@BestForBritain Remember: In June 2016, Major and Blair warned that Brexit may "destabilise the complicated constitutional settlement that underpins stability in Northern Ireland".
Leading pro-Brexit politicians called their caution "rather sad", "desperate" and "simply scaremongering". ~AA
Sunak has ensured there is effectively no border in the Irish sea as well as no border in Ireland, so the threat is less than if there had been no Brexit deal with the EU or the Protocol was retained
Surely the Lineker ruling is in error? I read on here quite strident comments from PB's resident Tax Expert that Sir Crispbag was the most egregious tax-dodging bastard whose political opinions were therefore practically treasonous.
He was always a marginal case for an IR35 prosecution, as he clearly wasn’t doing a full-time job with the BBC, and was working with other broadcasters for midweek games. A genuine contractor, as opposed to a five-days-a-week morning show host who was clearly an employee.
Is it not interesting that paragraph 40 says:
40. By Clause 2 of the Contributor Guarantee, which he signed on 21 March 2013, Mr Lineker gave his “personal guarantee”: “… to provide my services to the Partnership as required under the Contract and to comply with all terms and conditions which require performance or compliance on my part. In particular I warrant that I will read and fully comply with the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Guidance and the BBC’s Standards as defined in the Contract.”
So does that mean that he was like any other BBC employee and should not Tweet as he did? Asking for a friend (innocent face).
That contract was from 2013, and was superseded by other contracts and agreements.
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
@BestForBritain Remember: In June 2016, Major and Blair warned that Brexit may "destabilise the complicated constitutional settlement that underpins stability in Northern Ireland".
Leading pro-Brexit politicians called their caution "rather sad", "desperate" and "simply scaremongering". ~AA
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
I am clear that parts of the country think as you describe. I am also clear that larger parts think the direct opposite.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
Though pupils in state schools look set to learn less of anything, assuming that more strikes are incoming;
Schools in England could face further strike action as the National Education Union has asked teachers to reject a new pay offer, after intensive talks.
@BestForBritain Remember: In June 2016, Major and Blair warned that Brexit may "destabilise the complicated constitutional settlement that underpins stability in Northern Ireland".
Leading pro-Brexit politicians called their caution "rather sad", "desperate" and "simply scaremongering". ~AA
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
If there’s one thing that p***es people off more than Johnson’s hypocritical dishonesty, it’s his approach of announcing something and then not worrying about whether it works or even gets done.
You can only fool most of the people for most of the time for so long, before we ordinary folk get fed up emerging from our front doors at the cries of “free cake” only to discover there’s nothing whatsoever being given away.
Sunak would do well to focus on what works, and only announcing stuff that actually gets followed through.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
So you are still a glass bottle type rather than the far more efficient squeezy version.....
As my avatar implies, I'm quite into this topic. The squeezy is by far the better design on utility grounds but the glass Heinz ketchup bottle is up there with the Coke one as eye candy. You could imagine it as a Warhol. Then of course there's the sacred ritual of upturning it and slapping its arse to get the sauce out and onto your bacon roll, or whatever it is you're using it to adorn. Very satisfying when it works first time, even better when it gets stuck and nothing emerges and you end up hitting it harder and harder until your hand hurts and you're panting a bit until finally - whoosh - a great big blob suddenly comes out and goes all over the place. You don't get this with the squeezy.
Let me guess, you also prefer the separate hot and cold taps in sinks that are completely useless compared to a tap where you can actually choose temperatues between scalding and near frozen.....
Yes I do. I'm quite trad. Don't even mind button-up flies.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
The majority of such abuse is from privately educated people who are now trying, desperately, to be as left wing as they can.
Worse than that, there are some privately educated people who try to pass themselves off as working class.
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
So you are still a glass bottle type rather than the far more efficient squeezy version.....
As my avatar implies, I'm quite into this topic. The squeezy is by far the better design on utility grounds but the glass Heinz ketchup bottle is up there with the Coke one as eye candy. You could imagine it as a Warhol. Then of course there's the sacred ritual of upturning it and slapping its arse to get the sauce out and onto your bacon roll, or whatever it is you're using it to adorn. Very satisfying when it works first time, even better when it gets stuck and nothing emerges and you end up hitting it harder and harder until your hand hurts and you're panting a bit until finally - whoosh - a great big blob suddenly comes out and goes all over the place. You don't get this with the squeezy.
Wrong on so many counts apart from the iconic design.
First off, you do get that nothing, nothing, it's gone everywhere including on my shirt with the squeezy bottle. You need first to stamp it down, head first, on the table otherwise even though it's been stored upside down nothing will come out and then you puff, and puff, and when it does come out it goes in all directions and for some distance.
And secondly, you don't whack the bottom of the glass bottle dear god give me strength. You put two fingers out and then pour out while tapping the bottle half way along the neck on the two fingers and this will mean a steady, controlled amount of ketchup will emerge.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
If there’s one thing that p***es people off more than Johnson’s hypocritical dishonesty, it’s his approach of announcing something and then not worrying about whether it works or even gets done.
You can only fool most of the people for most of the time for so long, before we ordinary folk get fed up emerging from our front doors at the cries of “free cake” only to discover there’s nothing whatsoever being given away.
Sunak would do well to focus on what works, and only announcing stuff that actually gets followed through.
Yep, Sunak needs to actually stop the boats before the election - as opposed to talking about stopping them, and legislating about stopping them.
@BestForBritain Remember: In June 2016, Major and Blair warned that Brexit may "destabilise the complicated constitutional settlement that underpins stability in Northern Ireland".
Leading pro-Brexit politicians called their caution "rather sad", "desperate" and "simply scaremongering". ~AA
Sunak has ensured there is effectively no border in the Irish sea as well as no border in Ireland, so the threat is less than if there had been no Brexit deal with the EU or the Protocol was retained
Also, I never did get this argument. Were those of us who wanted to leave supposed to swallow any amount of future crap from the EU out of fear that something might happen in NI? Classic Remain campaign. Not a poeticise message in site and, with the electorate we have, almost guaranteed to make some of us say “sod you” on general principle.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
Though pupils in state schools look set to learn less of anything, assuming that more strikes are incoming;
Schools in England could face further strike action as the National Education Union has asked teachers to reject a new pay offer, after intensive talks.
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
I am clear that parts of the country think as you describe. I am also clear that larger parts think the direct opposite.
