“Half-term ski holidays in France are facing disruption after lift operators announced "unlimited" strikes in resorts next month over Emmanuel Macron's pension reforms.
“Just weeks after skiers endured record-low snow cover over Christmas, their biggest obstacle to hitting the slopes in the next holiday period could now prove to be industrial action.
“The two main French unions representing lift and tow operators and seasonal workers filed for open-ended strikes starting next Tuesday to coincide with the second day of mass protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.”
Scottish and Scandinavian ski resorts are benefiting from the dreadful snow in the Alps.
West Midlands Lab 50% Con 27% LD 11% Ref 9% Grn 1%
East Midlands Lab 57% Con 22% LD 11% Ref 5% Grn 2%
Eastern Lab 57% Con 22% Ref 10% LD 9% Grn 3%
North East Lab 67% Con 24% Ref 5% LD 4%
North West Lab 56% Con 25% LD 8% Grn 6% Ref 4%
Yorkshire & the Humber Lab 58% Con 22% LD 8% Ref 7% Grn 4%
Scotland SNP 47% Lab 23% Con 18% Grn 8% LD 3%
Wales Lab 51% Con 34% PC 6% Ref 5% LD 3%
(Redfield & Wilton; 22 January)
Conservatives now doing better in London than the East Midlands and East and North? The Rishi effect?
Wales now the Tories second best region after the South East seems a bit odd though
The Redfield & Wilton subsamples seem to be particularly noisy and vary a lot from poll to poll. That doesn't make them entirely useless, but you'd be better off averaging the subsamples from a few consecutive polls together, rather than looking at the subsamples from a single poll in isolation.
The sobering truth is that if you put people in absolute authority over people who are not in a position to complain easily, a significant proportion will abuse that power, and then get used to abusing it and start to joke about it to each other. The same pattern emerges with elderly care, prisons, asylum centres, etc.
Same applies to the NHS, right?
It applies to anywhere, though rather less in mainstream healthcare (not just the NHS - not sure if you're making a political point), since a significant proportion of the patients will be people like most of us who won't tolerate maltreatment for long. It's the sense that a potential victim is powerless that brings out the sadist.
I wasn't making a political point I was making an NHS point. And yes, as I mentioned to @Foxy, geriatric wards with no active (and I mean active) relatives or friends is not where you want to be.
My problem is that we don't seem to be allowed to say that the NHS should be added to your list - why did you miss it out, as a matter of interest - as having a systemic problem in this regard.
Same reason we can't even crown a new king without the absurd and continual bowing down to doctors and nurses regardless of the quality of care they provide and the cost. It has completely infected the broadcast media and almost all politicians. It gets worse as the reality moves ever further away from the image.
The sobering truth is that if you put people in absolute authority over people who are not in a position to complain easily, a significant proportion will abuse that power, and then get used to abusing it and start to joke about it to each other. The same pattern emerges with elderly care, prisons, asylum centres, etc.
Same applies to the NHS, right?
Decades ago, I knew someone who in their youth had worked at a large chicken farm, including their dispatch. He quit after a few months, saying he had gone in as a 'normal' teenager, and soon found he was flinging chicken carcasses around with the other lads and men, and doing things to dead and live chickens he would not have dreamed of before.
He still liked KFC, though.
If everybody's doing it; if the culture has been allowed to devolve to allow it, then even 'good' people will get dragged in.
It's rare I get actively angry but I was so incandescent on the M25 this evening I almost had to pull my car over to compose myself when I heard this story on Radio 4.
There's something about the abuse of vulnerable children - and the way adults lie about it, and get away with it - that provokes a very visceral reaction in me.
The response of OFSTED’s useless Spielman - ‘we need new powers’. Those who doubted the justification for @ydoethur ’s anger and contempt for her with regard to safeguarding should take note.
… The Hesley Group - owned by private equity firm Antin Infrastructure, which is better known for investing in gas pipelines - continues to run a school and placements for adults with learning disabilities. It says it cannot comment further because of the ongoing criminal investigation by South Yorkshire Police…
And note their profit margins at all of their sites were 16% -1% below the figure government deems ‘excessive’ for the ‘industry’.
