The government's immigration policy is not cast in stone.
Future governments will be able to change it if that is what voters want.
And that's the point. Voters will be able to choose from a menu of immigration policies set forward by the parties that want their vote. Immigration will not be a roped off issue.
Tricky for a labour party that wants those red wall seats back.
It’s not going to matter because red wall seat Tory voters will be told that all their immigration woes have been “fixed” and they will not notice any difference.
Blyth Valley is 98% White and British born. Their perception of the “immigration problem” is entirely fictional.
@Philip_Thompson it doesn’t matter what was said. Brexit voters are expecting their lives to improve as a result of leaving the EU. If that doesn’t happen, they are not going to be very happy.
On that I agree 100%.
However do you also agree that their lives won't improve if nothing changes, will it? Surely the only way to improve their lives is to seize the opportunities Brexiteers see before us, even if Remainers don't see it as an opportunity.
How can their lives improve if we proceed with Brexit in a "damage limitation" mindset?
Still waiting on an actual definition of those opportunities.
1: The UK Parliament rather than the EU determining UK laws. 2: The UK electorate being able to kick out governments that make laws they don't like (not possible with the EU). 3: UK controlling its own money. 4: UK controlling its own trade policies. 5: UK controlling its own borders.
Just off the top of my head. Point 5 is one I don't care about but a new points based immigration system has been announced today on that which is newsworthy.
On 3 - we always have as even Brown knew that the UK using the Euro was a bad idea..
I said money not currency.
Hundreds of millions of pounds a week going to the EU means we weren't controlling it.
Just wondering, Mr Thompson... Do you control your wife's finances?
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Would you be able to go back to work if your place of work is shut?
There is hard-faced commercial reckoning on this. Many eg City firms moved seamlessly to working from home. Why should they go back to their offices, exposing their staff to the Central Line or whatnot and a potential infection outbreak in their offices? This would mean that no one is in the offices but instead of everyone being at home working, they would be at home recovering or isolating on account of COVID-19.
Common sense for City firms would see the local restaurants go out of business
@Philip_Thompson it doesn’t matter what was said. Brexit voters are expecting their lives to improve as a result of leaving the EU. If that doesn’t happen, they are not going to be very happy.
On that I agree 100%.
However do you also agree that their lives won't improve if nothing changes, will it? Surely the only way to improve their lives is to seize the opportunities Brexiteers see before us, even if Remainers don't see it as an opportunity.
How can their lives improve if we proceed with Brexit in a "damage limitation" mindset?
Still waiting on an actual definition of those opportunities.
1: The UK Parliament rather than the EU determining UK laws. 2: The UK electorate being able to kick out governments that make laws they don't like (not possible with the EU). 3: UK controlling its own money. 4: UK controlling its own trade policies. 5: UK controlling its own borders.
Just off the top of my head. Point 5 is one I don't care about but a new points based immigration system has been announced today on that which is newsworthy.
On 3 - we always have as even Brown knew that the UK using the Euro was a bad idea..
I said money not currency.
Hundreds of millions of pounds a week going to the EU means we weren't controlling it.
Just wondering, Mr Thompson... Do you control your wife's finances?
@Philip_Thompson it doesn’t matter what was said. Brexit voters are expecting their lives to improve as a result of leaving the EU. If that doesn’t happen, they are not going to be very happy.
On that I agree 100%.
However do you also agree that their lives won't improve if nothing changes, will it? Surely the only way to improve their lives is to seize the opportunities Brexiteers see before us, even if Remainers don't see it as an opportunity.
How can their lives improve if we proceed with Brexit in a "damage limitation" mindset?
Still waiting on an actual definition of those opportunities.
1: The UK Parliament rather than the EU determining UK laws. 2: The UK electorate being able to kick out governments that make laws they don't like (not possible with the EU). 3: UK controlling its own money. 4: UK controlling its own trade policies. 5: UK controlling its own borders.
Just off the top of my head. Point 5 is one I don't care about but a new points based immigration system has been announced today on that which is newsworthy.
