Is anyone else getting 'deja vu all over again' with this thread?
What I would suggest it shows as much as anything is despite any polling numbers Nothing Has Changed.
"despite any polling numbers" = "apart from that, Mrs Lincoln..."
Here's what Has Changed: the referendum was fought on the NHS and immigration. Here's a picture, and if I erased the title, I bet people would have a no better than random chance of guessing which one it was about
The NHS got the extra money.
And another 300k workers during the last four years.
That it seems to swallow money and workers as if its the national Sarlacc pit is another matter.
"Also the extra hassle for Brits when traveling in Europe is not helping" says OGH.
I've made three trips to Europe in past 18 months and haven't found any hassle. Mobile phone works as in UK at no extra cost; no additional queues at borders etc. The impression I got last week was that the Spanish were tripping over themselves to welcome Brits.
What is driving these polls is anti Conservative feeling; the economic situation and blame everything on Brexit, just as pre-Brexit everything was blamed on EU.
Mobile phones at no extra cost? Are you sure? Perhaps you have a legacy contract but AFAIA operators (well, Three) started charging for using mobile data in the EU a while ago.
O2, Vodafone and EE all have roaming contracts. Three are the odd man out tbh.
"Also the extra hassle for Brits when traveling in Europe is not helping" says OGH.
I've made three trips to Europe in past 18 months and haven't found any hassle. Mobile phone works as in UK at no extra cost; no additional queues at borders etc. The impression I got last week was that the Spanish were tripping over themselves to welcome Brits.
What is driving these polls is anti Conservative feeling; the economic situation and blame everything on Brexit, just as pre-Brexit everything was blamed on EU.
Mobile phones at no extra cost? Are you sure? Perhaps you have a legacy contract but AFAIA operators (well, Three) started charging for using mobile data in the EU a while ago.
O2, Vodafone and EE all have roaming contracts. Three are the odd man out tbh.
Blimmin' typical.
costs an extra £10 for the month on EE, but that covers Can/US as well as EU
£5/day for EU with Three.
Switch to O2 if it's important to you. Vote with your wallet! It's the single best way to send a message to companies that don't provide a good enough service.
It's not important enough to me. It is an extra cost, however, which was my point.
It's only an extra cost if you want it to be one or you're oddly loyal to a phone network company. 🤷♂️
Show me via screenshot on EE where there is no roaming charge. And I don't mean in the "free" glass of champagne in First Class sense.
In my experience you have to speak to retentions to get the Roam Abroad pass added for free/part of an inclusive extra.
Edit : That’s from my MyEE app.
"speak to retentions". So you either have to be on EE to start with or have a pre-July 21 contract?
No.
You can sign up to it now as a new customer.
Just get a plan with an inclusive extra.
I have something like 9 contracts with EE, I get huge discounts but I have to speak to retentions to get those discounts added back on at the end of the contract.
So we have an admin with 8 burner phones, and a "journalist" for a patently fictitious publication who travels under a false ID in Ukraine, and then down to Falmouth to ask faux naif questions about RFAs and back to Exeter to "see the cathedral spire."
nothing fishy here at all.
I have a phone, watch, and iPad contract for myself.
I have two children under eighteen both of whom have phone and iPad contracts in my name.
I have a BT broadband contract via EE.
I also have a contract for a friend who cannot get a contract.
Also I have a contract with o2 as I like to be dual sim.
Another pretty big drop in CPI, I think the end of year rate is probably going to be ~4.5%, if oil prices fall then maybe 4%.
Core CPI looks tougher to shift with wage data endlessly rising and 2.5m people long term sick. If the government wants to fix the labour market then it needs to get serious about sickness benefits reform. Matthew Paris had it bang on a couple of weeks ago, too many people are realising that it's easy to get signed off sick for stress and opt out of working. For people aged 50-64 who have paid off mortgages it's a realistic option to live on sickness benefits plus all the other assistance you get for it like council tax reductions etc...
Once again the safety net has become a way of life for some people. This time it's the comfortably off middle classes opting out of work by saying they're too stressed. It's something the Labour will need to address on day one because it now seems that young people are not only being asked to support pensions for the old, childcare for their kids, endless student loan repayments, old age care in the NHS but now also for the lazy middle classes who are deciding not to work because they're "stressed".
Got a guy who's got signed off sick from work who worked for me up to last month.
He was basically a lazy fucker who was shy of a hard day's work unless it was easy and got sunshine blown up his arse.
We're a professional services firm not a holiday club.
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
Leavers still don't understand that they had to deliver that "moon on a stick" and have completely failed to do so. The resilient parts of the country are Remania, those in decline are Leaverstan. Nothing has changed.
They know that they were sold a pup, and will be out for electoral revenge. When Starmer fails to deliver too, fingers will point even more to Brexit being the problem.
Parties cannot ignore the polling forever. The laws of political gravity apply.
Thats also true.
The Leavers as yet have still to deliver upside on the vote. The conservatives who are the main drivers of this have been a shitshow, They spent ages fighting among themselves on the In\out divisions in their party and then had the bad luck to have two black swans land in their pond - Covid and Putin. You could argue that the crises should have made them put their arse in gear but instead we have rabbits in headlights.
As for electoral revenge when we have PM Tice youll know it has arrived.
Covid and Ukraine are manna from heaven for Brexit because they mask the damage.
The poll also suggested that there would be another pro-independence majority after the next Holyrood election, with the SNP winning 57 seats and the Greens ten. Labour would return 38 MSPs to comfortably overtake the Conservatives whose representation at Holyrood would almost halve, to 16 MSPs. The Liberal Democrats would win eight seats under this scenario.
YouGov interviewed 1,086 people aged 16 and older in Scotland between August 3 and 8.
Combined Unionist parties on 62 MSPs however ahead of the SNP on 57 MSPs on that projection and just 5 behind the combined SNP and Greens total. Sarwar now has a net positive rating with Scots unlike Yousaf so at least a chance he will be next FM
Ah, HYUFD arithmetic where a minority of Unionist msps beats a majority of pro Indy msps. Who do you think votes in an FM? Rumours of the death of the SNP greatly exaggerated in any case.
Unquestionably. Catalonia shows that the separatist movement may sometimes take a backward step, but there is a large, unshakeable bloc of the electorate that will never abandon it. The SNP are never not going to be a major force in Scotland. At least this side of independence. Anyone writing them off is a fool.
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
Leavers still don't understand that they had to deliver that "moon on a stick" and have completely failed to do so. The resilient parts of the country are Remania, those in decline are Leaverstan. Nothing has changed.
They know that they were sold a pup, and will be out for electoral revenge. When Starmer fails to deliver too, fingers will point even more to Brexit being the problem.
Parties cannot ignore the polling forever. The laws of political gravity apply.
Thats also true.
The Leavers as yet have still to deliver upside on the vote. The conservatives who are the main drivers of this have been a shitshow, They spent ages fighting among themselves on the In\out divisions in their party and then had the bad luck to have two black swans land in their pond - Covid and Putin. You could argue that the crises should have made them put their arse in gear but instead we have rabbits in headlights.
As for electoral revenge when we have PM Tice youll know it has arrived.
The Conservatives have been so stupid/useless that they haven't even tried to take credit for full employment.
Partially because some think that because there was high unemployment under Thatcher then high unemployment must be a good thing.
Partially because some are fully committed to rentierism and think that the only thing that should be allowed to increase are house prices.
Partially because some are so thick/unaware that they don't realise there's full employment.
They do talk about the employment rate quite a lot, don't they?
But the problem with claiming full employment specifically is that it invites questions about low productivity, poor growth and how to fill the huge numbers of job vacancies in essential services that there are.
Just think of the the TV shows from the early 80s that could not be made now.
Perhaps one could be made now with the catchline "dont gis us a job" where a bricklayer is in a pub and continually refuses offers of employment.
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Poeple voted our for sovereignty and because they couldnt see any advantage from being in. Remain had a case they could have made stressing the positives but they decided to go negative and it failed.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
We still have that problem none of the political parties want to address it. Labour may or may not reclaim big chunks of the Red Wall, but the mould has been broken and those constituencies will never be nailed on again. For me thats a good thing as politicians might now have to listen to their constituents,
Likewise the Conservatives need to listen to the young people of southern England and remember they're supposed to be the party of aspiration.
Of course and at present the Cons have zero ideas on putting this right.
Start with affordable housing.
The problem is that many Conservatives do not think anything needs to be put right.
The rentier state is now viewed as desirable by too many of them.
Likewise to many Conservatives 'trade' isn't about producing useful goods and services but being a well-connected middleman giving and receiving vast sums of government money for nobody's knows what.
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Poeple voted our for sovereignty and because they couldnt see any advantage from being in. Remain had a case they could have made stressing the positives but they decided to go negative and it failed.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
We still have that problem none of the political parties want to address it. Labour may or may not reclaim big chunks of the Red Wall, but the mould has been broken and those constituencies will never be nailed on again. For me thats a good thing as politicians might now have to listen to their constituents,
Likewise the Conservatives need to listen to the young people of southern England and remember they're supposed to be the party of aspiration.
Of course and at present the Cons have zero ideas on putting this right.
Start with affordable housing.
The problem is that many Conservatives do not think anything needs to be put right.
The rentier state is now viewed as desirable by too many of them.
Likewise to many Conservatives 'trade' isn't about producing useful goods and services but being a well-connected middleman giving and receiving vast sums of government money for nobody's knows what.
Their core vote no longer works, as they are past retirement age.
Another pretty big drop in CPI, I think the end of year rate is probably going to be ~4.5%, if oil prices fall then maybe 4%.
Core CPI looks tougher to shift with wage data endlessly rising and 2.5m people long term sick. If the government wants to fix the labour market then it needs to get serious about sickness benefits reform. Matthew Paris had it bang on a couple of weeks ago, too many people are realising that it's easy to get signed off sick for stress and opt out of working. For people aged 50-64 who have paid off mortgages it's a realistic option to live on sickness benefits plus all the other assistance you get for it like council tax reductions etc...
Once again the safety net has become a way of life for some people. This time it's the comfortably off middle classes opting out of work by saying they're too stressed. It's something the Labour will need to address on day one because it now seems that young people are not only being asked to support pensions for the old, childcare for their kids, endless student loan repayments, old age care in the NHS but now also for the lazy middle classes who are deciding not to work because they're "stressed".
Got a guy who's got signed off sick from work who worked for me up to last month.
He was basically a lazy fucker who was shy of a hard day's work unless it was easy and got sunshine blown up his arse.
We're a professional services firm not a holiday club.
So why haven't you dismissed him / managed him out for poor performance?
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Poeple voted our for sovereignty and because they couldnt see any advantage from being in. Remain had a case they could have made stressing the positives but they decided to go negative and it failed.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
We still have that problem none of the political parties want to address it. Labour may or may not reclaim big chunks of the Red Wall, but the mould has been broken and those constituencies will never be nailed on again. For me thats a good thing as politicians might now have to listen to their constituents,
Likewise the Conservatives need to listen to the young people of southern England and remember they're supposed to be the party of aspiration.
Of course and at present the Cons have zero ideas on putting this right.
Start with affordable housing.
The problem is that many Conservatives do not think anything needs to be put right.
The rentier state is now viewed as desirable by too many of them.
Likewise to many Conservatives 'trade' isn't about producing useful goods and services but being a well-connected middleman giving and receiving vast sums of government money for nobody's knows what.
Their core vote no longer works, as they are past retirement age.
Except when it comes to renting out property, surely?
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Poeple voted our for sovereignty and because they couldnt see any advantage from being in. Remain had a case they could have made stressing the positives but they decided to go negative and it failed.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
We still have that problem none of the political parties want to address it. Labour may or may not reclaim big chunks of the Red Wall, but the mould has been broken and those constituencies will never be nailed on again. For me thats a good thing as politicians might now have to listen to their constituents,
Likewise the Conservatives need to listen to the young people of southern England and remember they're supposed to be the party of aspiration.
Of course and at present the Cons have zero ideas on putting this right.
Start with affordable housing.
The problem is that many Conservatives do not think anything needs to be put right.
The rentier state is now viewed as desirable by too many of them.
Likewise to many Conservatives 'trade' isn't about producing useful goods and services but being a well-connected middleman giving and receiving vast sums of government money for nobody's knows what.
"We Conservatives have always passed our values from generation to generation. I believe that personal prosperity should follow the same course. I want to see wealth cascading down the generations. We do not see each generation starting out anew, with the past cut off and the future ignored."
john major, party conference 1991. you can't say they went out of their way to hide this stuff. Don't make what you can inherit.
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
Leavers still don't understand that they had to deliver that "moon on a stick" and have completely failed to do so. The resilient parts of the country are Remania, those in decline are Leaverstan. Nothing has changed.
They know that they were sold a pup, and will be out for electoral revenge. When Starmer fails to deliver too, fingers will point even more to Brexit being the problem.
Parties cannot ignore the polling forever. The laws of political gravity apply.
Thats also true.
The Leavers as yet have still to deliver upside on the vote. The conservatives who are the main drivers of this have been a shitshow, They spent ages fighting among themselves on the In\out divisions in their party and then had the bad luck to have two black swans land in their pond - Covid and Putin. You could argue that the crises should have made them put their arse in gear but instead we have rabbits in headlights.
As for electoral revenge when we have PM Tice youll know it has arrived.
The Conservatives have been so stupid/useless that they haven't even tried to take credit for full employment.
Partially because some think that because there was high unemployment under Thatcher then high unemployment must be a good thing.
Partially because some are fully committed to rentierism and think that the only thing that should be allowed to increase are house prices.
Partially because some are so thick/unaware that they don't realise there's full employment.
They do talk about the employment rate quite a lot, don't they?
But the problem with claiming full employment specifically is that it invites questions about low productivity, poor growth and how to fill the huge numbers of job vacancies in essential services that there are.
Just think of the the TV shows from the early 80s that could not be made now.
Perhaps one could be made now with the catchline "dont gis us a job" where a bricklayer is in a pub and continually refuses offers of employment.
Even on your old show The District Nurse, the main protagonist being unable to afford puncture repairs on her bicycle would have had no option but to strike.
Is anyone else getting 'deja vu all over again' with this thread?
What I would suggest it shows as much as anything is despite any polling numbers Nothing Has Changed.
"despite any polling numbers" = "apart from that, Mrs Lincoln..."
Here's what Has Changed: the referendum was fought on the NHS and immigration. Here's a picture, and if I erased the title, I bet people would have a no better than random chance of guessing which one it was about
About half of the waiting list surge is simply the long term trend. That's what we need to have serious conversation about where the health service is going.
Another pretty big drop in CPI, I think the end of year rate is probably going to be ~4.5%, if oil prices fall then maybe 4%.
Core CPI looks tougher to shift with wage data endlessly rising and 2.5m people long term sick. If the government wants to fix the labour market then it needs to get serious about sickness benefits reform. Matthew Paris had it bang on a couple of weeks ago, too many people are realising that it's easy to get signed off sick for stress and opt out of working. For people aged 50-64 who have paid off mortgages it's a realistic option to live on sickness benefits plus all the other assistance you get for it like council tax reductions etc...
