I'm happy to entertain bets on any of my polling predictions regarding the popularity of East Coast Rail franchising when it happens if you are interested.
The politics of HS2 are far far bigger, as the PB Tories have not yet grasped
So what is Labour proposing as an alternative to significantly increase Rail Capacity, if they scrap HS2.
As for East Coast most people won't care. Remind me again of the great nationwide outcry when Labour privatised the operations of the Tyne and Wear Matro.
"So what is Labour proposing as an alternative to significantly increase Rail Capacity, if they scrap HS2."
Deal 'saves Grangemouth plant' Breaking news Grangemouth petrochemical plant near Falkirk to stay open as new deal struck with workers, BBC understands
The trouble with the inevitable Caron 'Pollyanna' Lindsay bollocks is that if this was just a bit of a squeezing, that implies a whole world of pain still available to be dished out by the electorate, and there's no hint that they're going to hold back.
Thanks @Josias. Of course, the entire concept of having a bloke give you a bit of paper that you then have to keep about your person or be fined hundreds of pounds is anachronistic in the extreme and should be summarily dumped as part of any restructure. Send a barcode to your email and phone with your name and have done, alternatively introduce some sort of national Oyster Card or credi card NFC scheme.
What do you make of this Labour renationalisation stuff?
That way spells disaster and significant problems, as happened with the ideological privatisation is the first place.
A case can be made that the Post-WWII nationalisations were pragmatic rather than ideological - having been run flat out with minimal maintenance for 5 years there was little likely prospect of the private rail companies finding the finance required to get back on their feet.
Nationalising them now would be much more 'ideological'.....
Absolutely. The railways were knackered, physically and financially in 1945. Formal nationalisation (effective nationalisation came during the war anyway), was both a necessary and moral policy in the circumstances. They are not, however, the circumstances of today.
Strange as it may seem, Franco's government carried out widespread nationalisation very similar to that of Attlee's government.
Deal 'saves Grangemouth plant' Breaking news Grangemouth petrochemical plant near Falkirk to stay open as new deal struck with workers, BBC understands
If true, excellent news!
Whatever your political colours this is truly fab news.
Deal 'saves Grangemouth plant' Breaking news Grangemouth petrochemical plant near Falkirk to stay open as new deal struck with workers, BBC understands
Deal 'saves Grangemouth plant' Breaking news Grangemouth petrochemical plant near Falkirk to stay open as new deal struck with workers, BBC understands
If true, excellent news!
Excellent news indeed – it’s onwards and upwards with UK GDP.
Over the next week or so there will be lots of attempts to “get behind the back” of today’s growth figures. How trend levels are still below their pre-recession peak. The way the recovery is not yet being felt in people’s pay packets. That it is based on precisely the same sort of explosion in the housing market that precipitated the 2008 crash.
Some, perhaps all, of that analysis may prove to be correct. But in political terms it is just white noise.
"...Today the Deputy Prime Minister gave numerous interviews on TV and radio and took questions after a speech at a school. I don’t think I heard him offer an idea of his own to get energy bills down. I did, though, hear him say the following. On the Today programme, Sarah Montague asked him about energy bills, and here, after five and a half minutes, was his conclusion.
“They are very high,” he said, “and something must be done.”
Something must be done. So there you have it. Mr Clegg’s policy is that something must be done. He believes that someone (it’s not clear whom, but probably the Government, of which he’s rumoured to be a senior member) must do something (it’s not clear what, but definitely something)... > http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10402377/Sketch-Nick-Clegg-little-green-man.html
Press Conference confirms Grangemouth Petrochemical to reopen, £300m investment to go ahead and plant to re-start.
Wonder how those Labour MPs who were slagging off INEOS are feeling now?
Well done the SNP & Coalition Governments.....
Here here!
Good work Carmichael & Swinney!! Credit where credit is due. Lots of backroom folk deserve a mighty slap on the back too.
Turning into a pretty good day so far! Tonight I am meeting up with my best friend from school that I haven't seen in years, and tomorrow we are having our first school reunion in 25 years. Looking forward to our tour of the old place and meeting all those faces from the 1980s.
Hopefully the management will have chucked a little more into the pot for the workers to get a deal done.
Knighthood for Ratcliffe?
They will invest in the plant. Not fat cat public sector levels of pensions.
That reminds me - has the ultimate fatcat pension of them all, the DB pension scheme for MPs been closed to accrual? As a likely benefactor of it, maybe NP could update us as they'd need to tell him even if he's just a deferred member of it currently?
