"The MP for North Devon said that migrants had been moved into a “fully functioning tourist hotel in Ilfracombe” that was forced to sack “all its staff to become a hotel for the Home Office without any consultation with the council”. Previously when migrants have moved into hotels existing staff have been sacked to be replaced by Home Office staff."
Times.
This is not the sort of thing I want happening in my, erm, back yard.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
You can apply all that to Wales under the Welsh labour government (apart from the tube obviously)
Welsh Labour seem less a political proposition than a kind of shitocracy. I presume the Welsh prefer it this way as the Welsh Tories are even worse.
I've never understood the popularity of Mark Drakeford.
I've never understood the popularity of Welsh Labour in general, and I *am* Welsh.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever.
Far too London-centric. It's not in London that schools have the major problems in getting and retaining staff. It's got a large supply of young graduates it can draw on, although they also move on fairly swiftly as you note. The North East is by far the worst but things are grim in the Midlands and West Country.
Similarly, good luck getting a bus round here for less than a fortune. Tube, of course, doesn't operate outside London.
Also, the train services are grossly overstretched due to capacity constraints, which is why HS2 being scaled back is a real worry.
Now, that's not to say things are totally desolate. This is still a great country to live in in lots of ways. But it's frustratingly badly run and run down because too many public servants of all shades give no shits about anything except their own careers, so won't make hard choices and won't tell people difficult truths about spending and policy choices.
You have to explain though, why it seems to have got worse, and indeed whether the decline has hit the UK harder.
Hard to really tell as the English speaking media really only care about the UK and the US who are both fucked in quite different ways.
We mostly hear utter bullshit about Europe, and pretty much nothing about anywhere else.
I have a fair bit of experience of life, infrastructure and public services in France, admittedly as a second home owner who only has secondhand evidence on say education or policing.
They are much much better, in almost all ways. The planning process is less bureaucratic but seems to work effectively to prevent poor development. The healthcare system is quick and effective. Private transport infrastructure is way better, the roads better maintained (but public transport less so). Nursery and early years education and childcare are excellent meaning women are back in the workplace much more quickly than in Britain. The care system, from what I've seen, is well funded and humane. Environmental management is active, largely delegated to town hall or even commune level, and taken seriously.
The things that don't work as well in France as the UK include: buses - even thinner on the ground than here, very sparse local rail network, choice in things like prescription medicine which remains heavily restricted to private pharmacies, choice in other things like energy provider or broadband, shop opening hours of course, and the tendency of public sector workers to go on strike with alarming frequency. There are a few things like police heavy handedness where we seem to be equally as bad as each other. But all in all things are pretty good.
Doesn't stop the locals from moaning endlessly about how their country is going aux chiens though.
Probably true for a white Englishmen living in a nice part of white Burgundy (you see what I did there)
Is that true for the 10-20% of French people living in the bainlieues? They do burn an awful lot of cars
On the whole however I would agree that France feels better governed than the UK atm, and has done for some time, and it is quite annoying. We are meant to be the sensible ones
And the French do moan in an over-pessimistic way. La morosite is a thing
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
You can apply all that to Wales under the Welsh labour government (apart from the tube obviously)
Welsh Labour seem less a political proposition than a kind of shitocracy. I presume the Welsh prefer it this way as the Welsh Tories are even worse.
I've never understood the popularity of Mark Drakeford.
He was actually impressive when interviewed on the Rest Is Politics podcast. The mystery deepens…
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever.
Far too London-centric. It's not in London that schools have the major problems in getting and retaining staff. It's got a large supply of young graduates it can draw on, although they also move on fairly swiftly as you note. The North East is by far the worst but things are grim in the Midlands and West Country.
Similarly, good luck getting a bus round here for less than a fortune. Tube, of course, doesn't operate outside London.
Also, the train services are grossly overstretched due to capacity constraints, which is why HS2 being scaled back is a real worry.
Now, that's not to say things are totally desolate. This is still a great country to live in in lots of ways. But it's frustratingly badly run and run down because too many public servants of all shades give no shits about anything except their own careers, so won't make hard choices and won't tell people difficult truths about spending and policy choices.
I'm sorry it was London centric but I wanted to draw on my own personal experience and London is where I live!
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
And sewage. Don't forget sewage.
There is a serious issue with sewage and rivers but a bit like showing cooling towers at power stations as pollution (its steam) the muck into the sea in Cornwall on that video is mostly mud.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever.
Far too London-centric. It's not in London that schools have the major problems in getting and retaining staff. It's got a large supply of young graduates it can draw on, although they also move on fairly swiftly as you note. The North East is by far the worst but things are grim in the Midlands and West Country.
Similarly, good luck getting a bus round here for less than a fortune. Tube, of course, doesn't operate outside London.
Also, the train services are grossly overstretched due to capacity constraints, which is why HS2 being scaled back is a real worry.
Now, that's not to say things are totally desolate. This is still a great country to live in in lots of ways. But it's frustratingly badly run and run down because too many public servants of all shades give no shits about anything except their own careers, so won't make hard choices and won't tell people difficult truths about spending and policy choices.
I'm sorry it was London centric but I wanted to draw on my own personal experience and London is where I live!
You had in fact said 'from your personal experience' and I had missed that, so assumed you were extrapolating country wide from London. My apologies.
Note to self - try to read properly before replying.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever.
Far too London-centric. It's not in London that schools have the major problems in getting and retaining staff. It's got a large supply of young graduates it can draw on, although they also move on fairly swiftly as you note. The North East is by far the worst but things are grim in the Midlands and West Country.
Similarly, good luck getting a bus round here for less than a fortune. Tube, of course, doesn't operate outside London.
Also, the train services are grossly overstretched due to capacity constraints, which is why HS2 being scaled back is a real worry.
Now, that's not to say things are totally desolate. This is still a great country to live in in lots of ways. But it's frustratingly badly run and run down because too many public servants of all shades give no shits about anything except their own careers, so won't make hard choices and won't tell people difficult truths about spending and policy choices.
Politicians, of course, have the best motivation for not making hard choices and telling people difficult truths: it loses them elections.
If a politician tells the electors some difficult truths, and is voted out in consequence, whose fault is that? The politician’s, or the voters’?
If other politicians note the adverse consequences of telling difficult truths, and trim their message accordingly so that they get elected, whose fault is that? The politicians’, or the voters’?
It’s very much my view that in a free society we get the politicians we deserve. They reflect us profoundly, and if we don’t like what we see it should tell us something about ourselves. There’s a Russian saying: “Don’t blame the mirror if the mug is ugly."
"The MP for North Devon said that migrants had been moved into a “fully functioning tourist hotel in Ilfracombe” that was forced to sack “all its staff to become a hotel for the Home Office without any consultation with the council”. Previously when migrants have moved into hotels existing staff have been sacked to be replaced by Home Office staff."
Times.
This is not the sort of thing I want happening in my, erm, back yard.
Hang on. They sack the staff?
Yes. Because the asylum seekers require a “lower level of service” - they don’t need daily cleaning and a well stocked bar open 24/7 etc. Most of the staff go and it becomes a suspiciously well appointed halls of residence for Albanians
So these businesses are destroyed as a social entity. The owners make a fat profit. The whole thing is fucking fucked. Just deport these people. Enough. VOTE FARAGE
"The MP for North Devon said that migrants had been moved into a “fully functioning tourist hotel in Ilfracombe” that was forced to sack “all its staff to become a hotel for the Home Office without any consultation with the council”. Previously when migrants have moved into hotels existing staff have been sacked to be replaced by Home Office staff."
Times.
This is not the sort of thing I want happening in my, erm, back yard.
Hang on. They sack the staff?
Yes. Because the asylum seekers require a “lower level of service” - they don’t need daily cleaning and a well stocked bar open 24/7 etc. Most of the staff go and it becomes a suspiciously well appointed halls of residence for Albanians
So these businesses are destroyed as a social entity. The owners make a fat profit. The whole thing is fucking fucked. Just deport these people. Enough. VOTE FARAGE
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
You can apply all that to Wales under the Welsh labour government (apart from the tube obviously)
Welsh Labour seem less a political proposition than a kind of shitocracy. I presume the Welsh prefer it this way as the Welsh Tories are even worse.
I've never understood the popularity of Mark Drakeford.
He was actually impressive when interviewed on the Rest Is Politics podcast. The mystery deepens…
He is actually a very clever man. And those people I know who know him, like him. (But then, so do people who know Gavin Williamson.) But like all Welsh party leaders, he's proved pretty hapless in office.
I think part of the problem is the poor quality of the Welsh Civil Service, which fishes in a very small pool indeed for all sorts of reasons. But most of the problem is simply the fundamentally corrupt nature of the Welsh party systems, which are a veritable Augean stables of favours, kickbacks, shady deals and local bosses.
That applies just as much to the Tories and Plaid as to Labour. It used to apply to the Liberals too as I knew to my cost living in Aberystwyth, but they've died out so are no longer important.
This, I think, is the definitive statement on Musk's adventure.
Elon Musk's offer to buy Twitter was so outlandishly high that a.) Twitter's old board couldn't say no, b.) Musk himself couldn't afford it, and c.) it damned the entire company to significant debt and massive layoffs. Every part of this deal has been and continues to be stupid. https://twitter.com/ScottNover/status/1588369490722492417
Like Morrisons. Or, going further back, Kraft's buyout of Cadbury or Glazer's of ManUtd.
Why do they never learn?
The Glazers have made the thick end of $1bn out of buying Man U with its own money. Whatever you might think of what they have done to the club from a business perspective it borders on genius.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
I agree those things are all quite banjaxed, and yet in my recent travels this year - and I have been to many countries - the UK does not stand out as feeling notably buggered
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia Sri Lanka Georgia Turkey Greece Montenegro United States Portugal Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Iceland
…. Least fucked
The Courts and Land Registry are probably the worst. The introduction of new IT systems, designed to make things function better, seem to make things function worse. The Land Registry and Probate Registries can't complain of lack of resources, since they charge substantial fees to their users and they have a monopoly. I think both institutions actually take a great deal of pride in delivering terrible service to the public.
OTOH, the Courts were positively Dickensian back in the late eighties. There was a big improvement under Major and Blair, before things started to go backwards.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
You can apply all that to Wales under the Welsh labour government (apart from the tube obviously)
Welsh Labour seem less a political proposition than a kind of shitocracy. I presume the Welsh prefer it this way as the Welsh Tories are even worse.
I've never understood the popularity of Mark Drakeford.
He was actually impressive when interviewed on the Rest Is Politics podcast. The mystery deepens…
He is actually a very clever man. And those people I know who know him, like him. (But then, so do people who know Gavin Williamson.)
I think part of the problem is the poor quality of the Welsh Civil Service, which fishes in a very small pool indeed for all sorts of reasons. But most of the problem is simply the fundamentally corrupt nature of the Welsh party systems, which are a veritable Augean stables of favours, kickbacks, shady deals and local bosses.
That applies just as much to the Tories and Plaid as to Labour. It used to apply to the Liberals too as I knew to my cost living in Aberystwyth, but they've died out so are no longer important.
Do the Welsh CS and local authorities still insist on everyone speaking ‘the language’?
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
Thats too extreme. Schools and Uni's are open, the hospitals are cracking on with trying to reduce waiting lists, while still dealing with covid (less so but still there), unemployment is low, there are jobs available. Immigration is in the public eye but is at lower levels than most European nations. The economy is being buffeted by global events and is not alone. Tough times ahead, same as elsewhere.
The well off will be fine, the middle incomes will struggle some more and the poor as always will suffer the most.
I agree that it's too extreme a view. Our schools are actually OK, there are jobs, we still do a lot of stuff very well.
The area that seems closest to genuinely broken, to my outsider's eyes, is justice.
They're really, really not. That's a system right on the edge.
The thing is that the staff are trying their hardest to keep the full scale of the unfolding disaster from impacting the children so it isn't immediately obvious to outsiders just how bad it is.
Amusingly, in a grim way, I've just been sent yet another pleading email to go on supply. I checked where they wanted me and it was the very school I'd left. In fact, my old job. They haven't been able to replace me yet, six whole months after I informed them I was leaving.
Surely replacing you is a completely impossible task @ydoethur? No one else is as gifted at puns.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
And sewage. Don't forget sewage.
There is a serious issue with sewage and rivers but a bit like showing cooling towers at power stations as pollution (its steam) the muck into the sea in Cornwall on that video is mostly mud.