Once again the safety net has become a way of life for some people. This time it's the comfortably off middle classes opting out of work by saying they're too stressed. It's something the Labour will need to address on day one because it now seems that young people are not only being asked to support pensions for the old, childcare for their kids, endless student loan repayments, old age care in the NHS but now also for the lazy middle classes who are deciding not to work because they're "stressed".
No body living off sickness benefit (aka UC now) is 'comfortably off middle class'.
You do realise how much people who can't work get?
I doubt many people are using it as a long term career choice but how about as an effective way to early retire, work from home and generally toss it off at work at the expense of their employer and fellow workers ?
Is anyone else getting 'deja vu all over again' with this thread?
What I would suggest it shows as much as anything is despite any polling numbers Nothing Has Changed.
"despite any polling numbers" = "apart from that, Mrs Lincoln..."
Here's what Has Changed: the referendum was fought on the NHS and immigration. Here's a picture, and if I erased the title, I bet people would have a no better than random chance of guessing which one it was about
About half of the waiting list surge is simply the long term trend. That's what we need to have serious conversation about where the health service is going.
A long term trend that started with austerity. (Yes I know, the NHS budget was protected, but check out the pathetic capital investment numbers).
Good inflation numbers as expected. High fuel prices from last year falling out, will be interesting to see the effect on current public sector wage negotiations.
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
Leavers still don't understand that they had to deliver that "moon on a stick" and have completely failed to do so. The resilient parts of the country are Remania, those in decline are Leaverstan. Nothing has changed.
They know that they were sold a pup, and will be out for electoral revenge. When Starmer fails to deliver too, fingers will point even more to Brexit being the problem.
Parties cannot ignore the polling forever. The laws of political gravity apply.
Thats also true.
The Leavers as yet have still to deliver upside on the vote. The conservatives who are the main drivers of this have been a shitshow, They spent ages fighting among themselves on the In\out divisions in their party and then had the bad luck to have two black swans land in their pond - Covid and Putin. You could argue that the crises should have made them put their arse in gear but instead we have rabbits in headlights.
As for electoral revenge when we have PM Tice youll know it has arrived.
The Conservatives have been so stupid/useless that they haven't even tried to take credit for full employment.
Partially because some think that because there was high unemployment under Thatcher then high unemployment must be a good thing.
Partially because some are fully committed to rentierism and think that the only thing that should be allowed to increase are house prices.
Partially because some are so thick/unaware that they don't realise there's full employment.
They do talk about the employment rate quite a lot, don't they?
But the problem with claiming full employment specifically is that it invites questions about low productivity, poor growth and how to fill the huge numbers of job vacancies in essential services that there are.
Poor productivity has been a problem for decades and includes issues such as it being more profitable to invest in property than business and the greed of the executive oligarchy at the expense of their workforce.
Importing a workforce to wash cars and pick turnips hasn't helped either.
And the best ways to fill vacancies are higher pay, better training and capital investment.
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Poeple voted our for sovereignty and because they couldnt see any advantage from being in. Remain had a case they could have made stressing the positives but they decided to go negative and it failed.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
We still have that problem none of the political parties want to address it. Labour may or may not reclaim big chunks of the Red Wall, but the mould has been broken and those constituencies will never be nailed on again. For me thats a good thing as politicians might now have to listen to their constituents,
Likewise the Conservatives need to listen to the young people of southern England and remember they're supposed to be the party of aspiration.
Of course and at present the Cons have zero ideas on putting this right.
Start with affordable housing.
The problem is that many Conservatives do not think anything needs to be put right.
The rentier state is now viewed as desirable by too many of them.
Likewise to many Conservatives 'trade' isn't about producing useful goods and services but being a well-connected middleman giving and receiving vast sums of government money for nobody's knows what.
"We Conservatives have always passed our values from generation to generation. I believe that personal prosperity should follow the same course. I want to see wealth cascading down the generations. We do not see each generation starting out anew, with the past cut off and the future ignored."
john major, party conference 1991. you can't say they went out of their way to hide this stuff. Don't make what you can inherit.
The Conservative Party has long been a coalition of Tories descended from the party of landowners and inherited wealth and free market Liberals who supported the Conservatives to keep out socialism and the Labour Party.
On topic. I voted Leave. Do I have moments of regret? Yes. Would I have voted differently then if I know what I know now? Possibly. Would I vote to rejoin? No.
For what it is worth my main reason for voting Leave was to better control our immigration so we didn't need such vast housebuilding destroying neighbourhoods and to prevent house prices rising even higher (so my kids can afford houses). Clearly the government has completely failed to get immigration under control. Would us being in the EU I have helped? I don't think so. In fact, I think the only way to control immigration is to deport the fake asylum seekers to somewhere they don't want to go. That would only be possible if we left the ECHR.
The only other reason for regret is that I quite like the idea of retiring to somewhere rural and warm in France. That would now be much, much harder now.
On topic. -- It's interesting to compare the status of Rejoin as a political movement now with Brexit in say ~2011.
The opinion poll support for Rejoin certainly seems to be a lot stronger for Rejoin now than Brexit then, but there's no equivalent to UKIP to threaten the electoral prospects of one of the major parties, and no tireless monomaniacal campaigner in the mould of Farage to advocate for Rejoin.
OGH mentions the Lib Dems advocating Rejoin, but they will only do so insofar as they think it helps them win votes or seats. Where they think it will be a hindrance they will soft-pedal it, or caveat the message.
This will see the Lib Dems win a lot more seats than UKIP ever did, but in terms of advancing the cause of Rejoin it will be much less effective.
Consequently I'm not currently seeing any prospect of Rejoin becoming a serious political movement. A single issue campaign needs a single issue leader. Rejoin doesn't have one.
Annoyingly, the EH/HE website has fallen over just now ...
It’s been down since quite early this morning. Who knew so many people wanted to see the photos.
I was amused by the photo of a bombed Old Trafford and musing that the Glazers have turned the place into more of a dump than the Luftwaffe even managed.
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
Leavers still don't understand that they had to deliver that "moon on a stick" and have completely failed to do so. The resilient parts of the country are Remania, those in decline are Leaverstan. Nothing has changed.
They know that they were sold a pup, and will be out for electoral revenge. When Starmer fails to deliver too, fingers will point even more to Brexit being the problem.
Parties cannot ignore the polling forever. The laws of political gravity apply.
Thats also true.
The Leavers as yet have still to deliver upside on the vote. The conservatives who are the main drivers of this have been a shitshow, They spent ages fighting among themselves on the In\out divisions in their party and then had the bad luck to have two black swans land in their pond - Covid and Putin. You could argue that the crises should have made them put their arse in gear but instead we have rabbits in headlights.
As for electoral revenge when we have PM Tice youll know it has arrived.
Covid and Ukraine are manna from heaven for Brexit because they mask the damage.
I have lots of Remainer friends, They occasionally have a moan when I ask them how Brexit has made their lives worse, they cant identify anything bar a bit of inconvenience at customs,
The damage as you call it is mythical, since it is mostly based on forecast growth in a world we no longer live in. Trade is mostly back to where it was so much ado about nothing,
For what it’s worth - very little - for me Brexit is still a visceral thing. It still makes me angry thinking about it. It provokes an emotional response.
It’s not because I’m a bad loser. Pre-Brexit I was pro-EU but wasn’t too concerned about joining the Euro, going in full throttle, I was happy with the status quo.
Not anymore. Too late, sadly. I wish I had an inkling of how much of a gut punch leaving would be, how much I miss my EU citizenship. How much I resent having it removed from me against my will.
It’s not about a few percentage points here and there on the economy, that some Brexiters are trying to reduce it to. Though it seems unequivocal amongst serious economists that the economic damage has been large. And will continue to be so.
It’s the fact that it was, and is, a project of the amoral, selfish, right-wing elite. Brexit they only just got over the line thanks to two – two! – campaigns that were just lies from beginning to end. All the horseshit about no-one was mad enough to countenance leaving the single market, no downsides, they need us more than we need them, all the endless garbage. All the well-funded, slick, under the radar social media campaigns, all of Cummings’ cunning, only just got Brexit over the line.
And Cameron, who only called the referendum cos he was frit of his right-wing nutters, sodded off and left us with his steaming pile of ordure. Right-wingers, high on their own supply once this narrow, vague instruction to ‘leave’ had been received from the electorate, then pushed for an ever harder Brexit, for No Deal, for Frost to ‘negotiate’ the shambles we have now.
Brexit gave the right-wing of the Tories (and the UKIP returnees) their head, they have the power, and they are running the country into the ground simply so they and their already eye-wateringly rich donors can enrich themselves. They are pillaging the country. They have screwed the economy. They are slowly strangling public services. So they can cut taxes, privatise what’s left and watch the money roll in. They don’t care about ‘normal’ people, they never did. Being in the EU stopped them, to a certain extent, but some brakes on, this pillaging. The environmental regs, stuff like that. They sold Brexit on an ocean of lies so they impoverish us all whilst they shovel ever more money to themselves.
For what it’s worth - very little - for me Brexit is still a visceral thing. It still makes me angry thinking about it. It provokes an emotional response.
It’s not because I’m a bad loser. Pre-Brexit I was pro-EU but wasn’t too concerned about joining the Euro, going in full throttle, I was happy with the status quo.
Not anymore. Too late, sadly. I wish I had an inkling of how much of a gut punch leaving would be, how much I miss my EU citizenship. How much I resent having it removed from me against my will.
It’s not about a few percentage points here and there on the economy, that some Brexiters are trying to reduce it to. Though it seems unequivocal amongst serious economists that the economic damage has been large. And will continue to be so.
It’s the fact that it was, and is, a project of the amoral, selfish, right-wing elite. Brexit they only just got over the line thanks to two – two! – campaigns that were just lies from beginning to end. All the horseshit about no-one was mad enough to countenance leaving the single market, no downsides, they need us more than we need them, all the endless garbage. All the well-funded, slick, under the radar social media campaigns, all of Cummings’ cunning, only just got Brexit over the line.
And Cameron, who only called the referendum cos he was frit of his right-wing nutters, sodded off and left us with his steaming pile of ordure. Right-wingers, high on their own supply once this narrow, vague instruction to ‘leave’ had been received from the electorate, then pushed for an ever harder Brexit, for No Deal, for Frost to ‘negotiate’ the shambles we have now.
Brexit gave the right-wing of the Tories (and the UKIP returnees) their head, they have the power, and they are running the country into the ground simply so they and their already eye-wateringly rich donors can enrich themselves. They are pillaging the country. They have screwed the economy. They are slowly strangling public services. So they can cut taxes, privatise what’s left and watch the money roll in. They don’t care about ‘normal’ people, they never did. Being in the EU stopped them, to a certain extent, but some brakes on, this pillaging. The environmental regs, stuff like that. They sold Brexit on an ocean of lies so they impoverish us all whilst they shovel ever more money to themselves.
It's a tragedy.
To continue: The right-wingers, in their symbiotic relationship with their right-wing brethren across the pond, want US levels of inequality, they want a parochial, inward-looking population that is educated only as much as is required to work in a call centre, or work in a factory. They target the hard of thinking because, just like in the US, there is quite often just enough numbers in an unholy combination of the amoral, selfish right-wing and the spiteful, equally selfish, hard of thinking.
Yes, I’m not happy that Brexit has damaged the economy. But it’s so much more than the economy. It was sold as painless, cake for everyone. It’s the cynicism that really galls me. And the way any national debate on the impact of Brexit, how none of its promises are being delivered, how all the wild promises that aren’t coming true, isn’t happening. Polls show 60% want to rejoin. Undoubtedly there is a lot of Bregret. Yet the silence continues.
"Also the extra hassle for Brits when traveling in Europe is not helping" says OGH.
I've made three trips to Europe in past 18 months and haven't found any hassle. Mobile phone works as in UK at no extra cost; no additional queues at borders etc. The impression I got last week was that the Spanish were tripping over themselves to welcome Brits.
What is driving these polls is anti Conservative feeling; the economic situation and blame everything on Brexit, just as pre-Brexit everything was blamed on EU.
Mobile phones at no extra cost? Are you sure? Perhaps you have a legacy contract but AFAIA operators (well, Three) started charging for using mobile data in the EU a while ago.
O2, Vodafone and EE all have roaming contracts. Three are the odd man out tbh.
It is what I use. I don't think it will last though because they use EE (same group) and they are moving all their mobile stuff to EE gradually.
I know people are referring to inclusive contracts and the prices shown are way above what plebs like me pay or need. If that is what you need fine, but I suspect @Topping is like me and just wants a contract that:
a) Gets him reception b) Gives him free calls/texts and the data he needs
So the added cost in the EU is annoying, but not the end of the world.
Another pretty big drop in CPI, I think the end of year rate is probably going to be ~4.5%, if oil prices fall then maybe 4%.
Core CPI looks tougher to shift with wage data endlessly rising and 2.5m people long term sick. If the government wants to fix the labour market then it needs to get serious about sickness benefits reform. Matthew Paris had it bang on a couple of weeks ago, too many people are realising that it's easy to get signed off sick for stress and opt out of working. For people aged 50-64 who have paid off mortgages it's a realistic option to live on sickness benefits plus all the other assistance you get for it like council tax reductions etc...
Once again the safety net has become a way of life for some people. This time it's the comfortably off middle classes opting out of work by saying they're too stressed. It's something the Labour will need to address on day one because it now seems that young people are not only being asked to support pensions for the old, childcare for their kids, endless student loan repayments, old age care in the NHS but now also for the lazy middle classes who are deciding not to work because they're "stressed".
No body living off sickness benefit (aka UC now) is 'comfortably off middle class'.
You do realise how much people who can't work get?
I doubt many people are using it as a long term career choice but how about as an effective way to early retire, work from home and generally toss it off at work at the expense of their employer and fellow workers ?
Another pretty big drop in CPI, I think the end of year rate is probably going to be ~4.5%, if oil prices fall then maybe 4%.
Core CPI looks tougher to shift with wage data endlessly rising and 2.5m people long term sick. If the government wants to fix the labour market then it needs to get serious about sickness benefits reform. Matthew Paris had it bang on a couple of weeks ago, too many people are realising that it's easy to get signed off sick for stress and opt out of working. For people aged 50-64 who have paid off mortgages it's a realistic option to live on sickness benefits plus all the other assistance you get for it like council tax reductions etc...
Once again the safety net has become a way of life for some people. This time it's the comfortably off middle classes opting out of work by saying they're too stressed. It's something the Labour will need to address on day one because it now seems that young people are not only being asked to support pensions for the old, childcare for their kids, endless student loan repayments, old age care in the NHS but now also for the lazy middle classes who are deciding not to work because they're "stressed".
No body living off sickness benefit (aka UC now) is 'comfortably off middle class'.
You do realise how much people who can't work get?
I doubt many people are using it as a long term career choice but how about as an effective way to early retire, work from home and generally toss it off at work at the expense of their employer and fellow workers ?
