What happened near German railway stations on New Year's Eve was probably "organised" in the self-organised way that facebook etc enables. Similar atrocities had earlier been happening in Sweden on a smaller scale, but these have been in large part unreported by the politically correct Swedish press. Mrs Merkel has called for a hard response from the authorities without regard to where the perpetrators come from or what their background is. http://www.rp-online.de/nrw/staedte/koeln/angela-merkel-fordert-harte-antwort-des-rechtsstaats-aid-1.5669919 However the article ends with "little is known about the perpetrators"!
Yes. It reminds me strongly of the plasma-screen riots in the UK.
Probably these youths all use the same social media, Whatsapp or wherever. You can imagine the way it works, a few dozen gather, then they text their mates Come down to the station, we're having a little riot, then their friends gather - and many of them are boozing and smoking weed, it is New Year's Eve and these goodies are widely available, unlike at home - and so it escalates, then the first sexual assault takes place, and then they realise they can ALL have a lot of fun with some hot German girls, who, after all, are just sluts and whores, being stupidly out alone.
Et voila.
The parallels with Tahrir are deeply disturbing. It looks like the gangs used EXACTLY the same methods, the circling and isolating of women, then the verbal abuse, to terrify - then the assault.
I think you are exactly right as to how this was "organised" - feedback loop via social media.
I suspect that realising that cops (over the period of time they've been in Germany) have not been cracking down on individual incidents (as reported) has created an atmosphere of invulnerability. Once that is created (see the London riots) it takes hard action to re-create it.
They say UK productivity has been falling. I don't know if that is actually true or not, it JJ is definitely providing good solid anecdotal evidence of this. 3 days (at least) just to shuffle a few people around.
''the implication of this for our recorded labour productivity figures is that some portion of that growth in labour productivity over the period 2001 to 2010, and some portion of the fall in it since, is simply the result of the boom and then restraint in public sector pay.'' ''Why is UK labour productivity falling? Simply because we measure public sector labour productivity by the amount we pay them in wages and we’re deliberately squeezing those wages currently.''
They say UK productivity has been falling. I don't know if that is actually true or not, it JJ is definitely providing good solid anecdotal evidence of this. 3 days (at least) just to shuffle a few people around.
''the implication of this for our recorded labour productivity figures is that some portion of that growth in labour productivity over the period 2001 to 2010, and some portion of the fall in it since, is simply the result of the boom and then restraint in public sector pay.'' ''Why is UK labour productivity falling? Simply because we measure public sector labour productivity by the amount we pay them in wages and we’re deliberately squeezing those wages currently.''
Right.
So we ignore the drop in public sector employment and simply say it's wages.
Guess we should pay the doctors more then and watch productivity soar.
What happened near German railway stations on New Year's Eve was probably "organised" in the self-organised way that facebook etc enables. Similar atrocities had earlier been happening in Sweden on a smaller scale, but these have been in large part unreported by the politically correct Swedish press. Mrs Merkel has called for a hard response from the authorities without regard to where the perpetrators come from or what their background is. http://www.rp-online.de/nrw/staedte/koeln/angela-merkel-fordert-harte-antwort-des-rechtsstaats-aid-1.5669919 However the article ends with "little is known about the perpetrators"!
Well lets hope with a bit of German efficiency they work out who was responsible. I presume if a lot of this was posted on social media that would be a good start + mobile phone data.
Not to worry, they get to do it all again as Karneval kicks off in the Rhineland. What with three days of crowds getting pissed in Cologne and a woman;s day 4th February it should be a total riot this year.
Will Sadiq Khan's religious beliefs be an issue in the London election? There's a certain political correctness around issues of conscience in UK politics, unlike the US, so he may not get much scrutiny. However Ruth Kelly was ridiculed over Opus Dei and I seem to remember Paxman asking Tony Blair if he believed in the use of contraceptives. I think Khan is on the record as being a practising Muslim. What does that mean exactly. I'm not a Londoner, but I can't imagine I would vote for someone who thinks an ancient text is the literal word of God.
Will Sadiq Khan's religious beliefs be an issue in the London election? There's a certain political correctness around issues of conscience in UK politics, unlike the US, so he may not get much scrutiny. However Ruth Kelly was ridiculed over Opus Dei and I seem to remember Paxman asking Tony Blair if he believed in the use of contraceptives. I think Khan is on the record as being a practising Muslim. What does that mean exactly. I'm not a Londoner, but I can't imagine I would vote for someone who thinks an ancient text is the literal word of God.
I would be more concerned about the kind of people he has associated with in the past than his religion.
Anyone who believed the hype and voted for Corbyn now prepared to admit they fucked up big style?
Because a reshuffle has been a bit messy? I'm not even one of those people and I'd be disappointed if this was what broke the spell for them.
To be honest, its been a collection of feck ups. At every key moment where he's had to display some kind of leadership he has utterly failed.
Exactly – a politician can get away with an awful lot most of the time, but when the media spot light justly points in your direction, you had better be prepared to do what's expected and do it well. - Corbyn has been winging it for 30 years and it shows.
