There's a nice quote in the Times today about Alan Clark. Apparently at a speech he was giving a heckler shouted out: "Why do you make so many unwanted sexual advances?", to which Alan Clark replied "Because I don't know whether they are unwanted until I make them".
I think it's very common in many sectors - arts, charities, journalism, media/tv/film to have unpaid internships everyone does when they get started.
Indeed.
At a management meeting at a former employer, the issue of diversity was raised. Everyone was focusing on ideas for to get more ethnic minorities and women into the company.
I, meanwhile, suggested everyone at the meeting take a 10% pay cut so we could pay our interns full stop, and pay our juniors a living wage. Then the industry might not be as full of quite so many clueless plummy-accented public school types.
That went down like a bucket of the proverbial poo, I can assure you.
But as I said then, what does it matter if you raise your "diversity quota" by hiring a token black / female / trans / etc person who went to a top public school and has exactly the same outlook on life as you because of their background and education?
I see absolutely no reason in the modern workplace for interns who are not at least on the minimum wage. End of. No debate. No exceptions.
Agreed. I'd put it on the statute books that you could face an unlimited fine and / or a custodial sentence for paying staff below the minimum wage - we are heading back to a Dickensian era of exploitation and what is a government for, if not to protect the most vulnerable?
Failure to nip it in the bud now will lead to ever more radical solutions - whoever comes after Corbyn may make him look positively right wing!
I host one or two undergraduates every summer doing small research projects in my group. I can't afford to pay them - there really isn't the funding for it, and what there is, is competitive. They are happy to gain the experience.
Win-win, no?
I will happily give you my address so you can come and slap me in irons.
Last time I checked, you can't pay your rent with experience. I went into Tesco the other day and did my weekly shop. They turfed me out when I tried to pay them with all the valuable experience I had.
While I am not accusing you of this personally, and I do understand that experience has value in terms of your career, "We can't afford to pay you, but this will be wonderful experience for you!" is one of the oldest and most used lines in the game.
I'm honest about it when they ask, typically they come to me rather than the other way around, and I do look for money - but I'm up against, what, a good thousand youngish academics in my field.
At a management meeting at a former employer, the issue of diversity was raised. Everyone was focusing on ideas for to get more ethnic minorities and women into the company.
I, meanwhile, suggested everyone at the meeting take a 10% pay cut so we could pay our interns full stop, and pay our juniors a living wage. Then the industry might not be as full of quite so many clueless plummy-accented public school types.
That went down like a bucket of the proverbial poo, I can assure you.
But as I said then, what does it matter if you raise your "diversity quota" by hiring a token black / female / trans / etc person who went to a top public school and has exactly the same outlook on life as you because of their background and education?
I see absolutely no reason in the modern workplace for interns who are not at least on the minimum wage. End of. No debate. No exceptions.
Agreed. I'd put it on the statute books that you could face an unlimited fine and / or a custodial sentence for paying staff below the minimum wage - we are heading back to a Dickensian era of exploitation and what is a government for, if not to protect the most vulnerable?
Failure to nip it in the bud now will lead to ever more radical solutions - whoever comes after Corbyn may make him look positively right wing!
I host one or two undergraduates every summer doing small research projects in my group. I can't afford to pay them - there really isn't the funding for it, and what there is, is competitive. They are happy to gain the experience.
Win-win, no?
I will happily give you my address so you can come and slap me in irons.
Last time I checked, you can't pay your rent with experience. I went into Tesco the other day and did my weekly shop. They turfed me out when I tried to pay them with all the valuable experience I had.
While I am not accusing you of this personally, and I do understand that experience has value in terms of your career, "We can't afford to pay you, but this will be wonderful experience for you!" is one of the oldest and most used lines in the game.
Having internships while you are a student seems to me fair enough, with appropriate safeguards. It's once people have stopped being a student that I see a big problem.
Not really. If someone's doing a job, they should be paid for it. Apart from anything else, internships are a great way for a network to reinforce itself and a considerable barrier to outsiders looking to break in.