The UK was able to have a points based immigration system before. The reason for not having one was simply an assessment that it wasn't deemed the best solution. Immigration was however subject to a freedom of movement requirement for EU citizens. Freedom surely counts as "opportunity", no?
We could have a point based immigration system with EU migrants? Are you 100% sure?
No but most of the EU don't have a means tested welfare system, instead they offered a contribution based system.
Which meant that the UK was the place that low skilled workers went to once they arrived and registered they would instantly get additional money to top up their pay while the rest of the EU insisted that they worked for X years before getting any benefits...
Which meant you only went to Germany if the job paid a lot but you could go to the UK even if the job paid very little
There's also the actual enforcement of "Freedom of movement" to consider, aside from local details about benefits there is also the fact that economically inactive EU citizens, including those claming benefits, can be deported after three months.
Because the UK never registers new arrivals, unlike in Germany, for example, where you must register if you'll be resident for more than two weeks, there is no real means of tracking immigrants coming in under FoM but that was a UK choice. All the ranting seen about EU migrants claiming benefits was driven by the fact that the UK didn't want to enforce the rights it could under FoM legislation. It also chose not to block FoM from accession countries which most EU countries.
Again these are choice various UK governments of various stripes did not take.
@Philip_Thompson it doesn’t matter what was said. Brexit voters are expecting their lives to improve as a result of leaving the EU. If that doesn’t happen, they are not going to be very happy.
On that I agree 100%.
However do you also agree that their lives won't improve if nothing changes, will it? Surely the only way to improve their lives is to seize the opportunities Brexiteers see before us, even if Remainers don't see it as an opportunity.
How can their lives improve if we proceed with Brexit in a "damage limitation" mindset?
Still waiting on an actual definition of those opportunities.
1: The UK Parliament rather than the EU determining UK laws. 2: The UK electorate being able to kick out governments that make laws they don't like (not possible with the EU). 3: UK controlling its own money. 4: UK controlling its own trade policies. 5: UK controlling its own borders.
Just off the top of my head. Point 5 is one I don't care about but a new points based immigration system has been announced today on that which is newsworthy.
The UK was able to have a points based immigration system before. The reason for not having one was simply an assessment that it wasn't deemed the best solution. Immigration was however subject to a freedom of movement requirement for EU citizens. Freedom surely counts as "opportunity", no?
We could have a point based immigration system with EU migrants? Are you 100% sure?
No but most of the EU don't have a means tested welfare system, instead they offered a contribution based system.
Which meant that the UK was the place that low skilled workers went to once they arrived and registered they would instantly get additional money to top up their pay while the rest of the EU insisted that they worked for X years before getting any benefits...
Which meant you only went to Germany if the job paid a lot but you could go to the UK even if the job paid very little
One argument I have received against UBI is that - the EvulTories will make it UK citizens only.
@Philip_Thompson it doesn’t matter what was said. Brexit voters are expecting their lives to improve as a result of leaving the EU. If that doesn’t happen, they are not going to be very happy.
On that I agree 100%.
However do you also agree that their lives won't improve if nothing changes, will it? Surely the only way to improve their lives is to seize the opportunities Brexiteers see before us, even if Remainers don't see it as an opportunity.
How can their lives improve if we proceed with Brexit in a "damage limitation" mindset?
Still waiting on an actual definition of those opportunities.
1: The UK Parliament rather than the EU determining UK laws. 2: The UK electorate being able to kick out governments that make laws they don't like (not possible with the EU). 3: UK controlling its own money. 4: UK controlling its own trade policies. 5: UK controlling its own borders.
Just off the top of my head. Point 5 is one I don't care about but a new points based immigration system has been announced today on that which is newsworthy.
On 3 - we always have as even Brown knew that the UK using the Euro was a bad idea..
I said money not currency.
Hundreds of millions of pounds a week going to the EU means we weren't controlling it.
Absolutely. I have the same thing that my tennis club insists on taking a membership from me. I have no control whatsoever. Oh wait, I could resign. But I like being a member so not sure of my remaining options.