Nope. You aren't entitled to UC if you have savings over £16,000. If you are on UC, only £6,000 is protected, with the £10,000 difference tapered away.
The poll also suggested that there would be another pro-independence majority after the next Holyrood election, with the SNP winning 57 seats and the Greens ten. Labour would return 38 MSPs to comfortably overtake the Conservatives whose representation at Holyrood would almost halve, to 16 MSPs. The Liberal Democrats would win eight seats under this scenario.
YouGov interviewed 1,086 people aged 16 and older in Scotland between August 3 and 8.
Combined Unionist parties on 62 MSPs however ahead of the SNP on 57 MSPs on that projection and just 5 behind the combined SNP and Greens total. Sarwar now has a net positive rating with Scots unlike Yousaf so at least a chance he will be next FM
Ah, HYUFD arithmetic where a minority of Unionist msps beats a majority of pro Indy msps. Who do you think votes in an FM? Rumours of the death of the SNP greatly exaggerated in any case.
On that forecast the SNP are heading for their lowest number of MSPs at Holyrood since 2007 to 2011.
The SNP is clearly in decline and while narrowly ahead still Sarwar has the best chance of any Scottish Labour leader of becoming FM in over a decade
Another pretty big drop in CPI, I think the end of year rate is probably going to be ~4.5%, if oil prices fall then maybe 4%.
Core CPI looks tougher to shift with wage data endlessly rising and 2.5m people long term sick. If the government wants to fix the labour market then it needs to get serious about sickness benefits reform. Matthew Paris had it bang on a couple of weeks ago, too many people are realising that it's easy to get signed off sick for stress and opt out of working. For people aged 50-64 who have paid off mortgages it's a realistic option to live on sickness benefits plus all the other assistance you get for it like council tax reductions etc...
Once again the safety net has become a way of life for some people. This time it's the comfortably off middle classes opting out of work by saying they're too stressed. It's something the Labour will need to address on day one because it now seems that young people are not only being asked to support pensions for the old, childcare for their kids, endless student loan repayments, old age care in the NHS but now also for the lazy middle classes who are deciding not to work because they're "stressed".
Got a guy who's got signed off sick from work who worked for me up to last month.
He was basically a lazy fucker who was shy of a hard day's work unless it was easy and got sunshine blown up his arse.
We're a professional services firm not a holiday club.
So why haven't you dismissed him / managed him out for poor performance?
"Constructive dismissal" you can't get rid of people if they've been signed off sick with stress or some other bogus mental health issue they've made up and convinced some bleeding heart therapist is a real problem. The government needs to seriously reform being signed off for mental health concerns, at the moment it's become a free for all and the indolent have realised they can turn it into a lifestyle choice.
Shall we start the what if I want to move a horse to/from the EU one instead.
I think you may have cut down the advice you get considerably there @Topping, although @Alanbrooke seems to have come up with a good suggestion and I suspect he actually knows what he is talking about.
Another pretty big drop in CPI, I think the end of year rate is probably going to be ~4.5%, if oil prices fall then maybe 4%.
Core CPI looks tougher to shift with wage data endlessly rising and 2.5m people long term sick. If the government wants to fix the labour market then it needs to get serious about sickness benefits reform. Matthew Paris had it bang on a couple of weeks ago, too many people are realising that it's easy to get signed off sick for stress and opt out of working. For people aged 50-64 who have paid off mortgages it's a realistic option to live on sickness benefits plus all the other assistance you get for it like council tax reductions etc...
Once again the safety net has become a way of life for some people. This time it's the comfortably off middle classes opting out of work by saying they're too stressed. It's something the Labour will need to address on day one because it now seems that young people are not only being asked to support pensions for the old, childcare for their kids, endless student loan repayments, old age care in the NHS but now also for the lazy middle classes who are deciding not to work because they're "stressed".
No body living off sickness benefit (aka UC now) is 'comfortably off middle class'.
You do realise how much people who can't work get?
I doubt many people are using it as a long term career choice but how about as an effective way to early retire, work from home and generally toss it off at work at the expense of their employer and fellow workers ?
Nope. You aren't entitled to UC if you have savings over £16,000. If you are on UC, only £6,000 is protected, with the £10,000 differene tapered away.
Is property equity considered passu with savings ?
Another pretty big drop in CPI, I think the end of year rate is probably going to be ~4.5%, if oil prices fall then maybe 4%.
Core CPI looks tougher to shift with wage data endlessly rising and 2.5m people long term sick. If the government wants to fix the labour market then it needs to get serious about sickness benefits reform. Matthew Paris had it bang on a couple of weeks ago, too many people are realising that it's easy to get signed off sick for stress and opt out of working. For people aged 50-64 who have paid off mortgages it's a realistic option to live on sickness benefits plus all the other assistance you get for it like council tax reductions etc...
Once again the safety net has become a way of life for some people. This time it's the comfortably off middle classes opting out of work by saying they're too stressed. It's something the Labour will need to address on day one because it now seems that young people are not only being asked to support pensions for the old, childcare for their kids, endless student loan repayments, old age care in the NHS but now also for the lazy middle classes who are deciding not to work because they're "stressed".
No body living off sickness benefit (aka UC now) is 'comfortably off middle class'.
You do realise how much people who can't work get?
I doubt many people are using it as a long term career choice but how about as an effective way to early retire, work from home and generally toss it off at work at the expense of their employer and fellow workers ?
Nope. You aren't entitled to UC if you have savings over £16,000. If you are on UC, only £6,000 is protected, with the £10,000 differene tapered away.
Is property equity considered passu with savings ?
Another pretty big drop in CPI, I think the end of year rate is probably going to be ~4.5%, if oil prices fall then maybe 4%.
Core CPI looks tougher to shift with wage data endlessly rising and 2.5m people long term sick. If the government wants to fix the labour market then it needs to get serious about sickness benefits reform. Matthew Paris had it bang on a couple of weeks ago, too many people are realising that it's easy to get signed off sick for stress and opt out of working. For people aged 50-64 who have paid off mortgages it's a realistic option to live on sickness benefits plus all the other assistance you get for it like council tax reductions etc...
Once again the safety net has become a way of life for some people. This time it's the comfortably off middle classes opting out of work by saying they're too stressed. It's something the Labour will need to address on day one because it now seems that young people are not only being asked to support pensions for the old, childcare for their kids, endless student loan repayments, old age care in the NHS but now also for the lazy middle classes who are deciding not to work because they're "stressed".
No body living off sickness benefit (aka UC now) is 'comfortably off middle class'.
You do realise how much people who can't work get?
I doubt many people are using it as a long term career choice but how about as an effective way to early retire, work from home and generally toss it off at work at the expense of their employer and fellow workers ?
Nope. You aren't entitled to UC if you have savings over £16,000. If you are on UC, only £6,000 is protected, with the £10,000 differene tapered away.
Is property equity considered passu with savings ?
Not if it's where you live. Another way renters get screwed.
Another pretty big drop in CPI, I think the end of year rate is probably going to be ~4.5%, if oil prices fall then maybe 4%.
Core CPI looks tougher to shift with wage data endlessly rising and 2.5m people long term sick. If the government wants to fix the labour market then it needs to get serious about sickness benefits reform. Matthew Paris had it bang on a couple of weeks ago, too many people are realising that it's easy to get signed off sick for stress and opt out of working. For people aged 50-64 who have paid off mortgages it's a realistic option to live on sickness benefits plus all the other assistance you get for it like council tax reductions etc...
Once again the safety net has become a way of life for some people. This time it's the comfortably off middle classes opting out of work by saying they're too stressed. It's something the Labour will need to address on day one because it now seems that young people are not only being asked to support pensions for the old, childcare for their kids, endless student loan repayments, old age care in the NHS but now also for the lazy middle classes who are deciding not to work because they're "stressed".
Got a guy who's got signed off sick from work who worked for me up to last month.
He was basically a lazy fucker who was shy of a hard day's work unless it was easy and got sunshine blown up his arse.
We're a professional services firm not a holiday club.
So why haven't you dismissed him / managed him out for poor performance?
"Constructive dismissal" you can't get rid of people if they've been signed off sick with stress or some other bogus mental health issue they've made up and convinced some bleeding heart therapist is a real problem. The government needs to seriously reform being signed off for mental health concerns, at the moment it's become a free for all and the indolent have realised they can turn it into a lifestyle choice.
The other side of this is that companies love loading 'professionals' with unreasonable amounts of work to dismiss them without a payout or otherwise simply encourage them to leave without firing them. Which is, uh *checks notes* constructive dismissal.
Good inflation numbers as expected. High fuel prices from last year falling out, will be interesting to see the effect on current public sector wage negotiations.
Looks like we are on track to reach 5% CPI at the end of the year. Getting it down to 2% target will be much harder. Core inflation remains stubborn and wage settlements high. Base rate unlikely to fall below 5% for next 2 to 3 years.
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
Leavers still don't understand that they had to deliver that "moon on a stick" and have completely failed to do so. The resilient parts of the country are Remania, those in decline are Leaverstan. Nothing has changed.
They know that they were sold a pup, and will be out for electoral revenge. When Starmer fails to deliver too, fingers will point even more to Brexit being the problem.
Parties cannot ignore the polling forever. The laws of political gravity apply.
Thats also true.
The Leavers as yet have still to deliver upside on the vote. The conservatives who are the main drivers of this have been a shitshow, They spent ages fighting among themselves on the In\out divisions in their party and then had the bad luck to have two black swans land in their pond - Covid and Putin. You could argue that the crises should have made them put their arse in gear but instead we have rabbits in headlights.
As for electoral revenge when we have PM Tice youll know it has arrived.
The Conservatives have been so stupid/useless that they haven't even tried to take credit for full employment.
Partially because some think that because there was high unemployment under Thatcher then high unemployment must be a good thing.
Partially because some are fully committed to rentierism and think that the only thing that should be allowed to increase are house prices.
Partially because some are so thick/unaware that they don't realise there's full employment.
They do talk about the employment rate quite a lot, don't they?
But the problem with claiming full employment specifically is that it invites questions about low productivity, poor growth and how to fill the huge numbers of job vacancies in essential services that there are.
Poor productivity has been a problem for decades and includes issues such as it being more profitable to invest in property than business and the greed of the executive oligarchy at the expense of their workforce.
Importing a workforce to wash cars and pick turnips hasn't helped either.
And the best ways to fill vacancies are higher pay, better training and capital investment.
Some of which are finally now happening.
How do you fill vacancies in a full-employment economy, though? Better pay is clearly one lever, I agree. Much better pay for care workers, for example, is clearly merited and absolutely necessary. But who pays for the pay rise?
On topic. -- It's interesting to compare the status of Rejoin as a political movement now with Brexit in say ~2011.
The opinion poll support for Rejoin certainly seems to be a lot stronger for Rejoin now than Brexit then, but there's no equivalent to UKIP to threaten the electoral prospects of one of the major parties, and no tireless monomaniacal campaigner in the mould of Farage to advocate for Rejoin.
OGH mentions the Lib Dems advocating Rejoin, but they will only do so insofar as they think it helps them win votes or seats. Where they think it will be a hindrance they will soft-pedal it, or caveat the message.
This will see the Lib Dems win a lot more seats than UKIP ever did, but in terms of advancing the cause of Rejoin it will be much less effective.
Consequently I'm not currently seeing any prospect of Rejoin becoming a serious political movement. A single issue campaign needs a single issue leader. Rejoin doesn't have one.
The analogy would be a niche party demanding a referendum on rejoining and picking up enough support from Lab voters to force the Lab leader to put this in a GE manifesto. That's hard to see with the political dynamic we have, so it'll probably have to find another way to happen (if it does).
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Poeple voted our for sovereignty and because they couldnt see any advantage from being in. Remain had a case they could have made stressing the positives but they decided to go negative and it failed.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
We still have that problem none of the political parties want to address it. Labour may or may not reclaim big chunks of the Red Wall, but the mould has been broken and those constituencies will never be nailed on again. For me thats a good thing as politicians might now have to listen to their constituents,
Likewise the Conservatives need to listen to the young people of southern England and remember they're supposed to be the party of aspiration.
Tory councils across the South had local plans for lots of new housing, including affordable housing. Just in the local elections in May most of them lost control to NIMBY LDs, Greens and Independents.
On topic. -- It's interesting to compare the status of Rejoin as a political movement now with Brexit in say ~2011.
The opinion poll support for Rejoin certainly seems to be a lot stronger for Rejoin now than Brexit then, but there's no equivalent to UKIP to threaten the electoral prospects of one of the major parties, and no tireless monomaniacal campaigner in the mould of Farage to advocate for Rejoin.
OGH mentions the Lib Dems advocating Rejoin, but they will only do so insofar as they think it helps them win votes or seats. Where they think it will be a hindrance they will soft-pedal it, or caveat the message.
This will see the Lib Dems win a lot more seats than UKIP ever did, but in terms of advancing the cause of Rejoin it will be much less effective.
Consequently I'm not currently seeing any prospect of Rejoin becoming a serious political movement. A single issue campaign needs a single issue leader. Rejoin doesn't have one.
The analogy would be a niche party demanding a referendum on rejoining and picking up enough support from Lab voters to force the Lab leader to put this in a GE manifesto. That's hard to see with the political dynamic we have, so it'll probably have to find another way to happen (if it does).
Doesn't the SNP qualify? I can see it demanding both that and indyref if thje situation develops.
Shall we start the what if I want to move a horse to/from the EU one instead.
I think you may have cut down the advice you get considerably there @Topping, although @Alanbrooke seems to have come up with a good suggestion and I suspect he actually knows what he is talking about.
Moving horses (not dizzy ones, @Alanbrooke) to the EU costs hundreds and hundreds of pounds more than it used to pre-Brexit.
Not a constituency I appreciate that any party (Lozza?) is going to die in a ditch for but I'm sure it can't be the only category example beyond "waiting a bit longer at customs".
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Poeple voted our for sovereignty and because they couldnt see any advantage from being in. Remain had a case they could have made stressing the positives but they decided to go negative and it failed.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
We still have that problem none of the political parties want to address it. Labour may or may not reclaim big chunks of the Red Wall, but the mould has been broken and those constituencies will never be nailed on again. For me thats a good thing as politicians might now have to listen to their constituents,
Likewise the Conservatives need to listen to the young people of southern England and remember they're supposed to be the party of aspiration.
Of course and at present the Cons have zero ideas on putting this right.
Start with affordable housing.
The problem is that many Conservatives do not think anything needs to be put right.
The rentier state is now viewed as desirable by too many of them.
Likewise to many Conservatives 'trade' isn't about producing useful goods and services but being a well-connected middleman giving and receiving vast sums of government money for nobody's knows what.
Their core vote no longer works, as they are past retirement age.
But it needs to be replenished by the young becoming homeowners.
Now the Conservatives should encourage this by aspiration, better training opportunities, lower employment taxes and affordable housing.