Call me Mr Picky if you will, but I do like water I swim in to be entirely rather than just mostly not shit.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
I agree those things are all quite banjaxed, and yet in my recent travels this year - and I have been to many countries - the UK does not stand out as feeling notably buggered
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia Sri Lanka Georgia Turkey Greece Montenegro United States Portugal Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Iceland
…. Least fucked
The Courts and Land Registry are probably the worst. The introduction of new IT systems, designed to make things function better, seem to make things function worse. The Land Registry and Probate Registries can't complain of lack of resources, since they charge substantial fees to their users and they have a monopoly. I think both institutions actually take a great deal of pride in delivering terrible service to the public.
OTOH, the Courts were positively Dickensian back in the late eighties. There was a big improvement under Major and Blair, before things started to go backwards.
One question for the lawyers among us:
Why the f*** do so many court cases last so long these days? Not so long ago a trial was considered a bit of a monster if it lasted more than a week. Now, some drag on for months if not years.
Is there value betting AGAINST the Arizona favourite, Kari Lake, at these odds?
The early votes are modestly good for the Dems, the polls have significantly tightened. No way Kari Lake is that big a favourite
She's 2 points clear in the 538 pollnig average. Barring two 11 point lead polls the polls are very consistent at a 1-3 point lead for Lake.
So betting against her is betting on herding polling error in favour of the Democrats.
I am not tempted but 5/1 is definitely in the zone of temptation for betting on Hobbs here.
I would bet that the polls - in aggregate - are going to overstate Dems by 2-3% or overstate Republicans by the same amount. That makes 5-1 or more on Hobbs in AZ a decent bet.
Hobbs, btw, seems to be a dreadful candidate. Here she is, desperately struggling on a friendly tv show, as she explains why she won’t ever debate on TV. Not good
Suggests that a better Dem might have won quite easily?
TV debates are now so entrenched in US politics, that it’s always going to be counted against someone who doesn’t want to do them - even when their opponent is a brilliant media performer.
The one exception that comes to mind this year, is John Fetterman, clearly not recovered from a stroke some months ago, and as with Biden sad to see on TV.
There's been a couple of responses by stroke specialists saying that Fetterman's performance, poor as it was, showed that his recovery is progressing well and the prognosis is a near-total recovery. That's not to take away from the fact that it won't have come over well to anyone watching the debate, and who doesn't then see these analyses.
Good to hear that Mr Fetterman’s prognosis is good - but this was an interview for a stressful job representing his State in the US Senate, not his weekly therapy session with the doctors.
Isn't the major requirement of a Senator to vote the right way?
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
You can apply all that to Wales under the Welsh labour government (apart from the tube obviously)
Welsh Labour seem less a political proposition than a kind of shitocracy. I presume the Welsh prefer it this way as the Welsh Tories are even worse.
I've never understood the popularity of Mark Drakeford.
"The MP for North Devon said that migrants had been moved into a “fully functioning tourist hotel in Ilfracombe” that was forced to sack “all its staff to become a hotel for the Home Office without any consultation with the council”. Previously when migrants have moved into hotels existing staff have been sacked to be replaced by Home Office staff."
Times.
This is not the sort of thing I want happening in my, erm, back yard.
Hang on. They sack the staff?
Yes. Because the asylum seekers require a “lower level of service” - they don’t need daily cleaning and a well stocked bar open 24/7 etc. Most of the staff go and it becomes a suspiciously well appointed halls of residence for Albanians
So these businesses are destroyed as a social entity. The owners make a fat profit. The whole thing is fucking fucked. Just deport these people. Enough. VOTE FARAGE
I don't buy the " forced to" though, surely the HO can't just requisition? Entered a contract a term of which was that..., presumably
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
You can apply all that to Wales under the Welsh labour government (apart from the tube obviously)
Welsh Labour seem less a political proposition than a kind of shitocracy. I presume the Welsh prefer it this way as the Welsh Tories are even worse.
I've never understood the popularity of Mark Drakeford.
He was actually impressive when interviewed on the Rest Is Politics podcast. The mystery deepens…
He is actually a very clever man. And those people I know who know him, like him. (But then, so do people who know Gavin Williamson.) But like all Welsh party leaders, he's proved pretty hapless in office.
I think part of the problem is the poor quality of the Welsh Civil Service, which fishes in a very small pool indeed for all sorts of reasons. But most of the problem is simply the fundamentally corrupt nature of the Welsh party systems, which are a veritable Augean stables of favours, kickbacks, shady deals and local bosses.
That applies just as much to the Tories and Plaid as to Labour. It used to apply to the Liberals too as I knew to my cost living in Aberystwyth, but they've died out so are no longer important.
Wales is only a bit smaller than NZ. Often the countries that appear most well governed are quite small.
There must be some deeper seated reason for the incestuousness and corruption.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
You can apply all that to Wales under the Welsh labour government (apart from the tube obviously)
Welsh Labour seem less a political proposition than a kind of shitocracy. I presume the Welsh prefer it this way as the Welsh Tories are even worse.
I've never understood the popularity of Mark Drakeford.
He was actually impressive when interviewed on the Rest Is Politics podcast. The mystery deepens…
He is actually a very clever man. And those people I know who know him, like him. (But then, so do people who know Gavin Williamson.)
I think part of the problem is the poor quality of the Welsh Civil Service, which fishes in a very small pool indeed for all sorts of reasons. But most of the problem is simply the fundamentally corrupt nature of the Welsh party systems, which are a veritable Augean stables of favours, kickbacks, shady deals and local bosses.
That applies just as much to the Tories and Plaid as to Labour. It used to apply to the Liberals too as I knew to my cost living in Aberystwyth, but they've died out so are no longer important.
Do the Welsh CS and local authorities still insist on everyone speaking ‘the language’?
AIUI they don't *insist* exactly, but it is very difficult to get appointed as a monoglot English speaker ahead of somebody with at least a working knowledge of Welsh.
THey had to abandon the requirement for university vice chancellors when they realised they were appointing only idiots. Unfortunately one of the first beneficiaries was April Macmahon, whose staff nicknamed her 'Robert Maxwell' for her interesting financial arrangements.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
I agree those things are all quite banjaxed, and yet in my recent travels this year - and I have been to many countries - the UK does not stand out as feeling notably buggered
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia Sri Lanka Georgia Turkey Greece Montenegro United States Portugal Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Iceland
…. Least fucked
I'm sure you're right, in part. But to those of us being more bound to these fair isles it is cold comfort that it remains the case other places are more screwed.
Incidentally, I am amazed to discover that posters who told us the polls could not be trusted and GOP were going to do well in 2018 midterms & that Trump was going to win bigly in 2020 and that the polls could not be trusted (and that May was going to win big in 2017 and the polls could not be trusted) seem to be happy with the trustworthiness of the polls in 2022 when they are showing a GOP sweep.
Well, the polls did suggest that the Conservatives would win a working majority in 2017, and the polls do tend to underestimate Republican support, historically.
And, in the current case, the polls match the fundamentals. It's mid term, the economy is in a bad way, Biden is fairly unpopular, so why would one not expect the Presidential party to get a beating, since this almost always happens in those circumstances?
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
I agree those things are all quite banjaxed, and yet in my recent travels this year - and I have been to many countries - the UK does not stand out as feeling notably buggered
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia Sri Lanka Georgia Turkey Greece Montenegro United States Portugal Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Iceland
…. Least fucked
I would say that Italy is significantly more fucked than Portugal.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
I agree those things are all quite banjaxed, and yet in my recent travels this year - and I have been to many countries - the UK does not stand out as feeling notably buggered
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia Sri Lanka Georgia Turkey Greece Montenegro United States Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Iceland
…. Least fucked
Just don't get prosecuted, deported, educated or ill. I have seriously thought about limiting my riding because of the bleak outlook for A&E. Then I think fuck it, it's usually a helicopter job off the moor so at least I jump the ambulance queue.
My family has intimate experience of the NHS, education and the tax office at the moment. The NHS is actually looking after my dying parents (no need for sympathies, they are VERY old) rather well. No complaints
My older daughter’s education is good. She’s at a high performing North London Sixth Form College. It works well. She seems happy. The streets are safe when she walks home
The tax office has gone to shit. I finally got my double taxation forms returned: eight months after I applied. Rather than the normal 2 weeks. Pathetic
So much of this is simply Working From Home. We have to grasp the nettle - certainly in the public service - and say Guys this is not panning out. Get your fat lazy civil service arse back to the office. I suspect this is one reason continental Europe is, in part, recovering better than us. They have returned to more normal working patterns more effectively
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
You can apply all that to Wales under the Welsh labour government (apart from the tube obviously)
Welsh Labour seem less a political proposition than a kind of shitocracy. I presume the Welsh prefer it this way as the Welsh Tories are even worse.
I've never understood the popularity of Mark Drakeford.
He was actually impressive when interviewed on the Rest Is Politics podcast. The mystery deepens…
He is actually a very clever man. And those people I know who know him, like him. (But then, so do people who know Gavin Williamson.) But like all Welsh party leaders, he's proved pretty hapless in office.
I think part of the problem is the poor quality of the Welsh Civil Service, which fishes in a very small pool indeed for all sorts of reasons. But most of the problem is simply the fundamentally corrupt nature of the Welsh party systems, which are a veritable Augean stables of favours, kickbacks, shady deals and local bosses.
That applies just as much to the Tories and Plaid as to Labour. It used to apply to the Liberals too as I knew to my cost living in Aberystwyth, but they've died out so are no longer important.
Wales is only a bit smaller than NZ. Often the countries that appear most well governed are quite small.
There must be some deeper seated reason for the incestuousness and corruption.
Serious question - how many talented New Zealanders emigrate to more lucrative careers?
Or to put it another way - in which other country can a New Zealander earn 50% more merely by taking a two hour train ride?
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
You can apply all that to Wales under the Welsh labour government (apart from the tube obviously)
Welsh Labour seem less a political proposition than a kind of shitocracy. I presume the Welsh prefer it this way as the Welsh Tories are even worse.
I've never understood the popularity of Mark Drakeford.
I've never understood the popularity of Welsh Labour in general, and I *am* Welsh.
Wales has been Labour virtually forever, and while the NHS is in crisis with our GP practice taken over by the local health board and ambulance waiting times every bit as bad as England, Drakeford allocates £4.5 million for free Welsh lessons to all 18-25 year olds, is introducing extensive 20 mph zones, and a much hated tourist tax
One day Wales may wake up to this socialist utopia but not just for a while
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
I agree those things are all quite banjaxed, and yet in my recent travels this year - and I have been to many countries - the UK does not stand out as feeling notably buggered
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia Sri Lanka Georgia Turkey Greece Montenegro United States Portugal Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Iceland
…. Least fucked
The Courts and Land Registry are probably the worst. The introduction of new IT systems, designed to make things function better, seem to make things function worse. The Land Registry and Probate Registries can't complain of lack of resources, since they charge substantial fees to their users and they have a monopoly. I think both institutions actually take a great deal of pride in delivering terrible service to the public.
OTOH, the Courts were positively Dickensian back in the late eighties. There was a big improvement under Major and Blair, before things started to go backwards.
One question for the lawyers among us:
Why the f*** do so many court cases last so long these days? Not so long ago a trial was considered a bit of a monster if it lasted more than a week. Now, some drag on for months if not years.
Dunno, mainly the legal gravy train I think. Plus there's so much documentation about everything.
French courts will set aside a whole day for a trial which would be 16 weeks in the UK commercial court. And then automatically find for the French party.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever.
Far too London-centric. It's not in London that schools have the major problems in getting and retaining staff. It's got a large supply of young graduates it can draw on, although they also move on fairly swiftly as you note. The North East is by far the worst but things are grim in the Midlands and West Country.
Similarly, good luck getting a bus round here for less than a fortune. Tube, of course, doesn't operate outside London.
Also, the train services are grossly overstretched due to capacity constraints, which is why HS2 being scaled back is a real worry.
Now, that's not to say things are totally desolate. This is still a great country to live in in lots of ways. But it's frustratingly badly run and run down because too many public servants of all shades give no shits about anything except their own careers, so won't make hard choices and won't tell people difficult truths about spending and policy choices.
You have to explain though, why it seems to have got worse, and indeed whether the decline has hit the UK harder.
Hard to really tell as the English speaking media really only care about the UK and the US who are both fucked in quite different ways.
We mostly hear utter bullshit about Europe, and pretty much nothing about anywhere else.
I have a fair bit of experience of life, infrastructure and public services in France, admittedly as a second home owner who only has secondhand evidence on say education or policing.
They are much much better, in almost all ways. The planning process is less bureaucratic but seems to work effectively to prevent poor development. The healthcare system is quick and effective. Private transport infrastructure is way better, the roads better maintained (but public transport less so). Nursery and early years education and childcare are excellent meaning women are back in the workplace much more quickly than in Britain. The care system, from what I've seen, is well funded and humane. Environmental management is active, largely delegated to town hall or even commune level, and taken seriously.
