Labour's smear against Sunak looks even worse. I think the next election could be one of the nastiest ever in terms of negative ads and slogans
Labour's negative poster campaign was unfortunate and best left unpublished. But to suggest Johnson's scurrilous slur against Starmer, now taken on by Sunak it would seem, is a lesser of two evils is absurd.
As a committed Christian would you condone Sunak promoting the lies about Starmer and Savile even if it looks like winning him (and you) the next election?
Sunak is a Hindu, Starmer is an atheist. Even if I tried to say they should push Christian values and not be too negative about each other I doubt they would care.
Indeed the only Christian of the 3 main party leaders is Sir Ed Davey, who is Church of England.
Perhaps reflects the fact the Church of England is now more the Liberal Democrats at Prayer than the Tory Party at prayer with a few evangelical and ultra conservative high Anglo Catholic exceptions
But you don't push Christian values. The opposite. Look at the values of the people you shill for.
Sunak is pretty Christian even as a Hindu. Hunt is the most senior Anglican Tory now and also pretty Christian in values, certainly his personal life where he is in a lifelong, committed marriage with his wife.
Left Liberals also often ignore the Old Testament, just the help the poor bits of the New they like
Personally I welcome the fact that religion plays such an insignificant part in our political life. We see in America the terrible damage it can do. There are other, non religious belief systems that can and do allow people to lead moral, worthy lives.
Mr. Boulay, just on writing: even 'successful' authors averager under £10k a year. Unless you're a massive success, it's pretty much a second job. This is rather sad as a lot of great writers and stories just aren't known about or have a chance because the odds on making anywhere near enough money are so long.
A little unfair but there is something in it. I blame Simon Cowell - why graft when you can be famous?
Modern fame is a bizarre winner-takes-all system that disproportionately rewards those at the very top. Billions of dollars for Taylor Swift, almost nothing for an industrious, averagely successful guitar band. The lessons of this strange industry apply to almost nobody.
For most people, celebrity exhortations to dream big, sacrifice your life to your passion and keep going in the face of failure are not useful. As the comedian Bo Burnham put it, “Taylor Swift telling you to follow your dreams is like a lottery winner telling you, ‘Liquidise your assets; buy Powerball tickets — it works!’ ”
Toiling fanatically towards a distant goal sounds inspiring but it creates a single point of failure. If you spend every waking hour playing golf but never make it as a professional golfer, what exactly was the point of your life?
I actually disagree with this. If you are passionate about the arts and have a talent for it then pursue it. You don't need to sell out arenas to make a living in the music business. In fact, if you are in it with dreams of fame then you're in it for the wrong reasons. I know lots of people working in the arts and I also know lots of people in finance. I'd say that people who have a passion for either field and are working in it are living happy, fulfilled lives. People who are in finance solely for material comfort seem a lot less happy. Also, if you really do feel you have to work in a different field for material reasons (raising a family can be expensive) then you can easily find opportunities to make the arts a side-hustle or a part-time thing, with loads of open mic or other gigging opportunities. People who are locked into expensive status-driven lifestyles, stuck doing a job they hate, are living a sad, stultified existence. You only have one life. Grab it with both hands.
Yes you are right, however Cowell also sells snake oil to the talentless.
For every Harry Styles there are 999,999 burger flippers.
Cowell is in the entertainment business, which is arts-adjacent. The people who win the contests are usually seriously talented and are looking for a shortcut or at least a path into the business. Of course lots of mediocrities enter too. But the product is the TV show.
It really struck me on further consideration that once you are “in” you are really in. So many tv personalities seem to get publishing deals, so many BBC presenters who do one show suddenly seem to be selected to do other non-related shows.
Apparently Gary Lineker has a new gig presenting a game show on ITV, although I think that is probably evidence that he is good at what he does.
I find sports presenters curious. Some former competitors transition to commentary and punditry (like Gary) or Sue Barker and are brilliant at it. I have no idea how the completely anonymous woman who replaced her at Wimbledon got the gig.
Then there are people like Andrew Cotter, or Lee Mckenzie. Not former sports stars, but get continuous gigs at sporting events of all flavours. But they are brilliant at it.
Labour's smear against Sunak looks even worse. I think the next election could be one of the nastiest ever in terms of negative ads and slogans
Labour's negative poster campaign was unfortunate and best left unpublished. But to suggest Johnson's scurrilous slur against Starmer, now taken on by Sunak it would seem, is a lesser of two evils is absurd.
As a committed Christian would you condone Sunak promoting the lies about Starmer and Savile even if it looks like winning him (and you) the next election?
Sunak is a Hindu, Starmer is an atheist. Even if I tried to say they should push Christian values and not be too negative about each other I doubt they would care.
Indeed the only Christian of the 3 main party leaders is Sir Ed Davey, who is Church of England.
Perhaps reflects the fact the Church of England is now more the Liberal Democrats at Prayer than the Tory Party at prayer with a few evangelical and ultra conservative high Anglo Catholic exceptions
But you don't push Christian values. The opposite. Look at the values of the people you shill for.
Sunak is pretty Christian even as a Hindu. Hunt is the most senior Anglican Tory now and also pretty Christian in values, certainly his personal life where he is in a lifelong, committed marriage with his wife.
Left Liberals also often ignore the Old Testament, just the help the poor bits of the New they like
Most, if not all of the worlds major religions, urge one to do good, seek peace, give alms et cetera. If you’re looking at it from a Christian viewpoint, there is much in the old Testament, which ought to be ignored.
A little unfair but there is something in it. I blame Simon Cowell - why graft when you can be famous?
Modern fame is a bizarre winner-takes-all system that disproportionately rewards those at the very top. Billions of dollars for Taylor Swift, almost nothing for an industrious, averagely successful guitar band. The lessons of this strange industry apply to almost nobody.
For most people, celebrity exhortations to dream big, sacrifice your life to your passion and keep going in the face of failure are not useful. As the comedian Bo Burnham put it, “Taylor Swift telling you to follow your dreams is like a lottery winner telling you, ‘Liquidise your assets; buy Powerball tickets — it works!’ ”
Toiling fanatically towards a distant goal sounds inspiring but it creates a single point of failure. If you spend every waking hour playing golf but never make it as a professional golfer, what exactly was the point of your life?
I actually disagree with this. If you are passionate about the arts and have a talent for it then pursue it. You don't need to sell out arenas to make a living in the music business. In fact, if you are in it with dreams of fame then you're in it for the wrong reasons. I know lots of people working in the arts and I also know lots of people in finance. I'd say that people who have a passion for either field and are working in it are living happy, fulfilled lives. People who are in finance solely for material comfort seem a lot less happy. Also, if you really do feel you have to work in a different field for material reasons (raising a family can be expensive) then you can easily find opportunities to make the arts a side-hustle or a part-time thing, with loads of open mic or other gigging opportunities. People who are locked into expensive status-driven lifestyles, stuck doing a job they hate, are living a sad, stultified existence. You only have one life. Grab it with both hands.
I can second this for medicine. The folk I know who are most interested in status or pay are the least satisfied. Those that are happiest in their career are those who love the work, even though it is a cruel mistress.
Labour's smear against Sunak looks even worse. I think the next election could be one of the nastiest ever in terms of negative ads and slogans
Labour's negative poster campaign was unfortunate and best left unpublished. But to suggest Johnson's scurrilous slur against Starmer, now taken on by Sunak it would seem, is a lesser of two evils is absurd.
As a committed Christian would you condone Sunak promoting the lies about Starmer and Savile even if it looks like winning him (and you) the next election?
Sunak is a Hindu, Starmer is an atheist. Even if I tried to say they should push Christian values and not be too negative about each other I doubt they would care.
Indeed the only Christian of the 3 main party leaders is Sir Ed Davey, who is Church of England.
Perhaps reflects the fact the Church of England is now more the Liberal Democrats at Prayer than the Tory Party at prayer with a few evangelical and ultra conservative high Anglo Catholic exceptions
But you don't push Christian values. The opposite. Look at the values of the people you shill for.
Sunak is pretty Christian even as a Hindu. Hunt is the most senior Anglican Tory now and also pretty Christian in values, certainly his personal life where he is in a lifelong, committed marriage with his wife.
Left Liberals also often ignore the Old Testament, just the help the poor bits of the New they like
If you actually were a Tory you'd know the entire bible is "God Breathed" - you can't be selective, but you can try to understand the context.
Your problem is that the bits you deprioritise are the bits with Jesus is. Which as a Christian is a bit of a problem.
You may really enjoy the tastier bits of the old testament. Good for you! But you then can't ignore the new testament as you do, making claims about Him which don't stand up to Bible Studies 101.
I would have zero problem with this if not for the fact that you are a massive hypocrite and religious bore. You preach and denounce practically everyone else despite the fact that you shill for crooks and liars and people who do the exact opposite of what Jesus - supposedly your personal lord and saviour - taught. So you rewrite His teachings to fit.
That plank in your eye is galactic sized, is it not?
Labour's smear against Sunak looks even worse. I think the next election could be one of the nastiest ever in terms of negative ads and slogans
Labour's negative poster campaign was unfortunate and best left unpublished. But to suggest Johnson's scurrilous slur against Starmer, now taken on by Sunak it would seem, is a lesser of two evils is absurd.
As a committed Christian would you condone Sunak promoting the lies about Starmer and Savile even if it looks like winning him (and you) the next election?
Sunak is a Hindu, Starmer is an atheist. Even if I tried to say they should push Christian values and not be too negative about each other I doubt they would care.
Indeed the only Christian of the 3 main party leaders is Sir Ed Davey, who is Church of England.
Perhaps reflects the fact the Church of England is now more the Liberal Democrats at Prayer than the Tory Party at prayer with a few evangelical and ultra conservative high Anglo Catholic exceptions
But you don't push Christian values. The opposite. Look at the values of the people you shill for.
Sunak is pretty Christian even as a Hindu. Hunt is the most senior Anglican Tory now and also pretty Christian in values, certainly his personal life where he is in a lifelong, committed marriage with his wife.
Left Liberals also often ignore the Old Testament, just the help the poor bits of the New they like
Camels and needles, camels and needles. And is the Tory Party one where being faithful to one spouse for the long term is actually worthy of remark?
Labour's smear against Sunak looks even worse. I think the next election could be one of the nastiest ever in terms of negative ads and slogans
Labour's negative poster campaign was unfortunate and best left unpublished. But to suggest Johnson's scurrilous slur against Starmer, now taken on by Sunak it would seem, is a lesser of two evils is absurd.
As a committed Christian would you condone Sunak promoting the lies about Starmer and Savile even if it looks like winning him (and you) the next election?
Sunak is a Hindu, Starmer is an atheist. Even if I tried to say they should push Christian values and not be too negative about each other I doubt they would care.
Indeed the only Christian of the 3 main party leaders is Sir Ed Davey, who is Church of England.
Perhaps reflects the fact the Church of England is now more the Liberal Democrats at Prayer than the Tory Party at prayer with a few evangelical and ultra conservative high Anglo Catholic exceptions
But you don't push Christian values. The opposite. Look at the values of the people you shill for.
Sunak is pretty Christian even as a Hindu. Hunt is the most senior Anglican Tory now and also pretty Christian in values, certainly his personal life where he is in a lifelong, committed marriage with his wife.
Left Liberals also often ignore the Old Testament, just the help the poor bits of the New they like
Can I refer you back to my post from a few days ago. You really do need to get cracking on the New Testament. It's a compelling read compared to volume 1, which I find to be a bit "Game of Thrones".
Mr. Boulay, just on writing: even 'successful' authors averager under £10k a year. Unless you're a massive success, it's pretty much a second job. This is rather sad as a lot of great writers and stories just aren't known about or have a chance because the odds on making anywhere near enough money are so long.
Indeed, if you look at it in a “sliding doors” way and in two universes Anita Rani and Josephine Bloggs write the same novel in one world Anita Rani gets a nice advance from the publisher, the book sells well due to existing name recognition plus’s being pushed on R4, R5 and the one show by her colleagues and mates and she gets a deal to write a few more books.
In the other world Josephine Bloggs sells some copies, the odd review if lucky and has to keep working as a Nursery teacher hoping that when she has time to write her second book it takes off.
Labour's smear against Sunak looks even worse. I think the next election could be one of the nastiest ever in terms of negative ads and slogans
Labour's negative poster campaign was unfortunate and best left unpublished. But to suggest Johnson's scurrilous slur against Starmer, now taken on by Sunak it would seem, is a lesser of two evils is absurd.
As a committed Christian would you condone Sunak promoting the lies about Starmer and Savile even if it looks like winning him (and you) the next election?
Sunak is a Hindu, Starmer is an atheist. Even if I tried to say they should push Christian values and not be too negative about each other I doubt they would care.
Indeed the only Christian of the 3 main party leaders is Sir Ed Davey, who is Church of England.
Perhaps reflects the fact the Church of England is now more the Liberal Democrats at Prayer than the Tory Party at prayer with a few evangelical and ultra conservative high Anglo Catholic exceptions
But you don't push Christian values. The opposite. Look at the values of the people you shill for.
Sunak is pretty Christian even as a Hindu. Hunt is the most senior Anglican Tory now and also pretty Christian in values, certainly his personal life where he is in a lifelong, committed marriage with his wife.
Left Liberals also often ignore the Old Testament, just the help the poor bits of the New they like
Most, if not all of the worlds major religions, urge one to do, good, seek peace, give alms et cetera. If you’re looking at it from a Christian viewpoint, that there is much in the old Testament, which ought to be ignored.
Inherent to the Christian faith is the concept that we are all fallen, needing redemption in the risen Christ to be saved. Some of us need a lot of saving. What that means is that people are not perfect.
We have a Bible which is written and edited by people. It reflects their own views and prejudices as much as it reflects God's. It may be God Breathed, but it's breathed through people, and some of those people just happened to ignore all that Jesus actually did to empower the poor and the sick and women, and instead tells them to sit down and shut up cos that's what God really wants.
Men then select which testaments go into the bible and discard anything which disagrees. So people selecting Genesis, Leviticus and Revelation and various letters from Paul denouncing women and saying there's your Bible, that's fine. But it's hard to claim to be a Christian when in your faith there is no room for Christ.
A little unfair but there is something in it. I blame Simon Cowell - why graft when you can be famous?
Modern fame is a bizarre winner-takes-all system that disproportionately rewards those at the very top. Billions of dollars for Taylor Swift, almost nothing for an industrious, averagely successful guitar band. The lessons of this strange industry apply to almost nobody.
For most people, celebrity exhortations to dream big, sacrifice your life to your passion and keep going in the face of failure are not useful. As the comedian Bo Burnham put it, “Taylor Swift telling you to follow your dreams is like a lottery winner telling you, ‘Liquidise your assets; buy Powerball tickets — it works!’ ”
Toiling fanatically towards a distant goal sounds inspiring but it creates a single point of failure. If you spend every waking hour playing golf but never make it as a professional golfer, what exactly was the point of your life?
I actually disagree with this. If you are passionate about the arts and have a talent for it then pursue it. You don't need to sell out arenas to make a living in the music business. In fact, if you are in it with dreams of fame then you're in it for the wrong reasons. I know lots of people working in the arts and I also know lots of people in finance. I'd say that people who have a passion for either field and are working in it are living happy, fulfilled lives. People who are in finance solely for material comfort seem a lot less happy. Also, if you really do feel you have to work in a different field for material reasons (raising a family can be expensive) then you can easily find opportunities to make the arts a side-hustle or a part-time thing, with loads of open mic or other gigging opportunities. People who are locked into expensive status-driven lifestyles, stuck doing a job they hate, are living a sad, stultified existence. You only have one life. Grab it with both hands.
Very philosophical on a Sunday morning, and completely true.
I was just watching the Formula 3 race at Silverstone, on the undercard for today’s Grand Prix. The F3 drivers have an average age of about 19, and they and their parents have sacrificed an awful lot for the chance that they make it to Formula 1, something which the vast majority of that F3 grid won’t achieve. Yet every year, there’s 30 of them lining up on that grid, all hoping and dreaming that they will be the next Lewis Hamilton.