I think it's very common in many sectors - arts, charities, journalism, media/tv/film to have unpaid internships everyone does when they get started.
Indeed.
At a management meeting at a former employer, the issue of diversity was raised. Everyone was focusing on ideas for to get more ethnic minorities and women into the company.
I, meanwhile, suggested everyone at the meeting take a 10% pay cut so we could pay our interns full stop, and pay our juniors a living wage. Then the industry might not be as full of quite so many clueless plummy-accented public school types.
That went down like a bucket of the proverbial poo, I can assure you.
But as I said then, what does it matter if you raise your "diversity quota" by hiring a token black / female / trans / etc person who went to a top public school and has exactly the same outlook on life as you because of their background and education?
I see absolutely no reason in the modern workplace for interns who are not at least on the minimum wage. End of. No debate. No exceptions.
Failure to nip it in the bud now will lead to ever more radical solutions - whoever comes after Corbyn may make him look positively right wing!
I host one or two undergraduates every summer doing small research projects in my group. I can't afford to pay them - there really isn't the funding for it, and what there is, is competitive. They are happy to gain the experience.
Win-win, no?
I will happily give you my address so you can come and slap me in irons.
Last time I checked, you can't pay your rent with experience. I went into Tesco the other day and did my weekly shop. They turfed me out when I tried to pay them with all the valuable experience I had.
While I am not accusing you of this personally, and I do understand that experience has value in terms of your career, "We can't afford to pay you, but this will be wonderful experience for you!" is one of the oldest and most used lines in the game.
Having internships while you are a student seems to me fair enough, with appropriate safeguards. It's once people have stopped being a student that I see a big problem.
Agree with that. It can help students.
Assuming that the student can afford to live. I and my colleagues, back in the whenever, sought vacation jobs which would be useful, or gave them contacts, but would not have dreamed of doing them for nothing!
Having internships while you are a student seems to me fair enough, with appropriate safeguards. It's once people have stopped being a student that I see a big problem.
I agree, I had a lovely sixth form student shadow me for the day a while ago and it would have been faintly ridiculous to pay her for keeping me company through a four pint lunch and a lazy afternoon. However, while there are exceptions to every rule wasn't there a case earlier this year of Costa Coffee or Pret or one of those chains trying to get sixth form students to work for free for the experience?
I hope I am not being naieve here but I am a little puzzled why there were few reports of MPs treating their staff in this way back in the 1950s & 1960s - and indeed earlier than that! I can only assume that Westminster was so much more male-dominated in that era.
The zeitgeist has changed.
Churchill was known to shout abuse at underlings, and would sometimes work half-naked and occasionally completely so. We are all horrified by the revelations from Hollywood but we have all heard of the casting couch. And if there was any scandal in the 50s and 60s, the whips would have hushed it up. At a more mundane level, most MPs did not have staff as such.
Churchill was never accused of sexual abuse though - or indeed anything even vaguely close to that! Surely MPs needed secretaries even before World War 2?
Churchill's vice was alcohol.
And backbench MPs did not have secretaries on the public payroll until the 1960s I believe. The vast accretion of researchers, hangers-on and lobbyists at Westminster is a modern creation - previous generations of politicians manged quite well without them.
With everything going on Corbyn leads on tax evasion by the Isle of Man over private jets.
Interesting but when is he going to lead on Brexit question
It's a genuine issue. The old black and white tax efficiency good / tax evasion bad divide doesn't cut it any more. It's a lot grayer with aggressive tax avoidance that is somewhat tolerated and even encouraged by the authorities. It's also a live issue for Brexit. Will Britain aim to be a low welfare tax haven? The Leave vote by the "left behinds" would suggest not, but in that case they voted against their own interest, as the tax base will almost certainly be shrunk by Brexit.
But as I said then, what does it matter if you raise your "diversity quota" by hiring a token black / female / trans / etc person who went to a top public school and has exactly the same outlook on life as you because of their background and education?
I see absolutely no reason in the modern workplace for interns who are not at least on the minimum wage. End of. No debate. No exceptions.