The things that don't work as well in France as the UK include: buses - even thinner on the ground than here, very sparse local rail network, choice in things like prescription medicine which remains heavily restricted to private pharmacies, choice in other things like energy provider or broadband, shop opening hours of course, and the tendency of public sector workers to go on strike with alarming frequency. There are a few things like police heavy handedness where we seem to be equally as bad as each other. But all in all things are pretty good.
Doesn't stop the locals from moaning endlessly about how their country is going aux chiens though.
Probably true for a white Englishmen living in a nice part of white Burgundy (you see what I did there)
Is that true for the 10-20% of French people living in the bainlieues? They do burn an awful lot of cars
On the whole however I would agree that France feels better governed than the UK atm, and has done for some time, and it is quite annoying. We are meant to be the sensible ones
And the French do moan in an over-pessimistic way. La morosite is a thing
The French pay a lot more tax than we do. That's why they have better public services but also explains why they moan a lot.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
I agree those things are all quite banjaxed, and yet in my recent travels this year - and I have been to many countries - the UK does not stand out as feeling notably buggered
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia Sri Lanka Georgia Turkey Greece Montenegro United States Portugal Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Iceland
…. Least fucked
The Courts and Land Registry are probably the worst. The introduction of new IT systems, designed to make things function better, seem to make things function worse. The Land Registry and Probate Registries can't complain of lack of resources, since they charge substantial fees to their users and they have a monopoly. I think both institutions actually take a great deal of pride in delivering terrible service to the public.
OTOH, the Courts were positively Dickensian back in the late eighties. There was a big improvement under Major and Blair, before things started to go backwards.
One question for the lawyers among us:
Why the f*** do so many court cases last so long these days? Not so long ago a trial was considered a bit of a monster if it lasted more than a week. Now, some drag on for months if not years.
The Hanratty trial was then the longest murder trial ever - at three weeks. How things have changed.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
And sewage. Don't forget sewage.
There is a serious issue with sewage and rivers but a bit like showing cooling towers at power stations as pollution (its steam) the muck into the sea in Cornwall on that video is mostly mud.
Call me Mr Picky if you will, but I do like water I swim in to be entirely rather than just mostly not shit.
Also, the point was that the mud was a sign of excess effluent anyway. It's a bit like claiming that toilet paper isn't doing swimmers any harm - which was, strictly, true. But ...
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
Thats too extreme. Schools and Uni's are open, the hospitals are cracking on with trying to reduce waiting lists, while still dealing with covid (less so but still there), unemployment is low, there are jobs available. Immigration is in the public eye but is at lower levels than most European nations. The economy is being buffeted by global events and is not alone. Tough times ahead, same as elsewhere.
The well off will be fine, the middle incomes will struggle some more and the poor as always will suffer the most.
I agree that it's too extreme a view. Our schools are actually OK, there are jobs, we still do a lot of stuff very well.
The area that seems closest to genuinely broken, to my outsider's eyes, is justice.
They're really, really not. That's a system right on the edge.
The thing is that the staff are trying their hardest to keep the full scale of the unfolding disaster from impacting the children so it isn't immediately obvious to outsiders just how bad it is.
Amusingly, in a grim way, I've just been sent yet another pleading email to go on supply. I checked where they wanted me and it was the very school I'd left. In fact, my old job. They haven't been able to replace me yet, six whole months after I informed them I was leaving.
Surely replacing you is a completely impossible task @ydoethur? No one else is as gifted at puns.
You flatter me
More seriously, there is a chronic shortage of people who can teach A-level philosophy. But even in English they had to get supply in.
And that's a good school. Don't get me started on what's happened in Walsall...
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
The news channels are the best example of this.
Though from another point of view, news channels are another example of the "it's all a bit rubbish" malaise.
Earlier this week, we heard about the cuts to BBC local radio. And whilst sounds are still coming out of the speakers, the content is noticeably thinner than it used to be. A couple of local evening news shows are being cancelled. The Romford Recorder has just gone up to £1.10, and there's not much in it.
The country is creaking, and it's not obvious how it improves.
Whitakers Almanack -not published this year for first time in many years ? Really depressing if the end .
Still i am hosting my halloween murder mystery party tomorrow so not all bad
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
I agree those things are all quite banjaxed, and yet in my recent travels this year - and I have been to many countries - the UK does not stand out as feeling notably buggered
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia Sri Lanka Georgia Turkey Greece Montenegro United States Portugal Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Iceland
…. Least fucked
The Courts and Land Registry are probably the worst. The introduction of new IT systems, designed to make things function better, seem to make things function worse. The Land Registry and Probate Registries can't complain of lack of resources, since they charge substantial fees to their users and they have a monopoly. I think both institutions actually take a great deal of pride in delivering terrible service to the public.
OTOH, the Courts were positively Dickensian back in the late eighties. There was a big improvement under Major and Blair, before things started to go backwards.
One question for the lawyers among us:
Why the f*** do so many court cases last so long these days? Not so long ago a trial was considered a bit of a monster if it lasted more than a week. Now, some drag on for months if not years.
In my most recent trial I got all the evidence required in 1 hour. But the case still took 3 days! The first day we empanel a jury, sort out a joint minute of agreed facts etc. After the evidence we did both speeches on day 2 and then the Judge charged the jury on day 3 who came back with a verdict (guilty, as it happens). It is this bureaucracy that surrounds trials that takes the time.
In Scotland an innovation a few years ago now was a case management hearing before a Judge called a Preliminary Hearing. This tries to identify what is actually in dispute and to identify what witnesses are actually required. I am not sure if the same happens in England but there seems a lot of evidence that is either not contentious or not particularly relevant.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever.
Far too London-centric. It's not in London that schools have the major problems in getting and retaining staff. It's got a large supply of young graduates it can draw on, although they also move on fairly swiftly as you note. The North East is by far the worst but things are grim in the Midlands and West Country.
Similarly, good luck getting a bus round here for less than a fortune. Tube, of course, doesn't operate outside London.
Also, the train services are grossly overstretched due to capacity constraints, which is why HS2 being scaled back is a real worry.
Now, that's not to say things are totally desolate. This is still a great country to live in in lots of ways. But it's frustratingly badly run and run down because too many public servants of all shades give no shits about anything except their own careers, so won't make hard choices and won't tell people difficult truths about spending and policy choices.
You have to explain though, why it seems to have got worse, and indeed whether the decline has hit the UK harder.
Hard to really tell as the English speaking media really only care about the UK and the US who are both fucked in quite different ways.
We mostly hear utter bullshit about Europe, and pretty much nothing about anywhere else.
I have a fair bit of experience of life, infrastructure and public services in France, admittedly as a second home owner who only has secondhand evidence on say education or policing.
They are much much better, in almost all ways. The planning process is less bureaucratic but seems to work effectively to prevent poor development. The healthcare system is quick and effective. Private transport infrastructure is way better, the roads better maintained (but public transport less so). Nursery and early years education and childcare are excellent meaning women are back in the workplace much more quickly than in Britain. The care system, from what I've seen, is well funded and humane. Environmental management is active, largely delegated to town hall or even commune level, and taken seriously.
The things that don't work as well in France as the UK include: buses - even thinner on the ground than here, very sparse local rail network, choice in things like prescription medicine which remains heavily restricted to private pharmacies, choice in other things like energy provider or broadband, shop opening hours of course, and the tendency of public sector workers to go on strike with alarming frequency. There are a few things like police heavy handedness where we seem to be equally as bad as each other. But all in all things are pretty good.
Doesn't stop the locals from moaning endlessly about how their country is going aux chiens though.
Probably true for a white Englishmen living in a nice part of white Burgundy (you see what I did there)
Is that true for the 10-20% of French people living in the bainlieues? They do burn an awful lot of cars
On the whole however I would agree that France feels better governed than the UK atm, and has done for some time, and it is quite annoying. We are meant to be the sensible ones
And the French do moan in an over-pessimistic way. La morosite is a thing
Life obviously a lot harder in the Banlieues than Burgundy but like for like are they better served by public infrastructure than people in poor parts of Teeside or Cornwall? Almost certainly. Southern Burgundy is probably best compared with somewhere like Somerset or Monmouthshire ie it’s not the Home Counties but it’s not particularly poor either.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
I agree those things are all quite banjaxed, and yet in my recent travels this year - and I have been to many countries - the UK does not stand out as feeling notably buggered
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia Sri Lanka Georgia Turkey Greece Montenegro United States Portugal Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Iceland
…. Least fucked
Portugal is definitely not fucked. That's based on an extended stay with family in central Portugal last Autumn when my son married a Portuguese lass, in the main spent well away from the main tourist spots. It was like going back two decades to a time when things actually worked and public services existed. And then we returned to the UK.....
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
You can apply all that to Wales under the Welsh labour government (apart from the tube obviously)
Welsh Labour seem less a political proposition than a kind of shitocracy. I presume the Welsh prefer it this way as the Welsh Tories are even worse.
I've never understood the popularity of Mark Drakeford.
He was actually impressive when interviewed on the Rest Is Politics podcast. The mystery deepens…
He is actually a very clever man. And those people I know who know him, like him. (But then, so do people who know Gavin Williamson.) But like all Welsh party leaders, he's proved pretty hapless in office.
I think part of the problem is the poor quality of the Welsh Civil Service, which fishes in a very small pool indeed for all sorts of reasons. But most of the problem is simply the fundamentally corrupt nature of the Welsh party systems, which are a veritable Augean stables of favours, kickbacks, shady deals and local bosses.
That applies just as much to the Tories and Plaid as to Labour. It used to apply to the Liberals too as I knew to my cost living in Aberystwyth, but they've died out so are no longer important.
Wales is only a bit smaller than NZ. Often the countries that appear most well governed are quite small.
There must be some deeper seated reason for the incestuousness and corruption.
Serious question - how many talented New Zealanders emigrate to more lucrative careers?
Or to put it another way - in which other country can a New Zealander earn 50% more merely by taking a two hour train ride?
Good point.
Although we do have visa free residency in Australia which has tended to be something like 20 or 30% more.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
I agree those things are all quite banjaxed, and yet in my recent travels this year - and I have been to many countries - the UK does not stand out as feeling notably buggered
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia Sri Lanka Georgia Turkey Greece Montenegro United States Portugal Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Iceland
…. Least fucked
The Courts and Land Registry are probably the worst. The introduction of new IT systems, designed to make things function better, seem to make things function worse. The Land Registry and Probate Registries can't complain of lack of resources, since they charge substantial fees to their users and they have a monopoly. I think both institutions actually take a great deal of pride in delivering terrible service to the public.
OTOH, the Courts were positively Dickensian back in the late eighties. There was a big improvement under Major and Blair, before things started to go backwards.
One question for the lawyers among us:
Why the f*** do so many court cases last so long these days? Not so long ago a trial was considered a bit of a monster if it lasted more than a week. Now, some drag on for months if not years.
Wouldn't surprise if jury trial disappears completely at some point. It's argued matters are too complex, and people cannot take that much time.
Incidentally, I am amazed to discover that posters who told us the polls could not be trusted and GOP were going to do well in 2018 midterms & that Trump was going to win bigly in 2020 and that the polls could not be trusted (and that May was going to win big in 2017 and the polls could not be trusted) seem to be happy with the trustworthiness of the polls in 2022 when they are showing a GOP sweep.
Well, the polls did suggest that the Conservatives would win a working majority in 2017, and the polls do tend to underestimate Republican support, historically.
And, in the current case, the polls match the fundamentals. It's mid term, the economy is in a bad way, Biden is fairly unpopular, so why would one not expect the Presidential party to get a beating, since this almost always happens in those circumstances?
Of the last 10 Congressional elections the polls have understated Rs 6 times and Ds 4 times (on the RCP average - health warnings apply).
2020 understated the GOP, 2018 understated the Dems.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
I agree those things are all quite banjaxed, and yet in my recent travels this year - and I have been to many countries - the UK does not stand out as feeling notably buggered
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia Sri Lanka Georgia Turkey Greece Montenegro United States Portugal Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Iceland
…. Least fucked
The Courts and Land Registry are probably the worst. The introduction of new IT systems, designed to make things function better, seem to make things function worse. The Land Registry and Probate Registries can't complain of lack of resources, since they charge substantial fees to their users and they have a monopoly. I think both institutions actually take a great deal of pride in delivering terrible service to the public.
OTOH, the Courts were positively Dickensian back in the late eighties. There was a big improvement under Major and Blair, before things started to go backwards.