With the exception of football, most sports have only a few dozen professionals, people who are actually making good money from competition, although there will be many more part-timers and keen amateurs, and people employed around the sport.
The arts are the same, with dozens of people making good money, many more thousands more doing it because they enjoy it, or finding work in the wider industry.
So let me get this straight we imposed draconian economic sanctions on ourselves to specifically rid the nation of young EU migrant workers. And it worked like a dream. And now we want to encourage young EU workers back to the UK without reinstating any of the benefits we as a nation and as citizens of Europe cherished and lost by voting to specifically get rid of young migrant workers from the EU.
It’s about discovering Stuart Rose spoke the (unacceptable) truth.
Low end jobs had their wages suppressed by low/zero skill immigration.
Now companies are facing a shortage of people prepared to work for minimum wage (or even less - see piece work). They may even be faced with investing in automation. See all the lunch places which are installing big screen self service tills in London etc…
Bart would come along and demand all the businesses pay lots of wages or go bust - the will of the market. And he's right in the theoretical application of this. But in practice?
There is minimal automation that can remove jobs from manual labour roles, whether they be picking fruit or picking orders or caring for our unwanted elderly or making you a twatty coffee in Starbucks. What there is can't be afforded by these businesses.
So we wither find them low wage labour or we lose all these businesses. "Just pay more" is fine, except that smashes prices ever higher and people can't afford stuff as it is.
We need a wholesale redrawing of the corporate taxation map. Only give companies low taxes if they pay and invest more. But we can't do that as socialism or whatever. So we let Starbucks both pay starvation wages and pay no taxes.
Alternatively, we make do with only 20 Starbucks per square mile in London, instead of the 30 we have now.
Starbucks is the worst coffee chain horrible sharp tasting coffee.
Interestingly, McDonalds of all places, used to win blind tastings of Big Chain coffee.
Starbucks is just bland.
One thing that amuses, is people going to artisan places that advertise they use the strongest roasts. Then half full their cup with sugar to reduce the harshness of the taste.
I seem to recall a study on the power of marketing and social desirability that showed people will claim they want a rich dark roast because that's what sounds good and the socially correct answer. But that buying habits show people actually prefer weaker, milkier coffee.
I'm not a coffee drinker but it makes sense - lots of people also like McDonald's, and not solely because its cheap
It really struck me on further consideration that once you are “in” you are really in. So many tv personalities seem to get publishing deals, so many BBC presenters who do one show suddenly seem to be selected to do other non-related shows.
Apparently Gary Lineker has a new gig presenting a game show on ITV, although I think that is probably evidence that he is good at what he does.
I find sports presenters curious. Some former competitors transition to commentary and punditry (like Gary) or Sue Barker and are brilliant at it. I have no idea how the completely anonymous woman who replaced her at Wimbledon got the gig.
Then there are people like Andrew Cotter, or Lee Mckenzie. Not former sports stars, but get continuous gigs at sporting events of all flavours. But they are brilliant at it.
Isn’t Lineker’s new job intended to demonstrate that he doesn’t work hundred percent of the time for the BBC. And hence, the Inland Revenue can call off the dogs.
A little unfair but there is something in it. I blame Simon Cowell - why graft when you can be famous?
Modern fame is a bizarre winner-takes-all system that disproportionately rewards those at the very top. Billions of dollars for Taylor Swift, almost nothing for an industrious, averagely successful guitar band. The lessons of this strange industry apply to almost nobody.
For most people, celebrity exhortations to dream big, sacrifice your life to your passion and keep going in the face of failure are not useful. As the comedian Bo Burnham put it, “Taylor Swift telling you to follow your dreams is like a lottery winner telling you, ‘Liquidise your assets; buy Powerball tickets — it works!’ ”
Toiling fanatically towards a distant goal sounds inspiring but it creates a single point of failure. If you spend every waking hour playing golf but never make it as a professional golfer, what exactly was the point of your life?
I actually disagree with this. If you are passionate about the arts and have a talent for it then pursue it. You don't need to sell out arenas to make a living in the music business. In fact, if you are in it with dreams of fame then you're in it for the wrong reasons. I know lots of people working in the arts and I also know lots of people in finance. I'd say that people who have a passion for either field and are working in it are living happy, fulfilled lives. People who are in finance solely for material comfort seem a lot less happy. Also, if you really do feel you have to work in a different field for material reasons (raising a family can be expensive) then you can easily find opportunities to make the arts a side-hustle or a part-time thing, with loads of open mic or other gigging opportunities. People who are locked into expensive status-driven lifestyles, stuck doing a job they hate, are living a sad, stultified existence. You only have one life. Grab it with both hands.
I can second this for medicine. The folk I know who are most interested in status or pay are the least satisfied. Those that are happiest in their career are those who love the work, even though it is a cruel mistress.
Take this retirement notice by an American Surgeon for example:
A little unfair but there is something in it. I blame Simon Cowell - why graft when you can be famous?
Modern fame is a bizarre winner-takes-all system that disproportionately rewards those at the very top. Billions of dollars for Taylor Swift, almost nothing for an industrious, averagely successful guitar band. The lessons of this strange industry apply to almost nobody.
For most people, celebrity exhortations to dream big, sacrifice your life to your passion and keep going in the face of failure are not useful. As the comedian Bo Burnham put it, “Taylor Swift telling you to follow your dreams is like a lottery winner telling you, ‘Liquidise your assets; buy Powerball tickets — it works!’ ”
Toiling fanatically towards a distant goal sounds inspiring but it creates a single point of failure. If you spend every waking hour playing golf but never make it as a professional golfer, what exactly was the point of your life?
I actually disagree with this. If you are passionate about the arts and have a talent for it then pursue it. You don't need to sell out arenas to make a living in the music business. In fact, if you are in it with dreams of fame then you're in it for the wrong reasons. I know lots of people working in the arts and I also know lots of people in finance. I'd say that people who have a passion for either field and are working in it are living happy, fulfilled lives. People who are in finance solely for material comfort seem a lot less happy. Also, if you really do feel you have to work in a different field for material reasons (raising a family can be expensive) then you can easily find opportunities to make the arts a side-hustle or a part-time thing, with loads of open mic or other gigging opportunities. People who are locked into expensive status-driven lifestyles, stuck doing a job they hate, are living a sad, stultified existence. You only have one life. Grab it with both hands.
Yes you are right, however Cowell also sells snake oil to the talentless.
For every Harry Styles there are 999,999 burger flippers.
I'm not sure people are allowed to flip burgers now, it may be automated.
Labour's smear against Sunak looks even worse. I think the next election could be one of the nastiest ever in terms of negative ads and slogans
Labour's negative poster campaign was unfortunate and best left unpublished. But to suggest Johnson's scurrilous slur against Starmer, now taken on by Sunak it would seem, is a lesser of two evils is absurd.
As a committed Christian would you condone Sunak promoting the lies about Starmer and Savile even if it looks like winning him (and you) the next election?
Sunak is a Hindu, Starmer is an atheist. Even if I tried to say they should push Christian values and not be too negative about each other I doubt they would care.
Indeed the only Christian of the 3 main party leaders is Sir Ed Davey, who is Church of England.
Perhaps reflects the fact the Church of England is now more the Liberal Democrats at Prayer than the Tory Party at prayer with a few evangelical and ultra conservative high Anglo Catholic exceptions
But you don't push Christian values. The opposite. Look at the values of the people you shill for.
Sunak is pretty Christian even as a Hindu. Hunt is the most senior Anglican Tory now and also pretty Christian in values, certainly his personal life where he is in a lifelong, committed marriage with his wife.
Left Liberals also often ignore the Old Testament, just the help the poor bits of the New they like
If you actually were a Tory you'd know the entire bible is "God Breathed" - you can't be selective, but you can try to understand the context.
Your problem is that the bits you deprioritise are the bits with Jesus is. Which as a Christian is a bit of a problem.
You may really enjoy the tastier bits of the old testament. Good for you! But you then can't ignore the new testament as you do, making claims about Him which don't stand up to Bible Studies 101.
I would have zero problem with this if not for the fact that you are a massive hypocrite and religious bore. You preach and denounce practically everyone else despite the fact that you shill for crooks and liars and people who do the exact opposite of what Jesus - supposedly your personal lord and saviour - taught. So you rewrite His teachings to fit.
That plank in your eye is galactic sized, is it not?
Besides, there's plenty of lefty tosh in the Old Testament. Amos, for starters. Or if you want to use Leviticus as the conservative's favourite book,
The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt...
A little unfair but there is something in it. I blame Simon Cowell - why graft when you can be famous?
Modern fame is a bizarre winner-takes-all system that disproportionately rewards those at the very top. Billions of dollars for Taylor Swift, almost nothing for an industrious, averagely successful guitar band. The lessons of this strange industry apply to almost nobody.
For most people, celebrity exhortations to dream big, sacrifice your life to your passion and keep going in the face of failure are not useful. As the comedian Bo Burnham put it, “Taylor Swift telling you to follow your dreams is like a lottery winner telling you, ‘Liquidise your assets; buy Powerball tickets — it works!’ ”
Toiling fanatically towards a distant goal sounds inspiring but it creates a single point of failure. If you spend every waking hour playing golf but never make it as a professional golfer, what exactly was the point of your life?
I actually disagree with this. If you are passionate about the arts and have a talent for it then pursue it. You don't need to sell out arenas to make a living in the music business. In fact, if you are in it with dreams of fame then you're in it for the wrong reasons. I know lots of people working in the arts and I also know lots of people in finance. I'd say that people who have a passion for either field and are working in it are living happy, fulfilled lives. People who are in finance solely for material comfort seem a lot less happy. Also, if you really do feel you have to work in a different field for material reasons (raising a family can be expensive) then you can easily find opportunities to make the arts a side-hustle or a part-time thing, with loads of open mic or other gigging opportunities. People who are locked into expensive status-driven lifestyles, stuck doing a job they hate, are living a sad, stultified existence. You only have one life. Grab it with both hands.
Yes you are right, however Cowell also sells snake oil to the talentless.
For every Harry Styles there are 999,999 burger flippers.
Cowell is in the entertainment business, which is arts-adjacent. The people who win the contests are usually seriously talented and are looking for a shortcut or at least a path into the business. Of course lots of mediocrities enter too. But the product is the TV show.
True, but it also sells an unattainable and unrealistic dream to the talentless.
Back in the day entertainers put the miles in and cut their teeth busking, playing in pubs, working men's clubs and on cruise ships. The talented made a living and if they were very lucky met an impresario who propelled them to stardom.
Cowell offers a lazy dream of fortune and fame to lazy dreamers.
Labour's smear against Sunak looks even worse. I think the next election could be one of the nastiest ever in terms of negative ads and slogans
Labour's negative poster campaign was unfortunate and best left unpublished. But to suggest Johnson's scurrilous slur against Starmer, now taken on by Sunak it would seem, is a lesser of two evils is absurd.
As a committed Christian would you condone Sunak promoting the lies about Starmer and Savile even if it looks like winning him (and you) the next election?
Sunak is a Hindu, Starmer is an atheist. Even if I tried to say they should push Christian values and not be too negative about each other I doubt they would care.
Indeed the only Christian of the 3 main party leaders is Sir Ed Davey, who is Church of England.
Perhaps reflects the fact the Church of England is now more the Liberal Democrats at Prayer than the Tory Party at prayer with a few evangelical and ultra conservative high Anglo Catholic exceptions
But you don't push Christian values. The opposite. Look at the values of the people you shill for.
Sunak is pretty Christian even as a Hindu. Hunt is the most senior Anglican Tory now and also pretty Christian in values, certainly his personal life where he is in a lifelong, committed marriage with his wife.
Left Liberals also often ignore the Old Testament, just the help the poor bits of the New they like
Well aren't the bits Jesus actually said and did a bit more important?
There is a relevance to the Starmer-Savile issue you remoaners all conveniently forget.
SKS constantly calls on the heads of private companies and public bodies to resign in respect of errors and mistakes made by the people who work for them. SKS however did not think that principle applies to him. He should have resigned over the seriously bad decision taken by his assistants at the CPS. He didn't and therefore he is applying double standards by calling on others to do what he was unwilling to do.
This completely misses the point. The reason Savile was not prosecuted was not because of poor charging decisions by CPS lawyers. It was because the police never properly investigated him and never presented a case to the CPS for them to make a charging decision over. The Head of the CPS does not control the police and does not direct their investigations.
If the Tories go down this route they will make even bigger fools of themselves than they are already and show themselves to be utterly ignorant of how the criminal justice system works.
I have banged on endlessly about the child abuse investigations and reports and our failures to implement their recommendations or indeed to take the safeguarding of children and the vulnerable seriously.
Other than Sarah Champion in the Commons on the day the government responded to the final IICSA report, has any Labour Minister said anything about the IICSA recommendations? Has Starmer committed to implementing them? Because if Labour haven't they are in no position to criticise the Tories for doing nothing in this.
Child abuse and safeguarding are simply not taken seriously in this country. It is something just used to make political points. It is a monstrously immoral approach.
Labour's smear against Sunak looks even worse. I think the next election could be one of the nastiest ever in terms of negative ads and slogans
Labour's negative poster campaign was unfortunate and best left unpublished. But to suggest Johnson's scurrilous slur against Starmer, now taken on by Sunak it would seem, is a lesser of two evils is absurd.
As a committed Christian would you condone Sunak promoting the lies about Starmer and Savile even if it looks like winning him (and you) the next election?
Sunak is a Hindu, Starmer is an atheist. Even if I tried to say they should push Christian values and not be too negative about each other I doubt they would care.
Indeed the only Christian of the 3 main party leaders is Sir Ed Davey, who is Church of England.
Perhaps reflects the fact the Church of England is now more the Liberal Democrats at Prayer than the Tory Party at prayer with a few evangelical and ultra conservative high Anglo Catholic exceptions
But you don't push Christian values. The opposite. Look at the values of the people you shill for.
Sunak is pretty Christian even as a Hindu. Hunt is the most senior Anglican Tory now and also pretty Christian in values, certainly his personal life where he is in a lifelong, committed marriage with his wife.
Left Liberals also often ignore the Old Testament, just the help the poor bits of the New they like
Well aren't the bits Jesus actually said and did a bit more important?
Labour's smear against Sunak looks even worse. I think the next election could be one of the nastiest ever in terms of negative ads and slogans
Labour's negative poster campaign was unfortunate and best left unpublished. But to suggest Johnson's scurrilous slur against Starmer, now taken on by Sunak it would seem, is a lesser of two evils is absurd.
As a committed Christian would you condone Sunak promoting the lies about Starmer and Savile even if it looks like winning him (and you) the next election?
Sunak is a Hindu, Starmer is an atheist. Even if I tried to say they should push Christian values and not be too negative about each other I doubt they would care.
Indeed the only Christian of the 3 main party leaders is Sir Ed Davey, who is Church of England.
Perhaps reflects the fact the Church of England is now more the Liberal Democrats at Prayer than the Tory Party at prayer with a few evangelical and ultra conservative high Anglo Catholic exceptions
But you don't push Christian values. The opposite. Look at the values of the people you shill for.
Sunak is pretty Christian even as a Hindu. Hunt is the most senior Anglican Tory now and also pretty Christian in values, certainly his personal life where he is in a lifelong, committed marriage with his wife.
Left Liberals also often ignore the Old Testament, just the help the poor bits of the New they like
Well aren't the bits Jesus actually said and did a bit more important?
If that were not so he'd not have been needed.
I’d like to talk about what Jesus did for us.
To be fair it was Easter weekend he gave up so four days not just the two -quite a sacrifice.
So let me get this straight we imposed draconian economic sanctions on ourselves to specifically rid the nation of young EU migrant workers. And it worked like a dream. And now we want to encourage young EU workers back to the UK without reinstating any of the benefits we as a nation and as citizens of Europe cherished and lost by voting to specifically get rid of young migrant workers from the EU.
It’s about discovering Stuart Rose spoke the (unacceptable) truth.
Low end jobs had their wages suppressed by low/zero skill immigration.