As I said to william its a balancing act.
If you think that your tennis club provides value for money then maybe remain a member.
If you don't - and it you perhaps don't even enjoy tennis and want to play golf instead - maybe consider quitting the tennis club?
Mr. Eek, which is particularly ironic given how well-regarded Polish migrants are compared to some other groups.
Blair/Brown should've held that referendum. They didn't because they feared losing it (which was likely). But the resulting u-turn was a Pyrrhic victory for pro-EU types.
Those who still hold pro-EU views might want to consider what changes would move things their way, rather than confining themselves to tittering about the generally incompetent way the Government's going things (not aided by EU duplicity over the Canada deal, which was on offer up until the moment we wanted it, and decades of UK politicians of all parties integrating us ever more and thus making any departure all the more difficult).
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Its up to each of those businesses to decide based on what suits them.
It's faintly perverse that pro-EU politicians had such a habit of being sceptical in opposition and quietly acquiescent in office, in addition to using the EU as scapegoats for measures that need not have been so bad. I'd accuse them of deliberately increasing sceptical sentiment, but for the lack of cunning which became so apparent in 2016.
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Would you be able to go back to work if your place of work is shut?
There is hard-faced commercial reckoning on this. Many eg City firms moved seamlessly to working from home. Why should they go back to their offices, exposing their staff to the Central Line or whatnot and a potential infection outbreak in their offices? This would mean that no one is in the offices but instead of everyone being at home working, they would be at home recovering or isolating on account of COVID-19.
Common sense for City firms would see the local restaurants go out of business
Indeed, though as mentioned, offices aren't open in a lot of cases. We're not opening ours until September.
@Philip_Thompson it doesn’t matter what was said. Brexit voters are expecting their lives to improve as a result of leaving the EU. If that doesn’t happen, they are not going to be very happy.
On that I agree 100%.
However do you also agree that their lives won't improve if nothing changes, will it? Surely the only way to improve their lives is to seize the opportunities Brexiteers see before us, even if Remainers don't see it as an opportunity.
How can their lives improve if we proceed with Brexit in a "damage limitation" mindset?
Still waiting on an actual definition of those opportunities.
1: The UK Parliament rather than the EU determining UK laws. 2: The UK electorate being able to kick out governments that make laws they don't like (not possible with the EU). 3: UK controlling its own money. 4: UK controlling its own trade policies. 5: UK controlling its own borders.
Just off the top of my head. Point 5 is one I don't care about but a new points based immigration system has been announced today on that which is newsworthy.
On 3 - we always have as even Brown knew that the UK using the Euro was a bad idea..
I said money not currency.
Hundreds of millions of pounds a week going to the EU means we weren't controlling it.
Absolutely. I have the same thing that my tennis club insists on taking a membership from me. I have no control whatsoever. Oh wait, I could resign. But I like being a member so not sure of my remaining options.
As I said to william its a balancing act.
If you think that your tennis club provides value for money then maybe remain a member.
If you don't - and it you perhaps don't even enjoy tennis and want to play golf instead - maybe consider quitting the tennis club?
Buy you yourself have accepted that there are many benefits of being an EU member. In other words you want to play tennis. And the tennis club still requires its membership fees. To complain that the tennis club which you wanted to join charges fees is I must admit a strange line to take.
Mr. Eek, which is particularly ironic given how well-regarded Polish migrants are compared to some other groups.
Blair/Brown should've held that referendum. They didn't because they feared losing it (which was likely). But the resulting u-turn was a Pyrrhic victory for pro-EU types.
Those who still hold pro-EU views might want to consider what changes would move things their way, rather than confining themselves to tittering about the generally incompetent way the Government's going things (not aided by EU duplicity over the Canada deal, which was on offer up until the moment we wanted it, and decades of UK politicians of all parties integrating us ever more and thus making any departure all the more difficult).
Fair point. I do suspect that time may well move things our way, especially if 30% of Project Fear turns out to be true!