One question for the lawyers among us:
Why the f*** do so many court cases last so long these days? Not so long ago a trial was considered a bit of a monster if it lasted more than a week. Now, some drag on for months if not years.
The Hanratty trial was then the longest murder trial ever - at three weeks. How things have changed.
The reason I ask is - and call me naïve, which I probably am - if we made trials a bit snappier, wouldn't that be more beneficial to court waiting lists than all these other proposals?
Not to mention make jury service much less of a problem.
"The MP for North Devon said that migrants had been moved into a “fully functioning tourist hotel in Ilfracombe” that was forced to sack “all its staff to become a hotel for the Home Office without any consultation with the council”. Previously when migrants have moved into hotels existing staff have been sacked to be replaced by Home Office staff."
Times.
This is not the sort of thing I want happening in my, erm, back yard.
Hmm, that'll really go down well with out of season local employment figures.
At least, I see it's equal opps - this is in a Tory constituency. At the moment.
But why would the council expect consultation? It's not as if the HO give a shit about things like childrens' education, as far as I can see. And as for actual shit, that is OK so long as the HO down't overcrowd the hotel.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
I agree those things are all quite banjaxed, and yet in my recent travels this year - and I have been to many countries - the UK does not stand out as feeling notably buggered
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia Sri Lanka Georgia Turkey Greece Montenegro United States Portugal Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Iceland
…. Least fucked
The Courts and Land Registry are probably the worst. The introduction of new IT systems, designed to make things function better, seem to make things function worse. The Land Registry and Probate Registries can't complain of lack of resources, since they charge substantial fees to their users and they have a monopoly. I think both institutions actually take a great deal of pride in delivering terrible service to the public.
OTOH, the Courts were positively Dickensian back in the late eighties. There was a big improvement under Major and Blair, before things started to go backwards.
One question for the lawyers among us:
Why the f*** do so many court cases last so long these days? Not so long ago a trial was considered a bit of a monster if it lasted more than a week. Now, some drag on for months if not years.
Legal aid rates are terrible, which makes it hard to get people to conduct criminal defence work. Half the courts have been closed down, so there are delays in getting to trial. Countries like Japan or the US get around these problems by just letting the police beat confessions out of suspects, but we stopped doing that with PACE.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
I agree those things are all quite banjaxed, and yet in my recent travels this year - and I have been to many countries - the UK does not stand out as feeling notably buggered
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia Sri Lanka Georgia Turkey Greece Montenegro United States Portugal Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Iceland
…. Least fucked
The Courts and Land Registry are probably the worst. The introduction of new IT systems, designed to make things function better, seem to make things function worse. The Land Registry and Probate Registries can't complain of lack of resources, since they charge substantial fees to their users and they have a monopoly. I think both institutions actually take a great deal of pride in delivering terrible service to the public.
OTOH, the Courts were positively Dickensian back in the late eighties. There was a big improvement under Major and Blair, before things started to go backwards.
One question for the lawyers among us:
Why the f*** do so many court cases last so long these days? Not so long ago a trial was considered a bit of a monster if it lasted more than a week. Now, some drag on for months if not years.
In my most recent trial I got all the evidence required in 1 hour. But the case still took 3 days! The first day we empanel a jury, sort out a joint minute of agreed facts etc. After the evidence we did both speeches on day 2 and then the Judge charged the jury on day 3 who came back with a verdict (guilty, as it happens). It is this bureaucracy that surrounds trials that takes the time.
In Scotland an innovation a few years ago now was a case management hearing before a Judge called a Preliminary Hearing. This tries to identify what is actually in dispute and to identify what witnesses are actually required. I am not sure if the same happens in England but there seems a lot of evidence that is either not contentious or not particularly relevant.
I'd hope that was the case in England, I've seen such a thing happen in non-judicial contentious matters for years, where lawyers are involved, so that a hearing will deal with what facts are contested, what the key arguments are etc.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
Thats too extreme. Schools and Uni's are open, the hospitals are cracking on with trying to reduce waiting lists, while still dealing with covid (less so but still there), unemployment is low, there are jobs available. Immigration is in the public eye but is at lower levels than most European nations. The economy is being buffeted by global events and is not alone. Tough times ahead, same as elsewhere.
The well off will be fine, the middle incomes will struggle some more and the poor as always will suffer the most.
I agree that it's too extreme a view. Our schools are actually OK, there are jobs, we still do a lot of stuff very well.
The area that seems closest to genuinely broken, to my outsider's eyes, is justice.
They're really, really not. That's a system right on the edge.
The thing is that the staff are trying their hardest to keep the full scale of the unfolding disaster from impacting the children so it isn't immediately obvious to outsiders just how bad it is.
Amusingly, in a grim way, I've just been sent yet another pleading email to go on supply. I checked where they wanted me and it was the very school I'd left. In fact, my old job. They haven't been able to replace me yet, six whole months after I informed them I was leaving.
Surely replacing you is a completely impossible task @ydoethur? No one else is as gifted at puns.
You flatter me
More seriously, there is a chronic shortage of people who can teach A-level philosophy. But even in English they had to get supply in.
And that's a good school. Don't get me started on what's happened in Walsall...
Maybe my son should be tutoring in that during his holidays? Hmm....
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
I agree those things are all quite banjaxed, and yet in my recent travels this year - and I have been to many countries - the UK does not stand out as feeling notably buggered
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia Sri Lanka Georgia Turkey Greece Montenegro United States Portugal Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Iceland
…. Least fucked
The Courts and Land Registry are probably the worst. The introduction of new IT systems, designed to make things function better, seem to make things function worse. The Land Registry and Probate Registries can't complain of lack of resources, since they charge substantial fees to their users and they have a monopoly. I think both institutions actually take a great deal of pride in delivering terrible service to the public.
OTOH, the Courts were positively Dickensian back in the late eighties. There was a big improvement under Major and Blair, before things started to go backwards.
One question for the lawyers among us:
Why the f*** do so many court cases last so long these days? Not so long ago a trial was considered a bit of a monster if it lasted more than a week. Now, some drag on for months if not years.
Legal aid rates are terrible, which makes it hard to get people to conduct criminal defence work. Half the courts have been closed down, so there are delays in getting to trial. Countries like Japan or the US get around these problems by just letting the police beat confessions out of suspects, but we stopped doing that with PACE.
That may well all be true, but isn't what I asked. Why, when they come to trial, do they take so long in actually being heard?
@DavidL gives some insight above - three days to go through something that should really have taken four hours.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
Thats too extreme. Schools and Uni's are open, the hospitals are cracking on with trying to reduce waiting lists, while still dealing with covid (less so but still there), unemployment is low, there are jobs available. Immigration is in the public eye but is at lower levels than most European nations. The economy is being buffeted by global events and is not alone. Tough times ahead, same as elsewhere.
The well off will be fine, the middle incomes will struggle some more and the poor as always will suffer the most.
I agree that it's too extreme a view. Our schools are actually OK, there are jobs, we still do a lot of stuff very well.
The area that seems closest to genuinely broken, to my outsider's eyes, is justice.
They're really, really not. That's a system right on the edge.
The thing is that the staff are trying their hardest to keep the full scale of the unfolding disaster from impacting the children so it isn't immediately obvious to outsiders just how bad it is.
Amusingly, in a grim way, I've just been sent yet another pleading email to go on supply. I checked where they wanted me and it was the very school I'd left. In fact, my old job. They haven't been able to replace me yet, six whole months after I informed them I was leaving.
Surely replacing you is a completely impossible task @ydoethur? No one else is as gifted at puns.
You flatter me
More seriously, there is a chronic shortage of people who can teach A-level philosophy. But even in English they had to get supply in.
And that's a good school. Don't get me started on what's happened in Walsall...
Maybe my son should be tutoring in that during his holidays? Hmm....
He could try, if he wanted. There are websites that take Oxbridge undergraduates and find them tutoring jobs.
The only thing I would say is that there aren't many tutoring jobs in philosophy out there. He'd be better off concentrating on economics, where there's enormous demand.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
You can apply all that to Wales under the Welsh labour government (apart from the tube obviously)
Welsh Labour seem less a political proposition than a kind of shitocracy. I presume the Welsh prefer it this way as the Welsh Tories are even worse.
I've never understood the popularity of Mark Drakeford.
He was actually impressive when interviewed on the Rest Is Politics podcast. The mystery deepens…
He is actually a very clever man. And those people I know who know him, like him. (But then, so do people who know Gavin Williamson.)
I think part of the problem is the poor quality of the Welsh Civil Service, which fishes in a very small pool indeed for all sorts of reasons. But most of the problem is simply the fundamentally corrupt nature of the Welsh party systems, which are a veritable Augean stables of favours, kickbacks, shady deals and local bosses.
That applies just as much to the Tories and Plaid as to Labour. It used to apply to the Liberals too as I knew to my cost living in Aberystwyth, but they've died out so are no longer important.
Do the Welsh CS and local authorities still insist on everyone speaking ‘the language’?
Most of the civil servants I knew in Cardiff could barely speak Welsh. If it is compulsory, as you suggest, then perhaps they check for GCSE rather than fluency, and I know how poor my O-level French is. Aiui the Welsh CS includes specialist translation units.
A storm blew into the Seattle area overnight, bringing a flurry of warnings, watches and advisories in addition to the heavy rain, strong winds and mountain snow that are expected to blast the region through the weekend.
Heavy snow fell in the Cascades overnight, with a foot of snow at Snoqualmie Pass, and the resulting vehicle crashes, causing a full closure of Interstate 90 until around 5 a.m. Friday.
A warmer air mass then moved in, said Jeff Michalski, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Seattle. That’s bringing heavy mountain rainfall, but the rains in Seattle will be scattered because of “a rain shadow effect with some winds coming down off of the Olympics,” he said.
In King County, strong winds are expected across much of the lowlands Friday, with gusts reaching 40 to 50 mph and a wind advisory from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. (Just be happy we aren’t up on Mount Rainier, where gusts up to 100 mph are expected, along with a pleasant 6 to 8 inches of snow.)
Because of the mountain rains, a flood watch was issued in King County and a flash-flood warning for the burn scar from the Bolt Creek fire near Skykomish.
The weather service is watching for sharp changes and fast flows in the Snoqualmie River near Snoqualmie Falls and Carnation, the Tolt River near Carnation, the Green River and the White River.
SSI - Current weather radar shows it raining (snowing in mountains) like a sonofabitch everywhere in Western WA EXCEPT for Seattle and nearest burbs. Hopefully holds off here a bit longer, long enough anyway for me to get to the grocery store & back!
Meanwhile here it's a beautiful sunny evening and I've been sitting in the conservatory basking in the warmth. Again.
This is now the latest date for me putting on the central heating by three weeks. And I still haven't put it on!
Sunny or not it is too cold up here not to have heating on , was 2 degrees this morning , sunny day mind you.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
You can apply all that to Wales under the Welsh labour government (apart from the tube obviously)
Welsh Labour seem less a political proposition than a kind of shitocracy. I presume the Welsh prefer it this way as the Welsh Tories are even worse.
I've never understood the popularity of Mark Drakeford.
He was actually impressive when interviewed on the Rest Is Politics podcast. The mystery deepens…
He is actually a very clever man. And those people I know who know him, like him. (But then, so do people who know Gavin Williamson.) But like all Welsh party leaders, he's proved pretty hapless in office.
I think part of the problem is the poor quality of the Welsh Civil Service, which fishes in a very small pool indeed for all sorts of reasons. But most of the problem is simply the fundamentally corrupt nature of the Welsh party systems, which are a veritable Augean stables of favours, kickbacks, shady deals and local bosses.
That applies just as much to the Tories and Plaid as to Labour. It used to apply to the Liberals too as I knew to my cost living in Aberystwyth, but they've died out so are no longer important.
Wales is only a bit smaller than NZ. Often the countries that appear most well governed are quite small.
There must be some deeper seated reason for the incestuousness and corruption.
Serious question - how many talented New Zealanders emigrate to more lucrative careers?
Or to put it another way - in which other country can a New Zealander earn 50% more merely by taking a two hour train ride?
Good point.
Although we do have visa free residency in Australia which has tended to be something like 20 or 30% more.
But requires physically relocating.
It is possible to be based in Cardiff and work in London. Expensive, but possible.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
You can apply all that to Wales under the Welsh labour government (apart from the tube obviously)
Welsh Labour seem less a political proposition than a kind of shitocracy. I presume the Welsh prefer it this way as the Welsh Tories are even worse.
I've never understood the popularity of Mark Drakeford.
Our Welsh cousins are an incomprehensible lot.
