I really dont understand why Hunt just doesnt get rid of the OBR. Its yet another piece of Osborne stupidity which does nothing but produce unreliable forecasts ( and has itself admitted as much )in competition with all the other unrelable forecasters. That Rachel Reeves has decided to ransom her economic policies to its erratic performance is going to be something she will regret.
No, the OBR is the only good idea that Osborne ever had. It is a check on the Treasury's tendency towards expedient forecasts and is trusted by financial markets, hence ensuring we pay less to issue debt. Did you notice what happened to Gilt yields when Truss tried to sideline it?
LOL
from memory youre a forecaster yourself. I see no advantage in having duff forecasts from the OBR rather than the Treasury. As someone said there are a range of forecasters out there and they will all be wrong. It is as simple as pick your model and cross your fingers.
All forecasts are wrong but not all forecasts are honest. The "independence" of the OBR is in many ways a fiction (unlike with the US CBO we have no formal separation of powers to give its independence real bite) but by creating some distance between the forecasters and the Treasury it has helped to make the forecasting process more trusted by the markets and I believe that has helped all of us by lowering the rates at which the government borrows. Getting rid of the OBR would be a big mistake. It is probably the only positive achievement from the last 14 years of Tory misrule.
A cleaner has been fired for eating a leftover sandwich she found in a law firm’s meeting room, it has been alleged.
Gabriela, a single mother from Ecuador, cleaned the offices of Devonshires Solicitors for two years until she was summarily sacked just before Christmas by her employer, private contractor Total Clean.
Her alleged crime was to have eaten a £1.50 tuna sandwich from Tesco that had been left over from a meeting and was due to be discarded.
The breach was so abhorrent that Devonshires, whose highest-paid member received £1.68 million in 2023, allegedly complained to Total Clean, resulting in her dismissal. A spokesperson for the firm told RollOnFriday that it did not make a "formal complaint".
According to her supporters, Gabriela appealed the decision but Total Clean refused to reinstate her on the basis that “theft is theft” and because it did not want to upset Devonshires.
Supporters also appealed to the 235-lawyer firm directly, but they said it “showed no good will and refused to support Gabriela's case”.
Around 30 people protested outside Devonshires’ office this week where they handed out leaflets titled "I ATE A LEFTOVER TUNA SANDWICH AND GOT SACKED!”
The ‘Justice for Gabriela’ campaign has said her firing directly implicated Devonshires, which was “either responsible for her sacking or complicit in it”, and that while she had submitted an employment claim, tribunals “can take years to conclude and she needs a job and an income now”.
They are a shit firm if they are eating Tesco sandwiches.
Legally not all 'theft' is theft. The jury have to conclude that the taking is 'dishonest'. This is always a matter for them. Putting milk from your friend's fridge in your tea when they have popped out and you can't ask them satisfies the meaning of 'theft' except for the 'dishonest' bit. No jury/bench in the land would convict this lady.
If property is not actually abandoned but is considered so by the defendant, there can be no conviction. The issue is whether the individual subjectively and honestly believed the property was abandoned. R v Small [1987] Crim LR 777 Court of Appeal
He has to make a choice, he can no longer ride the fence.
* Go full Truss, do the tax cuts, play to the gbnews gallery on immigration, go for socialist conservativism and make a lot of noise. * Or full Osborne/Cameron/May. Talk about debt, austerity, sober managerialism and compassionate Conservatism. Few tax cuts,
The latter suits his persona better, but his heart seems to be in the first camp. Either way continue straddling the two makes him look silly and shifty. He cannot bluff his way through like Boris. He doesn’t have the political horse power to carve a third way. He has to choose.
With Hunt basically ruling out tax cuts this morning on the back of the OBR statements he seems to have made the second choice. Which is probably good for the country, if not the Conservative party. If we are to increase a yawning deficit it really has to be for investment, not tax cuts leading to yet more consumption.
Yet he never thinks of reducing the state, which is what he should be doing. The issue isnt the country has no money, but that it is spending it unwisely.
Spending on a lot of areas was trimmed severely during the Osborne period in particular. Spending on health continues to rise as we get older, fatter and more demanding. Spending on defence needs to rise to pay for all the ammunition required by Ukraine and to modernise our forces in respect of drones. Debt interest is a major cost and is rising as the deficits accumulate. The country is not spending enough on infrastructure or on new housing.
I agree that in an ideal world the State would be spending less of our money. I also agree that we get damn poor value for the spend. But when you go through the big ticket items it is hard to see where significant money can be saved.
Health really is a disaster, if you take a step back.
We have high tax rates and large cuts to other areas of spending, yet the NHS remains a top priority for voters, there is an enormous waiting list and there are millions on health-related out-of-work benefits.
Going private is simply jumping the queue while injecting more money and resources into the sector - see dentistry. Innovations like dementia drugs, while absolutely brilliant for patients, will further drive spending in healthcare whether it's public or not.
POLITICS. Labour might be in for 10 years. The demographic profile, while historically only a minor contributor to increased health spending, is at its worst over the next 15 years as the Boomers hit their 70s and 80s. They will need to decide very quickly if the NHS is expected to absorb these extra pressures. If so... it's tax rises. Big ones.
Funding is not the problem with the NHS; we've poured massive amounts of (non-covid) money into it over the past couple years and productivity is still below where it was before.
Capital spend is part of it, but the other part is that we've imported tens of thousands of very low quality third world trained medics and nurses to replace the people we've spent tens to hundreds of thousands training. Turns out having a lot of people who struggle communicating in British English, sometimes have fraudulently obtained qualifications and are mainly using it as a route to citizenship isn't productivity enhancing!
I have, probably, had as much direct involvement with the NHS as anyone on this forum since my DVT in mid October to my pacemaker operation last week and with more interaction needed over the coming months I simply do not recognise the comment you make in the last sentence of your final paragraph
From the multiple visits to my surgery, to two emergency overnighters in A & E and admission to hospital itself, every single member of staff has been kind, caring, and whilst there were many nationalities every single one conversed and communicated with me well
The fact is that the demand far outstrips the staffs ability to meet that demand and nobody has the answer, be it the English, Welsh or Scottish NHS
Or anywhere else:
For decades, western Europe’s national healthcare systems have been widely touted as among the best in the world.
But an ageing population, more long-term illnesses, a continuing recruitment and retainment crisis plus post-Covid exhaustion have combined, this winter, to create a perfect healthcare storm that is likely to get worse before it gets better.
“All countries of the region face severe problems related to their health and care workforce,” the World Health Organization’s Europe region said in a report earlier this year, warning of potentially dire consequences without urgent government action.
In France, there are fewer doctors now than in 2012. More than 6 million people, including 600,000 with chronic illnesses, do not have a regular GP and 30% of the population does not have adequate access to health services.
On a Thursday in mid-August, the doors of a hospital's emergency department two hours west of Toronto were shut.
A note posted on the front said the ER was closed for the day. It would reopen the following morning at 08:00, but close again for the evening. Patients who needed urgent care were asked to go to nearby hospitals - a 15- to 35-minute drive away.
It was the ninth time since April that the Huron Public Healthcare Alliance - a network of four hospitals serving around 150,000 people in western Ontario - had to temporarily close or cut back hours at one of its emergency departments.
And it won't be the last, said the organisation's CEO Andrew Williams.
The reason? There aren't enough nurses to staff the ER.
"You are seeing - almost weekly - hospitals having to reduce their services," Mr Williams told the BBC.
It's a dilemma playing out at emergency departments across Canada, particularly at smaller hospitals where reduced services have become commonplace.
In the maritime province of Nova Scotia, one hospital's ER has been closed since June 2021 due to staffing shortages.
I'm pretty sure Russia won't be putting their war on hold for the rest of the month.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/4470043-white-house-hits-johnson-for-going-on-recess-without-passing-ukraine-aid/ ..House GOP leadership canceled votes for Friday, and the House will return to Washington on Feb. 28 after the President’s Day recess. Bates noted the split out of D.C. also comes days after former Rep. Tom Suozzi (D) won in a New York special election, flipping a GOP-held seat. “The American people are outraged at the damage Speaker Johnson is causing to America’s national security in the name of politics, as voters in New York proved Tuesday,” Bates said. “But instead of ending his politicization of the country’s safety, Speaker Johnson is cutting and running, sending the House on an early, undeserved vacation as he continues to strengthen Russia’s murderous war effort and the Iranian regime at the expense of American national security, U.S. manufacturing jobs, and our closest alliances,” he added...
Perhaps the Dems shouldn't have got rid of Kevin McCarthy.
Having him replaced with a MAGA puppet might help the Dems in the 2024 elections but it was also going to make governing harder until then.
If it was all the Dems doing they would be able to replace Johnson with someone more amenable. They can't, because it isn't.
Anyway, important thing is that the chance of the House voting more money for Ukraine is zero. Not much point worrying about Trump - the pro-Putin shills in the GOP are already in charge.
Europe desperately needs to accept this reality and react appropriately.
Its not all the Dems doing.
But a large part of it is.
Accepting chaos in the House when they control the White House and Senate wasn't conducive to passing laws or providing funding for anything.
Yet the Dems were willing to have a non-functioning House for a year if it meant the GOP looked bad.
I just don't see how the Dems could have saved McCarthy. If he'd won a vote for Speaker only because of receiving Democrat support then he'd be finished. It would be the conclusive proof of everything the MAGA-GOP have always said about the "moderates" being Republicans In Name Only.
It's a complete fantasy to imagine that a coalition between the Democrats and moderate Republicans could last five seconds. The moderate Republicans don't want it, because they're terrified of the consequences.
McCarthy was elected on a single promise - to end rollover spending bills and replace them with departmental budgets subject to scrutiny. When, after a year of provaocation, he proposed yet another rollover spending bill, what were they supposed to with him?
A cleaner has been fired for eating a leftover sandwich she found in a law firm’s meeting room, it has been alleged.
Gabriela, a single mother from Ecuador, cleaned the offices of Devonshires Solicitors for two years until she was summarily sacked just before Christmas by her employer, private contractor Total Clean.
Her alleged crime was to have eaten a £1.50 tuna sandwich from Tesco that had been left over from a meeting and was due to be discarded.
The breach was so abhorrent that Devonshires, whose highest-paid member received £1.68 million in 2023, allegedly complained to Total Clean, resulting in her dismissal. A spokesperson for the firm told RollOnFriday that it did not make a "formal complaint".
According to her supporters, Gabriela appealed the decision but Total Clean refused to reinstate her on the basis that “theft is theft” and because it did not want to upset Devonshires.
Supporters also appealed to the 235-lawyer firm directly, but they said it “showed no good will and refused to support Gabriela's case”.
Around 30 people protested outside Devonshires’ office this week where they handed out leaflets titled "I ATE A LEFTOVER TUNA SANDWICH AND GOT SACKED!”
The ‘Justice for Gabriela’ campaign has said her firing directly implicated Devonshires, which was “either responsible for her sacking or complicit in it”, and that while she had submitted an employment claim, tribunals “can take years to conclude and she needs a job and an income now”.
He has to make a choice, he can no longer ride the fence.
* Go full Truss, do the tax cuts, play to the gbnews gallery on immigration, go for socialist conservativism and make a lot of noise. * Or full Osborne/Cameron/May. Talk about debt, austerity, sober managerialism and compassionate Conservatism. Few tax cuts,
The latter suits his persona better, but his heart seems to be in the first camp. Either way continue straddling the two makes him look silly and shifty. He cannot bluff his way through like Boris. He doesn’t have the political horse power to carve a third way. He has to choose.
With Hunt basically ruling out tax cuts this morning on the back of the OBR statements he seems to have made the second choice. Which is probably good for the country, if not the Conservative party. If we are to increase a yawning deficit it really has to be for investment, not tax cuts leading to yet more consumption.
Yet he never thinks of reducing the state, which is what he should be doing. The issue isnt the country has no money, but that it is spending it unwisely.
Spending on a lot of areas was trimmed severely during the Osborne period in particular. Spending on health continues to rise as we get older, fatter and more demanding. Spending on defence needs to rise to pay for all the ammunition required by Ukraine and to modernise our forces in respect of drones. Debt interest is a major cost and is rising as the deficits accumulate. The country is not spending enough on infrastructure or on new housing.
I agree that in an ideal world the State would be spending less of our money. I also agree that we get damn poor value for the spend. But when you go through the big ticket items it is hard to see where significant money can be saved.
Health really is a disaster, if you take a step back.
We have high tax rates and large cuts to other areas of spending, yet the NHS remains a top priority for voters, there is an enormous waiting list and there are millions on health-related out-of-work benefits.
Going private is simply jumping the queue while injecting more money and resources into the sector - see dentistry. Innovations like dementia drugs, while absolutely brilliant for patients, will further drive spending in healthcare whether it's public or not.
POLITICS. Labour might be in for 10 years. The demographic profile, while historically only a minor contributor to increased health spending, is at its worst over the next 15 years as the Boomers hit their 70s and 80s. They will need to decide very quickly if the NHS is expected to absorb these extra pressures. If so... it's tax rises. Big ones.
Funding is not the problem with the NHS; we've poured massive amounts of (non-covid) money into it over the past couple years and productivity is still below where it was before.
Capital spend is part of it, but the other part is that we've imported tens of thousands of very low quality third world trained medics and nurses to replace the people we've spent tens to hundreds of thousands training. Turns out having a lot of people who struggle communicating in British English, sometimes have fraudulently obtained qualifications and are mainly using it as a route to citizenship isn't productivity enhancing!
I have, probably, had as much direct involvement with the NHS as anyone on this forum since my DVT in mid October to my pacemaker operation last week and with more interaction needed over the coming months I simply do not recognise the comment you make in the last sentence of your final paragraph
From the multiple visits to my surgery, to two emergency overnighters in A & E and admission to hospital itself, every single member of staff has been kind, caring, and whilst there were many nationalities every single one conversed and communicated with me well
The fact is that the demand far outstrips the staffs ability to meet that demand and nobody has the answer, be it the English, Welsh or Scottish NHS
I'm glad you have had such a good experience, unfortunately my experience is significantly different. If, as you say there seems to be little to no loss in importing labour for health and social care, do you support closing our (very expensive) domestic training systems them?
Prompt: “Beautiful, snowy Tokyo city is bustling. The camera moves through the bustling city street, following several people enjoying the beautiful snowy weather and shopping at nearby stalls. Gorgeous sakura petals are flying through the wind along with snowflakes.”"
That's remarkable. It's still not quite right, the walk is a little stiff, there are still traces of uncanny valley, but when you remember the deeply weird, obviously AI videos of a year ago...
The technology is still accelerating
They are maybe 3-5 years from being able to create entire movies, all AI, with AI scripts and AI music
So those Hollywood strikes might have been for nothing
...and today's alternative thread is AI.