Larger parts of the country think that they want more of the country to feel less recognizably British?
I know that pockets of the left have deep cultural cringe over British culture, despise British history and think the Proms is not sufficiently woke etc... but it is definitely not the majority of the country.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
So you are still a glass bottle type rather than the far more efficient squeezy version.....
As my avatar implies, I'm quite into this topic. The squeezy is by far the better design on utility grounds but the glass Heinz ketchup bottle is up there with the Coke one as eye candy. You could imagine it as a Warhol. Then of course there's the sacred ritual of upturning it and slapping its arse to get the sauce out and onto your bacon roll, or whatever it is you're using it to adorn. Very satisfying when it works first time, even better when it gets stuck and nothing emerges and you end up hitting it harder and harder until your hand hurts and you're panting a bit until finally - whoosh - a great big blob suddenly comes out and goes all over the place. You don't get this with the squeezy.
Wrong on so many counts apart from the iconic design.
First off, you do get that nothing, nothing, it's gone everywhere including on my shirt with the squeezy bottle. You need first to stamp it down, head first, on the table otherwise even though it's been stored upside down nothing will come out and then you puff, and puff, and when it does come out it goes in all directions and for some distance.
And secondly, you don't whack the bottom of the glass bottle dear god give me strength. You put two fingers out and then pour out while tapping the bottle half way along the neck on the two fingers and this will mean a steady, controlled amount of ketchup will emerge.
You have to shake the bottle. It's called thixotropy, as any viewer of Magnus Pyke on 70s primetime television will know.
Tomato ketchup in a bottle, None'll come, and then a lot'll.
As my Grandpa used to say.
Surely the real question is when did tomato sauce get renamed ketchup? Can't we change it back as one of our Brexit freedoms?
Eh? I have only ever known it as ketchup. Or occasionally catsup, as my other Grandpa used to call it, largely to annoy my Granny.
EDIT: According to Wikipedia, the word 'ketchup' first appeared in 1682, though in those days was made with mushrooms rather than tomatoes.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
Though pupils in state schools look set to learn less of anything, assuming that more strikes are incoming;
Schools in England could face further strike action as the National Education Union has asked teachers to reject a new pay offer, after intensive talks.
@BestForBritain Remember: In June 2016, Major and Blair warned that Brexit may "destabilise the complicated constitutional settlement that underpins stability in Northern Ireland".
Leading pro-Brexit politicians called their caution "rather sad", "desperate" and "simply scaremongering". ~AA
I remember Leavers offering all sorts of sensible and enlightened solutions at the time: the Republic could leave the EU itself, for example, or even re-join the Union.
@BestForBritain Remember: In June 2016, Major and Blair warned that Brexit may "destabilise the complicated constitutional settlement that underpins stability in Northern Ireland".
Leading pro-Brexit politicians called their caution "rather sad", "desperate" and "simply scaremongering". ~AA
Sunak has ensured there is effectively no border in the Irish sea as well as no border in Ireland, so the threat is less than if there had been no Brexit deal with the EU or the Protocol was retained
Also, I never did get this argument. Were those of us who wanted to leave supposed to swallow any amount of future crap from the EU out of fear that something might happen in NI? Classic Remain campaign. Not a poeticise message in site and, with the electorate we have, almost guaranteed to make some of us say “sod you” on general principle.
That’s an oddly absolutist position. No, it’s about saying there are pros and cons to any decision, and here’s a big con. No-one ever said that this overrode “any amount of future crap with the EU”.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
Though pupils in state schools look set to learn less of anything, assuming that more strikes are incoming;
Schools in England could face further strike action as the National Education Union has asked teachers to reject a new pay offer, after intensive talks.
I'd never heard of the NEU before these strikes. Is it the successor to NUT and/or NASUWT ?
NEU is NUT (large, prone to striking) plus ATL (small, got a bit confused about what to do next when they voted to strike once, ran out of money). NASUWT still exists, didn't meet the turnout threshold for the recent strikes, but are equally cross with the government.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
Though pupils in state schools look set to learn less of anything, assuming that more strikes are incoming;
Schools in England could face further strike action as the National Education Union has asked teachers to reject a new pay offer, after intensive talks.
Final salary pensions have been uniquely horrible for UK plc
But it should not detract from the deleterious impact they have had on UK plc. Over the past two decades, companies have paid more than £500bn into such schemes. They have held back wage growth, curtailed investment, distorted decision-making, scuppered takeovers and consumed incalculable amounts of management time — all for the benefit of a relatively small cohort of mostly older employees (including me).
The FT, only a few months late to the story as usual.
And, on the face of it, ignoring the obvious implication that public sector final salary schemes have been equally horrible for the taxpayer.
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
What is "recognisably British"?
White.
I said in my very comment that it could happen with 10-20 years of integration. Is that supposed to magically change black and brown people white?
The fact you have to yell "racist!" at any argument for an effective immigration policy just shows how out of touch your side of the debate is.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
Though pupils in state schools look set to learn less of anything, assuming that more strikes are incoming;
Schools in England could face further strike action as the National Education Union has asked teachers to reject a new pay offer, after intensive talks.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
Though pupils in state schools look set to learn less of anything, assuming that more strikes are incoming;
Schools in England could face further strike action as the National Education Union has asked teachers to reject a new pay offer, after intensive talks.
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
What is "recognisably British"?
White.
I said in my very comment that it could happen with 10-20 years of integration. Is that supposed to magically change black and brown people white?
The fact you have to yell "racist!" at any argument for an effective immigration policy just shows how out of touch your side of the debate is.
Surely the Lineker ruling is in error? I read on here quite strident comments from PB's resident Tax Expert that Sir Crispbag was the most egregious tax-dodging bastard whose political opinions were therefore practically treasonous.
Surely the Lineker ruling is in error? I read on here quite strident comments from PB's resident Tax Expert that Sir Crispbag was the most egregious tax-dodging bastard whose political opinions were therefore practically treasonous.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
The majority of such abuse is from privately educated people who are now trying, desperately, to be as left wing as they can.
Even Corbynites educated at private school are more likely to speak with received pronounciation than Corbynites educated at comprehensives
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
I am clear that parts of the country think as you describe. I am also clear that larger parts think the direct opposite.
Larger parts of the country think that they want more of the country to feel less recognizably British?
