should be saying that since the railways aren't operating or serving the purpose they're there for that the subsidies the taxpayers are paying will be reduced so there will be less money for pay settlements.
    I am pretty sure government would get involved were management to start closing the most unprofitable lines.

    What you're spouting is rhetoric rather than reality.
    What I'm saying is my own opinion, nothing more than that.

    If the government wants to pay to keep unprofitable lines open then the management should say we're closing them unless you pay us £x

    Of course then the government should have a choice to say "OK we'll pay it" or "OK close it" or "actually we'll get a different operator to do so instead". Just as employers with striking staff should have the choice between paying the staff what they want, firing the staff, or hiring other staff instead.

    In my view unprofitable lines should be allowed to die. The state shouldn't be choosing winners or losers.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,578
    MISTY said:

    Pulpstar said:

    my estate agent just let me know that the landlord is putting up our rent from august by £400 a month

    cost of living and all that x


    https://twitter.com/AvaSantina/status/1538867925993627648

    Landlords are going to pass on those interest rate rises in full.

    The thing is I don't remember them reducing rents when interest rates fell. They're shits of the highest order and @MaxPB is spot on about most of them.
    Gove's reforms knock the BTL landlord for six, from what I can see?
    Could everyone please start their timers, please.

    For when the Guardian etc start complaining about the numbers of people being evicted when their landlords sell the property they are renting to occupying owners?

    Another stop watch for people discovering that the individual private landlord has now been replaced with a large company with Sagans of lawyers on tap….
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,598

    Nigelb said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    I was deeply underwhelmed by the muppet representing the train operators on R4 this morning. Apparently, there is currently no wage offer on the table because any wage increase has to be tied to changes in working practices etc.

    I repeat, the day before a national rail strike, there is no offer on the table. ....

    Still can't quite believe it.

    Yes, I heard that - astonishing. The RMT have asked for 7% - high, but below inflation. The employers have refused to say what they will offer. It's hardly surprising that the union has not backed down, with nothing on the table.

    I reckon a settlement of around 5% could be agreed, not unreasonable. But for some reason neither the government nor the employers seem interested in a settlement.

    I'm old enough to remember the halcyon days when the government and its supporters were lauding the return of a high wage economy that would level up, post Brexit and Covid. However, that seems to have somewhat run out of steam once the lorry drivers and a few other groups had been paid off.
    Managers have to manage and if they think that they need to impose new work rosters on their staff that is fair enough. They should negotiate for a period of time to see if a mutually acceptable compromise can be reached and, if not, they should impose what they think is necessary for their business. I have no problem with this.

    What I do have a problem with is refusing to discuss a wage increase at a time of 9% inflation. That is just unacceptable. And to try to pretend that the Union is being unreasonable about this is just dishonest. A settlement between 5 and 7% in the present situation is there for the taking at which point the specific proposals for managing the business can be made.

    The government wants a fight. No other conclusion is possible. Shame on them.
    The government aren't involved, they aren't the management.

    If the unions want an agreement they should be talking to the management, not the government.

    Though perhaps the government should be saying that since the railways aren't operating or serving the purpose they're there for that the subsidies the taxpayers are paying will be reduced so there will be less money for pay settlements.
    I am pretty sure government would get involved were management to start closing the most unprofitable lines.

    What you're spouting is rhetoric rather than reality.
    What I'm saying is my own opinion, nothing more than that.

    If the government wants to pay to keep unprofitable lines open then the management should say we're closing them unless you pay us £x

    Of course then the government should have a choice to say "OK we'll pay it" or "OK close it" or "actually we'll get a different operator to do so instead". Just as employers with striking staff should have the choice between paying the staff what they want, firing the staff, or hiring other staff instead.

    In my view unprofitable lines should be allowed to die. The state shouldn't be choosing winners or losers.
    Well that's just ridiculous, as you would no longer have a network – only the most popular lines would stay open. Would you apply the same test to roads, where only the most used roads remained open? Road and rail networks are a cost of running an economy.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517

    Nigelb said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    I was deeply underwhelmed by the muppet representing the train operators on R4 this morning. Apparently, there is currently no wage offer on the table because any wage increase has to be tied to changes in working practices etc.

    I repeat, the day before a national rail strike, there is no offer on the table. ....

    Still can't quite believe it.

    Yes, I heard that - astonishing. The RMT have asked for 7% - high, but below inflation. The employers have refused to say what they will offer. It's hardly surprising that the union has not backed down, with nothing on the table.

    I reckon a settlement of around 5% could be agreed, not unreasonable. But for some reason neither the government nor the employers seem interested in a settlement.

    I'm old enough to remember the halcyon days when the government and its supporters were lauding the return of a high wage economy that would level up, post Brexit and Covid. However, that seems to have somewhat run out of steam once the lorry drivers and a few other groups had been paid off.
    Managers have to manage and if they think that they need to impose new work rosters on their staff that is fair enough. They should negotiate for a period of time to see if a mutually acceptable compromise can be reached and, if not, they should impose what they think is necessary for their business. I have no problem with this.