'Living standards have fallen for 39 out of 40 months and govt spending is rising'
And to think that the stagnation & then fall in wages started under a Labour government back in 2003,can't be connected with their policy of mass immigration surely?
The Resolution Foundation Commission on Living Standards
The period from 2003 onwards has seen median wages stagnate, and then fall in the aftermath of the 2008-09 recession. From 2003 to 2008, median wages were stagnant. Despite growth in GDP of 11 percent over the period, median earnings fell by an annual average of 0.2% percent for men, and for women rose by 0.3 percent a year.Put simply, a middle earner in 2008 did not earn noticeably more than a middle earner in 2003'
I'm happy to entertain bets on any of my polling predictions regarding the popularity of East Coast Rail franchising when it happens if you are interested.
The politics of HS2 are far far bigger, as the PB Tories have not yet grasped
I don't give a flying f*** for the politics of HS2. I've read extensively on the project (almost all the reports I can find from all sides, including the antis), and see there is a real problem that needs fixing. HS2 appears to be the best way of fixing that problem. Other proposals such as 51m do not yield the same long-term advantages.
Early last year we called have called you 'Infrastructure Tim'. Many of your posts bemoaned the lack of infrastructure planning. I agreed with much of what you had to say, although you lacked a certain amount of knowledge on the topic.
Yet it now turns out that the infrastructure you seem to be in favour of is, oddly enough, the projects that will cause the Tories the most trouble.
And we see you admit it above. You are not interested in infrastructure. You are only interested in the politics and what will harm the Tories.
Hodges column today might have worked better if is key premise that Labour's command of the cost of living ground hasn't translated to the polls were true. In fact, Labour's lead and leader ratings have both nudged up a notch in recent days.
This is the first time we've had two consecutive quarters of GDP growth of 0.5% or greater since the first half of 2010.
The timing is not an accident.
Good to see the PB Tories cheering growth driven by increased govt spending, rising household debt and a housing bubble though
It seems to have been driven more by growth in manufacturing output, construction, and business services than government expenditure.
Faisal Islam @faisalislam 33m Services responsible for 0.6% points of the 0.8% Q3 GDP figure: ONS chart: pic.twitter.com/8EBXrUrOIe
Manufacturing and construction are way down on peak
CPS Think Tank @CPSThinkTank 50m UK economy 2.5% below peak before downturn. Services fully recovered, 0.4% ^ pre-downturn level, manufacturing 8.9% construction 12.5% lower
There's your rebalancing
In any prosperous Western country, the bulk of output comes from services.
Most of the drop in manufacturing output, and construction output took place between 2008-10, although both sectors seem to be recovering nicely, since the start of the year.
Good news for Grangemouth. No doubt all parties involved will spin it as a success for themselves, but the true winners are the staff who remain employed.
Guardian - Britain's economy is growing at its fastest rate in more than three years after a 0.8% increase in national output in the quarter to September.
The first stab at estimating the state of the economy from the Office for National Statistics found that activity had increased across the board with production, construction, services and agriculture all registering growth.
That reminds me - has the ultimate fatcat pension of them all, the DB pension scheme for MPs been closed to accrual? As a likely benefactor of it, maybe NP could update us as they'd need to tell him even if he's just a deferred member of it currently?
No, that's something Cameron has u-turned on since taking office.
"So what is Labour proposing as an alternative to significantly increase Rail Capacity, if they scrap HS2."
According to Nick Palmer's blog from 'ages ago' ...
Lol, still stalking me? I have nothing to do with Labour's transport planning policy though my guess is that they'll stick to HS2- I'm a local PPC who once expressed doubts about it. Your obsession with my comment in July or whenever it was (which you've quoted twice today so far) is getting creepy, especially as I was and am still (just about) agnostic rather than opposed. I do realise that it'd be helpful to our long-term economic future to have a fast north-south line that relieved congestion. I am however increasingly realising that some of HS2's supporters are obsessive train zealots - Britain has more problems than rail passenger crowding and it's not clear this issue needs £40 billion more than any of the other priorities.
"Deal 'saves Grangemouth plant' Breaking news Grangemouth petrochemical plant near Falkirk to stay open as new deal struck with workers, BBC understands
If true, excellent news!"
I think you are being optimistic. Any company depending on a boss like the one at Grangemouth is walking on ice. If that's what industrial relations are like there I can see another Rover looming. It's humiliating all round particularly for Scotland.
I'm happy to entertain bets on any of my polling predictions regarding the popularity of East Coast Rail franchising when it happens if you are interested.