Good morning.
Isn't it a tiny bit more interesting than inevitable Tory defeats in fucked-up old Britain?
At least it is something positive. Indeed, I would say, mindblowingly good. Near-miraculous
Not great if you work or TV or movies, tho, but still
I'm pretty sure Russia won't be putting their war on hold for the rest of the month.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/4470043-white-house-hits-johnson-for-going-on-recess-without-passing-ukraine-aid/ ..House GOP leadership canceled votes for Friday, and the House will return to Washington on Feb. 28 after the President’s Day recess. Bates noted the split out of D.C. also comes days after former Rep. Tom Suozzi (D) won in a New York special election, flipping a GOP-held seat. “The American people are outraged at the damage Speaker Johnson is causing to America’s national security in the name of politics, as voters in New York proved Tuesday,” Bates said. “But instead of ending his politicization of the country’s safety, Speaker Johnson is cutting and running, sending the House on an early, undeserved vacation as he continues to strengthen Russia’s murderous war effort and the Iranian regime at the expense of American national security, U.S. manufacturing jobs, and our closest alliances,” he added...
Perhaps the Dems shouldn't have got rid of Kevin McCarthy.
Having him replaced with a MAGA puppet might help the Dems in the 2024 elections but it was also going to make governing harder until then.
If it was all the Dems doing they would be able to replace Johnson with someone more amenable. They can't, because it isn't.
Anyway, important thing is that the chance of the House voting more money for Ukraine is zero. Not much point worrying about Trump - the pro-Putin shills in the GOP are already in charge.
Europe desperately needs to accept this reality and react appropriately.
Its not all the Dems doing.
But a large part of it is.
Accepting chaos in the House when they control the White House and Senate wasn't conducive to passing laws or providing funding for anything.
Yet the Dems were willing to have a non-functioning House for a year if it meant the GOP looked bad.
I just don't see how the Dems could have saved McCarthy. If he'd won a vote for Speaker only because of receiving Democrat support then he'd be finished. It would be the conclusive proof of everything the MAGA-GOP have always said about the "moderates" being Republicans In Name Only.
It's a complete fantasy to imagine that a coalition between the Democrats and moderate Republicans could last five seconds. The moderate Republicans don't want it, because they're terrified of the consequences.
McCarthy was elected on a single promise - to end rollover spending bills and replace them with departmental budgets subject to scrutiny. When, after a year of provaocation, he proposed yet another rollover spending bill, what were they supposed to with him?
If the GOP had wanted to replace McCarthy with someone who wasn't a pro-Putin shill, but would have another go at fixing the budget scrutiny process, then they could have done that.
I'm pretty sure Russia won't be putting their war on hold for the rest of the month.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/4470043-white-house-hits-johnson-for-going-on-recess-without-passing-ukraine-aid/ ..House GOP leadership canceled votes for Friday, and the House will return to Washington on Feb. 28 after the President’s Day recess. Bates noted the split out of D.C. also comes days after former Rep. Tom Suozzi (D) won in a New York special election, flipping a GOP-held seat. “The American people are outraged at the damage Speaker Johnson is causing to America’s national security in the name of politics, as voters in New York proved Tuesday,” Bates said. “But instead of ending his politicization of the country’s safety, Speaker Johnson is cutting and running, sending the House on an early, undeserved vacation as he continues to strengthen Russia’s murderous war effort and the Iranian regime at the expense of American national security, U.S. manufacturing jobs, and our closest alliances,” he added...
Perhaps the Dems shouldn't have got rid of Kevin McCarthy.
Having him replaced with a MAGA puppet might help the Dems in the 2024 elections but it was also going to make governing harder until then.
If it was all the Dems doing they would be able to replace Johnson with someone more amenable. They can't, because it isn't.
Anyway, important thing is that the chance of the House voting more money for Ukraine is zero. Not much point worrying about Trump - the pro-Putin shills in the GOP are already in charge.
Europe desperately needs to accept this reality and react appropriately.
If even just a quarter of House Republicans voted with the vast majority of House Democrats for more funds for Ukraine it would pass
It’s massively infuriating that the US discussions about Ukraine aid are mostly based on money, when the actual money involved is orders of magnitude different from the money being spent.
A $1m missile from the 1980s isn’t worth $5m now, it’s worth almost nothing. This lack of honesty from the administration allows opponents to compare Ukraine aid with domestic spending, which would actually be spending real money.
The administration has repeatedly made that point. The law requires that aid be accounted for in the current manner. If you want to change that, you have to go through Congress.
Blame the people who are preventing aid, not those who want to supply it.
I didn't know Howling Laud Hope has been leader of OMRLP for 25 years.
Food for thought in a country in dire need of strong and stable leadership.
He used to be a pub landlord in my local, 20 years ago. Lovely bloke, a wonderful British eccentric that makes politics fun. IIRC he now has the record for number of deposits lost, taking over from his predecessor the late Screaming Lord Sutch.
A cleaner has been fired for eating a leftover sandwich she found in a law firm’s meeting room, it has been alleged.
Gabriela, a single mother from Ecuador, cleaned the offices of Devonshires Solicitors for two years until she was summarily sacked just before Christmas by her employer, private contractor Total Clean.
Her alleged crime was to have eaten a £1.50 tuna sandwich from Tesco that had been left over from a meeting and was due to be discarded.
The breach was so abhorrent that Devonshires, whose highest-paid member received £1.68 million in 2023, allegedly complained to Total Clean, resulting in her dismissal. A spokesperson for the firm told RollOnFriday that it did not make a "formal complaint".
According to her supporters, Gabriela appealed the decision but Total Clean refused to reinstate her on the basis that “theft is theft” and because it did not want to upset Devonshires.
Supporters also appealed to the 235-lawyer firm directly, but they said it “showed no good will and refused to support Gabriela's case”.
Around 30 people protested outside Devonshires’ office this week where they handed out leaflets titled "I ATE A LEFTOVER TUNA SANDWICH AND GOT SACKED!”
The ‘Justice for Gabriela’ campaign has said her firing directly implicated Devonshires, which was “either responsible for her sacking or complicit in it”, and that while she had submitted an employment claim, tribunals “can take years to conclude and she needs a job and an income now”.
A cleaner has been fired for eating a leftover sandwich she found in a law firm’s meeting room, it has been alleged.
Gabriela, a single mother from Ecuador, cleaned the offices of Devonshires Solicitors for two years until she was summarily sacked just before Christmas by her employer, private contractor Total Clean.
Her alleged crime was to have eaten a £1.50 tuna sandwich from Tesco that had been left over from a meeting and was due to be discarded.
The breach was so abhorrent that Devonshires, whose highest-paid member received £1.68 million in 2023, allegedly complained to Total Clean, resulting in her dismissal. A spokesperson for the firm told RollOnFriday that it did not make a "formal complaint".
According to her supporters, Gabriela appealed the decision but Total Clean refused to reinstate her on the basis that “theft is theft” and because it did not want to upset Devonshires.
Supporters also appealed to the 235-lawyer firm directly, but they said it “showed no good will and refused to support Gabriela's case”.
Around 30 people protested outside Devonshires’ office this week where they handed out leaflets titled "I ATE A LEFTOVER TUNA SANDWICH AND GOT SACKED!”
The ‘Justice for Gabriela’ campaign has said her firing directly implicated Devonshires, which was “either responsible for her sacking or complicit in it”, and that while she had submitted an employment claim, tribunals “can take years to conclude and she needs a job and an income now”.
They are a shit firm if they are eating Tesco sandwiches.
As ever with these cases, it is the details LEFT OUT which tell a distinctly different story
eg the Telegraph is reporting that the sandwich in question - which she stole (and she does not deny this outright theft) - also contained four slices of cucumber. So it wasn't just some "leftover tuna sandwich"
The wnining of the Left much always be seen in context. They lie, lie and lie again. Always get the full facts
A better reply yet (from RollonFriday via X):
"If the cleaner entered the meeting room just as the meeting was ending, launched herself over the table, grabbed the sandwich whilst proclaiming "mmm, tuna!" then proceeded to eat it in two bites and throw the crusts at a client, I think she might've deserved the sack here."
The Tories, by and large, are resigned to a loss. They know they are too tired and divided to enact policies, and accept its time for opposition.
That's why even many of the efforts to fight back are lukewarm or anaemic. As nasty as the campaign might get, you can tell for most of them their hearts aren't in it.
It's why they are spiralling and getting worse, as even mitigating the scale of the coming defeat doesn't seem to motivate them.
He has to make a choice, he can no longer ride the fence.
* Go full Truss, do the tax cuts, play to the gbnews gallery on immigration, go for socialist conservativism and make a lot of noise. * Or full Osborne/Cameron/May. Talk about debt, austerity, sober managerialism and compassionate Conservatism. Few tax cuts,
The latter suits his persona better, but his heart seems to be in the first camp. Either way continue straddling the two makes him look silly and shifty. He cannot bluff his way through like Boris. He doesn’t have the political horse power to carve a third way. He has to choose.
With Hunt basically ruling out tax cuts this morning on the back of the OBR statements he seems to have made the second choice. Which is probably good for the country, if not the Conservative party. If we are to increase a yawning deficit it really has to be for investment, not tax cuts leading to yet more consumption.
Yet he never thinks of reducing the state, which is what he should be doing. The issue isnt the country has no money, but that it is spending it unwisely.
Spending on a lot of areas was trimmed severely during the Osborne period in particular. Spending on health continues to rise as we get older, fatter and more demanding. Spending on defence needs to rise to pay for all the ammunition required by Ukraine and to modernise our forces in respect of drones. Debt interest is a major cost and is rising as the deficits accumulate. The country is not spending enough on infrastructure or on new housing.
I agree that in an ideal world the State would be spending less of our money. I also agree that we get damn poor value for the spend. But when you go through the big ticket items it is hard to see where significant money can be saved.
Health really is a disaster, if you take a step back.
We have high tax rates and large cuts to other areas of spending, yet the NHS remains a top priority for voters, there is an enormous waiting list and there are millions on health-related out-of-work benefits.
Going private is simply jumping the queue while injecting more money and resources into the sector - see dentistry. Innovations like dementia drugs, while absolutely brilliant for patients, will further drive spending in healthcare whether it's public or not.
POLITICS. Labour might be in for 10 years. The demographic profile, while historically only a minor contributor to increased health spending, is at its worst over the next 15 years as the Boomers hit their 70s and 80s. They will need to decide very quickly if the NHS is expected to absorb these extra pressures. If so... it's tax rises. Big ones.
Funding is not the problem with the NHS; we've poured massive amounts of (non-covid) money into it over the past couple years and productivity is still below where it was before.
Capital spend is part of it, but the other part is that we've imported tens of thousands of very low quality third world trained medics and nurses to replace the people we've spent tens to hundreds of thousands training. Turns out having a lot of people who struggle communicating in British English, sometimes have fraudulently obtained qualifications and are mainly using it as a route to citizenship isn't productivity enhancing!
I have, probably, had as much direct involvement with the NHS as anyone on this forum since my DVT in mid October to my pacemaker operation last week and with more interaction needed over the coming months I simply do not recognise the comment you make in the last sentence of your final paragraph
From the multiple visits to my surgery, to two emergency overnighters in A & E and admission to hospital itself, every single member of staff has been kind, caring, and whilst there were many nationalities every single one conversed and communicated with me well
The fact is that the demand far outstrips the staffs ability to meet that demand and nobody has the answer, be it the English, Welsh or Scottish NHS
Yes, it is nonsense.
Immigrant medical staff have to pass both a medical exam and an English language exam, including colloquial language in order to get registration. It typically takes six months or a year to do so.
I’m not buying the Reform success story with these two by-elections.
Brexit / UKIP didn’t stand in Kingswood in 2019 or 2017 but UKIP got 14.8% at the 2015 GE while Labour only managed 28%.
In Wellingborough UKIP did stand in 2017 getting 3.4% but by then they were a spent force. In 2015 they got a whopping 19.6%.
UKIP nationally scored 12.6% in 2015, 2.2% lower than Kingswood and 7% lower than Wellingborough. So all things being equal and ignoring by-election effects you could translate these by-election results as meaning Refuk are well below 10% nationally.
Then add on the fact UKIP and other minor parties always do better in by-elections than GEs and I think if I were Tice I would be pretty dissatisfied with these results.
Reform nearly at UKIP 2015 levels both in these by elections and in national polls, most of which have them a clear 3rd and at or over 10%, is clearly very good news for Tice.
Not only are they now ahead of the LDs and Greens in most polls but on last night's by elections when actual votes are cast too. The better Reform do, the more pressure they put on the Tories to shift further right too either before or certainly after the election if a heavy defeat
Both elections suggest Reform are performing significantly worse than most national polls would suggest.
They’re doing OK, certainly better than a few years ago, but their national polling is wrong.
I’m pretty sure their vote last night was also partly at the expense of Labour votes.
Green was probably the biggest disappointment, especially in Kingswood. Lib Dem’s less so because their Faustian pact is to get squeezed in Labour targets in exchange for wringing Labour dry in their own targets.
Yes, but both of those seats have had higher than average UKIP etc. votes previously, and it's a by-election where you'd expect an essentially protest party to do better. The Reform results certainly do suggest that the party has been noticed by a significant minority of voters, but with UKIP having polled nearly 20% in Wellingborough before, despite Bone being an anti-EU nutter himself, getting 13% in a by-election doesn't (yet) support some of the higher poll ratings they have been getting.
And in both cases - the polls, and the by-elections, there are probably some right-wing Tories giving 'Reform' as their protest, hoping to pull their party off to the extreme while still intending to vote Tory come the GE. As the party responds it is likely to lose as many sensible voters as it gains from the margins.
A cleaner has been fired for eating a leftover sandwich she found in a law firm’s meeting room, it has been alleged.
Gabriela, a single mother from Ecuador, cleaned the offices of Devonshires Solicitors for two years until she was summarily sacked just before Christmas by her employer, private contractor Total Clean.
Her alleged crime was to have eaten a £1.50 tuna sandwich from Tesco that had been left over from a meeting and was due to be discarded.
The breach was so abhorrent that Devonshires, whose highest-paid member received £1.68 million in 2023, allegedly complained to Total Clean, resulting in her dismissal. A spokesperson for the firm told RollOnFriday that it did not make a "formal complaint".
According to her supporters, Gabriela appealed the decision but Total Clean refused to reinstate her on the basis that “theft is theft” and because it did not want to upset Devonshires.
Supporters also appealed to the 235-lawyer firm directly, but they said it “showed no good will and refused to support Gabriela's case”.
Around 30 people protested outside Devonshires’ office this week where they handed out leaflets titled "I ATE A LEFTOVER TUNA SANDWICH AND GOT SACKED!”