@Philip_Thompson it doesn’t matter what was said. Brexit voters are expecting their lives to improve as a result of leaving the EU. If that doesn’t happen, they are not going to be very happy.
On that I agree 100%.
However do you also agree that their lives won't improve if nothing changes, will it? Surely the only way to improve their lives is to seize the opportunities Brexiteers see before us, even if Remainers don't see it as an opportunity.
How can their lives improve if we proceed with Brexit in a "damage limitation" mindset?
Still waiting on an actual definition of those opportunities.
1: The UK Parliament rather than the EU determining UK laws. 2: The UK electorate being able to kick out governments that make laws they don't like (not possible with the EU). 3: UK controlling its own money. 4: UK controlling its own trade policies. 5: UK controlling its own borders.
Just off the top of my head. Point 5 is one I don't care about but a new points based immigration system has been announced today on that which is newsworthy.
The UK was able to have a points based immigration system before. The reason for not having one was simply an assessment that it wasn't deemed the best solution. Immigration was however subject to a freedom of movement requirement for EU citizens. Freedom surely counts as "opportunity", no?
We could have a point based immigration system with EU migrants? Are you 100% sure?
No but most of the EU don't have a means tested welfare system, instead they offered a contribution based system.
Which meant that the UK was the place that low skilled workers went to once they arrived and registered they would instantly get additional money to top up their pay while the rest of the EU insisted that they worked for X years before getting any benefits...
Which meant you only went to Germany if the job paid a lot but you could go to the UK even if the job paid very little
There's also the actual enforcement of "Freedom of movement" to consider, aside from local details about benefits there is also the fact that economically inactive EU citizens, including those claming benefits, can be deported after three months.
Because the UK never registers new arrivals, unlike in Germany, for example, where you must register if you'll be resident for more than two weeks, there is no real means of tracking immigrants coming in under FoM but that was a UK choice. All the ranting seen about EU migrants claiming benefits was driven by the fact that the UK didn't want to enforce the rights it could under FoM legislation. It also chose not to block FoM from accession countries which most EU countries.
Again these are choice various UK governments of various stripes did not take.
Regarding accession countries you're wrong - and making the same argument that @HYUFD regularly makes which is amusing.
Actually accession "blocks" were only ever a temporary transition issue. The "blocks" if they'd been applied would have expired about a decade ago anyway. Indeed when Romania became an EU nation then the transition restrictions where applied - and after the restrictions expired hundreds of thousands of Romanians moved to the UK despite the "block" that you talked about having been in place for the longest possible period.
Indeed Romanian now for years now is the second-highest non-UK nationality to be living in the UK even higher than either Irish or Indian.
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Its up to each of those businesses to decide based on what suits them.
I will say it again! What is the government trying to achieve? That's the whole point of government guidance, presumably?
The government is there to govern us, god help us. And to steer us through these difficult times. So what does it want to achieve and what policies is it putting in place to achieve that?
Once you understand that then you begin to see why the "guidance" is such a failure.
Mr. Eek, which is particularly ironic given how well-regarded Polish migrants are compared to some other groups.
Blair/Brown should've held that referendum. They didn't because they feared losing it (which was likely). But the resulting u-turn was a Pyrrhic victory for pro-EU types.
Those who still hold pro-EU views might want to consider what changes would move things their way, rather than confining themselves to tittering about the generally incompetent way the Government's going things (not aided by EU duplicity over the Canada deal, which was on offer up until the moment we wanted it, and decades of UK politicians of all parties integrating us ever more and thus making any departure all the more difficult).
Its just a matter of time: the UK was an outsider before and wanted in and it will be again. There is little to no prospect of the UK economy roaring off and becoming another Tiger economy outside the EU - the population is too high and unwieldy and the inertia against radical changes to the economy combined with no really clear path for what those changes should be (see Truss vs farm lobby for a preview), make it impossible.