But why oh why did Labour put him on the ballot? They do not understand the candidate and they do not understand their own electorate. Yet they expect to govern Great Britain!
Will Sadiq Khan's religious beliefs be an issue in the London election? There's a certain political correctness around issues of conscience in UK politics, unlike the US, so he may not get much scrutiny. However Ruth Kelly was ridiculed over Opus Dei and I seem to remember Paxman asking Tony Blair if he believed in the use of contraceptives. I think Khan is on the record as being a practising Muslim. What does that mean exactly. I'm not a Londoner, but I can't imagine I would vote for someone who thinks an ancient text is the literal word of God.
I would be more concerned about the kind of people he has associated with in the past than his religion.
Not unrelated IMHO.
The silent majority of Londeners will not vote for him.
They say UK productivity has been falling. I don't know if that is actually true or not, it JJ is definitely providing good solid anecdotal evidence of this. 3 days (at least) just to shuffle a few people around.
''the implication of this for our recorded labour productivity figures is that some portion of that growth in labour productivity over the period 2001 to 2010, and some portion of the fall in it since, is simply the result of the boom and then restraint in public sector pay.'' ''Why is UK labour productivity falling? Simply because we measure public sector labour productivity by the amount we pay them in wages and we’re deliberately squeezing those wages currently.''
Right.
So we ignore the drop in public sector employment and simply say it's wages.
Guess we should pay the doctors more then and watch productivity soar.
I surprised that anyone didn't know this one - it's been this way for a long time.
Mind you, I was surprised at the Petrol Strike - I thought everyone knew that about 70-80% of the price of petrol was tax....
"The mayor of Cologne has summoned police for crisis talks after about 80 women reported sexual assaults and muggings by men on New Year's Eve. The scale of the attacks on women at the city's central railway station has shocked Germany. About 1,000 drunk and aggressive young men were involved. City police chief Wolfgang Albers called it "a completely new dimension of crime". The men were of Arab or North African appearance, he said. Women were also targeted in Hamburg."
Hmmm. We'll have to see what happens. I do remember a few years ago a Swiss gentleman saying to me he was surprised how women in the UK were afraid to walk home alone at night. People have expectations of how they can live their life and don't react kindly if things seem to be regressing.
Wasn't Ball's Oxford drinking club called the steamers?
Codes of conduct for women after this is of course quite pathetic especially if its a formal one and not simply don't walk home alone in the dark. Don't women in Germany have the vote?
They say UK productivity has been falling. I don't know if that is actually true or not, it JJ is definitely providing good solid anecdotal evidence of this. 3 days (at least) just to shuffle a few people around.
''the implication of this for our recorded labour productivity figures is that some portion of that growth in labour productivity over the period 2001 to 2010, and some portion of the fall in it since, is simply the result of the boom and then restraint in public sector pay.'' ''Why is UK labour productivity falling? Simply because we measure public sector labour productivity by the amount we pay them in wages and we’re deliberately squeezing those wages currently.''
Right.
So we ignore the drop in public sector employment and simply say it's wages.
Guess we should pay the doctors more then and watch productivity soar.
I surprised that anyone didn't know this one - it's been this way for a long time.
Mind you, I was surprised at the Petrol Strike - I thought everyone knew that about 70-80% of the price of petrol was tax....
Don't blame the messenger. I for one was just pointing out an explanation of how the statistics work. Maybe there is a more meaningful statistic. But, dare I say it, when commenting on the statistics its best to at least try to understand how they are compiled.
Productivity statistics are meaningless. Productivity statistics are meaningless...
This is how it is measured: we take the Gross Domestic Product number and divide it by an estimate for the number of hours worked across the economy. This drives an "economic output per hour worked" figure, aka productivity.
There are two glaring issues with this:
1. Nobody knows how many hours are actually worked across the economy. It's a frickin' survey. And it doesn't get changing employment trends. It misses whole sections of the economy, and it also deals badly with changing job trends. (There is a rise in reported hours worked associated with carrying smartphones... but I think we know people aren't really working all those hours... some of those people are using their smartphones to surf pb...)
2. There is a very strong inverse correlation between labour market participation rates and labour productivity. It turns out that if lots of people don't work, then productivity is high. (In France, there is "high productivity" because social charges price low wage workers out of jobs.) We currently have record levels of labour participation, and this means that the most marginal workers' hours are counted alongside those of the most productive. If these marginal workers were sitting at home, watching Jeremy Kyle, measure productivity would be higher.
Basically: it's a stupid statistic and I'm banning discussion of it on pb. If any poster mentions productivity again without adding something along the lines of "It's most meaningless motherfucking economic statistic in the world" then they will be banned. Fair enough?
Oracle Nate Silver says there's a decent chance of Bernie Sanders beating Clinton in both Iowa and New Hampshire (but Clinton still clinching the nomination by the end):
rcs - is it not rather revealing when we look at GDP stats to see certain countries (who we think we are on a par with economically) managing to have the same output or even slightly higher whilst working shorter hours?
With literally millions of MENA migrants heading for Europe I think this debate is a bit bigger than "re-enacting slutwalk"
Indeed, as others have implied, it's pretty bloody insulting to use the word "slut" in relation to the assaulted girls and women of Cologne - some were 15 and with their parents as they were groped and molested FFS.