I know that pockets of the left have deep cultural cringe over British culture, despise British history and think the Proms is not sufficiently woke etc... but it is definitely not the majority of the country.
No, large countries don't consider the gammony parody you describe to be "British".
What you think isn't the same as what "the majority of the country" think. Can you see that?
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
What is "recognisably British"?
Crap weather, passive aggression, accent obsession, crisps, trainspotting, Marks and Spencer, a pebbledashed 1930s semi, Sunday League football, Radio 2, eating sandwiches in the car.
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
What is "recognisably British"?
Crap weather, passive aggression, accent obsession, crisps, trainspotting, Marks and Spencer, a pebbledashed 1930s semi, Sunday League football, Radio 2, eating sandwiches in the car.
Surely the Lineker ruling is in error? I read on here quite strident comments from PB's resident Tax Expert that Sir Crispbag was the most egregious tax-dodging bastard whose political opinions were therefore practically treasonous.
The main point of the Lineker judgement looks to me to be - if you want to pay less tax, get yourself two employers.
Unless you want to do the PAYE, etc, etc when you get a plumber around to service your boiler you have to accept there is such a thing as self employment.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
The majority of such abuse is from privately educated people who are now trying, desperately, to be as left wing as they can.
Even Corbynites educated at private school are more likely to speak with received pronounciation than Corbynites educated at comprehensives
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
What is "recognisably British"?
Crap weather, passive aggression, accent obsession, crisps, trainspotting, Marks and Spencer, a pebbledashed 1930s semi, Sunday League football, Radio 2, eating sandwiches in the car.
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
What is "recognisably British"?
Crap weather, passive aggression, accent obsession, crisps, trainspotting, Marks and Spencer, a pebbledashed 1930s semi, Sunday League football, Radio 2, eating sandwiches in the car.
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
What is "recognisably British"?
A combination of cultural markers that is obvious to anyone not being deliberately obtuse about national culture. We all know immigrants that have culturally become a lot more British than others. It's a bunch of things from accent to mannerisms to outlook. It shows up with immigrant groups living, socially mixing and intermarrying outside their own group at the same rates as the rest of the population.
Of course at this point, the mass immigration brigade will start claiming that I am arguing EVERY immigrant needs to adopt EVERYTHING British. I am not. I am saying sufficient cultural integration will happen with the bulk of people in immigrant areas without compulsion as long as we have time without ongoing mass immigration. But they don't have a good argument against this, so they have to make up a strawman.
Surely the Lineker ruling is in error? I read on here quite strident comments from PB's resident Tax Expert that Sir Crispbag was the most egregious tax-dodging bastard whose political opinions were therefore practically treasonous.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
The majority of such abuse is from privately educated people who are now trying, desperately, to be as left wing as they can.
Even Corbynites educated at private school are more likely to speak with received pronounciation than Corbynites educated at comprehensives
Do you speak with RP or more rough & ready Essex?
I was born and raised in Tunbridge Wells, went to a major public school and live in rural Essex not Basildon. What do you think I speak like?
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
I am clear that parts of the country think as you describe. I am also clear that larger parts think the direct opposite.
Larger parts of the country think that they want more of the country to feel less recognizably British?
I know that pockets of the left have deep cultural cringe over British culture, despise British history and think the Proms is not sufficiently woke etc... but it is definitely not the majority of the country.
No, large countries don't consider the gammony parody you describe to be "British".
What you think isn't the same as what "the majority of the country" think. Can you see that?
The fact you are the type to use racist slurs puts you in the outlying minority, not me.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
Though pupils in state schools look set to learn less of anything, assuming that more strikes are incoming;
Schools in England could face further strike action as the National Education Union has asked teachers to reject a new pay offer, after intensive talks.
I'd never heard of the NEU before these strikes. Is it the successor to NUT and/or NASUWT ?
The NUT. They've been around for a few years. They were the chief antagonists in stopping children getting taught during covid.
Unless I'm mistaken, wasn't it Hancock and Johnson, rather than the NUT, who determined what went on in schools during the peak of Covid?
The all powerful coalition of the unions, Sturgeon, lockdowners, woke media and teachers themselves made them do it and ran way, leaving the poor saps to take responsibilty. Not that they've taken a tiny bit of responsibilty for anything they've done.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
The majority of such abuse is from privately educated people who are now trying, desperately, to be as left wing as they can.
Even Corbynites educated at private school are more likely to speak with received pronounciation than Corbynites educated at comprehensives
Do you speak with RP or more rough & ready Essex?
I was born and raised in Tunbridge Wells, went to a major public school and live in rural Essex not Basildon. What do you think I speak like?
The main point of the Lineker judgement looks to me to be - if you want to pay less tax, get yourself two employers.
Unless you want to do the PAYE, etc, etc when you get a plumber around to service your boiler you have to accept there is such a thing as self employment.
The fairest solution would be to equalise all net income from the same gross point.
The main point of the Lineker judgement looks to me to be - if you want to pay less tax, get yourself two employers.
Unless you want to do the PAYE, etc, etc when you get a plumber around to service your boiler you have to accept there is such a thing as self employment.
The fairest solution would be to equalise all net income from the same gross point.
Why would anyone take the business risk of running their own company?
This is becoming a larger issue now, especially with the latest IR35 rules precluding travel and accommodation expenses from contractors.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
Though pupils in state schools look set to learn less of anything, assuming that more strikes are incoming;
Schools in England could face further strike action as the National Education Union has asked teachers to reject a new pay offer, after intensive talks.
I'd never heard of the NEU before these strikes. Is it the successor to NUT and/or NASUWT ?
The NUT. They've been around for a few years. They were the chief antagonists in stopping children getting taught during covid.
Unless I'm mistaken, wasn't it Hancock and Johnson, rather than the NUT, who determined what went on in schools during the peak of Covid?
The all powerful coalition of the unions, Sturgeon, lockdowners, woke media and teachers themselves made them do it and ran way, leaving the poor saps to take responsibilty. Not that they've taken a tiny bit of responsibilty for anything they've done.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
The majority of such abuse is from privately educated people who are now trying, desperately, to be as left wing as they can.
Even Corbynites educated at private school are more likely to speak with received pronounciation than Corbynites educated at comprehensives
Do you speak with RP or more rough & ready Essex?
I was born and raised in Tunbridge Wells, went to a major public school and live in rural Essex not Basildon. What do you think I speak like?