    What I do have a problem with is refusing to discuss a wage increase at a time of 9% inflation. That is just unacceptable. And to try to pretend that the Union is being unreasonable about this is just dishonest. A settlement between 5 and 7% in the present situation is there for the taking at which point the specific proposals for managing the business can be made.

    The government wants a fight. No other conclusion is possible. Shame on them.
    The government aren't involved, they aren't the management.

    If the unions want an agreement they should be talking to the management, not the government.

    Though perhaps the government should be saying that since the railways aren't operating or serving the purpose they're there for that the subsidies the taxpayers are paying will be reduced so there will be less money for pay settlements.
    I am pretty sure government would get involved were management to start closing the most unprofitable lines.

    What you're spouting is rhetoric rather than reality.
    What I'm saying is my own opinion, nothing more than that.

    If the government wants to pay to keep unprofitable lines open then the management should say we're closing them unless you pay us £x

    Of course then the government should have a choice to say "OK we'll pay it" or "OK close it" or "actually we'll get a different operator to do so instead". Just as employers with striking staff should have the choice between paying the staff what they want, firing the staff, or hiring other staff instead.

    In my view unprofitable lines should be allowed to die. The state shouldn't be choosing winners or losers.
    There are a whole host of problems with saying 'unprofitable lines'.

    There are issues such as the social good a railway can provide; sometimes a good and practical way to provide public transport to some rural areas, particularly for travel to the cities. Like bus services, they are subsidised for the public good. Then there is the experience of the 1960s, when many of the marginal lines shut cost the other routes traffic, both freight and passenger.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517

    Nigelb said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    I was deeply underwhelmed by the muppet representing the train operators on R4 this morning. Apparently, there is currently no wage offer on the table because any wage increase has to be tied to changes in working practices etc.

    I repeat, the day before a national rail strike, there is no offer on the table. ....

    Still can't quite believe it.

    Yes, I heard that - astonishing. The RMT have asked for 7% - high, but below inflation. The employers have refused to say what they will offer. It's hardly surprising that the union has not backed down, with nothing on the table.

    I reckon a settlement of around 5% could be agreed, not unreasonable. But for some reason neither the government nor the employers seem interested in a settlement.

    I'm old enough to remember the halcyon days when the government and its supporters were lauding the return of a high wage economy that would level up, post Brexit and Covid. However, that seems to have somewhat run out of steam once the lorry drivers and a few other groups had been paid off.
    Managers have to manage and if they think that they need to impose new work rosters on their staff that is fair enough. They should negotiate for a period of time to see if a mutually acceptable compromise can be reached and, if not, they should impose what they think is necessary for their business. I have no problem with this.

    What I do have a problem with is refusing to discuss a wage increase at a time of 9% inflation. That is just unacceptable. And to try to pretend that the Union is being unreasonable about this is just dishonest. A settlement between 5 and 7% in the present situation is there for the taking at which point the specific proposals for managing the business can be made.

    The government wants a fight. No other conclusion is possible. Shame on them.
    The government aren't involved, they aren't the management.

    If the unions want an agreement they should be talking to the management, not the government.

    Though perhaps the government should be saying that since the railways aren't operating or serving the purpose they're there for that the subsidies the taxpayers are paying will be reduced so there will be less money for pay settlements.
    I am pretty sure government would get involved were management to start closing the most unprofitable lines.

    What you're spouting is rhetoric rather than reality.
    What I'm saying is my own opinion, nothing more than that.

    If the government wants to pay to keep unprofitable lines open then the management should say we're closing them unless you pay us £x

    Of course then the government should have a choice to say "OK we'll pay it" or "OK close it" or "actually we'll get a different operator to do so instead". Just as employers with striking staff should have the choice between paying the staff what they want, firing the staff, or hiring other staff instead.

    In my view unprofitable lines should be allowed to die. The state shouldn't be choosing winners or losers.
    Well that's just ridiculous, as you would no longer have a network – only the most popular lines would stay open. Would you apply the same test to roads, where only the most used roads remained open? Road and rail networks are a cost of running an economy.
    The Serpell Reports are interesting from this respect - and the fact Thatcher ignored them.

    I think BR's in favour of option A:

    "Option A was a "commercial" network, in which the railways as a whole would make a profit. This scenario would have seen the route mileage reduced by 84%, and annual passenger-miles reduced by 56%. The only main lines left would have been London-Bristol/Cardiff, London-Birmingham-Liverpool/Manchester-Glasgow/Edinburgh, and London-Leeds/Newcastle. Some major commuter lines in the southeast would have been retained; all other lines would have disappeared completely. The passenger sector would still make a small loss, but this would be offset by profits from the freight sector."

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpell_Report
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,956
    Pulpstar said:

    my estate agent just let me know that the landlord is putting up our rent from august by £400 a month

    cost of living and all that x


    https://twitter.com/AvaSantina/status/1538867925993627648

    Landlords are going to pass on those interest rate rises in full.

    The thing is I don't remember them reducing rents when interest rates fell. They're shits of the highest order and @MaxPB is spot on about most of them.
    I’m not passing on the rate increases as I’ve got a fixed rate.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629

    Railway workers aren’t asking for much - they’re just asking to not get a pay cut. Oh the horror.

    @Big_G_NorthWales check your privilege.