Telegraph reporting that the German police have been seeing this "tactic" being used by gangs as part of robberies.
It makes good sense, therefore, for Corbyn to move Benn and Maria Eagle, because they support Trident and he doesn’t. But it is complicated. Labour Party policy is to renew the UK’s nuclear weapons programme, until of course it isn’t – in which case why not move them after this autumn’s Labour conference changes the policy? That would make sense: new policy, new spokespeople. The other complication is that Tom Watson, the Labour deputy leader, is also a Trident supporter and he cannot be sacked because he was directly elected by Labour members.
So it was always going to be messy. Even so, the presentational disaster – “omnishambles” is the Thick of It word – of the past two days has been quite exceptional. Days and nights went by with people rumoured to be in or out and in the morning nothing had happened, just as in one of the Thick of It specials.
P.............y statistics are meaningless. P.............y statistics are meaningless...
snip
Basically: it's a stupid statistic and I'm banning discussion of it on pb. If any poster mentions p...........y again without adding something along the lines of "It's most meaningless motherfucking economic statistic in the world" then they will be banned. Fair enough?
My only solace from this very scary post is that my own post was agreeing with you.
With literally millions of MENA migrants heading for Europe I think this debate is a bit bigger than "re-enacting slutwalk"
Indeed, as others have implied, it's pretty bloody insulting to use the word "slut" in relation to the assaulted girls and women of Cologne - some were 15 and with their parents as they were groped and molested FFS.
You've completely got the wrong end of the stick. Far from suggesting that the women of Cologne are sluts, I'm suggesting that the women of Cologne should not be asked by their government to tailor their behaviour to appease a large gang of lawless men and that instead the German authorities should be concentrating on apprehending the members of said large gang as a matter of urgency, putting them behind bars and culturally enlightening them with cold water, bromine and, if all else fails, two bricks.
With literally millions of MENA migrants heading for Europe I think this debate is a bit bigger than "re-enacting slutwalk"
Indeed, as others have implied, it's pretty bloody insulting to use the word "slut" in relation to the assaulted girls and women of Cologne - some were 15 and with their parents as they were groped and molested FFS.
You've completely got the wrong end of the stick. Far from suggesting that the women of Cologne are sluts, I'm suggesting that the women of Cologne should not be asked by their government to tailor their behaviour to appease a large gang of lawless men and that instead the German authorities should be concentrating on apprehending the members of said large gang as a matter of urgency, putting them behind bars and culturally enlightening them with cold water, bromine and, if all else fails, two bricks.
If that lawyer gig doesn't work out you can be the new Minister of the Interior.
rcs - is it not rather revealing when we look at GDP stats to see certain countries (who we think we are on a par with economically) managing to have the same output or even slightly higher whilst working shorter hours?
We have a similar GDP per head to France: but France has productivity of EUR46/hour worked, and we're at EUR39. Why? Because France has unemployment of 11% and we have half that level. If France reduced social charges that discourage businesses from hiring workers, then its unemployment and productivity would both be lower.
Dhanawade's innings enabled his side to declare on the mind-boggling 1465/3, also a world record, with Pranav unbeaten on 1,009... Arya Gurukul's [other team] woes were compounded by the fact that they had been bundled out for 31 on Monday.
I guess they don't follow the schoolmatch principle of retiring a player if they are being far too dominant.
Dhanawade's innings enabled his side to declare on the mind-boggling 1465/3, also a world record, with Pranav unbeaten on 1,009... Arya Gurukul's [other team] woes were compounded by the fact that they had been bundled out for 31 on Monday.
I guess they don't follow the schoolmatch principle of retiring a player if they are being far too dominant.
'No10 says Cameron decided to grant ministerial freedom on Brexit "a number of weeks ago" and explained it privately to some ministers'
Just a pity for Major and Hezza that the briefing didn't extend to them. Makes them look like a right pair of muppets.
Why is it that only the Europhiles that are upset with this move to allow debate? Is being pro-EC lead to a desire to stifle all discussion about the EC? Has the EC become a religion to the Europhiles?
rcs - is it not rather revealing when we look at GDP stats to see certain countries (who we think we are on a par with economically) managing to have the same output or even slightly higher whilst working shorter hours?
We have a similar GDP per head to France: but France has productivity of EUR46/hour worked, and we're at EUR39. Why? Because France has unemployment of 11% and we have half that level. If France reduced social charges that discourage businesses from hiring workers, then its unemployment and productivity would both be lower.
I guess France pays its public sector workers more and that helps raise these statistics on productivity?
rcs - is it not rather revealing when we look at GDP stats to see certain countries (who we think we are on a par with economically) managing to have the same output or even slightly higher whilst working shorter hours?
We have a similar GDP per head to France: but France has productivity of EUR46/hour worked, and we're at EUR39. Why? Because France has unemployment of 11% and we have half that level. If France reduced social charges that discourage businesses from hiring workers, then its unemployment and productivity would both be lower.