The politics of HS2 are far far bigger, as the PB Tories have not yet grasped
I don't give a flying f*** for the politics of HS2. I've read extensively on the project (almost all the reports I can find from all sides, including the antis), and see there is a real problem that needs fixing. HS2 appears to be the best way of fixing that problem. Other proposals such as 51m do not yield the same long-term advantages.
Early last year we called have called you 'Infrastructure Tim'. Many of your posts bemoaned the lack of infrastructure planning. I agreed with much of what you had to say, although you lacked a certain amount of knowledge on the topic.
Yet it now turns out that the infrastructure you seem to be in favour of is, oddly enough, the projects that will cause the Tories the most trouble.
And we see you admit it above. You are not interested in infrastructure. You are only interested in the politics and what will harm the Tories.
Josias. I am generally in favour of building nationally important infrastructure, such as HS2. However, such projects can only really hope to be successful if they have cross-party support.
For good or ill [mostly ill, I suspect] Balls has indicated that he prefers to play politics over HS2, so that he can have a £50bn warchest at the next election from which to pull a whole series of bunny rabbits. Balls is calculating that there are enough other opponents of HS2, from Home Counties Tories to the eternal naysayers, that he will have the political cover to play base politics with HS2.
Sadly, I think Balls is right. There does not exist the depth and breadth of support in civic society for HS2 to hold the line against such opportunism. The game is up. Osborne would be well advised to kill HS2 himself, so that Balls will not have that £50bn to play political games with. It is a case of kill* Balls, or kill HS2, and if Osborne and Cameron could have killed* Balls they would surely have done so by now.
* I mean in a political, rather than literal, sense. Of course.
Richard Edgar @ITVRichard Wow big capitulation by union @grangemouth to save 800jobs at plant. Pay freeze, no strikes, pensions cut The "something big" INEOS demanded
The invisibility of the missus may be deliberate, of course.
Surely you watched her barnstorming performance at 2nd reading this week. On her feet lambasting May for the best part of an hour, before dramatically announcing that Labour would, er, actually vote for the bill... Oh.
"So what is Labour proposing as an alternative to significantly increase Rail Capacity, if they scrap HS2."
According to Nick Palmer's blog from 'ages ago' ...
Lol, still stalking me? I have nothing to do with Labour's transport planning policy though my guess is that they'll stick to HS2- I'm a local PPC who once expressed doubts about it. Your obsession with my comment in July or whenever it was (which you've quoted twice today so far) is getting creepy, especially as I was and am still (just about) agnostic rather than opposed. I do realise that it'd be helpful to our long-term economic future to have a fast north-south line that relieved congestion. I am however increasingly realising that some of HS2's supporters are obsessive train zealots - Britain has more problems than rail passenger crowding and it's not clear this issue needs £40 billion more than any of the other priorities.
The invisibility of the missus may be deliberate, of course.
Surely you watched her barnstorming performance at 2nd reading this week. On her feet lambasting May for the best part of an hour, before dramatically announcing that Labour would, er, actually vote for the bill... Oh.
"So what is Labour proposing as an alternative to significantly increase Rail Capacity, if they scrap HS2."
According to Nick Palmer's blog from 'ages ago' ...
Lol, still stalking me? I have nothing to do with Labour's transport planning policy though my guess is that they'll stick to HS2- I'm a local PPC who once expressed doubts about it. Your obsession with my comment in July or whenever it was (which you've quoted twice today so far) is getting creepy, especially as I was and am still (just about) agnostic rather than opposed. I do realise that it'd be helpful to our long-term economic future to have a fast north-south line that relieved congestion. I am however increasingly realising that some of HS2's supporters are obsessive train zealots - Britain has more problems than rail passenger crowding and it's not clear this issue needs £40 billion more than any of the other priorities.
You're accusing me of stalking you? Really?
You've said something on your blog that is transparently rubbish. You have not retracted or clarified what you wrote, and it is relevant to the conversation on both HS2 and investment into any renationalised railway.
It's sad if our prospective politicians take someone quoting them in such a manner as 'stalking'.
May I suggest you rethink this nonsense: "stalking", "creepy, "zealots". I thought you were a decent guy.
And BTW, I'm not am obsessive train zealot. I'm just as obsessive about other forms of heavy engineering. ;-)
'It's humiliating all round particularly for Scotland.'
If Ratcliffe was making money at Grangemouth, and simply wanted to move to another site because it would make him fabulously richer, I woud agree with you 100%. Good riddance and don;t come back.
The fact is, no businessman can keep going indefinitely when he's losing 10 million quid a month. You can call it blackmail if you want, but its not really.