Agreed. I'd put it on the statute books that you could face an unlimited fine and / or a custodial sentence for paying staff below the minimum wage - we are heading back to a Dickensian era of exploitation and what is a government for, if not to protect the most vulnerable?
Failure to nip it in the bud now will lead to ever more radical solutions - whoever comes after Corbyn may make him look positively right wing!
I host one or two undergraduates every summer doing small research projects in my group. I can't afford to pay them - there really isn't the funding for it, and what there is, is competitive. They are happy to gain the experience.
Win-win, no?
I will happily give you my address so you can come and slap me in irons.
Last time I checked, you can't pay your rent with experience. I went into Tesco the other day and did my weekly shop. They turfed me out when I tried to pay them with all the valuable experience I had.
While I am not accusing you of this personally, and I do understand that experience has value in terms of your career, "We can't afford to pay you, but this will be wonderful experience for you!" is one of the oldest and most used lines in the game.
Having internships while you are a student seems to me fair enough, with appropriate safeguards. It's once people have stopped being a student that I see a big problem.
Not really. If someone's doing a job, they should be paid for it. Apart from anything else, internships are a great way for a network to reinforce itself and a considerable barrier to outsiders looking to break in.
It depends on what you mean by internships: if it's something for 2-3 weeks, a way for the firm to sussing out a possible future employee and for the student to get a taste of what the job or indeed work might entail I can see the value.
Time limiting unpaid internships would be a decent compromise.
Cyclefree nails in there....The game would then be even more about 'who you know'.
I've seen it happen too. I was the bank!
I think it's very common in many sectors - arts, charities, journalism, media/tv/film to have unpaid internships everyone does when they get started.
I see absolutely no reason in the modern workplace for interns who are not at least on the minimum wage. End of. No debate. No exceptions.
Agreed. I'd put it on the statute books that you could face an unlimited fine and / or a custodial sentence for paying staff below the minimum wage - we are heading back to a Dickensian era of exploitation and what is a government for, if not to protect the most vulnerable?
Failure to nip it in the bud now will lead to ever more radical solutions - whoever comes after Corbyn may make him look positively right wing!
I host one or two undergraduates every summer doing small research projects in my group. I can't afford to pay them - there really isn't the funding for it, and what there is, is competitive. They are happy to gain the experience.
Win-win, no?
I will happily give you my address so you can come and slap me in irons.
Is that a UK institution? One of those that charges massive tuition fees to build lovely boutique buildings? One where PDRA contracts now complete with and often outstrip equivalent industry posts? And then asks the person who pays for that lovely building and their supervising PDRA, on tic mind you, to work there for free?
It's an old practice I'll grant but:
If I hadn't seen such riches, I could live with being poor
It's not your doing, but at an institutional level, it sucks.
My wife was recently told what grad students at Imperial get paid per hour for part time teaching... apparently less than half what she received thirty years ago (albeit a different university).
I haven't noticed a similar trend in the pay of university VCs...
Agreed. I'd put it on the statute books that you could face an unlimited fine and / or a custodial sentence for paying staff below the minimum wage - we are heading back to a Dickensian era of exploitation and what is a government for, if not to protect the most vulnerable?
Failure to nip it in the bud now will lead to ever more radical solutions - whoever comes after Corbyn may make him look positively right wing!
I host one or two undergraduates every summer doing small research projects in my group. I can't afford to pay them - there really isn't the funding for it, and what there is, is competitive. They are happy to gain the experience.
Win-win, no?
I will happily give you my address so you can come and slap me in irons.
Last time I checked, you can't pay your rent with experience. I went into Tesco the other day and did my weekly shop. They turfed me out when I tried to pay them with all the valuable experience I had.
While I am not accusing you of this personally, and I do understand that experience has value in terms of your career, "We can't afford to pay you, but this will be wonderful experience for you!" is one of the oldest and most used lines in the game.