The ‘Justice for Gabriela’ campaign has said her firing directly implicated Devonshires, which was “either responsible for her sacking or complicit in it”, and that while she had submitted an employment claim, tribunals “can take years to conclude and she needs a job and an income now”.
It's over for the Tories. Absolutely over. We didn't do what we said we'd do and did the things we said we wouldn't. The longer Sunak delays the election date the angrier the electorate are going to get. https://twitter.com/montie/status/1758404316631531751
I'm pretty sure Russia won't be putting their war on hold for the rest of the month.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/4470043-white-house-hits-johnson-for-going-on-recess-without-passing-ukraine-aid/ ..House GOP leadership canceled votes for Friday, and the House will return to Washington on Feb. 28 after the President’s Day recess. Bates noted the split out of D.C. also comes days after former Rep. Tom Suozzi (D) won in a New York special election, flipping a GOP-held seat. “The American people are outraged at the damage Speaker Johnson is causing to America’s national security in the name of politics, as voters in New York proved Tuesday,” Bates said. “But instead of ending his politicization of the country’s safety, Speaker Johnson is cutting and running, sending the House on an early, undeserved vacation as he continues to strengthen Russia’s murderous war effort and the Iranian regime at the expense of American national security, U.S. manufacturing jobs, and our closest alliances,” he added...
Perhaps the Dems shouldn't have got rid of Kevin McCarthy.
Having him replaced with a MAGA puppet might help the Dems in the 2024 elections but it was also going to make governing harder until then.
If it was all the Dems doing they would be able to replace Johnson with someone more amenable. They can't, because it isn't.
Anyway, important thing is that the chance of the House voting more money for Ukraine is zero. Not much point worrying about Trump - the pro-Putin shills in the GOP are already in charge.
Europe desperately needs to accept this reality and react appropriately.
Its not all the Dems doing.
But a large part of it is.
Accepting chaos in the House when they control the White House and Senate wasn't conducive to passing laws or providing funding for anything.
Yet the Dems were willing to have a non-functioning House for a year if it meant the GOP looked bad.
I just don't see how the Dems could have saved McCarthy. If he'd won a vote for Speaker only because of receiving Democrat support then he'd be finished. It would be the conclusive proof of everything the MAGA-GOP have always said about the "moderates" being Republicans In Name Only.
It's a complete fantasy to imagine that a coalition between the Democrats and moderate Republicans could last five seconds. The moderate Republicans don't want it, because they're terrified of the consequences.
If the Dems had abstained McCarthy would have won by around 210-10.
But the Dems preferred to vote with Matt Gaetz to bring down McCarthy.
Now they have to deal with the consequences of a House which wont pass anything.
Its what they chose and what they knew was likely to happen when they made that choice.
re the vote yday - the difficulty is that the Cons are full of dicks who will say well let's tack right here go all guns blazing (perhaps literally) on Rwanda, stop other immigrants, put out the "right" message and we'll get those Reformers back on board.
Alternatively if you disliked the Cons (who doesn't) and wanted to protest, but were on the right, you might just stick your cross in the Reform box. At a GE, as we all know, however, are you really going to enable SKS to become PM? Perhaps not.
I'm pretty sure Russia won't be putting their war on hold for the rest of the month.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/4470043-white-house-hits-johnson-for-going-on-recess-without-passing-ukraine-aid/ ..House GOP leadership canceled votes for Friday, and the House will return to Washington on Feb. 28 after the President’s Day recess. Bates noted the split out of D.C. also comes days after former Rep. Tom Suozzi (D) won in a New York special election, flipping a GOP-held seat. “The American people are outraged at the damage Speaker Johnson is causing to America’s national security in the name of politics, as voters in New York proved Tuesday,” Bates said. “But instead of ending his politicization of the country’s safety, Speaker Johnson is cutting and running, sending the House on an early, undeserved vacation as he continues to strengthen Russia’s murderous war effort and the Iranian regime at the expense of American national security, U.S. manufacturing jobs, and our closest alliances,” he added...
Perhaps the Dems shouldn't have got rid of Kevin McCarthy.
Having him replaced with a MAGA puppet might help the Dems in the 2024 elections but it was also going to make governing harder until then.
If it was all the Dems doing they would be able to replace Johnson with someone more amenable. They can't, because it isn't.
Anyway, important thing is that the chance of the House voting more money for Ukraine is zero. Not much point worrying about Trump - the pro-Putin shills in the GOP are already in charge.
Europe desperately needs to accept this reality and react appropriately.
If even just a quarter of House Republicans voted with the vast majority of House Democrats for more funds for Ukraine it would pass
It’s massively infuriating that the US discussions about Ukraine aid are mostly based on money, when the actual money involved is orders of magnitude different from the money being spent.
A $1m missile from the 1980s isn’t worth $5m now, it’s worth almost nothing. This lack of honesty from the administration allows opponents to compare Ukraine aid with domestic spending, which would actually be spending real money.
The administration has repeatedly made that point. The law requires that aid be accounted for in the current manner. If you want to change that, you have to go through Congress.
Blame the people who are preventing aid, not those who want to supply it.
Link to “the administration has repeatedly made that point”?
I’m listening to Joe Rogan, who’s continually asking where $150bn of aid might go to American commutinites rather than to Ukraine. No-one is challenging this narrative.
A cleaner has been fired for eating a leftover sandwich she found in a law firm’s meeting room, it has been alleged.
Gabriela, a single mother from Ecuador, cleaned the offices of Devonshires Solicitors for two years until she was summarily sacked just before Christmas by her employer, private contractor Total Clean.
Her alleged crime was to have eaten a £1.50 tuna sandwich from Tesco that had been left over from a meeting and was due to be discarded.
The breach was so abhorrent that Devonshires, whose highest-paid member received £1.68 million in 2023, allegedly complained to Total Clean, resulting in her dismissal. A spokesperson for the firm told RollOnFriday that it did not make a "formal complaint".
According to her supporters, Gabriela appealed the decision but Total Clean refused to reinstate her on the basis that “theft is theft” and because it did not want to upset Devonshires.
Supporters also appealed to the 235-lawyer firm directly, but they said it “showed no good will and refused to support Gabriela's case”.
Around 30 people protested outside Devonshires’ office this week where they handed out leaflets titled "I ATE A LEFTOVER TUNA SANDWICH AND GOT SACKED!”
The ‘Justice for Gabriela’ campaign has said her firing directly implicated Devonshires, which was “either responsible for her sacking or complicit in it”, and that while she had submitted an employment claim, tribunals “can take years to conclude and she needs a job and an income now”.
They are a shit firm if they are eating Tesco sandwiches.
Doesn't the evidence suggest they are not eating Tesco sandwiches? If they had eaten the Tesco sandwich then the opportunity for this heinous crime would have been removed.
The purchaser of the Tesco sandwich must surely be fingered as an accomplice here.
A cleaner has been fired for eating a leftover sandwich she found in a law firm’s meeting room, it has been alleged.
Gabriela, a single mother from Ecuador, cleaned the offices of Devonshires Solicitors for two years until she was summarily sacked just before Christmas by her employer, private contractor Total Clean.
Her alleged crime was to have eaten a £1.50 tuna sandwich from Tesco that had been left over from a meeting and was due to be discarded.
The breach was so abhorrent that Devonshires, whose highest-paid member received £1.68 million in 2023, allegedly complained to Total Clean, resulting in her dismissal. A spokesperson for the firm told RollOnFriday that it did not make a "formal complaint".
According to her supporters, Gabriela appealed the decision but Total Clean refused to reinstate her on the basis that “theft is theft” and because it did not want to upset Devonshires.
Supporters also appealed to the 235-lawyer firm directly, but they said it “showed no good will and refused to support Gabriela's case”.
Around 30 people protested outside Devonshires’ office this week where they handed out leaflets titled "I ATE A LEFTOVER TUNA SANDWICH AND GOT SACKED!”
The ‘Justice for Gabriela’ campaign has said her firing directly implicated Devonshires, which was “either responsible for her sacking or complicit in it”, and that while she had submitted an employment claim, tribunals “can take years to conclude and she needs a job and an income now”.
They are a shit firm if they are eating Tesco sandwiches.
This story manages to encapsulate nearly everything wrong with modern Britain. Exploited immigrant labour, arrogant rich people, bad food and all wrapped up in a Social Media lynch mob.
Isn't the problem with "why doesn't Rishi use his remaining months to do something he believes in" that he doesn't believe in anything?
I think that's unfair. Certainly some people will be motivated by nothing other than personal aggrandisement, and be ready to drop any and all political pledges previously made in their single-minded pursuit for power, but I try to give people the benefit of the doubt , and perhaps there were things that motivated a young Sunak to give his time to politics.
I think it's extremely corrosive for politics to believe that all politicians are only self-interested, and have no public-spirited motivation at all. That sort of cynicism is not all that many steps away from Trumpism, really. I think it's necessary for both sides in politics to be motivated by their view of the public good, and to acknowledge that the other side are similarly motivated, if we're to keep democracy functioning.
I think most politicians want to do good things and even have a basic sense of what that might look like policy wise, even as only complete weirdos and those divorced from reality are experts at truly developed ideologies, which only work on paper.
But the intractability of the country's problems, which it is only politically beneficial to acknowledge in opposition (and only partly so then), the practical limitations on options for them, external matters beyond their control, obsession with instant results, lack of political reward for forward thinking, and the toxic morass of our political culture, moulds and shapes good hearted people.
It drags them down, dispirits them, until you are left with people trying their best, but overwhelmingly focused on internal party politics and media positioning, with little time for anything else.
And why not? In a few days I make the first payment of Liz Truss Tax on my mortgage. My local MP was a massive Lizaster supporter, so its his tax as well as hers.
A cleaner has been fired for eating a leftover sandwich she found in a law firm’s meeting room, it has been alleged.
Gabriela, a single mother from Ecuador, cleaned the offices of Devonshires Solicitors for two years until she was summarily sacked just before Christmas by her employer, private contractor Total Clean.
Her alleged crime was to have eaten a £1.50 tuna sandwich from Tesco that had been left over from a meeting and was due to be discarded.
The breach was so abhorrent that Devonshires, whose highest-paid member received £1.68 million in 2023, allegedly complained to Total Clean, resulting in her dismissal. A spokesperson for the firm told RollOnFriday that it did not make a "formal complaint".
According to her supporters, Gabriela appealed the decision but Total Clean refused to reinstate her on the basis that “theft is theft” and because it did not want to upset Devonshires.
Supporters also appealed to the 235-lawyer firm directly, but they said it “showed no good will and refused to support Gabriela's case”.
Around 30 people protested outside Devonshires’ office this week where they handed out leaflets titled "I ATE A LEFTOVER TUNA SANDWICH AND GOT SACKED!”
The ‘Justice for Gabriela’ campaign has said her firing directly implicated Devonshires, which was “either responsible for her sacking or complicit in it”, and that while she had submitted an employment claim, tribunals “can take years to conclude and she needs a job and an income now”.
He has to make a choice, he can no longer ride the fence.
* Go full Truss, do the tax cuts, play to the gbnews gallery on immigration, go for socialist conservativism and make a lot of noise. * Or full Osborne/Cameron/May. Talk about debt, austerity, sober managerialism and compassionate Conservatism. Few tax cuts,
The latter suits his persona better, but his heart seems to be in the first camp. Either way continue straddling the two makes him look silly and shifty. He cannot bluff his way through like Boris. He doesn’t have the political horse power to carve a third way. He has to choose.
With Hunt basically ruling out tax cuts this morning on the back of the OBR statements he seems to have made the second choice. Which is probably good for the country, if not the Conservative party. If we are to increase a yawning deficit it really has to be for investment, not tax cuts leading to yet more consumption.
Yet he never thinks of reducing the state, which is what he should be doing. The issue isnt the country has no money, but that it is spending it unwisely.
Spending on a lot of areas was trimmed severely during the Osborne period in particular. Spending on health continues to rise as we get older, fatter and more demanding. Spending on defence needs to rise to pay for all the ammunition required by Ukraine and to modernise our forces in respect of drones. Debt interest is a major cost and is rising as the deficits accumulate. The country is not spending enough on infrastructure or on new housing.
I agree that in an ideal world the State would be spending less of our money. I also agree that we get damn poor value for the spend. But when you go through the big ticket items it is hard to see where significant money can be saved.
Health really is a disaster, if you take a step back.
We have high tax rates and large cuts to other areas of spending, yet the NHS remains a top priority for voters, there is an enormous waiting list and there are millions on health-related out-of-work benefits.
Going private is simply jumping the queue while injecting more money and resources into the sector - see dentistry. Innovations like dementia drugs, while absolutely brilliant for patients, will further drive spending in healthcare whether it's public or not.
POLITICS. Labour might be in for 10 years. The demographic profile, while historically only a minor contributor to increased health spending, is at its worst over the next 15 years as the Boomers hit their 70s and 80s. They will need to decide very quickly if the NHS is expected to absorb these extra pressures. If so... it's tax rises. Big ones.
Funding is not the problem with the NHS; we've poured massive amounts of (non-covid) money into it over the past couple years and productivity is still below where it was before.
Capital spend is part of it, but the other part is that we've imported tens of thousands of very low quality third world trained medics and nurses to replace the people we've spent tens to hundreds of thousands training. Turns out having a lot of people who struggle communicating in British English, sometimes have fraudulently obtained qualifications and are mainly using it as a route to citizenship isn't productivity enhancing!
I have, probably, had as much direct involvement with the NHS as anyone on this forum since my DVT in mid October to my pacemaker operation last week and with more interaction needed over the coming months I simply do not recognise the comment you make in the last sentence of your final paragraph
From the multiple visits to my surgery, to two emergency overnighters in A & E and admission to hospital itself, every single member of staff has been kind, caring, and whilst there were many nationalities every single one conversed and communicated with me well
The fact is that the demand far outstrips the staffs ability to meet that demand and nobody has the answer, be it the English, Welsh or Scottish NHS
Or anywhere else:
For decades, western Europe’s national healthcare systems have been widely touted as among the best in the world.
But an ageing population, more long-term illnesses, a continuing recruitment and retainment crisis plus post-Covid exhaustion have combined, this winter, to create a perfect healthcare storm that is likely to get worse before it gets better.
“All countries of the region face severe problems related to their health and care workforce,” the World Health Organization’s Europe region said in a report earlier this year, warning of potentially dire consequences without urgent government action.
In France, there are fewer doctors now than in 2012. More than 6 million people, including 600,000 with chronic illnesses, do not have a regular GP and 30% of the population does not have adequate access to health services.
On a Thursday in mid-August, the doors of a hospital's emergency department two hours west of Toronto were shut.