Germany. You pay the worker for 35 hours and he does 35 hours work
UK you pay the worker for 37 hours but he takes 40 hours to complete the task
France you pay the worker 35 hours and he does about 30 hours.
With literally millions of MENA migrants heading for Europe I think this debate is a bit bigger than "re-enacting slutwalk"
Indeed, as others have implied, it's pretty bloody insulting to use the word "slut" in relation to the assaulted girls and women of Cologne - some were 15 and with their parents as they were groped and molested FFS.
You've completely got the wrong end of the stick. Far from suggesting that the women of Cologne are sluts, I'm suggesting that the women of Cologne should not be asked by their government to tailor their behaviour to appease a large gang of lawless men and that instead the German authorities should be concentrating on apprehending the members of said large gang as a matter of urgency, putting them behind bars and culturally enlightening them with cold water, bromine and, if all else fails, two bricks.
Given this all apparently happened in the vicinity of the main railway station, the attacks should have been captured on CCTV - and it should, therefore, be a relatively easy matter to arrest the perpetrators.
Just heard an interview with Labour's Michael Dugher. Articulate and impressive.
No wonder he fired him.
Dugher was Burnham's campaign manager and Burnham has told the Evening Standard this evening he was precisely the type of figure Labour needed to appeal to voters in the North and Midlands. So looks like Corbyn will have managed to annoy both his Shadow Home Secretary and Shadow Foreign Secretary after this reshuffle
I have just listened to the "voice of reason " in the Labour party , or so Dugher would have us all believe, but wasn't he one of Brown's enforcers with a somewhat chequered past at No 10. Its ironic that before being sacked, he replaced the even more odious Chris Bryant..
rcs - is it not rather revealing when we look at GDP stats to see certain countries (who we think we are on a par with economically) managing to have the same output or even slightly higher whilst working shorter hours?
We have a similar GDP per head to France: but France has productivity of EUR46/hour worked, and we're at EUR39. Why? Because France has unemployment of 11% and we have half that level. If France reduced social charges that discourage businesses from hiring workers, then its unemployment and productivity would both be lower.
Germany. You pay the worker for 35 hours and he does 35 hours work
UK you pay the worker for 37 hours but he takes 40 hours to complete the task
France you pay the worker 35 hours and he does about 30 hours.
Your average French worker doesn't spend half the day pissing about on Facebook or watching cat videos.
rcs - is it not rather revealing when we look at GDP stats to see certain countries (who we think we are on a par with economically) managing to have the same output or even slightly higher whilst working shorter hours?
We have a similar GDP per head to France: but France has productivity of EUR46/hour worked, and we're at EUR39. Why? Because France has unemployment of 11% and we have half that level. If France reduced social charges that discourage businesses from hiring workers, then its unemployment and productivity would both be lower.
I guess France pays its public sector workers more and that helps raise these statistics on productivity?
The Tim Worstall piece is right that we (and the French, etc.) measure public sector output by simply summing up what we pay. And therefore public sector spending / wage restraint will drag on measured productivity.
But the biggest issue continues to be that productivity - over periods of less than a decade - is simply an inverse of the employment rate.
To see this in action look at Spain. Between 2008 and 2013, productivity grew faster there than in any other EU country or the US. Economic miracle? No, it was because Spanish unemployment went up by 15%.
With literally millions of MENA migrants heading for Europe I think this debate is a bit bigger than "re-enacting slutwalk"
Indeed, as others have implied, it's pretty bloody insulting to use the word "slut" in relation to the assaulted girls and women of Cologne - some were 15 and with their parents as they were groped and molested FFS.
You've completely got the wrong end of the stick. Far from suggesting that the women of Cologne are sluts, I'm suggesting that the women of Cologne should not be asked by their government to tailor their behaviour to appease a large gang of lawless men and that instead the German authorities should be concentrating on apprehending the members of said large gang as a matter of urgency, putting them behind bars and culturally enlightening them with cold water, bromine and, if all else fails, two bricks.
In Hamburg questions of dress have been around for a while. The Reeperbahn has more prostitutes and brothels than any other area in the world. The girls can be quite aggressive and often parade themselves topless. I've worked in Hamburg loads of times but it has a very particular type of heavy metal aggression which can be intimidating.
If the incomers don't know the place and have some money they could seriously get taken. It's very organized though you wouldn't know it. Whether Cologne is the same I don't know but if it is it would explain why the reaction there isn't as hysterical as it is on here
rcs - is it not rather revealing when we look at GDP stats to see certain countries (who we think we are on a par with economically) managing to have the same output or even slightly higher whilst working shorter hours?
We have a similar GDP per head to France: but France has productivity of EUR46/hour worked, and we're at EUR39. Why? Because France has unemployment of 11% and we have half that level. If France reduced social charges that discourage businesses from hiring workers, then its unemployment and productivity would both be lower.
Germany. You pay the worker for 35 hours and he does 35 hours work
UK you pay the worker for 37 hours but he takes 40 hours to complete the task
France you pay the worker 35 hours and he does about 30 hours.