In reality the gradual glide path downwards the UK was on will continue and eventually there will be enough people looking at EU membership both as a good idea to stop that and also out of nostalgia for pre-2016 (after all nostalgia did it for Leave), that EEA, SM, CU, associate and finally full membership will follow.
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Would you be able to go back to work if your place of work is shut?
There is hard-faced commercial reckoning on this. Many eg City firms moved seamlessly to working from home. Why should they go back to their offices, exposing their staff to the Central Line or whatnot and a potential infection outbreak in their offices? This would mean that no one is in the offices but instead of everyone being at home working, they would be at home recovering or isolating on account of COVID-19.
Common sense for City firms would see the local restaurants go out of business
Indeed, though as mentioned, offices aren't open in a lot of cases. We're not opening ours until September.
Might mean more restaurants out in what up to now has been commuter-land.
Mr. Eek, which is particularly ironic given how well-regarded Polish migrants are compared to some other groups.
Blair/Brown should've held that referendum. They didn't because they feared losing it (which was likely). But the resulting u-turn was a Pyrrhic victory for pro-EU types.
Those who still hold pro-EU views might want to consider what changes would move things their way, rather than confining themselves to tittering about the generally incompetent way the Government's going things (not aided by EU duplicity over the Canada deal, which was on offer up until the moment we wanted it, and decades of UK politicians of all parties integrating us ever more and thus making any departure all the more difficult).
Do you mean held a referendum on the Euro or on Lisbon?
@Philip_Thompson it doesn’t matter what was said. Brexit voters are expecting their lives to improve as a result of leaving the EU. If that doesn’t happen, they are not going to be very happy.
On that I agree 100%.
However do you also agree that their lives won't improve if nothing changes, will it? Surely the only way to improve their lives is to seize the opportunities Brexiteers see before us, even if Remainers don't see it as an opportunity.
How can their lives improve if we proceed with Brexit in a "damage limitation" mindset?
Still waiting on an actual definition of those opportunities.
1: The UK Parliament rather than the EU determining UK laws. 2: The UK electorate being able to kick out governments that make laws they don't like (not possible with the EU). 3: UK controlling its own money. 4: UK controlling its own trade policies. 5: UK controlling its own borders.
Just off the top of my head. Point 5 is one I don't care about but a new points based immigration system has been announced today on that which is newsworthy.
On 3 - we always have as even Brown knew that the UK using the Euro was a bad idea..
I said money not currency.
Hundreds of millions of pounds a week going to the EU means we weren't controlling it.
Absolutely. I have the same thing that my tennis club insists on taking a membership from me. I have no control whatsoever. Oh wait, I could resign. But I like being a member so not sure of my remaining options.
As I said to william its a balancing act.
If you think that your tennis club provides value for money then maybe remain a member.
If you don't - and it you perhaps don't even enjoy tennis and want to play golf instead - maybe consider quitting the tennis club?
Buy you yourself have accepted that there are many benefits of being an EU member. In other words you want to play tennis. And the tennis club still requires its membership fees. To complain that the tennis club which you wanted to join charges fees is I must admit a strange line to take.
In the past I joined a gym as I wanted to exercise. After I while I found myself not going to the gym very often and preferred jogging on the road to exercising in the gym. I chose to quit the gym.
Should I have continued to pay Total Fitness (other gyms are available) £45 a month in membership fees, or should I quit and jog on the road instead? Does the fact I still wanted to exercise mean I shouldn't consider the membership fee and what else I could do with £45 a month when weighing up my options?
But don't underestimate the power of inertia. That's one of the most remarkable things about the vote to leave succeeding.
Pro-EU types consistently siding with the EU against the UK helps reinforce the Us and Them mentality which should be the natural mindset of sceptics. It looks unpatriotic, gleeful, and vindictive. But worst of all, it's just dumb.
Like the 'Little England' line. Like 'back of the queue'. It makes all the right-on people who agree with the cool kids giggle, and does nothing at all for everyone else.
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Would you be able to go back to work if your place of work is shut?