Now companies are facing a shortage of people prepared to work for minimum wage (or even less - see piece work). They may even be faced with investing in automation. See all the lunch places which are installing big screen self service tills in London etc…
You have completely missed or ignored my point. We specifically voted to withdraw from all the benefits of EU membership to expel young low paid Europeans, and now we want them back, but without associating their return with reinstatement of the benefits WE lost.
No, I haven’t.
I was just remarking on *why* this comment was being made by *this* politician.
The U.K. economy has/had an addiction to ultra cheap labour. This is directly connected to the very poor productivity figures we have seen over the years. And the continued attempts at suppressing wages in the NHS.
There are two approaches to resolve this - invest in productivity. Or get more cheap labour.
Stuart Rose pointed this out in the referendum campaign. Probably foolishly.
But any fool could see that. Even Boris Johnson, who promised to fill the Labour shortfalls by importing "our friends from the Indian Sub-Continent" to take up the slack.
Brexit voters didn't see that, at least the clump of them who explicitly voted Brexit to cut migration. They wanted less people from abroad taking their jobs and making their schools and hospitals full up. They wanted less Poles and Romanians and Muslims.
As I've been pointing out on here for years, Brits are not replacing departing forrin working in care homes and factories and the field. We don't want these jobs - which is why we needed migrant labour in the first place. And not just unskilled - anyone remember how you couldn't get a plumber or a sparky 20 years ago? Our people stopped wanting to work. And they still don't.
Country is full of lazy want everything for nothing barstewards, they whine plenty about pensioners but don't want to do a day's work themselves.
A little unfair but there is something in it. I blame Simon Cowell - why graft when you can be famous? My 15 year old son said yesterday that he couldn't understand people working nights. Both Mrs RP and I piped up with us working night shifts, and split shifts (I had one job that finished at 2am). As we said, you take the work you can get when you need work.
I know that I am privileged now being paid £lots for "work" which is far more gentle than so many who get paid £less. But I've chopped cucumbers and loaded clothes onto trucks and pushed trollies around.
The issue is that good honest work isn't seen as good or honest. It's "demeaning" or pick any other negative you like. That's not a people issue, it's a societal issue. And it goes back to Thatcherite pronunciations about if you are over the age of 30 and on a bus you have failed in life. Did our neighbours EU countries demean work in this way?
Agree totally , many jobs are seen as demeaning whereas in other countries they are seen as careers. Too many had it too easy in this country and expectations are that they start on huge wages and do very little , no early starts and no working after 4 or 5 pm. Unfortunate but the country is debauched , morals , standards and principles have gone down the drain. Banana republic status beckons if it stays on current track.
A little unfair but there is something in it. I blame Simon Cowell - why graft when you can be famous?
Modern fame is a bizarre winner-takes-all system that disproportionately rewards those at the very top. Billions of dollars for Taylor Swift, almost nothing for an industrious, averagely successful guitar band. The lessons of this strange industry apply to almost nobody.
For most people, celebrity exhortations to dream big, sacrifice your life to your passion and keep going in the face of failure are not useful. As the comedian Bo Burnham put it, “Taylor Swift telling you to follow your dreams is like a lottery winner telling you, ‘Liquidise your assets; buy Powerball tickets — it works!’ ”
Toiling fanatically towards a distant goal sounds inspiring but it creates a single point of failure. If you spend every waking hour playing golf but never make it as a professional golfer, what exactly was the point of your life?
I actually disagree with this. If you are passionate about the arts and have a talent for it then pursue it. You don't need to sell out arenas to make a living in the music business. In fact, if you are in it with dreams of fame then you're in it for the wrong reasons. I know lots of people working in the arts and I also know lots of people in finance. I'd say that people who have a passion for either field and are working in it are living happy, fulfilled lives. People who are in finance solely for material comfort seem a lot less happy. Also, if you really do feel you have to work in a different field for material reasons (raising a family can be expensive) then you can easily find opportunities to make the arts a side-hustle or a part-time thing, with loads of open mic or other gigging opportunities. People who are locked into expensive status-driven lifestyles, stuck doing a job they hate, are living a sad, stultified existence. You only have one life. Grab it with both hands.
Very philosophical on a Sunday morning, and completely true.
I was just watching the Formula 3 race at Silverstone, on the undercard for today’s Grand Prix. The F3 drivers have an average age of about 19, and they and their parents have sacrificed an awful lot for the chance that they make it to Formula 1, something which the vast majority of that F3 grid won’t achieve. Yet every year, there’s 30 of them lining up on that grid, all hoping and dreaming that they will be the next Lewis Hamilton.
With the exception of football, most sports have only a few dozen professionals, people who are actually making good money from competition, although there will be many more part-timers and keen amateurs, and people employed around the sport.
The arts are the same, with dozens of people making good money, many more thousands more doing it because they enjoy it, or finding work in the wider industry.
Fox Jr2 aspires to be an actor. He is actually very good at it and has been leading man in a number of commercial productions by youth theatre groups. Covid hit at the wrong time, and work just disappeared. 3 years later he is trying again.
I don't have a problem with this, and don't mind subsidising his dreams. What I don't want is for him to look back in his thirties wondering if he could have made it. Life is full of second and third chances though perhaps not twentieth chances.
So let me get this straight we imposed draconian economic sanctions on ourselves to specifically rid the nation of young EU migrant workers. And it worked like a dream. And now we want to encourage young EU workers back to the UK without reinstating any of the benefits we as a nation and as citizens of Europe cherished and lost by voting to specifically get rid of young migrant workers from the EU.
It’s about discovering Stuart Rose spoke the (unacceptable) truth.
Low end jobs had their wages suppressed by low/zero skill immigration.
Now companies are facing a shortage of people prepared to work for minimum wage (or even less - see piece work). They may even be faced with investing in automation. See all the lunch places which are installing big screen self service tills in London etc…
Bart would come along and demand all the businesses pay lots of wages or go bust - the will of the market. And he's right in the theoretical application of this. But in practice?
There is minimal automation that can remove jobs from manual labour roles, whether they be picking fruit or picking orders or caring for our unwanted elderly or making you a twatty coffee in Starbucks. What there is can't be afforded by these businesses.
So we wither find them low wage labour or we lose all these businesses. "Just pay more" is fine, except that smashes prices ever higher and people can't afford stuff as it is.
We need a wholesale redrawing of the corporate taxation map. Only give companies low taxes if they pay and invest more. But we can't do that as socialism or whatever. So we let Starbucks both pay starvation wages and pay no taxes.
Alternatively, we make do with only 20 Starbucks per square mile in London, instead of the 30 we have now.
Starbucks is the worst coffee chain horrible sharp tasting coffee.
Interestingly, McDonalds of all places, used to win blind tastings of Big Chain coffee.
Starbucks is just bland.
One thing that amuses, is people going to artisan places that advertise they use the strongest roasts. Then half full their cup with sugar to reduce the harshness of the taste.
I seem to recall a study on the power of marketing and social desirability that showed people will claim they want a rich dark roast because that's what sounds good and the socially correct answer. But that buying habits show people actually prefer weaker, milkier coffee.
I'm not a coffee drinker but it makes sense - lots of people also like McDonald's, and not solely because its cheap
I like a strong, good quality coffee. But such coffee is getting very expensive. McDonalds coffee isn't amazing but its perfectly acceptable. The coffee from the little independent shop on the bridge is better, but not three times better. But it is three times more expensive.
So let me get this straight we imposed draconian economic sanctions on ourselves to specifically rid the nation of young EU migrant workers. And it worked like a dream. And now we want to encourage young EU workers back to the UK without reinstating any of the benefits we as a nation and as citizens of Europe cherished and lost by voting to specifically get rid of young migrant workers from the EU.
It’s about discovering Stuart Rose spoke the (unacceptable) truth.
Low end jobs had their wages suppressed by low/zero skill immigration.
Now companies are facing a shortage of people prepared to work for minimum wage (or even less - see piece work). They may even be faced with investing in automation. See all the lunch places which are installing big screen self service tills in London etc…
You have completely missed or ignored my point. We specifically voted to withdraw from all the benefits of EU membership to expel young low paid Europeans, and now we want them back, but without associating their return with reinstatement of the benefits WE lost.
No, I haven’t.
I was just remarking on *why* this comment was being made by *this* politician.
The U.K. economy has/had an addiction to ultra cheap labour. This is directly connected to the very poor productivity figures we have seen over the years. And the continued attempts at suppressing wages in the NHS.
There are two approaches to resolve this - invest in productivity. Or get more cheap labour.
Stuart Rose pointed this out in the referendum campaign. Probably foolishly.
But any fool could see that. Even Boris Johnson, who promised to fill the Labour shortfalls by importing "our friends from the Indian Sub-Continent" to take up the slack.
Brexit voters didn't see that, at least the clump of them who explicitly voted Brexit to cut migration. They wanted less people from abroad taking their jobs and making their schools and hospitals full up. They wanted less Poles and Romanians and Muslims.
As I've been pointing out on here for years, Brits are not replacing departing forrin working in care homes and factories and the field. We don't want these jobs - which is why we needed migrant labour in the first place. And not just unskilled - anyone remember how you couldn't get a plumber or a sparky 20 years ago? Our people stopped wanting to work. And they still don't.
Country is full of lazy want everything for nothing barstewards, they whine plenty about pensioners but don't want to do a day's work themselves.
Hello, Malky. Was piddling down all day and night, pretty much, but we missed the worst by luck. Now sunny and drying out on this side, though I wonder how midgy it will be in the more sheltered areas.
Hello Carnyx , lovely here now, big thunder and lightning through the night. Badly needed as grey and muggy yesterday.
Labour's smear against Sunak looks even worse. I think the next election could be one of the nastiest ever in terms of negative ads and slogans
Labour's negative poster campaign was unfortunate and best left unpublished. But to suggest Johnson's scurrilous slur against Starmer, now taken on by Sunak it would seem, is a lesser of two evils is absurd.
As a committed Christian would you condone Sunak promoting the lies about Starmer and Savile even if it looks like winning him (and you) the next election?
Sunak is a Hindu, Starmer is an atheist. Even if I tried to say they should push Christian values and not be too negative about each other I doubt they would care.
Indeed the only Christian of the 3 main party leaders is Sir Ed Davey, who is Church of England.
Perhaps reflects the fact the Church of England is now more the Liberal Democrats at Prayer than the Tory Party at prayer with a few evangelical and ultra conservative high Anglo Catholic exceptions
But you don't push Christian values. The opposite. Look at the values of the people you shill for.
Sunak is pretty Christian even as a Hindu. Hunt is the most senior Anglican Tory now and also pretty Christian in values, certainly his personal life where he is in a lifelong, committed marriage with his wife.
Left Liberals also often ignore the Old Testament, just the help the poor bits of the New they like
Can I refer you back to my post from a few days ago. You really do need to get cracking on the New Testament. It's a compelling read compared to volume 1, which I find to be a bit "Game of Thrones".
Bit Indy movie to the old testaments summer blockbuster though isn't it? Too much preaching, not enough death and explosions.
I have no doubt that the Savile smear cuts through with some voters. However, hasn't it already done so where it is going to? Currently Mr Sunak can pretend to have clean hands but benefit from the unfounded allegations of that dastardly Johnson. If he wants to tie himself to the allegation then he might find it helps him as much in the polls as it did Johnson, i.e. it puts off as many as it attracts. There's a small section of the population believes ALL politicians are pedos. Basing your strategy on them might not be the smartest idea.
So here's an alternative. Why not try to Govern better. Who knows - it might help.
So let me get this straight we imposed draconian economic sanctions on ourselves to specifically rid the nation of young EU migrant workers. And it worked like a dream. And now we want to encourage young EU workers back to the UK without reinstating any of the benefits we as a nation and as citizens of Europe cherished and lost by voting to specifically get rid of young migrant workers from the EU.
It’s about discovering Stuart Rose spoke the (unacceptable) truth.
Low end jobs had their wages suppressed by low/zero skill immigration.
Now companies are facing a shortage of people prepared to work for minimum wage (or even less - see piece work). They may even be faced with investing in automation. See all the lunch places which are installing big screen self service tills in London etc…
You have completely missed or ignored my point. We specifically voted to withdraw from all the benefits of EU membership to expel young low paid Europeans, and now we want them back, but without associating their return with reinstatement of the benefits WE lost.
No, I haven’t.
I was just remarking on *why* this comment was being made by *this* politician.
The U.K. economy has/had an addiction to ultra cheap labour. This is directly connected to the very poor productivity figures we have seen over the years. And the continued attempts at suppressing wages in the NHS.
There are two approaches to resolve this - invest in productivity. Or get more cheap labour.
Stuart Rose pointed this out in the referendum campaign. Probably foolishly.
Brexit has, of course, also inhibited the desire of companies to invest in the UK.
So let me get this straight we imposed draconian economic sanctions on ourselves to specifically rid the nation of young EU migrant workers. And it worked like a dream. And now we want to encourage young EU workers back to the UK without reinstating any of the benefits we as a nation and as citizens of Europe cherished and lost by voting to specifically get rid of young migrant workers from the EU.
There does not appear to be any shortage of legal immigration into this country.
What Eustice and the people he's shilling for are complaining of is that they can't get people do minimum wage work. And, I'd have to say that my heart bleeds purple piss for them.
Labour's smear against Sunak looks even worse. I think the next election could be one of the nastiest ever in terms of negative ads and slogans
Labour's negative poster campaign was unfortunate and best left unpublished. But to suggest Johnson's scurrilous slur against Starmer, now taken on by Sunak it would seem, is a lesser of two evils is absurd.
As a committed Christian would you condone Sunak promoting the lies about Starmer and Savile even if it looks like winning him (and you) the next election?
Sunak is a Hindu, Starmer is an atheist. Even if I tried to say they should push Christian values and not be too negative about each other I doubt they would care.
Indeed the only Christian of the 3 main party leaders is Sir Ed Davey, who is Church of England.
Perhaps reflects the fact the Church of England is now more the Liberal Democrats at Prayer than the Tory Party at prayer with a few evangelical and ultra conservative high Anglo Catholic exceptions
But you don't push Christian values. The opposite. Look at the values of the people you shill for.
Sunak is pretty Christian even as a Hindu. ..
That is a comment I'd immediately identify as you, even if you were to post under another account.
So let me get this straight we imposed draconian economic sanctions on ourselves to specifically rid the nation of young EU migrant workers. And it worked like a dream. And now we want to encourage young EU workers back to the UK without reinstating any of the benefits we as a nation and as citizens of Europe cherished and lost by voting to specifically get rid of young migrant workers from the EU.
It’s about discovering Stuart Rose spoke the (unacceptable) truth.
Low end jobs had their wages suppressed by low/zero skill immigration.
Now companies are facing a shortage of people prepared to work for minimum wage (or even less - see piece work). They may even be faced with investing in automation. See all the lunch places which are installing big screen self service tills in London etc…
You have completely missed or ignored my point. We specifically voted to withdraw from all the benefits of EU membership to expel young low paid Europeans, and now we want them back, but without associating their return with reinstatement of the benefits WE lost.
No, I haven’t.
I was just remarking on *why* this comment was being made by *this* politician.
The U.K. economy has/had an addiction to ultra cheap labour. This is directly connected to the very poor productivity figures we have seen over the years. And the continued attempts at suppressing wages in the NHS.
There are two approaches to resolve this - invest in productivity. Or get more cheap labour.
Stuart Rose pointed this out in the referendum campaign. Probably foolishly.
But any fool could see that. Even Boris Johnson, who promised to fill the Labour shortfalls by importing "our friends from the Indian Sub-Continent" to take up the slack.
Brexit voters didn't see that, at least the clump of them who explicitly voted Brexit to cut migration. They wanted less people from abroad taking their jobs and making their schools and hospitals full up. They wanted less Poles and Romanians and Muslims.
As I've been pointing out on here for years, Brits are not replacing departing forrin working in care homes and factories and the field. We don't want these jobs - which is why we needed migrant labour in the first place. And not just unskilled - anyone remember how you couldn't get a plumber or a sparky 20 years ago? Our people stopped wanting to work. And they still don't.
Country is full of lazy want everything for nothing barstewards, they whine plenty about pensioners but don't want to do a day's work themselves.
