I'd say the US Justice System needs to apply its principle of equality before the law to ex-Presidents who are convicted of, or on trial for, civil or criminal offences.
This is the most recent I've noticed. For some reason he does not mention his exploitation of his position as owner / promoter of pageants to wander around the back rooms of pageants filled with half dressed teenage girls.
Isn’t Trump himself from New York?
Not sure about originally, but it's been his career forever.
This is apparently why he does not understand NY law, and employs lawyers who do not either.
In fairness he seems to understand it perfectly. The rich are not to be held to account for their actions and criminal charges are for little people of no importance.
He has fully applied the same malign principle to federal law. The public glorification of the Jan 6 rioters has a nasty beer hall taste about it.
Inside Donald Trump’s Embrace of the Jan. 6 Rioters The former president initially disavowed the attack on the Capitol, but he is now making it a centerpiece of his general election campaign. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/13/us/politics/trump-jan-6.html
Excellent. 17.4m people voted to shut down places selling foreign muck and replace them with Pie and Mash shops.
I'm confused - is it impossible for an Italian restaurant to employ someone not from Italy??
It can be done. I’ve dined in more than one with waiting staff that were non Italian. They stepped up to the plate. They were able to take a plate of carbonara from the pass to the table and crack some black pepper over it and sprinkle some Parmesan. It can be done.
Depends on the restaurant. Plenty of places sell Italian food. But an Italian restaurant? The entire schtick is authenticity. So replacing young Giuseppi with Brian from Bow kind of ruins the experience people want.
I believe that Pratt’s calls all their staff “George” (or, in a nod to modernity, “Georgina”)
So who not call Brian from Bow “Giuseppe”?
How many Brians live in Bow? It’ll either be Orlando or Muhammad
That is an extraordinary article and one the author would never have written without implicit backing from some very senior people in the Chinese government.
So what do we think? Will Israel hit back - will we see direct Israeli attacks on Iran?
Pros
1. Emotionally satisfying 2. Electorally popular 3. Chance to take out Iranian nuclear programme? 4. Deter others 5. America might support it as it stalls Iranian help to Putin
Cons: 1. Might go wrong, miss targets, electorally unpopular 2. Obvious risk of massive escalation with Iran 3. Might provoke Hezbollah into all out attack 4. Could end up killing everyone on earth 5. America will probably try and stop it; bad for Biden in election year
That’s finely balanced. I reckon it’s 52/48 Israel restrains itself. Maybe takes on Iranian proxies
Off topic - at every point of the income scale, people in England live longer than people in the US. I would not have thought that at the top end. The gap at the bottom is truly remarkable.
Does that second chart not simply suggest that health care is more expensive in the US than Europe?
It says 'adjusted for price differences between countries' along the X axis.
I missed that, but it doesn't say how they've adjusted it . I mean, maybe doctors get paid more per hour in the US. Maybe they spend more time with each patient. Maybe they organise more tests, I don't know
My daughter just had a CT scan in the US. Charge was $24,000. For 20 minutes in a machine that cost $2m.
They offered a 30% discount without being promoted for immediate settlement.
For the nth time it doesn't matter where she was actually living it matters what address she nominated, if any, as her primary residence for tax purposes.
According to Neidle that doesn't matter either. You can nominate whichever property you want or none of them.
Yes that's my point
Which means Rayner ends up with a slightly different tax calculation. So what? She says she's been advised she has nothing to pay.
She may be lying I suppose.
It’s not the quantum.
If she knowingly made a false declaration to HMRC that’s the issue.
Of course that would be the issue. Wake me up if and when you find the tiniest shred of evidence to suggest she had done so.
There’s lots of anecdotal evidence that her house, declared as her PPR, was not where she was living. I doubt we will ever get to a “beyond reasonable doubt” point.
My assumption is that she probably did make a false declaration (I don’t find the concept of her children being registered at her husband’s house while she lived elsewhere plausible).
But as someone else said she should have paid the amount in dispute and taken the high ground. In brazening it out it sets a poor tone on her mindset.
Were she to do so, the following morning’s Daily Mail would have a dozen quotes from Tory MPs about how this proves she must have been on the fiddle in the first place.
So what do we think? Will Israel hit back - will we see direct Israeli attacks on Iran?
Pros
1. Emotionally satisfying 2. Electorally popular 3. Chance to take out Iranian nuclear programme? 4. Deter others 5. America might support it as it stalls Iranian help to Putin
Cons: 1. Might go wrong, miss targets, electorally unpopular 2. Obvious risk of massive escalation with Iran 3. Might provoke Hezbollah into all out attack 4. Could end up killing everyone on earth 5. America will probably try and stop it; bad for Biden in election year
That’s finely balanced. I reckon it’s 52/48 Israel restrains itself. Maybe takes on Iranian proxies
We probably need Bart’s nuanced take on it.
Seems we already have an answer. I was (just about) right. Israeli restraint
“New York Times: The Israeli cabinet has abandoned the option of a retaliatory attack on Iran”
For the nth time it doesn't matter where she was actually living it matters what address she nominated, if any, as her primary residence for tax purposes.
According to Neidle that doesn't matter either. You can nominate whichever property you want or none of them.
Yes that's my point
Which means Rayner ends up with a slightly different tax calculation. So what? She says she's been advised she has nothing to pay.
She may be lying I suppose.
It’s not the quantum.
If she knowingly made a false declaration to HMRC that’s the issue.
Of course that would be the issue. Wake me up if and when you find the tiniest shred of evidence to suggest she had done so.
There’s lots of anecdotal evidence that her house, declared as her PPR, was not where she was living. I doubt we will ever get to a “beyond reasonable doubt” point.
My assumption is that she probably did make a false declaration (I don’t find the concept of her children being registered at her husband’s house while she lived elsewhere plausible).
But as someone else said she should have paid the amount in dispute and taken the high ground. In brazening it out it sets a poor tone on her mindset.
Were she to do so, the following morning’s Daily Mail would have a dozen quotes from Tory MPs about how this proves she must have been on the fiddle in the first place.
Of course it would. And then it would be yesterday’s chip paper
“Even if this is true……” That represents the perfect response to any troll [...] Award yourself a Troll Gold Star every time you get one! Other good responses include, but are not limited to…. “Although this is on-topic…..” “I disagree….” “Yes, but…..” “Can you provide a source for this….”
Mind you, Trump did look fetching in his green headband.
If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit
It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.
So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause
Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.
But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.
I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.
(Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
Also, the implicit deal used to be "Young Europeans- come and work in the UK for a bit. The pay won't be great, but there's minimal admin, you can improve your English, which will pay off well for you in the future. And it's a fun place to pass through." See also au pair-ing.
The recompense for the job wasn't just the cash, it was the experience. It's not as if young Brits wanted to do the work.
We've chucked that away, because of an obsession with control and total numbers of bodies. Brexit didn't have to be like this (and doesn't now.) But it was always a plausible outcome, especially after the campaign of 2016.
I think Brexit was always going to be like that because it is built on the premise that we are not part of Europe so young Europeans have no business coming here.
Liberal "Love Europe/Hate EU" was and is a genuine sincere thing. For me, it foundered on two problems. The first is that, if the rest of the continent is content with the current setup, there's a limit to how far they should change that for our sake. The other is that Liberal Leave needed Illiberal Leave to get across the line. If they really expected former Remainers to come and save them, that was naïve.
Agree with this and add it also foundered on the question of what do you want? If you now have the option of stuff you don't want, while losing the stuff you do actually want, what's the point of that choice?
So what do we think? Will Israel hit back - will we see direct Israeli attacks on Iran?
Pros
1. Emotionally satisfying 2. Electorally popular 3. Chance to take out Iranian nuclear programme? 4. Deter others 5. America might support it as it stalls Iranian help to Putin
Cons: 1. Might go wrong, miss targets, electorally unpopular 2. Obvious risk of massive escalation with Iran 3. Might provoke Hezbollah into all out attack 4. Could end up killing everyone on earth 5. America will probably try and stop it; bad for Biden in election year
That’s finely balanced. I reckon it’s 52/48 Israel restrains itself. Maybe takes on Iranian proxies
Netanyahu could just troll Iran and go on TV each day saying “When Iran carries out the attack it’s threatened then we will react accordingly but as of now we haven’t noticed anything.”
The scale of the Rwanda scheme is now very different to the large-scale and systematic removals originally promised by ministers
A civil servant told me efforts are geared towards a single flight as “proof of concept”, calling it an “election vanity scam”
Seriously, this is the standard of civil servants now? Gut the Home Office. It couldn't be much worse if a rent-a-thug company like G4S ran the whole thing.
As Israel swipes aside Iranian projectiles Bruce Lee style and declines tit-for-tat it appears they are shadow boxing. The Iron Dome has been tested by Iran and not found wanting.
The scale of the Rwanda scheme is now very different to the large-scale and systematic removals originally promised by ministers
A civil servant told me efforts are geared towards a single flight as “proof of concept”, calling it an “election vanity scam”
Seriously, this is the standard of civil servants now? Gut the Home Office. It couldn't be much worse if a rent-a-thug company like G4S ran the whole thing.
Indeed. The civil servant should just have stuck with the “proof of concept” description for Rwanda, and not have mentioned “election vanity scam".
Civil servants aren't paid along with their gold plated pensions to let the cat out of the bag.
The scale of the Rwanda scheme is now very different to the large-scale and systematic removals originally promised by ministers
A civil servant told me efforts are geared towards a single flight as “proof of concept”, calling it an “election vanity scam”
Seriously, this is the standard of civil servants now? Gut the Home Office. It couldn't be much worse if a rent-a-thug company like G4S ran the whole thing.
The Home Office should be broken up. Not sure why it’s survived this long in its current state .
For the nth time it doesn't matter where she was actually living it matters what address she nominated, if any, as her primary residence for tax purposes.
According to Neidle that doesn't matter either. You can nominate whichever property you want or none of them.
Yes that's my point
Which means Rayner ends up with a slightly different tax calculation. So what? She says she's been advised she has nothing to pay.
She may be lying I suppose.
It’s not the quantum.
If she knowingly made a false declaration to HMRC that’s the issue.
Of course that would be the issue. Wake me up if and when you find the tiniest shred of evidence to suggest she had done so.
There’s lots of anecdotal evidence that her house, declared as her PPR, was not where she was living. I doubt we will ever get to a “beyond reasonable doubt” point.
My assumption is that she probably did make a false declaration (I don’t find the concept of her children being registered at her husband’s house while she lived elsewhere plausible).
But as someone else said she should have paid the amount in dispute and taken the high ground. In brazening it out it sets a poor tone on her mindset.
Birth registration and re-registration don't require registering the child at an address.
Off topic - at every point of the income scale, people in England live longer than people in the US. I would not have thought that at the top end. The gap at the bottom is truly remarkable.
Does that second chart not simply suggest that health care is more expensive in the US than Europe?
It says 'adjusted for price differences between countries' along the X axis.
I missed that, but it doesn't say how they've adjusted it . I mean, maybe doctors get paid more per hour in the US. Maybe they spend more time with each patient. Maybe they organise more tests, I don't know
My daughter just had a CT scan in the US. Charge was $24,000. For 20 minutes in a machine that cost $2m.
They offered a 30% discount without being promoted for immediate settlement.
That’s egregious pricing
How much of that goes to the middlemen in the payment chain?
How does one tell the difference between a CT scan and an MRI scan machine? I'm sure I've had both in the last year, and I think the main perceived difference may be that a CT scan is 15-20 minutes, and an MRI scan more like 30-90 minutes.
I tend to refer to the "swallow you whole" scanning machines as The Giant Polo Mint.
The NHS has numbers on this buried within the cross-charging system, which I assume are just the marginal cost of the scan, which would cover variable costs with some predetermined overhead.
Their numbers are between £100 and £200 roughly afaics, but it is a system I do not understand well.
I certainly hope he is right, though I look at the problems Europe is having in providing supplies to Ukraine in the absence of US support and I have my doubts.
The interesting thing is that he should say so.
If the Chinese leadership is allowing the idea of Russian defeat to be discussed openly then it indicates that they are considering how they should react to Russia's defeat.