I'd be doing the same thing with the university lecturers pension fund. Pare it to the bone and help the disadvantaged student.
Very good news on growth. I suspect, though, that we may be reaching a quarterly high point with today's figures. The challenge for the government remains the same - people do not vote based on abstract numbers, they vote based on experience and perception. Away from London and the SE the recovery is extremely patchy, to say the least.
They've been flashing the prospect of a u-turn in front of us for some months now. Since Mandelson first told us that they only really backed it for party political reasons in the first place. Unfortunately most of us are too thick to understand the implications of this but in time tim will explain all.
It's humiliating all round particularly for Scotland.
The only people 'humiliated' by this are the local UNITE Union officials who catastrophically overplayed their hand & the Labour MPs who stood up in the HoC to slag off one side in a tense ongoing dispute.
The coalition and SNP governments have come well out of this (Salmond was again ducking the opportunity of point scoring on BBC News) - Miliband has been conspicuous by his absence - odd for a colossus bestriding the political stage.....
Tell me you're joking! I'd rather read SeanT's sex memoire and that comes just behind a swim in the Serpentine in December
Not joking. More generally, one thing I like about this site is the range of obsessive people. They may go round and round in little circles, but that helps stop the discussion going round and round in big, politically predictable circles.
''The only people 'humiliated' by this are the local UNITE Union officials who catastrophically overplayed their hand & the Labour MPs who stood up in the HoC to slag off one side in a tense ongoing dispute.'
Radcliffe had the opportunity to crucify Unite/labour over this...anti business, job destroying, militant, bullying, insulting etc.
It's humiliating all round particularly for Scotland.
The only people 'humiliated' by this are the local UNITE Union officials who catastrophically overplayed their hand & the Labour MPs who stood up in the HoC to slag off one side in a tense ongoing dispute.
The coalition and SNP governments have come well out of this (Salmond was again ducking the opportunity of point scoring on BBC News) - Miliband has been conspicuous by his absence - odd for a colossus bestriding the political stage.....
Salmond was very fair on BBC News. I don't particularly agree with him on many things, but as I've said in the past, he's a canny political operator. I also suspect he's a genuinely good man, and there's some politicians I won't say that about.
Talking of which, I'd better go and sell some houses do some work ...
Tell me you're joking! I'd rather read SeanT's sex memoire and that comes just behind a swim in the Serpentine in December
Not joking. More generally, one thing I like about this site is the range of obsessive people. They may go round and round in little circles, but that helps stop the discussion going round and round in big, politically predictable circles.
Ditto – the ‘obsessives’ understand their chosen subject and provide a wealth of knowledge both factual / anecdotal that is second to none. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea (Morris dancing ? ) but it all adds to the site imho.
'Radcliffe had the opportunity to crucify Unite/labour over this...anti business, job destroying, militant, bullying, insulting etc.
Again, the Grangemouth manager was asked in the Q&As to take a pop at UNITE & declined to do so - 'the important thing was to get the plant up & running again and get on with investment......'
'Radcliffe had the opportunity to crucify Unite/labour over this...anti business, job destroying, militant, bullying, insulting etc.
Again, the Grangemouth manager was asked in the Q&As to take a pop at UNITE & declined to do so - 'the important thing was to get the plant up & running again and get on with investment......'
You wouldn't expect a PB Tea Party Tory to see that.
Magnamity in victory is the standard rule in all walks of life. That, and the fact that they will need to continue to work with UNITE and so having a pop at them would be entirely counter-productive, regardless of his views about them.
The trouble with the inevitable Caron 'Pollyanna' Lindsay bollocks is that if this was just a bit of a squeezing, that implies a whole world of pain still available to be dished out by the electorate, and there's no hint that they're going to hold back.
I think you underestimate Clegg's comically inept spinners. Next thing you know she'll be trying to tell gullible lib dems that contrary to that pesky leadership polling Clegg, is actually very popular with scottish voters and the lid dems real problem is that they just need to send him to scotland more.
But of course that would be simply far too ludicrous to contemplate, even for a yellow tory firmly ensconsed in Clegg's ostrich faction...
£134m of government assistance, £125m of it from London. Don't quite understand this part of the Telegraph report: "the UK Government has given its "prequalification approval" for a £125m loan guarantee facility under the Treasury's £40m infrastructure guarantee scheme. "
But it looks like subsidised funding for INEOS.