But I fear there will be a faction - HYUFD seems to have inclinations this way - who instead prefer aspiration through inheritance in some modern Jane Austen style society.
How the Conservatives deal with the 'higher wages versus higher house prices' debate in opposition will be interesting.
Good inflation numbers as expected. High fuel prices from last year falling out, will be interesting to see the effect on current public sector wage negotiations.
Looks like we are on track to reach 5% CPI at the end of the year. Getting it down to 2% target will be much harder. Core inflation remains stubborn and wage settlements high. Base rate unlikely to fall below 5% for next 2 to 3 years.
Core inflation will follow the headline rate because pay settlements will be roughly based on the headline rate next year. If it's ~2.5-4% as expected then core inflation will drop to that level as well. I wouldn't be surprised if the first interest rate cut comes towards the back end of 2024 and we see rates fall to ~4% by the end of 2025. That feels like the "correct" level for the UK, maybe a shade lower.
We all know Ukraine did it but I do wonder what purpose is served by Ukraine revealing they did along with the fact that they could access Russia's own CCTV on the bridge.
Another pretty big drop in CPI, I think the end of year rate is probably going to be ~4.5%, if oil prices fall then maybe 4%.
Core CPI looks tougher to shift with wage data endlessly rising and 2.5m people long term sick. If the government wants to fix the labour market then it needs to get serious about sickness benefits reform. Matthew Paris had it bang on a couple of weeks ago, too many people are realising that it's easy to get signed off sick for stress and opt out of working. For people aged 50-64 who have paid off mortgages it's a realistic option to live on sickness benefits plus all the other assistance you get for it like council tax reductions etc...
Once again the safety net has become a way of life for some people. This time it's the comfortably off middle classes opting out of work by saying they're too stressed. It's something the Labour will need to address on day one because it now seems that young people are not only being asked to support pensions for the old, childcare for their kids, endless student loan repayments, old age care in the NHS but now also for the lazy middle classes who are deciding not to work because they're "stressed".
Got a guy who's got signed off sick from work who worked for me up to last month.
He was basically a lazy fucker who was shy of a hard day's work unless it was easy and got sunshine blown up his arse.
We're a professional services firm not a holiday club.
So why haven't you dismissed him / managed him out for poor performance?
"Constructive dismissal" you can't get rid of people if they've been signed off sick with stress or some other bogus mental health issue they've made up and convinced some bleeding heart therapist is a real problem. The government needs to seriously reform being signed off for mental health concerns, at the moment it's become a free for all and the indolent have realised they can turn it into a lifestyle choice.
"Got a guy who's got signed off sick from work who worked for me up to last month."
"He was basically a lazy fucker who was shy of a hard day's work unless it was easy and got sunshine blown up his arse."
I cannot imagine what might have induced any level of employee stress here.
Instead of creating the opportunity/necessity to be signed off sick, perhaps a better management approach in the first place may have prevented it getting to that stage.
On topic. -- It's interesting to compare the status of Rejoin as a political movement now with Brexit in say ~2011.
The opinion poll support for Rejoin certainly seems to be a lot stronger for Rejoin now than Brexit then, but there's no equivalent to UKIP to threaten the electoral prospects of one of the major parties, and no tireless monomaniacal campaigner in the mould of Farage to advocate for Rejoin.
OGH mentions the Lib Dems advocating Rejoin, but they will only do so insofar as they think it helps them win votes or seats. Where they think it will be a hindrance they will soft-pedal it, or caveat the message.
This will see the Lib Dems win a lot more seats than UKIP ever did, but in terms of advancing the cause of Rejoin it will be much less effective.
Consequently I'm not currently seeing any prospect of Rejoin becoming a serious political movement. A single issue campaign needs a single issue leader. Rejoin doesn't have one.
The analogy would be a niche party demanding a referendum on rejoining and picking up enough support from Lab voters to force the Lab leader to put this in a GE manifesto. That's hard to see with the political dynamic we have, so it'll probably have to find another way to happen (if it does).
Doesn't the SNP qualify? I can see it demanding both that and indyref if thje situation develops.
No as they are Scotland only and would put indyref2 first, indeed the SNP would rather have an independent Scotland in EFTA than the whole UK back in the EU.
Only the LDs could really push Rejoin the EU for the whole UK
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
Leavers still don't understand that they had to deliver that "moon on a stick" and have completely failed to do so. The resilient parts of the country are Remania, those in decline are Leaverstan. Nothing has changed.
They know that they were sold a pup, and will be out for electoral revenge. When Starmer fails to deliver too, fingers will point even more to Brexit being the problem.
Parties cannot ignore the polling forever. The laws of political gravity apply.
Thats also true.
The Leavers as yet have still to deliver upside on the vote. The conservatives who are the main drivers of this have been a shitshow, They spent ages fighting among themselves on the In\out divisions in their party and then had the bad luck to have two black swans land in their pond - Covid and Putin. You could argue that the crises should have made them put their arse in gear but instead we have rabbits in headlights.
As for electoral revenge when we have PM Tice youll know it has arrived.
The Conservatives have been so stupid/useless that they haven't even tried to take credit for full employment.
Partially because some think that because there was high unemployment under Thatcher then high unemployment must be a good thing.
Partially because some are fully committed to rentierism and think that the only thing that should be allowed to increase are house prices.
Partially because some are so thick/unaware that they don't realise there's full employment.
They do talk about the employment rate quite a lot, don't they?
But the problem with claiming full employment specifically is that it invites questions about low productivity, poor growth and how to fill the huge numbers of job vacancies in essential services that there are.
Poor productivity has been a problem for decades and includes issues such as it being more profitable to invest in property than business and the greed of the executive oligarchy at the expense of their workforce.
Importing a workforce to wash cars and pick turnips hasn't helped either.
And the best ways to fill vacancies are higher pay, better training and capital investment.
Some of which are finally now happening.
How do you fill vacancies in a full-employment economy, though? Better pay is clearly one lever, I agree. Much better pay for care workers, for example, is clearly merited and absolutely necessary. But who pays for the pay rise?
But we're not in a full employment economy, there's 2.5m people out of work long term sick. It's about 1m higher than pre COVID. That needs to be tackled properly but the government is burying it's head in the sand.
Ukraine Summer Offensive Update for August 16: ‘Urozhaine Officially Liberated’ Kyiv announces liberation of Urozhaine; heavy battles raging near Robotyne and Verbove with possibly significant gains for Ukraine; elite air assault units make deep strikes in the south. https://www.kyivpost.com/post/20597
The Atlantic hurricane season is just about to start. The first Cape Verde disturbance of the year is starting to form in the Eastern tropical Atlantic and is likely to strengthen into a hurricane before recurving back towards us.
Why is this politically relevant? Because a major landfalling hurricane in the continental US this autumn spells danger for Ukraine. Russia's new bot tactic is to astroturf public anger at spending arming Ukraine rather than saving the victims of natural disasters. We've already seen the line rehearsed after the Maui fires - initial Russian troll farm seeding which then spills into organic engagement. If there's a major hurricane then expect much more of this: "money for South Carolina, not Ukraine".
Hurricanes and their aftermath are also interesting for US domestic politics. They can cement support for the incumbent president if managed well but ruin them if managed badly (remember Bush and Katrina). Most importantly they can bring Southern governors, representatives and senators into the limelight and set them up for a run at the presidency, although given the very narrow field on both sides this time perhaps the opportunity isn't so clearcut for 2024.
As for Britain: recurving hurricanes tend to change our weather. If they linger in the central North Atlantic they can act as heat pumps bringing us high pressure and warmth. If they get entrained in the polar front jet stream they can pump up the westerlies and bring us wind and rain.
All things being equal we should expect a less active season than average (in terms of numbers) because of the forthcoming El Nino which tends to enhance vertical wind shear and tear apart the upper structure of storms, but all things are not equal. Any that do make it close to the US or into the Gulf of Mexico could be absolute monsters because SSTs and ocean heat content are at all time record levels. 33C off the coast of Florida a few days ago.
Another pretty big drop in CPI, I think the end of year rate is probably going to be ~4.5%, if oil prices fall then maybe 4%.
Core CPI looks tougher to shift with wage data endlessly rising and 2.5m people long term sick. If the government wants to fix the labour market then it needs to get serious about sickness benefits reform. Matthew Paris had it bang on a couple of weeks ago, too many people are realising that it's easy to get signed off sick for stress and opt out of working. For people aged 50-64 who have paid off mortgages it's a realistic option to live on sickness benefits plus all the other assistance you get for it like council tax reductions etc...
Once again the safety net has become a way of life for some people. This time it's the comfortably off middle classes opting out of work by saying they're too stressed. It's something the Labour will need to address on day one because it now seems that young people are not only being asked to support pensions for the old, childcare for their kids, endless student loan repayments, old age care in the NHS but now also for the lazy middle classes who are deciding not to work because they're "stressed".
Got a guy who's got signed off sick from work who worked for me up to last month.
He was basically a lazy fucker who was shy of a hard day's work unless it was easy and got sunshine blown up his arse.
We're a professional services firm not a holiday club.
So why haven't you dismissed him / managed him out for poor performance?
"Constructive dismissal" you can't get rid of people if they've been signed off sick with stress or some other bogus mental health issue they've made up and convinced some bleeding heart therapist is a real problem. The government needs to seriously reform being signed off for mental health concerns, at the moment it's become a free for all and the indolent have realised they can turn it into a lifestyle choice.
@MaxPB - Not joking you need a new employment lawyer. Constructive dismissal is something else completely. It is possible to dismiss someone who is on long term sick. I advise on how to do it all the time. It's perfectly possible you're just turning it into a party political point.
Constructive dismissal is what happens when someone resigns in response to a breach of contract by their employer. Sod all to do with what you're talking about.
The media will monster anyone supporting a policy with 65% support, rather than their preferred narrative that only 60 WWC seats matter and everyone who is WWC is a non-metropolitan racist.
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
Leavers still don't understand that they had to deliver that "moon on a stick" and have completely failed to do so. The resilient parts of the country are Remania, those in decline are Leaverstan. Nothing has changed.
They know that they were sold a pup, and will be out for electoral revenge. When Starmer fails to deliver too, fingers will point even more to Brexit being the problem.
Parties cannot ignore the polling forever. The laws of political gravity apply.
Thats also true.
The Leavers as yet have still to deliver upside on the vote. The conservatives who are the main drivers of this have been a shitshow, They spent ages fighting among themselves on the In\out divisions in their party and then had the bad luck to have two black swans land in their pond - Covid and Putin. You could argue that the crises should have made them put their arse in gear but instead we have rabbits in headlights.
As for electoral revenge when we have PM Tice youll know it has arrived.
The Conservatives have been so stupid/useless that they haven't even tried to take credit for full employment.
Partially because some think that because there was high unemployment under Thatcher then high unemployment must be a good thing.
Partially because some are fully committed to rentierism and think that the only thing that should be allowed to increase are house prices.
Partially because some are so thick/unaware that they don't realise there's full employment.
They do talk about the employment rate quite a lot, don't they?
But the problem with claiming full employment specifically is that it invites questions about low productivity, poor growth and how to fill the huge numbers of job vacancies in essential services that there are.
Poor productivity has been a problem for decades and includes issues such as it being more profitable to invest in property than business and the greed of the executive oligarchy at the expense of their workforce.
Importing a workforce to wash cars and pick turnips hasn't helped either.
And the best ways to fill vacancies are higher pay, better training and capital investment.
Some of which are finally now happening.
How do you fill vacancies in a full-employment economy, though? Better pay is clearly one lever, I agree. Much better pay for care workers, for example, is clearly merited and absolutely necessary. But who pays for the pay rise?
Consumers.
So a wealth transfer from those who don't work to those who do.
With care workers that is specifically a wealth transfer from the old to the young.
This will, of course, lead to opposition from those who value inheritance above all other things.
So who deserves those extra thousands ? Those who care for the sick oldies or those who will inherit from them.
That's a question that the Conservatives, and the country generally, need to discuss.
Another pretty big drop in CPI, I think the end of year rate is probably going to be ~4.5%, if oil prices fall then maybe 4%.
Core CPI looks tougher to shift with wage data endlessly rising and 2.5m people long term sick. If the government wants to fix the labour market then it needs to get serious about sickness benefits reform. Matthew Paris had it bang on a couple of weeks ago, too many people are realising that it's easy to get signed off sick for stress and opt out of working. For people aged 50-64 who have paid off mortgages it's a realistic option to live on sickness benefits plus all the other assistance you get for it like council tax reductions etc...
Once again the safety net has become a way of life for some people. This time it's the comfortably off middle classes opting out of work by saying they're too stressed. It's something the Labour will need to address on day one because it now seems that young people are not only being asked to support pensions for the old, childcare for their kids, endless student loan repayments, old age care in the NHS but now also for the lazy middle classes who are deciding not to work because they're "stressed".
Got a guy who's got signed off sick from work who worked for me up to last month.
He was basically a lazy fucker who was shy of a hard day's work unless it was easy and got sunshine blown up his arse.
We're a professional services firm not a holiday club.
So why haven't you dismissed him / managed him out for poor performance?
"Constructive dismissal" you can't get rid of people if they've been signed off sick with stress or some other bogus mental health issue they've made up and convinced some bleeding heart therapist is a real problem. The government needs to seriously reform being signed off for mental health concerns, at the moment it's become a free for all and the indolent have realised they can turn it into a lifestyle choice.
"Got a guy who's got signed off sick from work who worked for me up to last month."
"He was basically a lazy fucker who was shy of a hard day's work unless it was easy and got sunshine blown up his arse."
I cannot imagine what might have induced any level of employee stress here.
Instead of creating the opportunity/necessity to be signed off sick, perhaps a better management approach in the first place may have prevented it getting to that stage.
I cannot believe the unwisdom of posting this sort of thing. Unless the law on discovery of documents has radically changed since I were a solicitor, it's disclosable in unfair dismissal proceedings.
Another pretty big drop in CPI, I think the end of year rate is probably going to be ~4.5%, if oil prices fall then maybe 4%.
Core CPI looks tougher to shift with wage data endlessly rising and 2.5m people long term sick. If the government wants to fix the labour market then it needs to get serious about sickness benefits reform. Matthew Paris had it bang on a couple of weeks ago, too many people are realising that it's easy to get signed off sick for stress and opt out of working. For people aged 50-64 who have paid off mortgages it's a realistic option to live on sickness benefits plus all the other assistance you get for it like council tax reductions etc...
Once again the safety net has become a way of life for some people. This time it's the comfortably off middle classes opting out of work by saying they're too stressed. It's something the Labour will need to address on day one because it now seems that young people are not only being asked to support pensions for the old, childcare for their kids, endless student loan repayments, old age care in the NHS but now also for the lazy middle classes who are deciding not to work because they're "stressed".
Got a guy who's got signed off sick from work who worked for me up to last month.
He was basically a lazy fucker who was shy of a hard day's work unless it was easy and got sunshine blown up his arse.
We're a professional services firm not a holiday club.
So why haven't you dismissed him / managed him out for poor performance?