A note posted on the front said the ER was closed for the day. It would reopen the following morning at 08:00, but close again for the evening. Patients who needed urgent care were asked to go to nearby hospitals - a 15- to 35-minute drive away.
It was the ninth time since April that the Huron Public Healthcare Alliance - a network of four hospitals serving around 150,000 people in western Ontario - had to temporarily close or cut back hours at one of its emergency departments.
And it won't be the last, said the organisation's CEO Andrew Williams.
The reason? There aren't enough nurses to staff the ER.
"You are seeing - almost weekly - hospitals having to reduce their services," Mr Williams told the BBC.
It's a dilemma playing out at emergency departments across Canada, particularly at smaller hospitals where reduced services have become commonplace.
In the maritime province of Nova Scotia, one hospital's ER has been closed since June 2021 due to staffing shortages.
re the vote yday - the difficulty is that the Cons are full of dicks who will say well let's tack right here go all guns blazing (perhaps literally) on Rwanda, stop other immigrants, put out the "right" message and we'll get those Reformers back on board.
Alternatively if you disliked the Cons (who doesn't) and wanted to protest, but were on the right, you might just stick your cross in the Reform box. At a GE, as we all know, however, are you really going to enable SKS to become PM? Perhaps not.
Why wouldn’t the protest continue into the general election - Rishi’s problem is that he isn’t offering anything to anyone - all his attempts to do things that would please the right have failed (probably because they continue fundamental flaws so could never actually work).
It's over for the Tories. Absolutely over. We didn't do what we said we'd do and did the things we said we wouldn't. The longer Sunak delays the election date the angrier the electorate are going to get.
A cleaner has been fired for eating a leftover sandwich she found in a law firm’s meeting room, it has been alleged.
Gabriela, a single mother from Ecuador, cleaned the offices of Devonshires Solicitors for two years until she was summarily sacked just before Christmas by her employer, private contractor Total Clean.
Her alleged crime was to have eaten a £1.50 tuna sandwich from Tesco that had been left over from a meeting and was due to be discarded.
The breach was so abhorrent that Devonshires, whose highest-paid member received £1.68 million in 2023, allegedly complained to Total Clean, resulting in her dismissal. A spokesperson for the firm told RollOnFriday that it did not make a "formal complaint".
According to her supporters, Gabriela appealed the decision but Total Clean refused to reinstate her on the basis that “theft is theft” and because it did not want to upset Devonshires.
Supporters also appealed to the 235-lawyer firm directly, but they said it “showed no good will and refused to support Gabriela's case”.
Around 30 people protested outside Devonshires’ office this week where they handed out leaflets titled "I ATE A LEFTOVER TUNA SANDWICH AND GOT SACKED!”
The ‘Justice for Gabriela’ campaign has said her firing directly implicated Devonshires, which was “either responsible for her sacking or complicit in it”, and that while she had submitted an employment claim, tribunals “can take years to conclude and she needs a job and an income now”.
A cleaner has been fired for eating a leftover sandwich she found in a law firm’s meeting room, it has been alleged.
Gabriela, a single mother from Ecuador, cleaned the offices of Devonshires Solicitors for two years until she was summarily sacked just before Christmas by her employer, private contractor Total Clean.
Her alleged crime was to have eaten a £1.50 tuna sandwich from Tesco that had been left over from a meeting and was due to be discarded.
The breach was so abhorrent that Devonshires, whose highest-paid member received £1.68 million in 2023, allegedly complained to Total Clean, resulting in her dismissal. A spokesperson for the firm told RollOnFriday that it did not make a "formal complaint".
According to her supporters, Gabriela appealed the decision but Total Clean refused to reinstate her on the basis that “theft is theft” and because it did not want to upset Devonshires.
Supporters also appealed to the 235-lawyer firm directly, but they said it “showed no good will and refused to support Gabriela's case”.
Around 30 people protested outside Devonshires’ office this week where they handed out leaflets titled "I ATE A LEFTOVER TUNA SANDWICH AND GOT SACKED!”
The ‘Justice for Gabriela’ campaign has said her firing directly implicated Devonshires, which was “either responsible for her sacking or complicit in it”, and that while she had submitted an employment claim, tribunals “can take years to conclude and she needs a job and an income now”.
They are a shit firm if they are eating Tesco sandwiches.
This story manages to encapsulate nearly everything wrong with modern Britain. Exploited immigrant Labour, arrogant rich people, bad food and all wrapped up in a Social Media lynch mob.
What more is there to say about us as a nation?
That we are quick to jump on any seemingly sensational story whereas it is very likely that there is more to it than what was reported.
I’m not buying the Reform success story with these two by-elections.
Brexit / UKIP didn’t stand in Kingswood in 2019 or 2017 but UKIP got 14.8% at the 2015 GE while Labour only managed 28%.
In Wellingborough UKIP did stand in 2017 getting 3.4% but by then they were a spent force. In 2015 they got a whopping 19.6%.
UKIP nationally scored 12.6% in 2015, 2.2% lower than Kingswood and 7% lower than Wellingborough. So all things being equal and ignoring by-election effects you could translate these by-election results as meaning Refuk are well below 10% nationally.
Then add on the fact UKIP and other minor parties always do better in by-elections than GEs and I think if I were Tice I would be pretty dissatisfied with these results.
Reform nearly at UKIP 2015 levels both in these by elections and in national polls, most of which have them a clear 3rd and at or over 10%, is clearly very good news for Tice.
Not only are they now ahead of the LDs and Greens in most polls but on last night's by elections when actual votes are cast too. The better Reform do, the more pressure they put on the Tories to shift further right too either before or certainly after the election if a heavy defeat
Both elections suggest Reform are performing significantly worse than most national polls would suggest.
They’re doing OK, certainly better than a few years ago, but their national polling is wrong.
I’m pretty sure their vote last night was also partly at the expense of Labour votes.
Green was probably the biggest disappointment, especially in Kingswood. Lib Dem’s less so because their Faustian pact is to get squeezed in Labour targets in exchange for wringing Labour dry in their own targets.
Nope - see my original post. They would be expected to outperform national polls in both constituencies, and in Wellingborough by a significant amount.
And why not? In a few days I make the first payment of Liz Truss Tax on my mortgage. My local MP was a massive Lizaster supporter, so its his tax as well as hers.
Perhaps I should thank Dizzy and Dishy for the pay rises and the savings interest I've been getting ?
He has to make a choice, he can no longer ride the fence.
* Go full Truss, do the tax cuts, play to the gbnews gallery on immigration, go for socialist conservativism and make a lot of noise. * Or full Osborne/Cameron/May. Talk about debt, austerity, sober managerialism and compassionate Conservatism. Few tax cuts,
The latter suits his persona better, but his heart seems to be in the first camp. Either way continue straddling the two makes him look silly and shifty. He cannot bluff his way through like Boris. He doesn’t have the political horse power to carve a third way. He has to choose.
With Hunt basically ruling out tax cuts this morning on the back of the OBR statements he seems to have made the second choice. Which is probably good for the country, if not the Conservative party. If we are to increase a yawning deficit it really has to be for investment, not tax cuts leading to yet more consumption.
Yet he never thinks of reducing the state, which is what he should be doing. The issue isnt the country has no money, but that it is spending it unwisely.
Spending on a lot of areas was trimmed severely during the Osborne period in particular. Spending on health continues to rise as we get older, fatter and more demanding. Spending on defence needs to rise to pay for all the ammunition required by Ukraine and to modernise our forces in respect of drones. Debt interest is a major cost and is rising as the deficits accumulate. The country is not spending enough on infrastructure or on new housing.
I agree that in an ideal world the State would be spending less of our money. I also agree that we get damn poor value for the spend. But when you go through the big ticket items it is hard to see where significant money can be saved.
Health really is a disaster, if you take a step back.
We have high tax rates and large cuts to other areas of spending, yet the NHS remains a top priority for voters, there is an enormous waiting list and there are millions on health-related out-of-work benefits.
Going private is simply jumping the queue while injecting more money and resources into the sector - see dentistry. Innovations like dementia drugs, while absolutely brilliant for patients, will further drive spending in healthcare whether it's public or not.
POLITICS. Labour might be in for 10 years. The demographic profile, while historically only a minor contributor to increased health spending, is at its worst over the next 15 years as the Boomers hit their 70s and 80s. They will need to decide very quickly if the NHS is expected to absorb these extra pressures. If so... it's tax rises. Big ones.
Funding is not the problem with the NHS; we've poured massive amounts of (non-covid) money into it over the past couple years and productivity is still below where it was before.
Capital spend is part of it, but the other part is that we've imported tens of thousands of very low quality third world trained medics and nurses to replace the people we've spent tens to hundreds of thousands training. Turns out having a lot of people who struggle communicating in British English, sometimes have fraudulently obtained qualifications and are mainly using it as a route to citizenship isn't productivity enhancing!
I have, probably, had as much direct involvement with the NHS as anyone on this forum since my DVT in mid October to my pacemaker operation last week and with more interaction needed over the coming months I simply do not recognise the comment you make in the last sentence of your final paragraph
From the multiple visits to my surgery, to two emergency overnighters in A & E and admission to hospital itself, every single member of staff has been kind, caring, and whilst there were many nationalities every single one conversed and communicated with me well
The fact is that the demand far outstrips the staffs ability to meet that demand and nobody has the answer, be it the English, Welsh or Scottish NHS
Yes, it is nonsense.
Immigrant medical staff have to pass both a medical exam and an English language exam, including colloquial language in order to get registration. It typically takes six months or a year to do so.
IIRC there was much howling, when the language tests were introduced, in the 1990s.
I'm pretty sure Russia won't be putting their war on hold for the rest of the month.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/4470043-white-house-hits-johnson-for-going-on-recess-without-passing-ukraine-aid/ ..House GOP leadership canceled votes for Friday, and the House will return to Washington on Feb. 28 after the President’s Day recess. Bates noted the split out of D.C. also comes days after former Rep. Tom Suozzi (D) won in a New York special election, flipping a GOP-held seat. “The American people are outraged at the damage Speaker Johnson is causing to America’s national security in the name of politics, as voters in New York proved Tuesday,” Bates said. “But instead of ending his politicization of the country’s safety, Speaker Johnson is cutting and running, sending the House on an early, undeserved vacation as he continues to strengthen Russia’s murderous war effort and the Iranian regime at the expense of American national security, U.S. manufacturing jobs, and our closest alliances,” he added...
Perhaps the Dems shouldn't have got rid of Kevin McCarthy.
Having him replaced with a MAGA puppet might help the Dems in the 2024 elections but it was also going to make governing harder until then.
If it was all the Dems doing they would be able to replace Johnson with someone more amenable. They can't, because it isn't.
Anyway, important thing is that the chance of the House voting more money for Ukraine is zero. Not much point worrying about Trump - the pro-Putin shills in the GOP are already in charge.
Europe desperately needs to accept this reality and react appropriately.
If even just a quarter of House Republicans voted with the vast majority of House Democrats for more funds for Ukraine it would pass
It’s massively infuriating that the US discussions about Ukraine aid are mostly based on money, when the actual money involved is orders of magnitude different from the money being spent.
A $1m missile from the 1980s isn’t worth $5m now, it’s worth almost nothing. This lack of honesty from the administration allows opponents to compare Ukraine aid with domestic spending, which would actually be spending real money.
The administration has repeatedly made that point. The law requires that aid be accounted for in the current manner. If you want to change that, you have to go through Congress.
Blame the people who are preventing aid, not those who want to supply it.
Link to “the administration has repeatedly made that point”?
I’m listening to Joe Rogan, who’s continually asking where $150bn of aid might go to American commutinites rather than to Ukraine. No-one is challenging this narrative.
It'll go into the pockets of the already-rich, obvs.
A cleaner has been fired for eating a leftover sandwich she found in a law firm’s meeting room, it has been alleged.
Gabriela, a single mother from Ecuador, cleaned the offices of Devonshires Solicitors for two years until she was summarily sacked just before Christmas by her employer, private contractor Total Clean.
Her alleged crime was to have eaten a £1.50 tuna sandwich from Tesco that had been left over from a meeting and was due to be discarded.
The breach was so abhorrent that Devonshires, whose highest-paid member received £1.68 million in 2023, allegedly complained to Total Clean, resulting in her dismissal. A spokesperson for the firm told RollOnFriday that it did not make a "formal complaint".
According to her supporters, Gabriela appealed the decision but Total Clean refused to reinstate her on the basis that “theft is theft” and because it did not want to upset Devonshires.
Supporters also appealed to the 235-lawyer firm directly, but they said it “showed no good will and refused to support Gabriela's case”.
Around 30 people protested outside Devonshires’ office this week where they handed out leaflets titled "I ATE A LEFTOVER TUNA SANDWICH AND GOT SACKED!”
The ‘Justice for Gabriela’ campaign has said her firing directly implicated Devonshires, which was “either responsible for her sacking or complicit in it”, and that while she had submitted an employment claim, tribunals “can take years to conclude and she needs a job and an income now”.
They are a shit firm if they are eating Tesco sandwiches.
This story manages to encapsulate nearly everything wrong with modern Britain. Exploited immigrant Labour, arrogant rich people, bad food and all wrapped up in a Social Media lynch mob.
What more is there to say about us as a nation?
That we are quick to jump on any seemingly outrageous story whereas it is very likely that there is more to it than what was reported.
The story is so simple I expect there is nothing more to it.
You have a cleaner eating a sandwich when they probably shouldn’t have done, it being reported to management and management reacting to the report.
There are probably reasons for every part of it but the end result seems to be an overreaction that could have been way better handled
A cleaner has been fired for eating a leftover sandwich she found in a law firm’s meeting room, it has been alleged.
Gabriela, a single mother from Ecuador, cleaned the offices of Devonshires Solicitors for two years until she was summarily sacked just before Christmas by her employer, private contractor Total Clean.
Her alleged crime was to have eaten a £1.50 tuna sandwich from Tesco that had been left over from a meeting and was due to be discarded.
The breach was so abhorrent that Devonshires, whose highest-paid member received £1.68 million in 2023, allegedly complained to Total Clean, resulting in her dismissal. A spokesperson for the firm told RollOnFriday that it did not make a "formal complaint".
According to her supporters, Gabriela appealed the decision but Total Clean refused to reinstate her on the basis that “theft is theft” and because it did not want to upset Devonshires.
Supporters also appealed to the 235-lawyer firm directly, but they said it “showed no good will and refused to support Gabriela's case”.
Around 30 people protested outside Devonshires’ office this week where they handed out leaflets titled "I ATE A LEFTOVER TUNA SANDWICH AND GOT SACKED!”
The ‘Justice for Gabriela’ campaign has said her firing directly implicated Devonshires, which was “either responsible for her sacking or complicit in it”, and that while she had submitted an employment claim, tribunals “can take years to conclude and she needs a job and an income now”.