It is not surprising that Salmond is not seeking to make too much political capital out of this. Could an independent Scotland have afforded this level of support? It would have been a real budget buster. The UK has a strategic interest in this plant and can afford it. Having said that the astonishing incompetence and unreality of UNITE officials certainly moved this application right to the front of the queue.
It's humiliating all round particularly for Scotland.
Yes Roger saving 800 jobs is obviously humiliating for scotland. Jesus f**ing christ. If your aim was to make Labour seem like totally out of touch twits then mission accomplished.
"The public increasingly believes that the economy is on the mend but they don’t see their own prospects improving to the same extent. Those are the findings of a new poll of 1,000 people conducted over the course of the weekend by the polling organisation Populus.
The poll, conducted to coincide with the release of the GDP figures for the third quarter of 2013, shows that the ‘optimism gap’ – the difference between those who expect the economy to perform well for them and their families on the one hand and for the country as a whole on the other – has narrowed significantly in the past year (from 30% in December 2012 to just 11% today) as more people have come to believe that a national recovery is underway."
Tell me you're joking! I'd rather read SeanT's sex memoire and that comes just behind a swim in the Serpentine in December
Not joking. More generally, one thing I like about this site is the range of obsessive people. They may go round and round in little circles, but that helps stop the discussion going round and round in big, politically predictable circles.
Ditto – the ‘obsessives’ understand their chosen subject and provide a wealth of knowledge both factual / anecdotal that is second to none. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea (Morris dancing ? ) but it all adds to the site imho.
I find the 'obsessives' on both rail and power generation very informative.
On the political significance of the improving economy, Dan Hodges (as so often) nails it very well:
Today’s growth figures will not see an overnight change in either party’s political fortunes. People do not, as the Labour spinners rightly argue, digest growth figures with their cornflakes.
But the message is out there, and it is slowly but surely starting to permeate the consciousness of the electorate. The Conservatives got it right on the economy. And Labour got it wrong.
We are currently in the early stages of that process.
Tell me you're joking! I'd rather read SeanT's sex memoire and that comes just behind a swim in the Serpentine in December
Not joking. More generally, one thing I like about this site is the range of obsessive people. They may go round and round in little circles, but that helps stop the discussion going round and round in big, politically predictable circles.
Ditto – the ‘obsessives’ understand their chosen subject and provide a wealth of knowledge both factual / anecdotal that is second to none. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea (Morris dancing ? ) but it all adds to the site imho.
I find the 'obsessives' on both rail and power generation very informative.
Climate change, less so.
The site's not as good on climate science because it divides on tribal lines in a way that - say - trains - don't, so if anyone here does actually know about it their information gets drowned out by people reposting things they read on agenda-driven blogs.
On the political significance of the improving economy, Dan Hodges (as so often) nails it very well:
Today’s growth figures will not see an overnight change in either party’s political fortunes. People do not, as the Labour spinners rightly argue, digest growth figures with their cornflakes.
But the message is out there, and it is slowly but surely starting to permeate the consciousness of the electorate. The Conservatives got it right on the economy. And Labour got it wrong.
We are currently in the early stages of that process.
The danger being that, come GE2015, people don't look back to 2010-2013 and the slowly improving economic indicators and their own even more slowly improving personal circumstances, but that they look back to 2005-2007 and think: well Labour presided over great prosperity and economic strength....
It's just one of those topics that you cant discuss sensibly on the internet. Cycling is another I find (cyclist V motorist debates are some of the most venomous you ever see!).
"I don't understand how the Suez Crisis brought down a PM, the canal was built on perfectly sound engineering principles, crisis was far too strong a word, the water levels barely shifted during the period now described as a "crisis""
We tolerate Josia's railway posts, in the same way as your excitable one's about half naked men in wetsuits.
£134m of government assistance, £125m of it from London. Don't quite understand this part of the Telegraph report: "the UK Government has given its "prequalification approval" for a £125m loan guarantee facility under the Treasury's £40m infrastructure guarantee scheme. "
But it looks like subsidised funding for INEOS.
It is not surprising that Salmond is not seeking to make too much political capital out of this. Could an independent Scotland have afforded this level of support? It would have been a real budget buster. The UK has a strategic interest in this plant and can afford it. Having said that the astonishing incompetence and unreality of UNITE officials certainly moved this application right to the front of the queue.
DavidL
That Treasury Guarantee was announced 3 days ago and is part of a wider government guarantee scheme - Ineos is near the bottom of the page
"Energy, road and rail projects worth £33 billion have passed the first hurdle in getting a government infrastructure guarantee Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander has announced today.