Your average French worker doesn't spend half the day pissing about on Facebook or watching cat videos.
rcs - is it not rather revealing when we look at GDP stats to see certain countries (who we think we are on a par with economically) managing to have the same output or even slightly higher whilst working shorter hours?
We have a similar GDP per head to France: but France has productivity of EUR46/hour worked, and we're at EUR39. Why? Because France has unemployment of 11% and we have half that level. If France reduced social charges that discourage businesses from hiring workers, then its unemployment and productivity would both be lower.
Germany. You pay the worker for 35 hours and he does 35 hours work
UK you pay the worker for 37 hours but he takes 40 hours to complete the task
France you pay the worker 35 hours and he does about 30 hours.
Does the Frenchman finish his task, or is he still in the cafe with an aperatif?
rcs - is it not rather revealing when we look at GDP stats to see certain countries (who we think we are on a par with economically) managing to have the same output or even slightly higher whilst working shorter hours?
We have a similar GDP per head to France: but France has productivity of EUR46/hour worked, and we're at EUR39. Why? Because France has unemployment of 11% and we have half that level. If France reduced social charges that discourage businesses from hiring workers, then its unemployment and productivity would both be lower.
Germany. You pay the worker for 35 hours and he does 35 hours work
UK you pay the worker for 37 hours but he takes 40 hours to complete the task
France you pay the worker 35 hours and he does about 30 hours.
Your average French worker doesn't spend half the day pissing about on Facebook or watching cat videos.
Too busy striking to look at cat videos.
If a worker goes on strike, it will almost certainly cause a rise in measured productivity.
rcs - is it not rather revealing when we look at GDP stats to see certain countries (who we think we are on a par with economically) managing to have the same output or even slightly higher whilst working shorter hours?
We have a similar GDP per head to France: but France has productivity of EUR46/hour worked, and we're at EUR39. Why? Because France has unemployment of 11% and we have half that level. If France reduced social charges that discourage businesses from hiring workers, then its unemployment and productivity would both be lower.
Germany. You pay the worker for 35 hours and he does 35 hours work
UK you pay the worker for 37 hours but he takes 40 hours to complete the task
France you pay the worker 35 hours and he does about 30 hours.
Does the Frenchman finish his task, or is he still in the cafe with an aperatif?
Germany gets 6 weeks holiday per year, UK gets 4 weeks, US gets 2 weeks. At least that was the case at my multinational company in the mid 80s.
If you are going to get rid of your enemies, get rid of all of them in one stroke. Look at the Labour reshuffle, Corbyn has sacked only the relative non-entity Dugher and already his enemies have declared war, precisely as I predicted no matter who Corbyn get's rid of they still would declare war on him.
Corbyn should sack the lot of them in one stroke, since his enemies have already declared war it doesn't matter if he keeps Benn or Eargle, it's better to conduct a clean sweep early on.
If he doesn't, then I'm afraid that I will have to place a small bet on Corbyn not making it till 2020, since a botched reshuffle will allow his enemies to use their shadow cabinet positions to grow in strength.
With literally millions of MENA migrants heading for Europe I think this debate is a bit bigger than "re-enacting slutwalk"
Indeed, as others have implied, it's pretty bloody insulting to use the word "slut" in relation to the assaulted girls and women of Cologne - some were 15 and with their parents as they were groped and molested FFS.
You've completely got the wrong end of the stick. Far from suggesting that the women of Cologne are sluts, I'm suggesting that the women of Cologne should not be asked by their government to tailor their behaviour to appease a large gang of lawless men and that instead the German authorities should be concentrating on apprehending the members of said large gang as a matter of urgency, putting them behind bars and culturally enlightening them with cold water, bromine and, if all else fails, two bricks.
In Hamburg questions of dress have been around for a while. The Reeperbahn has more prostitutes and brothels than any other area in the world. The girls can be quite aggressive and often parade themselves topless. I've worked in Hamburg loads of times but it has a very particular type of heavy metal aggression which can be intimidating.
If the incomers don't know the place and have some money they could seriously get taken. It's very organized though you wouldn't know it. Whether Cologne is the same I don't know but if it is it would explain why the reaction there isn't as hysterical as it is on here
Ah.. Victim blaming. What next Woger? A law that all women not in a tent and walking x paces behind a male relative are fair game?
If you are going to get rid of your enemies, get rid of all of them in one stroke. Look at the Labour reshuffle, Corbyn has sacked only the relative non-entity Dugher and already his enemies have declared war, precisely as I predicted no matter who Corbyn get's rid of they still would declare war on him.
Corbyn should sack the lot of them in one stroke, since his enemies have already declared war it doesn't matter if he keeps Benn or Eargle, it's better to conduct a clean sweep early on.
If he doesn't, then I'm afraid that I will have to place a small bet on Corbyn not making it till 2020, since a botched reshuffle will allow his enemies to use their shadow cabinet positions to grow in strength.
It does seem like if you are going to get rid of some troublemakers or those who just don't support you, you should do a complete job of it - as it will be presented as a declaration of war regardless, as you say.
rcs - is it not rather revealing when we look at GDP stats to see certain countries (who we think we are on a par with economically) managing to have the same output or even slightly higher whilst working shorter hours?