    They are not getting a pay cut but their pay rise is likely to be in the region of 4% and I expect that to be the norm across the public sector
    It is a pay cut in real terms. Why should they get a pay cut in real terms?
    Because we all will be? Everyone has to deal with the cost of living. No excuse for massively fucking up peoples' lives and crippling businesses.
    Not everyone. Just the lowest paid.
    The lowest paid....those who's pay you want to nail hard to the minimum wage level by reintroducing the infinite labour pool of FoM? Those low paid that for the first time are seeing their pay rates rise above the minimum wage pool now their labour is no longer as scarce.

    So quite happy to sacrifice them on the altar of your beloved FoM but not happy if they get below inflation pay rises if you can't have FoM?
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,543

    eek said:

    eek said:

    franklyn said:

    Rail staff are hastening their own demise.
    Ticket offices will be closing from September (as they have done years ago on the London Underground). Driverless trains are perfectly viable, as on the Docklands Light Railway, which has never had a fatality.
    The present system is massively overstaffed and full of restrictive practices. Staffing costs inflate fares which in turn deter customers.
    The unions are totally short-sighted and clearly need to be reminded of Scargill

    Care to tell me how the bit in bold actually works.

    https://www.londonreconnections.com/2021/the-political-myth-of-the-driverless-tube-train/ will tell you everything anyone needs to know about how it's a complete myth unless you are starting from scratch (and even then it may not make sense).

    Heck Edinburgh, Manchester, Nottingham, Sheffield and Croydon have all introduced Trams since the DLR was built - but none of them are driverless. For the same reason you can't make our rail network driverless when it's easily accessibly by people.

    Only if a track is completely inaccessible to human beings is a driverless network plausible.

    Oh and train prices are set centrally based on a formula from the 70s (from memory) and are completely separate to costs because the network runs at a loss anyway.
    BiB: This is the root of the problem.

    Privatisation was mismanaged, it should have led to the abolition of subsidies but didn't.

    Japan has a highly developed rail network mostly operating without any subsidies. Subsidies should only exist for eg very rural routes etc if they provide a strategic reason they should be open but aren't viable otherwise.

    Rail staff wages should be entirely paid for by rail customers ticket prices, and other associated related revenues. The government shouldn't be in the business of picking and choosing businesses to succeed or fail.
    Parts of the rail network are vastly profitable - otherwise the Open Access Providers wouldn't run long distance services from the North into London.

    The issue is that local short distance networks aren't profitable yet MPs love them and wish for more to be built. Heck round here the current Sedgefield MP wants a station opened at Ferryhill (population 10,000) to provide services to Teesside.

    I suspect the number of commuters wanting an hourly service from Ferryhill to Boro is about 0.01% and that's probably generous.
    If the local short distances aren't profitable, then the government shouldn't be in the business of picking and choosing winners and losers.

    The Japanese manage a highly efficient rail system, mostly without subsidies. We should do the same.
    The rail services on the north island of Hokkaido are 100% public owned, and subsidised.
    And it is hard to see how we would replicate the Japanese model. You'd have to have abolished planning controls before you started hyper expensive projects like HS2, for example.
    Private rail in Japan either owns or has extremely long leases on its rail. It makes up to a third of its money from real estate development. And it consists of local monopolies, not competitors sharing track owned by an operating company, on short term franchises.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,742
    Food for thought.


  • londonpubmanlondonpubman Posts: 3,151

    Nigelb said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    I was deeply underwhelmed by the muppet representing the train operators on R4 this morning. Apparently, there is currently no wage offer on the table because any wage increase has to be tied to changes in working practices etc.

    I repeat, the day before a national rail strike, there is no offer on the table. ....

    Still can't quite believe it.

    Yes, I heard that - astonishing. The RMT have asked for 7% - high, but below inflation. The employers have refused to say what they will offer. It's hardly surprising that the union has not backed down, with nothing on the table.

    I reckon a settlement of around 5% could be agreed, not unreasonable. But for some reason neither the government nor the employers seem interested in a settlement.

    I'm old enough to remember the halcyon days when the government and its supporters were lauding the return of a high wage economy that would level up, post Brexit and Covid. However, that seems to have somewhat run out of steam once the lorry drivers and a few other groups had been paid off.
    Managers have to manage and if they think that they need to impose new work rosters on their staff that is fair enough. They should negotiate for a period of time to see if a mutually acceptable compromise can be reached and, if not, they should impose what they think is necessary for their business. I have no problem with this.

    What I do have a problem with is refusing to discuss a wage increase at a time of 9% inflation. That is just unacceptable. And to try to pretend that the Union is being unreasonable about this is just dishonest. A settlement between 5 and 7% in the present situation is there for the taking at which point the specific proposals for managing the business can be made.

    The government wants a fight. No other conclusion is possible. Shame on them.
    The government aren't involved, they aren't the management.

    If the unions want an agreement they should be talking to the management, not the government.

    Though perhaps the government should be saying that since the railways aren't operating or serving the purpose they're there for that the subsidies the taxpayers are paying will be reduced so there will be less money for pay settlements.
    I am pretty sure government would get involved were management to start closing the most unprofitable lines.