He blames the Bank, but it's really the Government's responsibility. The taxpayer has paid the Bank £50bn so far this year to cover its QT losses - that dwarves any bad procurement, school repair, wasteful departmental spending, or any other scandal, yet as he says, he's the only MP complaining about it. Don't know what the rest are thinking, useless shower, probably too busy photographing their own genitals.
I certainly hope he is right, though I look at the problems Europe is having in providing supplies to Ukraine in the absence of US support and I have my doubts.
The interesting thing is that he should say so.
If the Chinese leadership is allowing the idea of Russian defeat to be discussed openly then it indicates that they are considering how they should react to Russia's defeat.
It’s certainly interesting. I wonder if it’s China - with a slowing economy - growing tired of global chaos. First Ukraine, now the Mid East. All this after Covid. What China needs is a period of calm and free trade to restart its economy
So this could be a hint to Putin: take what you’ve got and sue for peace. Kinda hope so
That is an extraordinary article and one the author would never have written without implicit backing from some very senior people in the Chinese government.
This is an interesting bullet point:
Russia's nuclear capability is no guarantee of success. Feng Yujun gives the example of the United States, which left Vietnam, Korea, and Afghanistan with no less nuclear potential than the Russian Federation has today.
So what do we think? Will Israel hit back - will we see direct Israeli attacks on Iran?
Pros
1. Emotionally satisfying 2. Electorally popular 3. Chance to take out Iranian nuclear programme? 4. Deter others 5. America might support it as it stalls Iranian help to Putin
Cons: 1. Might go wrong, miss targets, electorally unpopular 2. Obvious risk of massive escalation with Iran 3. Might provoke Hezbollah into all out attack 4. Could end up killing everyone on earth 5. America will probably try and stop it; bad for Biden in election year
That’s finely balanced. I reckon it’s 52/48 Israel restrains itself. Maybe takes on Iranian proxies
I think it hinges on the nuclear question.
If Israel want to hit Iran's nuclear programme, wreck a few facilities, destroy some equipment, set the programme back a few more years, then this is the best opportunity they have to do so. It can be presented as a response to the Iranian missile attack in a way that simply hitting Iran at any other time could not.
If Israel are not looking for such an excuse then Iran have set it up for de-escalation. The Iranian attack can be shrugged off as ineffective, not requiring a response.
My guess is that Israel will want to take this chance. Last October shows the peril of being complacent about a potential threat to Israel. If Israel don't hit the Iranian nuclear programme now, then when will they?
As Israel swipes aside Iranian projectiles Bruce Lee style and declines tit-for-tat it appears they are shadow boxing. The Iron Dome has been tested by Iran and not found wanting.
Swiped aside with the assistance of the airforces of three nuclear-armed foreign powers, reportedly. Oh the indignity!
What do you make of the reports of power blackouts in Israel, including in Tel Aviv, said to be the work of the "Cyber Avengers" according to some sources?
The scale of the Rwanda scheme is now very different to the large-scale and systematic removals originally promised by ministers
A civil servant told me efforts are geared towards a single flight as “proof of concept”, calling it an “election vanity scam”
Seriously, this is the standard of civil servants now? Gut the Home Office. It couldn't be much worse if a rent-a-thug company like G4S ran the whole thing.
Indeed. The civil servant should just have stuck with the “proof of concept” description for Rwanda, and not have mentioned “election vanity scam".
Civil servants aren't paid along with their gold plated pensions to let the cat out of the bag.
They're not paid to flap their gums about Government policy full stop. Where there's wrong-doing or serious departmental issues, they have a right to blow the whistle. Otherwise stfu.
So what do we think? Will Israel hit back - will we see direct Israeli attacks on Iran?
Pros
1. Emotionally satisfying 2. Electorally popular 3. Chance to take out Iranian nuclear programme? 4. Deter others 5. America might support it as it stalls Iranian help to Putin
Cons: 1. Might go wrong, miss targets, electorally unpopular 2. Obvious risk of massive escalation with Iran 3. Might provoke Hezbollah into all out attack 4. Could end up killing everyone on earth 5. America will probably try and stop it; bad for Biden in election year
That’s finely balanced. I reckon it’s 52/48 Israel restrains itself. Maybe takes on Iranian proxies
I think it hinges on the nuclear question.
If Israel want to hit Iran's nuclear programme, wreck a few facilities, destroy some equipment, set the programme back a few more years, then this is the best opportunity they have to do so. It can be presented as a response to the Iranian missile attack in a way that simply hitting Iran at any other time could not.
If Israel are not looking for such an excuse then Iran have set it up for de-escalation. The Iranian attack can be shrugged off as ineffective, not requiring a response.
My guess is that Israel will want to take this chance. Last October shows the peril of being complacent about a potential threat to Israel. If Israel don't hit the Iranian nuclear programme now, then when will they?
The NYT is already reporting that Israel won’t directly hit back - Biden is pressuring them. Israel will instead attack covertly - cyber hacks, hit Iranian officials abroad, etc. I reckon that’s what will happen - PROBABLY
So what do we think? Will Israel hit back - will we see direct Israeli attacks on Iran?
Pros
1. Emotionally satisfying 2. Electorally popular 3. Chance to take out Iranian nuclear programme? 4. Deter others 5. America might support it as it stalls Iranian help to Putin
Cons: 1. Might go wrong, miss targets, electorally unpopular 2. Obvious risk of massive escalation with Iran 3. Might provoke Hezbollah into all out attack 4. Could end up killing everyone on earth 5. America will probably try and stop it; bad for Biden in election year
That’s finely balanced. I reckon it’s 52/48 Israel restrains itself. Maybe takes on Iranian proxies
We probably need Bart’s nuanced take on it.
Seems we already have an answer. I was (just about) right. Israeli restraint
“New York Times: The Israeli cabinet has abandoned the option of a retaliatory attack on Iran”
The US likely pointed out that their munition stocks are nor unlimited, and there’s no guarantee of Congress authorising military aid to back a war against Iran, started by Israel.
Netanyahu is a man of seriously bad and limited judgment, but the IDF will have told him their odds without US help aren’t good.
The scale of the Rwanda scheme is now very different to the large-scale and systematic removals originally promised by ministers
A civil servant told me efforts are geared towards a single flight as “proof of concept”, calling it an “election vanity scam”
Seriously, this is the standard of civil servants now? Gut the Home Office. It couldn't be much worse if a rent-a-thug company like G4S ran the whole thing.
The Home Office should be broken up. Not sure why it’s survived this long in its current state .
The Home Office was broken up by Tony Blair with the Border Agency set up and the Department of Justice spun out. Like most management reorganisations, it has proved an expensive flop.
So what do we think? Will Israel hit back - will we see direct Israeli attacks on Iran?
Pros
1. Emotionally satisfying 2. Electorally popular 3. Chance to take out Iranian nuclear programme? 4. Deter others 5. America might support it as it stalls Iranian help to Putin
Cons: 1. Might go wrong, miss targets, electorally unpopular 2. Obvious risk of massive escalation with Iran 3. Might provoke Hezbollah into all out attack 4. Could end up killing everyone on earth 5. America will probably try and stop it; bad for Biden in election year
That’s finely balanced. I reckon it’s 52/48 Israel restrains itself. Maybe takes on Iranian proxies
We probably need Bart’s nuanced take on it.
Seems we already have an answer. I was (just about) right. Israeli restraint
“New York Times: The Israeli cabinet has abandoned the option of a retaliatory attack on Iran”
The US likely pointed out that their munition stocks are nor unlimited, and there’s no guarantee of Congress authorising military aid to back a war against Iran, started by Israel.
Netanyahu is a man of seriously bad and limited judgment, but the IDF will have told him their odds without US help aren’t good.
Agreed. I imagine Bibi would love to hit back, but without American help it’s insanely risky = unlikely
Restraint is strategically clever as well. Israel now looks like the plucky little victim again. Global anger over Gaza will abate. Maybe they can defeat Hamas now, and they can justify it by saying Hamas = Iran
Off topic - at every point of the income scale, people in England live longer than people in the US. I would not have thought that at the top end. The gap at the bottom is truly remarkable.
Does that second chart not simply suggest that health care is more expensive in the US than Europe?
It says 'adjusted for price differences between countries' along the X axis.
I missed that, but it doesn't say how they've adjusted it . I mean, maybe doctors get paid more per hour in the US. Maybe they spend more time with each patient. Maybe they organise more tests, I don't know
My daughter just had a CT scan in the US. Charge was $24,000. For 20 minutes in a machine that cost $2m.
They offered a 30% discount without being promoted for immediate settlement.
That’s egregious pricing
My wife paid for an MRI scan recently. I assume an MRI scan would be more expensive than a CT scan. The cost was £400.
So what do we think? Will Israel hit back - will we see direct Israeli attacks on Iran?
Pros
1. Emotionally satisfying 2. Electorally popular 3. Chance to take out Iranian nuclear programme? 4. Deter others 5. America might support it as it stalls Iranian help to Putin
Cons: 1. Might go wrong, miss targets, electorally unpopular 2. Obvious risk of massive escalation with Iran 3. Might provoke Hezbollah into all out attack 4. Could end up killing everyone on earth 5. America will probably try and stop it; bad for Biden in election year
That’s finely balanced. I reckon it’s 52/48 Israel restrains itself. Maybe takes on Iranian proxies
Under Pros you missed:
6. Would make Bart from north-west England very happy.
The scale of the Rwanda scheme is now very different to the large-scale and systematic removals originally promised by ministers
A civil servant told me efforts are geared towards a single flight as “proof of concept”, calling it an “election vanity scam”
Seriously, this is the standard of civil servants now? Gut the Home Office. It couldn't be much worse if a rent-a-thug company like G4S ran the whole thing.
Indeed. The civil servant should just have stuck with the “proof of concept” description for Rwanda, and not have mentioned “election vanity scam".
Civil servants aren't paid along with their gold plated pensions to let the cat out of the bag.
You are right but it is possible the phrase "election vanity scam" came from the journalist, and a civil servant naive to the ways of the press did not immediately demur.
The scale of the Rwanda scheme is now very different to the large-scale and systematic removals originally promised by ministers
A civil servant told me efforts are geared towards a single flight as “proof of concept”, calling it an “election vanity scam”
Seriously, this is the standard of civil servants now? Gut the Home Office. It couldn't be much worse if a rent-a-thug company like G4S ran the whole thing.
Indeed. The civil servant should just have stuck with the “proof of concept” description for Rwanda, and not have mentioned “election vanity scam".
Civil servants aren't paid along with their gold plated pensions to let the cat out of the bag.
Luckyguy seems to imagine that the odd G4S employee won’t have a chat with a journalist. Or that civil servants have never done so before.
Before Team Starmer have got their hands on a single red box, the most miserabilist voices declare that failure is inevitable.
A dour tone is in tune with a sour national mood about the condition of the country and the trustworthiness of its politicians. Sir Keir and his people think the worst thing they could do would be to arouse expectations that they won’t be able to meet.
The mistake here, and it is one which is particularly prevalent on the left, is to think that progress is entirely dependent on being able to spend lots of extra money.
Progress isn’t all about the state being able to open its wallet. The legacy of reforming governments is often not defined by how much money they spent, but by the enduring institutions they created and the social advances they embedded. Several of New Labour’s key reforms came at zero or trivial cost to the exchequer. A notable one was the establishment of the minimum wage.
Of all the reforms of the New Labour years, banning smoking in enclosed public spaces was one of the greatest triumphs of no-cost progressivism. Fuggy pubs and fume-hazed restaurants are no more than a smelly memory. Deaths from heart disease and strokes have fallen dramatically since lighting up was banned in indoor venues. There’s a strong case that the ban has been the single biggest benefit to public health in my lifetime while saving the NHS the money that it would otherwise be spending on treating smoking-related diseases.
The House of Lords provides an easy way to demonstrate that Britain has a modernising government. Given how abysmal the consequences of Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal have been, it should not be beyond the wit of a Labour government to agree more rational and less frictional trading arrangements with the EU. It will very likely be a first-year priority for Labour to create Great British Energy, a new publicly owned clean power company. It would be a quick win for a Starmer government, and one rectifying a Tory failure, to implement a comprehensive ban on the sale of zombie knives, machetes and other vicious bladed weapons.