We have a similar GDP per head to France: but France has productivity of EUR46/hour worked, and we're at EUR39. Why? Because France has unemployment of 11% and we have half that level. If France reduced social charges that discourage businesses from hiring workers, then its unemployment and productivity would both be lower.
I guess France pays its public sector workers more and that helps raise these statistics on productivity?
The Tim Worstall piece is right that we (and the French, etc.) measure public sector output by simply summing up what we pay. And therefore public sector spending / wage restraint will drag on measured productivity.
But the biggest issue continues to be that productivity - over periods of less than a decade - is simply an inverse of the employment rate.
To see this in action look at Spain. Between 2008 and 2013, productivity grew faster there than in any other EU country or the US. Economic miracle? No, it was because Spanish unemployment went up by 15%.
Probably because productivity is a factor of skill and highly skilled people find it easier to get a job. In recessions, you cut the lower skilled jobs first - the highly skilled people tend to be core to the business and are last to go.
rcs - is it not rather revealing when we look at GDP stats to see certain countries (who we think we are on a par with economically) managing to have the same output or even slightly higher whilst working shorter hours?
We have a similar GDP per head to France: but France has productivity of EUR46/hour worked, and we're at EUR39. Why? Because France has unemployment of 11% and we have half that level. If France reduced social charges that discourage businesses from hiring workers, then its unemployment and productivity would both be lower.
I guess France pays its public sector workers more and that helps raise these statistics on productivity?
The Tim Worstall piece is right that we (and the French, etc.) measure public sector output by simply summing up what we pay. And therefore public sector spending / wage restraint will drag on measured productivity.
But the biggest issue continues to be that productivity - over periods of less than a decade - is simply an inverse of the employment rate.
To see this in action look at Spain. Between 2008 and 2013, productivity grew faster there than in any other EU country or the US. Economic miracle? No, it was because Spanish unemployment went up by 15%.
I prefer to measure productivity by GDP growth per change of employment, after the initial slump in 2008 which caused many unproductive jobs to disappear , productivity growth has stalled or even gone into decline in many european countries, mirroring Japan's trend since it's crash in the early 90's. It's rare to find productivity growth larger than 2% these days.
Productivity: It's most meaningless motherxxxxing economic statistic in the world" (will that do?)
But if it is measured in the same erroneous way over extended periods it really ought to show trends. What is depressing about the Adam Smith point is that even that is not true. I find it incredible that in so much of the debate on our "productivity crisis" this point has not been made before and often. Even David Smith, who has been blaming the fall in North Sea production, higher marginal employment and a massive fall in City profitability whilst suspecting that productivity has been under recorded has not made this point.
It really is a meaningless isn't it? And yet it should be important. A meaningful figure would indicate, for example, whether the million apprenticeships is actually worth doing, whether increasing the number of graduates actually achieves anything and whether our children are going to be able to pay back all the money we are borrowing to spend on ourselves. That would be kinda useful.
rcs - is it not rather revealing when we look at GDP stats to see certain countries (who we think we are on a par with economically) managing to have the same output or even slightly higher whilst working shorter hours?
We have a similar GDP per head to France: but France has productivity of EUR46/hour worked, and we're at EUR39. Why? Because France has unemployment of 11% and we have half that level. If France reduced social charges that discourage businesses from hiring workers, then its unemployment and productivity would both be lower.
I guess France pays its public sector workers more and that helps raise these statistics on productivity?
The Tim Worstall piece is right that we (and the French, etc.) measure public sector output by simply summing up what we pay. And therefore public sector spending / wage restraint will drag on measured productivity.
But the biggest issue continues to be that productivity - over periods of less than a decade - is simply an inverse of the employment rate.
To see this in action look at Spain. Between 2008 and 2013, productivity grew faster there than in any other EU country or the US. Economic miracle? No, it was because Spanish unemployment went up by 15%.
Probably because productivity is a factor of skill and highly skilled people find it easier to get a job. In recessions, you cut the lower skilled jobs first - the highly skilled people tend to be core to the business and are last to go.
Yes.
You can even simplify and say that as businesses are economically rational, they will lay off the low value add workers first.
There was a time when he was coming to be seen as the continuity-Cameron, roundly applauded for clearing up Lansley's mess. He's really f**ked up since then!
rcs - is it not rather revealing when we look at GDP stats to see certain countries (who we think we are on a par with economically) managing to have the same output or even slightly higher whilst working shorter hours?
We have a similar GDP per head to France: but France has productivity of EUR46/hour worked, and we're at EUR39. Why? Because France has unemployment of 11% and we have half that level. If France reduced social charges that discourage businesses from hiring workers, then its unemployment and productivity would both be lower.
I guess France pays its public sector workers more and that helps raise these statistics on productivity?
The Tim Worstall piece is right that we (and the French, etc.) measure public sector output by simply summing up what we pay. And therefore public sector spending / wage restraint will drag on measured productivity.
But the biggest issue continues to be that productivity - over periods of less than a decade - is simply an inverse of the employment rate.
To see this in action look at Spain. Between 2008 and 2013, productivity grew faster there than in any other EU country or the US. Economic miracle? No, it was because Spanish unemployment went up by 15%.