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
I am clear that parts of the country think as you describe. I am also clear that larger parts think the direct opposite.
Larger parts of the country think that they want more of the country to feel less recognizably British?
I know that pockets of the left have deep cultural cringe over British culture, despise British history and think the Proms is not sufficiently woke etc... but it is definitely not the majority of the country.
No, large countries don't consider the gammony parody you describe to be "British".
What you think isn't the same as what "the majority of the country" think. Can you see that?
The fact you are the type to use racist slurs puts you in the outlying minority, not me.
What racist slur? "Gammon"? That is a skin tone driven by internal rage, not a race.
@BestForBritain Remember: In June 2016, Major and Blair warned that Brexit may "destabilise the complicated constitutional settlement that underpins stability in Northern Ireland".
Leading pro-Brexit politicians called their caution "rather sad", "desperate" and "simply scaremongering". ~AA
The main point of the Lineker judgement looks to me to be - if you want to pay less tax, get yourself two employers.
Unless you want to do the PAYE, etc, etc when you get a plumber around to service your boiler you have to accept there is such a thing as self employment.
The fairest solution would be to equalise all net income from the same gross point.
You'll have to explain that to me. Generally I don't think there is much of an issue these days regarding employment, (proper) self employment or (proper) employment through your own company. There are swings and roundabouts. I certainly employed myself through my company and obviously I minimised my tax where I could, but really there was little in it. I set up the limited company for other reasons, not tax and no I wasn't someone who could be caught by IR35 as I ran a proper business.
The obvious change that could be made is to combine tax and NI. It would simplify matter, knock out some of the kinks in the marginal tax graph (although there will still be others notably at the 100k level) and be fairer.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
The majority of such abuse is from privately educated people who are now trying, desperately, to be as left wing as they can.
Even Corbynites educated at private school are more likely to speak with received pronounciation than Corbynites educated at comprehensives
Do you speak with RP or more rough & ready Essex?
I was born and raised in Tunbridge Wells, went to a major public school and live in rural Essex not Basildon. What do you think I speak like?
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
The majority of such abuse is from privately educated people who are now trying, desperately, to be as left wing as they can.
Even Corbynites educated at private school are more likely to speak with received pronounciation than Corbynites educated at comprehensives
Do you speak with RP or more rough & ready Essex?
I was born and raised in Tunbridge Wells, went to a major public school and live in rural Essex not Basildon. What do you think I speak like?
James Argent.
The traditional Essex accent was more the rural burr similar to much of East Anglia pre 1950s, the variation of cockney James Argent speaks with is a more recent arrival from the East End of London
Surely the Lineker ruling is in error? I read on here quite strident comments from PB's resident Tax Expert that Sir Crispbag was the most egregious tax-dodging bastard whose political opinions were therefore practically treasonous.
And for his libel lawyer an interesting case .....and then of course he could also ask for substantiation on comments about his private life.......
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
The majority of such abuse is from privately educated people who are now trying, desperately, to be as left wing as they can.
Even Corbynites educated at private school are more likely to speak with received pronounciation than Corbynites educated at comprehensives
Do you speak with RP or more rough & ready Essex?
I was born and raised in Tunbridge Wells, went to a major public school and live in rural Essex not Basildon. What do you think I speak like?
I was thinking a bit like David Beckham?
What did he mean by "not Basildon"? Talk about snobby!
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
The majority of such abuse is from privately educated people who are now trying, desperately, to be as left wing as they can.
Even Corbynites educated at private school are more likely to speak with received pronounciation than Corbynites educated at comprehensives
Do you speak with RP or more rough & ready Essex?
I was born and raised in Tunbridge Wells, went to a major public school and live in rural Essex not Basildon. What do you think I speak like?
I was thinking a bit like David Beckham?
That wouldn't be a problem if I also had the wealth of David Beckham
@BestForBritain Remember: In June 2016, Major and Blair warned that Brexit may "destabilise the complicated constitutional settlement that underpins stability in Northern Ireland".
Leading pro-Brexit politicians called their caution "rather sad", "desperate" and "simply scaremongering". ~AA
I remember Leavers offering all sorts of sensible and enlightened solutions at the time: the Republic could leave the EU itself, for example, or even re-join the Union.
Well, they still could.
And it would be as much of a piss-take today as it was back then.
Surely the Lineker ruling is in error? I read on here quite strident comments from PB's resident Tax Expert that Sir Crispbag was the most egregious tax-dodging bastard whose political opinions were therefore practically treasonous.
And for his libel lawyer an interesting case .....and then of course he could also ask for substantiation on comments about his private life.......
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
The majority of such abuse is from privately educated people who are now trying, desperately, to be as left wing as they can.
Even Corbynites educated at private school are more likely to speak with received pronounciation than Corbynites educated at comprehensives
Do you speak with RP or more rough & ready Essex?
I was born and raised in Tunbridge Wells, went to a major public school and live in rural Essex not Basildon. What do you think I speak like?
I was thinking a bit like David Beckham?
What did he mean by "not Basildon"? Talk about snobby!
I didn't say the Basildon accent is awful but you don't need to walk more than 5 minutes down Basildon high to see it is not a RP accent most locals speak with!
@BestForBritain Remember: In June 2016, Major and Blair warned that Brexit may "destabilise the complicated constitutional settlement that underpins stability in Northern Ireland".
Leading pro-Brexit politicians called their caution "rather sad", "desperate" and "simply scaremongering". ~AA
Desperate, even for BestForBritain, and even for you. The third paragraph of the BBC article they are tweet-quoting:
"It reverses a downgrade in Northern Ireland's terror threat level last March - its first change for 12 years."
The actual problem is that the various Community Leader Groups (aka terrorist organisations) have taken advantage of the latitude granted to them to do low level nastiness to setup criminal empires of some extent.
A policeman was being very rude and gathered evidence on drug dealing, extortion and a few other fun hobbies. So they shot him.
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
I am clear that parts of the country think as you describe. I am also clear that larger parts think the direct opposite.
I had lunch with someone who is a moderate and a significant employer of skilled labour. I am not entirely clear how he votes - it could be for any one of the 3 main parties.
He was very clear: the only way to force firms to invest in productivity enhancing projects (and to fix the UK’s macro productivity issue) is to restrict the supply of unskilled labour otherwise business will take the easy route of hiring more people.
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
What is "recognisably British"?