Forty projects are now at the stage known as prequalification, meaning that they are eligible for the UK Guarantee scheme. Over half that have prequalified are energy projects, helping ensure that Britain develops a sustainable future energy supply."
It's just one of those topics that you cant discuss sensibly on the internet. Cycling is another I find (cyclist V motorist debates are some of the most venomous you ever see!).
As broadly a non-cyclist and a non-motorist, I can comment with detachment that both sides of that particular debate are utterly mental.
There's certainly a very great deal of prejudice against him, but he's a very perceptive observer (and a very good writer).
It's not his fault that he is completely over-exposed on pbc in relation to the quality of his insights but whether his fault or not it does make him incredibly annoying.
It's just one of those topics that you cant discuss sensibly on the internet. Cycling is another I find (cyclist V motorist debates are some of the most venomous you ever see!).
As broadly a non-cyclist and a non-motorist, I can comment with detachment that both sides of that particular debate are utterly mental.
Re Boris on being the only British politician who admits he's in favour of immigration.
It occurred to me as I went to my favourite cafe this morning past the latest Sherman tank sized prams to be served by the very attractive Polish Magda and the equally handsome and bright Greek known as Dennis that immigration is an absolute Godsend for a country like the UK.
No need for 20 years of education medical bills pavement destruction caused by oversized prams child benefit or unproductive women while they child mind. Instead the fully grown article interesting and productive from day one with no prams and none of the baggage....what's not to like?
It's just one of those topics that you cant discuss sensibly on the internet. Cycling is another I find (cyclist V motorist debates are some of the most venomous you ever see!).
As broadly a non-cyclist and a non-motorist, I can comment with detachment that both sides of that particular debate are utterly mental.
Paul Nuttal on DP putting lots of clear black water between UKIP & the French National Front - absolutely will not join any grouping involving them in the EU Parliament - UKIP are Eurosceptic moderate right.
Comments
UK economic output rose by 0.8% between July and September, official GDP figures show.
Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne tweeted: "This shows that Britain's hard work is paying off & the country is on the path to prosperity."
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said the figures "show that we are firmly on the road to economic recovery".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24668687
The wrong kind of property price increases and the wrong type of construction, of course.
Following your logic, Stafford Hospital's failings are an indicator to the state of the entire NHS.
http://order-order.com/2013/10/25/sketch-speaker-may-have-to-rule-on-his-own-behaviour/#more-153165
According to Nick Palmer's blog from 'ages ago', he thinks 20 projects of £100 million each should do it. (see http://www.nickpalmer.org.uk/britains-investment-is-159th-out-of-163-can-we-do-betterways-to-help-part-2/)
When the WCML upgrade alone cost £9-10 billion ...
Breaking news
Grangemouth petrochemical plant near Falkirk to stay open as new deal struck with workers, BBC understands
If true, excellent news!
Mr Balls shredded in most recent media performances and Mrs Balls almost invisible to the point of search parties being formed.
Oh how the mighty in their own minds have crumbled.
Hopefully the management will have chucked a little more into the pot for the workers to get a deal done.
Knighthood for Ratcliffe?
Wonder how those Labour MPs who were slagging off INEOS are feeling now?
Well done the SNP & Coalition Governments.....
Over the next week or so there will be lots of attempts to “get behind the back” of today’s growth figures. How trend levels are still below their pre-recession peak. The way the recovery is not yet being felt in people’s pay packets. That it is based on precisely the same sort of explosion in the housing market that precipitated the 2008 crash.
Some, perhaps all, of that analysis may prove to be correct. But in political terms it is just white noise.
"...Today the Deputy Prime Minister gave numerous interviews on TV and radio and took questions after a speech at a school. I don’t think I heard him offer an idea of his own to get energy bills down. I did, though, hear him say the following. On the Today programme, Sarah Montague asked him about energy bills, and here, after five and a half minutes, was his conclusion.
“They are very high,” he said, “and something must be done.”
Something must be done. So there you have it. Mr Clegg’s policy is that something must be done. He believes that someone (it’s not clear whom, but probably the Government, of which he’s rumoured to be a senior member) must do something (it’s not clear what, but definitely something)... > http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10402377/Sketch-Nick-Clegg-little-green-man.html
Perfidious Albion
Good work Carmichael & Swinney!! Credit where credit is due. Lots of backroom folk deserve a mighty slap on the back too.
Turning into a pretty good day so far! Tonight I am meeting up with my best friend from school that I haven't seen in years, and tomorrow we are having our first school reunion in 25 years. Looking forward to our tour of the old place and meeting all those faces from the 1980s.