They are a shit firm if they are eating Tesco sandwiches.
Euch, lawyers are the worst.
Fake news.
Lawyers are the best.
Getting the cleaner fired for eating a leftover sandwich, shows what lawyers are really like.
"I don't believe it. I don't believe it! You're meant to come down here and defend me against these characters, and the only one I've got on my side is the blood-sucking lawyer!"
Clearly a bad night for the Tories losing both by elections on big swings. Labour will be pleased to win them although they failed to get over 50% in either seat.
The big winners of the night though were Reform who took third place and over 10% of the vote in both seats beating the LDs and Greens too. Indeed in Kingswood the combined Tory and Reform vote was bigger than the Labour vote.
Sunak must therefore continue to focus on stopping the boats, getting his Rwanda plan implemented and if not cutting tax further in the budget at least having tax cuts in the manifesto. Another leadership challenge now is pointless, no alternative leader would do much better except fractionally maybe Mordaunt.
The focus should be inflation and interest rates down further, then cutting tax and growth and cutting immigration also using new tougher points system
I think the big winners of the night were the party who, like, won: Labour.
So while Labour are heading for victory it looks more like Tory voters staying home or going Reform than any mass enthusiasm for Labour, Starmer still isn't getting quite the level of switchers Blair did from the Conservatives
And yet, with FPTP it could still result in fewer Tory MPs than 1997. Or considerably more. I support FPTP purely to make election night more exciting. (ETA: And to annoy certain types of LD.)
re the vote yday - the difficulty is that the Cons are full of dicks who will say well let's tack right here go all guns blazing (perhaps literally) on Rwanda, stop other immigrants, put out the "right" message and we'll get those Reformers back on board.
Alternatively if you disliked the Cons (who doesn't) and wanted to protest, but were on the right, you might just stick your cross in the Reform box. At a GE, as we all know, however, are you really going to enable SKS to become PM? Perhaps not.
Why wouldn’t the protest continue into the general election - Rishi’s problem is that he isn’t offering anything to anyone - all his attempts to do things that would please the right have failed (probably because they continue fundamental flaws so could never actually work).
Maybe so. But there has built up, since 2010 and via the Corbyn years, a caution over Lab. Many erstwhile Cons voters might not want them in power. What is the alternative vision. We are blundering along now, from one exogenous shock to another plus we seem to be passengers rather than driving.
Apart from spending money, which SKS now seems to be rowing back on, what is the vision for Britain from Lab.
Of course parties lose elections, rather than win them, but there is no Blairite hope and optimism, just a(nother) dour technocrat offering more of the same.
On the economy what has Rishi done/not done that is so egregious that Lab has pledged not to do/do if they come to power.
A cleaner has been fired for eating a leftover sandwich she found in a law firm’s meeting room, it has been alleged.
Gabriela, a single mother from Ecuador, cleaned the offices of Devonshires Solicitors for two years until she was summarily sacked just before Christmas by her employer, private contractor Total Clean.
Her alleged crime was to have eaten a £1.50 tuna sandwich from Tesco that had been left over from a meeting and was due to be discarded.
The breach was so abhorrent that Devonshires, whose highest-paid member received £1.68 million in 2023, allegedly complained to Total Clean, resulting in her dismissal. A spokesperson for the firm told RollOnFriday that it did not make a "formal complaint".
According to her supporters, Gabriela appealed the decision but Total Clean refused to reinstate her on the basis that “theft is theft” and because it did not want to upset Devonshires.
Supporters also appealed to the 235-lawyer firm directly, but they said it “showed no good will and refused to support Gabriela's case”.
Around 30 people protested outside Devonshires’ office this week where they handed out leaflets titled "I ATE A LEFTOVER TUNA SANDWICH AND GOT SACKED!”
The ‘Justice for Gabriela’ campaign has said her firing directly implicated Devonshires, which was “either responsible for her sacking or complicit in it”, and that while she had submitted an employment claim, tribunals “can take years to conclude and she needs a job and an income now”.
They are a shit firm if they are eating Tesco sandwiches.
This story manages to encapsulate nearly everything wrong with modern Britain. Exploited immigrant labour, arrogant rich people, bad food and all wrapped up in a Social Media lynch mob.
What more is there to say about us as a nation?
The lady has a really cute pet, which now she can't afford to feed.
65% of primary school children have a positive view of the monarchy, even slightly higher than the UK overall.
Primary school children seem like natural Tories, maybe Rishi should consider giving the vote to 8 year olds? After all when he meets them they don't seem to ask him hostile questions unlike adults https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68283130
Nobody young is ever going to vote Tory again until you stop using them as a piggy bank. Your party actively hates young people.
As I sip a rather excellent Kiwi Sauv Blanc, watching the warm tropic sun begin its slow slide into the Tonle Sap, the only sensible advice to young Britons remains the same: LEAVE
LEAVE Britain. No way should you vote to REMAIN
It was good advice in 2016 and it's even better now
A cleaner has been fired for eating a leftover sandwich she found in a law firm’s meeting room, it has been alleged.
Gabriela, a single mother from Ecuador, cleaned the offices of Devonshires Solicitors for two years until she was summarily sacked just before Christmas by her employer, private contractor Total Clean.
Her alleged crime was to have eaten a £1.50 tuna sandwich from Tesco that had been left over from a meeting and was due to be discarded.
The breach was so abhorrent that Devonshires, whose highest-paid member received £1.68 million in 2023, allegedly complained to Total Clean, resulting in her dismissal. A spokesperson for the firm told RollOnFriday that it did not make a "formal complaint".
According to her supporters, Gabriela appealed the decision but Total Clean refused to reinstate her on the basis that “theft is theft” and because it did not want to upset Devonshires.
Supporters also appealed to the 235-lawyer firm directly, but they said it “showed no good will and refused to support Gabriela's case”.
Around 30 people protested outside Devonshires’ office this week where they handed out leaflets titled "I ATE A LEFTOVER TUNA SANDWICH AND GOT SACKED!”
The ‘Justice for Gabriela’ campaign has said her firing directly implicated Devonshires, which was “either responsible for her sacking or complicit in it”, and that while she had submitted an employment claim, tribunals “can take years to conclude and she needs a job and an income now”.
He has to make a choice, he can no longer ride the fence.
* Go full Truss, do the tax cuts, play to the gbnews gallery on immigration, go for socialist conservativism and make a lot of noise. * Or full Osborne/Cameron/May. Talk about debt, austerity, sober managerialism and compassionate Conservatism. Few tax cuts,
The latter suits his persona better, but his heart seems to be in the first camp. Either way continue straddling the two makes him look silly and shifty. He cannot bluff his way through like Boris. He doesn’t have the political horse power to carve a third way. He has to choose.
With Hunt basically ruling out tax cuts this morning on the back of the OBR statements he seems to have made the second choice. Which is probably good for the country, if not the Conservative party. If we are to increase a yawning deficit it really has to be for investment, not tax cuts leading to yet more consumption.
Yet he never thinks of reducing the state, which is what he should be doing. The issue isnt the country has no money, but that it is spending it unwisely.
Spending on a lot of areas was trimmed severely during the Osborne period in particular. Spending on health continues to rise as we get older, fatter and more demanding. Spending on defence needs to rise to pay for all the ammunition required by Ukraine and to modernise our forces in respect of drones. Debt interest is a major cost and is rising as the deficits accumulate. The country is not spending enough on infrastructure or on new housing.
I agree that in an ideal world the State would be spending less of our money. I also agree that we get damn poor value for the spend. But when you go through the big ticket items it is hard to see where significant money can be saved.
Health really is a disaster, if you take a step back.
We have high tax rates and large cuts to other areas of spending, yet the NHS remains a top priority for voters, there is an enormous waiting list and there are millions on health-related out-of-work benefits.
Going private is simply jumping the queue while injecting more money and resources into the sector - see dentistry. Innovations like dementia drugs, while absolutely brilliant for patients, will further drive spending in healthcare whether it's public or not.
POLITICS. Labour might be in for 10 years. The demographic profile, while historically only a minor contributor to increased health spending, is at its worst over the next 15 years as the Boomers hit their 70s and 80s. They will need to decide very quickly if the NHS is expected to absorb these extra pressures. If so... it's tax rises. Big ones.
Funding is not the problem with the NHS; we've poured massive amounts of (non-covid) money into it over the past couple years and productivity is still below where it was before.
Capital spend is part of it, but the other part is that we've imported tens of thousands of very low quality third world trained medics and nurses to replace the people we've spent tens to hundreds of thousands training. Turns out having a lot of people who struggle communicating in British English, sometimes have fraudulently obtained qualifications and are mainly using it as a route to citizenship isn't productivity enhancing!
I have, probably, had as much direct involvement with the NHS as anyone on this forum since my DVT in mid October to my pacemaker operation last week and with more interaction needed over the coming months I simply do not recognise the comment you make in the last sentence of your final paragraph
From the multiple visits to my surgery, to two emergency overnighters in A & E and admission to hospital itself, every single member of staff has been kind, caring, and whilst there were many nationalities every single one conversed and communicated with me well
The fact is that the demand far outstrips the staffs ability to meet that demand and nobody has the answer, be it the English, Welsh or Scottish NHS
Yes, it is nonsense.
Immigrant medical staff have to pass both a medical exam and an English language exam, including colloquial language in order to get registration. It typically takes six months or a year to do so.
There is an issue, but it's not as straightforward as poor English (which, I agree, is largely absent). My dad has spent a lot of time on the phone and in hospitals talking to clinicians about my mum and has often commented that they are hard to understand - my mum, in lucid moments, has said the same. And yet, I have had conversations with some of the same people, on the phone directly afterwards or simultaneously on wards and found their English excellent with no issues in understanding on my part.
My parents are not well travelled and live in a largely white/English part of Essex, so I think they are just not used to other accents - and my mum's hearing, at least, is not super. They're a bit racist and tend to blame it on the 'foreign' clinicians, but there is a real issue in them genuinely struggling to understand, even if the average Brit in the street would not be having any problems. I'm not sure how it is best addressed really, but the communication issues are real, even if they seem bizarre to many of us - they do to me, I've come away from conversations thinking how on earth do my parents have trouble understanding this person. But they do.
It's over for the Tories. Absolutely over. We didn't do what we said we'd do and did the things we said we wouldn't. The longer Sunak delays the election date the angrier the electorate are going to get.
I think this is right. I'm not sure what sort of black swan the Dishy one is waiting on, but it's surely only going to get worse. A recession, ditching tax cuts, ongoing failure to cut migration (legal and illegal), ongoing failure to improve waiting lists, the increasing profile of niche but keenly felt issues like dentistry. He is cooked. Every extra week will increase the potential Labour majority.
re the vote yday - the difficulty is that the Cons are full of dicks who will say well let's tack right here go all guns blazing (perhaps literally) on Rwanda, stop other immigrants, put out the "right" message and we'll get those Reformers back on board.
Alternatively if you disliked the Cons (who doesn't) and wanted to protest, but were on the right, you might just stick your cross in the Reform box. At a GE, as we all know, however, are you really going to enable SKS to become PM? Perhaps not.
Why wouldn’t the protest continue into the general election - Rishi’s problem is that he isn’t offering anything to anyone - all his attempts to do things that would please the right have failed (probably because they continue fundamental flaws so could never actually work).
Ultimately the problem for Sunak is he's failed to recover from the seismic shock that the Truss era caused, which was the main purpose of installing him, so he's been unable to shore up support to then try to recover support among Borisites, the right, or disaffected centrists. Indeed, he's gone backwards in some, since he's had more time to screw up in different ways.
Without restoring credibility efforts to secure support from either area are undermined, and which ones they are targeting has been confused at best at any rate.
A cleaner has been fired for eating a leftover sandwich she found in a law firm’s meeting room, it has been alleged.
Gabriela, a single mother from Ecuador, cleaned the offices of Devonshires Solicitors for two years until she was summarily sacked just before Christmas by her employer, private contractor Total Clean.
Her alleged crime was to have eaten a £1.50 tuna sandwich from Tesco that had been left over from a meeting and was due to be discarded.
The breach was so abhorrent that Devonshires, whose highest-paid member received £1.68 million in 2023, allegedly complained to Total Clean, resulting in her dismissal. A spokesperson for the firm told RollOnFriday that it did not make a "formal complaint".
According to her supporters, Gabriela appealed the decision but Total Clean refused to reinstate her on the basis that “theft is theft” and because it did not want to upset Devonshires.
Supporters also appealed to the 235-lawyer firm directly, but they said it “showed no good will and refused to support Gabriela's case”.
Around 30 people protested outside Devonshires’ office this week where they handed out leaflets titled "I ATE A LEFTOVER TUNA SANDWICH AND GOT SACKED!”
The ‘Justice for Gabriela’ campaign has said her firing directly implicated Devonshires, which was “either responsible for her sacking or complicit in it”, and that while she had submitted an employment claim, tribunals “can take years to conclude and she needs a job and an income now”.
They are a shit firm if they are eating Tesco sandwiches.
This story manages to encapsulate nearly everything wrong with modern Britain. Exploited immigrant labour, arrogant rich people, bad food and all wrapped up in a Social Media lynch mob.
What more is there to say about us as a nation?
The lady has a really cute pet, which now she can't afford to feed.
He has to make a choice, he can no longer ride the fence.
* Go full Truss, do the tax cuts, play to the gbnews gallery on immigration, go for socialist conservativism and make a lot of noise. * Or full Osborne/Cameron/May. Talk about debt, austerity, sober managerialism and compassionate Conservatism. Few tax cuts,
The latter suits his persona better, but his heart seems to be in the first camp. Either way continue straddling the two makes him look silly and shifty. He cannot bluff his way through like Boris. He doesn’t have the political horse power to carve a third way. He has to choose.
With Hunt basically ruling out tax cuts this morning on the back of the OBR statements he seems to have made the second choice. Which is probably good for the country, if not the Conservative party. If we are to increase a yawning deficit it really has to be for investment, not tax cuts leading to yet more consumption.
Yet he never thinks of reducing the state, which is what he should be doing. The issue isnt the country has no money, but that it is spending it unwisely.
Spending on a lot of areas was trimmed severely during the Osborne period in particular. Spending on health continues to rise as we get older, fatter and more demanding. Spending on defence needs to rise to pay for all the ammunition required by Ukraine and to modernise our forces in respect of drones. Debt interest is a major cost and is rising as the deficits accumulate. The country is not spending enough on infrastructure or on new housing.
I agree that in an ideal world the State would be spending less of our money. I also agree that we get damn poor value for the spend. But when you go through the big ticket items it is hard to see where significant money can be saved.