Crap weather, passive aggression, accent obsession, crisps, trainspotting, Marks and Spencer, a pebbledashed 1930s semi, Sunday League football, Radio 2, eating sandwiches in the car.
This places you as someone who grew up in the 1980s. You are evoking many of my childhood Saturday afternoons: sitting in the back of the car eating crisps after a trip to M&S, as the whine of the windscreen wiper sloshes away the pouring rain in the afternoon half light while the BBC classified football results play over the car radio.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
The majority of such abuse is from privately educated people who are now trying, desperately, to be as left wing as they can.
Even Corbynites educated at private school are more likely to speak with received pronounciation than Corbynites educated at comprehensives
Do you speak with RP or more rough & ready Essex?
I was born and raised in Tunbridge Wells, went to a major public school and live in rural Essex not Basildon. What do you think I speak like?
On the good news front, Kevin Mckenzie thinks Lineker and Davie are both finished. Lineker won't have his contract renewed and Davie will go as Lineker says Davie told him he had carte balance over refugees and Climate change. If they both go the left and right will be equally happy
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
I am clear that parts of the country think as you describe. I am also clear that larger parts think the direct opposite.
I had lunch with someone who is a moderate and a significant employer of skilled labour. I am not entirely clear how he votes - it could be for any one of the 3 main parties.
He was very clear: the only way to force firms to invest in productivity enhancing projects (and to fix the UK’s macro productivity issue) is to restrict the supply of unskilled labour otherwise business will take the easy route of hiring more people.
I have encountered a number of people who simply refuse to accept that labour is anything more than minimum wage.
They seem think it is a human right to have people queuing up, gratefully to get exactly minimum wage. Not a penny more.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
The majority of such abuse is from privately educated people who are now trying, desperately, to be as left wing as they can.
Even Corbynites educated at private school are more likely to speak with received pronounciation than Corbynites educated at comprehensives
Do you speak with RP or more rough & ready Essex?
I was born and raised in Tunbridge Wells, went to a major public school and live in rural Essex not Basildon. What do you think I speak like?
ROYAL Tunbridge Wells surely??!!
Oh, it's a very real thing. Friend of mine - his parents lived there. His mum really insisted on the R***** word in postal addresses, etc.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
The majority of such abuse is from privately educated people who are now trying, desperately, to be as left wing as they can.
Even Corbynites educated at private school are more likely to speak with received pronounciation than Corbynites educated at comprehensives
Do you speak with RP or more rough & ready Essex?
I was born and raised in Tunbridge Wells, went to a major public school and live in rural Essex not Basildon. What do you think I speak like?
James Argent.
The traditional Essex accent was more the rural burr similar to much of East Anglia pre 1950s, the variation of cockney James Argent speaks with is a more recent arrival from the East End of London
Have you ever watched Detectorists? That is the Essex you describe, I think. (Although it's actually largely filmed in Suffolk.) One of the loveliest bits of telly created this century.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
The majority of such abuse is from privately educated people who are now trying, desperately, to be as left wing as they can.
Even Corbynites educated at private school are more likely to speak with received pronounciation than Corbynites educated at comprehensives
Do you speak with RP or more rough & ready Essex?
I was born and raised in Tunbridge Wells, went to a major public school and live in rural Essex not Basildon. What do you think I speak like?
ROYAL Tunbridge Wells surely??!!
Oh, it's a very real thing. Friend of mine - his parents lived there. His mum really insisted on the R***** word in postal addresses, etc.
In France the revolutionaries renamed a lot of places from "Le Royal" to "Le National", so if we get a republic it might become National Tunbridge Wells (and National Leamington Spa, National Lytham St Annes etc).
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
The majority of such abuse is from privately educated people who are now trying, desperately, to be as left wing as they can.
Even Corbynites educated at private school are more likely to speak with received pronounciation than Corbynites educated at comprehensives
Do you speak with RP or more rough & ready Essex?
I was born and raised in Tunbridge Wells, went to a major public school and live in rural Essex not Basildon. What do you think I speak like?
ROYAL Tunbridge Wells surely??!!
Oh, it's a very real thing. Friend of mine - his parents lived there. His mum really insisted on the R***** word in postal addresses, etc.
In France the revolutionaries renamed a lot of places from "Le Royal" to "Le National", so if we get a republic it might become National Tunbridge Wells (and National Leamington Spa, National Lytham St Annes etc).
The National Health Service could become the Royal Health Service to compensate.
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
I am clear that parts of the country think as you describe. I am also clear that larger parts think the direct opposite.
I had lunch with someone who is a moderate and a significant employer of skilled labour. I am not entirely clear how he votes - it could be for any one of the 3 main parties.
He was very clear: the only way to force firms to invest in productivity enhancing projects (and to fix the UK’s macro productivity issue) is to restrict the supply of unskilled labour otherwise business will take the easy route of hiring more people.
For skilled labour? I entirely agree. Largely though the shortages are for unskilled labour. We can't find people to work in agriculture on in warehouses or on repetitive task production lines.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
The majority of such abuse is from privately educated people who are now trying, desperately, to be as left wing as they can.
Even Corbynites educated at private school are more likely to speak with received pronounciation than Corbynites educated at comprehensives
Do you speak with RP or more rough & ready Essex?
I was born and raised in Tunbridge Wells, went to a major public school and live in rural Essex not Basildon. What do you think I speak like?
ROYAL Tunbridge Wells surely??!!
Oh, it's a very real thing. Friend of mine - his parents lived there. His mum really insisted on the R***** word in postal addresses, etc.
In France the revolutionaries renamed a lot of places from "Le Royal" to "Le National", so if we get a republic it might become National Tunbridge Wells (and National Leamington Spa, National Lytham St Annes etc).
What a good idea. We could have the Blues and Nationals, the National and National Lifeboat Institution [which, of course, covers Eire as well], and so on.
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
What is "recognisably British"?
Crap weather, passive aggression, accent obsession, crisps, trainspotting, Marks and Spencer, a pebbledashed 1930s semi, Sunday League football, Radio 2, eating sandwiches in the car.
This places you as someone who grew up in the 1980s. You are evoking many of my childhood Saturday afternoons: sitting in the back of the car eating crisps after a trip to M&S, as the whine of the windscreen wiper sloshes away the pouring rain in the afternoon half light while the BBC classified football results play over the car radio.