Hello, Malky. Was piddling down all day and night, pretty much, but we missed the worst by luck. Now sunny and drying out on this side, though I wonder how midgy it will be in the more sheltered areas.
Hello Carnyx , lovely here now, big thunder and lightning through the night. Badly needed as grey and muggy yesterday.
The rain last night was something else here in the west highlands. Everything in spate this morning.
A little unfair but there is something in it. I blame Simon Cowell - why graft when you can be famous?
Modern fame is a bizarre winner-takes-all system that disproportionately rewards those at the very top. Billions of dollars for Taylor Swift, almost nothing for an industrious, averagely successful guitar band. The lessons of this strange industry apply to almost nobody.
For most people, celebrity exhortations to dream big, sacrifice your life to your passion and keep going in the face of failure are not useful. As the comedian Bo Burnham put it, “Taylor Swift telling you to follow your dreams is like a lottery winner telling you, ‘Liquidise your assets; buy Powerball tickets — it works!’ ”
Toiling fanatically towards a distant goal sounds inspiring but it creates a single point of failure. If you spend every waking hour playing golf but never make it as a professional golfer, what exactly was the point of your life?
I actually disagree with this. If you are passionate about the arts and have a talent for it then pursue it. You don't need to sell out arenas to make a living in the music business. In fact, if you are in it with dreams of fame then you're in it for the wrong reasons. I know lots of people working in the arts and I also know lots of people in finance. I'd say that people who have a passion for either field and are working in it are living happy, fulfilled lives. People who are in finance solely for material comfort seem a lot less happy. Also, if you really do feel you have to work in a different field for material reasons (raising a family can be expensive) then you can easily find opportunities to make the arts a side-hustle or a part-time thing, with loads of open mic or other gigging opportunities. People who are locked into expensive status-driven lifestyles, stuck doing a job they hate, are living a sad, stultified existence. You only have one life. Grab it with both hands.
I can second this for medicine. The folk I know who are most interested in status or pay are the least satisfied. Those that are happiest in their career are those who love the work, even though it is a cruel mistress.
Take this retirement notice by an American Surgeon for example:
Insightful.
I may have told this story before but when I was a solicitor I had a case which I considered a good one. The QC did not agree so we had a meeting and I explained to him why I thought that was the case. He changed his position. When it came to the appeal I came through and met him. He was a nervous wreak, he could not sit still and was twisting himself around the furniture. This wasn't an important case (except to my client), the man was soon to be appointed a judge but he was wound up like I had never seen.
I feared a disaster and he started with some hesitation but then the adrenalin kicked in and he was just brilliant, sharp, engaging turns of phrase, clever and swift responses. We won but I was left to reflect that (a) I would never, ever be that good and (b) I was not sure that I could live with the consequences if I could.
I am much more like the surgeon after his heart attacks and will have no problem turning my back from the law when the time comes. Sometimes, occasionally, I dream of being as good as that QC but I know the price would have been unacceptable. Dreams are all very well but contentment has a lot to be said for it too.
Labour's smear against Sunak looks even worse. I think the next election could be one of the nastiest ever in terms of negative ads and slogans
Labour's negative poster campaign was unfortunate and best left unpublished. But to suggest Johnson's scurrilous slur against Starmer, now taken on by Sunak it would seem, is a lesser of two evils is absurd.
As a committed Christian would you condone Sunak promoting the lies about Starmer and Savile even if it looks like winning him (and you) the next election?
Sunak is a Hindu, Starmer is an atheist. Even if I tried to say they should push Christian values and not be too negative about each other I doubt they would care.
Indeed the only Christian of the 3 main party leaders is Sir Ed Davey, who is Church of England.
Perhaps reflects the fact the Church of England is now more the Liberal Democrats at Prayer than the Tory Party at prayer with a few evangelical and ultra conservative high Anglo Catholic exceptions
But you don't push Christian values. The opposite. Look at the values of the people you shill for.
Sunak is pretty Christian even as a Hindu. Hunt is the most senior Anglican Tory now and also pretty Christian in values, certainly his personal life where he is in a lifelong, committed marriage with his wife.
Left Liberals also often ignore the Old Testament, just the help the poor bits of the New they like
If you actually were a Tory you'd know the entire bible is "God Breathed" - you can't be selective, but you can try to understand the context.
Your problem is that the bits you deprioritise are the bits with Jesus is. Which as a Christian is a bit of a problem.
You may really enjoy the tastier bits of the old testament. Good for you! But you then can't ignore the new testament as you do, making claims about Him which don't stand up to Bible Studies 101.
I would have zero problem with this if not for the fact that you are a massive hypocrite and religious bore. You preach and denounce practically everyone else despite the fact that you shill for crooks and liars and people who do the exact opposite of what Jesus - supposedly your personal lord and saviour - taught. So you rewrite His teachings to fit.
That plank in your eye is galactic sized, is it not?
IIRC Jesus preached "Man's greatest joy is to slaughter his enemies, to crush them and drive them before him, and to listen to the lamentations of the women."
A little unfair but there is something in it. I blame Simon Cowell - why graft when you can be famous?
Modern fame is a bizarre winner-takes-all system that disproportionately rewards those at the very top. Billions of dollars for Taylor Swift, almost nothing for an industrious, averagely successful guitar band. The lessons of this strange industry apply to almost nobody.
For most people, celebrity exhortations to dream big, sacrifice your life to your passion and keep going in the face of failure are not useful. As the comedian Bo Burnham put it, “Taylor Swift telling you to follow your dreams is like a lottery winner telling you, ‘Liquidise your assets; buy Powerball tickets — it works!’ ”
Toiling fanatically towards a distant goal sounds inspiring but it creates a single point of failure. If you spend every waking hour playing golf but never make it as a professional golfer, what exactly was the point of your life?
I actually disagree with this. If you are passionate about the arts and have a talent for it then pursue it. You don't need to sell out arenas to make a living in the music business. In fact, if you are in it with dreams of fame then you're in it for the wrong reasons. I know lots of people working in the arts and I also know lots of people in finance. I'd say that people who have a passion for either field and are working in it are living happy, fulfilled lives. People who are in finance solely for material comfort seem a lot less happy. Also, if you really do feel you have to work in a different field for material reasons (raising a family can be expensive) then you can easily find opportunities to make the arts a side-hustle or a part-time thing, with loads of open mic or other gigging opportunities. People who are locked into expensive status-driven lifestyles, stuck doing a job they hate, are living a sad, stultified existence. You only have one life. Grab it with both hands.
Very philosophical on a Sunday morning, and completely true.
I was just watching the Formula 3 race at Silverstone, on the undercard for today’s Grand Prix. The F3 drivers have an average age of about 19, and they and their parents have sacrificed an awful lot for the chance that they make it to Formula 1, something which the vast majority of that F3 grid won’t achieve. Yet every year, there’s 30 of them lining up on that grid, all hoping and dreaming that they will be the next Lewis Hamilton.
With the exception of football, most sports have only a few dozen professionals, people who are actually making good money from competition, although there will be many more part-timers and keen amateurs, and people employed around the sport.
The arts are the same, with dozens of people making good money, many more thousands more doing it because they enjoy it, or finding work in the wider industry.
Fox Jr2 aspires to be an actor. He is actually very good at it and has been leading man in a number of commercial productions by youth theatre groups. Covid hit at the wrong time, and work just disappeared. 3 years later he is trying again.
I don't have a problem with this, and don't mind subsidising his dreams. What I don't want is for him to look back in his thirties wondering if he could have made it. Life is full of second and third chances though perhaps not twentieth chances.
There's a genuine issue that we've hollowed out a lot of the "make a decent living in the second division" bits of the economy. Provincial theatres with weekly rep. Local media. That sort of thing.
Makes sense economically - the consumers get better actors, the producers get lower costs. But I'm not sure it's better for us as a society. The effort + talent to reward graph is too hard to navigate.
If you believe in the free market as a good thing (and mostly I think I do) the existence of situations where individuals acting rationally leads to a bad collective outcome is a tricky challenge.
Labour's smear against Sunak looks even worse. I think the next election could be one of the nastiest ever in terms of negative ads and slogans
Labour's negative poster campaign was unfortunate and best left unpublished. But to suggest Johnson's scurrilous slur against Starmer, now taken on by Sunak it would seem, is a lesser of two evils is absurd.
As a committed Christian would you condone Sunak promoting the lies about Starmer and Savile even if it looks like winning him (and you) the next election?
Sunak is a Hindu, Starmer is an atheist. Even if I tried to say they should push Christian values and not be too negative about each other I doubt they would care.
Indeed the only Christian of the 3 main party leaders is Sir Ed Davey, who is Church of England.
Perhaps reflects the fact the Church of England is now more the Liberal Democrats at Prayer than the Tory Party at prayer with a few evangelical and ultra conservative high Anglo Catholic exceptions
But you don't push Christian values. The opposite. Look at the values of the people you shill for.
Sunak is pretty Christian even as a Hindu. Hunt is the most senior Anglican Tory now and also pretty Christian in values, certainly his personal life where he is in a lifelong, committed marriage with his wife.
Left Liberals also often ignore the Old Testament, just the help the poor bits of the New they like
If you actually were a Tory you'd know the entire bible is "God Breathed" - you can't be selective, but you can try to understand the context.
Your problem is that the bits you deprioritise are the bits with Jesus is. Which as a Christian is a bit of a problem.
You may really enjoy the tastier bits of the old testament. Good for you! But you then can't ignore the new testament as you do, making claims about Him which don't stand up to Bible Studies 101.
I would have zero problem with this if not for the fact that you are a massive hypocrite and religious bore. You preach and denounce practically everyone else despite the fact that you shill for crooks and liars and people who do the exact opposite of what Jesus - supposedly your personal lord and saviour - taught. So you rewrite His teachings to fit.
That plank in your eye is galactic sized, is it not?
IIRC Jesus preached "Man's greatest joy is to slaughter his enemies, to crush them and drive them before him, and to listen to the lamentations of the women."
A little unfair but there is something in it. I blame Simon Cowell - why graft when you can be famous?
Modern fame is a bizarre winner-takes-all system that disproportionately rewards those at the very top. Billions of dollars for Taylor Swift, almost nothing for an industrious, averagely successful guitar band. The lessons of this strange industry apply to almost nobody.
For most people, celebrity exhortations to dream big, sacrifice your life to your passion and keep going in the face of failure are not useful. As the comedian Bo Burnham put it, “Taylor Swift telling you to follow your dreams is like a lottery winner telling you, ‘Liquidise your assets; buy Powerball tickets — it works!’ ”
Toiling fanatically towards a distant goal sounds inspiring but it creates a single point of failure. If you spend every waking hour playing golf but never make it as a professional golfer, what exactly was the point of your life?
I actually disagree with this. If you are passionate about the arts and have a talent for it then pursue it. You don't need to sell out arenas to make a living in the music business. In fact, if you are in it with dreams of fame then you're in it for the wrong reasons. I know lots of people working in the arts and I also know lots of people in finance. I'd say that people who have a passion for either field and are working in it are living happy, fulfilled lives. People who are in finance solely for material comfort seem a lot less happy. Also, if you really do feel you have to work in a different field for material reasons (raising a family can be expensive) then you can easily find opportunities to make the arts a side-hustle or a part-time thing, with loads of open mic or other gigging opportunities. People who are locked into expensive status-driven lifestyles, stuck doing a job they hate, are living a sad, stultified existence. You only have one life. Grab it with both hands.
Very philosophical on a Sunday morning, and completely true.
I was just watching the Formula 3 race at Silverstone, on the undercard for today’s Grand Prix. The F3 drivers have an average age of about 19, and they and their parents have sacrificed an awful lot for the chance that they make it to Formula 1, something which the vast majority of that F3 grid won’t achieve. Yet every year, there’s 30 of them lining up on that grid, all hoping and dreaming that they will be the next Lewis Hamilton.
With the exception of football, most sports have only a few dozen professionals, people who are actually making good money from competition, although there will be many more part-timers and keen amateurs, and people employed around the sport.
The arts are the same, with dozens of people making good money, many more thousands more doing it because they enjoy it, or finding work in the wider industry.
Fox Jr2 aspires to be an actor. He is actually very good at it and has been leading man in a number of commercial productions by youth theatre groups. Covid hit at the wrong time, and work just disappeared. 3 years later he is trying again.
I don't have a problem with this, and don't mind subsidising his dreams. What I don't want is for him to look back in his thirties wondering if he could have made it. Life is full of second and third chances though perhaps not twentieth chances.
Good luck to him!
Yes the entertainment industry was badly affected by the pandemic, although seems to be removing now. So many industries are very cyclical. I always thought about training as an airline pilot, but for every friend who has a comfortable job in the industry with BA or Emirates, there’s many more who have piled on training debt or suffered redundancy.
So let me get this straight we imposed draconian economic sanctions on ourselves to specifically rid the nation of young EU migrant workers. And it worked like a dream. And now we want to encourage young EU workers back to the UK without reinstating any of the benefits we as a nation and as citizens of Europe cherished and lost by voting to specifically get rid of young migrant workers from the EU.
It’s about discovering Stuart Rose spoke the (unacceptable) truth.
Low end jobs had their wages suppressed by low/zero skill immigration.
Now companies are facing a shortage of people prepared to work for minimum wage (or even less - see piece work). They may even be faced with investing in automation. See all the lunch places which are installing big screen self service tills in London etc…
You have completely missed or ignored my point. We specifically voted to withdraw from all the benefits of EU membership to expel young low paid Europeans, and now we want them back, but without associating their return with reinstatement of the benefits WE lost.
No, I haven’t.
I was just remarking on *why* this comment was being made by *this* politician.
The U.K. economy has/had an addiction to ultra cheap labour. This is directly connected to the very poor productivity figures we have seen over the years. And the continued attempts at suppressing wages in the NHS.
There are two approaches to resolve this - invest in productivity. Or get more cheap labour.
Stuart Rose pointed this out in the referendum campaign. Probably foolishly.
Brexit has, of course, also inhibited the desire of companies to invest in the UK.
In fact not. Overall investment (aka Gross Fixed Capital Formation) is well above its level in 2016.
A little unfair but there is something in it. I blame Simon Cowell - why graft when you can be famous?
Modern fame is a bizarre winner-takes-all system that disproportionately rewards those at the very top. Billions of dollars for Taylor Swift, almost nothing for an industrious, averagely successful guitar band. The lessons of this strange industry apply to almost nobody.
For most people, celebrity exhortations to dream big, sacrifice your life to your passion and keep going in the face of failure are not useful. As the comedian Bo Burnham put it, “Taylor Swift telling you to follow your dreams is like a lottery winner telling you, ‘Liquidise your assets; buy Powerball tickets — it works!’ ”
Toiling fanatically towards a distant goal sounds inspiring but it creates a single point of failure. If you spend every waking hour playing golf but never make it as a professional golfer, what exactly was the point of your life?
I actually disagree with this. If you are passionate about the arts and have a talent for it then pursue it. You don't need to sell out arenas to make a living in the music business. In fact, if you are in it with dreams of fame then you're in it for the wrong reasons. I know lots of people working in the arts and I also know lots of people in finance. I'd say that people who have a passion for either field and are working in it are living happy, fulfilled lives. People who are in finance solely for material comfort seem a lot less happy. Also, if you really do feel you have to work in a different field for material reasons (raising a family can be expensive) then you can easily find opportunities to make the arts a side-hustle or a part-time thing, with loads of open mic or other gigging opportunities. People who are locked into expensive status-driven lifestyles, stuck doing a job they hate, are living a sad, stultified existence. You only have one life. Grab it with both hands.
Very philosophical on a Sunday morning, and completely true.
I was just watching the Formula 3 race at Silverstone, on the undercard for today’s Grand Prix. The F3 drivers have an average age of about 19, and they and their parents have sacrificed an awful lot for the chance that they make it to Formula 1, something which the vast majority of that F3 grid won’t achieve. Yet every year, there’s 30 of them lining up on that grid, all hoping and dreaming that they will be the next Lewis Hamilton.