Health really is a disaster, if you take a step back.
We have high tax rates and large cuts to other areas of spending, yet the NHS remains a top priority for voters, there is an enormous waiting list and there are millions on health-related out-of-work benefits.
Going private is simply jumping the queue while injecting more money and resources into the sector - see dentistry. Innovations like dementia drugs, while absolutely brilliant for patients, will further drive spending in healthcare whether it's public or not.
POLITICS. Labour might be in for 10 years. The demographic profile, while historically only a minor contributor to increased health spending, is at its worst over the next 15 years as the Boomers hit their 70s and 80s. They will need to decide very quickly if the NHS is expected to absorb these extra pressures. If so... it's tax rises. Big ones.
Funding is not the problem with the NHS; we've poured massive amounts of (non-covid) money into it over the past couple years and productivity is still below where it was before.
Capital spend is part of it, but the other part is that we've imported tens of thousands of very low quality third world trained medics and nurses to replace the people we've spent tens to hundreds of thousands training. Turns out having a lot of people who struggle communicating in British English, sometimes have fraudulently obtained qualifications and are mainly using it as a route to citizenship isn't productivity enhancing!
I have, probably, had as much direct involvement with the NHS as anyone on this forum since my DVT in mid October to my pacemaker operation last week and with more interaction needed over the coming months I simply do not recognise the comment you make in the last sentence of your final paragraph
From the multiple visits to my surgery, to two emergency overnighters in A & E and admission to hospital itself, every single member of staff has been kind, caring, and whilst there were many nationalities every single one conversed and communicated with me well
The fact is that the demand far outstrips the staffs ability to meet that demand and nobody has the answer, be it the English, Welsh or Scottish NHS
Yes, it is nonsense.
Immigrant medical staff have to pass both a medical exam and an English language exam, including colloquial language in order to get registration. It typically takes six months or a year to do so.
I have no doubt whatsoever that immigrant NHS staff are amongst the most diligent, hardworking, and caring employees of our health service. It is the management, structure, "old and bold" usually British staff that are fucked up, usually couldn't care less, really, and ensure that if you go into hospital you are taking your life into your own hands, even if you only went in to have a bunion removed.
It's over for the Tories. Absolutely over. We didn't do what we said we'd do and did the things we said we wouldn't. The longer Sunak delays the election date the angrier the electorate are going to get.
As I posted earlier, people are utterly sick of them. They aren't interested in Tory perspectives on Starmer so its a waste of Sunak's breath constantly trying to attack him.
You can fight an election on fear of the other when you have delivered something, you can't when you have failed on every one of your own measures.
What the Tories really need is to go off on a policy retreat, sit round in a circle, and come up with some new ideas which they could get started on quickly. New news, change the narrative, find something positive to run on.
So, Labour have their Dudley West of this electoral cycle. Results hint at Starmer getting a whopping majority with Lab's vote increasing slightly but the Tory vote completely cratering.
Lab 13 million, Tories 8.
For all the noise, Labour got almost exactly the same number of votes in Wellingborough as they did in GE2019.
Now, there will be some swing disguised in that but it basically looks like to me that virtually all the Labour voters turned out whereas the Conservative voters went on strike, to Reform or a few to independents.
That is not a seat Labour will be able to hold for long.
37 & 38% for the two turnouts, not really that low for by elections is it?
It's over for the Tories. Absolutely over. We didn't do what we said we'd do and did the things we said we wouldn't. The longer Sunak delays the election date the angrier the electorate are going to get.
Given the 2019 manifesto- lots of brilliant stuff funded by the phoney £350 million a week spent multiple times- some sort of failure was pretty much inevitable.
It probably didn't need to be as spectacular as this, though.
Prompt: “Beautiful, snowy Tokyo city is bustling. The camera moves through the bustling city street, following several people enjoying the beautiful snowy weather and shopping at nearby stalls. Gorgeous sakura petals are flying through the wind along with snowflakes.”"
That's remarkable. It's still not quite right, the walk is a little stiff, there are still traces of uncanny valley, but when you remember the deeply weird, obviously AI videos of a year ago...
The technology is still accelerating
They are maybe 3-5 years from being able to create entire movies, all AI, with AI scripts and AI music
So those Hollywood strikes might have been for nothing
In a few years it might be impressive enough to render convincing faces, and have the people not look like they are floating weirdly up in the air over a studio flat with a picture of what might be snow on it, for 17 seconds.
HOWEVER that's just pointing out the problems.
This looks like it is *amazing* for previz and really optimize that part of the process. Like, now, today, as-is.
And that's the kind of thing at which this generation of generative AI is going to dominate.
A cleaner has been fired for eating a leftover sandwich she found in a law firm’s meeting room, it has been alleged.
Gabriela, a single mother from Ecuador, cleaned the offices of Devonshires Solicitors for two years until she was summarily sacked just before Christmas by her employer, private contractor Total Clean.
Her alleged crime was to have eaten a £1.50 tuna sandwich from Tesco that had been left over from a meeting and was due to be discarded.
The breach was so abhorrent that Devonshires, whose highest-paid member received £1.68 million in 2023, allegedly complained to Total Clean, resulting in her dismissal. A spokesperson for the firm told RollOnFriday that it did not make a "formal complaint".
According to her supporters, Gabriela appealed the decision but Total Clean refused to reinstate her on the basis that “theft is theft” and because it did not want to upset Devonshires.
Supporters also appealed to the 235-lawyer firm directly, but they said it “showed no good will and refused to support Gabriela's case”.
Around 30 people protested outside Devonshires’ office this week where they handed out leaflets titled "I ATE A LEFTOVER TUNA SANDWICH AND GOT SACKED!”
The ‘Justice for Gabriela’ campaign has said her firing directly implicated Devonshires, which was “either responsible for her sacking or complicit in it”, and that while she had submitted an employment claim, tribunals “can take years to conclude and she needs a job and an income now”.
They are a shit firm if they are eating Tesco sandwiches.
This story manages to encapsulate nearly everything wrong with modern Britain. Exploited immigrant Labour, arrogant rich people, bad food and all wrapped up in a Social Media lynch mob.
What more is there to say about us as a nation?
That we are quick to jump on any seemingly sensational story whereas it is very likely that there is more to it than what was reported.
I don't think there necessarily is. I get this sort of thing reasonably regularly. Employer concerned about upsetting big client fires employee complained about by said big client. It's the kind of situation that the statutory "some other substantial reason" for a fair dismissal is used for.
65% of primary school children have a positive view of the monarchy, even slightly higher than the UK overall.
Primary school children seem like natural Tories, maybe Rishi should consider giving the vote to 8 year olds? After all when he meets them they don't seem to ask him hostile questions unlike adults https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68283130
Nobody young is ever going to vote Tory again until you stop using them as a piggy bank. Your party actively hates young people.
As I sip a rather excellent Kiwi Sauv Blanc, watching the warm tropic sun begin its slow slide into the Tonle Sap, the only sensible advice to young Britons remains the same: LEAVE
LEAVE Britain. No way should you vote to REMAIN
It was good advice in 2016 and it's even better now
"I voted for the current mess, and now I'm off."
Persuasive stuff.
To be a little more serious, I think AI is about to render many of our political/economic arguments utterly irrelevant, and often in a good way. We will need far fewer workers, so the whole demographic issue is, actually, not an issue
This will take pressure off the climate, we can reduce the human population, lots of things that seem insoluble now wil become easy to solve - health, ageing, etc
it's beginning and happening NOW
The dystopian side of this is that AI is gonna take all the good jobs first, the creative stuff, but hey ho. IF we want a world of easy plenty, this is the price we pay
I’m not buying the Reform success story with these two by-elections.
Brexit / UKIP didn’t stand in Kingswood in 2019 or 2017 but UKIP got 14.8% at the 2015 GE while Labour only managed 28%.
In Wellingborough UKIP did stand in 2017 getting 3.4% but by then they were a spent force. In 2015 they got a whopping 19.6%.
UKIP nationally scored 12.6% in 2015, 2.2% lower than Kingswood and 7% lower than Wellingborough. So all things being equal and ignoring by-election effects you could translate these by-election results as meaning Refuk are well below 10% nationally.
Then add on the fact UKIP and other minor parties always do better in by-elections than GEs and I think if I were Tice I would be pretty dissatisfied with these results.
Reform nearly at UKIP 2015 levels both in these by elections and in national polls, most of which have them a clear 3rd and at or over 10%, is clearly very good news for Tice.
Not only are they now ahead of the LDs and Greens in most polls but on last night's by elections when actual votes are cast too. The better Reform do, the more pressure they put on the Tories to shift further right too either before or certainly after the election if a heavy defeat
Both elections suggest Reform are performing significantly worse than most national polls would suggest.
They’re doing OK, certainly better than a few years ago, but their national polling is wrong.
I’m pretty sure their vote last night was also partly at the expense of Labour votes.
Green was probably the biggest disappointment, especially in Kingswood. Lib Dem’s less so because their Faustian pact is to get squeezed in Labour targets in exchange for wringing Labour dry in their own targets.
Disagree. @TimS put some numbers up earlier and I posted last night. In 2015 both seats polled above the national UKIP average. I reckoned that if Reform was polling at about 10% nationally then they should get about 12% in Kingswood and 15% in Wellingborough. They fell a little short in both so this suggests the lower end of national polling is about right, say 8% currently. But that does assume no by-election boost.
On that, it's hard to say as there is no other real evidence to go on. Last night, once again, REF scored a big fat 0 in local council by-elections by not standing. My feeling is that if they can't even find a candidate in somewhere like Hull in a General Election year, they aren't going to be putting up anything like a full slate of candidates come the GE.
It's over for the Tories. Absolutely over. We didn't do what we said we'd do and did the things we said we wouldn't. The longer Sunak delays the election date the angrier the electorate are going to get.
As I posted earlier, people are utterly sick of them. They aren't interested in Tory perspectives on Starmer so its a waste of Sunak's breath constantly trying to attack him.
You can fight an election on fear of the other when you have delivered something, you can't when you have failed on every one of your own measures.
What the Tories really need is to go off on a policy retreat, sit round in a circle, and come up with some new ideas which they could get started on quickly. New news, change the narrative, find something positive to run on.
A cleaner has been fired for eating a leftover sandwich she found in a law firm’s meeting room, it has been alleged.
Gabriela, a single mother from Ecuador, cleaned the offices of Devonshires Solicitors for two years until she was summarily sacked just before Christmas by her employer, private contractor Total Clean.
Her alleged crime was to have eaten a £1.50 tuna sandwich from Tesco that had been left over from a meeting and was due to be discarded.
The breach was so abhorrent that Devonshires, whose highest-paid member received £1.68 million in 2023, allegedly complained to Total Clean, resulting in her dismissal. A spokesperson for the firm told RollOnFriday that it did not make a "formal complaint".
According to her supporters, Gabriela appealed the decision but Total Clean refused to reinstate her on the basis that “theft is theft” and because it did not want to upset Devonshires.
Supporters also appealed to the 235-lawyer firm directly, but they said it “showed no good will and refused to support Gabriela's case”.
Around 30 people protested outside Devonshires’ office this week where they handed out leaflets titled "I ATE A LEFTOVER TUNA SANDWICH AND GOT SACKED!”
The ‘Justice for Gabriela’ campaign has said her firing directly implicated Devonshires, which was “either responsible for her sacking or complicit in it”, and that while she had submitted an employment claim, tribunals “can take years to conclude and she needs a job and an income now”.
A cleaner has been fired for eating a leftover sandwich she found in a law firm’s meeting room, it has been alleged.
Gabriela, a single mother from Ecuador, cleaned the offices of Devonshires Solicitors for two years until she was summarily sacked just before Christmas by her employer, private contractor Total Clean.
Her alleged crime was to have eaten a £1.50 tuna sandwich from Tesco that had been left over from a meeting and was due to be discarded.
The breach was so abhorrent that Devonshires, whose highest-paid member received £1.68 million in 2023, allegedly complained to Total Clean, resulting in her dismissal. A spokesperson for the firm told RollOnFriday that it did not make a "formal complaint".
According to her supporters, Gabriela appealed the decision but Total Clean refused to reinstate her on the basis that “theft is theft” and because it did not want to upset Devonshires.
Supporters also appealed to the 235-lawyer firm directly, but they said it “showed no good will and refused to support Gabriela's case”.
Around 30 people protested outside Devonshires’ office this week where they handed out leaflets titled "I ATE A LEFTOVER TUNA SANDWICH AND GOT SACKED!”
The ‘Justice for Gabriela’ campaign has said her firing directly implicated Devonshires, which was “either responsible for her sacking or complicit in it”, and that while she had submitted an employment claim, tribunals “can take years to conclude and she needs a job and an income now”.
"Stick with our plan, because it's starting to deliver the message that the country wants and needs."
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says that's the message he'll be sharing in the upcoming general election following Labour's wins in Kingswood and Wellingborough.
A cleaner has been fired for eating a leftover sandwich she found in a law firm’s meeting room, it has been alleged.
Gabriela, a single mother from Ecuador, cleaned the offices of Devonshires Solicitors for two years until she was summarily sacked just before Christmas by her employer, private contractor Total Clean.
Her alleged crime was to have eaten a £1.50 tuna sandwich from Tesco that had been left over from a meeting and was due to be discarded.
The breach was so abhorrent that Devonshires, whose highest-paid member received £1.68 million in 2023, allegedly complained to Total Clean, resulting in her dismissal. A spokesperson for the firm told RollOnFriday that it did not make a "formal complaint".
According to her supporters, Gabriela appealed the decision but Total Clean refused to reinstate her on the basis that “theft is theft” and because it did not want to upset Devonshires.
Supporters also appealed to the 235-lawyer firm directly, but they said it “showed no good will and refused to support Gabriela's case”.
Around 30 people protested outside Devonshires’ office this week where they handed out leaflets titled "I ATE A LEFTOVER TUNA SANDWICH AND GOT SACKED!”
The ‘Justice for Gabriela’ campaign has said her firing directly implicated Devonshires, which was “either responsible for her sacking or complicit in it”, and that while she had submitted an employment claim, tribunals “can take years to conclude and she needs a job and an income now”.
They are a shit firm if they are eating Tesco sandwiches.
This story manages to encapsulate nearly everything wrong with modern Britain. Exploited immigrant Labour, arrogant rich people, bad food and all wrapped up in a Social Media lynch mob.
What more is there to say about us as a nation?
That we are quick to jump on any seemingly sensational story whereas it is very likely that there is more to it than what was reported.
I don't think there necessarily is. I get this sort of thing reasonably regularly. Employer concerned about upsetting big client fires employee complained about by said big client. It's the kind of situation that the statutory "some other substantial reason" for a fair dismissal is used for.