Ha ha, yes indeed. Although growing up we didn't have a car and never shopped at M&S! But when I close my eyes and think of Britain these are the images that come to mind. A wet weekend afternoon certainly, with almost empty suburban streets; a few grumpy looking people out and about, smoking.
Surely the Lineker ruling is in error? I read on here quite strident comments from PB's resident Tax Expert that Sir Crispbag was the most egregious tax-dodging bastard whose political opinions were therefore practically treasonous.
And for his libel lawyer an interesting case .....and then of course he could also ask for substantiation on comments about his private life.......
What a time to be a lawyer!
The trouble is none of know who Leon is.
I'm sure one of Carter Ruck's article clerks will find a spare five minutes.....
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
The majority of such abuse is from privately educated people who are now trying, desperately, to be as left wing as they can.
Even Corbynites educated at private school are more likely to speak with received pronounciation than Corbynites educated at comprehensives
Do you speak with RP or more rough & ready Essex?
I was born and raised in Tunbridge Wells, went to a major public school and live in rural Essex not Basildon. What do you think I speak like?
ROYAL Tunbridge Wells surely??!!
Oh, it's a very real thing. Friend of mine - his parents lived there. His mum really insisted on the R***** word in postal addresses, etc.
In France the revolutionaries renamed a lot of places from "Le Royal" to "Le National", so if we get a republic it might become National Tunbridge Wells (and National Leamington Spa, National Lytham St Annes etc).
What a good idea. We could have the Blues and Nationals, the National and National Lifeboat Institution [which, of course, covers Eire as well], and so on.
Already the case of course with the NSPCC which history or urban myth says was refused royal status because preventing cruelty to children was more controversial than preventing cruelty to animals.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
The majority of such abuse is from privately educated people who are now trying, desperately, to be as left wing as they can.
Even Corbynites educated at private school are more likely to speak with received pronounciation than Corbynites educated at comprehensives
Do you speak with RP or more rough & ready Essex?
I was born and raised in Tunbridge Wells, went to a major public school and live in rural Essex not Basildon. What do you think I speak like?
I was thinking a bit like David Beckham?
That wouldn't be a problem if I also had the wealth of David Beckham
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
The majority of such abuse is from privately educated people who are now trying, desperately, to be as left wing as they can.
Even Corbynites educated at private school are more likely to speak with received pronounciation than Corbynites educated at comprehensives
Do you speak with RP or more rough & ready Essex?
I was born and raised in Tunbridge Wells, went to a major public school and live in rural Essex not Basildon. What do you think I speak like?
ROYAL Tunbridge Wells surely??!!
Oh, it's a very real thing. Friend of mine - his parents lived there. His mum really insisted on the R***** word in postal addresses, etc.
In France the revolutionaries renamed a lot of places from "Le Royal" to "Le National", so if we get a republic it might become National Tunbridge Wells (and National Leamington Spa, National Lytham St Annes etc).
What a good idea. We could have the Blues and Nationals, the National and National Lifeboat Institution [which, of course, covers Eire as well], and so on.
Already the case of course with the NSPCC which history or urban myth says was refused royal status because preventing cruelty to children was more controversial than preventing cruelty to animals.
Preferring animals to children can be number 11 in my list of things that are recognisably British.
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
I am clear that parts of the country think as you describe. I am also clear that larger parts think the direct opposite.
I had lunch with someone who is a moderate and a significant employer of skilled labour. I am not entirely clear how he votes - it could be for any one of the 3 main parties.
He was very clear: the only way to force firms to invest in productivity enhancing projects (and to fix the UK’s macro productivity issue) is to restrict the supply of unskilled labour otherwise business will take the easy route of hiring more people.
For skilled labour? I entirely agree. Largely though the shortages are for unskilled labour. We can't find people to work in agriculture on in warehouses or on repetitive task production lines.
The distinction between skilled and unskilled isn't binary. You would miraculously find a shortage in any occupation if you didn't offer enough money.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
The majority of such abuse is from privately educated people who are now trying, desperately, to be as left wing as they can.
Even Corbynites educated at private school are more likely to speak with received pronounciation than Corbynites educated at comprehensives
Do you speak with RP or more rough & ready Essex?
I was born and raised in Tunbridge Wells, went to a major public school and live in rural Essex not Basildon. What do you think I speak like?
ROYAL Tunbridge Wells surely??!!
Oh, it's a very real thing. Friend of mine - his parents lived there. His mum really insisted on the R***** word in postal addresses, etc.
In France the revolutionaries renamed a lot of places from "Le Royal" to "Le National", so if we get a republic it might become National Tunbridge Wells (and National Leamington Spa, National Lytham St Annes etc).
What a good idea. We could have the Blues and Nationals, the National and National Lifeboat Institution [which, of course, covers Eire as well], and so on.
Already the case of course with the NSPCC which history or urban myth says was refused royal status because preventing cruelty to children was more controversial than preventing cruelty to animals.
Urban myth, I think. Wikipedia says The NSPCC was granted its Royal Charter on 28 May 1895 [11 years after founding] by Queen Victoria who became its first Royal Patron. It did not change its title to "Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children" or similar, as the name NSPCC was already well established, and to avoid confusion with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), which had already existed for more than fifty years.
The telling thing is that we got the RSPCA sixty years before the NSPCC!
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
I am clear that parts of the country think as you describe. I am also clear that larger parts think the direct opposite.
I had lunch with someone who is a moderate and a significant employer of skilled labour. I am not entirely clear how he votes - it could be for any one of the 3 main parties.
He was very clear: the only way to force firms to invest in productivity enhancing projects (and to fix the UK’s macro productivity issue) is to restrict the supply of unskilled labour otherwise business will take the easy route of hiring more people.
For skilled labour? I entirely agree. Largely though the shortages are for unskilled labour. We can't find people to work in agriculture on in warehouses or on repetitive task production lines.
Yes, because in other countries those jobs are done by machines rather than people.
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
I am clear that parts of the country think as you describe. I am also clear that larger parts think the direct opposite.
I had lunch with someone who is a moderate and a significant employer of skilled labour. I am not entirely clear how he votes - it could be for any one of the 3 main parties.
He was very clear: the only way to force firms to invest in productivity enhancing projects (and to fix the UK’s macro productivity issue) is to restrict the supply of unskilled labour otherwise business will take the easy route of hiring more people.