[Other opportunities] include modernising the school curriculum, using planning reform and the levers of the state to encourage house building, overhauling the regulation of water and other utilities, banning no-fault evictions and enhancing consumer protection.
History shows that you don’t have to be a chequebook government to be a reforming government. Even when money is tight, Labour will have substantial opportunities to change lives in ways that matter a lot. They just have to be seized.
For the nth time it doesn't matter where she was actually living it matters what address she nominated, if any, as her primary residence for tax purposes.
According to Neidle that doesn't matter either. You can nominate whichever property you want or none of them.
Yes that's my point
Which means Rayner ends up with a slightly different tax calculation. So what? She says she's been advised she has nothing to pay.
She may be lying I suppose.
It’s not the quantum.
If she knowingly made a false declaration to HMRC that’s the issue.
Of course that would be the issue. Wake me up if and when you find the tiniest shred of evidence to suggest she had done so.
There’s lots of anecdotal evidence that her house, declared as her PPR, was not where she was living. I doubt we will ever get to a “beyond reasonable doubt” point.
My assumption is that she probably did make a false declaration (I don’t find the concept of her children being registered at her husband’s house while she lived elsewhere plausible).
But as someone else said she should have paid the amount in dispute and taken the high ground. In brazening it out it sets a poor tone on her mindset.
Were she to do so, the following morning’s Daily Mail would have a dozen quotes from Tory MPs about how this proves she must have been on the fiddle in the first place.
Well, they would have known about such activities.
Off topic - at every point of the income scale, people in England live longer than people in the US. I would not have thought that at the top end. The gap at the bottom is truly remarkable.
Does that second chart not simply suggest that health care is more expensive in the US than Europe?
It says 'adjusted for price differences between countries' along the X axis.
I missed that, but it doesn't say how they've adjusted it . I mean, maybe doctors get paid more per hour in the US. Maybe they spend more time with each patient. Maybe they organise more tests, I don't know
My daughter just had a CT scan in the US. Charge was $24,000. For 20 minutes in a machine that cost $2m.
They offered a 30% discount without being promoted for immediate settlement.
If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit
It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.
So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
But actual Italian restaurants in Italy are full of Eastern European staff, so for the authentic Italian experience just import waiters from Ro- oh shit, that's also the EU.
Oh well, Italian restaurants in Germany still have Italian staff. It's very traditional. Also investing in an Italian restaurant in Germany is a traditional means of laundering mafia money. So it's win-win-win.
For the nth time it doesn't matter where she was actually living it matters what address she nominated, if any, as her primary residence for tax purposes.
According to Neidle that doesn't matter either. You can nominate whichever property you want or none of them.
Yes that's my point
Which means Rayner ends up with a slightly different tax calculation. So what? She says she's been advised she has nothing to pay.
She may be lying I suppose.
It’s not the quantum.
If she knowingly made a false declaration to HMRC that’s the issue.
Of course that would be the issue. Wake me up if and when you find the tiniest shred of evidence to suggest she had done so.
There’s lots of anecdotal evidence that her house, declared as her PPR, was not where she was living. I doubt we will ever get to a “beyond reasonable doubt” point.
My assumption is that she probably did make a false declaration (I don’t find the concept of her children being registered at her husband’s house while she lived elsewhere plausible).
But as someone else said she should have paid the amount in dispute and taken the high ground. In brazening it out it sets a poor tone on her mindset.
I am absolutely convinced that would have left the Tory press and fan club in no doubt that the matter would be closed after a generous gesture by Rayner, rather than proof of an admission of guilt. Absolutely, no doubt about it.
So what do we think? Will Israel hit back - will we see direct Israeli attacks on Iran?
Pros
1. Emotionally satisfying 2. Electorally popular 3. Chance to take out Iranian nuclear programme? 4. Deter others 5. America might support it as it stalls Iranian help to Putin
Cons: 1. Might go wrong, miss targets, electorally unpopular 2. Obvious risk of massive escalation with Iran 3. Might provoke Hezbollah into all out attack 4. Could end up killing everyone on earth 5. America will probably try and stop it; bad for Biden in election year
That’s finely balanced. I reckon it’s 52/48 Israel restrains itself. Maybe takes on Iranian proxies
We probably need Bart’s nuanced take on it.
Seems we already have an answer. I was (just about) right. Israeli restraint
“New York Times: The Israeli cabinet has abandoned the option of a retaliatory attack on Iran”
The US likely pointed out that their munition stocks are nor unlimited, and there’s no guarantee of Congress authorising military aid to back a war against Iran, started by Israel.
Netanyahu is a man of seriously bad and limited judgment, but the IDF will have told him their odds without US help aren’t good.
Agreed. I imagine Bibi would love to hit back, but without American help it’s insanely risky = unlikely
Restraint is strategically clever as well. Israel now looks like the plucky little victim again. Global anger over Gaza will abate. Maybe they can defeat Hamas now, and they can justify it by saying Hamas = Iran
BBC luncht8me News reports the US has told Israel it won’t support retaliation against Iran.
If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit
It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.
So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause
Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.
But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.
I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.
(Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
Then they need to rethink the business model.
What you are suggesting is the broader population should accept lower wages so a restaurant owner can make greater profits
That’s not equitable
I am not suggesting what the business model should be.
Restaurant industry complained about a lack of staff. You come up with a fairly silly quick fix that hits brick walls after a few seconds thought and would result in restaurant industry shrinking, which is probably not the resolution the restauranteurs are seeking.
For the nth time it doesn't matter where she was actually living it matters what address she nominated, if any, as her primary residence for tax purposes.
According to Neidle that doesn't matter either. You can nominate whichever property you want or none of them.
Yes that's my point
Which means Rayner ends up with a slightly different tax calculation. So what? She says she's been advised she has nothing to pay.
She may be lying I suppose.
It’s not the quantum.
If she knowingly made a false declaration to HMRC that’s the issue.
Of course that would be the issue. Wake me up if and when you find the tiniest shred of evidence to suggest she had done so.
There’s lots of anecdotal evidence that her house, declared as her PPR, was not where she was living. I doubt we will ever get to a “beyond reasonable doubt” point.
My assumption is that she probably did make a false declaration (I don’t find the concept of her children being registered at her husband’s house while she lived elsewhere plausible).
But as someone else said she should have paid the amount in dispute and taken the high ground. In brazening it out it sets a poor tone on her mindset.
Birth registration and re-registration don't require registering the child at an address.
My birth wasn’t registered at my parents home address. Nor were my children. All were born at a hospital some miles away from our, and immediately afterwards, homes.
Most of that is staff costs. These organisations work on a negotiated price which is cost + margin
Depends what you count as costs. It all smells rather like Thames Water...
CareTech is owned through a company called Amalfi Midco, which is based in Jersey, to the benefit of international investors. They have loaded the company with debts of £780 million, charging CareTech tens of millions of pounds in interest and financial fees.
It’s negotiated dependent on the services required.
I assume that the children in the Observer article are the most challenging cases.
Let’s say they need 2 staff members available for 24/7 care (and some cases, especially where there the children can be violent you can have 3x24/7)
NMW of £18k x 2 x 3 (2 staff, 3 shifts) = £108k. Add in some for accommodation and ancillaries plus a margin and you very quickly get to £150k
Financing / corporate overhead are paid for out of the margin.
Now is now £22k. Your estimate for staff is wrong 168 a week is minimum 4 staff probably 5 to cover gaps and breaks. You then forget holiday pay / cover so you need a minimum of .6 workers to cover that if not another full time one.
That’s £132,000 in staff costs for minimum wage workers alone - can easily see why the minimum cost is £150,000 per child because it adds up incredibly quickly..l
Anyone else thinking of the council provided place in as a Costwald village that looked to be costing £250k per child?
24/7 coverage is expensive. Especially when you can’t just pay the staff in bottle tops.
The scale of the Rwanda scheme is now very different to the large-scale and systematic removals originally promised by ministers
A civil servant told me efforts are geared towards a single flight as “proof of concept”, calling it an “election vanity scam”
Seriously, this is the standard of civil servants now? Gut the Home Office. It couldn't be much worse if a rent-a-thug company like G4S ran the whole thing.
Indeed. The civil servant should just have stuck with the “proof of concept” description for Rwanda, and not have mentioned “election vanity scam".
Civil servants aren't paid along with their gold plated pensions to let the cat out of the bag.
They're not paid to flap their gums about Government policy full stop. Where there's wrong-doing or serious departmental issues, they have a right to blow the whistle. Otherwise stfu.
Oh I think there's a public interest in knowing the Rwanda policy is now "proof of concept". Tax payers might legitimately want to know what we're getting for our £0.5 billion.
I certainly hope he is right, though I look at the problems Europe is having in providing supplies to Ukraine in the absence of US support and I have my doubts.
The interesting thing is that he should say so.
If the Chinese leadership is allowing the idea of Russian defeat to be discussed openly then it indicates that they are considering how they should react to Russia's defeat.
Or they are negotiating with Russia on the price of their continued support…
He blames the Bank, but it's really the Government's responsibility. The taxpayer has paid the Bank £50bn so far this year to cover its QT losses - that dwarves any bad procurement, school repair, wasteful departmental spending, or any other scandal, yet as he says, he's the only MP complaining about it. Don't know what the rest are thinking, useless shower, probably too busy photographing their own genitals.
Let me be clear: you would prefer the Bank to hold to maturity?
Admittedly that gets back to the original history of the Bank from the 17th century.
But I am stunned that a monetarist such as Redwood really wants an inflated money supply
So what do we think? Will Israel hit back - will we see direct Israeli attacks on Iran?
Pros
1. Emotionally satisfying 2. Electorally popular 3. Chance to take out Iranian nuclear programme? 4. Deter others 5. America might support it as it stalls Iranian help to Putin
Cons: 1. Might go wrong, miss targets, electorally unpopular 2. Obvious risk of massive escalation with Iran 3. Might provoke Hezbollah into all out attack 4. Could end up killing everyone on earth 5. America will probably try and stop it; bad for Biden in election year
That’s finely balanced. I reckon it’s 52/48 Israel restrains itself. Maybe takes on Iranian proxies
We probably need Bart’s nuanced take on it.
Seems we already have an answer. I was (just about) right. Israeli restraint
“New York Times: The Israeli cabinet has abandoned the option of a retaliatory attack on Iran”
The US likely pointed out that their munition stocks are nor unlimited, and there’s no guarantee of Congress authorising military aid to back a war against Iran, started by Israel.
Netanyahu is a man of seriously bad and limited judgment, but the IDF will have told him their odds without US help aren’t good.
Agreed. I imagine Bibi would love to hit back, but without American help it’s insanely risky = unlikely
Restraint is strategically clever as well. Israel now looks like the plucky little victim again. Global anger over Gaza will abate. Maybe they can defeat Hamas now, and they can justify it by saying Hamas = Iran
BBC luncht8me News reports the US has told Israel it won’t support retaliation against Iran.
Restraint offers the chance to balance the books (just a little) after Gaza, which has done so much reputational damage.
I certainly hope he is right, though I look at the problems Europe is having in providing supplies to Ukraine in the absence of US support and I have my doubts.
The interesting thing is that he should say so.
If the Chinese leadership is allowing the idea of Russian defeat to be discussed openly then it indicates that they are considering how they should react to Russia's defeat.
Or they are negotiating with Russia on the price of their continued support…
China is a net importer of oil and I suspect that price instability is worrying them. The whole thing has tipped from destabilising for the West, while China pulls Russia's strings, to being globally destabilising.
Most of that is staff costs. These organisations work on a negotiated price which is cost + margin
Depends what you count as costs. It all smells rather like Thames Water...
CareTech is owned through a company called Amalfi Midco, which is based in Jersey, to the benefit of international investors. They have loaded the company with debts of £780 million, charging CareTech tens of millions of pounds in interest and financial fees.
It’s negotiated dependent on the services required.
I assume that the children in the Observer article are the most challenging cases.