With the exception of football, most sports have only a few dozen professionals, people who are actually making good money from competition, although there will be many more part-timers and keen amateurs, and people employed around the sport.
The arts are the same, with dozens of people making good money, many more thousands more doing it because they enjoy it, or finding work in the wider industry.
Fox Jr2 aspires to be an actor. He is actually very good at it and has been leading man in a number of commercial productions by youth theatre groups. Covid hit at the wrong time, and work just disappeared. 3 years later he is trying again.
I don't have a problem with this, and don't mind subsidising his dreams. What I don't want is for him to look back in his thirties wondering if he could have made it. Life is full of second and third chances though perhaps not twentieth chances.
My father talked me out of following my dream (pro cycling) at age 20. I'll always believe I was good enough (and I was definitely prepared to take enough performance enhancing drugs) to be on a pro team but in those days it was a short, brutal and poorly remunerated sporting career. I settle for being the éminence grise of my cycling club and telling them stories about when Cyrille Guimard was my DS.
A little unfair but there is something in it. I blame Simon Cowell - why graft when you can be famous?
Modern fame is a bizarre winner-takes-all system that disproportionately rewards those at the very top. Billions of dollars for Taylor Swift, almost nothing for an industrious, averagely successful guitar band. The lessons of this strange industry apply to almost nobody.
For most people, celebrity exhortations to dream big, sacrifice your life to your passion and keep going in the face of failure are not useful. As the comedian Bo Burnham put it, “Taylor Swift telling you to follow your dreams is like a lottery winner telling you, ‘Liquidise your assets; buy Powerball tickets — it works!’ ”
Toiling fanatically towards a distant goal sounds inspiring but it creates a single point of failure. If you spend every waking hour playing golf but never make it as a professional golfer, what exactly was the point of your life?
I actually disagree with this. If you are passionate about the arts and have a talent for it then pursue it. You don't need to sell out arenas to make a living in the music business. In fact, if you are in it with dreams of fame then you're in it for the wrong reasons. I know lots of people working in the arts and I also know lots of people in finance. I'd say that people who have a passion for either field and are working in it are living happy, fulfilled lives. People who are in finance solely for material comfort seem a lot less happy. Also, if you really do feel you have to work in a different field for material reasons (raising a family can be expensive) then you can easily find opportunities to make the arts a side-hustle or a part-time thing, with loads of open mic or other gigging opportunities. People who are locked into expensive status-driven lifestyles, stuck doing a job they hate, are living a sad, stultified existence. You only have one life. Grab it with both hands.
Very philosophical on a Sunday morning, and completely true.
I was just watching the Formula 3 race at Silverstone, on the undercard for today’s Grand Prix. The F3 drivers have an average age of about 19, and they and their parents have sacrificed an awful lot for the chance that they make it to Formula 1, something which the vast majority of that F3 grid won’t achieve. Yet every year, there’s 30 of them lining up on that grid, all hoping and dreaming that they will be the next Lewis Hamilton.
With the exception of football, most sports have only a few dozen professionals, people who are actually making good money from competition, although there will be many more part-timers and keen amateurs, and people employed around the sport.
The arts are the same, with dozens of people making good money, many more thousands more doing it because they enjoy it, or finding work in the wider industry.
Fox Jr2 aspires to be an actor. He is actually very good at it and has been leading man in a number of commercial productions by youth theatre groups. Covid hit at the wrong time, and work just disappeared. 3 years later he is trying again.
I don't have a problem with this, and don't mind subsidising his dreams. What I don't want is for him to look back in his thirties wondering if he could have made it. Life is full of second and third chances though perhaps not twentieth chances.
There's a genuine issue that we've hollowed out a lot of the "make a decent living in the second division" bits of the economy. Provincial theatres with weekly rep. Local media. That sort of thing.
Makes sense economically - the consumers get better actors, the producers get lower costs. But I'm not sure it's better for us as a society. The effort + talent to reward graph is too hard to navigate.
If you believe in the free market as a good thing (and mostly I think I do) the existence of situations where individuals acting rationally leads to a bad collective outcome is a tricky challenge.
There are a hell of a lot of people who are extremely talented as writers, artists, performers etc. Unfortunately, there are far too few livings for them.
Fortunately, most do these things because they enjoy them.
A little unfair but there is something in it. I blame Simon Cowell - why graft when you can be famous?
Modern fame is a bizarre winner-takes-all system that disproportionately rewards those at the very top. Billions of dollars for Taylor Swift, almost nothing for an industrious, averagely successful guitar band. The lessons of this strange industry apply to almost nobody.
For most people, celebrity exhortations to dream big, sacrifice your life to your passion and keep going in the face of failure are not useful. As the comedian Bo Burnham put it, “Taylor Swift telling you to follow your dreams is like a lottery winner telling you, ‘Liquidise your assets; buy Powerball tickets — it works!’ ”
Toiling fanatically towards a distant goal sounds inspiring but it creates a single point of failure. If you spend every waking hour playing golf but never make it as a professional golfer, what exactly was the point of your life?
I actually disagree with this. If you are passionate about the arts and have a talent for it then pursue it. You don't need to sell out arenas to make a living in the music business. In fact, if you are in it with dreams of fame then you're in it for the wrong reasons. I know lots of people working in the arts and I also know lots of people in finance. I'd say that people who have a passion for either field and are working in it are living happy, fulfilled lives. People who are in finance solely for material comfort seem a lot less happy. Also, if you really do feel you have to work in a different field for material reasons (raising a family can be expensive) then you can easily find opportunities to make the arts a side-hustle or a part-time thing, with loads of open mic or other gigging opportunities. People who are locked into expensive status-driven lifestyles, stuck doing a job they hate, are living a sad, stultified existence. You only have one life. Grab it with both hands.
Very philosophical on a Sunday morning, and completely true.
I was just watching the Formula 3 race at Silverstone, on the undercard for today’s Grand Prix. The F3 drivers have an average age of about 19, and they and their parents have sacrificed an awful lot for the chance that they make it to Formula 1, something which the vast majority of that F3 grid won’t achieve. Yet every year, there’s 30 of them lining up on that grid, all hoping and dreaming that they will be the next Lewis Hamilton.
With the exception of football, most sports have only a few dozen professionals, people who are actually making good money from competition, although there will be many more part-timers and keen amateurs, and people employed around the sport.
The arts are the same, with dozens of people making good money, many more thousands more doing it because they enjoy it, or finding work in the wider industry.
Fox Jr2 aspires to be an actor. He is actually very good at it and has been leading man in a number of commercial productions by youth theatre groups. Covid hit at the wrong time, and work just disappeared. 3 years later he is trying again.
I don't have a problem with this, and don't mind subsidising his dreams. What I don't want is for him to look back in his thirties wondering if he could have made it. Life is full of second and third chances though perhaps not twentieth chances.
There's a genuine issue that we've hollowed out a lot of the "make a decent living in the second division" bits of the economy. Provincial theatres with weekly rep. Local media. That sort of thing.
Makes sense economically - the consumers get better actors, the producers get lower costs. But I'm not sure it's better for us as a society. The effort + talent to reward graph is too hard to navigate.
If you believe in the free market as a good thing (and mostly I think I do) the existence of situations where individuals acting rationally leads to a bad collective outcome is a tricky challenge.
Yes. Support your local theatre, your local comedy club, your local sports team, your local band playing in the pub.
Those working in the “second division” entertainment, really need all the support they can get.
I have no doubt that the Savile smear cuts through with some voters. However, hasn't it already done so where it is going to? Currently Mr Sunak can pretend to have clean hands but benefit from the unfounded allegations of that dastardly Johnson. If he wants to tie himself to the allegation then he might find it helps him as much in the polls as it did Johnson, i.e. it puts off as many as it attracts. There's a small section of the population believes ALL politicians are pedos. Basing your strategy on them might not be the smartest idea.
So here's an alternative. Why not try to Govern better. Who knows - it might help.
Starmer has limited appeal. He is wooden, verbose, timid and has no vision. What he does have though is a rather solid integrity which is notably lacking in the government, or for that matter the Scottish government. Hence the Tory desire to smear.
I'm not sure the Labour poster will help keep Savile out of the election.
The picture of Saville in the Conservative T shirt should effectively trump that.
SUNAK: I know which party was a friend of Saville Mr Speaker. The party of the man who let him off! STARMER: Ahem
I believe that image is as fake as the claims Starmer refused to prosecute Savile
There are plenty of Saville supporting the Conservative images, including newspaper articles with photos. if i knew how to get images in these comments I would post them.
I'm not sure the Labour poster will help keep Savile out of the election.
The picture of Saville in the Conservative T shirt should effectively trump that.
SUNAK: I know which party was a friend of Saville Mr Speaker. The party of the man who let him off! STARMER: Ahem
I believe that image is as fake as the claims Starmer refused to prosecute Savile
There are plenty of Saville supporting the Conservative images, including newspaper articles with photos. if i knew how to get images in these comments I would post them.
Some years ago, a university Conservative association organised a Jimmy Savile themed fancy dress party.
The whole Savile thing is ghastly of course. Boris's wicked and lying attack on Starmer has begun a sequence that can have no good outcome.
In particular the Labour counter attack (the poster in the article) was just as egregiously lying rubbish.
The whole charade is sick.
In total the effect should be to encourage thoughtful people either to stay at home on election day or vote LD.
I am not going to speculate on the BBC presenter but I will comment on one aspect.
In my work we once had a case of some photos put on our system by an employee which, at first glance, could have fallen into the category of child pornography.
Our immediate reaction was to get specialist legal advice because even moving such a photo to another folder to get it away from other employees can amount to a criminal offence - and it is a personal one. So we called the specialist child abuse police who came round to deal with it. If you do something under their direction you are protected. In the end it turned out not to be anything bad, which was a relief.
But the key point is this: you should not try to investigate internally. You must get legal advice and you must involve the police. Otherwise you run a hell of a lot of risks.
If the BBC were informed that one of their staff was soliciting sexual photos from an underage child, why the hell didn't they call the police there and then?
So let me get this straight we imposed draconian economic sanctions on ourselves to specifically rid the nation of young EU migrant workers. And it worked like a dream. And now we want to encourage young EU workers back to the UK without reinstating any of the benefits we as a nation and as citizens of Europe cherished and lost by voting to specifically get rid of young migrant workers from the EU.
It’s about discovering Stuart Rose spoke the (unacceptable) truth.
Low end jobs had their wages suppressed by low/zero skill immigration.
Now companies are facing a shortage of people prepared to work for minimum wage (or even less - see piece work). They may even be faced with investing in automation. See all the lunch places which are installing big screen self service tills in London etc…
You have completely missed or ignored my point. We specifically voted to withdraw from all the benefits of EU membership to expel young low paid Europeans, and now we want them back, but without associating their return with reinstatement of the benefits WE lost.
No, I haven’t.
I was just remarking on *why* this comment was being made by *this* politician.
The U.K. economy has/had an addiction to ultra cheap labour. This is directly connected to the very poor productivity figures we have seen over the years. And the continued attempts at suppressing wages in the NHS.
There are two approaches to resolve this - invest in productivity. Or get more cheap labour.
Stuart Rose pointed this out in the referendum campaign. Probably foolishly.
Brexit has, of course, also inhibited the desire of companies to invest in the UK.
In fact not. Overall investment (aka Gross Fixed Capital Formation) is well above its level in 2016.
Look at the graph - the long term trend growth stalled around Brexit. Just because it's now above that level doesn't invalidate my point about Brexit's inhibitory effect.
Labour's smear against Sunak looks even worse. I think the next election could be one of the nastiest ever in terms of negative ads and slogans
Labour's negative poster campaign was unfortunate and best left unpublished. But to suggest Johnson's scurrilous slur against Starmer, now taken on by Sunak it would seem, is a lesser of two evils is absurd.
As a committed Christian would you condone Sunak promoting the lies about Starmer and Savile even if it looks like winning him (and you) the next election?
Sunak is a Hindu, Starmer is an atheist. Even if I tried to say they should push Christian values and not be too negative about each other I doubt they would care.
Indeed the only Christian of the 3 main party leaders is Sir Ed Davey, who is Church of England.
Perhaps reflects the fact the Church of England is now more the Liberal Democrats at Prayer than the Tory Party at prayer with a few evangelical and ultra conservative high Anglo Catholic exceptions
But you don't push Christian values. The opposite. Look at the values of the people you shill for.
Sunak is pretty Christian even as a Hindu. ..
That is a comment I'd immediately identify as you, even if you were to post under another account.
Though not perhaps a foolish one. Jesus was quite willing to praise and exalt a number of those who did not follow the creed, notably Samaritans and a Roman (pagan) Centurion.
So let me get this straight we imposed draconian economic sanctions on ourselves to specifically rid the nation of young EU migrant workers. And it worked like a dream. And now we want to encourage young EU workers back to the UK without reinstating any of the benefits we as a nation and as citizens of Europe cherished and lost by voting to specifically get rid of young migrant workers from the EU.
It’s about discovering Stuart Rose spoke the (unacceptable) truth.
Low end jobs had their wages suppressed by low/zero skill immigration.
Now companies are facing a shortage of people prepared to work for minimum wage (or even less - see piece work). They may even be faced with investing in automation. See all the lunch places which are installing big screen self service tills in London etc…
You have completely missed or ignored my point. We specifically voted to withdraw from all the benefits of EU membership to expel young low paid Europeans, and now we want them back, but without associating their return with reinstatement of the benefits WE lost.
No, I haven’t.
I was just remarking on *why* this comment was being made by *this* politician.
The U.K. economy has/had an addiction to ultra cheap labour. This is directly connected to the very poor productivity figures we have seen over the years. And the continued attempts at suppressing wages in the NHS.
There are two approaches to resolve this - invest in productivity. Or get more cheap labour.
Stuart Rose pointed this out in the referendum campaign. Probably foolishly.
Brexit has, of course, also inhibited the desire of companies to invest in the UK.
In fact not. Overall investment (aka Gross Fixed Capital Formation) is well above its level in 2016.
Driven by the super deduction on investment spending. As I said at the time by far the best part of the budget and something we need to do a lot more of if we want proper growth in this country.
Labour's smear against Sunak looks even worse. I think the next election could be one of the nastiest ever in terms of negative ads and slogans
Labour's negative poster campaign was unfortunate and best left unpublished. But to suggest Johnson's scurrilous slur against Starmer, now taken on by Sunak it would seem, is a lesser of two evils is absurd.
As a committed Christian would you condone Sunak promoting the lies about Starmer and Savile even if it looks like winning him (and you) the next election?
Sunak is a Hindu, Starmer is an atheist. Even if I tried to say they should push Christian values and not be too negative about each other I doubt they would care.
Indeed the only Christian of the 3 main party leaders is Sir Ed Davey, who is Church of England.
Perhaps reflects the fact the Church of England is now more the Liberal Democrats at Prayer than the Tory Party at prayer with a few evangelical and ultra conservative high Anglo Catholic exceptions
But you don't push Christian values. The opposite. Look at the values of the people you shill for.
Sunak is pretty Christian even as a Hindu. Hunt is the most senior Anglican Tory now and also pretty Christian in values, certainly his personal life where he is in a lifelong, committed marriage with his wife.
Left Liberals also often ignore the Old Testament, just the help the poor bits of the New they like
If you actually were a Tory you'd know the entire bible is "God Breathed" - you can't be selective, but you can try to understand the context.
Your problem is that the bits you deprioritise are the bits with Jesus is. Which as a Christian is a bit of a problem.
You may really enjoy the tastier bits of the old testament. Good for you! But you then can't ignore the new testament as you do, making claims about Him which don't stand up to Bible Studies 101.
I would have zero problem with this if not for the fact that you are a massive hypocrite and religious bore. You preach and denounce practically everyone else despite the fact that you shill for crooks and liars and people who do the exact opposite of what Jesus - supposedly your personal lord and saviour - taught. So you rewrite His teachings to fit.
That plank in your eye is galactic sized, is it not?
IIRC Jesus preached "Man's greatest joy is to slaughter his enemies, to crush them and drive them before him, and to listen to the lamentations of the women."