    What you're spouting is rhetoric rather than reality.
    What I'm saying is my own opinion, nothing more than that.

    If the government wants to pay to keep unprofitable lines open then the management should say we're closing them unless you pay us £x

    Of course then the government should have a choice to say "OK we'll pay it" or "OK close it" or "actually we'll get a different operator to do so instead". Just as employers with striking staff should have the choice between paying the staff what they want, firing the staff, or hiring other staff instead.

    In my view unprofitable lines should be allowed to die. The state shouldn't be choosing winners or losers.
    There are a whole host of problems with saying 'unprofitable lines'.

    There are issues such as the social good a railway can provide; sometimes a good and practical way to provide public transport to some rural areas, particularly for travel to the cities. Like bus services, they are subsidised for the public good. Then there is the experience of the 1960s, when many of the marginal lines shut cost the other routes traffic, both freight and passenger.
    Passenger rail closures are a thing of the past. The rail industry knows that no passenger service withdrawal will be approved by the Secretary of State for Transport either CON or LAB.

    This is why we have 'closure by stealth' instead typically reducing the service on the line/stations which the rail operator would like to close to say one or two trains a day often at unpopular travel times.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,048
    kinabalu said:

    MISTY said:

    MISTY said:

    franklyn said:

    Rail staff are hastening their own demise.
    Ticket offices will be closing from September (as they have done years ago on the London Underground). Driverless trains are perfectly viable, as on the Docklands Light Railway, which has never had a fatality.
    The present system is massively overstaffed and full of restrictive practices. Staffing costs inflate fares which in turn deter customers.
    The unions are totally short-sighted and clearly need to be reminded of Scargill

    A fellow on the radio over the week-end was talking about restrictive practices he experienced at British Leyland in the 1970s.

    Took me back...
    Workers got a much bigger slice of the economic pie in the 1970s, though, so they must have been doing something right.
    Yes, and the reasons behind that really do need some examining.

    I doubt anyone on here would disagree that the mega rich are too rich relative to the rest of us, but as to how to spread the love more widely, well....there's the rub.
    Smashing the unions had a lot to do with it.
    On which point I wonder if Johnson now fancies a bit of Thatcher cosplay at home to go with the Churchill abroad. Thinks that would boost his ratings as well as being great fun. It's one explanation of why he seems to want a big face-off with the unions rather than working for a settlement to avoid it. One would hope that's not the plan but increasingly I find the best way to understand this government is through the prism of the strange personality of the man leading it.
    I think his clash with the unions will be more like Heath than Thatcher. She had prepared in advance for the Coal Strike, while there is no real preparation for this summer of discontent.

  • CiceroCicero Posts: 2,178
    edited June 2022

    Nigelb said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    I was deeply underwhelmed by the muppet representing the train operators on R4 this morning. Apparently, there is currently no wage offer on the table because any wage increase has to be tied to changes in working practices etc.

    I repeat, the day before a national rail strike, there is no offer on the table. ....

    Still can't quite believe it.

    Yes, I heard that - astonishing. The RMT have asked for 7% - high, but below inflation. The employers have refused to say what they will offer. It's hardly surprising that the union has not backed down, with nothing on the table.

    I reckon a settlement of around 5% could be agreed, not unreasonable. But for some reason neither the government nor the employers seem interested in a settlement.

    I'm old enough to remember the halcyon days when the government and its supporters were lauding the return of a high wage economy that would level up, post Brexit and Covid. However, that seems to have somewhat run out of steam once the lorry drivers and a few other groups had been paid off.
    Managers have to manage and if they think that they need to impose new work rosters on their staff that is fair enough. They should negotiate for a period of time to see if a mutually acceptable compromise can be reached and, if not, they should impose what they think is necessary for their business. I have no problem with this.

    What I do have a problem with is refusing to discuss a wage increase at a time of 9% inflation. That is just unacceptable. And to try to pretend that the Union is being unreasonable about this is just dishonest. A settlement between 5 and 7% in the present situation is there for the taking at which point the specific proposals for managing the business can be made.

    The government wants a fight. No other conclusion is possible. Shame on them.
    The government aren't involved, they aren't the management.

    If the unions want an agreement they should be talking to the management, not the government.

    Though perhaps the government should be saying that since the railways aren't operating or serving the purpose they're there for that the subsidies the taxpayers are paying will be reduced so there will be less money for pay settlements.
    I am pretty sure government would get involved were management to start closing the most unprofitable lines.

    What you're spouting is rhetoric rather than reality.
    What I'm saying is my own opinion, nothing more than that.

    If the government wants to pay to keep unprofitable lines open then the management should say we're closing them unless you pay us £x

    Of course then the government should have a choice to say "OK we'll pay it" or "OK close it" or "actually we'll get a different operator to do so instead". Just as employers with striking staff should have the choice between paying the staff what they want, firing the staff, or hiring other staff instead.