"Constructive dismissal" you can't get rid of people if they've been signed off sick with stress or some other bogus mental health issue they've made up and convinced some bleeding heart therapist is a real problem. The government needs to seriously reform being signed off for mental health concerns, at the moment it's become a free for all and the indolent have realised they can turn it into a lifestyle choice.
This is a comforting fiction. Good employers that pay well and treat staff fairly will not have a problem with people signing off for bogus mental health reasons. People that do sign off take a big cut in their income and standard of living. They will tend to do so for a genuine reason.
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Poeple voted our for sovereignty and because they couldnt see any advantage from being in. Remain had a case they could have made stressing the positives but they decided to go negative and it failed.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
We still have that problem none of the political parties want to address it. Labour may or may not reclaim big chunks of the Red Wall, but the mould has been broken and those constituencies will never be nailed on again. For me thats a good thing as politicians might now have to listen to their constituents,
Likewise the Conservatives need to listen to the young people of southern England and remember they're supposed to be the party of aspiration.
Of course and at present the Cons have zero ideas on putting this right.
Start with affordable housing.
The problem is that many Conservatives do not think anything needs to be put right.
The rentier state is now viewed as desirable by too many of them.
Likewise to many Conservatives 'trade' isn't about producing useful goods and services but being a well-connected middleman giving and receiving vast sums of government money for nobody's knows what.
Their core vote no longer works, as they are past retirement age.
But it needs to be replenished by the young becoming homeowners.
Now the Conservatives should encourage this by aspiration, better training opportunities, lower employment taxes and affordable housing.
But I fear there will be a faction - HYUFD seems to have inclinations this way - who instead prefer aspiration through inheritance in some modern Jane Austen style society.
How the Conservatives deal with the 'higher wages versus higher house prices' debate in opposition will be interesting.
HYUFD does have aspirations. He was recxommending the landed gentry and horde of grateful peasantry model for rural society when we were talking about the Salopian by-election. Makes Blandings Castle look like a North London hipster fest.
We all know Ukraine did it but I do wonder what purpose is served by Ukraine revealing they did along with the fact that they could access Russia's own CCTV on the bridge.
Just to show that they can. And they will keep doing.
That bridge is Putin’s personal penis extension, it’s going to get blown up every time the Ukranians get the opportunity.
Meanwhile, the defenders moved a couple of km closer to the railway line from the mainland to Crimea yesterday. They’re now around 30km from Tomak, well within HIMARS range.
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
Leavers still don't understand that they had to deliver that "moon on a stick" and have completely failed to do so. The resilient parts of the country are Remania, those in decline are Leaverstan. Nothing has changed.
They know that they were sold a pup, and will be out for electoral revenge. When Starmer fails to deliver too, fingers will point even more to Brexit being the problem.
Parties cannot ignore the polling forever. The laws of political gravity apply.
Thats also true.
The Leavers as yet have still to deliver upside on the vote. The conservatives who are the main drivers of this have been a shitshow, They spent ages fighting among themselves on the In\out divisions in their party and then had the bad luck to have two black swans land in their pond - Covid and Putin. You could argue that the crises should have made them put their arse in gear but instead we have rabbits in headlights.
As for electoral revenge when we have PM Tice youll know it has arrived.
The Conservatives have been so stupid/useless that they haven't even tried to take credit for full employment.
Partially because some think that because there was high unemployment under Thatcher then high unemployment must be a good thing.
Partially because some are fully committed to rentierism and think that the only thing that should be allowed to increase are house prices.
Partially because some are so thick/unaware that they don't realise there's full employment.
They do talk about the employment rate quite a lot, don't they?
But the problem with claiming full employment specifically is that it invites questions about low productivity, poor growth and how to fill the huge numbers of job vacancies in essential services that there are.
Poor productivity has been a problem for decades and includes issues such as it being more profitable to invest in property than business and the greed of the executive oligarchy at the expense of their workforce.
Importing a workforce to wash cars and pick turnips hasn't helped either.
And the best ways to fill vacancies are higher pay, better training and capital investment.
Some of which are finally now happening.
How do you fill vacancies in a full-employment economy, though? Better pay is clearly one lever, I agree. Much better pay for care workers, for example, is clearly merited and absolutely necessary. But who pays for the pay rise?
But we're not in a full employment economy, there's 2.5m people out of work long term sick. It's about 1m higher than pre COVID. That needs to be tackled properly but the government is burying it's head in the sand.
What's interesting is that the fall in participation rates reverses the trend during the 2010s (a trend that covered up low productivity growth), so we are just back to where we were before.
About half of the fall is people aged 50-64. Early retirees. About half is mental health (there is crossover between the two groups, this doesn't sum to 100%).
Most of those who have left the workforce are low skilled (so we can expect a big boost in productivity, perversely), and tend to have worked in customer facing industries.
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
Leavers still don't understand that they had to deliver that "moon on a stick" and have completely failed to do so. The resilient parts of the country are Remania, those in decline are Leaverstan. Nothing has changed.
They know that they were sold a pup, and will be out for electoral revenge. When Starmer fails to deliver too, fingers will point even more to Brexit being the problem.
Parties cannot ignore the polling forever. The laws of political gravity apply.
Thats also true.
The Leavers as yet have still to deliver upside on the vote. The conservatives who are the main drivers of this have been a shitshow, They spent ages fighting among themselves on the In\out divisions in their party and then had the bad luck to have two black swans land in their pond - Covid and Putin. You could argue that the crises should have made them put their arse in gear but instead we have rabbits in headlights.
As for electoral revenge when we have PM Tice youll know it has arrived.
The Conservatives have been so stupid/useless that they haven't even tried to take credit for full employment.
Partially because some think that because there was high unemployment under Thatcher then high unemployment must be a good thing.
Partially because some are fully committed to rentierism and think that the only thing that should be allowed to increase are house prices.
Partially because some are so thick/unaware that they don't realise there's full employment.
They do talk about the employment rate quite a lot, don't they?
But the problem with claiming full employment specifically is that it invites questions about low productivity, poor growth and how to fill the huge numbers of job vacancies in essential services that there are.
Poor productivity has been a problem for decades and includes issues such as it being more profitable to invest in property than business and the greed of the executive oligarchy at the expense of their workforce.
Importing a workforce to wash cars and pick turnips hasn't helped either.
And the best ways to fill vacancies are higher pay, better training and capital investment.
Some of which are finally now happening.
How do you fill vacancies in a full-employment economy, though? Better pay is clearly one lever, I agree. Much better pay for care workers, for example, is clearly merited and absolutely necessary. But who pays for the pay rise?
Consumers.
So a wealth transfer from those who don't work to those who do.
With care workers that is specifically a wealth transfer from the old to the young.
This will, of course, lead to opposition from those who value inheritance above all other things.
So who deserves those extra thousands ? Those who care for the sick oldies or those who will inherit from them.
That's a question that the Conservatives, and the country generally, need to discuss.
Yep, that's a very fair point. It's a discussion I cannot imagine taking place while the votes of old people are so important to winning elections, though - especially for the Tories.
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
Leavers still don't understand that they had to deliver that "moon on a stick" and have completely failed to do so. The resilient parts of the country are Remania, those in decline are Leaverstan. Nothing has changed.
They know that they were sold a pup, and will be out for electoral revenge. When Starmer fails to deliver too, fingers will point even more to Brexit being the problem.
Parties cannot ignore the polling forever. The laws of political gravity apply.
Thats also true.
The Leavers as yet have still to deliver upside on the vote. The conservatives who are the main drivers of this have been a shitshow, They spent ages fighting among themselves on the In\out divisions in their party and then had the bad luck to have two black swans land in their pond - Covid and Putin. You could argue that the crises should have made them put their arse in gear but instead we have rabbits in headlights.
As for electoral revenge when we have PM Tice youll know it has arrived.
Covid and Ukraine are manna from heaven for Brexit because they mask the damage.
I have lots of Remainer friends, They occasionally have a moan when I ask them how Brexit has made their lives worse, they cant identify anything bar a bit of inconvenience at customs,
The damage as you call it is mythical, since it is mostly based on forecast growth in a world we no longer live in. Trade is mostly back to where it was so much ado about nothing,
The cultural damage is subjective (since it depends on what's important to you) but the economic hit from making it harder to trade with our close neighbours is about as much of a fact as anything can be outside the physical sciences.
As for it being no big deal in the grand scheme of things, that's true of almost everything. People tend to use that lofty perspective selectively to minimise the problems caused by something they favour. You're doing that here.
Good inflation numbers as expected. High fuel prices from last year falling out, will be interesting to see the effect on current public sector wage negotiations.
Looks like we are on track to reach 5% CPI at the end of the year. Getting it down to 2% target will be much harder. Core inflation remains stubborn and wage settlements high. Base rate unlikely to fall below 5% for next 2 to 3 years.
Core inflation will follow the headline rate because pay settlements will be roughly based on the headline rate next year. If it's ~2.5-4% as expected then core inflation will drop to that level as well. I wouldn't be surprised if the first interest rate cut comes towards the back end of 2024 and we see rates fall to ~4% by the end of 2025. That feels like the "correct" level for the UK, maybe a shade lower.
Yes long term interest rates of around 4% seems reasonable. The days of the artificially ultra low rates are, correctly, over.
Good inflation numbers as expected. High fuel prices from last year falling out, will be interesting to see the effect on current public sector wage negotiations.
Looks like we are on track to reach 5% CPI at the end of the year. Getting it down to 2% target will be much harder. Core inflation remains stubborn and wage settlements high. Base rate unlikely to fall below 5% for next 2 to 3 years.
5% should be doable, the first of the PM’s five targets, but the last bit down to 2% will indeed be pretty sticky, likely taking a couple of years.
The key unknowns are Ukraine and OPEC, so Western governments need to keep sending military aid to the former, and pressurising the latter to keep production up.
The poll also suggested that there would be another pro-independence majority after the next Holyrood election, with the SNP winning 57 seats and the Greens ten. Labour would return 38 MSPs to comfortably overtake the Conservatives whose representation at Holyrood would almost halve, to 16 MSPs. The Liberal Democrats would win eight seats under this scenario.
YouGov interviewed 1,086 people aged 16 and older in Scotland between August 3 and 8.
Combined Unionist parties on 62 MSPs however ahead of the SNP on 57 MSPs on that projection and just 5 behind the combined SNP and Greens total. Sarwar now has a net positive rating with Scots unlike Yousaf so at least a chance he will be next FM
Ah, HYUFD arithmetic where a minority of Unionist msps beats a majority of pro Indy msps. Who do you think votes in an FM? Rumours of the death of the SNP greatly exaggerated in any case.
Agree with that. Starmer/Sarwar still struggling to achieve definitive tipping point. The main danger to SNP is civil war breaking out over the alliance with the Greens. That would follow if Nats get hammered at GE but the result still appears open at the moment.
Starmer/Sarwar have had some success in convincing anti EU anti immigration Red wall voters in England and vaguely progressive pro EU voters in Scotland that Labour is the party for them, but the essential contradiction in those positions has to come to a head sooner or later. Pretending to these groups that the other doesn't exist only works for so long.
For what it’s worth - very little - for me Brexit is still a visceral thing. It still makes me angry thinking about it. It provokes an emotional response.
It’s not because I’m a bad loser. Pre-Brexit I was pro-EU but wasn’t too concerned about joining the Euro, going in full throttle, I was happy with the status quo.
Not anymore. Too late, sadly. I wish I had an inkling of how much of a gut punch leaving would be, how much I miss my EU citizenship. How much I resent having it removed from me against my will.
It’s not about a few percentage points here and there on the economy, that some Brexiters are trying to reduce it to. Though it seems unequivocal amongst serious economists that the economic damage has been large. And will continue to be so.
It’s the fact that it was, and is, a project of the amoral, selfish, right-wing elite. Brexit they only just got over the line thanks to two – two! – campaigns that were just lies from beginning to end. All the horseshit about no-one was mad enough to countenance leaving the single market, no downsides, they need us more than we need them, all the endless garbage. All the well-funded, slick, under the radar social media campaigns, all of Cummings’ cunning, only just got Brexit over the line.
And Cameron, who only called the referendum cos he was frit of his right-wing nutters, sodded off and left us with his steaming pile of ordure. Right-wingers, high on their own supply once this narrow, vague instruction to ‘leave’ had been received from the electorate, then pushed for an ever harder Brexit, for No Deal, for Frost to ‘negotiate’ the shambles we have now.
Brexit gave the right-wing of the Tories (and the UKIP returnees) their head, they have the power, and they are running the country into the ground simply so they and their already eye-wateringly rich donors can enrich themselves. They are pillaging the country. They have screwed the economy. They are slowly strangling public services. So they can cut taxes, privatise what’s left and watch the money roll in. They don’t care about ‘normal’ people, they never did. Being in the EU stopped them, to a certain extent, but some brakes on, this pillaging. The environmental regs, stuff like that. They sold Brexit on an ocean of lies so they impoverish us all whilst they shovel ever more money to themselves.
It's a tragedy.
I disagree with one bit there. You say that "they are slowly strangling public services". Actually, I think they're doing that rather quickly.
"Also the extra hassle for Brits when traveling in Europe is not helping" says OGH.
I've made three trips to Europe in past 18 months and haven't found any hassle. Mobile phone works as in UK at no extra cost; no additional queues at borders etc. The impression I got last week was that the Spanish were tripping over themselves to welcome Brits.
What is driving these polls is anti Conservative feeling; the economic situation and blame everything on Brexit, just as pre-Brexit everything was blamed on EU.
Mobile phones at no extra cost? Are you sure? Perhaps you have a legacy contract but AFAIA operators (well, Three) started charging for using mobile data in the EU a while ago.
O2, Vodafone and EE all have roaming contracts. Three are the odd man out tbh.
Blimmin' typical.
costs an extra £10 for the month on EE, but that covers Can/US as well as EU
£5/day for EU with Three.
Switch to O2 if it's important to you. Vote with your wallet! It's the single best way to send a message to companies that don't provide a good enough service.
It's not important enough to me. It is an extra cost, however, which was my point.
It's only an extra cost if you want it to be one or you're oddly loyal to a phone network company. 🤷♂️
Show me via screenshot on EE where there is no roaming charge. And I don't mean in the "free" glass of champagne in First Class sense.
In my experience you have to speak to retentions to get the Roam Abroad pass added for free/part of an inclusive extra.
Edit : That’s from my MyEE app.
"speak to retentions". So you either have to be on EE to start with or have a pre-July 21 contract?
No.
You can sign up to it now as a new customer.
Just get a plan with an inclusive extra.
I have something like 9 contracts with EE, I get huge discounts but I have to speak to retentions to get those discounts added back on at the end of the contract.
I have 4 business contracts on Three. An absurd rate at £10+VAT for unlimited everything, and 12GB/month of international roaming and free roaming calls. Now out of contract on the one I use for my own business, and Three keep calling me to get me to take out a new contract.
New contract = 24 months tie-in vs the 1 month now, higher cost and no roaming. Why would I do that?