Thought that was Ghengis Khan? I’m not ruling out that he occupies the place of a lord and saviour in your life.
So let me get this straight we imposed draconian economic sanctions on ourselves to specifically rid the nation of young EU migrant workers. And it worked like a dream. And now we want to encourage young EU workers back to the UK without reinstating any of the benefits we as a nation and as citizens of Europe cherished and lost by voting to specifically get rid of young migrant workers from the EU.
It’s about discovering Stuart Rose spoke the (unacceptable) truth.
Low end jobs had their wages suppressed by low/zero skill immigration.
Now companies are facing a shortage of people prepared to work for minimum wage (or even less - see piece work). They may even be faced with investing in automation. See all the lunch places which are installing big screen self service tills in London etc…
You have completely missed or ignored my point. We specifically voted to withdraw from all the benefits of EU membership to expel young low paid Europeans, and now we want them back, but without associating their return with reinstatement of the benefits WE lost.
No, I haven’t.
I was just remarking on *why* this comment was being made by *this* politician.
The U.K. economy has/had an addiction to ultra cheap labour. This is directly connected to the very poor productivity figures we have seen over the years. And the continued attempts at suppressing wages in the NHS.
There are two approaches to resolve this - invest in productivity. Or get more cheap labour.
Stuart Rose pointed this out in the referendum campaign. Probably foolishly.
Brexit has, of course, also inhibited the desire of companies to invest in the UK.
In fact not. Overall investment (aka Gross Fixed Capital Formation) is well above its level in 2016.
Driven by the super deduction on investment spending. As I said at the time by far the best part of the budget and something we need to do a lot more of if we want proper growth in this country.
And probably an awful lot more useful than claiming employers need to go cold turkey.
There’s a report on cricinfo with sub “Scoreline reads 2-0 to Australia - they are worthy of that - but the margins have been so tight” I think is spot on. It’s about to go 2-1, I’m very confident of it, because the key moment of the match for me was when Australias vaunted big 4 went so quickly in the second innings at least 2 played inexplicable shots - without that they would have added a 100 or so runs more runs
I’ve so got into this series I’m organise I’m life around it, and wake up looking forward to watching it!
This will be todays weather. Threat of some wet stuff in afternoon.
So let me get this straight we imposed draconian economic sanctions on ourselves to specifically rid the nation of young EU migrant workers. And it worked like a dream. And now we want to encourage young EU workers back to the UK without reinstating any of the benefits we as a nation and as citizens of Europe cherished and lost by voting to specifically get rid of young migrant workers from the EU.
It’s about discovering Stuart Rose spoke the (unacceptable) truth.
Low end jobs had their wages suppressed by low/zero skill immigration.
Now companies are facing a shortage of people prepared to work for minimum wage (or even less - see piece work). They may even be faced with investing in automation. See all the lunch places which are installing big screen self service tills in London etc…
You have completely missed or ignored my point. We specifically voted to withdraw from all the benefits of EU membership to expel young low paid Europeans, and now we want them back, but without associating their return with reinstatement of the benefits WE lost.
No, I haven’t.
I was just remarking on *why* this comment was being made by *this* politician.
The U.K. economy has/had an addiction to ultra cheap labour. This is directly connected to the very poor productivity figures we have seen over the years. And the continued attempts at suppressing wages in the NHS.
There are two approaches to resolve this - invest in productivity. Or get more cheap labour.
Stuart Rose pointed this out in the referendum campaign. Probably foolishly.
Brexit has, of course, also inhibited the desire of companies to invest in the UK.
In fact not. Overall investment (aka Gross Fixed Capital Formation) is well above its level in 2016.
Driven by the super deduction on investment spending. As I said at the time by far the best part of the budget and something we need to do a lot more of if we want proper growth in this country.
And probably an awful lot more useful than claiming employers need to go cold turkey.
I have work to do today and I don't want to divert yet another thread down this path but it is a very good example of what we do and what policies we put in place being far more important than Brexit for good or ill. We need a government that focuses on what we need now to improve our output, improve our productivity, improve our standard of living and reduce our carbon footprint. It is irrelevant whether we could or could not have done this before Brexit. We are where we are and we need to get on with it.
I very much hope that the Chancellor pays attention to this successful policy and builds on it in the next budget. Next up, encourage training and skills by similar deductions.
Labour's smear against Sunak looks even worse. I think the next election could be one of the nastiest ever in terms of negative ads and slogans
Labour's negative poster campaign was unfortunate and best left unpublished. But to suggest Johnson's scurrilous slur against Starmer, now taken on by Sunak it would seem, is a lesser of two evils is absurd.
As a committed Christian would you condone Sunak promoting the lies about Starmer and Savile even if it looks like winning him (and you) the next election?
Sunak is a Hindu, Starmer is an atheist. Even if I tried to say they should push Christian values and not be too negative about each other I doubt they would care.
Indeed the only Christian of the 3 main party leaders is Sir Ed Davey, who is Church of England.
Perhaps reflects the fact the Church of England is now more the Liberal Democrats at Prayer than the Tory Party at prayer with a few evangelical and ultra conservative high Anglo Catholic exceptions
But you don't push Christian values. The opposite. Look at the values of the people you shill for.
Sunak is pretty Christian even as a Hindu. Hunt is the most senior Anglican Tory now and also pretty Christian in values, certainly his personal life where he is in a lifelong, committed marriage with his wife.
Left Liberals also often ignore the Old Testament, just the help the poor bits of the New they like
If you actually were a Tory you'd know the entire bible is "God Breathed" - you can't be selective, but you can try to understand the context.
Your problem is that the bits you deprioritise are the bits with Jesus is. Which as a Christian is a bit of a problem.
You may really enjoy the tastier bits of the old testament. Good for you! But you then can't ignore the new testament as you do, making claims about Him which don't stand up to Bible Studies 101.
I would have zero problem with this if not for the fact that you are a massive hypocrite and religious bore. You preach and denounce practically everyone else despite the fact that you shill for crooks and liars and people who do the exact opposite of what Jesus - supposedly your personal lord and saviour - taught. So you rewrite His teachings to fit.
That plank in your eye is galactic sized, is it not?
IIRC Jesus preached "Man's greatest joy is to slaughter his enemies, to crush them and drive them before him, and to listen to the lamentations of the women."
Thought that was Ghengis Khan? I’m not ruling out that he occupies the place of a lord and saviour in your life.
I was thinking more of Otto in A Fish Called Wanda, who's always misquoting religious leaders and philosophers to justify his career as a professional assassin.
Labour's smear against Sunak looks even worse. I think the next election could be one of the nastiest ever in terms of negative ads and slogans
Labour's negative poster campaign was unfortunate and best left unpublished. But to suggest Johnson's scurrilous slur against Starmer, now taken on by Sunak it would seem, is a lesser of two evils is absurd.
As a committed Christian would you condone Sunak promoting the lies about Starmer and Savile even if it looks like winning him (and you) the next election?
Sunak is a Hindu, Starmer is an atheist. Even if I tried to say they should push Christian values and not be too negative about each other I doubt they would care.
Indeed the only Christian of the 3 main party leaders is Sir Ed Davey, who is Church of England.
Perhaps reflects the fact the Church of England is now more the Liberal Democrats at Prayer than the Tory Party at prayer with a few evangelical and ultra conservative high Anglo Catholic exceptions
But you don't push Christian values. The opposite. Look at the values of the people you shill for.
Sunak is pretty Christian even as a Hindu. Hunt is the most senior Anglican Tory now and also pretty Christian in values, certainly his personal life where he is in a lifelong, committed marriage with his wife.
Left Liberals also often ignore the Old Testament, just the help the poor bits of the New they like
Well aren't the bits Jesus actually said and did a bit more important?
If that were not so he'd not have been needed.
I’d like to talk about what Jesus did for us.
To be fair it was Easter weekend he gave up so four days not just the two -quite a sacrifice.
But he chose an Easter weekend without the Snooker final or a test match so I am not sure that counts.
An obvious and straightforward answer: Tories and Tory Chancellors are a risk with money, banks have WOKEN up to this fact so very sensibly not allowing them accounts or credit cards.
So let me get this straight we imposed draconian economic sanctions on ourselves to specifically rid the nation of young EU migrant workers. And it worked like a dream. And now we want to encourage young EU workers back to the UK without reinstating any of the benefits we as a nation and as citizens of Europe cherished and lost by voting to specifically get rid of young migrant workers from the EU.
It’s about discovering Stuart Rose spoke the (unacceptable) truth.
Low end jobs had their wages suppressed by low/zero skill immigration.
Now companies are facing a shortage of people prepared to work for minimum wage (or even less - see piece work). They may even be faced with investing in automation. See all the lunch places which are installing big screen self service tills in London etc…
You have completely missed or ignored my point. We specifically voted to withdraw from all the benefits of EU membership to expel young low paid Europeans, and now we want them back, but without associating their return with reinstatement of the benefits WE lost.
No, I haven’t.
I was just remarking on *why* this comment was being made by *this* politician.
The U.K. economy has/had an addiction to ultra cheap labour. This is directly connected to the very poor productivity figures we have seen over the years. And the continued attempts at suppressing wages in the NHS.
There are two approaches to resolve this - invest in productivity. Or get more cheap labour.
Stuart Rose pointed this out in the referendum campaign. Probably foolishly.
Brexit has, of course, also inhibited the desire of companies to invest in the UK.
In fact not. Overall investment (aka Gross Fixed Capital Formation) is well above its level in 2016.
Driven by the super deduction on investment spending. As I said at the time by far the best part of the budget and something we need to do a lot more of if we want proper growth in this country.
With investment now revised up to 6% above its pre-pandemic level, I expect that overall GDP is now well above its pre-pandemic level as well, but we'll have to wait for the ONS to tell us that.
They consider the British people to be a resource to be used up and thrown away, and if they get too uppity or expensive, they will just import more malleable workers from elsewhere.
There’s a report on cricinfo with sub “Scoreline reads 2-0 to Australia - they are worthy of that - but the margins have been so tight” I think is spot on. It’s about to go 2-1, I’m very confident of it, because the key moment of the match for me was when Australias vaunted big 4 went so quickly in the second innings at least 2 played inexplicable shots - without that they would have added a 100 or so runs more runs
I’ve so got into this series I’m organise I’m life around it, and wake up looking forward to watching it!
This will be todays weather. Threat of some wet stuff in afternoon.
I am nowhere near as confident. The Australian bowling line up and fielding are both formidable. There are several reasons this is the best team in the world and batting is only one of them.
The whole Savile thing is ghastly of course. Boris's wicked and lying attack on Starmer has begun a sequence that can have no good outcome.
In particular the Labour counter attack (the poster in the article) was just as egregiously lying rubbish.
The whole charade is sick.
In total the effect should be to encourage thoughtful people either to stay at home on election day or vote LD.
I am not going to speculate on the BBC presenter but I will comment on one aspect.
In my work we once had a case of some photos put on our system by an employee which, at first glance, could have fallen into the category of child pornography.
Our immediate reaction was to get specialist legal advice because even moving such a photo to another folder to get it away from other employees can amount to a criminal offence - and it is a personal one. So we called the specialist child abuse police who came round to deal with it. If you do something under their direction you are protected. In the end it turned out not to be anything bad, which was a relief.
But the key point is this: you should not try to investigate internally. You must get legal advice and you must involve the police. Otherwise you run a hell of a lot of risks.
If the BBC were informed that one of their staff was soliciting sexual photos from an underage child, why the hell didn't they call the police there and then?
Yes, something that could be CP appearing on a company server, is the sort of thing that keeps the Head of IT awake at night.
Doing anything other than pulling the network cable out of the back of the server, could expose *you* to a serious criminal offence, that even the accusation will ruin your life.
Calling in the specialist police and lawyers, and acting only on their written instructions, is the way to deal with it.
So let me get this straight we imposed draconian economic sanctions on ourselves to specifically rid the nation of young EU migrant workers. And it worked like a dream. And now we want to encourage young EU workers back to the UK without reinstating any of the benefits we as a nation and as citizens of Europe cherished and lost by voting to specifically get rid of young migrant workers from the EU.
It’s about discovering Stuart Rose spoke the (unacceptable) truth.
Low end jobs had their wages suppressed by low/zero skill immigration.
Now companies are facing a shortage of people prepared to work for minimum wage (or even less - see piece work). They may even be faced with investing in automation. See all the lunch places which are installing big screen self service tills in London etc…
You have completely missed or ignored my point. We specifically voted to withdraw from all the benefits of EU membership to expel young low paid Europeans, and now we want them back, but without associating their return with reinstatement of the benefits WE lost.
No, I haven’t.
I was just remarking on *why* this comment was being made by *this* politician.
The U.K. economy has/had an addiction to ultra cheap labour. This is directly connected to the very poor productivity figures we have seen over the years. And the continued attempts at suppressing wages in the NHS.
There are two approaches to resolve this - invest in productivity. Or get more cheap labour.
Stuart Rose pointed this out in the referendum campaign. Probably foolishly.
Brexit has, of course, also inhibited the desire of companies to invest in the UK.
In fact not. Overall investment (aka Gross Fixed Capital Formation) is well above its level in 2016.
Driven by the super deduction on investment spending. As I said at the time by far the best part of the budget and something we need to do a lot more of if we want proper growth in this country.
With investment now revised up to 6% above its pre-pandemic level, I expect that overall GDP is now well above its pre-pandemic level as well, but we'll have to wait for the ONS to tell us that.
A film I’ve never seen as it happens. I like pretty much all the constituent parts but the whole never appealed to me for some reason,
Labour's smear against Sunak looks even worse. I think the next election could be one of the nastiest ever in terms of negative ads and slogans
Labour's negative poster campaign was unfortunate and best left unpublished. But to suggest Johnson's scurrilous slur against Starmer, now taken on by Sunak it would seem, is a lesser of two evils is absurd.
As a committed Christian would you condone Sunak promoting the lies about Starmer and Savile even if it looks like winning him (and you) the next election?
Sunak is a Hindu, Starmer is an atheist. Even if I tried to say they should push Christian values and not be too negative about each other I doubt they would care.
Indeed the only Christian of the 3 main party leaders is Sir Ed Davey, who is Church of England.
Perhaps reflects the fact the Church of England is now more the Liberal Democrats at Prayer than the Tory Party at prayer with a few evangelical and ultra conservative high Anglo Catholic exceptions
But you don't push Christian values. The opposite. Look at the values of the people you shill for.
Sunak is pretty Christian even as a Hindu. Hunt is the most senior Anglican Tory now and also pretty Christian in values, certainly his personal life where he is in a lifelong, committed marriage with his wife.
Left Liberals also often ignore the Old Testament, just the help the poor bits of the New they like
If you actually were a Tory you'd know the entire bible is "God Breathed" - you can't be selective, but you can try to understand the context.
Your problem is that the bits you deprioritise are the bits with Jesus is. Which as a Christian is a bit of a problem.
You may really enjoy the tastier bits of the old testament. Good for you! But you then can't ignore the new testament as you do, making claims about Him which don't stand up to Bible Studies 101.
I would have zero problem with this if not for the fact that you are a massive hypocrite and religious bore. You preach and denounce practically everyone else despite the fact that you shill for crooks and liars and people who do the exact opposite of what Jesus - supposedly your personal lord and saviour - taught. So you rewrite His teachings to fit.
That plank in your eye is galactic sized, is it not?
IIRC Jesus preached "Man's greatest joy is to slaughter his enemies, to crush them and drive them before him, and to listen to the lamentations of the women."
Jesus: the dark years.
Um... I think it´s a Conan the Barbarian quote (or Possibly Genghiz Khan) rather than the Prince of Peace.
The whole Savile thing is ghastly of course. Boris's wicked and lying attack on Starmer has begun a sequence that can have no good outcome.
In particular the Labour counter attack (the poster in the article) was just as egregiously lying rubbish.
The whole charade is sick.
In total the effect should be to encourage thoughtful people either to stay at home on election day or vote LD.
I am not going to speculate on the BBC presenter but I will comment on one aspect.
In my work we once had a case of some photos put on our system by an employee which, at first glance, could have fallen into the category of child pornography.