    In my view unprofitable lines should be allowed to die. The state shouldn't be choosing winners or losers.
    Except that the state already does this and for generally very good reasons. Railways are extremely capital intensive and if a line becomes broken or incomplete no traffic can use any part of the line. Roads are not so capital intensive and traffic can be easily diverted. However there are considerable benefits for certain kinds of rail use over road use that are not captured in conventional cost/benefit studies. The Beeching Axe made sense in the economics of the time, but the losses resulting from Beeching exceeded the gains from shrinking the capital base. The problem was a failure to invest over decades, not that the network was intrinsictly obsolete.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,786
    edited June 2022

    Food for thought.


    How did the composition of the public sector change over that period?
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    Food for thought.


    What do those numbers look like if you use 1997 as the baseline, rather than 2010?
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 18,145
    edited June 2022

    Nigelb said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    I was deeply underwhelmed by the muppet representing the train operators on R4 this morning. Apparently, there is currently no wage offer on the table because any wage increase has to be tied to changes in working practices etc.

    I repeat, the day before a national rail strike, there is no offer on the table. ....

    Still can't quite believe it.

    Yes, I heard that - astonishing. The RMT have asked for 7% - high, but below inflation. The employers have refused to say what they will offer. It's hardly surprising that the union has not backed down, with nothing on the table.

    I reckon a settlement of around 5% could be agreed, not unreasonable. But for some reason neither the government nor the employers seem interested in a settlement.

    I'm old enough to remember the halcyon days when the government and its supporters were lauding the return of a high wage economy that would level up, post Brexit and Covid. However, that seems to have somewhat run out of steam once the lorry drivers and a few other groups had been paid off.
    Managers have to manage and if they think that they need to impose new work rosters on their staff that is fair enough. They should negotiate for a period of time to see if a mutually acceptable compromise can be reached and, if not, they should impose what they think is necessary for their business. I have no problem with this.

    What I do have a problem with is refusing to discuss a wage increase at a time of 9% inflation. That is just unacceptable. And to try to pretend that the Union is being unreasonable about this is just dishonest. A settlement between 5 and 7% in the present situation is there for the taking at which point the specific proposals for managing the business can be made.

    The government wants a fight. No other conclusion is possible. Shame on them.
    The government aren't involved, they aren't the management.

    If the unions want an agreement they should be talking to the management, not the government.

    Though perhaps the government should be saying that since the railways aren't operating or serving the purpose they're there for that the subsidies the taxpayers are paying will be reduced so there will be less money for pay settlements.
    I am pretty sure government would get involved were management to start closing the most unprofitable lines.

    What you're spouting is rhetoric rather than reality.
    What I'm saying is my own opinion, nothing more than that.

    If the government wants to pay to keep unprofitable lines open then the management should say we're closing them unless you pay us £x

    Of course then the government should have a choice to say "OK we'll pay it" or "OK close it" or "actually we'll get a different operator to do so instead". Just as employers with striking staff should have the choice between paying the staff what they want, firing the staff, or hiring other staff instead.

    In my view unprofitable lines should be allowed to die. The state shouldn't be choosing winners or losers.
    Well that's just ridiculous, as you would no longer have a network – only the most popular lines would stay open. Would you apply the same test to roads, where only the most used roads remained open? Road and rail networks are a cost of running an economy.
    Considering the entire road network is self-funded, yes I would.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    Foxy said:

    kinabalu said:

    MISTY said:

    MISTY said:

    franklyn said:

    Rail staff are hastening their own demise.
    Ticket offices will be closing from September (as they have done years ago on the London Underground). Driverless trains are perfectly viable, as on the Docklands Light Railway, which has never had a fatality.
    The present system is massively overstaffed and full of restrictive practices. Staffing costs inflate fares which in turn deter customers.
    The unions are totally short-sighted and clearly need to be reminded of Scargill

    A fellow on the radio over the week-end was talking about restrictive practices he experienced at British Leyland in the 1970s.

    Took me back...
    Workers got a much bigger slice of the economic pie in the 1970s, though, so they must have been doing something right.
    Yes, and the reasons behind that really do need some examining.

    I doubt anyone on here would disagree that the mega rich are too rich relative to the rest of us, but as to how to spread the love more widely, well....there's the rub.
    Smashing the unions had a lot to do with it.
    On which point I wonder if Johnson now fancies a bit of Thatcher cosplay at home to go with the Churchill abroad. Thinks that would boost his ratings as well as being great fun. It's one explanation of why he seems to want a big face-off with the unions rather than working for a settlement to avoid it. One would hope that's not the plan but increasingly I find the best way to understand this government is through the prism of the strange personality of the man leading it.
    I think his clash with the unions will be more like Heath than Thatcher. She had prepared in advance for the Coal Strike, while there is no real preparation for this summer of discontent.

    Weren't the unions much more powerful in the early 1970s? Around 12 million in the late 70s (from memory) to around 2-3 million today? What does that mean for the potential disruption of strikes?

    Those fapping themselves off over the thought of another winter/summer of discontent might well suffer a little disappointment.