Interesting thanks. I just wondered about the mechanics and sequence of it but I suppose there is a route to it having happened.
65% of primary school children have a positive view of the monarchy, even slightly higher than the UK overall.
Primary school children seem like natural Tories, maybe Rishi should consider giving the vote to 8 year olds? After all when he meets them they don't seem to ask him hostile questions unlike adults https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68283130
Nobody young is ever going to vote Tory again until you stop using them as a piggy bank. Your party actively hates young people.
As I sip a rather excellent Kiwi Sauv Blanc, watching the warm tropic sun begin its slow slide into the Tonle Sap, the only sensible advice to young Britons remains the same: LEAVE
LEAVE Britain. No way should you vote to REMAIN
It was good advice in 2016 and it's even better now
"I voted for the current mess, and now I'm off."
Persuasive stuff.
To be a little more serious, I think AI is about to render many of our political/economic arguments utterly irrelevant, and often in a good way. We will need far fewer workers, so the whole demographic issue is, actually, not an issue
This will take pressure off the climate, we can reduce the human population, lots of things that seem insoluble now wil become easy to solve - health, ageing, etc
it's beginning and happening NOW
The dystopian side of this is that AI is gonna take all the good jobs first, the creative stuff, but hey ho. IF we want a world of easy plenty, this is the price we pay
AI is going to take all the non-creative middle management jobs that take <1sec (then <10sec, then <100sec) of cognitive load first.
And that's going to generate about a decade of even more conspicuous "make work" in corporates - as the first jobs that *could* go are in Finance but they control the purse strings. It's all going to be *very* interesting.
Mr. Leon, it'll be interesting to see the cultural side of that commercial transformation.
Pathfinder/Paizo have said they won't use AI for art, and WotC/DnD got a bollocking from the TTRPG community for using AI art. Disney/Marvel's Secret Invasion used AI for the intro and got a backlash for that as well.
It's over for the Tories. Absolutely over. We didn't do what we said we'd do and did the things we said we wouldn't. The longer Sunak delays the election date the angrier the electorate are going to get.
Given the 2019 manifesto- lots of brilliant stuff funded by the phoney £350 million a week spent multiple times- some sort of failure was pretty much inevitable.
It probably didn't need to be as spectacular as this, though.
They were due for a reversal of fortune. But it's been far worse than predicted - with such a victory cushion Boris should have been invulnerable internally and with a very decent shot of holding on.
Now there is total panic since as Rochdale says attacks are not working as people aren't listening.
You need a solid base from which to launch attacks, or you just fall on your face in the dirt.
re the vote yday - the difficulty is that the Cons are full of dicks who will say well let's tack right here go all guns blazing (perhaps literally) on Rwanda, stop other immigrants, put out the "right" message and we'll get those Reformers back on board.
Alternatively if you disliked the Cons (who doesn't) and wanted to protest, but were on the right, you might just stick your cross in the Reform box. At a GE, as we all know, however, are you really going to enable SKS to become PM? Perhaps not.
Why wouldn’t the protest continue into the general election - Rishi’s problem is that he isn’t offering anything to anyone - all his attempts to do things that would please the right have failed (probably because they continue fundamental flaws so could never actually work).
Ultimately the problem for Sunak is he's failed to recover from the seismic shock that the Truss era caused, which was the main purpose of installing him, so he's been unable to shore up support to then try to recover support among Borisites, the right, or disaffected centrists. Indeed, he's gone backwards in some, since he's had more time to screw up in different ways.
Without restoring credibility efforts to secure support from either area are undermined, and which ones they are targeting has been confused at best at any rate.
TLDR: His USP was to be Mr Sensible but he’s been Mr Stupid.
Chair of the Conservative Party Richard Holden defends the use of a “clipped” video of Sadiq Khan on the party’s social media.
Jews are just a stick to beat Labour with, they aren't even real people to the Tories.
Quite indefensible from the Tories to use that clip without the correction from Khan. It’s the kind of thing Remain types would do to Farage, Boris or a UKIP candidate and say it showed their true colours etc
It will happen to a Tory, they will misspeak and it will be used against them, and now they have given up the moral high ground
"Stick with our plan, because it's starting to deliver the message that the country wants and needs."
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says that's the message he'll be sharing in the upcoming general election following Labour's wins in Kingswood and Wellingborough.
Don't risk change is the default election campaign for an incumbent. If they don't have a hook to make it more unique that is a difficulty, when you are 14 years in.
A cleaner has been fired for eating a leftover sandwich she found in a law firm’s meeting room, it has been alleged.
Gabriela, a single mother from Ecuador, cleaned the offices of Devonshires Solicitors for two years until she was summarily sacked just before Christmas by her employer, private contractor Total Clean.
Her alleged crime was to have eaten a £1.50 tuna sandwich from Tesco that had been left over from a meeting and was due to be discarded.
The breach was so abhorrent that Devonshires, whose highest-paid member received £1.68 million in 2023, allegedly complained to Total Clean, resulting in her dismissal. A spokesperson for the firm told RollOnFriday that it did not make a "formal complaint".
According to her supporters, Gabriela appealed the decision but Total Clean refused to reinstate her on the basis that “theft is theft” and because it did not want to upset Devonshires.
Supporters also appealed to the 235-lawyer firm directly, but they said it “showed no good will and refused to support Gabriela's case”.
Around 30 people protested outside Devonshires’ office this week where they handed out leaflets titled "I ATE A LEFTOVER TUNA SANDWICH AND GOT SACKED!”
The ‘Justice for Gabriela’ campaign has said her firing directly implicated Devonshires, which was “either responsible for her sacking or complicit in it”, and that while she had submitted an employment claim, tribunals “can take years to conclude and she needs a job and an income now”.
They are a shit firm if they are eating Tesco sandwiches.
This story manages to encapsulate nearly everything wrong with modern Britain. Exploited immigrant Labour, arrogant rich people, bad food and all wrapped up in a Social Media lynch mob.
What more is there to say about us as a nation?
That we are quick to jump on any seemingly outrageous story whereas it is very likely that there is more to it than what was reported.
The story is so simple I expect there is nothing more to it.
You have a cleaner eating a sandwich when they probably shouldn’t have done, it being reported to management and management reacting to the report.
There are probably reasons for every part of it but the end result seems to be an overreaction that could have been way better handled
A spokesperson for Devonshires told ROF, “Devonshires did not make a formal complaint against Gabriela or ask for any action to be taken against her. Total Clean carried out their own investigation and the decision to dismiss Gabriela was taken without any input or influence from Devonshires whatsoever. This is a private matter between Total Clean and Gabriela, but we have made clear to Total Clean that we would not object, as we never have done, to Gabriela attending and working on our premises if Total Clean changes its position".
65% of primary school children have a positive view of the monarchy, even slightly higher than the UK overall.
Primary school children seem like natural Tories, maybe Rishi should consider giving the vote to 8 year olds? After all when he meets them they don't seem to ask him hostile questions unlike adults https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68283130
Nobody young is ever going to vote Tory again until you stop using them as a piggy bank. Your party actively hates young people.
As I sip a rather excellent Kiwi Sauv Blanc, watching the warm tropic sun begin its slow slide into the Tonle Sap, the only sensible advice to young Britons remains the same: LEAVE
LEAVE Britain. No way should you vote to REMAIN
It was good advice in 2016 and it's even better now
"I voted for the current mess, and now I'm off."
Persuasive stuff.
To be a little more serious, I think AI is about to render many of our political/economic arguments utterly irrelevant, and often in a good way. We will need far fewer workers, so the whole demographic issue is, actually, not an issue
This will take pressure off the climate, we can reduce the human population, lots of things that seem insoluble now wil become easy to solve - health, ageing, etc
it's beginning and happening NOW
The dystopian side of this is that AI is gonna take all the good jobs first, the creative stuff, but hey ho. IF we want a world of easy plenty, this is the price we pay
We just need AI to build some houses and railways, educate our children, cure all disease and look after the old folks, and we’re sorted.
It's over for the Tories. Absolutely over. We didn't do what we said we'd do and did the things we said we wouldn't. The longer Sunak delays the election date the angrier the electorate are going to get.
Mr. Leon, it'll be interesting to see the cultural side of that commercial transformation.
Pathfinder/Paizo have said they won't use AI for art, and WotC/DnD got a bollocking from the TTRPG community for using AI art. Disney/Marvel's Secret Invasion used AI for the intro and got a backlash for that as well.
Aa quality and ease of use increases it will come in though I'd guess. A few elite hold outs of artisanal human created work.
I think i might be taking that from Look to Windward though.
A cleaner has been fired for eating a leftover sandwich she found in a law firm’s meeting room, it has been alleged.
Gabriela, a single mother from Ecuador, cleaned the offices of Devonshires Solicitors for two years until she was summarily sacked just before Christmas by her employer, private contractor Total Clean.
Her alleged crime was to have eaten a £1.50 tuna sandwich from Tesco that had been left over from a meeting and was due to be discarded.
The breach was so abhorrent that Devonshires, whose highest-paid member received £1.68 million in 2023, allegedly complained to Total Clean, resulting in her dismissal. A spokesperson for the firm told RollOnFriday that it did not make a "formal complaint".
According to her supporters, Gabriela appealed the decision but Total Clean refused to reinstate her on the basis that “theft is theft” and because it did not want to upset Devonshires.
Supporters also appealed to the 235-lawyer firm directly, but they said it “showed no good will and refused to support Gabriela's case”.
Around 30 people protested outside Devonshires’ office this week where they handed out leaflets titled "I ATE A LEFTOVER TUNA SANDWICH AND GOT SACKED!”
The ‘Justice for Gabriela’ campaign has said her firing directly implicated Devonshires, which was “either responsible for her sacking or complicit in it”, and that while she had submitted an employment claim, tribunals “can take years to conclude and she needs a job and an income now”.
They are a shit firm if they are eating Tesco sandwiches.
This story manages to encapsulate nearly everything wrong with modern Britain. Exploited immigrant Labour, arrogant rich people, bad food and all wrapped up in a Social Media lynch mob.
What more is there to say about us as a nation?
That we are quick to jump on any seemingly outrageous story whereas it is very likely that there is more to it than what was reported.
The story is so simple I expect there is nothing more to it.
You have a cleaner eating a sandwich when they probably shouldn’t have done, it being reported to management and management reacting to the report.
There are probably reasons for every part of it but the end result seems to be an overreaction that could have been way better handled
A spokesperson for Devonshires told ROF, “Devonshires did not make a formal complaint against Gabriela or ask for any action to be taken against her. Total Clean carried out their own investigation and the decision to dismiss Gabriela was taken without any input or influence from Devonshires whatsoever. This is a private matter between Total Clean and Gabriela, but we have made clear to Total Clean that we would not object, as we never have done, to Gabriela attending and working on our premises if Total Clean changes its position".
The key question being: who blabbed.
“We would like to be sensible, but Process Says No.”
re the vote yday - the difficulty is that the Cons are full of dicks who will say well let's tack right here go all guns blazing (perhaps literally) on Rwanda, stop other immigrants, put out the "right" message and we'll get those Reformers back on board.
Alternatively if you disliked the Cons (who doesn't) and wanted to protest, but were on the right, you might just stick your cross in the Reform box. At a GE, as we all know, however, are you really going to enable SKS to become PM? Perhaps not.
Why wouldn’t the protest continue into the general election - Rishi’s problem is that he isn’t offering anything to anyone - all his attempts to do things that would please the right have failed (probably because they continue fundamental flaws so could never actually work).
Ultimately the problem for Sunak is he's failed to recover from the seismic shock that the Truss era caused, which was the main purpose of installing him, so he's been unable to shore up support to then try to recover support among Borisites, the right, or disaffected centrists. Indeed, he's gone backwards in some, since he's had more time to screw up in different ways.
Without restoring credibility efforts to secure support from either area are undermined, and which ones they are targeting has been confused at best at any rate.
TLDR: His USP was to be Mr Sensible but he’s been Mr Stupid.
OpenAI have just announced single shot text-to-video ie you text a prompt, and it can now create 60 seconds of lifelike video.
"Introducing Sora, our text-to-video model. Sora can create videos of up to 60 seconds featuring highly detailed scenes, complex camera motion, and multiple characters with vibrant emotions.
Prompt: “Beautiful, snowy Tokyo city is bustling. The camera moves through the bustling city street, following several people enjoying the beautiful snowy weather and shopping at nearby stalls. Gorgeous sakura petals are flying through the wind along with snowflakes.”"
That's remarkable. It's still not quite right, the walk is a little stiff, there are still traces of uncanny valley, but when you remember the deeply weird, obviously AI videos of a year ago...
The technology is still accelerating
They are maybe 3-5 years from being able to create entire movies, all AI, with AI scripts and AI music
So those Hollywood strikes might have been for nothing
Damn, I came here to tell you (@Leon) that but you got here first. Here's a video from Marques Brownlee on that very subject
It's over for the Tories. Absolutely over. We didn't do what we said we'd do and did the things we said we wouldn't. The longer Sunak delays the election date the angrier the electorate are going to get.
DELETED double post.
As that sage of political analysis @Leon put it so well: It's February. A Turkey doesn't vote to bring forward Christmas to May.
Chair of the Conservative Party Richard Holden defends the use of a “clipped” video of Sadiq Khan on the party’s social media.
Jews are just a stick to beat Labour with, they aren't even real people to the Tories.
Quite indefensible from the Tories to use that clip without the correction from Khan. It’s the kind of thing Remain types would do to Farage, Boris or a UKIP candidate and say it showed their true nature etc
It will happen to a Tory, they will misspeak and it will be used against them, and now they have given up the moral high ground
The temptation for parties to do it is big, but it's not worth it.
With Khan it always seems to me the Tories overshoot in their attacks on him, like Goldsmith did, and in general people don't buy it.
A cleaner has been fired for eating a leftover sandwich she found in a law firm’s meeting room, it has been alleged.
Gabriela, a single mother from Ecuador, cleaned the offices of Devonshires Solicitors for two years until she was summarily sacked just before Christmas by her employer, private contractor Total Clean.
Her alleged crime was to have eaten a £1.50 tuna sandwich from Tesco that had been left over from a meeting and was due to be discarded.
The breach was so abhorrent that Devonshires, whose highest-paid member received £1.68 million in 2023, allegedly complained to Total Clean, resulting in her dismissal. A spokesperson for the firm told RollOnFriday that it did not make a "formal complaint".
According to her supporters, Gabriela appealed the decision but Total Clean refused to reinstate her on the basis that “theft is theft” and because it did not want to upset Devonshires.
Supporters also appealed to the 235-lawyer firm directly, but they said it “showed no good will and refused to support Gabriela's case”.