Our immediate reaction was to get specialist legal advice because even moving such a photo to another folder to get it away from other employees can amount to a criminal offence - and it is a personal one. So we called the specialist child abuse police who came round to deal with it. If you do something under their direction you are protected. In the end it turned out not to be anything bad, which was a relief.
But the key point is this: you should not try to investigate internally. You must get legal advice and you must involve the police. Otherwise you run a hell of a lot of risks.
If the BBC were informed that one of their staff was soliciting sexual photos from an underage child, why the hell didn't they call the police there and then?
Yes, something that could be CP appearing on a company server, is the sort of thing that keeps the Head of IT awake at night.
Doing anything other than pulling the network cable out of the back of the server, could expose *you* to a serious criminal offence, that even the accusation will ruin your life.
Calling in the specialist police and lawyers, and acting only on their written instructions, is the way to deal with it.
Whilst I would agree it is of course possible that the person did not use the BBC's server or equipment for the communication. That would surely just be common sense but that is not always present in such cases.
Sorry TSE but this is a very biased piece. So far all we have is suggestions that the Tories might use the Savile line. At the same time you seem to excuse Labour's attack ads because they were just getting their retaliation in first! Come on this is laughable.
As for the 'nasty' Tories, what were they under Cameron? Who let us not forget appeared to insinuate from the Despatch box that Sadiq Khan was an Islamist and George (booed at the Olympics) Osborne talking about people sleeping off a life on benefits.
Sigh, does anybody even notice this nonsense other than PB obsessives? I seriously doubt it. But if you want to feel morally superior or simply wish to condemn there is no shortage of material. It just makes for slightly dull threads.
Indeed. And well said
It’s niche to the point of Zzzzz. But then we do all bang on about the “spin bowling conditions over the next hour at Trent Bridge” so we are as guilty as the mods
On the real subject of the day: Yes Starbucks coffee is hideous. The lattes are basically big cups of boiled milk with a faint trace of weak coffee powder
The whole Savile thing is ghastly of course. Boris's wicked and lying attack on Starmer has begun a sequence that can have no good outcome.
In particular the Labour counter attack (the poster in the article) was just as egregiously lying rubbish.
The whole charade is sick.
In total the effect should be to encourage thoughtful people either to stay at home on election day or vote LD.
I am not going to speculate on the BBC presenter but I will comment on one aspect.
In my work we once had a case of some photos put on our system by an employee which, at first glance, could have fallen into the category of child pornography.
Our immediate reaction was to get specialist legal advice because even moving such a photo to another folder to get it away from other employees can amount to a criminal offence - and it is a personal one. So we called the specialist child abuse police who came round to deal with it. If you do something under their direction you are protected. In the end it turned out not to be anything bad, which was a relief.
But the key point is this: you should not try to investigate internally. You must get legal advice and you must involve the police. Otherwise you run a hell of a lot of risks.
If the BBC were informed that one of their staff was soliciting sexual photos from an underage child, why the hell didn't they call the police there and then?
Yes, something that could be CP appearing on a company server, is the sort of thing that keeps the Head of IT awake at night.
Doing anything other than pulling the network cable out of the back of the server, could expose *you* to a serious criminal offence, that even the accusation will ruin your life.
Calling in the specialist police and lawyers, and acting only on their written instructions, is the way to deal with it.
Whilst I would agree it is of course possible that the person did not use the BBC's server or equipment for the communication. That would surely just be common sense but that is not always present in such cases.
I don’t know about the BBC, but everywhere I’ve worked in a role that involves monitoring or investigations, it’s been quite amazing to see just how much people use their work-provided equipment for things that aren’t work!
Sorry TSE but this is a very biased piece. So far all we have is suggestions that the Tories might use the Savile line. At the same time you seem to excuse Labour's attack ads because they were just getting their retaliation in first! Come on this is laughable.
As for the 'nasty' Tories, what were they under Cameron? Who let us not forget appeared to insinuate from the Despatch box that Sadiq Khan was an Islamist and George (booed at the Olympics) Osborne talking about people sleeping off a life on benefits.
Let's not forget Labour's insinuations about Cameron's child's disability and the demand he releases his medical records. Or Red Rag, for that matter.
It's bad, whoever does it. But some of it can get terrible.
Posting fro. Cloudy but warm Southwold, where two lifeboats have been searching the water, and the red and yellow flags have been pulled from the beach as the lifeguards are needed elsewhere...
The whole Savile thing is ghastly of course. Boris's wicked and lying attack on Starmer has begun a sequence that can have no good outcome.
In particular the Labour counter attack (the poster in the article) was just as egregiously lying rubbish.
The whole charade is sick.
In total the effect should be to encourage thoughtful people either to stay at home on election day or vote LD.
I am not going to speculate on the BBC presenter but I will comment on one aspect.
In my work we once had a case of some photos put on our system by an employee which, at first glance, could have fallen into the category of child pornography.
Our immediate reaction was to get specialist legal advice because even moving such a photo to another folder to get it away from other employees can amount to a criminal offence - and it is a personal one. So we called the specialist child abuse police who came round to deal with it. If you do something under their direction you are protected. In the end it turned out not to be anything bad, which was a relief.
But the key point is this: you should not try to investigate internally. You must get legal advice and you must involve the police. Otherwise you run a hell of a lot of risks.
If the BBC were informed that one of their staff was soliciting sexual photos from an underage child, why the hell didn't they call the police there and then?
Yes, something that could be CP appearing on a company server, is the sort of thing that keeps the Head of IT awake at night.
Doing anything other than pulling the network cable out of the back of the server, could expose *you* to a serious criminal offence, that even the accusation will ruin your life.
Calling in the specialist police and lawyers, and acting only on their written instructions, is the way to deal with it.
Whilst I would agree it is of course possible that the person did not use the BBC's server or equipment for the communication. That would surely just be common sense but that is not always present in such cases.
I don’t know about the BBC, but everywhere I’ve worked in a role that involves monitoring or investigations, it’s been quite amazing to see just how much people use their work-provided equipment for things that aren’t work!
Wife used to work at DSTL (Porton Down) and they had very restricted internet access. No booking holibobs at work for her. I think it’s a trade off. Allow full internet access and accept that a lot of non work stuff goes on, but have strenuous rules about dodgy stuff, and the balance is probably happy staff.
I see twitter appears to have outed the "BBC personality" after several failed attempts
Like they "appeared" to have outed the other people accused?
This whole thing seems to me to have an even stronger whiff of homophobia than the Schofield affair.
Would anyone really be surprised if any number of male BBC employees had exploited 17-year-old girls sexually?
The sex of the exploiter or the exploitee is surely immaterial.
Are you really so thick that you didn't understand the point of the question I asked?
The question - in essence - was whether the press would be treating this the same if a male TV presenter had been paying a 17-year-old woman for sexually explicit photos. And whether people would have found it equally newsworthy if it didn't involve homosexuality.
So let me get this straight we imposed draconian economic sanctions on ourselves to specifically rid the nation of young EU migrant workers. And it worked like a dream. And now we want to encourage young EU workers back to the UK without reinstating any of the benefits we as a nation and as citizens of Europe cherished and lost by voting to specifically get rid of young migrant workers from the EU.
It’s about discovering Stuart Rose spoke the (unacceptable) truth.
Low end jobs had their wages suppressed by low/zero skill immigration.
Now companies are facing a shortage of people prepared to work for minimum wage (or even less - see piece work). They may even be faced with investing in automation. See all the lunch places which are installing big screen self service tills in London etc…
You have completely missed or ignored my point. We specifically voted to withdraw from all the benefits of EU membership to expel young low paid Europeans, and now we want them back, but without associating their return with reinstatement of the benefits WE lost.
No, I haven’t.
I was just remarking on *why* this comment was being made by *this* politician.
The U.K. economy has/had an addiction to ultra cheap labour. This is directly connected to the very poor productivity figures we have seen over the years. And the continued attempts at suppressing wages in the NHS.
There are two approaches to resolve this - invest in productivity. Or get more cheap labour.
Stuart Rose pointed this out in the referendum campaign. Probably foolishly.
Brexit has, of course, also inhibited the desire of companies to invest in the UK.
In fact not. Overall investment (aka Gross Fixed Capital Formation) is well above its level in 2016.
Driven by the super deduction on investment spending. As I said at the time by far the best part of the budget and something we need to do a lot more of if we want proper growth in this country.
It won't be proper growth at all - it will either reward investment decisions that would have been taken anyway (most of it) or it will incentivise (a few) decisions that would make no sense but for the tax deduction. So it will result in a surplus of useless investment and a big hit to the public finances. Oh, and like all subsidies it will be very difficult to revoke once put in place, and will result in a big rush for clever accountants to fiddle the rules to reclassify operating expenditure as capital expenditure.
Rather than fiddling with the rules and trying to introduce Brownite too-clever-by-half incentives, we should have low and stable headline rates of corporate and payroll taxes enforced with simple and predictable rules. That's the way to deliver high-quality growth in the long run, not a quick sugar rush from a fiddly tax break.
I see twitter appears to have outed the "BBC personality" after several failed attempts
Like they "appeared" to have outed the other people accused?
This whole thing seems to me to have an even stronger whiff of homophobia than the Schofield affair.
Would anyone really be surprised if any number of male BBC employees had exploited 17-year-old girls sexually?
The sex of the exploiter or the exploitee is surely immaterial.
Are you really so thick that you didn't understand the point of the question I asked?
The question - in essence - was whether the press would be treating this the same if a male TV presenter had been paying a 17-year-old woman for sexually explicit photos. And whether people would have found it equally newsworthy if it didn't involve homosexuality.
If Schofield had been caught grooming a young girl, rather than a young boy, at work, then the story definitely wouldn’t about how ‘brave’ he was, and wonderful that he was accepting himself, with the underage groomer bit conveniently swept under the carpet for a couple of years.
If you are short of labour, the price of labour will go up, so yes, but that is not necessarily a good thing.
There's not much benefit of wages going up increases prices in line, as we're seeing. The question the "cheap labour addict" theory proponents never seemed to ask themselves is whether it was possible to transition to a higher investment/more productivity model without Brexit, or whether Brexit would help in that endeavour anyway.
Indeed. Which is part of the reason I voted against Brexit.
The addiction to cheap labour is evident - we have whole industries that are struggling for lack of people grateful and keen to work at minimum wage. We have the productivity data over decades.
We have the evidence of our eyes - my next door neighbour but one are doing a full rip out of the house. Instead of craning a 900kg piece of steel, the cash in hand builders assembled every bloke they could find to walk it through the building… dangerous, stupid and completely typical.
A little unfair but there is something in it. I blame Simon Cowell - why graft when you can be famous?
Modern fame is a bizarre winner-takes-all system that disproportionately rewards those at the very top. Billions of dollars for Taylor Swift, almost nothing for an industrious, averagely successful guitar band. The lessons of this strange industry apply to almost nobody.
For most people, celebrity exhortations to dream big, sacrifice your life to your passion and keep going in the face of failure are not useful. As the comedian Bo Burnham put it, “Taylor Swift telling you to follow your dreams is like a lottery winner telling you, ‘Liquidise your assets; buy Powerball tickets — it works!’ ”
Toiling fanatically towards a distant goal sounds inspiring but it creates a single point of failure. If you spend every waking hour playing golf but never make it as a professional golfer, what exactly was the point of your life?
I actually disagree with this. If you are passionate about the arts and have a talent for it then pursue it. You don't need to sell out arenas to make a living in the music business. In fact, if you are in it with dreams of fame then you're in it for the wrong reasons. I know lots of people working in the arts and I also know lots of people in finance. I'd say that people who have a passion for either field and are working in it are living happy, fulfilled lives. People who are in finance solely for material comfort seem a lot less happy. Also, if you really do feel you have to work in a different field for material reasons (raising a family can be expensive) then you can easily find opportunities to make the arts a side-hustle or a part-time thing, with loads of open mic or other gigging opportunities. People who are locked into expensive status-driven lifestyles, stuck doing a job they hate, are living a sad, stultified existence. You only have one life. Grab it with both hands.
Yes you are right, however Cowell also sells snake oil to the talentless.
For every Harry Styles there are 999,999 burger flippers.
The arts have always been this way. Behind Hans Holbein (painter to the *major* Kings of Europe) there were a zillion daubers who got nowhere.
A little unfair but there is something in it. I blame Simon Cowell - why graft when you can be famous?
Modern fame is a bizarre winner-takes-all system that disproportionately rewards those at the very top. Billions of dollars for Taylor Swift, almost nothing for an industrious, averagely successful guitar band. The lessons of this strange industry apply to almost nobody.
For most people, celebrity exhortations to dream big, sacrifice your life to your passion and keep going in the face of failure are not useful. As the comedian Bo Burnham put it, “Taylor Swift telling you to follow your dreams is like a lottery winner telling you, ‘Liquidise your assets; buy Powerball tickets — it works!’ ”
Toiling fanatically towards a distant goal sounds inspiring but it creates a single point of failure. If you spend every waking hour playing golf but never make it as a professional golfer, what exactly was the point of your life?
I actually disagree with this. If you are passionate about the arts and have a talent for it then pursue it. You don't need to sell out arenas to make a living in the music business. In fact, if you are in it with dreams of fame then you're in it for the wrong reasons. I know lots of people working in the arts and I also know lots of people in finance. I'd say that people who have a passion for either field and are working in it are living happy, fulfilled lives. People who are in finance solely for material comfort seem a lot less happy. Also, if you really do feel you have to work in a different field for material reasons (raising a family can be expensive) then you can easily find opportunities to make the arts a side-hustle or a part-time thing, with loads of open mic or other gigging opportunities. People who are locked into expensive status-driven lifestyles, stuck doing a job they hate, are living a sad, stultified existence. You only have one life. Grab it with both hands.
Yes you are right, however Cowell also sells snake oil to the talentless.
For every Harry Styles there are 999,999 burger flippers.
The arts have always been this way. Behind Hans Holbein (painter to the *major* Kings of Europe) there were a zillion daubers who got nowhere.
True - Hans Holbein The Even Younger muscled out of the industry by his old man.
Posting fro. Cloudy but warm Southwold, where two lifeboats have been searching the water, and the red and yellow flags have been pulled from the beach as the lifeguards are needed elsewhere...
Apparently it was kids reporting their parents missing. Their parents turned up elsewhere out of the water. A bit of a role reversal, but the best kind of RNLI callout
The whole Savile thing is ghastly of course. Boris's wicked and lying attack on Starmer has begun a sequence that can have no good outcome.
In particular the Labour counter attack (the poster in the article) was just as egregiously lying rubbish.
The whole charade is sick.
In total the effect should be to encourage thoughtful people either to stay at home on election day or vote LD.
I am not going to speculate on the BBC presenter but I will comment on one aspect.
In my work we once had a case of some photos put on our system by an employee which, at first glance, could have fallen into the category of child pornography.
Our immediate reaction was to get specialist legal advice because even moving such a photo to another folder to get it away from other employees can amount to a criminal offence - and it is a personal one. So we called the specialist child abuse police who came round to deal with it. If you do something under their direction you are protected. In the end it turned out not to be anything bad, which was a relief.
But the key point is this: you should not try to investigate internally. You must get legal advice and you must involve the police. Otherwise you run a hell of a lot of risks.
If the BBC were informed that one of their staff was soliciting sexual photos from an underage child, why the hell didn't they call the police there and then?
Yes, something that could be CP appearing on a company server, is the sort of thing that keeps the Head of IT awake at night.
Doing anything other than pulling the network cable out of the back of the server, could expose *you* to a serious criminal offence, that even the accusation will ruin your life.
Calling in the specialist police and lawyers, and acting only on their written instructions, is the way to deal with it.
Whilst I would agree it is of course possible that the person did not use the BBC's server or equipment for the communication. That would surely just be common sense but that is not always present in such cases.
I don’t know about the BBC, but everywhere I’ve worked in a role that involves monitoring or investigations, it’s been quite amazing to see just how much people use their work-provided equipment for things that aren’t work!