    And besides, if it means belonging on the side of a Putin-supporting piece of filth like Dempsey, I'm glad to be on the other side of this dispute.

    https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2019-10-23/eddie-dempsey-and-misogynistic-warlord
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 18,145
    edited June 2022
    Nigelb said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    franklyn said:

    Rail staff are hastening their own demise.
    Ticket offices will be closing from September (as they have done years ago on the London Underground). Driverless trains are perfectly viable, as on the Docklands Light Railway, which has never had a fatality.
    The present system is massively overstaffed and full of restrictive practices. Staffing costs inflate fares which in turn deter customers.
    The unions are totally short-sighted and clearly need to be reminded of Scargill

    Care to tell me how the bit in bold actually works.

    https://www.londonreconnections.com/2021/the-political-myth-of-the-driverless-tube-train/ will tell you everything anyone needs to know about how it's a complete myth unless you are starting from scratch (and even then it may not make sense).

    Heck Edinburgh, Manchester, Nottingham, Sheffield and Croydon have all introduced Trams since the DLR was built - but none of them are driverless. For the same reason you can't make our rail network driverless when it's easily accessibly by people.

    Only if a track is completely inaccessible to human beings is a driverless network plausible.

    Oh and train prices are set centrally based on a formula from the 70s (from memory) and are completely separate to costs because the network runs at a loss anyway.
    BiB: This is the root of the problem.

    Privatisation was mismanaged, it should have led to the abolition of subsidies but didn't.

    Japan has a highly developed rail network mostly operating without any subsidies. Subsidies should only exist for eg very rural routes etc if they provide a strategic reason they should be open but aren't viable otherwise.

    Rail staff wages should be entirely paid for by rail customers ticket prices, and other associated related revenues. The government shouldn't be in the business of picking and choosing businesses to succeed or fail.
    Parts of the rail network are vastly profitable - otherwise the Open Access Providers wouldn't run long distance services from the North into London.

    The issue is that local short distance networks aren't profitable yet MPs love them and wish for more to be built. Heck round here the current Sedgefield MP wants a station opened at Ferryhill (population 10,000) to provide services to Teesside.

    I suspect the number of commuters wanting an hourly service from Ferryhill to Boro is about 0.01% and that's probably generous.
    If the local short distances aren't profitable, then the government shouldn't be in the business of picking and choosing winners and losers.

    The Japanese manage a highly efficient rail system, mostly without subsidies. We should do the same.
    The rail services on the north island of Hokkaido are 100% public owned, and subsidised.
    And it is hard to see how we would replicate the Japanese model. You'd have to have abolished planning controls before you started hyper expensive projects like HS2, for example.
    Private rail in Japan either owns or has extremely long leases on its rail. It makes up to a third of its money from real estate development. And it consists of local monopolies, not competitors sharing track owned by an operating company, on short term franchises.
    BiB - Hmmm. Are you aware on my opinion of planning controls?

    Two birds, one stone, springs to mind. Win, win.

    It makes sense for rail operators to be involved in development, because developing an area they're serving by rail improves their rail investment, improving the rail network can improve the area they've invested in. Its a virtuous circle.

    So yes, embracing what the Japanese have very successfully done and emulating their lessons seems to make sense.

    PS Hokkaido is less populated than Scotland, so yes different policies in Scotland than England may make sense.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,543

    I wonder what can be up with BJ's sinuses? Inhaled a bit too much cordite on his Ukraine visits maybe.


    It's a strange one.
    For me, it's Starmer who sounds as though he needs his adenoids fixed.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,583

    carnforth said:



    Wes Streeting would like to toy with your emotions. To me this is the most disturbing one because it’s just so weird. What kind of mind thinks this stuff up?

    A less weird one, but another sign he likes the thought of violence:

    image
    Getting your tackles in early?
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    Nigelb said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    I was deeply underwhelmed by the muppet representing the train operators on R4 this morning. Apparently, there is currently no wage offer on the table because any wage increase has to be tied to changes in working practices etc.

    I repeat, the day before a national rail strike, there is no offer on the table. ....

    Still can't quite believe it.

    Yes, I heard that - astonishing. The RMT have asked for 7% - high, but below inflation. The employers have refused to say what they will offer. It's hardly surprising that the union has not backed down, with nothing on the table.

    I reckon a settlement of around 5% could be agreed, not unreasonable. But for some reason neither the government nor the employers seem interested in a settlement.

    I'm old enough to remember the halcyon days when the government and its supporters were lauding the return of a high wage economy that would level up, post Brexit and Covid. However, that seems to have somewhat run out of steam once the lorry drivers and a few other groups had been paid off.
    Managers have to manage and if they think that they need to impose new work rosters on their staff that is fair enough. They should negotiate for a period of time to see if a mutually acceptable compromise can be reached and, if not, they should impose what they think is necessary for their business. I have no problem with this.

    What I do have a problem with is refusing to discuss a wage increase at a time of 9% inflation. That is just unacceptable. And to try to pretend that the Union is being unreasonable about this is just dishonest. A settlement between 5 and 7% in the present situation is there for the taking at which point the specific proposals for managing the business can be made.

    The government wants a fight. No other conclusion is possible. Shame on them.
    The government aren't involved, they aren't the management.

    If the unions want an agreement they should be talking to the management, not the government.

    Though perhaps the government should be saying that since the railways aren't operating or serving the purpose they're there for that the subsidies the taxpayers are paying will be reduced so there will be less money for pay settlements.
    I am pretty sure government would get involved were management to start closing the most unprofitable lines.