I'm honest about it when they ask, typically they come to me rather than the other way around, and I do look for money - but I'm up against, what, a good thousand youngish academics in my field.
What harm am I actually doing with this?
None.
What benefits are there, to both?
Many.
I think banning it outright is massive overkill.
The trouble is, of course, if it isn't banned for you, what's to stop a company like Sports Direct taking on "students" for a week or two for the "valuable experience" they gain. Where do you draw the line?
If someone is actually doing a job, as in, is contributing towards wealth creation somewhere, even if it's just licking enevelopes that go out on marketing mailers, they should be paid for that job, because their labour is earning money for somebody else. If they are purely there to learn something - as is the case of the sixth form student who shadowed me for the day to discover what my job entailed - that is slightly different. I think the exploitation, certainly within my industry, has become so egregious that legislation is the only way to move forward.
It is astonishing how we are now all of the consensus that the minimum wage is a good thing. I remember it wasn't a million years ago (more like twenty!) that the Tories were actively campaigning against it.
It is my hope that one day unpaid internships will be seen in a similar light.
It depends on what you mean by internships: if it's something for 2-3 weeks, a way for the firm to sussing out a possible future employee and for the student to get a taste of what the job or indeed work might entail I can see the value.
The answer to this is that minimum wage is already graded by age and by formal apprenticeship on a scale ranging from £3.50-£7.50 per hour. This is specifically geared for those training and beneficial experience advantages that are being touted, though perhaps some extensions of the categories, should unpaid internships be banned, might be in order.
Just remembering my first summer job - on YTS T&C's helping with QA in a cotton mill.
There are clearly mentioned inaccuracies including some serious ones on the Spreadsheet. But it's public now and the numbers will be whittled down to the most serious and substantiated. It's how big the residual core is that matters now. Governments always take more of the blame for these sorts of endemic scandals by dint of incumbency but it's clearly a scandal of the political class rather than one party. I tend to think we are still in " in the price " territory. Voters think politicians are corrupt anyway. Perhaps that's what so many of us missed about Brexit - the ability to over throw the system by voting for a proposition rather than electing another set of buggers.
The danger is if the reduced core of allegations that emerges from the fact checking phase *is* serious. That mixed with falling real terms wages and a credit squeeze could be nasty.
Time for May to redeem herself. As a rather prim female in her 60's in some ways she's ideal placed to deal with this is terms of casting at least. A scandal that's even worse than her decision to call the GE could help reframe her if played properly.
But as I said then, what does it matter if you raise your "diversity quota" by hiring a token black / female / trans / etc person who went to a top public school and has exactly the same outlook on life as you because of their background and education?
I see absolutely no reason in the modern workplace for interns who are not at least on the minimum wage. End of. No debate. No exceptions.
Agreed. I'd put it on the statute books that you could face an unlimited fine and / or a custodial sentence for paying staff below the minimum wage - we are heading back to a Dickensian era of exploitation and what is a government for, if not to protect the most vulnerable?
Failure to nip it in the bud now will lead to ever more radical solutions - whoever comes after Corbyn may make him look positively right wing!
I host one or two undergraduates every summer doing small research projects in my group. I can't afford to pay them - there really isn't the funding for it, and what there is, is competitive. They are happy to gain the experience.
Win-win, no?
I will happily give you my address so you can come and slap me in irons.
Last time I checked, you can't pay your rent with experience. I went into Tesco the other day and did my weekly shop. They turfed me out when I tried to pay them with all the valuable experience I had.
While I am not accusing you of this personally, and I do understand that experience has value in terms of your career, "We can't afford to pay you, but this will be wonderful experience for you!" is one of the oldest and most used lines in the game.
Having internships while you are a student seems to me fair enough, with appropriate safeguards. It's once people have stopped being a student that I see a big problem.
Not really. If someone's doing a job, they should be paid for it. Apart from anything else, internships are a great way for a network to reinforce itself and a considerable barrier to outsiders looking to break in.
It depends on what you mean by internships: if it's something for 2-3 weeks, a way for the firm to sussing out a possible future employee and for the student to get a taste of what the job or indeed work might entail I can see the value.