I like Drakeford’s proper full-fat sing-song Welsh accent. I could imagine him reciting under milk wood for the radio.
Up there with old Revd Ian Paisley with the most iconic Ulster accent of all.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
I agree those things are all quite banjaxed, and yet in my recent travels this year - and I have been to many countries - the UK does not stand out as feeling notably buggered
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia Sri Lanka Georgia Turkey Greece Montenegro United States Portugal Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Iceland
…. Least fucked
The Courts and Land Registry are probably the worst. The introduction of new IT systems, designed to make things function better, seem to make things function worse. The Land Registry and Probate Registries can't complain of lack of resources, since they charge substantial fees to their users and they have a monopoly. I think both institutions actually take a great deal of pride in delivering terrible service to the public.
OTOH, the Courts were positively Dickensian back in the late eighties. There was a big improvement under Major and Blair, before things started to go backwards.
One question for the lawyers among us:
Why the f*** do so many court cases last so long these days? Not so long ago a trial was considered a bit of a monster if it lasted more than a week. Now, some drag on for months if not years.
Legal aid rates are terrible, which makes it hard to get people to conduct criminal defence work. Half the courts have been closed down, so there are delays in getting to trial. Countries like Japan or the US get around these problems by just letting the police beat confessions out of suspects, but we stopped doing that with PACE.
That may well all be true, but isn't what I asked. Why, when they come to trial, do they take so long in actually being heard?
@DavidL gives some insight above - three days to go through something that should really have taken four hours.
Some of those points do also lead to delays at the trial too though presumably, as even on the day things haven't arrived or been supplied, with additional delays etc.
But it does still seem baffling. It's not just here, in the US it seems like cases takes weeks or months, which even for complex matters seems like it shouldn't be necessary.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
I agree those things are all quite banjaxed, and yet in my recent travels this year - and I have been to many countries - the UK does not stand out as feeling notably buggered
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia Sri Lanka Georgia Turkey Greece Montenegro United States Portugal Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Iceland
…. Least fucked
The Courts and Land Registry are probably the worst. The introduction of new IT systems, designed to make things function better, seem to make things function worse. The Land Registry and Probate Registries can't complain of lack of resources, since they charge substantial fees to their users and they have a monopoly. I think both institutions actually take a great deal of pride in delivering terrible service to the public.
OTOH, the Courts were positively Dickensian back in the late eighties. There was a big improvement under Major and Blair, before things started to go backwards.
One question for the lawyers among us:
Why the f*** do so many court cases last so long these days? Not so long ago a trial was considered a bit of a monster if it lasted more than a week. Now, some drag on for months if not years.
Legal aid rates are terrible, which makes it hard to get people to conduct criminal defence work. Half the courts have been closed down, so there are delays in getting to trial. Countries like Japan or the US get around these problems by just letting the police beat confessions out of suspects, but we stopped doing that with PACE.
That may well all be true, but isn't what I asked. Why, when they come to trial, do they take so long in actually being heard?
@DavidL gives some insight above - three days to go through something that should really have taken four hours.
I don't know that's the case. A lot of cases get disposed of very quickly once they come to trial, if only because it becomes very clear, very quickly, what the verdict should be.
I think one thing is that the quality of forensics is much better than in the past. You really will get an expert giving evidence over prolonged period, in a way that would not have happened in the past.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
You can apply all that to Wales under the Welsh labour government (apart from the tube obviously)
Welsh Labour seem less a political proposition than a kind of shitocracy. I presume the Welsh prefer it this way as the Welsh Tories are even worse.
I've never understood the popularity of Mark Drakeford.
I've never understood the popularity of Welsh Labour in general, and I *am* Welsh.
Wales has been Labour virtually forever, and while the NHS is in crisis with our GP practice taken over by the local health board and ambulance waiting times every bit as bad as England, Drakeford allocates £4.5 million for free Welsh lessons to all 18-25 year olds, is introducing extensive 20 mph zones, and a much hated tourist tax
One day Wales may wake up to this socialist utopia but not just for a while
The Tory one party state in the South of England is slowly coming to an end.
Normally there is a fortnight long fireworks season smeared out between Diwali and Guy Fawkes. This year, barely two days for each. As good a sign of the cost of living crisis as any.
A storm blew into the Seattle area overnight, bringing a flurry of warnings, watches and advisories in addition to the heavy rain, strong winds and mountain snow that are expected to blast the region through the weekend.
Heavy snow fell in the Cascades overnight, with a foot of snow at Snoqualmie Pass, and the resulting vehicle crashes, causing a full closure of Interstate 90 until around 5 a.m. Friday.
A warmer air mass then moved in, said Jeff Michalski, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Seattle. That’s bringing heavy mountain rainfall, but the rains in Seattle will be scattered because of “a rain shadow effect with some winds coming down off of the Olympics,” he said.
In King County, strong winds are expected across much of the lowlands Friday, with gusts reaching 40 to 50 mph and a wind advisory from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. (Just be happy we aren’t up on Mount Rainier, where gusts up to 100 mph are expected, along with a pleasant 6 to 8 inches of snow.)
Because of the mountain rains, a flood watch was issued in King County and a flash-flood warning for the burn scar from the Bolt Creek fire near Skykomish.
The weather service is watching for sharp changes and fast flows in the Snoqualmie River near Snoqualmie Falls and Carnation, the Tolt River near Carnation, the Green River and the White River.
SSI - Current weather radar shows it raining (snowing in mountains) like a sonofabitch everywhere in Western WA EXCEPT for Seattle and nearest burbs. Hopefully holds off here a bit longer, long enough anyway for me to get to the grocery store & back!
Meanwhile here it's a beautiful sunny evening and I've been sitting in the conservatory basking in the warmth. Again.
This is now the latest date for me putting on the central heating by three weeks. And I still haven't put it on!
Sunny or not it is too cold up here not to have heating on , was 2 degrees this morning , sunny day mind you.
Icy here with hoar frost on the cars, trees and grass when I peeked out at sparrowfart. Melted like snow off a dyke though with the sun.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
I agree those things are all quite banjaxed, and yet in my recent travels this year - and I have been to many countries - the UK does not stand out as feeling notably buggered
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia Sri Lanka Georgia Turkey Greece Montenegro United States Portugal Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Iceland
…. Least fucked
The Courts and Land Registry are probably the worst. The introduction of new IT systems, designed to make things function better, seem to make things function worse. The Land Registry and Probate Registries can't complain of lack of resources, since they charge substantial fees to their users and they have a monopoly. I think both institutions actually take a great deal of pride in delivering terrible service to the public.
OTOH, the Courts were positively Dickensian back in the late eighties. There was a big improvement under Major and Blair, before things started to go backwards.
One question for the lawyers among us:
Why the f*** do so many court cases last so long these days? Not so long ago a trial was considered a bit of a monster if it lasted more than a week. Now, some drag on for months if not years.
Legal aid rates are terrible, which makes it hard to get people to conduct criminal defence work. Half the courts have been closed down, so there are delays in getting to trial. Countries like Japan or the US get around these problems by just letting the police beat confessions out of suspects, but we stopped doing that with PACE.
That may well all be true, but isn't what I asked. Why, when they come to trial, do they take so long in actually being heard?
@DavidL gives some insight above - three days to go through something that should really have taken four hours.
I don't know that's the case. A lot of cases get disposed of very quickly once they come to trial, if only because it becomes very clear, very quickly, what the verdict should be.
I think one thing is that the quality of forensics is much better than in the past. You really will get an expert giving evidence over prolonged period, in a way that would not have happened in the past.
But how does that emerging clarity help? No case to answer aside, trials last as long as the parties have stamina for.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
I agree those things are all quite banjaxed, and yet in my recent travels this year - and I have been to many countries - the UK does not stand out as feeling notably buggered
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia Sri Lanka Georgia Turkey Greece Montenegro United States Portugal Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Iceland
…. Least fucked
Portugal is definitely not fucked. That's based on an extended stay with family in central Portugal last Autumn when my son married a Portuguese lass, in the main spent well away from the main tourist spots. It was like going back two decades to a time when things actually worked and public services existed. And then we returned to the UK.....
I agree, which is why I put Portugal in my superior hall of the table - least fucked
In fact of those countries I’d say that only two are in properly dire straits (sadly). Sri Lanka and Armenia. They are desperately poor and there isn’t an obvious way out, despite both countries and peoples being charming in different ways
And it is important to remember that even for inhabitants of Sri Lanka and Armenia life is INFINITELY better than it was 50 or 100 years ago
if we can get through the next few years and this damn war, and not kill our selves in an accidental global nuclear toilet flush, then prospects for humanity are bright.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
You can apply all that to Wales under the Welsh labour government (apart from the tube obviously)
Welsh Labour seem less a political proposition than a kind of shitocracy. I presume the Welsh prefer it this way as the Welsh Tories are even worse.
I've never understood the popularity of Mark Drakeford.
He was actually impressive when interviewed on the Rest Is Politics podcast. The mystery deepens…
He is actually a very clever man. And those people I know who know him, like him. (But then, so do people who know Gavin Williamson.)
I think part of the problem is the poor quality of the Welsh Civil Service, which fishes in a very small pool indeed for all sorts of reasons. But most of the problem is simply the fundamentally corrupt nature of the Welsh party systems, which are a veritable Augean stables of favours, kickbacks, shady deals and local bosses.
That applies just as much to the Tories and Plaid as to Labour. It used to apply to the Liberals too as I knew to my cost living in Aberystwyth, but they've died out so are no longer important.
Do the Welsh CS and local authorities still insist on everyone speaking ‘the language’?
Most of the civil servants I knew in Cardiff could barely speak Welsh. If it is compulsory, as you suggest, then perhaps they check for GCSE rather than fluency, and I know how poor my O-level French is. Aiui the Welsh CS includes specialist translation units.
They still do it. Not that long ago a road sign at a shopping centre in Wrexham had in English, 'Please call again.' Some prat typed it into Google Translate and the result in Welsh was 'Ffoniwch Eto' - phone back!
Edit - and in my experience you were damn lucky they could speak any English!
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever.
Far too London-centric. It's not in London that schools have the major problems in getting and retaining staff. It's got a large supply of young graduates it can draw on, although they also move on fairly swiftly as you note. The North East is by far the worst but things are grim in the Midlands and West Country.
Similarly, good luck getting a bus round here for less than a fortune. Tube, of course, doesn't operate outside London.
Also, the train services are grossly overstretched due to capacity constraints, which is why HS2 being scaled back is a real worry.
Now, that's not to say things are totally desolate. This is still a great country to live in in lots of ways. But it's frustratingly badly run and run down because too many public servants of all shades give no shits about anything except their own careers, so won't make hard choices and won't tell people difficult truths about spending and policy choices.
You have to explain though, why it seems to have got worse, and indeed whether the decline has hit the UK harder.
Hard to really tell as the English speaking media really only care about the UK and the US who are both fucked in quite different ways.
We mostly hear utter bullshit about Europe, and pretty much nothing about anywhere else.
I have a fair bit of experience of life, infrastructure and public services in France, admittedly as a second home owner who only has secondhand evidence on say education or policing.
They are much much better, in almost all ways. The planning process is less bureaucratic but seems to work effectively to prevent poor development. The healthcare system is quick and effective. Private transport infrastructure is way better, the roads better maintained (but public transport less so). Nursery and early years education and childcare are excellent meaning women are back in the workplace much more quickly than in Britain. The care system, from what I've seen, is well funded and humane. Environmental management is active, largely delegated to town hall or even commune level, and taken seriously.
The things that don't work as well in France as the UK include: buses - even thinner on the ground than here, very sparse local rail network, choice in things like prescription medicine which remains heavily restricted to private pharmacies, choice in other things like energy provider or broadband, shop opening hours of course, and the tendency of public sector workers to go on strike with alarming frequency. There are a few things like police heavy handedness where we seem to be equally as bad as each other. But all in all things are pretty good.
Doesn't stop the locals from moaning endlessly about how their country is going aux chiens though.
Probably true for a white Englishmen living in a nice part of white Burgundy (you see what I did there)
Is that true for the 10-20% of French people living in the bainlieues? They do burn an awful lot of cars
On the whole however I would agree that France feels better governed than the UK atm, and has done for some time, and it is quite annoying. We are meant to be the sensible ones
And the French do moan in an over-pessimistic way. La morosite is a thing
The French pay a lot more tax than we do. That's why they have better public services but also explains why they moan a lot.
The French also have very different systems for many things - not least the Health Service. If you tried to introduce a French style health service in the UK (which would be a very good thing in my opinion) it would likely be viewed in the same way as if you suggested digging up the Queen and sticking her on display at the British Museum.