    What you're spouting is rhetoric rather than reality.
    What I'm saying is my own opinion, nothing more than that.

    If the government wants to pay to keep unprofitable lines open then the management should say we're closing them unless you pay us £x

    Of course then the government should have a choice to say "OK we'll pay it" or "OK close it" or "actually we'll get a different operator to do so instead". Just as employers with striking staff should have the choice between paying the staff what they want, firing the staff, or hiring other staff instead.

    In my view unprofitable lines should be allowed to die. The state shouldn't be choosing winners or losers.
    Well that's just ridiculous, as you would no longer have a network – only the most popular lines would stay open. Would you apply the same test to roads, where only the most used roads remained open? Road and rail networks are a cost of running an economy.
    Considering the entire road network is self-funded, yes I would.
    Fuel Duty isn't spent on the road network - if it was HMG could just cut it now by stopping a couple of years of development / repairs.

  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,727
    Sir Bob Neill becomes one of the first Tory MPs to publicly criticise the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill

    He writes in @TheHouseMag that it is legally dubious and politically risky

    Here's why he has a hard time buying government's "necessity" argument

    https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/bob-neill-northern-ireland-protocol-bill-legal-criticism https://twitter.com/adampayne26/status/1538865403656646658/photo/1
  • eek said:

    Nigelb said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    I was deeply underwhelmed by the muppet representing the train operators on R4 this morning. Apparently, there is currently no wage offer on the table because any wage increase has to be tied to changes in working practices etc.

    I repeat, the day before a national rail strike, there is no offer on the table. ....

    Still can't quite believe it.

    Yes, I heard that - astonishing. The RMT have asked for 7% - high, but below inflation. The employers have refused to say what they will offer. It's hardly surprising that the union has not backed down, with nothing on the table.

    I reckon a settlement of around 5% could be agreed, not unreasonable. But for some reason neither the government nor the employers seem interested in a settlement.

    I'm old enough to remember the halcyon days when the government and its supporters were lauding the return of a high wage economy that would level up, post Brexit and Covid. However, that seems to have somewhat run out of steam once the lorry drivers and a few other groups had been paid off.
    Managers have to manage and if they think that they need to impose new work rosters on their staff that is fair enough. They should negotiate for a period of time to see if a mutually acceptable compromise can be reached and, if not, they should impose what they think is necessary for their business. I have no problem with this.

    What I do have a problem with is refusing to discuss a wage increase at a time of 9% inflation. That is just unacceptable. And to try to pretend that the Union is being unreasonable about this is just dishonest. A settlement between 5 and 7% in the present situation is there for the taking at which point the specific proposals for managing the business can be made.

    The government wants a fight. No other conclusion is possible. Shame on them.
    The government aren't involved, they aren't the management.

    If the unions want an agreement they should be talking to the management, not the government.

    Though perhaps the government should be saying that since the railways aren't operating or serving the purpose they're there for that the subsidies the taxpayers are paying will be reduced so there will be less money for pay settlements.
    I am pretty sure government would get involved were management to start closing the most unprofitable lines.

    What you're spouting is rhetoric rather than reality.
    What I'm saying is my own opinion, nothing more than that.

    If the government wants to pay to keep unprofitable lines open then the management should say we're closing them unless you pay us £x

    Of course then the government should have a choice to say "OK we'll pay it" or "OK close it" or "actually we'll get a different operator to do so instead". Just as employers with striking staff should have the choice between paying the staff what they want, firing the staff, or hiring other staff instead.

    In my view unprofitable lines should be allowed to die. The state shouldn't be choosing winners or losers.
    Well that's just ridiculous, as you would no longer have a network – only the most popular lines would stay open. Would you apply the same test to roads, where only the most used roads remained open? Road and rail networks are a cost of running an economy.
    Considering the entire road network is self-funded, yes I would.
    Fuel Duty isn't spent on the road network - if it was HMG could just cut it now by stopping a couple of years of development / repairs.

    I know its not, its spent on the NHS and pensions instead.

    But the roads are entirely self-funded and then some by fuel duty etc which is not the case for subsidised rail businesses.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,543

    It turns out that Brown’s phrase, “never spent anything”, actually amounted to a whopping £103,284 spent by him and Sarah between 2007 and 2010. Additionally awkward for Brown is the revelation that the only years a PM actually spent no public cash renovating their flat were under his Tory successors, in 2012-13, 14-15 and 17-18.

    https://order-order.com/2022/06/20/browns-no-10-renovation-memory-loss/

    Seems like the amount of money tarting up #10 flats over the past 20 years you could have built a mansion.

    It's a dump, it really is.

    I think prior to Blair it was a 150 years since a sitting PM had a new baby, now we've three in the last 20 years, it really isn't fit for purpose.