That only washes if they can show they did highlight serious concerns but were "powerless" to do anything to stop it. Otherwise, it's a standard hand-washing technique - it makes it sort of somebody else's fault.
I suspect they already have the powers they need, but just didn't use them.
You suspect correctly. They were warned 42 times of safeguarding and welfare breaches, any one of which should automatically have triggered an emergency inspection. They ignored every one of them.
When the baby P thing happened in Haringey, Sharon Shoesmith claimed that her dismissal was unfair, because she had followed all the procedures and her paperwork was top notch.
That a baby had been slowly beaten to death on her watch wasn't the point. Nor that her response to a junior annoying her with concerns about said baby consisted of sustained administrative harassment. On the grounds that said junior had abused a child - she had shouted back, once, at a teenager.
The parallel with those who raise corruption issues in the police and find themselves being disciplined for corruption themselves* is striking.
*In one incident in Oxford, when I was young, a Sergeant was dismissed for making a mistake of £1.34 on expenses. Sadly, this meant he couldn't provide evidence to an internal enquiry into the case of a police officer who had taken money from drug dealers. The Sergeant was the one who had reported the matter...
If Sharp stays the Tories are fucked. The BBC will be widely seen as hopelessly compromised. Hence elder statesman Dimbleby’s intervention yesterday.
I don't know the details of all this, but in professional services you have a duty to give a perception of integrity in order to retain the confidence of your clients/other stakeholders, regardless of the underlying issue or lack thereof.
It's rare I get actively angry but I was so incandescent on the M25 this evening I almost had to pull my car over to compose myself when I heard this story on Radio 4.
There's something about the abuse of vulnerable children - and the way adults lie about it, and get away with it - that provokes a very visceral reaction in me.
The response of OFSTED’s useless Spielman - ‘we need new powers’. Those who doubted the justification for @ydoethur ’s anger and contempt for her with regard to safeguarding should take note.
… The Hesley Group - owned by private equity firm Antin Infrastructure, which is better known for investing in gas pipelines - continues to run a school and placements for adults with learning disabilities. It says it cannot comment further because of the ongoing criminal investigation by South Yorkshire Police…
And note their profit margins at all of their sites were 16% -1% below the figure government deems ‘excessive’ for the ‘industry’.
That only washes if they can show they did highlight serious concerns but were "powerless" to do anything to stop it. Otherwise, it's a standard hand-washing technique - it makes it sort of somebody else's fault.
I suspect they already have the powers they need, but just didn't use them.
That's almost certain, given their record. Why Spielman so consistently escapes any responsibility for every scandal OFSTED has some part in, is beyond me.
The involvement of infra funds in the high acuity space has been deeply worrying me for a couple of years.
I toss and turn at night, worrying about it, as well tbh
“Half-term ski holidays in France are facing disruption after lift operators announced "unlimited" strikes in resorts next month over Emmanuel Macron's pension reforms.
“Just weeks after skiers endured record-low snow cover over Christmas, their biggest obstacle to hitting the slopes in the next holiday period could now prove to be industrial action.
“The two main French unions representing lift and tow operators and seasonal workers filed for open-ended strikes starting next Tuesday to coincide with the second day of mass protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.”
Scottish and Scandinavian ski resorts are benefiting from the dreadful snow in the Alps.
The sobering truth is that if you put people in absolute authority over people who are not in a position to complain easily, a significant proportion will abuse that power, and then get used to abusing it and start to joke about it to each other. The same pattern emerges with elderly care, prisons, asylum centres, etc.
Same applies to the NHS, right?
Decades ago, I knew someone who in their youth had worked at a large chicken farm, including their dispatch. He quit after a few months, saying he had gone in as a 'normal' teenager, and soon found he was flinging chicken carcasses around with the other lads and men, and doing things to dead and live chickens he would not have dreamed of before.
He still liked KFC, though.
If everybody's doing it; if the culture has been allowed to devolve to allow it, then even 'good' people will get dragged in.
“Doing things to live and dead chickens…”
Err…
"Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely" - this is always true.