There is hard-faced commercial reckoning on this. Many eg City firms moved seamlessly to working from home. Why should they go back to their offices, exposing their staff to the Central Line or whatnot and a potential infection outbreak in their offices? This would mean that no one is in the offices but instead of everyone being at home working, they would be at home recovering or isolating on account of COVID-19.
Common sense for City firms would see the local restaurants go out of business
Indeed, though as mentioned, offices aren't open in a lot of cases. We're not opening ours until September.
Might mean more restaurants out in what up to now has been commuter-land.
And a massive shift of lunch and coffee from cafes and restaurants to supermarkets which is going to cause a lot of unemployment.
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Its up to each of those businesses to decide based on what suits them.
I will say it again! What is the government trying to achieve? That's the whole point of government guidance, presumably?
The government is there to govern us, god help us. And to steer us through these difficult times. So what does it want to achieve and what policies is it putting in place to achieve that?
Once you understand that then you begin to see why the "guidance" is such a failure.
The government is trying to balance minimising the risk from the virus with minimising the economic damage of restrictions.
The government is not there to steer us through these difficult times. The government is there to help as best as it can but to let individuals choose their own path as much as possible.
That is why the guidance is a success not a failure. Because unless you're an authoritarian dictator it is up for local businesses and local people to determine what to do based upon their own requirements not have a centrally managed diktat from Whitehall that applies to everyone uniformly.
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Would you be able to go back to work if your place of work is shut?
There is hard-faced commercial reckoning on this. Many eg City firms moved seamlessly to working from home. Why should they go back to their offices, exposing their staff to the Central Line or whatnot and a potential infection outbreak in their offices? This would mean that no one is in the offices but instead of everyone being at home working, they would be at home recovering or isolating on account of COVID-19.
Common sense for City firms would see the local restaurants go out of business
Indeed, though as mentioned, offices aren't open in a lot of cases. We're not opening ours until September.
Yes, the risk of getting everyone back and then having them all off sick is perceived to be high.
But sadly for the government this doesn't solve the problem of getting customers through the door at K10.
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Would you be able to go back to work if your place of work is shut?
There is hard-faced commercial reckoning on this. Many eg City firms moved seamlessly to working from home. Why should they go back to their offices, exposing their staff to the Central Line or whatnot and a potential infection outbreak in their offices? This would mean that no one is in the offices but instead of everyone being at home working, they would be at home recovering or isolating on account of COVID-19.
Common sense for City firms would see the local restaurants go out of business
Indeed, though as mentioned, offices aren't open in a lot of cases. We're not opening ours until September.
Yes, the risk of getting everyone back and then having them all off sick is perceived to be high.
But sadly for the government this doesn't solve the problem of getting customers through the door at K10.
Its not the governments job to get customers through the door at K10. That's K10's managements job.
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Would you be able to go back to work if your place of work is shut?
There is hard-faced commercial reckoning on this. Many eg City firms moved seamlessly to working from home. Why should they go back to their offices, exposing their staff to the Central Line or whatnot and a potential infection outbreak in their offices? This would mean that no one is in the offices but instead of everyone being at home working, they would be at home recovering or isolating on account of COVID-19.
Common sense for City firms would see the local restaurants go out of business
Indeed, though as mentioned, offices aren't open in a lot of cases. We're not opening ours until September.
Might mean more restaurants out in what up to now has been commuter-land.
And a massive shift of lunch and coffee from cafes and restaurants to supermarkets which is going to cause a lot of unemployment.
I fear there's going to be a big employment shake up over the next couple of years. And when there's a shake up some come out on top and some don't. That's not saying the Government shouldn't do something. That was the big problem with Thatcherism. the mines and so on were closed and the workers were, too often, just left to get on with it.
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Would you be able to go back to work if your place of work is shut?
There is hard-faced commercial reckoning on this. Many eg City firms moved seamlessly to working from home. Why should they go back to their offices, exposing their staff to the Central Line or whatnot and a potential infection outbreak in their offices? This would mean that no one is in the offices but instead of everyone being at home working, they would be at home recovering or isolating on account of COVID-19.