Around 30 people protested outside Devonshires’ office this week where they handed out leaflets titled "I ATE A LEFTOVER TUNA SANDWICH AND GOT SACKED!”
The ‘Justice for Gabriela’ campaign has said her firing directly implicated Devonshires, which was “either responsible for her sacking or complicit in it”, and that while she had submitted an employment claim, tribunals “can take years to conclude and she needs a job and an income now”.
They are a shit firm if they are eating Tesco sandwiches.
This story manages to encapsulate nearly everything wrong with modern Britain. Exploited immigrant Labour, arrogant rich people, bad food and all wrapped up in a Social Media lynch mob.
What more is there to say about us as a nation?
That we are quick to jump on any seemingly outrageous story whereas it is very likely that there is more to it than what was reported.
The story is so simple I expect there is nothing more to it.
You have a cleaner eating a sandwich when they probably shouldn’t have done, it being reported to management and management reacting to the report.
There are probably reasons for every part of it but the end result seems to be an overreaction that could have been way better handled
A spokesperson for Devonshires told ROF, “Devonshires did not make a formal complaint against Gabriela or ask for any action to be taken against her. Total Clean carried out their own investigation and the decision to dismiss Gabriela was taken without any input or influence from Devonshires whatsoever. This is a private matter between Total Clean and Gabriela, but we have made clear to Total Clean that we would not object, as we never have done, to Gabriela attending and working on our premises if Total Clean changes its position".
The key question being: who blabbed.
Here's what I think happened. Someone in facilities/general office at Devonshires told his contact at Total Clean (who only deal with facilities/GO - never going near a partner) that he saw the cleaner taking the sandwich. Total Clean react by firing her for fear of upsetting the only people at Devonshires they deal with. No one at partner level at Devonshires heard anything about it until this morning (no 'formal complaint') and today the partners, PR, and marketing are likely losing their shit at facilities.
I’m not buying the Reform success story with these two by-elections.
Brexit / UKIP didn’t stand in Kingswood in 2019 or 2017 but UKIP got 14.8% at the 2015 GE while Labour only managed 28%.
In Wellingborough UKIP did stand in 2017 getting 3.4% but by then they were a spent force. In 2015 they got a whopping 19.6%.
UKIP nationally scored 12.6% in 2015, 2.2% lower than Kingswood and 7% lower than Wellingborough. So all things being equal and ignoring by-election effects you could translate these by-election results as meaning Refuk are well below 10% nationally.
Then add on the fact UKIP and other minor parties always do better in by-elections than GEs and I think if I were Tice I would be pretty dissatisfied with these results.
Reform nearly at UKIP 2015 levels both in these by elections and in national polls, most of which have them a clear 3rd and at or over 10%, is clearly very good news for Tice.
Not only are they now ahead of the LDs and Greens in most polls but on last night's by elections when actual votes are cast too. The better Reform do, the more pressure they put on the Tories to shift further right too either before or certainly after the election if a heavy defeat
Both elections suggest Reform are performing significantly worse than most national polls would suggest.
They’re doing OK, certainly better than a few years ago, but their national polling is wrong.
I’m pretty sure their vote last night was also partly at the expense of Labour votes.
Green was probably the biggest disappointment, especially in Kingswood. Lib Dem’s less so because their Faustian pact is to get squeezed in Labour targets in exchange for wringing Labour dry in their own targets.
If Reform are serious about winning seats, they need to concentrate on working hard in a few winnable seats like Clacton, not standing in every seat.
They aren't. I think they're a one-purpose political party to exert pressure on another party to adopt certain policies. In this case it's the Conservatives and anti-immigration policies, but it's not unprecedented.
It's over for the Tories. Absolutely over. We didn't do what we said we'd do and did the things we said we wouldn't. The longer Sunak delays the election date the angrier the electorate are going to get.
Given the 2019 manifesto- lots of brilliant stuff funded by the phoney £350 million a week spent multiple times- some sort of failure was pretty much inevitable.
It probably didn't need to be as spectacular as this, though.
They were due for a reversal of fortune. But it's been far worse than predicted - with such a victory cushion Boris should have been invulnerable internally and with a very decent shot of holding on.
Now there is total panic since as Rochdale says attacks are not working as people aren't listening.
You need a solid base from which to launch attacks, or you just fall on your face in the dirt.
They must have thought it was worth the risk of losing support by getting rid of Boris as they had such a cushion. It was a particularly stupid thing to do in this parliament,, as the majority consisted of lots of voters who were first time Tories that felt some loyalty to Boris, but none to other potential Conservative leaders.
Mr. kle4, it's possibly that the inherently social nature (and popularity of home-brewing) in TTRPGs will make it resistant to that. We'll see.
One aspect of work (keeping it vague) with a client was going to be done by staff but using AI, until one person pointed out it actually took longer to use AI for it (because there was a high volume of small text amounts). In some areas of work, that will stop AI being used, because it actually increases the time it takes to do something compared to a human doing it by themselves.
It's over for the Tories. Absolutely over. We didn't do what we said we'd do and did the things we said we wouldn't. The longer Sunak delays the election date the angrier the electorate are going to get.
DELETED double post.
As that sage of political analysis @Leon put it so well: It's February. A Turkey doesn't vote to bring forward Christmas to May.
Degrees of loss though, and I'm starting to think there's a real chance of a VONC (per thread header).
I'm not saying he will - as we know, Rishi's defining characteristic as PM is how bad he is at politics.
Comments
The dog in Burano is incredible
the woman in Tokyo and the Gold Rush footage also impressive
https://openai.com/sora
This is the future of video and it involves virtually no human creativity apart from the prompt
For decades, western Europe’s national healthcare systems have been widely touted as among the best in the world.
But an ageing population, more long-term illnesses, a continuing recruitment and retainment crisis plus post-Covid exhaustion have combined, this winter, to create a perfect healthcare storm that is likely to get worse before it gets better.
“All countries of the region face severe problems related to their health and care workforce,” the World Health Organization’s Europe region said in a report earlier this year, warning of potentially dire consequences without urgent government action.
In France, there are fewer doctors now than in 2012. More than 6 million people, including 600,000 with chronic illnesses, do not have a regular GP and 30% of the population does not have adequate access to health services.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/dec/14/a-ticking-time-bomb-healthcare-under-threat-across-western-europe
On a Thursday in mid-August, the doors of a hospital's emergency department two hours west of Toronto were shut.
A note posted on the front said the ER was closed for the day. It would reopen the following morning at 08:00, but close again for the evening. Patients who needed urgent care were asked to go to nearby hospitals - a 15- to 35-minute drive away.
It was the ninth time since April that the Huron Public Healthcare Alliance - a network of four hospitals serving around 150,000 people in western Ontario - had to temporarily close or cut back hours at one of its emergency departments.
And it won't be the last, said the organisation's CEO Andrew Williams.
The reason? There aren't enough nurses to staff the ER.
"You are seeing - almost weekly - hospitals having to reduce their services," Mr Williams told the BBC.
It's a dilemma playing out at emergency departments across Canada, particularly at smaller hospitals where reduced services have become commonplace.
In the maritime province of Nova Scotia, one hospital's ER has been closed since June 2021 due to staffing shortages.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-62716710
Food for thought in a country in dire need of strong and stable leadership.
At least it is something positive. Indeed, I would say, mindblowingly good. Near-miraculous
Not great if you work or TV or movies, tho, but still
They chose a pro-Putin shill.
The law requires that aid be accounted for in the current manner. If you want to change that, you have to go through Congress.
Blame the people who are preventing aid, not those who want to supply it.
This is the story that needs dissection and analysis.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-68311273
Lawyers are the best.
"If the cleaner entered the meeting room just as the meeting was ending, launched herself over the table, grabbed the sandwich whilst proclaiming "mmm, tuna!" then proceeded to eat it in two bites and throw the crusts at a client, I think she might've deserved the sack here."
That's why even many of the efforts to fight back are lukewarm or anaemic. As nasty as the campaign might get, you can tell for most of them their hearts aren't in it.
It's why they are spiralling and getting worse, as even mitigating the scale of the coming defeat doesn't seem to motivate them.
Immigrant medical staff have to pass both a medical exam and an English language exam, including colloquial language in order to get registration. It typically takes six months or a year to do so.
And in both cases - the polls, and the by-elections, there are probably some right-wing Tories giving 'Reform' as their protest, hoping to pull their party off to the extreme while still intending to vote Tory come the GE. As the party responds it is likely to lose as many sensible voters as it gains from the margins.
“It's not been edited. It was clipped.”
Chair of the Conservative Party Richard Holden defends the use of a “clipped” video of Sadiq Khan on the party’s social media.
Jews are just a stick to beat Labour with, they aren't even real people to the Tories.
https://twitter.com/montie/status/1758404316631531751
But the Dems preferred to vote with Matt Gaetz to bring down McCarthy.
Now they have to deal with the consequences of a House which wont pass anything.
Its what they chose and what they knew was likely to happen when they made that choice.
Alternatively if you disliked the Cons (who doesn't) and wanted to protest, but were on the right, you might just stick your cross in the Reform box. At a GE, as we all know, however, are you really going to enable SKS to become PM? Perhaps not.
On the Suffragettes, I had forgotten that they planted bombs in Tube Stations - specifically Piccadilly Circus and Westbourne Park.
It's time for the revisionist history to be rolled back
I’m listening to Joe Rogan, who’s continually asking where $150bn of aid might go to American commutinites rather than to Ukraine. No-one is challenging this narrative.
Sora is not a LLM, not a Large Language Model - it is a Diffusion Model
The purchaser of the Tesco sandwich must surely be fingered as an accomplice here.
One does wonder how the sperm were mixed - samples provided to a fertility clinic or a more old-fashioned method
What more is there to say about us as a nation?
But the intractability of the country's problems, which it is only politically beneficial to acknowledge in opposition (and only partly so then), the practical limitations on options for them, external matters beyond their control, obsession with instant results, lack of political reward for forward thinking, and the toxic morass of our political culture, moulds and shapes good hearted people.
It drags them down, dispirits them, until you are left with people trying their best, but overwhelmingly focused on internal party politics and media positioning, with little time for anything else.
Our government really hates market forces.
https://x.com/minchoi/status/1649086503174258700?s=20
I mean, interesting. And probably at the time - all of ten months ago! - impressive
Now it can do THIS
https://x.com/csakon/status/1758288886839787992?s=20
https://x.com/sGianella/status/1758237698349801878?s=20
https://x.com/x_ai_a12/status/1758345884998173029?s=20
That's in ten months. This is exploding
Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧
@montie
It's over for the Tories. Absolutely over. We didn't do what we said we'd do and did the things we said we wouldn't. The longer Sunak delays the election date the angrier the electorate are going to get.
Or maybe they're down to my own brilliance
You have a cleaner eating a sandwich when they probably shouldn’t have done, it being reported to management and management reacting to the report.
There are probably reasons for every part of it but the end result seems to be an overreaction that could have been way better handled
Apart from spending money, which SKS now seems to be rowing back on, what is the vision for Britain from Lab.
Of course parties lose elections, rather than win them, but there is no Blairite hope and optimism, just a(nother) dour technocrat offering more of the same.
On the economy what has Rishi done/not done that is so egregious that Lab has pledged not to do/do if they come to power.
https://x.com/paultrillo/status/1758380582277406816?s=20
Persuasive stuff.
But Tesco sandwiches, really? No way a City law firm orders Tesco sandwiches for the boardroom.
My parents are not well travelled and live in a largely white/English part of Essex, so I think they are just not used to other accents - and my mum's hearing, at least, is not super. They're a bit racist and tend to blame it on the 'foreign' clinicians, but there is a real issue in them genuinely struggling to understand, even if the average Brit in the street would not be having any problems. I'm not sure how it is best addressed really, but the communication issues are real, even if they seem bizarre to many of us - they do to me, I've come away from conversations thinking how on earth do my parents have trouble understanding this person. But they do.
Without restoring credibility efforts to secure support from either area are undermined, and which ones they are targeting has been confused at best at any rate.
You can fight an election on fear of the other when you have delivered something, you can't when you have failed on every one of your own measures.
What the Tories really need is to go off on a policy retreat, sit round in a circle, and come up with some new ideas which they could get started on quickly. New news, change the narrative, find something positive to run on.
Yes and Ho!
It probably didn't need to be as spectacular as this, though.
HOWEVER that's just pointing out the problems.
This looks like it is *amazing* for previz and really optimize that part of the process. Like, now, today, as-is.
And that's the kind of thing at which this generation of generative AI is going to dominate.
This will take pressure off the climate, we can reduce the human population, lots of things that seem insoluble now wil become easy to solve - health, ageing, etc
it's beginning and happening NOW
The dystopian side of this is that AI is gonna take all the good jobs first, the creative stuff, but hey ho. IF we want a world of easy plenty, this is the price we pay
On that, it's hard to say as there is no other real evidence to go on. Last night, once again, REF scored a big fat 0 in local council by-elections by not standing. My feeling is that if they can't even find a candidate in somewhere like Hull in a General Election year, they aren't going to be putting up anything like a full slate of candidates come the GE.
Donald Trump's empire of fraud being dismantled by corporate death penalty.
#Manionisyourman
The voters have realised they can only deliver tofu and food colouring.
The issue is competence, not marketing...
@SkyNews
"Stick with our plan, because it's starting to deliver the message that the country wants and needs."
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says that's the message he'll be sharing in the upcoming general election following Labour's wins in Kingswood and Wellingborough.
And that's going to generate about a decade of even more conspicuous "make work" in corporates - as the first jobs that *could* go are in Finance but they control the purse strings. It's all going to be *very* interesting.
Pathfinder/Paizo have said they won't use AI for art, and WotC/DnD got a bollocking from the TTRPG community for using AI art. Disney/Marvel's Secret Invasion used AI for the intro and got a backlash for that as well.
Now there is total panic since as Rochdale says attacks are not working as people aren't listening.
You need a solid base from which to launch attacks, or you just fall on your face in the dirt.
Although that was out of 26.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Kingdom_by-elections_(1950–1979)
It will happen to a Tory, they will misspeak and it will be used against them, and now they have given up the moral high ground
The key question being: who blabbed.
I think i might be taking that from Look to Windward though.
"AI Generated Videos Just Changed Forever", Marques Brownlee, YouTube, 12mins, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXpdyAWLDas
With Khan it always seems to me the Tories overshoot in their attacks on him, like Goldsmith did, and in general people don't buy it.
One aspect of work (keeping it vague) with a client was going to be done by staff but using AI, until one person pointed out it actually took longer to use AI for it (because there was a high volume of small text amounts). In some areas of work, that will stop AI being used, because it actually increases the time it takes to do something compared to a human doing it by themselves.
I'm not saying he will - as we know, Rishi's defining characteristic as PM is how bad he is at politics.