Let’s say they need 2 staff members available for 24/7 care (and some cases, especially where there the children can be violent you can have 3x24/7)
NMW of £18k x 2 x 3 (2 staff, 3 shifts) = £108k. Add in some for accommodation and ancillaries plus a margin and you very quickly get to £150k
Financing / corporate overhead are paid for out of the margin.
Now is now £22k. Your estimate for staff is wrong 168 a week is minimum 4 staff probably 5 to cover gaps and breaks. You then forget holiday pay / cover so you need a minimum of .6 workers to cover that if not another full time one.
That’s £132,000 in staff costs for minimum wage workers alone - can easily see why the minimum cost is £150,000 per child because it adds up incredibly quickly..l
Anyone else thinking of the council provided place in as a Costwald village that looked to be costing £250k per child?
24/7 coverage is expensive. Especially when you can’t just pay the staff in bottle tops.
I would be utterly staggered if any of these places provided two or three staff per child at night time.
Didcot and Wantage: YouGov has it Lib Dem 35, Cons 28, Labour 23, on this basis a safe Lib Dem win, given they will probably squeeze the Labour vote down to what 15%.
Off topic - at every point of the income scale, people in England live longer than people in the US. I would not have thought that at the top end. The gap at the bottom is truly remarkable.
Does that second chart not simply suggest that health care is more expensive in the US than Europe?
It says 'adjusted for price differences between countries' along the X axis.
I missed that, but it doesn't say how they've adjusted it . I mean, maybe doctors get paid more per hour in the US. Maybe they spend more time with each patient. Maybe they organise more tests, I don't know
My daughter just had a CT scan in the US. Charge was $24,000. For 20 minutes in a machine that cost $2m.
They offered a 30% discount without being promoted for immediate settlement.
That’s egregious pricing
It’s theft. Was she insured ?
No…
But fortunately I have a line of credit on my mortgage
We've done this already, but I suppose the more times it gets posted the more traction it gains and the guiltier she appears.
Ah, "appears". Bad for the health, that "appears". Many political careers fail once they catch "appears", it can be very difficult to get rid of. Dead cats are usually involved.
Off topic - at every point of the income scale, people in England live longer than people in the US. I would not have thought that at the top end. The gap at the bottom is truly remarkable.
Does that second chart not simply suggest that health care is more expensive in the US than Europe?
It says 'adjusted for price differences between countries' along the X axis.
I missed that, but it doesn't say how they've adjusted it . I mean, maybe doctors get paid more per hour in the US. Maybe they spend more time with each patient. Maybe they organise more tests, I don't know
My daughter just had a CT scan in the US. Charge was $24,000. For 20 minutes in a machine that cost $2m.
They offered a 30% discount without being promoted for immediate settlement.
That’s egregious pricing
It’s theft. Was she insured ?
FWIW my view is that US doctors aren’t very good. They just do tests to avoid legal liability.
She had had a migraine lasting a week. Just after starting a new brand of cereal with raisins.
I recommended changing the cereal.
The doctors said “better have a CT scan to make sure it’s not a brain tumour”.
That wasn’t a fight I was ever going to win with my wife…
But the CT scan was clear. And the migraines stopped after she stopped having cereal for breakfast.
For the nth time it doesn't matter where she was actually living it matters what address she nominated, if any, as her primary residence for tax purposes.
According to Neidle that doesn't matter either. You can nominate whichever property you want or none of them.
Yes that's my point
Which means Rayner ends up with a slightly different tax calculation. So what? She says she's been advised she has nothing to pay.
She may be lying I suppose.
It’s not the quantum.
If she knowingly made a false declaration to HMRC that’s the issue.
Of course that would be the issue. Wake me up if and when you find the tiniest shred of evidence to suggest she had done so.
There’s lots of anecdotal evidence that her house, declared as her PPR, was not where she was living. I doubt we will ever get to a “beyond reasonable doubt” point.
My assumption is that she probably did make a false declaration (I don’t find the concept of her children being registered at her husband’s house while she lived elsewhere plausible).
But as someone else said she should have paid the amount in dispute and taken the high ground. In brazening it out it sets a poor tone on her mindset.
I am absolutely convinced that would have left the Tory press and fan club in no doubt that the matter would be closed after a generous gesture by Rayner, rather than proof of an admission of guilt. Absolutely, no doubt about it.
But the Tory fan club is (probably) going to vote Tory anyway…
The constant drip drip of news stories is more damaging.
If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit
It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.
So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause
Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.
But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.
I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.
(Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
Then they need to rethink the business model.
What you are suggesting is the broader population should accept lower wages so a restaurant owner can make greater profits
That’s not equitable
I am not suggesting what the business model should be.
Restaurant industry complained about a lack of staff. You come up with a fairly silly quick fix that hits brick walls after a few seconds thought and would result in restaurant industry shrinking, which is probably not the resolution the restauranteurs are seeking.
Ok, the original poster seems to blame the lack of visas due to Brexit, not you.
They are complaining about lack of staff. This means there are two options: (I) make the terms they are offering better; or (ii) expand the pool of potential labour to find people who will work for those wages.
They went with option (ii). I said you need to do (I) because you can’t expect society to bear the costs of a non-viable business model. And if that results in a reduction of capacity in the industry (which will allow for higher prices) then so be it.
For the nth time it doesn't matter where she was actually living it matters what address she nominated, if any, as her primary residence for tax purposes.
According to Neidle that doesn't matter either. You can nominate whichever property you want or none of them.
Yes that's my point
Which means Rayner ends up with a slightly different tax calculation. So what? She says she's been advised she has nothing to pay.
She may be lying I suppose.
It’s not the quantum.
If she knowingly made a false declaration to HMRC that’s the issue.
Of course that would be the issue. Wake me up if and when you find the tiniest shred of evidence to suggest she had done so.
There’s lots of anecdotal evidence that her house, declared as her PPR, was not where she was living. I doubt we will ever get to a “beyond reasonable doubt” point.
My assumption is that she probably did make a false declaration (I don’t find the concept of her children being registered at her husband’s house while she lived elsewhere plausible).
But as someone else said she should have paid the amount in dispute and taken the high ground. In brazening it out it sets a poor tone on her mindset.
Birth registration and re-registration don't require registering the child at an address.
My birth wasn’t registered at my parents home address. Nor were my children. All were born at a hospital some miles away from our, and immediately afterwards, homes.
But you were born before the invention of writing…
Off topic - at every point of the income scale, people in England live longer than people in the US. I would not have thought that at the top end. The gap at the bottom is truly remarkable.
Does that second chart not simply suggest that health care is more expensive in the US than Europe?
It says 'adjusted for price differences between countries' along the X axis.
I missed that, but it doesn't say how they've adjusted it . I mean, maybe doctors get paid more per hour in the US. Maybe they spend more time with each patient. Maybe they organise more tests, I don't know
My daughter just had a CT scan in the US. Charge was $24,000. For 20 minutes in a machine that cost $2m.
They offered a 30% discount without being promoted for immediate settlement.
That’s egregious pricing
It’s theft. Was she insured ?
FWIW my view is that US doctors aren’t very good. They just do tests to avoid legal liability.
She had had a migraine lasting a week. Just after starting a new brand of cereal with raisins.
I recommended changing the cereal.
The doctors said “better have a CT scan to make sure it’s not a brain tumour”.
That wasn’t a fight I was ever going to win with my wife…
But the CT scan was clear. And the migraines stopped after she stopped having cereal for breakfast.
We had all the stories about vets charges here last week. The NHS (rightly) insulates us from awareness of medical treatment prices.
For the nth time it doesn't matter where she was actually living it matters what address she nominated, if any, as her primary residence for tax purposes.
According to Neidle that doesn't matter either. You can nominate whichever property you want or none of them.
Yes that's my point
Which means Rayner ends up with a slightly different tax calculation. So what? She says she's been advised she has nothing to pay.
She may be lying I suppose.
It’s not the quantum.
If she knowingly made a false declaration to HMRC that’s the issue.
Of course that would be the issue. Wake me up if and when you find the tiniest shred of evidence to suggest she had done so.
There’s lots of anecdotal evidence that her house, declared as her PPR, was not where she was living. I doubt we will ever get to a “beyond reasonable doubt” point.
My assumption is that she probably did make a false declaration (I don’t find the concept of her children being registered at her husband’s house while she lived elsewhere plausible).
But as someone else said she should have paid the amount in dispute and taken the high ground. In brazening it out it sets a poor tone on her mindset.
I am absolutely convinced that would have left the Tory press and fan club in no doubt that the matter would be closed after a generous gesture by Rayner, rather than proof of an admission of guilt. Absolutely, no doubt about it.
But the Tory fan club is (probably) going to vote Tory anyway…
The constant drip drip of news stories is more damaging.
It is not damaging Labour at all, just making the complainers look silly. By far the most likely crime here is a persistent waste of police time.
If I understand correctly, the latest Raynergate scandal is that she allegedly broke electoral law by registering at the wrong address.
Instead of registering at her true address in Stockport, she instead was registered at her other address in Stockport. Thus falsely getting her a vote in Stockport instead of the constituency she should have voted in which was Stockport.
High crimes and misdemeanours indeed. Thank god the Tories - who are free from sin - are doing the public a favour by going after this one.
It’s time barred by a decade and it’s literally she used address 1 in the constituency rather than address 2 in the same constituency.
It’s about as none story as possible because our current MP didn’t even publish his address when he stood last time round (you can opt just to say if you live I the constituency or not).
Good job too as it tied him to a law firm that had recently gone / went bankrupt.
Serious question- are the Tories bonkers? They have been caught with the fingers in the till. Vast amounts of public money corruptly embezzled Gongs sold for cash. And they think there are votes in going after Rayner? For this?
I think what they are doing makes sense (in terms of winning an election, which they won't), although it is far from moral:
a) Put in people's minds that all politicians are all as bad as one another b) Get this story in the media so as to squeeze out any other stories. All the voters hear about are dodgy Labour and nothing else.
Most voters are neither reading the details nor following politics on social media. It is all background stuff that works.
I'm not sure they are thinking it through to that extent Those with an agenda against Rayner including the Conservative Party and allied media see a target so go in for the attack.
However I am much more interested in the honeytrap story, which is much more widespread and organised than just William Wragg, and which certain parts of the media have very limited interest in investigating for some reason. Maybe it's your point (b).
It would of course be concerning if a foreign security service was successfully sexting lots of MPs, but seemingly this isn't the case. So who is behind this and why? That's perhaps even more worrying.
I agree. The successful blackmailing of an MP is very serious in my mind and in particular the blackmailer(s) weren't actually after money either, but to get private contact details of other MPs, which implies it is more widespread and that the motives were far greater.
There are a few comparisons with Profumo. Although not as senior, it is more widespread (so who knows) and not obviously a foreign government (yet).
It’s such a weird story, and there’s no obvious motive. It could be anyone from a comedian to a foreign state actor, but most likely some disgruntled former Westmentster insider, a former staffer or or junior hack playing games.
Most of that is staff costs. These organisations work on a negotiated price which is cost + margin
Depends what you count as costs. It all smells rather like Thames Water...
CareTech is owned through a company called Amalfi Midco, which is based in Jersey, to the benefit of international investors. They have loaded the company with debts of £780 million, charging CareTech tens of millions of pounds in interest and financial fees.
It’s negotiated dependent on the services required.
I assume that the children in the Observer article are the most challenging cases.
Let’s say they need 2 staff members available for 24/7 care (and some cases, especially where there the children can be violent you can have 3x24/7)
NMW of £18k x 2 x 3 (2 staff, 3 shifts) = £108k. Add in some for accommodation and ancillaries plus a margin and you very quickly get to £150k
Financing / corporate overhead are paid for out of the margin.
Now is now £22k. Your estimate for staff is wrong 168 a week is minimum 4 staff probably 5 to cover gaps and breaks. You then forget holiday pay / cover so you need a minimum of .6 workers to cover that if not another full time one.
That’s £132,000 in staff costs for minimum wage workers alone - can easily see why the minimum cost is £150,000 per child because it adds up incredibly quickly..l
Anyone else thinking of the council provided place in as a Costwald village that looked to be costing £250k per child?