Wife used to work at DSTL (Porton Down) and they had very restricted internet access. No booking holibobs at work for her. I think it’s a trade off. Allow full internet access and accept that a lot of non work stuff goes on, but have strenuous rules about dodgy stuff, and the balance is probably happy staff.
Ha yes, the military take these things rather seriously!
We didn’t particularly care about people booking their holiday, but we did care about people browsing competitors’ job openings, sending documents to competitors, or running second jobs on the side - including one young PA lady who had what’s best described as a personal service business to keep her busy at the weekend!
So let me get this straight we imposed draconian economic sanctions on ourselves to specifically rid the nation of young EU migrant workers. And it worked like a dream. And now we want to encourage young EU workers back to the UK without reinstating any of the benefits we as a nation and as citizens of Europe cherished and lost by voting to specifically get rid of young migrant workers from the EU.
It’s about discovering Stuart Rose spoke the (unacceptable) truth.
Low end jobs had their wages suppressed by low/zero skill immigration.
Now companies are facing a shortage of people prepared to work for minimum wage (or even less - see piece work). They may even be faced with investing in automation. See all the lunch places which are installing big screen self service tills in London etc…
You have completely missed or ignored my point. We specifically voted to withdraw from all the benefits of EU membership to expel young low paid Europeans, and now we want them back, but without associating their return with reinstatement of the benefits WE lost.
No, I haven’t.
I was just remarking on *why* this comment was being made by *this* politician.
The U.K. economy has/had an addiction to ultra cheap labour. This is directly connected to the very poor productivity figures we have seen over the years. And the continued attempts at suppressing wages in the NHS.
There are two approaches to resolve this - invest in productivity. Or get more cheap labour.
Stuart Rose pointed this out in the referendum campaign. Probably foolishly.
Brexit has, of course, also inhibited the desire of companies to invest in the UK.
In fact not. Overall investment (aka Gross Fixed Capital Formation) is well above its level in 2016.
Driven by the super deduction on investment spending. As I said at the time by far the best part of the budget and something we need to do a lot more of if we want proper growth in this country.
With investment now revised up to 6% above its pre-pandemic level, I expect that overall GDP is now well above its pre-p
I see twitter appears to have outed the "BBC personality" after several failed attempts
Like they "appeared" to have outed the other people accused?
This whole thing seems to me to have an even stronger whiff of homophobia than the Schofield affair.
Would anyone really be surprised if any number of male BBC employees had exploited 17-year-old girls sexually?
The sex of the exploiter or the exploitee is surely immaterial.
Are you really so thick that you didn't understand the point of the question I asked?
The question - in essence - was whether the press would be treating this the same if a male TV presenter had been paying a 17-year-old woman for sexually explicit photos. And whether people would have found it equally newsworthy if it didn't involve homosexuality.
Well, it’s a dishonest question, designed to elicit sympathy for an exploiter, because he’s gay.
A producer who acted like this towards a 17 year old girl would certainly be in hot water, if caught.
So let me get this straight we imposed draconian economic sanctions on ourselves to specifically rid the nation of young EU migrant workers. And it worked like a dream. And now we want to encourage young EU workers back to the UK without reinstating any of the benefits we as a nation and as citizens of Europe cherished and lost by voting to specifically get rid of young migrant workers from the EU.
It’s about discovering Stuart Rose spoke the (unacceptable) truth.
Low end jobs had their wages suppressed by low/zero skill immigration.
Now companies are facing a shortage of people prepared to work for minimum wage (or even less - see piece work). They may even be faced with investing in automation. See all the lunch places which are installing big screen self service tills in London etc…
You have completely missed or ignored my point. We specifically voted to withdraw from all the benefits of EU membership to expel young low paid Europeans, and now we want them back, but without associating their return with reinstatement of the benefits WE lost.
No, I haven’t.
I was just remarking on *why* this comment was being made by *this* politician.
The U.K. economy has/had an addiction to ultra cheap labour. This is directly connected to the very poor productivity figures we have seen over the years. And the continued attempts at suppressing wages in the NHS.
There are two approaches to resolve this - invest in productivity. Or get more cheap labour.
Stuart Rose pointed this out in the referendum campaign. Probably foolishly.
Brexit has, of course, also inhibited the desire of companies to invest in the UK.
In fact not. Overall investment (aka Gross Fixed Capital Formation) is well above its level in 2016.
Driven by the super deduction on investment spending. As I said at the time by far the best part of the budget and something we need to do a lot more of if we want proper growth in this country.
With investment now revised up to 6% above its pre-pandemic level, I expect that overall GDP is now well above its pre-p
I see twitter appears to have outed the "BBC personality" after several failed attempts
Like they "appeared" to have outed the other people accused?
This whole thing seems to me to have an even stronger whiff of homophobia than the Schofield affair.
Would anyone really be surprised if any number of male BBC employees had exploited 17-year-old girls sexually?
The sex of the exploiter or the exploitee is surely immaterial.
Are you really so thick that you didn't understand the point of the question I asked?
The question - in essence - was whether the press would be treating this the same if a male TV presenter had been paying a 17-year-old woman for sexually explicit photos. And whether people would have found it equally newsworthy if it didn't involve homosexuality.
Well, it’s a dishonest question, designed to elicit sympathy for an exploiter, because he’s gay.
A producer who acted like this towards a 17 year old girl would certainly be in hot water, if caught.
If the allegations are vaguely like those claimed (see the news reports for details), then what happened wasn’t a relationship between an adult and a 17 year old. It was a grotesque taking advantage of a vulnerable person.
Comments
I find sports presenters curious. Some former competitors transition to commentary and punditry (like Gary) or Sue Barker and are brilliant at it. I have no idea how the completely anonymous woman who replaced her at Wimbledon got the gig.
Then there are people like Andrew Cotter, or Lee Mckenzie. Not former sports stars, but get continuous gigs at sporting events of all flavours. But they are brilliant at it.
If you’re looking at it from a Christian viewpoint, there is much in the old Testament, which ought to be ignored.
Your problem is that the bits you deprioritise are the bits with Jesus is. Which as a Christian is a bit of a problem.
You may really enjoy the tastier bits of the old testament. Good for you! But you then can't ignore the new testament as you do, making claims about Him which don't stand up to Bible Studies 101.
I would have zero problem with this if not for the fact that you are a massive hypocrite and religious bore. You preach and denounce practically everyone else despite the fact that you shill for crooks and liars and people who do the exact opposite of what Jesus - supposedly your personal lord and saviour - taught. So you rewrite His teachings to fit.
That plank in your eye is galactic sized, is it not?
In the other world Josephine Bloggs sells some copies, the odd review if lucky and has to keep working as a Nursery teacher hoping that when she has time to write her second book it takes off.
We have a Bible which is written and edited by people. It reflects their own views and prejudices as much as it reflects God's. It may be God Breathed, but it's breathed through people, and some of those people just happened to ignore all that Jesus actually did to empower the poor and the sick and women, and instead tells them to sit down and shut up cos that's what God really wants.
Men then select which testaments go into the bible and discard anything which disagrees. So people selecting Genesis, Leviticus and Revelation and various letters from Paul denouncing women and saying there's your Bible, that's fine. But it's hard to claim to be a Christian when in your faith there is no room for Christ.
I was just watching the Formula 3 race at Silverstone, on the undercard for today’s Grand Prix. The F3 drivers have an average age of about 19, and they and their parents have sacrificed an awful lot for the chance that they make it to Formula 1, something which the vast majority of that F3 grid won’t achieve. Yet every year, there’s 30 of them lining up on that grid, all hoping and dreaming that they will be the next Lewis Hamilton.
With the exception of football, most sports have only a few dozen professionals, people who are actually making good money from competition, although there will be many more part-timers and keen amateurs, and people employed around the sport.
The arts are the same, with dozens of people making good money, many more thousands more doing it because they enjoy it, or finding work in the wider industry.
I'm not a coffee drinker but it makes sense - lots of people also like McDonald's, and not solely because its cheap
And hence, the Inland Revenue can call off the dogs.
Nothing for renters nothing for workers nothing for the planet nothing different compared to Sunak
Thinks £3bn from Non Dom loophole closure "is a huge sum of money"
Its not
The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt...
Back in the day entertainers put the miles in and cut their teeth busking, playing in pubs, working men's clubs and on cruise ships. The talented made a living and if they were very lucky met an impresario who propelled them to stardom.
Cowell offers a lazy dream of fortune and fame to lazy dreamers.
If that were not so he'd not have been needed.
If the Tories go down this route they will make even bigger fools of themselves than they are already and show themselves to be utterly ignorant of how the criminal justice system works.
I have banged on endlessly about the child abuse investigations and reports and our failures to implement their recommendations or indeed to take the safeguarding of children and the vulnerable seriously.
Other than Sarah Champion in the Commons on the day the government responded to the final IICSA report, has any Labour Minister said anything about the IICSA recommendations? Has Starmer committed to implementing them? Because if Labour haven't they are in no position to criticise the Tories for doing nothing in this.
Child abuse and safeguarding are simply not taken seriously in this country. It is something just used to make political points. It is a monstrously immoral approach.
I don't have a problem with this, and don't mind subsidising his dreams. What I don't want is for him to look back in his thirties wondering if he could have made it. Life is full of second and third chances though perhaps not twentieth chances.
So here's an alternative. Why not try to Govern better. Who knows - it might help.
What Eustice and the people he's shilling for are complaining of is that they can't get people do minimum wage work. And, I'd have to say that my heart bleeds purple piss for them.
I may have told this story before but when I was a solicitor I had a case which I considered a good one. The QC did not agree so we had a meeting and I explained to him why I thought that was the case. He changed his position. When it came to the appeal I came through and met him. He was a nervous wreak, he could not sit still and was twisting himself around the furniture. This wasn't an important case (except to my client), the man was soon to be appointed a judge but he was wound up like I had never seen.
I feared a disaster and he started with some hesitation but then the adrenalin kicked in and he was just brilliant, sharp, engaging turns of phrase, clever and swift responses. We won but I was left to reflect that (a) I would never, ever be that good and (b) I was not sure that I could live with the consequences if I could.
I am much more like the surgeon after his heart attacks and will have no problem turning my back from the law when the time comes. Sometimes, occasionally, I dream of being as good as that QC but I know the price would have been unacceptable. Dreams are all very well but contentment has a lot to be said for it too.
In particular the Labour counter attack (the poster in the article) was just as egregiously lying rubbish.
The whole charade is sick.
In total the effect should be to encourage thoughtful people either to stay at home on election day or vote LD.
Makes sense economically - the consumers get better actors, the producers get lower costs. But I'm not sure it's better for us as a society. The effort + talent to reward graph is too hard to navigate.
If you believe in the free market as a good thing (and mostly I think I do) the existence of situations where individuals acting rationally leads to a bad collective outcome is a tricky challenge.
Yes the entertainment industry was badly affected by the pandemic, although seems to be removing now. So many industries are very cyclical. I always thought about training as an airline pilot, but for every friend who has a comfortable job in the industry with BA or Emirates, there’s many more who have piled on training debt or suffered redundancy.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/bulletins/businessinvestment/januarytomarch2023revisedresults
The ONS has revised it upwards yet again.
Fortunately, most do these things because they enjoy them.
Those working in the “second division” entertainment, really need all the support they can get.
Huge thanks to all those who have helped us collect and analyze (and when needed correct) all this data.
https://twitter.com/Rebel44CZ/status/1677931243705364481
This whole thing seems to me to have an even stronger whiff of homophobia than the Schofield affair.
Would anyone really be surprised if any number of male BBC employees had exploited 17-year-old girls sexually?
In my work we once had a case of some photos put on our system by an employee which, at first glance, could have fallen into the category of child pornography.
Our immediate reaction was to get specialist legal advice because even moving such a photo to another folder to get it away from other employees can amount to a criminal offence - and it is a personal one. So we called the specialist child abuse police who came round to deal with it. If you do something under their direction you are protected. In the end it turned out not to be anything bad, which was a relief.
But the key point is this: you should not try to investigate internally. You must get legal advice and you must involve the police. Otherwise you run a hell of a lot of risks.
If the BBC were informed that one of their staff was soliciting sexual photos from an underage child, why the hell didn't they call the police there and then?
Just because it's now above that level doesn't invalidate my point about Brexit's inhibitory effect.
I’m not ruling out that he occupies the place of a lord and saviour in your life.
There’s a report on cricinfo with sub “Scoreline reads 2-0 to Australia - they are worthy of that - but the margins have been so tight” I think is spot on. It’s about to go 2-1, I’m very confident of it, because the key moment of the match for me was when Australias vaunted big 4 went so quickly in the second innings at least 2 played inexplicable shots - without that they would have added a 100 or so runs more runs
I’ve so got into this series I’m organise I’m life around it, and wake up looking forward to watching it!
This will be todays weather. Threat of some wet stuff in afternoon.
https://www.yr.no/nb/værvarsel/daglig-tabell/2-6695619/Storbritannia/England/Leeds/Headingley
Viking’s predict Yorkshire weather so much better than the English
I very much hope that the Chancellor pays attention to this successful policy and builds on it in the next budget. Next up, encourage training and skills by similar deductions.
With investment now revised up to 6% above its pre-pandemic level, I expect that overall GDP is now well above its pre-pandemic level as well, but we'll have to wait for the ONS to tell us that.
Doing anything other than pulling the network cable out of the back of the server, could expose *you* to a serious criminal offence, that even the accusation will ruin your life.
Calling in the specialist police and lawyers, and acting only on their written instructions, is the way to deal with it.
His manifesto is here: https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/sermon-on-mount_bible/
As for the 'nasty' Tories, what were they under Cameron? Who let us not forget appeared to insinuate from the Despatch box that Sadiq Khan was an Islamist and George (booed at the Olympics) Osborne talking about people sleeping off a life on benefits.
It’s niche to the point of Zzzzz. But then we do all bang on about the “spin bowling conditions over the next hour at Trent Bridge” so we are as guilty as the mods
On the real subject of the day: Yes Starbucks coffee is hideous. The lattes are basically big cups of boiled milk with a faint trace of weak coffee powder
It's bad, whoever does it. But some of it can get terrible.
I think it’s a trade off. Allow full internet access and accept that a lot of non work stuff goes on, but have strenuous rules about dodgy stuff, and the balance is probably happy staff.
The question - in essence - was whether the press would be treating this the same if a male TV presenter had been paying a 17-year-old woman for sexually explicit photos. And whether people would have found it equally newsworthy if it didn't involve homosexuality.
Rather than fiddling with the rules and trying to introduce Brownite too-clever-by-half incentives, we should have low and stable headline rates of corporate and payroll taxes enforced with simple and predictable rules. That's the way to deliver high-quality growth in the long run, not a quick sugar rush from a fiddly tax break.
"Sunak is pretty Christian even as a Hindu."
I like this on so many levels.
The addiction to cheap labour is evident - we have whole industries that are struggling for lack of people grateful and keen to work at minimum wage. We have the productivity data over decades.
We have the evidence of our eyes - my next door neighbour but one are doing a full rip out of the house. Instead of craning a 900kg piece of steel, the cash in hand builders assembled every bloke they could find to walk it through the building… dangerous, stupid and completely typical.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jul/09/rupert-murdoch-keir-starmer-labour-party-power-no-10?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
We didn’t particularly care about people booking their holiday, but we did care about people browsing competitors’ job openings, sending documents to competitors, or running second jobs on the side - including one young PA lady who had what’s best described as a personal service business to keep her busy at the weekend!
With investment now revised up to 6% above its pre-pandemic level, I expect that overall GDP is now well above its pre-p Well, it’s a dishonest question, designed to elicit sympathy for an exploiter, because he’s gay.
A producer who acted like this towards a 17 year old girl would certainly be in hot water, if caught.
With investment now revised up to 6% above its pre-pandemic level, I expect that overall GDP is now well above its pre-p Well, it’s a dishonest question, designed to elicit sympathy for an exploiter, because he’s gay.
A producer who acted like this towards a 17 year old girl would certainly be in hot water, if caught.
If the allegations are vaguely like those claimed (see the news reports for details), then what happened wasn’t a relationship between an adult and a 17 year old. It was a grotesque taking advantage of a vulnerable person.