There are many things we could learn from our neighbours about how to run things but a combination of nostalgia, inertia and vested interests keep us mired in failing systems.
That is not to say everything is better overseas. There are many things that are better in the UK but we can't use that as an excuse not to improve those things that are clearly worse.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
It is difficult to say how much of that is due to the UK's worse terms of trade following brexit compared with prioritising pandemic related spending.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
I agree those things are all quite banjaxed, and yet in my recent travels this year - and I have been to many countries - the UK does not stand out as feeling notably buggered
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia Sri Lanka Georgia Turkey Greece Montenegro United States Portugal Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Iceland
…. Least fucked
The Courts and Land Registry are probably the worst. The introduction of new IT systems, designed to make things function better, seem to make things function worse. The Land Registry and Probate Registries can't complain of lack of resources, since they charge substantial fees to their users and they have a monopoly. I think both institutions actually take a great deal of pride in delivering terrible service to the public.
OTOH, the Courts were positively Dickensian back in the late eighties. There was a big improvement under Major and Blair, before things started to go backwards.
One question for the lawyers among us:
Why the f*** do so many court cases last so long these days? Not so long ago a trial was considered a bit of a monster if it lasted more than a week. Now, some drag on for months if not years.
In my most recent trial I got all the evidence required in 1 hour. But the case still took 3 days! The first day we empanel a jury, sort out a joint minute of agreed facts etc. After the evidence we did both speeches on day 2 and then the Judge charged the jury on day 3 who came back with a verdict (guilty, as it happens). It is this bureaucracy that surrounds trials that takes the time.
In Scotland an innovation a few years ago now was a case management hearing before a Judge called a Preliminary Hearing. This tries to identify what is actually in dispute and to identify what witnesses are actually required. I am not sure if the same happens in England but there seems a lot of evidence that is either not contentious or not particularly relevant.
I'd hope that was the case in England, I've seen such a thing happen in non-judicial contentious matters for years, where lawyers are involved, so that a hearing will deal with what facts are contested, what the key arguments are etc.
But if they do clearly it isn't working.
A lot depends on the prosecutor. I had a case earlier this year in Aberdeen where the accused was on multiple charges of rape. The indictment and later notices had something like 40 witnesses on them. I called 4, the 3 complainers and one other witness. It worked, we got a conviction but if something had gone wrong I suppose I might have been criticised for not calling some or all of the other 36. What we see in prosecutions sometimes is driven by that kind of thinking, it's a bit like defensive medicine.
To me, the jury were either going to believe the complainers or they weren't. I wanted them to focus on that question and not be distracted by all of the police inquiries which might have given their versions some minimal support but might just as easily have confused matters.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
You can apply all that to Wales under the Welsh labour government (apart from the tube obviously)
Welsh Labour seem less a political proposition than a kind of shitocracy. I presume the Welsh prefer it this way as the Welsh Tories are even worse.
I've never understood the popularity of Mark Drakeford.
I've never understood the popularity of Welsh Labour in general, and I *am* Welsh.
Wales has been Labour virtually forever, and while the NHS is in crisis with our GP practice taken over by the local health board and ambulance waiting times every bit as bad as England, Drakeford allocates £4.5 million for free Welsh lessons to all 18-25 year olds, is introducing extensive 20 mph zones, and a much hated tourist tax
One day Wales may wake up to this socialist utopia but not just for a while
"much hated" = Labour innovation, so Big G hates it. From what I see it's no such thing at all. It is merely the *option* for a local council to introduce such a tax in its area. And it will be because the locals want it in those areas.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
I agree those things are all quite banjaxed, and yet in my recent travels this year - and I have been to many countries - the UK does not stand out as feeling notably buggered
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia Sri Lanka Georgia Turkey Greece Montenegro United States Portugal Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Iceland
…. Least fucked
The Courts and Land Registry are probably the worst. The introduction of new IT systems, designed to make things function better, seem to make things function worse. The Land Registry and Probate Registries can't complain of lack of resources, since they charge substantial fees to their users and they have a monopoly. I think both institutions actually take a great deal of pride in delivering terrible service to the public.
OTOH, the Courts were positively Dickensian back in the late eighties. There was a big improvement under Major and Blair, before things started to go backwards.
One question for the lawyers among us:
Why the f*** do so many court cases last so long these days? Not so long ago a trial was considered a bit of a monster if it lasted more than a week. Now, some drag on for months if not years.
Legal aid rates are terrible, which makes it hard to get people to conduct criminal defence work. Half the courts have been closed down, so there are delays in getting to trial. Countries like Japan or the US get around these problems by just letting the police beat confessions out of suspects, but we stopped doing that with PACE.
It depends. If it is something an individual can turn on / off themselves. Then its a way to take a chunk of the OnlyFans and SnapChat "premium" money. If its a free for all, well that obviously dumb as.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
I agree those things are all quite banjaxed, and yet in my recent travels this year - and I have been to many countries - the UK does not stand out as feeling notably buggered
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia Sri Lanka Georgia Turkey Greece Montenegro United States Portugal Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Iceland
…. Least fucked
The Courts and Land Registry are probably the worst. The introduction of new IT systems, designed to make things function better, seem to make things function worse. The Land Registry and Probate Registries can't complain of lack of resources, since they charge substantial fees to their users and they have a monopoly. I think both institutions actually take a great deal of pride in delivering terrible service to the public.
OTOH, the Courts were positively Dickensian back in the late eighties. There was a big improvement under Major and Blair, before things started to go backwards.
One question for the lawyers among us:
Why the f*** do so many court cases last so long these days? Not so long ago a trial was considered a bit of a monster if it lasted more than a week. Now, some drag on for months if not years.
Legal aid rates are terrible, which makes it hard to get people to conduct criminal defence work. Half the courts have been closed down, so there are delays in getting to trial. Countries like Japan or the US get around these problems by just letting the police beat confessions out of suspects, but we stopped doing that with PACE.
That may well all be true, but isn't what I asked. Why, when they come to trial, do they take so long in actually being heard?
@DavidL gives some insight above - three days to go through something that should really have taken four hours.
Some of those points do also lead to delays at the trial too though presumably, as even on the day things haven't arrived or been supplied, with additional delays etc.
But it does still seem baffling. It's not just here, in the US it seems like cases takes weeks or months, which even for complex matters seems like it shouldn't be necessary.
This is how things were traditionally done:-
Dudley Smith: Edmund, you're a political animal. You have the eye for human weakness, but not the stomach.
Ed Exley: You're wrong, sir.
Captain Dudley Smith: Would you be willing to plant corroborative evidence on a suspect you knew to be guilty, in order to ensure an indictment?
Ed Exley: Dudley, we've been over this.
Captain Dudley Smith: Yes or no, Edmund?
Ed Exley: No!
Captain Dudley Smith: Would you be willing to beat a confession out of a suspect you knew to be guilty?
Ed Exley: No.
Captain Dudley Smith: Would you be willing to shoot a hardened criminal in the back, in order to offset the chance that some... lawyer...
Ed Exley: No.
Captain Dudley Smith: Then, for the love of God, don't be a detective. Stick to assignments where you don't have...
Ed Exley: Dudley, I know you mean well, but I don't need to do it the way you did. Or my father.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
You can apply all that to Wales under the Welsh labour government (apart from the tube obviously)
Welsh Labour seem less a political proposition than a kind of shitocracy. I presume the Welsh prefer it this way as the Welsh Tories are even worse.
I've never understood the popularity of Mark Drakeford.
He was actually impressive when interviewed on the Rest Is Politics podcast. The mystery deepens…
He is actually a very clever man. And those people I know who know him, like him. (But then, so do people who know Gavin Williamson.)
I think part of the problem is the poor quality of the Welsh Civil Service, which fishes in a very small pool indeed for all sorts of reasons. But most of the problem is simply the fundamentally corrupt nature of the Welsh party systems, which are a veritable Augean stables of favours, kickbacks, shady deals and local bosses.
That applies just as much to the Tories and Plaid as to Labour. It used to apply to the Liberals too as I knew to my cost living in Aberystwyth, but they've died out so are no longer important.
Do the Welsh CS and local authorities still insist on everyone speaking ‘the language’?
Most of the civil servants I knew in Cardiff could barely speak Welsh. If it is compulsory, as you suggest, then perhaps they check for GCSE rather than fluency, and I know how poor my O-level French is. Aiui the Welsh CS includes specialist translation units.
They still do it. Not that long ago a road sign at a shopping centre in Wrexham had in English, 'Please call again.' Some prat typed it into Google Translate and the result in Welsh was 'Ffoniwch Eto' - phone back!
I still cannot understand that story. I mean, if they provide translations for people who do not speak Welsh then it would not make much sense to have an out of office message which was not in at least one other language as well as Welsh. So either it didn't and their out of office was dumb, or it did and the person receiving it still didn't notice.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
I agree those things are all quite banjaxed, and yet in my recent travels this year - and I have been to many countries - the UK does not stand out as feeling notably buggered
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia Sri Lanka Georgia Turkey Greece Montenegro United States Portugal Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Iceland
…. Least fucked
Germany is arguably in a worse position than the UK because of their energy problems and the fact they still seem to think being strongly associated with China is a good idea.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
You can apply all that to Wales under the Welsh labour government (apart from the tube obviously)
Welsh Labour seem less a political proposition than a kind of shitocracy. I presume the Welsh prefer it this way as the Welsh Tories are even worse.
I've never understood the popularity of Mark Drakeford.
He was actually impressive when interviewed on the Rest Is Politics podcast. The mystery deepens…
He is actually a very clever man. And those people I know who know him, like him. (But then, so do people who know Gavin Williamson.)
I think part of the problem is the poor quality of the Welsh Civil Service, which fishes in a very small pool indeed for all sorts of reasons. But most of the problem is simply the fundamentally corrupt nature of the Welsh party systems, which are a veritable Augean stables of favours, kickbacks, shady deals and local bosses.
That applies just as much to the Tories and Plaid as to Labour. It used to apply to the Liberals too as I knew to my cost living in Aberystwyth, but they've died out so are no longer important.
Do the Welsh CS and local authorities still insist on everyone speaking ‘the language’?
Most of the civil servants I knew in Cardiff could barely speak Welsh. If it is compulsory, as you suggest, then perhaps they check for GCSE rather than fluency, and I know how poor my O-level French is. Aiui the Welsh CS includes specialist translation units.
They still do it. Not that long ago a road sign at a shopping centre in Wrexham had in English, 'Please call again.' Some prat typed it into Google Translate and the result in Welsh was 'Ffoniwch Eto' - phone back!
I still cannot understand that story. I mean, if they provide translations for people who do not speak Welsh then it would not make much sense to have an out of office message which was not in at least one other language as well as Welsh. So either it didn't and their out of office was dumb, or it did and the person receiving it still didn't notice.
Because under the Welsh Language Act, the Welsh comes first. And the recipient didn't scroll down to see the English equivalent, just assumed it was what he'd asked for.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
You can apply all that to Wales under the Welsh labour government (apart from the tube obviously)
Welsh Labour seem less a political proposition than a kind of shitocracy. I presume the Welsh prefer it this way as the Welsh Tories are even worse.
I've never understood the popularity of Mark Drakeford.
I've never understood the popularity of Welsh Labour in general, and I *am* Welsh.
Wales has been Labour virtually forever, and while the NHS is in crisis with our GP practice taken over by the local health board and ambulance waiting times every bit as bad as England, Drakeford allocates £4.5 million for free Welsh lessons to all 18-25 year olds, is introducing extensive 20 mph zones, and a much hated tourist tax
One day Wales may wake up to this socialist utopia but not just for a while
"much hated" = Labour innovation, so Big G hates it. From what I see it's no such thing at all. It is merely the *option* for a local council to introduce such a tax in its area. And it will be because the locals want it in those areas.
You have no idea just how much anger there is across the county of Conwy where tourism is vitally important for thousands of jobs and businesses. Adding £140 per week to a family of 4 holidaying in Llandudno is unacceptable
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
Thats too extreme. Schools and Uni's are open, the hospitals are cracking on with trying to reduce waiting lists, while still dealing with covid (less so but still there), unemployment is low, there are jobs available. Immigration is in the public eye but is at lower levels than most European nations. The economy is being buffeted by global events and is not alone. Tough times ahead, same as elsewhere.
The well off will be fine, the middle incomes will struggle some more and the poor as always will suffer the most.
I agree that it's too extreme a view. Our schools are actually OK, there are jobs, we still do a lot of stuff very well.
The area that seems closest to genuinely broken, to my outsider's eyes, is justice.