24/7 coverage is expensive. Especially when you can’t just pay the staff in bottle tops.
For
I would be utterly staggered if any of these places provided two or three staff per child at night time.
Care packages, including staff ratios. are individually negotiated for troubled children.
You don’t just have institutional “children’s homes” with one warden locking them up at night and scrimping on the serving of gruel to save money anymore
Before Team Starmer have got their hands on a single red box, the most miserabilist voices declare that failure is inevitable.
A dour tone is in tune with a sour national mood about the condition of the country and the trustworthiness of its politicians. Sir Keir and his people think the worst thing they could do would be to arouse expectations that they won’t be able to meet.
The mistake here, and it is one which is particularly prevalent on the left, is to think that progress is entirely dependent on being able to spend lots of extra money.
Progress isn’t all about the state being able to open its wallet. The legacy of reforming governments is often not defined by how much money they spent, but by the enduring institutions they created and the social advances they embedded. Several of New Labour’s key reforms came at zero or trivial cost to the exchequer. A notable one was the establishment of the minimum wage.
Of all the reforms of the New Labour years, banning smoking in enclosed public spaces was one of the greatest triumphs of no-cost progressivism. Fuggy pubs and fume-hazed restaurants are no more than a smelly memory. Deaths from heart disease and strokes have fallen dramatically since lighting up was banned in indoor venues. There’s a strong case that the ban has been the single biggest benefit to public health in my lifetime while saving the NHS the money that it would otherwise be spending on treating smoking-related diseases.
The House of Lords provides an easy way to demonstrate that Britain has a modernising government. Given how abysmal the consequences of Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal have been, it should not be beyond the wit of a Labour government to agree more rational and less frictional trading arrangements with the EU. It will very likely be a first-year priority for Labour to create Great British Energy, a new publicly owned clean power company. It would be a quick win for a Starmer government, and one rectifying a Tory failure, to implement a comprehensive ban on the sale of zombie knives, machetes and other vicious bladed weapons.
[Other opportunities] include modernising the school curriculum, using planning reform and the levers of the state to encourage house building, overhauling the regulation of water and other utilities, banning no-fault evictions and enhancing consumer protection.
History shows that you don’t have to be a chequebook government to be a reforming government. Even when money is tight, Labour will have substantial opportunities to change lives in ways that matter a lot. They just have to be seized.
I get the point, but a new consumer protection act or abolishing zero hours contracts is only going to get the next Government so far. Doreen from Hunstanton is still going to expect her dodgy hip to get fixed within a reasonable timescale, not in 2037 - and the wretched state of the public services can't simply be wished away with a magic legislative wand.
Everything about the "there is no money" narrative snacks of not being willing to tell unpalatable truths about the distribution of finite resources within this sickly country. It would be nice to think that truths will be told once the necessity to get certain voters to dump the Tories is dispensed with. But I'm not holding my breath.
For the nth time it doesn't matter where she was actually living it matters what address she nominated, if any, as her primary residence for tax purposes.
According to Neidle that doesn't matter either. You can nominate whichever property you want or none of them.
Yes that's my point
Which means Rayner ends up with a slightly different tax calculation. So what? She says she's been advised she has nothing to pay.
She may be lying I suppose.
It’s not the quantum.
If she knowingly made a false declaration to HMRC that’s the issue.
Of course that would be the issue. Wake me up if and when you find the tiniest shred of evidence to suggest she had done so.
There’s lots of anecdotal evidence that her house, declared as her PPR, was not where she was living. I doubt we will ever get to a “beyond reasonable doubt” point.
My assumption is that she probably did make a false declaration (I don’t find the concept of her children being registered at her husband’s house while she lived elsewhere plausible).
But as someone else said she should have paid the amount in dispute and taken the high ground. In brazening it out it sets a poor tone on her mindset.
I am absolutely convinced that would have left the Tory press and fan club in no doubt that the matter would be closed after a generous gesture by Rayner, rather than proof of an admission of guilt. Absolutely, no doubt about it.
But the Tory fan club is (probably) going to vote Tory anyway…
The constant drip drip of news stories is more damaging.
But the drip, drip seems to be pretty much the same drip, drip recirculating.
I suspect those who are Conservative minded are lapping this up as proof of greater opposition corruption than their own.
Those who are skeptical of Conservative probity seem to think it is small beer (and korma) compared to some of the outrageous corruption from those associated with the current Government. It's the sort of bind ordinary people could find themselves the wrong side of HMRC or the police over, and it highlights the law applies only to them and not Tory Grandees.
For the nth time it doesn't matter where she was actually living it matters what address she nominated, if any, as her primary residence for tax purposes.
According to Neidle that doesn't matter either. You can nominate whichever property you want or none of them.
Yes that's my point
Which means Rayner ends up with a slightly different tax calculation. So what? She says she's been advised she has nothing to pay.
She may be lying I suppose.
It’s not the quantum.
If she knowingly made a false declaration to HMRC that’s the issue.
Of course that would be the issue. Wake me up if and when you find the tiniest shred of evidence to suggest she had done so.
There’s lots of anecdotal evidence that her house, declared as her PPR, was not where she was living. I doubt we will ever get to a “beyond reasonable doubt” point.
My assumption is that she probably did make a false declaration (I don’t find the concept of her children being registered at her husband’s house while she lived elsewhere plausible).
But as someone else said she should have paid the amount in dispute and taken the high ground. In brazening it out it sets a poor tone on her mindset.
Birth registration and re-registration don't require registering the child at an address.
My birth wasn’t registered at my parents home address. Nor were my children. All were born at a hospital some miles away from our, and immediately afterwards, homes.
But you were born before the invention of writing…
For the nth time it doesn't matter where she was actually living it matters what address she nominated, if any, as her primary residence for tax purposes.
According to Neidle that doesn't matter either. You can nominate whichever property you want or none of them.
Yes that's my point
Which means Rayner ends up with a slightly different tax calculation. So what? She says she's been advised she has nothing to pay.
She may be lying I suppose.
It’s not the quantum.
If she knowingly made a false declaration to HMRC that’s the issue.
Of course that would be the issue. Wake me up if and when you find the tiniest shred of evidence to suggest she had done so.
There’s lots of anecdotal evidence that her house, declared as her PPR, was not where she was living. I doubt we will ever get to a “beyond reasonable doubt” point.
My assumption is that she probably did make a false declaration (I don’t find the concept of her children being registered at her husband’s house while she lived elsewhere plausible).
But as someone else said she should have paid the amount in dispute and taken the high ground. In brazening it out it sets a poor tone on her mindset.
I am absolutely convinced that would have left the Tory press and fan club in no doubt that the matter would be closed after a generous gesture by Rayner, rather than proof of an admission of guilt. Absolutely, no doubt about it.
But the Tory fan club is (probably) going to vote Tory anyway…
The constant drip drip of news stories is more damaging.
But the drip, drip seems to be pretty much the same drip, drip recirculating.
I suspect those who are Conservative minded are lapping this up as proof of greater opposition corruption than their own.
Those who are skeptical of Conservative probity seem to think it is small beer (and korma) compared to some of the outrageous corruption from those associated with the current Government. It's the sort of bind ordinary people could find themselves the wrong side of HMRC or the police over, and it highlights the law applies only to them and not Tory Grandees.
Or Post Office bosses.
That does get under my skin, so I’m likely to bang on about it.
That is an extraordinary article and one the author would never have written without implicit backing from some very senior people in the Chinese government.
Yes, Chinese academics, especially the ones actually based in China, don’t tend to speak out of turn. In which case, we’re seeing what we thought might happen in the end, that the China/Russia axis is at best over, and at worst turns hostile.
Off topic - at every point of the income scale, people in England live longer than people in the US. I would not have thought that at the top end. The gap at the bottom is truly remarkable.
Does that second chart not simply suggest that health care is more expensive in the US than Europe?
It says 'adjusted for price differences between countries' along the X axis.
I missed that, but it doesn't say how they've adjusted it . I mean, maybe doctors get paid more per hour in the US. Maybe they spend more time with each patient. Maybe they organise more tests, I don't know
My daughter just had a CT scan in the US. Charge was $24,000. For 20 minutes in a machine that cost $2m.
They offered a 30% discount without being promoted for immediate settlement.
That’s egregious pricing
How much of that goes to the middlemen in the payment chain?
How does one tell the difference between a CT scan and an MRI scan machine? I'm sure I've had both in the last year, and I think the main perceived difference may be that a CT scan is 15-20 minutes, and an MRI scan more like 30-90 minutes.
I tend to refer to the "swallow you whole" scanning machines as The Giant Polo Mint.
The NHS has numbers on this buried within the cross-charging system, which I assume are just the marginal cost of the scan, which would cover variable costs with some predetermined overhead.
Their numbers are between £100 and £200 roughly afaics, but it is a system I do not understand well.
Most of that is staff costs. These organisations work on a negotiated price which is cost + margin
Depends what you count as costs. It all smells rather like Thames Water...
CareTech is owned through a company called Amalfi Midco, which is based in Jersey, to the benefit of international investors. They have loaded the company with debts of £780 million, charging CareTech tens of millions of pounds in interest and financial fees.
It’s negotiated dependent on the services required.
I assume that the children in the Observer article are the most challenging cases.
Let’s say they need 2 staff members available for 24/7 care (and some cases, especially where there the children can be violent you can have 3x24/7)
NMW of £18k x 2 x 3 (2 staff, 3 shifts) = £108k. Add in some for accommodation and ancillaries plus a margin and you very quickly get to £150k
Financing / corporate overhead are paid for out of the margin.
Now is now £22k. Your estimate for staff is wrong 168 a week is minimum 4 staff probably 5 to cover gaps and breaks. You then forget holiday pay / cover so you need a minimum of .6 workers to cover that if not another full time one.
That’s £132,000 in staff costs for minimum wage workers alone - can easily see why the minimum cost is £150,000 per child because it adds up incredibly quickly..l
Anyone else thinking of the council provided place in as a Costwald village that looked to be costing £250k per child?
24/7 coverage is expensive. Especially when you can’t just pay the staff in bottle tops.
For
I would be utterly staggered if any of these places provided two or three staff per child at night time.
Care packages, including staff ratios. are individually negotiated for troubled children.
You don’t just have institutional “children’s homes” with one warden locking them up at night and scrimping on the serving of gruel to save money anymore
As they are in education. But they are routinely (by which I mean every single day) flouted due to a lack of staff willing to work for the ludicrous pay.
For the nth time it doesn't matter where she was actually living it matters what address she nominated, if any, as her primary residence for tax purposes.
According to Neidle that doesn't matter either. You can nominate whichever property you want or none of them.
Yes that's my point
Which means Rayner ends up with a slightly different tax calculation. So what? She says she's been advised she has nothing to pay.
She may be lying I suppose.
It’s not the quantum.
If she knowingly made a false declaration to HMRC that’s the issue.
Of course that would be the issue. Wake me up if and when you find the tiniest shred of evidence to suggest she had done so.
There’s lots of anecdotal evidence that her house, declared as her PPR, was not where she was living. I doubt we will ever get to a “beyond reasonable doubt” point.
My assumption is that she probably did make a false declaration (I don’t find the concept of her children being registered at her husband’s house while she lived elsewhere plausible).
But as someone else said she should have paid the amount in dispute and taken the high ground. In brazening it out it sets a poor tone on her mindset.
I am absolutely convinced that would have left the Tory press and fan club in no doubt that the matter would be closed after a generous gesture by Rayner, rather than proof of an admission of guilt. Absolutely, no doubt about it.
But the Tory fan club is (probably) going to vote Tory anyway…
The constant drip drip of news stories is more damaging.
But the drip, drip seems to be pretty much the same drip, drip recirculating.
I suspect those who are Conservative minded are lapping this up as proof of greater opposition corruption than their own.
Those who are skeptical of Conservative probity seem to think it is small beer (and korma) compared to some of the outrageous corruption from those associated with the current Government. It's the sort of bind ordinary people could find themselves the wrong side of HMRC or the police over, and it highlights the law applies only to them and not Tory Grandees.