For skilled labour? I entirely agree. Largely though the shortages are for unskilled labour. We can't find people to work in agriculture on in warehouses or on repetitive task production lines.
The distinction between skilled and unskilled isn't binary. You would miraculously find a shortage in any occupation if you didn't offer enough money.
I know some of the companies who have struggled for factory staff for quite a few years now. The issue isn't wages - they and their competitors all pay a lot more than the minimum wage. The issue is full employment in the area. There literally aren't the bodies to hire, and capacity constraints caused by short production cost more than additional wages anyway.
The reality is that few of us want to do night shifts in a food factory in Anglia. Its miserable, repetitive, unfulfilling drudge. Money isn't the issue.
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
I am clear that parts of the country think as you describe. I am also clear that larger parts think the direct opposite.
I had lunch with someone who is a moderate and a significant employer of skilled labour. I am not entirely clear how he votes - it could be for any one of the 3 main parties.
He was very clear: the only way to force firms to invest in productivity enhancing projects (and to fix the UK’s macro productivity issue) is to restrict the supply of unskilled labour otherwise business will take the easy route of hiring more people.
For skilled labour? I entirely agree. Largely though the shortages are for unskilled labour. We can't find people to work in agriculture on in warehouses or on repetitive task production lines.
Yes, because in other countries those jobs are done by machines rather than people.
Not necessarily. But mechanical substitution is becoming easer for, say, fruit and veg picking. For a few K you can buy a robot that will happily trundle along, picking cucumbers all day and all night.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
The majority of such abuse is from privately educated people who are now trying, desperately, to be as left wing as they can.
Even Corbynites educated at private school are more likely to speak with received pronounciation than Corbynites educated at comprehensives
Do you speak with RP or more rough & ready Essex?
I was born and raised in Tunbridge Wells, went to a major public school and live in rural Essex not Basildon. What do you think I speak like?
ROYAL Tunbridge Wells surely??!!
Oh, it's a very real thing. Friend of mine - his parents lived there. His mum really insisted on the R***** word in postal addresses, etc.
In France the revolutionaries renamed a lot of places from "Le Royal" to "Le National", so if we get a republic it might become National Tunbridge Wells (and National Leamington Spa, National Lytham St Annes etc).
What a good idea. We could have the Blues and Nationals, the National and National Lifeboat Institution [which, of course, covers Eire as well], and so on.
The National British Legion sounds like the latest BNP spin-off.
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
I am clear that parts of the country think as you describe. I am also clear that larger parts think the direct opposite.
I had lunch with someone who is a moderate and a significant employer of skilled labour. I am not entirely clear how he votes - it could be for any one of the 3 main parties.
He was very clear: the only way to force firms to invest in productivity enhancing projects (and to fix the UK’s macro productivity issue) is to restrict the supply of unskilled labour otherwise business will take the easy route of hiring more people.
For skilled labour? I entirely agree. Largely though the shortages are for unskilled labour. We can't find people to work in agriculture on in warehouses or on repetitive task production lines.
Yes, because in other countries those jobs are done by machines rather than people.
Not necessarily. But mechanical substitution is becoming easer for, say, fruit and veg picking. For a few K you can buy a robot that will happily trundle along, picking cucumbers all day and all night.
Find me a machine that can do that for soft fruit...
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
The majority of such abuse is from privately educated people who are now trying, desperately, to be as left wing as they can.
Even Corbynites educated at private school are more likely to speak with received pronounciation than Corbynites educated at comprehensives
Do you speak with RP or more rough & ready Essex?
I was born and raised in Tunbridge Wells, went to a major public school and live in rural Essex not Basildon. What do you think I speak like?
No idea how you speak, young HY, but with a background like that, you ought to be a Lib Dem supporter by now.
From my recent door-knocking, I find that all decent Conservatives have switched to the Lib Dems now.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
So you are still a glass bottle type rather than the far more efficient squeezy version.....
As my avatar implies, I'm quite into this topic. The squeezy is by far the better design on utility grounds but the glass Heinz ketchup bottle is up there with the Coke one as eye candy. You could imagine it as a Warhol. Then of course there's the sacred ritual of upturning it and slapping its arse to get the sauce out and onto your bacon roll, or whatever it is you're using it to adorn. Very satisfying when it works first time, even better when it gets stuck and nothing emerges and you end up hitting it harder and harder until your hand hurts and you're panting a bit until finally - whoosh - a great big blob suddenly comes out and goes all over the place. You don't get this with the squeezy.
Wrong on so many counts apart from the iconic design.
First off, you do get that nothing, nothing, it's gone everywhere including on my shirt with the squeezy bottle. You need first to stamp it down, head first, on the table otherwise even though it's been stored upside down nothing will come out and then you puff, and puff, and when it does come out it goes in all directions and for some distance.
And secondly, you don't whack the bottom of the glass bottle dear god give me strength. You put two fingers out and then pour out while tapping the bottle half way along the neck on the two fingers and this will mean a steady, controlled amount of ketchup will emerge.
You have to shake the bottle. It's called thixotropy, as any viewer of Magnus Pyke on 70s primetime television will know.
Preferably with the cap still on.
Also holding it at an angle of 45deg while tapping the base gently is pretty effective.
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
I am clear that parts of the country think as you describe. I am also clear that larger parts think the direct opposite.
I had lunch with someone who is a moderate and a significant employer of skilled labour. I am not entirely clear how he votes - it could be for any one of the 3 main parties.
He was very clear: the only way to force firms to invest in productivity enhancing projects (and to fix the UK’s macro productivity issue) is to restrict the supply of unskilled labour otherwise business will take the easy route of hiring more people.
For skilled labour? I entirely agree. Largely though the shortages are for unskilled labour. We can't find people to work in agriculture on in warehouses or on repetitive task production lines.
Yes, because in other countries those jobs are done by machines rather than people.
Not necessarily. But mechanical substitution is becoming easer for, say, fruit and veg picking. For a few K you can buy a robot that will happily trundle along, picking cucumbers all day and all night.
Find me a machine that can do that for soft fruit...
On topic, Sunak and the government need to realise that the small boats policy is interpreted as a step in the right direction by many voters but only a small pillar of what needs to be a comprehensive approach. Each time the government does something like this, the reaction is "good" before a realization that "oh it was just a headline grabber".
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
I am clear that parts of the country think as you describe. I am also clear that larger parts think the direct opposite.