The Atlantic hurricane season is just about to start. The first Cape Verde disturbance of the year is starting to form in the Eastern tropical Atlantic and is likely to strengthen into a hurricane before recurving back towards us.
Why is this politically relevant? Because a major landfalling hurricane in the continental US this autumn spells danger for Ukraine. Russia's new bot tactic is to astroturf public anger at spending arming Ukraine rather than saving the victims of natural disasters. We've already seen the line rehearsed after the Maui fires - initial Russian troll farm seeding which then spills into organic engagement. If there's a major hurricane then expect much more of this: "money for South Carolina, not Ukraine".
Hurricanes and their aftermath are also interesting for US domestic politics. They can cement support for the incumbent president if managed well but ruin them if managed badly (remember Bush and Katrina). Most importantly they can bring Southern governors, representatives and senators into the limelight and set them up for a run at the presidency, although given the very narrow field on both sides this time perhaps the opportunity isn't so clearcut for 2024.
As for Britain: recurving hurricanes tend to change our weather. If they linger in the central North Atlantic they can act as heat pumps bringing us high pressure and warmth. If they get entrained in the polar front jet stream they can pump up the westerlies and bring us wind and rain.
All things being equal we should expect a less active season than average (in terms of numbers) because of the forthcoming El Nino which tends to enhance vertical wind shear and tear apart the upper structure of storms, but all things are not equal. Any that do make it close to the US or into the Gulf of Mexico could be absolute monsters because SSTs and ocean heat content are at all time record levels. 33C off the coast of Florida a few days ago.
The Met Office Atlantic hurricane prediction system used to be called JASON after the core months of the Atlantic hurricane season, so we can already see the effect of El Niño in the late start.
But the political impact is from the hurricanes that make landfall and cause damage, and it only takes one of those, as you say.
SSTs are above average across the whole of the tropical Atlantic, but particularly in the hurricane nursery off the west coast of Africa, and in the north-eastern Gulf of Mexico.
Another pretty big drop in CPI, I think the end of year rate is probably going to be ~4.5%, if oil prices fall then maybe 4%.
Core CPI looks tougher to shift with wage data endlessly rising and 2.5m people long term sick. If the government wants to fix the labour market then it needs to get serious about sickness benefits reform. Matthew Paris had it bang on a couple of weeks ago, too many people are realising that it's easy to get signed off sick for stress and opt out of working. For people aged 50-64 who have paid off mortgages it's a realistic option to live on sickness benefits plus all the other assistance you get for it like council tax reductions etc...
Once again the safety net has become a way of life for some people. This time it's the comfortably off middle classes opting out of work by saying they're too stressed. It's something the Labour will need to address on day one because it now seems that young people are not only being asked to support pensions for the old, childcare for their kids, endless student loan repayments, old age care in the NHS but now also for the lazy middle classes who are deciding not to work because they're "stressed".
Got a guy who's got signed off sick from work who worked for me up to last month.
He was basically a lazy fucker who was shy of a hard day's work unless it was easy and got sunshine blown up his arse.
We're a professional services firm not a holiday club.
So why haven't you dismissed him / managed him out for poor performance?
"Constructive dismissal" you can't get rid of people if they've been signed off sick with stress or some other bogus mental health issue they've made up and convinced some bleeding heart therapist is a real problem. The government needs to seriously reform being signed off for mental health concerns, at the moment it's become a free for all and the indolent have realised they can turn it into a lifestyle choice.
This is a comforting fiction. Good employers that pay well and treat staff fairly will not have a problem with people signing off for bogus mental health reasons. People that do sign off take a big cut in their income and standard of living. They will tend to do so for a genuine reason.
Depression and back issues seem to affect NHS staff very frequently.
Ukraine Summer Offensive Update for August 16: ‘Urozhaine Officially Liberated’ Kyiv announces liberation of Urozhaine; heavy battles raging near Robotyne and Verbove with possibly significant gains for Ukraine; elite air assault units make deep strikes in the south. https://www.kyivpost.com/post/20597
There is mention that they used the Challenger 2 tanks. They do seem to be good tanks.
Annoyingly, the EH/HE website has fallen over just now ...
A pedant writes
The USAAF (US Army Air Forces) fought WW2. The present USAF (US Air Force) came into existence on 18 September 1947. My headcanon says the reorganisation was caused by the Roswell incident, but that's obviously fiction. Obviously...
It’s an easy, short route, but I curse the people who named the streets here
I have to deliver to North Street, North End, North Way, North Cote and Northfields
What dickheads came up with all those in the same postcode?
The same dick heads who named the streets in my village. We're on Main Street. With the same postcode we have 6 Streets that have "Main Street" or "Off Main Street" in their address all with numbers that are identical. Amazon drivers just chuck parcels over whatever fence that has "Main" Street in their address. It causes havoc when a call centre operator just ticks the first "Main Street" that comes up in a drop down box.
It actually surprises me that Brexit has become so unpopular so quickly. If I'd voted Leave on any of the grounds so often heard on here (sovereignty, the EU going long term in a direction I was uncomfortable with, this sort of 'Times editorial' type shit) I'd still be happy with it. Why wouldn't I be?
So what I conclude is that many people must have voted Leave because they thought it would (i) stop immigration or (ii) deliver some sort of financial bonanza. It's done neither (in fact the opposite on both) therefore they are now pissed off. They feel conned.
Annoyingly, the EH/HE website has fallen over just now ...
A pedant writes
The USAAF (US Army Air Forces) fought WW2. The present USAF (US Air Force) came into existence on 18 September 1947. My headcanon says the reorganisation was caused by the Roswell incident, but that's obviously fiction. Obviously...
Quite right. Apologies - a bad night's sleep explains but does not excuse it.
Another pretty big drop in CPI, I think the end of year rate is probably going to be ~4.5%, if oil prices fall then maybe 4%.
Core CPI looks tougher to shift with wage data endlessly rising and 2.5m people long term sick. If the government wants to fix the labour market then it needs to get serious about sickness benefits reform. Matthew Paris had it bang on a couple of weeks ago, too many people are realising that it's easy to get signed off sick for stress and opt out of working. For people aged 50-64 who have paid off mortgages it's a realistic option to live on sickness benefits plus all the other assistance you get for it like council tax reductions etc...
Once again the safety net has become a way of life for some people. This time it's the comfortably off middle classes opting out of work by saying they're too stressed. It's something the Labour will need to address on day one because it now seems that young people are not only being asked to support pensions for the old, childcare for their kids, endless student loan repayments, old age care in the NHS but now also for the lazy middle classes who are deciding not to work because they're "stressed".
Got a guy who's got signed off sick from work who worked for me up to last month.
He was basically a lazy fucker who was shy of a hard day's work unless it was easy and got sunshine blown up his arse.
We're a professional services firm not a holiday club.
So why haven't you dismissed him / managed him out for poor performance?
"Constructive dismissal" you can't get rid of people if they've been signed off sick with stress or some other bogus mental health issue they've made up and convinced some bleeding heart therapist is a real problem. The government needs to seriously reform being signed off for mental health concerns, at the moment it's become a free for all and the indolent have realised they can turn it into a lifestyle choice.
"Got a guy who's got signed off sick from work who worked for me up to last month."
"He was basically a lazy fucker who was shy of a hard day's work unless it was easy and got sunshine blown up his arse."
I cannot imagine what might have induced any level of employee stress here.
Instead of creating the opportunity/necessity to be signed off sick, perhaps a better management approach in the first place may have prevented it getting to that stage.
It’s an easy, short route, but I curse the people who named the streets here
I have to deliver to North Street, North End, North Way, North Cote and Northfields
What dickheads came up with all those in the same postcode?
The same dick heads who named the streets in my village. We're on Main Street. With the same postcode we have 6 Streets that have "Main Street" or "Off Main Street" in their address all with numbers that are identical. Amazon drivers just chuck parcels over whatever fence that has "Main" Street in their address. It causes havoc when a call centre operator just ticks the first "Main Street" that comes up in a drop down box.
My village has about 8 named streets, and two of them (referring to two different stations) are Station Road.
Shall we start the what if I want to move a horse to/from the EU one instead.
I think you may have cut down the advice you get considerably there @Topping, although @Alanbrooke seems to have come up with a good suggestion and I suspect he actually knows what he is talking about.
Moving horses (not dizzy ones, @Alanbrooke) to the EU costs hundreds and hundreds of pounds more than it used to pre-Brexit.
Not a constituency I appreciate that any party (Lozza?) is going to die in a ditch for but I'm sure it can't be the only category example beyond "waiting a bit longer at customs".
Not something I know one iota about (and here I am talking about it anyway), but it doesn't surprise me. The one area I had some knowledge on was carnets and thank god I don't have to do that post Brexit, particularly if you are in certain lines of business (motor racing, concerts, etc). An acquaintance, who built large bespoke stages, exhibition stands etc, basically packed up business after Brexit as a consequence as he could no longer compete in Europe with the extra cost and hassle.
None of the political culture (politicians, media, activists etc.) want to relitigate the EU (partly because solving other things is just as if not more important, partly because it is still a highly emotive topic for many). Labour has no desire to give the Tories a stick to beat them with, the LDs are not important enough and, most importantly, we don't know the terms we would be offered to rejoin. If I were an EU member state I would not allow the UK to rejoin with the exceptions we already had carved out back during the Cameron era. Not out of spite, but because it seems clear to me now that our exceptional status within the EU was part of what led us out - that we could not be appeased because at the end of the day the UK did not enter the project wanting it to succeed, and rather was accepted so it was on the inside pissing out rather than the other way around. For the UK to rejoin the EU would require both the UK and EU to say up front and clearly what kind of political entity they want the EU to be, and for the UK to clearly and affirmatively say we want to be part of that entity - not just a desire for us to get an economic boost for trade reasons (which we could do without rejoining).
If the EU project is that of differing states eventually evolving into a more federalist super state model, similar to the US or even the Russian Federation, the UKs "reentry" would be the perfect moment to make that clear. I know not all individual member states like that idea, nor do all voters within the individual states, but with a single currency and talks of increased security collaboration alongside increased collaboration likely necessary to deal with climate change and immigration, as well as threats from Russia and an increasingly unstable US, it would be beneficial to put all the cards on the table. And if the UK doesn't want to be part of that - fine. But if we do, we need to know at that point what rejoin means.
I don't think the EU really wants to have that conversation, and I don't think the UK would sign up for that - so I doubt anyone will push rejoin for a long time yet. I think the outcome of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the next decade of US political leadership will likely force the EU to react and therefore become more like a federalised state, rather than an open debate about whether that is what the individual countries want. So I don't see rejoin becoming a significant movement for at least a decade, if not longer, and by then it will be greatly overshadowed by the politics of climate catastrophe.
Shall we start the what if I want to move a horse to/from the EU one instead.
I think you may have cut down the advice you get considerably there @Topping, although @Alanbrooke seems to have come up with a good suggestion and I suspect he actually knows what he is talking about.
Moving horses (not dizzy ones, @Alanbrooke) to the EU costs hundreds and hundreds of pounds more than it used to pre-Brexit.
Not a constituency I appreciate that any party (Lozza?) is going to die in a ditch for but I'm sure it can't be the only category example beyond "waiting a bit longer at customs".
Not something I know one iota about (and here I am talking about it anyway), but it doesn't surprise me. The one area I had some knowledge on was carnets and thank god I don't have to do that post Brexit, particularly if you are in certain lines of business (motor racing, concerts, etc). An acquaintance, who built large bespoke stages, exhibition stands etc, basically packed up business after Brexit as a consequence as he could no longer compete in Europe with the extra cost and hassle.
Temporary imports is one of the largest issues that needs resolving, it should be done as part of the trusted trader scheme for NI that was supposed to be in place by now. It’s adding a lot of paperwork for certain industries. The difference is that everyone in NI wants the issues there resolved; the French and the Brussels bureaucrats, not so much.
I'll say it again, we have the world's best spies, MI5 and the SIS have no rivals in the world.
Agents of the British state have “captured and controlled” the SNP government after successfully infiltrating the party, a former MSP has claimed.
Campbell Martin, who represented the nationalists at Holyrood and worked in its whips office, alleged that security service assets have risen through the ranks of the SNP to positions where they can shape policy.
Martin, 63, claims the party’s focus on “gender policies” is being pushed by infiltrators in a bid to make it unelectable and discredit the idea of breaking up the UK.
It explains why it took MI5 so long to catch the Bulgarian Russian spies who are all over today's front pages. They took their eye off the ball in order to infiltrate the SNP.
I'll say it again, we have the world's best spies, MI5 and the SIS have no rivals in the world.
Agents of the British state have “captured and controlled” the SNP government after successfully infiltrating the party, a former MSP has claimed.
Campbell Martin, who represented the nationalists at Holyrood and worked in its whips office, alleged that security service assets have risen through the ranks of the SNP to positions where they can shape policy.
Martin, 63, claims the party’s focus on “gender policies” is being pushed by infiltrators in a bid to make it unelectable and discredit the idea of breaking up the UK.
So we are saying that Nicola was better at spying than she was at being FM then?
His suggestion that senior party figures, right up to cabinet level, have been passing information to the British intelligence services may appear incredible. However, other senior SNP figures have told The Times they believe that MI5 has a longstanding policy of using agents to penetrate and monitor the independence movement.
Another pretty big drop in CPI, I think the end of year rate is probably going to be ~4.5%, if oil prices fall then maybe 4%.
Core CPI looks tougher to shift with wage data endlessly rising and 2.5m people long term sick. If the government wants to fix the labour market then it needs to get serious about sickness benefits reform. Matthew Paris had it bang on a couple of weeks ago, too many people are realising that it's easy to get signed off sick for stress and opt out of working. For people aged 50-64 who have paid off mortgages it's a realistic option to live on sickness benefits plus all the other assistance you get for it like council tax reductions etc...
Once again the safety net has become a way of life for some people. This time it's the comfortably off middle classes opting out of work by saying they're too stressed. It's something the Labour will need to address on day one because it now seems that young people are not only being asked to support pensions for the old, childcare for their kids, endless student loan repayments, old age care in the NHS but now also for the lazy middle classes who are deciding not to work because they're "stressed".
Got a guy who's got signed off sick from work who worked for me up to last month.
He was basically a lazy fucker who was shy of a hard day's work unless it was easy and got sunshine blown up his arse.
We're a professional services firm not a holiday club.
So why haven't you dismissed him / managed him out for poor performance?
"Constructive dismissal" you can't get rid of people if they've been signed off sick with stress or some other bogus mental health issue they've made up and convinced some bleeding heart therapist is a real problem. The government needs to seriously reform being signed off for mental health concerns, at the moment it's become a free for all and the indolent have realised they can turn it into a lifestyle choice.
"Got a guy who's got signed off sick from work who worked for me up to last month."
"He was basically a lazy fucker who was shy of a hard day's work unless it was easy and got sunshine blown up his arse."
I cannot imagine what might have induced any level of employee stress here.