If it’s a couple of weeks, by an undergrad student, then that’s probably fair enough. Graduates should definitely be paid NMW if it’s more than a two-day interview though.
Nandy is trying to pull at a string, but I think she'll find that there's nothing on the end of it. This stuff is very much historic - the criminality element. The 'Affairs' blackmail certainly persists I'm sure, but that's a big leap to criminal assault/abuse.
But any proper response to this scandal has to deal with the root cause. Power imbalances. MPs directly employ large numbers of people to provide publically funded services to themselves. It needed be this way. Parliament it's self and local authorities in constituencies could take over the vast bulk of these functions. But that suits no one. The huge patronage involved, the ability to employ party supporters and squeeze out working works above what's being paid for is enormous and popular with MPs who don't abuse it. There is a case for an MP being able to appoint 2 posts. One each in parliament and the constituency with everything else being offered by permanent public employees who serve the incumbent not the individual MP. But it's simply too much of a Gravy Train at the moment for the political class to abandon it. Which is why it survived the expenses scandal almost entirely intact.
Then there is the extent to which this is the Dopplar effect. What we can hear is the approaching crisis when Brexit does bugger all to address the ' alienation ' aspects of the Referendum majority and it all just festers further and reattaches it's self to ' Westminster '. Carwyn Jones the FM of Wales is the only politican I've seen publically talk about this.
Fortunate their are the first stirrings of throwing the Lord's under the bus in the shape of big cuts in numbers to deal with a repatriated crisis. But as Gropegate shows it would only be a start.
If she has evidence of any criminal activity why is she not going to the police?
And why didn't she report it three years ago to the police - why wait until now. It's not the whips offices' job to report crimes - it's the victims' surely?
If she has evidence of any criminal activity why is she not going to the police?
Probably because she doesn't - but she wants to create the impression that the PM does. It will play well to the gallery.
What interest does May have in covering up crimes committed in the 70s?
None - but giving the impression that she does will play well with the wilder elements of the Corbyn wing. If you had a 'little black book' that originated in the 70's, what would you have done with it when the Saville revelations came out? We saw how party political that became, links to Thatcher etc.
That black book went on the fire, it would have had no use then, because to have known and done nothing would have been viewed as an equally serious offence. No book=plausible deniability.
Lord help us, does Lisa Nandy really think that a clearly flippant remark made by an ex-Whip in the 1990s and referring to events 50 years ago is something which the PM should address?
Lord help us, does Lisa Nandy really think that a clearly flippant remark made by an ex-Whip in the 1990s and referring to events 50 years ago is something which the PM should address?
Richard
If Tory whips did in fact cover up child sex abuse, then the government need address that.
It need not however (a) address an off hand remark in itself or (b) need do so in a twenty second sound bite on the floor of the House of Commons.
As head of the party, TM must have a decent idea of what the whips did.
Lord help us, does Lisa Nandy really think that a clearly flippant remark made by an ex-Whip in the 1990s and referring to events 50 years ago is something which the PM should address?
There is nothing in politics that cannot be used for Party advantage, or at at least attempt to be used.
I see absolutely no reason in the modern workplace for interns who are not at least on the minimum wage. End of. No debate. No exceptions.
Agreed. I'd put it on the statute books that you could face an unlimited fine and / or a custodial sentence for paying staff below the minimum wage - we are heading back to a Dickensian era of exploitation and what is a government for, if not to protect the most vulnerable?
Failure to nip it in the bud now will lead to ever more radical solutions - whoever comes after Corbyn may make him look positively right wing!
I host one or two undergraduates every summer doing small research projects in my group. I can't afford to pay them - there really isn't the funding for it, and what there is, is competitive. They are happy to gain the experience.
Win-win, no?
I will happily give you my address so you can come and slap me in irons.
Last time I checked, you can't pay your rent with experience. I went into Tesco the other day and did my weekly shop. They turfed me out when I tried to pay them with all the valuable experience I had.