Without effective oversight, it is simply a matter of time before corruption occurs.
Every time I hear someone say "Why introduce checks? It's all working fine", I recount the spoons.
The sobering truth is that if you put people in absolute authority over people who are not in a position to complain easily, a significant proportion will abuse that power, and then get used to abusing it and start to joke about it to each other. The same pattern emerges with elderly care, prisons, asylum centres, etc.
Same applies to the NHS, right?
Yes, though the issue tends to be at its worst in long term institutions, such as mental health and learning disability than in short term care. Stafford shows that it can happen even in shorter stay environments.
This scandal does show that privatising such services is not a panacea for either value or quality.
Absolutely. I would expect more acquiescence on the geriatric ward than the orthopaedic ward, indeed I have seen it myself. I would be interested to know what measures are in place to address this and whether one is indeed allowed to say that systemically there is (also) an issue in the NHS in this regard.
Oh absolutely. For all the struggles of my Trust, there is a culture of openness in challenging these things, indeed we have Trustwide courses to encourage speaking up and how to do it, for all levels of staff.
And if it was full you wouldn’t be criticising it for being full?
The point made in the linked article that it could be used to 'store' some of the lorries queued up on the M20 is a good one. The last two times I used the tunnel, stretches of the motorway were being used as lorry parks, with other vehicle traffic diverted onto back roads, and police checkpoints stationed at key junctions to turn back any lorries that tried to sneak past the queue. So the journey takes longer than usual, and there's a three-lane motorway built to speed traffic to the entrance of the tunnel, unused for moving traffic which is routed onto country lanes. There must be a better way of doing it.
Here Stuarts once in glory reign’d, And laws for Scotland’s weal ordain’d; But now unroof’d their palace stands, Their sceptre’s sway’d by other hands.
The injur’d Stuart line is gone, A race outlandish fills their throne An idiot race, to honour lost; Who know them best despise them most.
Best bard. 🏴
Enjoy yer haggis.
To all the Scots here, enjoy Burns’ Nicht!
thank you
I’ll be breaking off from Dry January, for the virtual sharing of a wee dram of the 18-year-old Glenmorangie with my (Glaswegian) father this evening. 🥃
Here Stuarts once in glory reign’d, And laws for Scotland’s weal ordain’d; But now unroof’d their palace stands, Their sceptre’s sway’d by other hands.
The injur’d Stuart line is gone, A race outlandish fills their throne An idiot race, to honour lost; Who know them best despise them most.
Best bard. 🏴
Enjoy yer haggis.
To all the Scots here, enjoy Burns’ Nicht!
thank you
I’ll be breaking off from Dry January, for the virtual sharing of a wee dram of the 18-year-old Glenmorangie with my (Glaswegian) father this evening. 🥃
And if it was full you wouldn’t be criticising it for being full?
I think it is fair to be critical either way. It was needed for Brexit delays so an unnecessary waste of money and if it isn't needed now is that because border controls are going great (excellent news if true) or because lots of companies have given up exporting to Europe. Who knows but there are daily reports of the latter.
Comments
https://planetski.eu/2023/01/14/good-skiing-continues-in-scotland/
Err…
That a baby had been slowly beaten to death on her watch wasn't the point. Nor that her response to a junior annoying her with concerns about said baby consisted of sustained administrative harassment. On the grounds that said junior had abused a child - she had shouted back, once, at a teenager.
The parallel with those who raise corruption issues in the police and find themselves being disciplined for corruption themselves* is striking.
*In one incident in Oxford, when I was young, a Sergeant was dismissed for making a mistake of £1.34 on expenses. Sadly, this meant he couldn't provide evidence to an internal enquiry into the case of a police officer who had taken money from drug dealers. The Sergeant was the one who had reported the matter...
Clearly the BBC have failed on this count so far.
Without effective oversight, it is simply a matter of time before corruption occurs.
Every time I hear someone say "Why introduce checks? It's all working fine", I recount the spoons.
Its a very sensible policy. Not sure why you'd object to it, I didn't have you down as a Putinista.