It clearly is small beer which is why I’m stunned that she is trying to brazen it out. Just not worth it.
The losses on PPP - I’m not convinced it was corruption - really arose from poor judgement on the government’s part. They were desperately trying to source PPP from anywhere and at any price. They created a fast track system which seemed sensible but then didn’t apply the judgement to exclude the chancers who were attracted like bees to a honeypot. As far as I know, no one in the government benefited financially - if they did then, of course, they should be punished and shamed.
Most of that is staff costs. These organisations work on a negotiated price which is cost + margin
Depends what you count as costs. It all smells rather like Thames Water...
CareTech is owned through a company called Amalfi Midco, which is based in Jersey, to the benefit of international investors. They have loaded the company with debts of £780 million, charging CareTech tens of millions of pounds in interest and financial fees.
It’s negotiated dependent on the services required.
I assume that the children in the Observer article are the most challenging cases.
Let’s say they need 2 staff members available for 24/7 care (and some cases, especially where there the children can be violent you can have 3x24/7)
NMW of £18k x 2 x 3 (2 staff, 3 shifts) = £108k. Add in some for accommodation and ancillaries plus a margin and you very quickly get to £150k
Financing / corporate overhead are paid for out of the margin.
Now is now £22k. Your estimate for staff is wrong 168 a week is minimum 4 staff probably 5 to cover gaps and breaks. You then forget holiday pay / cover so you need a minimum of .6 workers to cover that if not another full time one.
That’s £132,000 in staff costs for minimum wage workers alone - can easily see why the minimum cost is £150,000 per child because it adds up incredibly quickly..l
Anyone else thinking of the council provided place in as a Costwald village that looked to be costing £250k per child?
24/7 coverage is expensive. Especially when you can’t just pay the staff in bottle tops.
For
I would be utterly staggered if any of these places provided two or three staff per child at night time.
Care packages, including staff ratios. are individually negotiated for troubled children.
You don’t just have institutional “children’s homes” with one warden locking them up at night and scrimping on the serving of gruel to save money anymore
You can't even sell them in the way Mr Bumble did. Still seem to have the odd Bill Sykes, sadly.
Some reported stats from last nights Iranian attack on Israel
Some suggestions are that precisely 0% of the UAVs (drones) and criuise missiles made it to the ground in one piece, never mind be on target. Yep, zero.
All those that did make it through were reportedly the ballistic missiles. Apparently about 110 were fired and maybe seven made it through. This is a singular attack involving 110 short and medium range ballistic missiles coming within a very narrow time window, high altitude, high speed. That is a truly shit return if confirmed. Bear in mind too that there is a fair chance that a large majority of ballistic weapons may well have been dealt with by the Israelis themselves, whilst the proportion of UAVs and cruise missiles shot down by 3rd parties will represent a more significant fraction of those totals.
I know some people think that the Iranians were playing for symbolism and I did mention there there was a likely a sense of understanding amongst all parties about the nature of the attack. The idea, though, that the Iranians knew this was going to be a right flop in military terms is fanciful. 300 surface to surface weapons and a nil return? No one could be that deliberate in failure. The Iranians could not have expected such a poor output with what was a multi layered attack designed to be too big to not have a hard effect.
Um it actually doesn’t - it’s not an electoral issue and the requirement for the discount purchase price was to own it for 5 years - nothing in law stops you fro. letting it out immediately…
If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit
It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.
So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause
Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.
But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.
I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.
(Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
Then they need to rethink the business model.
What you are suggesting is the broader population should accept lower wages so a restaurant owner can make greater profits
That’s not equitable
I am not suggesting what the business model should be.
Restaurant industry complained about a lack of staff. You come up with a fairly silly quick fix that hits brick walls after a few seconds thought and would result in restaurant industry shrinking, which is probably not the resolution the restauranteurs are seeking.
Ok, the original poster seems to blame the lack of visas due to Brexit, not you.
They are complaining about lack of staff. This means there are two options: (I) make the terms they are offering better; or (ii) expand the pool of potential labour to find people who will work for those wages.
They went with option (ii). I said you need to do (I) because you can’t expect society to bear the costs of a non-viable business model. And if that results in a reduction of capacity in the industry (which will allow for higher prices) then so be it.
Looks like Man City title nailed on again. I would prefer Arsenal to win but it won't happen. Liverpool won't win anything this season apart from League Cup. Which in itself is one more trophy than my team has ever won!
For the nth time it doesn't matter where she was actually living it matters what address she nominated, if any, as her primary residence for tax purposes.
According to Neidle that doesn't matter either. You can nominate whichever property you want or none of them.
Yes that's my point
Which means Rayner ends up with a slightly different tax calculation. So what? She says she's been advised she has nothing to pay.
She may be lying I suppose.
It’s not the quantum.
If she knowingly made a false declaration to HMRC that’s the issue.
Of course that would be the issue. Wake me up if and when you find the tiniest shred of evidence to suggest she had done so.
There’s lots of anecdotal evidence that her house, declared as her PPR, was not where she was living. I doubt we will ever get to a “beyond reasonable doubt” point.
My assumption is that she probably did make a false declaration (I don’t find the concept of her children being registered at her husband’s house while she lived elsewhere plausible).
But as someone else said she should have paid the amount in dispute and taken the high ground. In brazening it out it sets a poor tone on her mindset.
I am absolutely convinced that would have left the Tory press and fan club in no doubt that the matter would be closed after a generous gesture by Rayner, rather than proof of an admission of guilt. Absolutely, no doubt about it.
But the Tory fan club is (probably) going to vote Tory anyway…
The constant drip drip of news stories is more damaging.
But the drip, drip seems to be pretty much the same drip, drip recirculating.
I suspect those who are Conservative minded are lapping this up as proof of greater opposition corruption than their own.
Those who are skeptical of Conservative probity seem to think it is small beer (and korma) compared to some of the outrageous corruption from those associated with the current Government. It's the sort of bind ordinary people could find themselves the wrong side of HMRC or the police over, and it highlights the law applies only to them and not Tory Grandees.
It’s not worth a single vote - all I’m seeing is some incompetent Tory politicians going look butterfly and I’m waiting to find out what scam they are trying to distract us from.
Collapsing like a house of cards by the looks of it. Is this the start of another coronation procession for Man City? If Arsenal come a cropper against Villa later on then quite possibly yes.
Most of that is staff costs. These organisations work on a negotiated price which is cost + margin
Depends what you count as costs. It all smells rather like Thames Water...
CareTech is owned through a company called Amalfi Midco, which is based in Jersey, to the benefit of international investors. They have loaded the company with debts of £780 million, charging CareTech tens of millions of pounds in interest and financial fees.
It’s negotiated dependent on the services required.
I assume that the children in the Observer article are the most challenging cases.
Let’s say they need 2 staff members available for 24/7 care (and some cases, especially where there the children can be violent you can have 3x24/7)
NMW of £18k x 2 x 3 (2 staff, 3 shifts) = £108k. Add in some for accommodation and ancillaries plus a margin and you very quickly get to £150k
Financing / corporate overhead are paid for out of the margin.
Now is now £22k. Your estimate for staff is wrong 168 a week is minimum 4 staff probably 5 to cover gaps and breaks. You then forget holiday pay / cover so you need a minimum of .6 workers to cover that if not another full time one.
That’s £132,000 in staff costs for minimum wage workers alone - can easily see why the minimum cost is £150,000 per child because it adds up incredibly quickly..l
Anyone else thinking of the council provided place in as a Costwald village that looked to be costing £250k per child?
24/7 coverage is expensive. Especially when you can’t just pay the staff in bottle tops.
For
I would be utterly staggered if any of these places provided two or three staff per child at night time.
Care packages, including staff ratios. are individually negotiated for troubled children.
You don’t just have institutional “children’s homes” with one warden locking them up at night and scrimping on the serving of gruel to save money anymore
As they are in education. But they are routinely (by which I mean every single day) flouted due to a lack of staff willing to work for the ludicrous pay.
The cost of both education and residential care is in part due to a failure of effective early support. There were modest but useful benefits from the Sure Start programme for example.
A emphasis on timely intervention in child and adolescent mental health may well be of long term economic benefit in terms of cost to health, social care and criminal justice systems as well as relieving a lot of misery for patients and their families.
Off topic - at every point of the income scale, people in England live longer than people in the US. I would not have thought that at the top end. The gap at the bottom is truly remarkable.
Does that second chart not simply suggest that health care is more expensive in the US than Europe?
It says 'adjusted for price differences between countries' along the X axis.
I missed that, but it doesn't say how they've adjusted it . I mean, maybe doctors get paid more per hour in the US. Maybe they spend more time with each patient. Maybe they organise more tests, I don't know
My daughter just had a CT scan in the US. Charge was $24,000. For 20 minutes in a machine that cost $2m.
They offered a 30% discount without being promoted for immediate settlement.
That’s egregious pricing
It’s theft. Was she insured ?
FWIW my view is that US doctors aren’t very good. They just do tests to avoid legal liability.
She had had a migraine lasting a week. Just after starting a new brand of cereal with raisins.
I recommended changing the cereal.
The doctors said “better have a CT scan to make sure it’s not a brain tumour”.
That wasn’t a fight I was ever going to win with my wife…
But the CT scan was clear. And the migraines stopped after she stopped having cereal for breakfast.
The absurdities of the US medical system are mostly lawyers and insurance company bureaucracy.
IIRC the average doctor spends $200k-$300k per year on professional indemnity insurance, something that will also carry down at a lower level to every nurse and radiographer, which obviously gets reflected in their charges to customers.
The other is that insurance companies will negotiate huge discounts with providers, so the providers simply raise the list prices to compensate, meaning that’s what a walk-in patient gets as the bill. Yes a scan should be a couple of hundred bucks for the use of the scanner, and a couple of hundred more for the doc to review the output and write a report.
It’s by some distance the most inefficient way of delivering healthcare that’s ever been known.
Some reported stats from last nights Iranian attack on Israel
Some suggestions are that precisely 0% of the UAVs (drones) and criuise missiles made it to the ground in one piece, never mind be on target. Yep, zero.
All those that did make it through were reportedly the ballistic missiles. Apparently about 110 were fired and maybe seven made it through. This is a singular attack involving 110 short and medium range ballistic missiles coming within a very narrow time window, high altitude, high speed. That is a truly shit return if confirmed. Bear in mind too that there is a fair chance that a large majority of ballistic weapons may well have been dealt with by the Israelis themselves, whilst the proportion of UAVs and cruise missiles shot down by 3rd parties will represent a more significant fraction of those totals.
I know some people think that the Iranians were playing for symbolism and I did mention there there was a likely a sense of understanding amongst all parties about the nature of the attack. The idea, though, that the Iranians knew this was going to be a right flop in military terms is fanciful. 300 surface to surface weapons and a nil return? No one could be that deliberate in failure. The Iranians could not have expected such a poor output with what was a multi layered attack designed to be too big to not have a hard effect.
Iran has been making good money selling those drones, not least to Russia. As an advert for your wares go, this was Shiite.
I certainly hope he is right, though I look at the problems Europe is having in providing supplies to Ukraine in the absence of US support and I have my doubts.
The interesting thing is that he should say so.
If the Chinese leadership is allowing the idea of Russian defeat to be discussed openly then it indicates that they are considering how they should react to Russia's defeat.
Europe's problems are of their own making, the most fundamental of which are piss artists like Olaf there in Germany and the unblieveable mistake of not sourcing & financing munition supply from factories outside of the bloc. The rest of the world has factories that can produce the likes of 122, 152 and 155 shells but Europe hasnt, as far I know over the last two years, even attempted to place sizeable contracts to buy from these non bloc suppliers.
Off topic - at every point of the income scale, people in England live longer than people in the US. I would not have thought that at the top end. The gap at the bottom is truly remarkable.
Does that second chart not simply suggest that health care is more expensive in the US than Europe?
It says 'adjusted for price differences between countries' along the X axis.