Instead of creating the opportunity/necessity to be signed off sick, perhaps a better management approach in the first place may have prevented it getting to that stage.
"Professional Services".
Just reflecting that my "professional" training included management training - a large chunk of which consisted of being told how to stick to the rule book at the first hint of any dispute or disciplinary action, because otherwise the thje employer tends to 'lose', however that is defined. (I see there is no mention of HR in the thread: this may just be for brevity, but I wonder.)
The poll also suggested that there would be another pro-independence majority after the next Holyrood election, with the SNP winning 57 seats and the Greens ten. Labour would return 38 MSPs to comfortably overtake the Conservatives whose representation at Holyrood would almost halve, to 16 MSPs. The Liberal Democrats would win eight seats under this scenario.
YouGov interviewed 1,086 people aged 16 and older in Scotland between August 3 and 8.
Combined Unionist parties on 62 MSPs however ahead of the SNP on 57 MSPs on that projection and just 5 behind the combined SNP and Greens total. Sarwar now has a net positive rating with Scots unlike Yousaf so at least a chance he will be next FM
Ah, HYUFD arithmetic where a minority of Unionist msps beats a majority of pro Indy msps. Who do you think votes in an FM? Rumours of the death of the SNP greatly exaggerated in any case.
Agree with that. Starmer/Sarwar still struggling to achieve definitive tipping point. The main danger to SNP is civil war breaking out over the alliance with the Greens. That would follow if Nats get hammered at GE but the result still appears open at the moment.
Starmer/Sarwar have had some success in convincing anti EU anti immigration Red wall voters in England and vaguely progressive pro EU voters in Scotland that Labour is the party for them, but the essential contradiction in those positions has to come to a head sooner or later. Pretending to these groups that the other doesn't exist only works for so long.
Seems the SNP have stabilised a little and much will depend on the outcome of the police investigations
As far as Starmer is concerned he remains an English man from London trying to ride two horses at once, with differences over trans gender policies and the 2 children rule between himself and Sawar, and indeed Khan and himself over ULEZ
None of the political culture (politicians, media, activists etc.) want to relitigate the EU (partly because solving other things is just as if not more important, partly because it is still a highly emotive topic for many). Labour has no desire to give the Tories a stick to beat them with, the LDs are not important enough and, most importantly, we don't know the terms we would be offered to rejoin. If I were an EU member state I would not allow the UK to rejoin with the exceptions we already had carved out back during the Cameron era. Not out of spite, but because it seems clear to me now that our exceptional status within the EU was part of what led us out - that we could not be appeased because at the end of the day the UK did not enter the project wanting it to succeed, and rather was accepted so it was on the inside pissing out rather than the other way around. For the UK to rejoin the EU would require both the UK and EU to say up front and clearly what kind of political entity they want the EU to be, and for the UK to clearly and affirmatively say we want to be part of that entity - not just a desire for us to get an economic boost for trade reasons (which we could do without rejoining).
If the EU project is that of differing states eventually evolving into a more federalist super state model, similar to the US or even the Russian Federation, the UKs "reentry" would be the perfect moment to make that clear. I know not all individual member states like that idea, nor do all voters within the individual states, but with a single currency and talks of increased security collaboration alongside increased collaboration likely necessary to deal with climate change and immigration, as well as threats from Russia and an increasingly unstable US, it would be beneficial to put all the cards on the table. And if the UK doesn't want to be part of that - fine. But if we do, we need to know at that point what rejoin means.
I don't think the EU really wants to have that conversation, and I don't think the UK would sign up for that - so I doubt anyone will push rejoin for a long time yet. I think the outcome of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the next decade of US political leadership will likely force the EU to react and therefore become more like a federalised state, rather than an open debate about whether that is what the individual countries want. So I don't see rejoin becoming a significant movement for at least a decade, if not longer, and by then it will be greatly overshadowed by the politics of climate catastrophe.
I think that a Federal EU can only emerge based on the Eurozone, and so it would deepen the split between the Eurozone countries and the non-Eurozone countries, likely making it permanent (and anyway, neither France or Germany want a Federal Europe for different reasons anyway). I think at the moment the EU would prefer to preserve the fiction that this divide between the Eurozone and the rest is temporary, rather than entrench it.
We see with the way the EU has handled Hungary over Ukraine that it is currently favouring the preservation of unanimity, rather than proceeding with a more determined core (even when they core is all the states bar one).
Another pretty big drop in CPI, I think the end of year rate is probably going to be ~4.5%, if oil prices fall then maybe 4%.
Core CPI looks tougher to shift with wage data endlessly rising and 2.5m people long term sick. If the government wants to fix the labour market then it needs to get serious about sickness benefits reform. Matthew Paris had it bang on a couple of weeks ago, too many people are realising that it's easy to get signed off sick for stress and opt out of working. For people aged 50-64 who have paid off mortgages it's a realistic option to live on sickness benefits plus all the other assistance you get for it like council tax reductions etc...
Once again the safety net has become a way of life for some people. This time it's the comfortably off middle classes opting out of work by saying they're too stressed. It's something the Labour will need to address on day one because it now seems that young people are not only being asked to support pensions for the old, childcare for their kids, endless student loan repayments, old age care in the NHS but now also for the lazy middle classes who are deciding not to work because they're "stressed".
Got a guy who's got signed off sick from work who worked for me up to last month.
He was basically a lazy fucker who was shy of a hard day's work unless it was easy and got sunshine blown up his arse.
We're a professional services firm not a holiday club.
So why haven't you dismissed him / managed him out for poor performance?
"Constructive dismissal" you can't get rid of people if they've been signed off sick with stress or some other bogus mental health issue they've made up and convinced some bleeding heart therapist is a real problem. The government needs to seriously reform being signed off for mental health concerns, at the moment it's become a free for all and the indolent have realised they can turn it into a lifestyle choice.
"Got a guy who's got signed off sick from work who worked for me up to last month."
"He was basically a lazy fucker who was shy of a hard day's work unless it was easy and got sunshine blown up his arse."
I cannot imagine what might have induced any level of employee stress here.
Instead of creating the opportunity/necessity to be signed off sick, perhaps a better management approach in the first place may have prevented it getting to that stage.
I cannot believe the unwisdom of posting this sort of thing. Unless the law on discovery of documents has radically changed since I were a solicitor, it's disclosable in unfair dismissal proceedings.
Might I inquire - without wanting to comment on this specific case - if it is a general principle to disclose anything you write on matter x? I can understand memos and emails and corporate files. But what about something like this that t is purportedly anonymised as to both the manager and the employee (and indeed employer)?
The debate which is Rejoin v Status Quo+tinkering is too limited. So this polling is fairly crude. Rejoin will remain incendiary, despite the current figures. There has always been a way of staying in most of the economic fold but outside political union - as the Swiss and Norwegians know.
We can hope that Labour have this in mind, as it is consistent with the Brexit vote (not the rhetoric of it of course - but nothing can be) so required no absolute reverse ferret on 2016.
I get the feeling that for far too many of the protagonists, Brexit was a journey not a destination. No one really thought it'd happen. Cameron certainly didnt. He thought he was being clever. It was all about looking like they were doing something that was a bit populist. The likes of Farage and Johnson liked the glory of being heroic failures, never once imagining they'd have to implement it. It's turned into a shitshow, and they've been lucky with covid and war. Rejoin might be on the table at some point, but if a decent set of politicians finally show up and actually work with the EU to up both our games, rejoin might not be necessary.
The poll also suggested that there would be another pro-independence majority after the next Holyrood election, with the SNP winning 57 seats and the Greens ten. Labour would return 38 MSPs to comfortably overtake the Conservatives whose representation at Holyrood would almost halve, to 16 MSPs. The Liberal Democrats would win eight seats under this scenario.
YouGov interviewed 1,086 people aged 16 and older in Scotland between August 3 and 8.
Combined Unionist parties on 62 MSPs however ahead of the SNP on 57 MSPs on that projection and just 5 behind the combined SNP and Greens total. Sarwar now has a net positive rating with Scots unlike Yousaf so at least a chance he will be next FM
Ah, HYUFD arithmetic where a minority of Unionist msps beats a majority of pro Indy msps. Who do you think votes in an FM? Rumours of the death of the SNP greatly exaggerated in any case.
Agree with that. Starmer/Sarwar still struggling to achieve definitive tipping point. The main danger to SNP is civil war breaking out over the alliance with the Greens. That would follow if Nats get hammered at GE but the result still appears open at the moment.
Starmer/Sarwar have had some success in convincing anti EU anti immigration Red wall voters in England and vaguely progressive pro EU voters in Scotland that Labour is the party for them, but the essential contradiction in those positions has to come to a head sooner or later. Pretending to these groups that the other doesn't exist only works for so long.
The uniform bloc of angry racist red wall voters in football strips and union jack tattoos is a lazy myth. See the header: support for staying out of the EU is now scarcely higher than GB support for the Tories. That means most people planning to vote Labour are not going to be put off by a gradual shift to a more pro-EU stance.
Nor, I suspect, are all Labour-curious voters in Scotland going to be begging for immediate rejoin, anymore than they are in Labour stronghold London where the remain vote in my constituency was nearly 80% and Labour have a 30k majority.
Another pretty big drop in CPI, I think the end of year rate is probably going to be ~4.5%, if oil prices fall then maybe 4%.
Core CPI looks tougher to shift with wage data endlessly rising and 2.5m people long term sick. If the government wants to fix the labour market then it needs to get serious about sickness benefits reform. Matthew Paris had it bang on a couple of weeks ago, too many people are realising that it's easy to get signed off sick for stress and opt out of working. For people aged 50-64 who have paid off mortgages it's a realistic option to live on sickness benefits plus all the other assistance you get for it like council tax reductions etc...
Once again the safety net has become a way of life for some people. This time it's the comfortably off middle classes opting out of work by saying they're too stressed. It's something the Labour will need to address on day one because it now seems that young people are not only being asked to support pensions for the old, childcare for their kids, endless student loan repayments, old age care in the NHS but now also for the lazy middle classes who are deciding not to work because they're "stressed".
Got a guy who's got signed off sick from work who worked for me up to last month.
He was basically a lazy fucker who was shy of a hard day's work unless it was easy and got sunshine blown up his arse.
We're a professional services firm not a holiday club.
So why haven't you dismissed him / managed him out for poor performance?
"Constructive dismissal" you can't get rid of people if they've been signed off sick with stress or some other bogus mental health issue they've made up and convinced some bleeding heart therapist is a real problem. The government needs to seriously reform being signed off for mental health concerns, at the moment it's become a free for all and the indolent have realised they can turn it into a lifestyle choice.
"Got a guy who's got signed off sick from work who worked for me up to last month."
"He was basically a lazy fucker who was shy of a hard day's work unless it was easy and got sunshine blown up his arse."
I cannot imagine what might have induced any level of employee stress here.
Instead of creating the opportunity/necessity to be signed off sick, perhaps a better management approach in the first place may have prevented it getting to that stage.
I cannot believe the unwisdom of posting this sort of thing. Unless the law on discovery of documents has radically changed since I were a solicitor, it's disclosable in unfair dismissal proceedings.
Might I inquire - without wanting to comment on this specific case - if it is a general principle to disclose anything you write on matter x? I can understand memos and emails and corporate files. But what about something like this that t is purportedly anonymised as to both the manager and the employee (and indeed employer)?
The law and practice of discovery and disclosure (civil and criminal) is a tricky maze into which it is easy to wander and harder to get out of. Strict enforcement is not easy. Shredders and delete buttons exist; as does the capacity to create back dated paper documents to cover the gaps.
The most annoying of the Leave brigade are those who either lived full time in the EU or had holiday homes which they’re now limited to 3 months in any 6 .
They then have the gall to start moaning now about regretting their vote . They need to stfu and take responsibility for their idiocy and should have done their research .
Zero sympathy that also goes for the idiot farmers and fishermen who voted Leave .
The poll also suggested that there would be another pro-independence majority after the next Holyrood election, with the SNP winning 57 seats and the Greens ten. Labour would return 38 MSPs to comfortably overtake the Conservatives whose representation at Holyrood would almost halve, to 16 MSPs. The Liberal Democrats would win eight seats under this scenario.
YouGov interviewed 1,086 people aged 16 and older in Scotland between August 3 and 8.
Combined Unionist parties on 62 MSPs however ahead of the SNP on 57 MSPs on that projection and just 5 behind the combined SNP and Greens total. Sarwar now has a net positive rating with Scots unlike Yousaf so at least a chance he will be next FM
Ah, HYUFD arithmetic where a minority of Unionist msps beats a majority of pro Indy msps. Who do you think votes in an FM? Rumours of the death of the SNP greatly exaggerated in any case.
Agree with that. Starmer/Sarwar still struggling to achieve definitive tipping point. The main danger to SNP is civil war breaking out over the alliance with the Greens. That would follow if Nats get hammered at GE but the result still appears open at the moment.
Starmer/Sarwar have had some success in convincing anti EU anti immigration Red wall voters in England and vaguely progressive pro EU voters in Scotland that Labour is the party for them, but the essential contradiction in those positions has to come to a head sooner or later. Pretending to these groups that the other doesn't exist only works for so long.
The uniform bloc of angry racist red wall voters in football strips and union jack tattoos is a lazy myth. See the header: support for staying out of the EU is now scarcely higher than GB support for the Tories. That means most people planning to vote Labour are not going to be put off by a gradual shift to a more pro-EU stance.
Nor, I suspect, are all Labour-curious voters in Scotland going to be begging for immediate rejoin, anymore than they are in Labour stronghold London where the remain vote in my constituency was nearly 80% and Labour have a 30k majority.
With NI as an example of what some people can get even within the EU? And Norway also next door? A lack of failure to proceed with full reunion, still more so a more limited move to EFTA or NI type level, could become a real issue. And there is also the image. The more SKS goes all blue ...
The increase in people being on sick leave has risen with a greater profile and awareness of mental health. If you try and reduce long term sick leave then you will be also be taking on mental health, which will prove to be politically difficult, if not impossible. It would be going completely against the zeitgeist. So I think it won't happen.
It’s an easy, short route, but I curse the people who named the streets here
I have to deliver to North Street, North End, North Way, North Cote and Northfields
What dickheads came up with all those in the same postcode?
The same dick heads who named the streets in my village. We're on Main Street. With the same postcode we have 6 Streets that have "Main Street" or "Off Main Street" in their address all with numbers that are identical. Amazon drivers just chuck parcels over whatever fence that has "Main" Street in their address. It causes havoc when a call centre operator just ticks the first "Main Street" that comes up in a drop down box.
We have had issues with stuff delivered by DPD. There are various "New" villages in the countryside around Fraserburgh and all have a High Street. I think we've persuaded / berated the guy dropping for them into submission as no issues recently.
His main issue is not knowing the area at the start and using a DPD deliveries app which (wait for it) put our postcode in the wrong New village. Not that you can complain to DPD to fix the app for their driver. They don't care. Nor does patently downloading their app and marking your address do anything.