Probably because productivity is a factor of skill and highly skilled people find it easier to get a job. In recessions, you cut the lower skilled jobs first - the highly skilled people tend to be core to the business and are last to go.
Yes.
You can even simplify and say that as businesses are economically rational, they will lay off the low value add workers first.
Which is in fact what a rational, justifiable, redundancy process is supposed to do - in law, you are supposed to prove that you laid off people by skills/areas and then ability within those skills/areas. Weakest first.....
Productivity: It's most meaningless motherxxxxing economic statistic in the world" (will that do?)
But if it is measured in the same erroneous way over extended periods it really ought to show trends. What is depressing about the Adam Smith point is that even that is not true. I find it incredible that in so much of the debate on our "productivity crisis" this point has not been made before and often. Even David Smith, who has been blaming the fall in North Sea production, higher marginal employment and a massive fall in City profitability whilst suspecting that productivity has been under recorded has not made this point.
It really is a meaningless isn't it? And yet it should be important. A meaningful figure would indicate, for example, whether the million apprenticeships is actually worth doing, whether increasing the number of graduates actually achieves anything and whether our children are going to be able to pay back all the money we are borrowing to spend on ourselves. That would be kinda useful.
If we could measure the output of workers on a like-for-like basis, that would be great. If we could say "people with the following educational achievements who went on apprentiships had output of x, while those that did not had y" then it would be genuinely meaningful.
But aggregate productivity statistics are utterly meaningless.
Productivity: It's most meaningless motherxxxxing economic statistic in the world" (will that do?)
But if it is measured in the same erroneous way over extended periods it really ought to show trends. What is depressing about the Adam Smith point is that even that is not true. I find it incredible that in so much of the debate on our "productivity crisis" this point has not been made before and often. Even David Smith, who has been blaming the fall in North Sea production, higher marginal employment and a massive fall in City profitability whilst suspecting that productivity has been under recorded has not made this point.
It really is a meaningless isn't it? And yet it should be important. A meaningful figure would indicate, for example, whether the million apprenticeships is actually worth doing, whether increasing the number of graduates actually achieves anything and whether our children are going to be able to pay back all the money we are borrowing to spend on ourselves. That would be kinda useful.
If we could measure the output of workers on a like-for-like basis, that would be great. If we could say "people with the following educational achievements who went on apprentiships had output of x, while those that did not had y" then it would be genuinely meaningful.
But aggregate productivity statistics are utterly meaningless.
Once again in economics it is asking the right questions of the data which is important as well as the quality of the data itself. Labour economists (and I don't mean Ed Balls and pals) should be ashamed of the quality of their work and, eh, their output.
And of course the King James' Bible is pure poetry. Whoever decided to replace it with the telephone directory style modern version should be put in one of Dante's Seven Circles of Hell.
Even more true of the Book of Common Prayer. I find modern C of E services painful to listen to, like music sung out of tune.
It's not as though the modern versions even work in their own terms. If they really wanted to use contemporary forms of expression, the service would go something like this:
"The Lord be with you"
"And with you too, mate".
That's very true. The new liturgy introduced a painfully stilted form of modern speech that has become an Anglican trademark.
I am an atheist, but there is something incredibly moving about the old service for the burial of the dead, knowing that the same words have been said over graves for centuries past.
How lovely that others feel as I do! On reflection, were I to be religious I'd probably be one of those Catholics railing about Vatican II and insisting on the reinstatement of Latin. Religion should (in my view of course) be about mystery and a sense of the sacred. Not some modern day Cod English to make the numpties feel more comfortable.
Basically: it's a stupid statistic and I'm banning discussion of it on pb. If any poster mentions productivity again without adding something along the lines of "It's most meaningless motherfucking economic statistic in the world" then they will be banned. Fair enough?
Strange, my no-doubt faulty memory recalls you giving a little sermon on how you weren't a PB moderator, nor did you have anything to do with previous bannings of posters.
Congratulations on your promotion to capricious tyranthood!
Comments
I suspect that realising that cops (over the period of time they've been in Germany) have not been cracking down on individual incidents (as reported) has created an atmosphere of invulnerability. Once that is created (see the London riots) it takes hard action to re-create it.
So we ignore the drop in public sector employment and simply say it's wages.
Guess we should pay the doctors more then and watch productivity soar.
As to the police response - would you want to be the German cop who arrested 20 immigrants in one night?
They do not understand the candidate and they do not understand their own electorate.
Yet they expect to govern Great Britain!
The silent majority of Londeners will not vote for him.
"Reshuffle all sorted, no problems, just need Benn to sign a gag order. We are completely united..."
FFS
Mind you, I was surprised at the Petrol Strike - I thought everyone knew that about 70-80% of the price of petrol was tax....
What also matters is whether it spreads.
You seem to believe that someone is leading the Labour party. Could you tell us who it is, and why you think they are the leader?
Cheers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steaming_(crime)
"The mayor of Cologne has summoned police for crisis talks after about 80 women reported sexual assaults and muggings by men on New Year's Eve.