I missed that, but it doesn't say how they've adjusted it . I mean, maybe doctors get paid more per hour in the US. Maybe they spend more time with each patient. Maybe they organise more tests, I don't know
My daughter just had a CT scan in the US. Charge was $24,000. For 20 minutes in a machine that cost $2m.
They offered a 30% discount without being promoted for immediate settlement.
That’s egregious pricing
It’s theft. Was she insured ?
FWIW my view is that US doctors aren’t very good. They just do tests to avoid legal liability.
She had had a migraine lasting a week. Just after starting a new brand of cereal with raisins.
I recommended changing the cereal.
The doctors said “better have a CT scan to make sure it’s not a brain tumour”.
That wasn’t a fight I was ever going to win with my wife…
But the CT scan was clear. And the migraines stopped after she stopped having cereal for breakfast.
The absurdities of the US medical system are mostly lawyers and insurance company bureaucracy.
IIRC the average doctor spends $200k-$300k per year on professional indemnity insurance, something that will also carry down at a lower level to every nurse and radiographer, which obviously gets reflected in their charges to customers.
The other is that insurance companies will negotiate huge discounts with providers, so the providers simply raise the list prices to compensate, meaning that’s what a walk-in patient gets as the bill. Yes a scan should be a couple of hundred bucks for the use of the scanner, and a couple of hundred more for the doc to review the output and write a report.
It’s by some distance the most inefficient way of delivering healthcare that’s ever been known.
You make the fundamental mistake of seeing the USA medical business as inefficient. It is enormously successful at extracting money from customers. What you see as inefficiency is someone's profit, and high profit margins are the goal of business.
Some reported stats from last nights Iranian attack on Israel
Some suggestions are that precisely 0% of the UAVs (drones) and criuise missiles made it to the ground in one piece, never mind be on target. Yep, zero.
All those that did make it through were reportedly the ballistic missiles. Apparently about 110 were fired and maybe seven made it through. This is a singular attack involving 110 short and medium range ballistic missiles coming within a very narrow time window, high altitude, high speed. That is a truly shit return if confirmed. Bear in mind too that there is a fair chance that a large majority of ballistic weapons may well have been dealt with by the Israelis themselves, whilst the proportion of UAVs and cruise missiles shot down by 3rd parties will represent a more significant fraction of those totals.
I know some people think that the Iranians were playing for symbolism and I did mention there there was a likely a sense of understanding amongst all parties about the nature of the attack. The idea, though, that the Iranians knew this was going to be a right flop in military terms is fanciful. 300 surface to surface weapons and a nil return? No one could be that deliberate in failure. The Iranians could not have expected such a poor output with what was a multi layered attack designed to be too big to not have a hard effect.
Iran has been making good money selling those drones, not least to Russia. As an advert for your wares go, this was Shiite.
Sending a few kilos of explosives to that drone factory, would be killing two birds with one stone.
I certainly hope he is right, though I look at the problems Europe is having in providing supplies to Ukraine in the absence of US support and I have my doubts.
The interesting thing is that he should say so.
If the Chinese leadership is allowing the idea of Russian defeat to be discussed openly then it indicates that they are considering how they should react to Russia's defeat.
Europe's problems are of their own making, the most fundamental of which are piss artists like Olaf there in Germany and the unblieveable mistake of not sourcing & financing munition supply from factories outside of the bloc. The rest of the world has factories that can produce the likes of 122, 152 and 155 shells but Europe hasnt, as far I know over the last two years, even attempted to place sizeable contracts to buy from these non bloc suppliers.
Presumably you include us in that "Europe", as we have done (or more accurately not done) the same.
Some reported stats from last nights Iranian attack on Israel
Some suggestions are that precisely 0% of the UAVs (drones) and criuise missiles made it to the ground in one piece, never mind be on target. Yep, zero.
All those that did make it through were reportedly the ballistic missiles. Apparently about 110 were fired and maybe seven made it through. This is a singular attack involving 110 short and medium range ballistic missiles coming within a very narrow time window, high altitude, high speed. That is a truly shit return if confirmed. Bear in mind too that there is a fair chance that a large majority of ballistic weapons may well have been dealt with by the Israelis themselves, whilst the proportion of UAVs and cruise missiles shot down by 3rd parties will represent a more significant fraction of those totals.
I know some people think that the Iranians were playing for symbolism and I did mention there there was a likely a sense of understanding amongst all parties about the nature of the attack. The idea, though, that the Iranians knew this was going to be a right flop in military terms is fanciful. 300 surface to surface weapons and a nil return? No one could be that deliberate in failure. The Iranians could not have expected such a poor output with what was a multi layered attack designed to be too big to not have a hard effect.
Iran has been making good money selling those drones, not least to Russia. As an advert for your wares go, this was Shiite.
A decent number of the Iranian designed UAVs in use by Russia are now licence manufactured in Russia itself.
Some reported stats from last nights Iranian attack on Israel
Some suggestions are that precisely 0% of the UAVs (drones) and criuise missiles made it to the ground in one piece, never mind be on target. Yep, zero.
All those that did make it through were reportedly the ballistic missiles. Apparently about 110 were fired and maybe seven made it through. This is a singular attack involving 110 short and medium range ballistic missiles coming within a very narrow time window, high altitude, high speed. That is a truly shit return if confirmed. Bear in mind too that there is a fair chance that a large majority of ballistic weapons may well have been dealt with by the Israelis themselves, whilst the proportion of UAVs and cruise missiles shot down by 3rd parties will represent a more significant fraction of those totals.
I know some people think that the Iranians were playing for symbolism and I did mention there there was a likely a sense of understanding amongst all parties about the nature of the attack. The idea, though, that the Iranians knew this was going to be a right flop in military terms is fanciful. 300 surface to surface weapons and a nil return? No one could be that deliberate in failure. The Iranians could not have expected such a poor output with what was a multi layered attack designed to be too big to not have a hard effect.
Iran has been making good money selling those drones, not least to Russia. As an advert for your wares go, this was Shiite.
Sending a few kilos of explosives to that drone factory, would be killing two birds with one stone.
Almost not sure it is worth the bother. It will be going out of business shortly.
I do wonder if this would have happened without the lessons learned in the Ukraine though. Both drones and anti-drone technology is advancing at a frightening pace and these drones were simply archaic.
If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit
It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.
So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause
Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.
But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.
I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.
(Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
Also, the implicit deal used to be "Young Europeans- come and work in the UK for a bit. The pay won't be great, but there's minimal admin, you can improve your English, which will pay off well for you in the future. And it's a fun place to pass through." See also au pair-ing.
The recompense for the job wasn't just the cash, it was the experience. It's not as if young Brits wanted to do the work.
We've chucked that away, because of an obsession with control and total numbers of bodies. Brexit didn't have to be like this (and doesn't now.) But it was always a plausible outcome, especially after the campaign of 2016.
I doubt many people would mind there being an exemption on FOM for under 21s, or maybe under 23s. They’re equivalent to students really. I think problem people had, which led to Leave winning, was immigrants undercutting the market on jobs that grown men were used to supporting their families by. I suppose it is hard to replicate implicit deals in practice
Some reported stats from last nights Iranian attack on Israel
Some suggestions are that precisely 0% of the UAVs (drones) and criuise missiles made it to the ground in one piece, never mind be on target. Yep, zero.
All those that did make it through were reportedly the ballistic missiles. Apparently about 110 were fired and maybe seven made it through. This is a singular attack involving 110 short and medium range ballistic missiles coming within a very narrow time window, high altitude, high speed. That is a truly shit return if confirmed. Bear in mind too that there is a fair chance that a large majority of ballistic weapons may well have been dealt with by the Israelis themselves, whilst the proportion of UAVs and cruise missiles shot down by 3rd parties will represent a more significant fraction of those totals.
I know some people think that the Iranians were playing for symbolism and I did mention there there was a likely a sense of understanding amongst all parties about the nature of the attack. The idea, though, that the Iranians knew this was going to be a right flop in military terms is fanciful. 300 surface to surface weapons and a nil return? No one could be that deliberate in failure. The Iranians could not have expected such a poor output with what was a multi layered attack designed to be too big to not have a hard effect.
Iran has been making good money selling those drones, not least to Russia. As an advert for your wares go, this was Shiite.
A decent number of the Iranian designed UAVs in use by Russia are now licence manufactured in Russia itself.
Interesting but doesn't take away from my point that these particular drones were like going up against Messerschmidt Bf 110s with a Sopwith Camel. The most recent drones are moving towards jet engines. One of the biggest problems I see for us is that anything we buy risks being every bit as out of date by the time it enters service.
I certainly hope he is right, though I look at the problems Europe is having in providing supplies to Ukraine in the absence of US support and I have my doubts.
The interesting thing is that he should say so.
If the Chinese leadership is allowing the idea of Russian defeat to be discussed openly then it indicates that they are considering how they should react to Russia's defeat.
Europe's problems are of their own making, the most fundamental of which are piss artists like Olaf there in Germany and the unblieveable mistake of not sourcing & financing munition supply from factories outside of the bloc. The rest of the world has factories that can produce the likes of 122, 152 and 155 shells but Europe hasnt, as far I know over the last two years, even attempted to place sizeable contracts to buy from these non bloc suppliers.
Presumably you include us in that "Europe", as we have done (or more accurately not done) the same.
If a country supporting Ukraine hasnt sought to place contracts for munitions outside its own manufacturers, its in the same pot of committing such an error no matter what you want to call it.
The most devastating thing that Israel can do right now vis a vis Iran is to treat their major effort last night with the disdain it deserves and frankly ignore it.
Whether that suits Netanyahu's purposes of both staying in office and out of jail remains to be seen.
If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit
It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.
So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause
Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.
But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.
I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.
(Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
Also, the implicit deal used to be "Young Europeans- come and work in the UK for a bit. The pay won't be great, but there's minimal admin, you can improve your English, which will pay off well for you in the future. And it's a fun place to pass through." See also au pair-ing.
The recompense for the job wasn't just the cash, it was the experience. It's not as if young Brits wanted to do the work.
We've chucked that away, because of an obsession with control and total numbers of bodies. Brexit didn't have to be like this (and doesn't now.) But it was always a plausible outcome, especially after the campaign of 2016.
I doubt many people would mind there being an exemption on FOM for under 21s, or maybe under 23s. They’re equivalent to students really. I think problem people had, which led to Leave winning, was immigrants undercutting the market on jobs that grown men were used to supporting their families by. I suppose it is hard to replicate implicit deals in practice
But the reality is that a bunch of young Europeans doing poorly paid jobs for "the experience" is what enables those jobs to be poorly paid in the first place. It supplies a massive excess of labour supply which sinks pay and conditions. That had knock on effects for less skilled Britons.
If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit
It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.
So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause
Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.
But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.
I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.
(Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
Then they need to rethink the business model.
What you are suggesting is the broader population should accept lower wages so a restaurant owner can make greater profits
That’s not equitable
I am not suggesting what the business model should be.
Restaurant industry complained about a lack of staff. You come up with a fairly silly quick fix that hits brick walls after a few seconds thought and would result in restaurant industry shrinking, which is probably not the resolution the restauranteurs are seeking.
Ok, the original poster seems to blame the lack of visas due to Brexit, not you.
They are complaining about lack of staff. This means there are two options: (I) make the terms they are offering better; or (ii) expand the pool of potential labour to find people who will work for those wages.
They went with option (ii). I said you need to do (I) because you can’t expect society to bear the costs of a non-viable business model. And if that results in a reduction of capacity in the industry (which will allow for higher prices) then so be it.
Who benefits from your preferred option?
UK based employees who get higher wages
The reality is that most people on NMW will prefer the stability of a supermarket gig to working shifts on a care home or as wait staff.
If you read the article it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit
It’s the government policy on the minimum salary you have to earn to get a visa plus the cost of living.
So valid concerns but just to say “because Brexit” makes it much harder to address the causes of the issue
Er, without Brexit the Italian waiters wouldn't need visas!
You are looking at the proximate issue not the underlying cause
Given the prices London restaurants charge they should be able to pay a decent wage. Or they can find employees from the local population and/or the settled Italian community if they insist.
But your solution is unlimited immigration rather than improving wages for the local population.
I get it. I understand why you might like that. I also understand why the local population might not.