While I am not accusing you of this personally, and I do understand that experience has value in terms of your career, "We can't afford to pay you, but this will be wonderful experience for you!" is one of the oldest and most used lines in the game.
Having internships while you are a student seems to me fair enough, with appropriate safeguards. It's once people have stopped being a student that I see a big problem.
Not really. If someone's doing a job, they should be paid for it. Apart from anything else, internships are a great way for a network to reinforce itself and a considerable barrier to outsiders looking to break in.
It depends on what you mean by internships: if it's something for 2-3 weeks, a way for the firm to sussing out a possible future employee and for the student to get a taste of what the job or indeed work might entail I can see the value.
There will always be grey areas. How would the rules account for people doing voluntary work, for example (an issue which would be of some concern to local political parties, for example)?
However, it ought to be possible to put limits, like those you suggest, on what would amount to work experience temps, and to define what is genuine voluntary work.
Lord help us, does Lisa Nandy really think that a clearly flippant remark made by an ex-Whip in the 1990s and referring to events 50 years ago is something which the PM should address?
We've already seen the O'Mara case some folk think a Party should have read everything a candidate has ever written on the internet. Even when it was posted anonymously. As you well know we are now in the tactics trumping strategy phase of this. Everyone is trying to get a ' hit ' on the other party ignoring the fact that most voters won't view it in hyper partisan terms. Merely that they are all at it again. At it again while living standards are now falling in real terms on average and Brexit at best continues and at worst heads for the Rocks. I'd have hoped Nancy was one of the cleverer new who could see this but obviously not.
Lord help us, does Lisa Nandy really think that a clearly flippant remark made by an ex-Whip in the 1990s and referring to events 50 years ago is something which the PM should address?
There is nothing in politics that cannot be used for Party advantage, or at at least attempt to be used.
The trouble with politics today is that the choice between the lesser evil has descended to the point at which many voters will wonder why supporting any kind of evil is a sensible choice at all?
I am sure Rog will be along in a mo to tell us Kev is a great guy and handled this really well....
I am sure it was unpleasant but six months of PTSD for that? You do wonder how the snowflakes would have coped during wartime on a battlefield.
That's a remarkably stupid thing to say. PTSD is a recognised medical condition. You might as well argue a mugger didn't really knock your teeth out because you weren't in a firefight with the Taliban.
My wife was recently told what grad students at Imperial get paid per hour for part time teaching... apparently less than half what she received thirty years ago (albeit a different university).
I haven't noticed a similar trend in the pay of university VCs...
Not in the VCs. But US universities, rely on paying next to nothing for non-faculty staff to teach.
I was approached about doing a 13-week course for a top-5 program on biosecurity - one lecture a week plus student assignments. I was to develop all the materials, which the university would then own, and deliver these materials in lectures, assign homework and mark it all for the princely sum of about $2,000. The mileage to get there and back alone would have cost about $800 (and over an hour driving each way).
All told, I reckoned my hourly rate would be around $10.
And I'd have been constrained from international travel for my paying work for that 13 weeks.
Meanwhile in a good week to bury bad news Davis, Fox and Grayling have all used the last 72 hours to volunteer statements bring Brexit expectations more in line with reality. While Brexit van net ministers publically preparing us for the worse is wise and welcome to some degree it would be extraordinary in less extraordinary times. Dunkirk Brexit takes shape. A defeat and retreat sufficiently well handled to be later mythologised. I now accept many voters will be satisfied with that. The Brexit core of 40% + will live with an outcome that is less damaging than the more extreme predictions of Remain.
It's not going to be pretty though. Though that's now in the price. The more interesting question politically is will it be sustainable ?
That’s pretty serious, junior staff members being harassed to the point of quitting their jobs. This is more like the sort of thing I was expecting to be honest, and is a clear abuse of position with young colleagues.
Hope the Tory MP isn’t a minister, as that’s probably a sackable offence. His constituency chair had better start looking for a new candidate for the next election too.
Women and gay candidates are likely to be a safer bet.