    Don't even get me started on the number of mice I saw on my visits to Number 10/11.
    And now at least one very large rat.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,543

    Nigelb said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    franklyn said:

    Rail staff are hastening their own demise.
    Ticket offices will be closing from September (as they have done years ago on the London Underground). Driverless trains are perfectly viable, as on the Docklands Light Railway, which has never had a fatality.
    The present system is massively overstaffed and full of restrictive practices. Staffing costs inflate fares which in turn deter customers.
    The unions are totally short-sighted and clearly need to be reminded of Scargill

    Care to tell me how the bit in bold actually works.

    https://www.londonreconnections.com/2021/the-political-myth-of-the-driverless-tube-train/ will tell you everything anyone needs to know about how it's a complete myth unless you are starting from scratch (and even then it may not make sense).

    Heck Edinburgh, Manchester, Nottingham, Sheffield and Croydon have all introduced Trams since the DLR was built - but none of them are driverless. For the same reason you can't make our rail network driverless when it's easily accessibly by people.

    Only if a track is completely inaccessible to human beings is a driverless network plausible.

    Oh and train prices are set centrally based on a formula from the 70s (from memory) and are completely separate to costs because the network runs at a loss anyway.
    BiB: This is the root of the problem.

    Privatisation was mismanaged, it should have led to the abolition of subsidies but didn't.

    Japan has a highly developed rail network mostly operating without any subsidies. Subsidies should only exist for eg very rural routes etc if they provide a strategic reason they should be open but aren't viable otherwise.

    Rail staff wages should be entirely paid for by rail customers ticket prices, and other associated related revenues. The government shouldn't be in the business of picking and choosing businesses to succeed or fail.
    Parts of the rail network are vastly profitable - otherwise the Open Access Providers wouldn't run long distance services from the North into London.

    The issue is that local short distance networks aren't profitable yet MPs love them and wish for more to be built. Heck round here the current Sedgefield MP wants a station opened at Ferryhill (population 10,000) to provide services to Teesside.

    I suspect the number of commuters wanting an hourly service from Ferryhill to Boro is about 0.01% and that's probably generous.
    If the local short distances aren't profitable, then the government shouldn't be in the business of picking and choosing winners and losers.

    The Japanese manage a highly efficient rail system, mostly without subsidies. We should do the same.
    The rail services on the north island of Hokkaido are 100% public owned, and subsidised.
    And it is hard to see how we would replicate the Japanese model. You'd have to have abolished planning controls before you started hyper expensive projects like HS2, for example.
    Private rail in Japan either owns or has extremely long leases on its rail. It makes up to a third of its money from real estate development. And it consists of local monopolies, not competitors sharing track owned by an operating company, on short term franchises.
    BiB - Hmmm. Are you aware on my opinion of planning controls?

    Two birds, one stone, springs to mind. Win, win.

    It makes sense for rail operators to be involved in development, because developing an area they're serving by rail improves their rail investment, improving the rail network can improve the area they've invested in. Its a virtuous circle.

    So yes, embracing what the Japanese have very successfully done and emulating their lessons seems to make sense.

    PS Hokkaido is less populated than Scotland, so yes different policies in Scotland than England may make sense.
    That's why I say your opinions on this are fantasy.
    We're discussing how government and/or management deal with the current wage round.

    You're planning for your benign dictatorship.

    There are various debates to be had over all kinds of policies - but the government you support isn't contemplating any of what you propose.
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 20,433

    Food for thought.


    How did the composition of the public sector change over that period?
    Was it a significant increase in the proportion of the workforce that were also Johnson's mistresses?
  • Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 4,784
    Leon said:

    Pro_Rata said:

    Just read chapter 1 of the Oldham report, 20 pages or so of key findings.

    It doesn't quite read to me as a the general cover up of Leon's summarising, but of a council post 2010 fighting the issue hard, on policy and operation fronts, actively trying to be upfront, but not always succeeding to turn the screw on the abusers tightly or quickly enough, or always managing to get the on the ground coordination right. It definitely highlights failures, very serious failures, especially in 2005-2010, but it doesn't read to me as a damning report on the post 2010 efforts of the council.

    Report link contained within this BBC article:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-61863603

    It's interesting that you're so keen to specifically exonerate Oldham Council from 2010 onwards, but heap blame on them over 2005-2010

    Of course this would have nothing to do with the Labour Leader of Oldham Council elected in 2011?

    That person being Jim McMahon, now Shadow Minister for DEFRA in Keir Starmer's Shadow Cabinet

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_McMahon_(politician)
    I have been impressed at times with Jim McMahon and warmed to him when he was elected in his by election, both how he put himself across and looking at his history as a campaigning council leader. Later he was supposedly the shadow minister dissing Rayner for campaigning in leopard print, where I thought he was being a bit of a pillock.

    So, yes, I pretty well knew who leader A was and where he is now, and that he stands very much on my part of the political spectrum (albeit I'm not an actual activist beyond these pages nor a current member of any party), but my honest reading of the key findings is genuinely that his tenure was a phase where they were very aware and making a strong effort to crack down on this kind of exploitation and as such what I have read does not diminish him in my estimation.

    Perhaps I see a distinction pre and post 2010 more because of that awareness, but it is clearly there in the findings, and the image of a council not getting everything right even in the midst of a push to do better is an important one for other councils and leaders grappling with this. And that image actually has little to do with the stripe of his politics, but his experience and actions being leader in the midst of that storm and is something leaders anywhere on the political spectrum can gain lessons from.
This discussion has been closed.