They're really, really not. That's a system right on the edge.
The thing is that the staff are trying their hardest to keep the full scale of the unfolding disaster from impacting the children so it isn't immediately obvious to outsiders just how bad it is.
Amusingly, in a grim way, I've just been sent yet another pleading email to go on supply. I checked where they wanted me and it was the very school I'd left. In fact, my old job. They haven't been able to replace me yet, six whole months after I informed them I was leaving.
Surely replacing you is a completely impossible task @ydoethur? No one else is as gifted at puns.
You flatter me
More seriously, there is a chronic shortage of people who can teach A-level philosophy. But even in English they had to get supply in.
And that's a good school. Don't get me started on what's happened in Walsall...
Maybe my son should be tutoring in that during his holidays? Hmm....
He could try, if he wanted. There are websites that take Oxbridge undergraduates and find them tutoring jobs.
The only thing I would say is that there aren't many tutoring jobs in philosophy out there. He'd be better off concentrating on economics, where there's enormous demand.
He's doing that too but philosophy is his true love. Curiously, it wasn't taught as a subject in his school (I don't any Scottish schools teach it). In his 3rd year at school he had someone who had experience of working as a prison guard in the US for something like Moral and Social Education. He really challenged the class to think about issues and my son was hooked. Sadly, that teacher fell out with the school and left acrimoniously but I am not sure my son would be doing PPE without his input.
"Lost generation: Albanian migrant exodus leaves its schools empty
‘They don’t want the jobs here. They can earn five times as much in Britain,’ say teachers who fear teenagers are being lured across the Channel by social media" (£)
It depends. If it is something an individual can turn on / off themselves. Then its a way to take a chunk of the OnlyFans and SnapChat "premium" money. If its a free for all, well that obviously dumb as.
Seems torture for her if she turns out to be innocent and for the parents, if guilty. You would have thought they could have cherrypicked the best two or three specimen cases and gone with those.
It depends. If it is something an individual can turn on / off themselves. Then its a way to take a chunk of the OnlyFans and SnapChat "premium" money. If its a free for all, well that obviously dumb as.
I’ve heard of SnapChat but what’s this OnlyFans?
Its a website dedicated to fans, all shapes and sizes, big fans, small fans....but only fans.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever.
Far too London-centric. It's not in London that schools have the major problems in getting and retaining staff. It's got a large supply of young graduates it can draw on, although they also move on fairly swiftly as you note. The North East is by far the worst but things are grim in the Midlands and West Country.
Similarly, good luck getting a bus round here for less than a fortune. Tube, of course, doesn't operate outside London.
Also, the train services are grossly overstretched due to capacity constraints, which is why HS2 being scaled back is a real worry.
Now, that's not to say things are totally desolate. This is still a great country to live in in lots of ways. But it's frustratingly badly run and run down because too many public servants of all shades give no shits about anything except their own careers, so won't make hard choices and won't tell people difficult truths about spending and policy choices.
You have to explain though, why it seems to have got worse, and indeed whether the decline has hit the UK harder.
Hard to really tell as the English speaking media really only care about the UK and the US who are both fucked in quite different ways.
We mostly hear utter bullshit about Europe, and pretty much nothing about anywhere else.
I have a fair bit of experience of life, infrastructure and public services in France, admittedly as a second home owner who only has secondhand evidence on say education or policing.
They are much much better, in almost all ways. The planning process is less bureaucratic but seems to work effectively to prevent poor development. The healthcare system is quick and effective. Private transport infrastructure is way better, the roads better maintained (but public transport less so). Nursery and early years education and childcare are excellent meaning women are back in the workplace much more quickly than in Britain. The care system, from what I've seen, is well funded and humane. Environmental management is active, largely delegated to town hall or even commune level, and taken seriously.
The things that don't work as well in France as the UK include: buses - even thinner on the ground than here, very sparse local rail network, choice in things like prescription medicine which remains heavily restricted to private pharmacies, choice in other things like energy provider or broadband, shop opening hours of course, and the tendency of public sector workers to go on strike with alarming frequency. There are a few things like police heavy handedness where we seem to be equally as bad as each other. But all in all things are pretty good.
Doesn't stop the locals from moaning endlessly about how their country is going aux chiens though.
Probably true for a white Englishmen living in a nice part of white Burgundy (you see what I did there)
Is that true for the 10-20% of French people living in the bainlieues? They do burn an awful lot of cars
On the whole however I would agree that France feels better governed than the UK atm, and has done for some time, and it is quite annoying. We are meant to be the sensible ones
And the French do moan in an over-pessimistic way. La morosite is a thing
The French pay a lot more tax than we do. That's why they have better public services but also explains why they moan a lot.
The French also have very different systems for many things - not least the Health Service. If you tried to introduce a French style health service in the UK (which would be a very good thing in my opinion) it would likely be viewed in the same way as if you suggested digging up the Queen and sticking her on display at the British Museum.
There are many things we could learn from our neighbours about how to run things but a combination of nostalgia, inertia and vested interests keep us mired in failing systems.
That is not to say everything is better overseas. There are many things that are better in the UK but we can't use that as an excuse not to improve those things that are clearly worse.
I would love to see us carrying out a thorough fact finding exercise looking at best practice in the public sector across Europe, East Asia and North America (I don't expect to learn much from the US having lived there but we might learn something from Canada) and then using the findings to carry out a complete overhaul of our public sector.
It depends. If it is something an individual can turn on / off themselves. Then its a way to take a chunk of the OnlyFans and SnapChat "premium" money. If its a free for all, well that obviously dumb as.
I’ve heard of SnapChat but what’s this OnlyFans?
A closed book to most of us. Pornhub but with credit cards.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
You can apply all that to Wales under the Welsh labour government (apart from the tube obviously)
Welsh Labour seem less a political proposition than a kind of shitocracy. I presume the Welsh prefer it this way as the Welsh Tories are even worse.
I've never understood the popularity of Mark Drakeford.
He was actually impressive when interviewed on the Rest Is Politics podcast. The mystery deepens…
He is actually a very clever man. And those people I know who know him, like him. (But then, so do people who know Gavin Williamson.)
I think part of the problem is the poor quality of the Welsh Civil Service, which fishes in a very small pool indeed for all sorts of reasons. But most of the problem is simply the fundamentally corrupt nature of the Welsh party systems, which are a veritable Augean stables of favours, kickbacks, shady deals and local bosses.
That applies just as much to the Tories and Plaid as to Labour. It used to apply to the Liberals too as I knew to my cost living in Aberystwyth, but they've died out so are no longer important.
Do the Welsh CS and local authorities still insist on everyone speaking ‘the language’?
Most of the civil servants I knew in Cardiff could barely speak Welsh. If it is compulsory, as you suggest, then perhaps they check for GCSE rather than fluency, and I know how poor my O-level French is. Aiui the Welsh CS includes specialist translation units.
They still do it. Not that long ago a road sign at a shopping centre in Wrexham had in English, 'Please call again.' Some prat typed it into Google Translate and the result in Welsh was 'Ffoniwch Eto' - phone back!
I still cannot understand that story. I mean, if they provide translations for people who do not speak Welsh then it would not make much sense to have an out of office message which was not in at least one other language as well as Welsh. So either it didn't and their out of office was dumb, or it did and the person receiving it still didn't notice.
Because under the Welsh Language Act, the Welsh comes first. And the recipient didn't scroll down to see the English equivalent, just assumed it was what he'd asked for.
So they were even stupider than the story suggests, since the story at least implies it could have been a reasonable error if the welsh text was all they got.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
I agree those things are all quite banjaxed, and yet in my recent travels this year - and I have been to many countries - the UK does not stand out as feeling notably buggered
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia Sri Lanka Georgia Turkey Greece Montenegro United States Portugal Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Iceland
…. Least fucked
The Courts and Land Registry are probably the worst. The introduction of new IT systems, designed to make things function better, seem to make things function worse. The Land Registry and Probate Registries can't complain of lack of resources, since they charge substantial fees to their users and they have a monopoly. I think both institutions actually take a great deal of pride in delivering terrible service to the public.
OTOH, the Courts were positively Dickensian back in the late eighties. There was a big improvement under Major and Blair, before things started to go backwards.
One question for the lawyers among us:
Why the f*** do so many court cases last so long these days? Not so long ago a trial was considered a bit of a monster if it lasted more than a week. Now, some drag on for months if not years.
Legal aid rates are terrible, which makes it hard to get people to conduct criminal defence work. Half the courts have been closed down, so there are delays in getting to trial. Countries like Japan or the US get around these problems by just letting the police beat confessions out of suspects, but we stopped doing that with PACE.
That may well all be true, but isn't what I asked. Why, when they come to trial, do they take so long in actually being heard?
@DavidL gives some insight above - three days to go through something that should really have taken four hours.
Some of those points do also lead to delays at the trial too though presumably, as even on the day things haven't arrived or been supplied, with additional delays etc.
But it does still seem baffling. It's not just here, in the US it seems like cases takes weeks or months, which even for complex matters seems like it shouldn't be necessary.
This is how things were traditionally done:-
Dudley Smith: Edmund, you're a political animal. You have the eye for human weakness, but not the stomach.
Ed Exley: You're wrong, sir.
Captain Dudley Smith: Would you be willing to plant corroborative evidence on a suspect you knew to be guilty, in order to ensure an indictment?
Ed Exley: Dudley, we've been over this.
Captain Dudley Smith: Yes or no, Edmund?
Ed Exley: No!
Captain Dudley Smith: Would you be willing to beat a confession out of a suspect you knew to be guilty?
Ed Exley: No.
Captain Dudley Smith: Would you be willing to shoot a hardened criminal in the back, in order to offset the chance that some... lawyer...
Ed Exley: No.
Captain Dudley Smith: Then, for the love of God, don't be a detective. Stick to assignments where you don't have...
Ed Exley: Dudley, I know you mean well, but I don't need to do it the way you did. Or my father.
I honestly think that is one of the best films ever made. They were extremely fortunate to compile a cast who almost all went on to do bigger if not better things. It's a work of genius.
Seems torture for her if she turns out to be innocent and for the parents, if guilty. You would have thought they could have cherrypicked the best two or three specimen cases and gone with those.
That's what they did with Shipman. Of course, in his case the specimen cases was still 15 or so.
It depends. If it is something an individual can turn on / off themselves. Then its a way to take a chunk of the OnlyFans and SnapChat "premium" money. If its a free for all, well that obviously dumb as.
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
The news channels are the best example of this.
Though from another point of view, news channels are another example of the "it's all a bit rubbish" malaise.
Earlier this week, we heard about the cuts to BBC local radio. And whilst sounds are still coming out of the speakers, the content is noticeably thinner than it used to be. A couple of local evening news shows are being cancelled. The Romford Recorder has just gone up to £1.10, and there's not much in it.
The country is creaking, and it's not obvious how it improves.
Whitakers Almanack -not published this year for first time in many years ? Really depressing if
the end .
Still i am hosting my halloween murder mystery party tomorrow so not all bad
It depends. If it is something an individual can turn on / off themselves. Then its a way to take a chunk of the OnlyFans and SnapChat "premium" money. If its a free for all, well that obviously dumb as.
It depends. If it is something an individual can turn on / off themselves. Then its a way to take a chunk of the OnlyFans and SnapChat "premium" money. If its a free for all, well that obviously dumb as.
I’ve heard of SnapChat but what’s this OnlyFans?
A closed book to most of us. Pornhub but with credit cards.
Acc. to wiki they have chefs, fitness trainers, etc. as well. Presumably as a convenient screen.
"You been on that Onlyfans again? It's on the credit card statement." "Oh yes, learning about cupcakes and roasts, dear."
This person is an "epidemiologist and federal disaster medicine team member". Covid really has driven some people completely mad.
@maolesen Some perspective for those who still don't get it: If I were forced to be infected by either HIV or COVID, I would choose HIV without hesitation.
Good news the RMT have suspended their strikes to enter unconditional talks with the employers
Mark Harper no doubt has given the green light (signal) to this and good if so to be pragmatic rather than the idiotic previous nothing to do with us mantra
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Portugal has been doing quite well lately. Booming digital economy in Lisbon, for example.
Of course it is poorer than the rest of Western Europe, always has been, but it’s catching up.
Covid response was also notably coherent, belying stereotypes.
I don’t recognise Leon’s judgement that it is “fucked”. It seems to my eyes that it is slowly but surely de-fucking.
There COVID vaccine programme had a massive scandal to start with....kinda of playing up to sterotypes...