Comments
I think it was later shown that Keeler did not boff Ivanov.
(Completely O/T, my family has a rather interesting connection to that whole scandal.)
I'm honest about it when they ask, typically they come to me rather than the other way around, and I do look for money - but I'm up against, what, a good thousand youngish academics in my field.
What harm am I actually doing with this?
None.
What benefits are there, to both?
Many.
I think banning it outright is massive overkill.
And backbench MPs did not have secretaries on the public payroll until the 1960s I believe. The vast accretion of researchers, hangers-on and lobbyists at Westminster is a modern creation - previous generations of politicians manged quite well without them.
Lots of questions and not many answers.
Other men have now come forward, accusing Spacey of sexual harassment.
US filmmaker Tony Montana claimed he suffered from PTSD for six months after Spacey allegedly grabbed his crotch in a Los Angeles bar in 2003.
And Mexican actor Roberto Cavazos, who acted in several plays at the Old Vic, claims Spacey "routinely preyed" on young male actors.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-41828874
I am sure Rog will be along in a mo to tell us Kev is a great guy and handled this really well....
I haven't noticed a similar trend in the pay of university VCs...
If someone is actually doing a job, as in, is contributing towards wealth creation somewhere, even if it's just licking enevelopes that go out on marketing mailers, they should be paid for that job, because their labour is earning money for somebody else. If they are purely there to learn something - as is the case of the sixth form student who shadowed me for the day to discover what my job entailed - that is slightly different. I think the exploitation, certainly within my industry, has become so egregious that legislation is the only way to move forward.
It is astonishing how we are now all of the consensus that the minimum wage is a good thing. I remember it wasn't a million years ago (more like twenty!) that the Tories were actively campaigning against it.
It is my hope that one day unpaid internships will be seen in a similar light.
Just remembering my first summer job - on YTS T&C's helping with QA in a cotton mill.
The danger is if the reduced core of allegations that emerges from the fact checking phase *is* serious. That mixed with falling real terms wages and a credit squeeze could be nasty.
Time for May to redeem herself. As a rather prim female in her 60's in some ways she's ideal placed to deal with this is terms of casting at least. A scandal that's even worse than her decision to call the GE could help reframe her if played properly.
Why does this not surprise me?
Fortunate their are the first stirrings of throwing the Lord's under the bus in the shape of big cuts in numbers to deal with a repatriated crisis. But as Gropegate shows it would only be a start.
https://twitter.com/afneil/status/925653541863284736
If you had a 'little black book' that originated in the 70's, what would you have done with it when the Saville revelations came out? We saw how party political that became, links to Thatcher etc.
That black book went on the fire, it would have had no use then, because to have known and done nothing would have been viewed as an equally serious offence. No book=plausible deniability.
If Tory whips did in fact cover up child sex abuse, then the government need address that.
It need not however (a) address an off hand remark in itself or (b) need do so in a twenty second sound bite on the floor of the House of Commons.
As head of the party, TM must have a decent idea of what the whips did.
However, it ought to be possible to put limits, like those you suggest, on what would amount to work experience temps, and to define what is genuine voluntary work.
In any case, as Faisal Islam has just tweeted, the Alexis Jay historic abuse inquiry would cover any such allegations, if there were any.
I was approached about doing a 13-week course for a top-5 program on biosecurity - one lecture a week plus student assignments. I was to develop all the materials, which the university would then own, and deliver these materials in lectures, assign homework and mark it all for the princely sum of about $2,000. The mileage to get there and back alone would have cost about $800 (and over an hour driving each way).
All told, I reckoned my hourly rate would be around $10.
And I'd have been constrained from international travel for my paying work for that 13 weeks.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2017/11/i-faced-backlash-speaking-out-about-lord-rennard-so-i-know-why-women-dont-come
Though the New Statesman hasn't very effectively anonymised the "soon-to-be Cabinet minister", who can be identified easily from the timing.
It's not going to be pretty though. Though that's now in the price. The more interesting question politically is will it be sustainable ?
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