The scale of the attacks on women at the city's central railway station has shocked Germany. About 1,000 drunk and aggressive young men were involved.
City police chief Wolfgang Albers called it "a completely new dimension of crime". The men were of Arab or North African appearance, he said.
Women were also targeted in Hamburg."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35231046
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SlutWalk
Time to have this debate again, I guess.
Codes of conduct for women after this is of course quite pathetic especially if its a formal one and not simply don't walk home alone in the dark.
Don't women in Germany have the vote?
There is no evidence the women concerned were dressed anything other than in a civil way, nor is there any evidence yet they were drunk or unruly.
What the f8ck are the Germans on?
Ministers can slag off Cameron over remain and remain
NewsSense™
But it's crackers. And unless they face the truth, the situation will worsen.
A woman being drunk as a skunk is no excuse for Merkel's 'guests' to take advantage of her.
Productivity statistics are meaningless. Productivity statistics are meaningless...
This is how it is measured: we take the Gross Domestic Product number and divide it by an estimate for the number of hours worked across the economy. This drives an "economic output per hour worked" figure, aka productivity.
There are two glaring issues with this:
1. Nobody knows how many hours are actually worked across the economy. It's a frickin' survey. And it doesn't get changing employment trends. It misses whole sections of the economy, and it also deals badly with changing job trends. (There is a rise in reported hours worked associated with carrying smartphones... but I think we know people aren't really working all those hours... some of those people are using their smartphones to surf pb...)
2. There is a very strong inverse correlation between labour market participation rates and labour productivity. It turns out that if lots of people don't work, then productivity is high. (In France, there is "high productivity" because social charges price low wage workers out of jobs.) We currently have record levels of labour participation, and this means that the most marginal workers' hours are counted alongside those of the most productive. If these marginal workers were sitting at home, watching Jeremy Kyle, measure productivity would be higher.
Basically: it's a stupid statistic and I'm banning discussion of it on pb. If any poster mentions productivity again without adding something along the lines of "It's most meaningless motherfucking economic statistic in the world" then they will be banned. Fair enough?
There is a debate about 'provocation' as someone up thread said. A sticky controversial old debate
No state can allow its citizens to be treated like that.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/one-reason-hillary-clinton-might-underperform-in-the-early-states/
No wonder he fired him.
@derekrootboy: Tom Watson appealed for votes on the basis of being loyal to whoever won the leadership. He's betrayed his mandate. #RecallTomWatson
I guess they don't follow the schoolmatch principle of retiring a player if they are being far too dominant.
http://ukandeu.ac.uk/when-can-the-eu-referendum-be-held/
It's a little out of date but not so as invalidates what it says.
Put in that light, September / October seem very likely. June unrealistic. Next year very unwelcome for Cameron / Remain.
UK you pay the worker for 37 hours but he takes 40 hours to complete the task
France you pay the worker 35 hours and he does about 30 hours.
http://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2016/01/our-future-tory-leader-feels-the-brexit-factor-as-theresa-may-goes-top.html
One for the bin.
But the biggest issue continues to be that productivity - over periods of less than a decade - is simply an inverse of the employment rate.
To see this in action look at Spain. Between 2008 and 2013, productivity grew faster there than in any other EU country or the US. Economic miracle? No, it was because Spanish unemployment went up by 15%.
If the incomers don't know the place and have some money they could seriously get taken. It's very organized though you wouldn't know it. Whether Cologne is the same I don't know but if it is it would explain why the reaction there isn't as hysterical as it is on here
At least that was the case at my multinational company in the mid 80s.
Look at the Labour reshuffle, Corbyn has sacked only the relative non-entity Dugher and already his enemies have declared war, precisely as I predicted no matter who Corbyn get's rid of they still would declare war on him.
Corbyn should sack the lot of them in one stroke, since his enemies have already declared war it doesn't matter if he keeps Benn or Eargle, it's better to conduct a clean sweep early on.
If he doesn't, then I'm afraid that I will have to place a small bet on Corbyn not making it till 2020, since a botched reshuffle will allow his enemies to use their shadow cabinet positions to grow in strength.
It's rare to find productivity growth larger than 2% these days.
But if it is measured in the same erroneous way over extended periods it really ought to show trends. What is depressing about the Adam Smith point is that even that is not true. I find it incredible that in so much of the debate on our "productivity crisis" this point has not been made before and often. Even David Smith, who has been blaming the fall in North Sea production, higher marginal employment and a massive fall in City profitability whilst suspecting that productivity has been under recorded has not made this point.
It really is a meaningless isn't it? And yet it should be important. A meaningful figure would indicate, for example, whether the million apprenticeships is actually worth doing, whether increasing the number of graduates actually achieves anything and whether our children are going to be able to pay back all the money we are borrowing to spend on ourselves. That would be kinda useful.
You can even simplify and say that as businesses are economically rational, they will lay off the low value add workers first.
But aggregate productivity statistics are utterly meaningless.
Former Chief of RAF says: "we're now in a different ballpark. There are hundreds of thousands of these things lying around, on scrapheaps..."
Congratulations on your promotion to capricious tyranthood!