The new head of Portugal’s COVID-19 vaccination task force was due to start work Thursday, a day after his predecessor resigned amid scandals over vaccine queue-jumping and frustration over a sluggish rollout similar to that seen in other European Union countries.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
You can apply all that to Wales under the Welsh labour government (apart from the tube obviously)
Welsh Labour seem less a political proposition than a kind of shitocracy. I presume the Welsh prefer it this way as the Welsh Tories are even worse.
I've never understood the popularity of Mark Drakeford.
He was actually impressive when interviewed on the Rest Is Politics podcast. The mystery deepens…
He is actually a very clever man. And those people I know who know him, like him. (But then, so do people who know Gavin Williamson.)
I think part of the problem is the poor quality of the Welsh Civil Service, which fishes in a very small pool indeed for all sorts of reasons. But most of the problem is simply the fundamentally corrupt nature of the Welsh party systems, which are a veritable Augean stables of favours, kickbacks, shady deals and local bosses.
That applies just as much to the Tories and Plaid as to Labour. It used to apply to the Liberals too as I knew to my cost living in Aberystwyth, but they've died out so are no longer important.
Do the Welsh CS and local authorities still insist on everyone speaking ‘the language’?
Most of the civil servants I knew in Cardiff could barely speak Welsh. If it is compulsory, as you suggest, then perhaps they check for GCSE rather than fluency, and I know how poor my O-level French is. Aiui the Welsh CS includes specialist translation units.
My time in Wales was 25 years ago, but it always used to be that the good public sector jobs only ever went to the locals, with language used as the descriminatory factor, if only ever unofficially.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
You can apply all that to Wales under the Welsh labour government (apart from the tube obviously)
Welsh Labour seem less a political proposition than a kind of shitocracy. I presume the Welsh prefer it this way as the Welsh Tories are even worse.
I've never understood the popularity of Mark Drakeford.
He was actually impressive when interviewed on the Rest Is Politics podcast. The mystery deepens…
He is actually a very clever man. And those people I know who know him, like him. (But then, so do people who know Gavin Williamson.)
I think part of the problem is the poor quality of the Welsh Civil Service, which fishes in a very small pool indeed for all sorts of reasons. But most of the problem is simply the fundamentally corrupt nature of the Welsh party systems, which are a veritable Augean stables of favours, kickbacks, shady deals and local bosses.
That applies just as much to the Tories and Plaid as to Labour. It used to apply to the Liberals too as I knew to my cost living in Aberystwyth, but they've died out so are no longer important.
Do the Welsh CS and local authorities still insist on everyone speaking ‘the language’?
Most of the civil servants I knew in Cardiff could barely speak Welsh. If it is compulsory, as you suggest, then perhaps they check for GCSE rather than fluency, and I know how poor my O-level French is. Aiui the Welsh CS includes specialist translation units.
They still do it. Not that long ago a road sign at a shopping centre in Wrexham had in English, 'Please call again.' Some prat typed it into Google Translate and the result in Welsh was 'Ffoniwch Eto' - phone back!
I still cannot understand that story. I mean, if they provide translations for people who do not speak Welsh then it would not make much sense to have an out of office message which was not in at least one other language as well as Welsh. So either it didn't and their out of office was dumb, or it did and the person receiving it still didn't notice.
Because under the Welsh Language Act, the Welsh comes first. And the recipient didn't scroll down to see the English equivalent, just assumed it was what he'd asked for.
So they were even stupider than the story suggests, since the story at least implies it could have been a reasonable error if the welsh text was all they got.
We are talking about Swansea City Council.
(Not to be called 'Cyngor Dinas a Sir Abertawe,' apparently.)
Comments
They sack the staff?
Is that true for the 10-20% of French people living in the bainlieues? They do burn an awful lot of cars
On the whole however I would agree that France feels better governed than the UK atm, and has done for some time, and it is quite annoying. We are meant to be the sensible ones
And the French do moan in an over-pessimistic way. La morosite is a thing
Note to self - try to read properly before replying.
If the Tesla share price starts falling, he could get margin calls on the loans and need to find cash.
If other politicians note the adverse consequences of telling difficult truths, and trim their message accordingly so that they get elected, whose fault is that? The politicians’, or the voters’?
It’s very much my view that in a free society we get the politicians we deserve. They reflect us profoundly, and if we don’t like what we see it should tell us something about ourselves. There’s a Russian saying: “Don’t blame the mirror if the mug is ugly."
So these businesses are destroyed as a social entity. The owners make a fat profit. The whole thing is fucking fucked. Just deport these people. Enough. VOTE FARAGE
Now who was it.....?
I think part of the problem is the poor quality of the Welsh Civil Service, which fishes in a very small pool indeed for all sorts of reasons. But most of the problem is simply the fundamentally corrupt nature of the Welsh party systems, which are a veritable Augean stables of favours, kickbacks, shady deals and local bosses.
That applies just as much to the Tories and Plaid as to Labour. It used to apply to the Liberals too as I knew to my cost living in Aberystwyth, but they've died out so are no longer important.
OTOH, the Courts were positively Dickensian back in the late eighties. There was a big improvement under Major and Blair, before things started to go backwards.
Why the f*** do so many court cases last so long these days? Not so long ago a trial was considered a bit of a monster if it lasted more than a week. Now, some drag on for months if not years.
Often the countries that appear most well governed are quite small.
There must be some deeper seated reason for the incestuousness and corruption.
THey had to abandon the requirement for university vice chancellors when they realised they were appointing only idiots. Unfortunately one of the first beneficiaries was April Macmahon, whose staff nicknamed her 'Robert Maxwell' for her interesting financial arrangements.
And, in the current case, the polls match the fundamentals. It's mid term, the economy is in a bad way, Biden is fairly unpopular, so why would one not expect the Presidential party to get a beating, since this almost always happens in those circumstances?
My older daughter’s education is good. She’s at a high performing North London Sixth Form College. It works well. She seems happy. The streets are safe when she walks home
The tax office has gone to shit. I finally got my double taxation forms returned: eight months after I applied. Rather than the normal 2 weeks. Pathetic
So much of this is simply Working From Home. We have to grasp the nettle - certainly in the public service - and say Guys this is not panning out. Get your fat lazy civil service arse back to the office. I suspect this is one reason continental Europe is, in part, recovering better than us. They have returned to more normal working patterns more effectively
Or to put it another way - in which other country can a New Zealander earn 50% more merely by taking a two hour train ride?
One day Wales may wake up to this socialist utopia but not just for a while
French courts will set aside a whole day for a trial which would be 16 weeks in the UK commercial court. And then automatically find for the French party.
More seriously, there is a chronic shortage of people who can teach A-level philosophy. But even in English they had to get supply in.
And that's a good school. Don't get me started on what's happened in Walsall...
Still i am hosting my halloween murder mystery party tomorrow so not all bad
In Scotland an innovation a few years ago now was a case management hearing before a Judge called a Preliminary Hearing. This tries to identify what is actually in dispute and to identify what witnesses are actually required. I am not sure if the same happens in England but there seems a lot of evidence that is either not contentious or not particularly relevant.
Although we do have visa free residency in Australia which has tended to be something like 20 or 30% more.
2020 understated the GOP, 2018 understated the Dems.
Not to mention make jury service much less of a problem.
At least, I see it's equal opps - this is in a Tory constituency. At the moment.
But why would the council expect consultation? It's not as if the HO give a shit about things like childrens' education, as far as I can see. And as for actual shit, that is OK so long as the HO down't overcrowd the hotel.
But if they do clearly it isn't working.
https://twitter.com/tomhfh/status/1588456176253128704?s=20&t=iYL6wU_HDFGTDHhquRCOmw
@DavidL gives some insight above - three days to go through something that should really have taken four hours.
The only thing I would say is that there aren't many tutoring jobs in philosophy out there. He'd be better off concentrating on economics, where there's enormous demand.
His Majesty The King has long been a leader in the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss.
I was pleased to join him this afternoon at the close of our COP Presidency. It is more important than ever that we deliver on Glasgow's legacy.
https://twitter.com/RishiSunak/status/1588580188258209792
And who’s the lady the King is greeting as Sunak looks on?
It is possible to be based in Cardiff and work in London. Expensive, but possible.
Up there with old Revd Ian Paisley with the most iconic Ulster accent of all.
But it does still seem baffling. It's not just here, in the US it seems like cases takes weeks or months, which even for complex matters seems like it shouldn't be necessary.
I think one thing is that the quality of forensics is much better than in the past. You really will get an expert giving evidence over prolonged period, in a way that would not have happened in the past.
Normally there is a fortnight long fireworks season smeared out between Diwali and Guy Fawkes. This year, barely two days for each. As good a sign of the cost of living crisis as any.
In fact of those countries I’d say that only two are in properly dire straits (sadly). Sri Lanka and Armenia. They are desperately poor and there isn’t an obvious way out, despite both countries and peoples being charming in different ways
And it is important to remember that even for inhabitants of Sri Lanka and Armenia life is INFINITELY better than it was 50 or 100 years ago
if we can get through the next few years and this damn war, and not kill our selves in an accidental global nuclear toilet flush, then prospects for humanity are bright.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1259745/Welsh-road-sign-error-Swansea-Councils-office-email-reply-ends-road-sign.html
They still do it. Not that long ago a road sign at a shopping centre in Wrexham had in English, 'Please call again.' Some prat typed it into Google Translate and the result in Welsh was 'Ffoniwch Eto' - phone back!
Edit - and in my experience you were damn lucky they could speak any English!
There are many things we could learn from our neighbours about how to run things but a combination of nostalgia, inertia and vested interests keep us mired in failing systems.
That is not to say everything is better overseas. There are many things that are better in the UK but we can't use that as an excuse not to improve those things that are clearly worse.
To me, the jury were either going to believe the complainers or they weren't. I wanted them to focus on that question and not be distracted by all of the police inquiries which might have given their versions some minimal support but might just as easily have confused matters.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-63516054
Dudley Smith:
Edmund, you're a political animal. You have the eye for human weakness, but not the stomach.
Ed Exley:
You're wrong, sir.
Captain Dudley Smith:
Would you be willing to plant corroborative evidence on a suspect you knew to be guilty, in order to ensure an indictment?
Ed Exley:
Dudley, we've been over this.
Captain Dudley Smith:
Yes or no, Edmund?
Ed Exley:
No!
Captain Dudley Smith:
Would you be willing to beat a confession out of a suspect you knew to be guilty?
Ed Exley:
No.
Captain Dudley Smith:
Would you be willing to shoot a hardened criminal in the back, in order to offset the chance that some... lawyer...
Ed Exley:
No.
Captain Dudley Smith:
Then, for the love of God, don't be a detective. Stick to assignments where you don't have...
Ed Exley:
Dudley, I know you mean well, but I don't need to do it the way you did. Or my father.
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
https://www.portugalresident.com/why-portugal-is-so-much-poorer-than-other-european-countries/
‘They don’t want the jobs here. They can earn five times as much in Britain,’ say teachers who fear teenagers are being lured across the Channel by social media" (£)
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/albania-migrant-crisis-schools-english-channel-crossing-uk-ddq88w3tc
The trial, scheduled to last six months, began on Monday and the jury has now heard in outline the seven murder and 10 attempted murder allegations.
https://www.nationalworld.com/news/crime/lucy-letby-trial-nurse-confession-alleged-baby-murders-what-did-note-say-3878384
Seems torture for her if she turns out to be innocent and for the parents, if guilty. You would have thought they could have cherrypicked the best two or three specimen cases and gone with those.
Portugal has been doing quite well lately.
Booming digital economy in Lisbon, for example.
Of course it is poorer than the rest of Western Europe, always has been, but it’s catching up.
Covid response was also notably coherent, belying stereotypes.
I don’t recognise Leon’s judgement that it is “fucked”. It seems to my eyes that it is slowly but surely de-fucking.
"You been on that Onlyfans again? It's on the credit card statement."
"Oh yes, learning about cupcakes and roasts, dear."
@maolesen
Some perspective for those who still don't get it: If I were forced to be infected by either HIV or COVID, I would choose HIV without hesitation.
https://twitter.com/maolesen/status/1588412779102208000
Mark Harper no doubt has given the green light (signal) to this and good if so to be pragmatic rather than the idiotic previous nothing to do with us mantra
The new head of Portugal’s COVID-19 vaccination task force was due to start work Thursday, a day after his predecessor resigned amid scandals over vaccine queue-jumping and frustration over a sluggish rollout similar to that seen in other European Union countries.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/portugal-vaccine-rollout-gets-chief-110335440.html
Reminds me somewhat of Dubai in 2022.
(Not to be called 'Cyngor Dinas a Sir Abertawe,' apparently.)