(Now there is a specific topic on wait staff where the UK culture sees it as a transitory job while many European cultures see it as a career. But that should be reflected in wages restaurants are prepared to pay).
80% of restaurants fail within the first 5 years. Higher wages probably would work at the top end of the market with better retention improving service, but for the middle and lower end of the market margins seem too tight. That the prices seem high to customers doesn't mean owners can just pay a lot more.
Also, the implicit deal used to be "Young Europeans- come and work in the UK for a bit. The pay won't be great, but there's minimal admin, you can improve your English, which will pay off well for you in the future. And it's a fun place to pass through." See also au pair-ing.
The recompense for the job wasn't just the cash, it was the experience. It's not as if young Brits wanted to do the work.
We've chucked that away, because of an obsession with control and total numbers of bodies. Brexit didn't have to be like this (and doesn't now.) But it was always a plausible outcome, especially after the campaign of 2016.
I doubt many people would mind there being an exemption on FOM for under 21s, or maybe under 23s. They’re equivalent to students really. I think problem people had, which led to Leave winning, was immigrants undercutting the market on jobs that grown men were used to supporting their families by. I suppose it is hard to replicate implicit deals in practice
But the reality is that a bunch of young Europeans doing poorly paid jobs for "the experience" is what enables those jobs to be poorly paid in the first place. It supplies a massive excess of labour supply which sinks pay and conditions. That had knock on effects for less skilled Britons.
Comments
The public glorification of the Jan 6 rioters has a nasty beer hall taste about it.
Inside Donald Trump’s Embrace of the Jan. 6 Rioters
The former president initially disavowed the attack on the Capitol, but he is now making it a centerpiece of his general election campaign.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/13/us/politics/trump-jan-6.html
They offered a 30% discount without being promoted for immediate settlement.
That’s egregious pricing
“New York Times: The Israeli cabinet has abandoned the option of a retaliatory attack on Iran”
What is the price for Israel not attacking Iran . Could they say to the west stop criticizing our Gaza response and let us get on with Rafah .
Or refer to the Troller's FAQ before it disappears from the internet:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160530235556/https://www.skankworks.net/the-trollers-faq/
"Section 6: Following-Up
“Even if this is true……”
That represents the perfect response to any troll [...] Award yourself a Troll Gold Star every time you get one!
Other good responses include, but are not limited to….
“Although this is on-topic…..”
“I disagree….”
“Yes, but…..”
“Can you provide a source for this….”
Mind you, Trump did look fetching in his green headband.
Civil servants aren't paid along with their gold plated pensions to let the cat out of the bag.
How does one tell the difference between a CT scan and an MRI scan machine? I'm sure I've had both in the last year, and I think the main perceived difference may be that a CT scan is 15-20 minutes, and an MRI scan more like 30-90 minutes.
I tend to refer to the "swallow you whole" scanning machines as The Giant Polo Mint.
The NHS has numbers on this buried within the cross-charging system, which I assume are just the marginal cost of the scan, which would cover variable costs with some predetermined overhead.
Their numbers are between £100 and £200 roughly afaics, but it is a system I do not understand well.
It's in "Annex A" on this page, in the "Unbundled Prices" tab in the ss.
https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/2023-25-nhs-payment-scheme/
The interesting thing is that he should say so.
If the Chinese leadership is allowing the idea of Russian defeat to be discussed openly then it indicates that they are considering how they should react to Russia's defeat.
https://order-order.com/2024/04/14/john-redwood-attacks-bank-of-england-for-performing-extremely-badly/#comments
He blames the Bank, but it's really the Government's responsibility. The taxpayer has paid the Bank £50bn so far this year to cover its QT losses - that dwarves any bad procurement, school repair, wasteful departmental spending, or any other scandal, yet as he says, he's the only MP complaining about it. Don't know what the rest are thinking, useless shower, probably too busy photographing their own genitals.
So this could be a hint to Putin: take what you’ve got and sue for peace. Kinda hope so
Russia's nuclear capability is no guarantee of success. Feng Yujun gives the example of the United States, which left Vietnam, Korea, and Afghanistan with no less nuclear potential than the Russian Federation has today.
And this is the full text:
https://archive.ph/C2Fbs
If Israel want to hit Iran's nuclear programme, wreck a few facilities, destroy some equipment, set the programme back a few more years, then this is the best opportunity they have to do so. It can be presented as a response to the Iranian missile attack in a way that simply hitting Iran at any other time could not.
If Israel are not looking for such an excuse then Iran have set it up for de-escalation. The Iranian attack can be shrugged off as ineffective, not requiring a response.
My guess is that Israel will want to take this chance. Last October shows the peril of being complacent about a potential threat to Israel. If Israel don't hit the Iranian nuclear programme now, then when will they?
What do you make of the reports of power blackouts in Israel, including in Tel Aviv, said to be the work of the "Cyber Avengers" according to some sources?
Netanyahu is a man of seriously bad and limited judgment, but the IDF will have told him their odds without US help aren’t good.
Restraint is strategically clever as well. Israel now looks like the plucky little victim again. Global anger over Gaza will abate. Maybe they can defeat Hamas now, and they can justify it by saying Hamas = Iran
6. Would make Bart from north-west England very happy.
Or that civil servants have never done so before.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/angela-rayner-council-housing-matt-finnegan-b2528469.html
Thoughts and prayers for the religious anti-ABM types. “ABM can never, never work”
Before Team Starmer have got their hands on a single red box, the most miserabilist voices declare that failure is inevitable.
A dour tone is in tune with a sour national mood about the condition of the country and the trustworthiness of its politicians. Sir Keir and his people think the worst thing they could do would be to arouse expectations that they won’t be able to meet.
The mistake here, and it is one which is particularly prevalent on the left, is to think that progress is entirely dependent on being able to spend lots of extra money.
Progress isn’t all about the state being able to open its wallet. The legacy of reforming governments is often not defined by how much money they spent, but by the enduring institutions they created and the social advances they embedded. Several of New Labour’s key reforms came at zero or trivial cost to the exchequer. A notable one was the establishment of the minimum wage.
Of all the reforms of the New Labour years, banning smoking in enclosed public spaces was one of the greatest triumphs of no-cost progressivism. Fuggy pubs and fume-hazed restaurants are no more than a smelly memory. Deaths from heart disease and strokes have fallen dramatically since lighting up was banned in indoor venues. There’s a strong case that the ban has been the single biggest benefit to public health in my lifetime while saving the NHS the money that it would otherwise be spending on treating smoking-related diseases.
The House of Lords provides an easy way to demonstrate that Britain has a modernising government. Given how abysmal the consequences of Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal have been, it should not be beyond the wit of a Labour government to agree more rational and less frictional trading arrangements with the EU. It will very likely be a first-year priority for Labour to create Great British Energy, a new publicly owned clean power company. It would be a quick win for a Starmer government, and one rectifying a Tory failure, to implement a comprehensive ban on the sale of zombie knives, machetes and other vicious bladed weapons.
[Other opportunities] include modernising the school curriculum, using planning reform and the levers of the state to encourage house building, overhauling the regulation of water and other utilities, banning no-fault evictions and enhancing consumer protection.
History shows that you don’t have to be a chequebook government to be a reforming government. Even when money is tight, Labour will have substantial opportunities to change lives in ways that matter a lot. They just have to be seized.
Was she insured ?
Oh well, Italian restaurants in Germany still have Italian staff. It's very traditional. Also investing in an Italian restaurant in Germany is a traditional means of laundering mafia money. So it's win-win-win.
Restaurant industry complained about a lack of staff. You come up with a fairly silly quick fix that hits brick walls after a few seconds thought and would result in restaurant industry shrinking, which is probably not the resolution the restauranteurs are seeking.
24/7 coverage is expensive. Especially when you can’t just pay the staff in bottle tops.
Admittedly that gets back to the original history of the Bank from the 17th century.
But I am stunned that a monetarist such as Redwood really wants an inflated money supply
But fortunately I have a line of credit on my mortgage
She had had a migraine lasting a week. Just after starting a new brand of cereal with raisins.
I recommended changing the cereal.
The doctors said “better have a CT scan to make sure it’s not a brain tumour”.
That wasn’t a fight I was ever going to win with my wife…
But the CT scan was clear. And the migraines stopped after she stopped having cereal for breakfast.
The constant drip drip of news stories is more damaging.
They are complaining about lack of staff. This means there are two options: (I) make the terms they are offering better; or (ii) expand the pool of potential labour to find people who will work for those wages.
They went with option (ii). I said you need to do (I) because you can’t expect society to bear the costs of a non-viable business model. And if that results in a reduction of capacity in the industry (which will allow for higher prices) then so be it.
😉
You don’t just have institutional “children’s homes” with one warden locking them up at night and scrimping on the serving of gruel to save money anymore
Everything about the "there is no money" narrative snacks of not being willing to tell unpalatable truths about the distribution of finite resources within this sickly country. It would be nice to think that truths will be told once the necessity to get certain voters to dump the Tories is dispensed with. But I'm not holding my breath.
I suspect those who are Conservative minded are lapping this up as proof of greater opposition corruption than their own.
Those who are skeptical of Conservative probity seem to think it is small beer (and korma) compared to some of the outrageous corruption from those associated with the current Government. It's the sort of bind ordinary people could find themselves the wrong side of HMRC or the police over, and it highlights the law applies only to them and not Tory Grandees.
But the facts on the ground are still that the Ukranians need more weapons, and need them yesterday.
That does get under my skin, so I’m likely to bang on about it.
Each has an advantage looking for different things.
But they are routinely (by which I mean every single day) flouted due to a lack of staff willing to work for the ludicrous pay.
The losses on PPP - I’m not convinced it was corruption - really arose from poor judgement on the government’s part. They were desperately trying to source PPP from anywhere and at any price. They created a fast track system which seemed sensible but then didn’t apply the judgement to exclude the chancers who were attracted like bees to a honeypot. As far as I know, no one in the government benefited financially - if they did then, of course, they should be punished and shamed.
Not sure what is happening to Liverpool
Some suggestions are that precisely 0% of the UAVs (drones) and criuise missiles made it to the ground in one piece, never mind be on target. Yep, zero.
All those that did make it through were reportedly the ballistic missiles. Apparently about 110 were fired and maybe seven made it through. This is a singular attack involving 110 short and medium range ballistic missiles coming within a very narrow time window, high altitude, high speed. That is a truly shit return if confirmed. Bear in mind too that there is a fair chance that a large majority of ballistic weapons may well have been dealt with by the Israelis themselves, whilst the proportion of UAVs and cruise missiles shot down by 3rd parties will represent a more significant fraction of those totals.
I know some people think that the Iranians were playing for symbolism and I did mention there there was a likely a sense of understanding amongst all parties about the nature of the attack. The idea, though, that the Iranians knew this was going to be a right flop in military terms is fanciful. 300 surface to surface weapons and a nil return? No one could be that deliberate in failure. The Iranians could not have expected such a poor output with what was a multi layered attack designed to be too big to not have a hard effect.
Liverpool nearly 2 down with goal line clearance by Robertson
A emphasis on timely intervention in child and adolescent mental health may well be of long term economic benefit in terms of cost to health, social care and criminal justice systems as well as relieving a lot of misery for patients and their families.
IIRC the average doctor spends $200k-$300k per year on professional indemnity insurance, something that will also carry down at a lower level to every nurse and radiographer, which obviously gets reflected in their charges to customers.
The other is that insurance companies will negotiate huge discounts with providers, so the providers simply raise the list prices to compensate, meaning that’s what a walk-in patient gets as the bill. Yes a scan should be a couple of hundred bucks for the use of the scanner, and a couple of hundred more for the doc to review the output and write a report.
It’s by some distance the most inefficient way of delivering healthcare that’s ever been known.
I do wonder if this would have happened without the lessons learned in the Ukraine though. Both drones and anti-drone technology is advancing at a frightening pace and these drones were simply archaic.
Whether that suits Netanyahu's purposes of both staying in office and out of jail remains to be seen.
The reality is that most people on NMW will prefer the stability of a supermarket gig to working shifts on a care home or as wait staff.