Another pretty big drop in CPI, I think the end of year rate is probably going to be ~4.5%, if oil prices fall then maybe 4%.
Core CPI looks tougher to shift with wage data endlessly rising and 2.5m people long term sick. If the government wants to fix the labour market then it needs to get serious about sickness benefits reform. Matthew Paris had it bang on a couple of weeks ago, too many people are realising that it's easy to get signed off sick for stress and opt out of working. For people aged 50-64 who have paid off mortgages it's a realistic option to live on sickness benefits plus all the other assistance you get for it like council tax reductions etc...
Once again the safety net has become a way of life for some people. This time it's the comfortably off middle classes opting out of work by saying they're too stressed. It's something the Labour will need to address on day one because it now seems that young people are not only being asked to support pensions for the old, childcare for their kids, endless student loan repayments, old age care in the NHS but now also for the lazy middle classes who are deciding not to work because they're "stressed".
Got a guy who's got signed off sick from work who worked for me up to last month.
He was basically a lazy fucker who was shy of a hard day's work unless it was easy and got sunshine blown up his arse.
We're a professional services firm not a holiday club.
So why haven't you dismissed him / managed him out for poor performance?
I've said he should be but we're pussyfooting around (not just my decision)
Comments
https://www.bt.com/help/mobile/going-abroad/costs-and-charges/how-do-i-check-the-costs-of-using-bt-mobile-abroad-
I have two children under eighteen both of whom have phone and iPad contracts in my name.
I have a BT broadband contract via EE.
I also have a contract for a friend who cannot get a contract.
Also I have a contract with o2 as I like to be dual sim.
He was basically a lazy fucker who was shy of a hard day's work unless it was easy and got sunshine blown up his arse.
We're a professional services firm not a holiday club.
Perhaps one could be made now with the catchline "dont gis us a job" where a bricklayer is in a pub and continually refuses offers of employment.
Donald Trump was indicted yesterday and today's @nytimes front page gives it a third as much space as it devoted to the infamous Hillary's Email story ... and Trump's name isn't even in the headline
https://twitter.com/jamisonfoser/status/1691569421779919087
The rentier state is now viewed as desirable by too many of them.
Likewise to many Conservatives 'trade' isn't about producing useful goods and services but being a well-connected middleman giving and receiving vast sums of government money for nobody's knows what.
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1691646209578975341
Usually blamed on a confluence of ley lines.
And it’s a bright sunny morning here, too.
john major, party conference 1991. you can't say they went out of their way to hide this stuff. Don't make what you can inherit.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/why-are-taxpayers-funding-invisible-dorries-sfcbxfws8
But seriously, 'at the expense of their employer and fellow workers' - that's all down to the employer not the benefits system.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/16/us-air-force-photos-england-second-world-war
Annoyingly, the EH/HE website has fallen over just now ...
(Yes I know, the NHS budget was protected, but check out the pathetic capital investment numbers).
Importing a workforce to wash cars and pick turnips hasn't helped either.
And the best ways to fill vacancies are higher pay, better training and capital investment.
Some of which are finally now happening.
For what it is worth my main reason for voting Leave was to better control our immigration so we didn't need such vast housebuilding destroying neighbourhoods and to prevent house prices rising even higher (so my kids can afford houses). Clearly the government has completely failed to get immigration under control. Would us being in the EU I have helped? I don't think so. In fact, I think the only way to control immigration is to deport the fake asylum seekers to somewhere they don't want to go. That would only be possible if we left the ECHR.
The only other reason for regret is that I quite like the idea of retiring to somewhere rural and warm in France. That would now be much, much harder now.
--
It's interesting to compare the status of Rejoin as a political movement now with Brexit in say ~2011.
The opinion poll support for Rejoin certainly seems to be a lot stronger for Rejoin now than Brexit then, but there's no equivalent to UKIP to threaten the electoral prospects of one of the major parties, and no tireless monomaniacal campaigner in the mould of Farage to advocate for Rejoin.
OGH mentions the Lib Dems advocating Rejoin, but they will only do so insofar as they think it helps them win votes or seats. Where they think it will be a hindrance they will soft-pedal it, or caveat the message.
This will see the Lib Dems win a lot more seats than UKIP ever did, but in terms of advancing the cause of Rejoin it will be much less effective.
Consequently I'm not currently seeing any prospect of Rejoin becoming a serious political movement. A single issue campaign needs a single issue leader. Rejoin doesn't have one.
I was amused by the photo of a bombed Old Trafford and musing that the Glazers have turned the place into more of a dump than the Luftwaffe even managed.
The damage as you call it is mythical, since it is mostly based on forecast growth in a world we no longer live in. Trade is mostly back to where it was so much ado about nothing,
It’s not because I’m a bad loser. Pre-Brexit I was pro-EU but wasn’t too concerned about joining the Euro, going in full throttle, I was happy with the status quo.
Not anymore. Too late, sadly. I wish I had an inkling of how much of a gut punch leaving would be, how much I miss my EU citizenship. How much I resent having it removed from me against my will.
It’s not about a few percentage points here and there on the economy, that some Brexiters are trying to reduce it to. Though it seems unequivocal amongst serious economists that the economic damage has been large. And will continue to be so.
It’s the fact that it was, and is, a project of the amoral, selfish, right-wing elite. Brexit they only just got over the line thanks to two – two! – campaigns that were just lies from beginning to end. All the horseshit about no-one was mad enough to countenance leaving the single market, no downsides, they need us more than we need them, all the endless garbage. All the well-funded, slick, under the radar social media campaigns, all of Cummings’ cunning, only just got Brexit over the line.
And Cameron, who only called the referendum cos he was frit of his right-wing nutters, sodded off and left us with his steaming pile of ordure. Right-wingers, high on their own supply once this narrow, vague instruction to ‘leave’ had been received from the electorate, then pushed for an ever harder Brexit, for No Deal, for Frost to ‘negotiate’ the shambles we have now.
Brexit gave the right-wing of the Tories (and the UKIP returnees) their head, they have the power, and they are running the country into the ground simply so they and their already eye-wateringly rich donors can enrich themselves. They are pillaging the country. They have screwed the economy. They are slowly strangling public services. So they can cut taxes, privatise what’s left and watch the money roll in. They don’t care about ‘normal’ people, they never did. Being in the EU stopped them, to a certain extent, but some brakes on, this pillaging. The environmental regs, stuff like that. They sold Brexit on an ocean of lies so they impoverish us all whilst they shovel ever more money to themselves.
It's a tragedy.
The right-wingers, in their symbiotic relationship with their right-wing brethren across the pond, want US levels of inequality, they want a parochial, inward-looking population that is educated only as much as is required to work in a call centre, or work in a factory. They target the hard of thinking because, just like in the US, there is quite often just enough numbers in an unholy combination of the amoral, selfish right-wing and the spiteful, equally selfish, hard of thinking.
Yes, I’m not happy that Brexit has damaged the economy. But it’s so much more than the economy. It was sold as painless, cake for everyone. It’s the cynicism that really galls me. And the way any national debate on the impact of Brexit, how none of its promises are being delivered, how all the wild promises that aren’t coming true, isn’t happening. Polls show 60% want to rejoin. Undoubtedly there is a lot of Bregret. Yet the silence continues.
I know people are referring to inclusive contracts and the prices shown are way above what plebs like me pay or need. If that is what you need fine, but I suspect @Topping is like me and just wants a contract that:
a) Gets him reception
b) Gives him free calls/texts and the data he needs
So the added cost in the EU is annoying, but not the end of the world.
But it isn't that easy to get rid of someone who is always bringing in sick notes.
And I suspect that especially applies in the public sector.
The SNP is clearly in decline and while narrowly ahead still Sarwar has the best chance of any Scottish Labour leader of becoming FM in over a decade
It’s an easy, short route, but I curse the people who named the streets here
I have to deliver to North Street, North End, North Way, North Cote and Northfields
What dickheads came up with all those in the same postcode?
Not a constituency I appreciate that any party (Lozza?) is going to die in a ditch for but I'm sure it can't be the only category example beyond "waiting a bit longer at customs".
Now the Conservatives should encourage this by aspiration, better training opportunities, lower employment taxes and affordable housing.
But I fear there will be a faction - HYUFD seems to have inclinations this way - who instead prefer aspiration through inheritance in some modern Jane Austen style society.
How the Conservatives deal with the 'higher wages versus higher house prices' debate in opposition will be interesting.
This is amazing. Not only the bridge was unsecured to be attacked by two drones from two directions, Ukrainians also had access to the cameras on the bridge.
https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1691723437050380571?s=20
We all know Ukraine did it but I do wonder what purpose is served by Ukraine revealing they did along with the fact that they could access Russia's own CCTV on the bridge.
"He was basically a lazy fucker who was shy of a hard day's work unless it was easy and got sunshine blown up his arse."
I cannot imagine what might have induced any level of employee stress here.
Instead of creating the opportunity/necessity to be signed off sick, perhaps a better management approach in the first place may have prevented it getting to that stage.
Only the LDs could really push Rejoin the EU for the whole UK
Kyiv announces liberation of Urozhaine; heavy battles raging near Robotyne and Verbove with possibly significant gains for Ukraine; elite air assault units make deep strikes in the south.
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/20597
Why is this politically relevant? Because a major landfalling hurricane in the continental US this autumn spells danger for Ukraine. Russia's new bot tactic is to astroturf public anger at spending arming Ukraine rather than saving the victims of natural disasters. We've already seen the line rehearsed after the Maui fires - initial Russian troll farm seeding which then spills into organic engagement. If there's a major hurricane then expect much more of this: "money for South Carolina, not Ukraine".
Hurricanes and their aftermath are also interesting for US domestic politics. They can cement support for the incumbent president if managed well but ruin them if managed badly (remember Bush and Katrina). Most importantly they can bring Southern governors, representatives and senators into the limelight and set them up for a run at the presidency, although given the very narrow field on both sides this time perhaps the opportunity isn't so clearcut for 2024.
As for Britain: recurving hurricanes tend to change our weather. If they linger in the central North Atlantic they can act as heat pumps bringing us high pressure and warmth. If they get entrained in the polar front jet stream they can pump up the westerlies and bring us wind and rain.
All things being equal we should expect a less active season than average (in terms of numbers) because of the forthcoming El Nino which tends to enhance vertical wind shear and tear apart the upper structure of storms, but all things are not equal. Any that do make it close to the US or into the Gulf of Mexico could be absolute monsters because SSTs and ocean heat content are at all time record levels. 33C off the coast of Florida a few days ago.
Keep an eye out here: https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/?model=gfs®ion=atl&pkg=mslp_uv850&runtime=2023081600&fh=6
Constructive dismissal is what happens when someone resigns in response to a breach of contract by their employer. Sod all to do with what you're talking about.
So a wealth transfer from those who don't work to those who do.
With care workers that is specifically a wealth transfer from the old to the young.
This will, of course, lead to opposition from those who value inheritance above all other things.
So who deserves those extra thousands ? Those who care for the sick oldies or those who will inherit from them.
That's a question that the Conservatives, and the country generally, need to discuss.
That bridge is Putin’s personal penis extension, it’s going to get blown up every time the Ukranians get the opportunity.
Meanwhile, the defenders moved a couple of km closer to the railway line from the mainland to Crimea yesterday. They’re now around 30km from Tomak, well within HIMARS range.
About half of the fall is people aged 50-64. Early retirees. About half is mental health (there is crossover between the two groups, this doesn't sum to 100%).
Most of those who have left the workforce are low skilled (so we can expect a big boost in productivity, perversely), and tend to have worked in customer facing industries.
As for it being no big deal in the grand scheme of things, that's true of almost everything. People tend to use that lofty perspective selectively to minimise the problems caused by something they favour. You're doing that here.
The key unknowns are Ukraine and OPEC, so Western governments need to keep sending military aid to the former, and pressurising the latter to keep production up.
Actually, I think they're doing that rather quickly.
New contract = 24 months tie-in vs the 1 month now, higher cost and no roaming. Why would I do that?
Week 1: Registration plates for cyclists
Week 2: Boats in the channel
Week 3: Abandon climate change strategy
Week 4: Universal Credit skivers
But the political impact is from the hurricanes that make landfall and cause damage, and it only takes one of those, as you say.
SSTs are above average across the whole of the tropical Atlantic, but particularly in the hurricane nursery off the west coast of Africa, and in the north-eastern Gulf of Mexico.
https://ghrsst-pp.metoffice.gov.uk/ostia-website/anombrowser.html
Also the National Hurricane Center at:
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/
The USAAF (US Army Air Forces) fought WW2. The present USAF (US Air Force) came into existence on 18 September 1947. My headcanon says the reorganisation was caused by the Roswell incident, but that's obviously fiction. Obviously...
So what I conclude is that many people must have voted Leave because they thought it would (i) stop immigration or (ii) deliver some sort of financial bonanza. It's done neither (in fact the opposite on both) therefore they are now pissed off. They feel conned.
If the EU project is that of differing states eventually evolving into a more federalist super state model, similar to the US or even the Russian Federation, the UKs "reentry" would be the perfect moment to make that clear. I know not all individual member states like that idea, nor do all voters within the individual states, but with a single currency and talks of increased security collaboration alongside increased collaboration likely necessary to deal with climate change and immigration, as well as threats from Russia and an increasingly unstable US, it would be beneficial to put all the cards on the table. And if the UK doesn't want to be part of that - fine. But if we do, we need to know at that point what rejoin means.
I don't think the EU really wants to have that conversation, and I don't think the UK would sign up for that - so I doubt anyone will push rejoin for a long time yet. I think the outcome of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the next decade of US political leadership will likely force the EU to react and therefore become more like a federalised state, rather than an open debate about whether that is what the individual countries want. So I don't see rejoin becoming a significant movement for at least a decade, if not longer, and by then it will be greatly overshadowed by the politics of climate catastrophe.
As far as Starmer is concerned he remains an English man from London trying to ride two horses at once, with differences over trans gender policies and the 2 children rule between himself and Sawar, and indeed Khan and himself over ULEZ
We see with the way the EU has handled Hungary over Ukraine that it is currently favouring the preservation of unanimity, rather than proceeding with a more determined core (even when they core is all the states bar one).
We can hope that Labour have this in mind, as it is consistent with the Brexit vote (not the rhetoric of it of course - but nothing can be) so required no absolute reverse ferret on 2016.
Nor, I suspect, are all Labour-curious voters in Scotland going to be begging for immediate rejoin, anymore than they are in Labour stronghold London where the remain vote in my constituency was nearly 80% and Labour have a 30k majority.
Harry Brook left out of England’s World Cup squad.
Archer not fit.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/66512824
They then have the gall to start moaning now about regretting their vote . They need to stfu and take responsibility for their idiocy and should have done their research .
Zero sympathy that also goes for the idiot farmers and fishermen who voted Leave .
His main issue is not knowing the area at the start and using a DPD deliveries app which (wait for it) put our postcode in the wrong New village. Not that you can complain to DPD to fix the app for their driver. They don't care. Nor does patently downloading their app and marking your address do anything.