'Living standards have fallen for 39 out of 40 months and govt spending is rising'
And to think that the stagnation & then fall in wages started under a Labour government back in 2003,can't be connected with their policy of mass immigration surely?
The Resolution Foundation Commission on Living Standards
The period from 2003 onwards has seen median wages stagnate, and then fall in the aftermath of the 2008-09 recession. From 2003 to 2008, median wages were stagnant. Despite growth in GDP of 11 percent over the period, median earnings fell by an annual average of 0.2% percent for men, and for women rose by 0.3 percent a year.Put simply, a middle earner in 2008 did not earn noticeably more than a middle earner in 2003'
Early last year we called have called you 'Infrastructure Tim'. Many of your posts bemoaned the lack of infrastructure planning. I agreed with much of what you had to say, although you lacked a certain amount of knowledge on the topic.
Yet it now turns out that the infrastructure you seem to be in favour of is, oddly enough, the projects that will cause the Tories the most trouble.
And we see you admit it above. You are not interested in infrastructure. You are only interested in the politics and what will harm the Tories.
In any prosperous Western country, the bulk of output comes from services.
Most of the drop in manufacturing output, and construction output took place between 2008-10, although both sectors seem to be recovering nicely, since the start of the year.
Overall, construction is up 4.9% Y o Y.
Business services are up 2.1%.
Transport is up 2.5.
Distribution and hotels are up 3.8%.
Manufacturing is only up 0.2%.
Government is up only 0.1%.
Which brings us on to the topic of the bankrupt university pensions scheme.
Surely all those marxist/leninist lecturers would be prepared to renegotiate their pensions to prevent students having to pay more....??
Yeah right.
Had it been 1%,it might have done with the noise made by the Tory media.
The first stab at estimating the state of the economy from the Office for National Statistics found that activity had increased across the board with production, construction, services and agriculture all registering growth.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/oct/25/uk-economy-growth-gdp-third-quarter
"Deal 'saves Grangemouth plant'
Breaking news
Grangemouth petrochemical plant near Falkirk to stay open as new deal struck with workers, BBC understands
If true, excellent news!"
I think you are being optimistic. Any company depending on a boss like the one at Grangemouth is walking on ice. If that's what industrial relations are like there I can see another Rover looming. It's humiliating all round particularly for Scotland.
For good or ill [mostly ill, I suspect] Balls has indicated that he prefers to play politics over HS2, so that he can have a £50bn warchest at the next election from which to pull a whole series of bunny rabbits. Balls is calculating that there are enough other opponents of HS2, from Home Counties Tories to the eternal naysayers, that he will have the political cover to play base politics with HS2.
Sadly, I think Balls is right. There does not exist the depth and breadth of support in civic society for HS2 to hold the line against such opportunism. The game is up. Osborne would be well advised to kill HS2 himself, so that Balls will not have that £50bn to play political games with. It is a case of kill* Balls, or kill HS2, and if Osborne and Cameron could have killed* Balls they would surely have done so by now.
* I mean in a political, rather than literal, sense. Of course.
Wow big capitulation by union @grangemouth to save 800jobs at plant. Pay freeze, no strikes, pensions cut The "something big" INEOS demanded
Do you favour present plans for HS2 - yes or no ?
"Lol, still stalking me?..."
Jessop's a complete headbanger. His interminable posts about a train line are driving normal people rounf the f***ing bend!
You've said something on your blog that is transparently rubbish. You have not retracted or clarified what you wrote, and it is relevant to the conversation on both HS2 and investment into any renationalised railway.
It's sad if our prospective politicians take someone quoting them in such a manner as 'stalking'.
May I suggest you rethink this nonsense: "stalking", "creepy, "zealots". I thought you were a decent guy.
And BTW, I'm not am obsessive train zealot. I'm just as obsessive about other forms of heavy engineering. ;-)
Go sell some houses
If Ratcliffe was making money at Grangemouth, and simply wanted to move to another site because it would make him fabulously richer, I woud agree with you 100%. Good riddance and don;t come back.
The fact is, no businessman can keep going indefinitely when he's losing 10 million quid a month. You can call it blackmail if you want, but its not really.
I'd be doing the same thing with the university lecturers pension fund. Pare it to the bone and help the disadvantaged student.
Why?
Personally I think its vital that the UK still has people who are obsessed with heavy engineering.
Brunel, Dibnah, weren't they??? Marvelous.
Is Labour against HS2 now ?
Balls U-Turn ?