I had lunch with someone who is a moderate and a significant employer of skilled labour. I am not entirely clear how he votes - it could be for any one of the 3 main parties.
He was very clear: the only way to force firms to invest in productivity enhancing projects (and to fix the UK’s macro productivity issue) is to restrict the supply of unskilled labour otherwise business will take the easy route of hiring more people.
For skilled labour? I entirely agree. Largely though the shortages are for unskilled labour. We can't find people to work in agriculture on in warehouses or on repetitive task production lines.
Yes, because in other countries those jobs are done by machines rather than people.
Not necessarily. But mechanical substitution is becoming easer for, say, fruit and veg picking. For a few K you can buy a robot that will happily trundle along, picking cucumbers all day and all night.
Find me a machine that can do that for soft fruit...
'The BBC understands that Jeremy Corbyn is considering running as an independent candidate in Islington North.'
'Mr Corbyn criticised the Labour leader, claiming Sir Keir "has broken his commitment to respect the rights of Labour members and denigrated the democratic foundations of our party", in a statement issued on Monday.
"I joined the Labour Party when I was 16 years old because, like millions of others, I believed in a redistribution of wealth and power," he added.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
The majority of such abuse is from privately educated people who are now trying, desperately, to be as left wing as they can.
Even Corbynites educated at private school are more likely to speak with received pronounciation than Corbynites educated at comprehensives
Do you speak with RP or more rough & ready Essex?
I was born and raised in Tunbridge Wells, went to a major public school and live in rural Essex not Basildon. What do you think I speak like?
No idea how you speak, young HY, but with a background like that, you ought to be a Lib Dem supporter by now.
From my recent door-knocking, I find that all decent Conservatives have switched to the Lib Dems now.
Sure, but that's only because you define "decent Conservatives" as those who have switched to your party.
Comments
Sunak needs to comprehensively address lpw skilled immigration. Much of the public living in or near low income areas wants these places to feel reocgnizably British again. And for that to happen we need 10 to 20 years of integration without a constant influx of newcomers who work in the irregular economy, keep down wages, speak broken English, and, in some cases, have reactionary religious views.
So part of that is stopping the boats by genuinely removing the incentive. But it is also ending marriage visas being used to bring in arranged brides. It is also ending low quality universities just effectively acting as fee for visa model or being majority foreign student. It is also not letting marginal college students from the Middle East bringing over entire families. It is also tightening up the "skilled" visa route from the watering down by employers that has included shopkeepers and fencers on 26k a year.
If Sunak did all that and could say at the next election, "I have revamped our immigration policy to move from 40% high skilled to 95% high skilled", THAT would be an election winner. And Labour would also trip over themselves in saying how they want more low income folks.
Schools in England could face further strike action as the National Education Union has asked teachers to reject a new pay offer, after intensive talks.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-65037422
Give Norn back to the Irish and let them deal with the consequences of the violent DNA in Ireland's nationalist politics.
You can only fool most of the people for most of the time for so long, before we ordinary folk get fed up emerging from our front doors at the cries of “free cake” only to discover there’s nothing whatsoever being given away.
Sunak would do well to focus on what works, and only announcing stuff that actually gets followed through.
I know that pockets of the left have deep cultural cringe over British culture, despise British history and think the Proms is not sufficiently woke etc... but it is definitely not the majority of the country.
https://www.coles.com.au/product/heinz-ketchup-tomato-sauce-500ml-5328995
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/business-economics/jd-wetherspoons-profits-plummet-91-per-cent-345722/
The fact you have to yell "racist!" at any argument for an effective immigration policy just shows how out of touch your side of the debate is.
NASUWT is still as was, I'm not sure if it was invited to join the merger.
Dude, you chat shit, expect to get banged.
What’s the antonym of polymath?
What you think isn't the same as what "the majority of the country" think. Can you see that?
Of course at this point, the mass immigration brigade will start claiming that I am arguing EVERY immigrant needs to adopt EVERYTHING British. I am not. I am saying sufficient cultural integration will happen with the bulk of people in immigrant areas without compulsion as long as we have time without ongoing mass immigration. But they don't have a good argument against this, so they have to make up a strawman.
Not that they've taken a tiny bit of responsibilty for anything they've done.
This is becoming a larger issue now, especially with the latest IR35 rules precluding travel and accommodation expenses from contractors.
Unless you can show your family line back to one or the other of these germanic invading tribes then you should be deported What racist slur? "Gammon"? That is a skin tone driven by internal rage, not a race.
"It reverses a downgrade in Northern Ireland's terror threat level last March - its first change for 12 years."
The obvious change that could be made is to combine tax and NI. It would simplify matter, knock out some of the kinks in the marginal tax graph (although there will still be others notably at the 100k level) and be fairer.
What a time to be a lawyer!
And it would be as much of a piss-take today as it was back then.
A policeman was being very rude and gathered evidence on drug dealing, extortion and a few other fun hobbies. So they shot him.
He was very clear: the only way to force firms to invest in productivity enhancing projects (and to fix the UK’s macro productivity issue) is to restrict the supply of unskilled labour otherwise business will take the easy route of hiring more people.
However in this instance I think you'll find he has it wrong!
They seem think it is a human right to have people queuing up, gratefully to get exactly minimum wage. Not a penny more.
One of the loveliest bits of telly created this century.
The telling thing is that we got the RSPCA sixty years before the NSPCC!
The reality is that few of us want to do night shifts in a food factory in Anglia. Its miserable, repetitive, unfulfilling drudge. Money isn't the issue.
Confirmed:
@jeremycorbyn won't be a Labour candidate at next election.
The motion Keir Starmer proposed to say that the NEC will not endorse Jeremy Corbyn as a candidate has passed 22-12.
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1640691751428947968?s=20
From my recent door-knocking, I find that all decent Conservatives have switched to the Lib Dems now.
Also holding it at an angle of 45deg while tapping the base gently is pretty effective.
Strawberries - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCivsotZEjk
'Mr Corbyn criticised the Labour leader, claiming Sir Keir "has broken his commitment to respect the rights of Labour members and denigrated the democratic foundations of our party", in a statement issued on Monday.
"I joined the Labour Party when I was 16 years old because, like millions of others, I believed in a redistribution of wealth and power," he added.
"Our message is clear: we are not going anywhere. Neither is our determination to stand up for a better world."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65102128