Tell me you're joking! I'd rather read SeanT's sex memoire and that comes just behind a swim in the Serpentine in December
The coalition and SNP governments have come well out of this (Salmond was again ducking the opportunity of point scoring on BBC News) - Miliband has been conspicuous by his absence - odd for a colossus bestriding the political stage.....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24668852
For instance, SeanT doles out much more ingenious insults. Perhaps they should swap jobs. Although I doubt SeanT would welcome the drop in income. ;-)
"(Salmond was again ducking the opportunity of point scoring on BBC News) -"
Are you seriously suggesting if there was a point to score Salmond would ignore it?
I think he can see the writing on the wall like everyone else and knows that at any minute this is likely to blow up in someone's face
Radcliffe had the opportunity to crucify Unite/labour over this...anti business, job destroying, militant, bullying, insulting etc.
I guess he still could.
Talking of which, I'd better go and sell some houses do some work ...
Both the Coalition and SNP governments quickly grasped that, as Nick Clegg put it, something as important as this was 'above politics'.
Something that escaped several (but far from all) Labour MPs & Lamont.
Next thing you know she'll be trying to tell gullible lib dems that contrary to that pesky leadership polling Clegg, is actually very popular with scottish voters and the lid dems real problem is that they just need to send him to scotland more.
But of course that would be simply far too ludicrous to contemplate, even for a yellow tory firmly ensconsed in Clegg's ostrich faction...
or is it?
http://www.libdemvoice.org/dunfermline-byelection-win-for-labour-disaster-for-snp-and-lib-dems-hold-3rd-place-36905.html#comments
LOL
£134m of government assistance, £125m of it from London. Don't quite understand this part of the Telegraph report:
"the UK Government has given its "prequalification approval" for a £125m loan guarantee facility under the Treasury's £40m infrastructure guarantee scheme. "
But it looks like subsidised funding for INEOS.
It is not surprising that Salmond is not seeking to make too much political capital out of this. Could an independent Scotland have afforded this level of support? It would have been a real budget buster. The UK has a strategic interest in this plant and can afford it. Having said that the astonishing incompetence and unreality of UNITE officials certainly moved this application right to the front of the queue.
If your aim was to make Labour seem like totally out of touch twits then mission accomplished.
As for things blowing up in people's faces.. I'm sure little Ed will be delighted to finally make public his secret report on Falkirk.
Any day now.
http://www.populus.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/131024-Populus_Economic-Confidence_Graphic.pdf
http://tinyurl.com/qe5rq3v
"The public increasingly believes that the economy is on the mend but they don’t see their own prospects improving to the same extent. Those are the findings of a new poll of 1,000 people conducted over the course of the weekend by the polling organisation Populus.
The poll, conducted to coincide with the release of the GDP figures for the third quarter of 2013, shows that the ‘optimism gap’ – the difference between those who expect the economy to perform well for them and their families on the one hand and for the country as a whole on the other – has narrowed significantly in the past year (from 30% in December 2012 to just 11% today) as more people have come to believe that a national recovery is underway."
Climate change, less so.
The key to 2015....
Today’s growth figures will not see an overnight change in either party’s political fortunes. People do not, as the Labour spinners rightly argue, digest growth figures with their cornflakes.
But the message is out there, and it is slowly but surely starting to permeate the consciousness of the electorate. The Conservatives got it right on the economy. And Labour got it wrong.
We are currently in the early stages of that process.
Each to their own.
Absolutely agree but how long is the lag?
DavidL
That Treasury Guarantee was announced 3 days ago and is part of a wider government guarantee scheme - Ineos is near the bottom of the page
"Energy, road and rail projects worth £33 billion have passed the first hurdle in getting a government infrastructure guarantee Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander has announced today.
Forty projects are now at the stage known as prequalification, meaning that they are eligible for the UK Guarantee scheme. Over half that have prequalified are energy projects, helping ensure that Britain develops a sustainable future energy supply."
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-projects-pass-first-hurdle-to-secure-government-guarantee-for-infrastructure
chortle.
It occurred to me as I went to my favourite cafe this morning past the latest Sherman tank sized prams to be served by the very attractive Polish Magda and the equally handsome and bright Greek known as Dennis that immigration is an absolute Godsend for a country like the UK.
No need for 20 years of education medical bills pavement destruction caused by oversized prams child benefit or unproductive women while they child mind. Instead the fully grown article interesting and productive from day one with no prams and none of the baggage....what's not to like?
You cant hide from this debate!!!
The duel between George Osborne and Ed Balls is over. Balls has won.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danhodges/100153326/ed-balls-has-put-george-osborne-on-the-canvas/