Common sense for City firms would see the local restaurants go out of business
Indeed, though as mentioned, offices aren't open in a lot of cases. We're not opening ours until September.
Might mean more restaurants out in what up to now has been commuter-land.
And a massive shift of lunch and coffee from cafes and restaurants to supermarkets which is going to cause a lot of unemployment.
Exactly. I stopped buying coffees ages ago, and then I began to bring in lunch to the office which is awkward but a very small amount of xl action plugging in my daily breakfast (porridge at Pret), lunch (salad bar at the place round the corner), and coffee (decaf americano at Pret or wherever) left a staggering pre-tax outlay.
@Philip_Thompson it doesn’t matter what was said. Brexit voters are expecting their lives to improve as a result of leaving the EU. If that doesn’t happen, they are not going to be very happy.
On that I agree 100%.
However do you also agree that their lives won't improve if nothing changes, will it? Surely the only way to improve their lives is to seize the opportunities Brexiteers see before us, even if Remainers don't see it as an opportunity.
How can their lives improve if we proceed with Brexit in a "damage limitation" mindset?
Still waiting on an actual definition of those opportunities.
1: The UK Parliament rather than the EU determining UK laws. 2: The UK electorate being able to kick out governments that make laws they don't like (not possible with the EU). 3: UK controlling its own money. 4: UK controlling its own trade policies. 5: UK controlling its own borders.
Just off the top of my head. Point 5 is one I don't care about but a new points based immigration system has been announced today on that which is newsworthy.
On 3 - we always have as even Brown knew that the UK using the Euro was a bad idea..
I said money not currency.
Hundreds of millions of pounds a week going to the EU means we weren't controlling it.
Just wondering, Mr Thompson... Do you control your wife's finances?
No, why?
Then why would you expect the UK to control the finances of the whole of the EU? When we were still in it, of course.
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Its up to each of those businesses to decide based on what suits them.
I will say it again! What is the government trying to achieve? That's the whole point of government guidance, presumably?
The government is there to govern us, god help us. And to steer us through these difficult times. So what does it want to achieve and what policies is it putting in place to achieve that?
Once you understand that then you begin to see why the "guidance" is such a failure.
The government is trying to balance minimising the risk from the virus with minimising the economic damage of restrictions.
The government is not there to steer us through these difficult times. The government is there to help as best as it can but to let individuals choose their own path as much as possible.
That is why the guidance is a success not a failure. Because unless you're an authoritarian dictator it is up for local businesses and local people to determine what to do based upon their own requirements not have a centrally managed diktat from Whitehall that applies to everyone uniformly.
So the government is aimless? Well at least we agree on that.
But all this guidance makes me think that actually they are trying to steer us somewhere. I am just glad we agree that they are failing at that aim.
The government is not there to steer us through these difficult times. The government is there to help as best as it can but to let individuals choose their own path as much as possible.
"You can fight on the beaches if possible. You can fight on the landing grounds if it suits you. You can surrender if you think it's for the best."
Also interesting that Huawei are banking on a future Labour government to reverse the current stance of removing them from UK infrastructure. This could become a real live wire for Starmer if he doesn't address it, Tories will absolutely roast him on national security and patriotism if he doesn't sign up to getting rid of them as well.
I don't think anyone has picked up on this from last week but the Government has decided that they wish to push ahead with making all local councils Unitary and outlined minimum (300,000 population) and preferred (400,000) sizes.
The bun fights in Surrey and North Yorkshire amongst other places are going to be a sight to behold.
And from Tory district councillors who would no longer have a seat
300k minimum would entail pretty much a total redrawing of metropolitans - even where a metropolitan is 300k+, it almost certainly has a neighbour that isn't.
I have to say I didn't really know the applicable populations. However there are only two current English local government area under 300,000 that are not special cases: Rutland, and Herefordshire.
“North Tyneside” is 200k...
NTMBC would be Northumberland already were it not for the electoral implications.
@Philip_Thompson it doesn’t matter what was said. Brexit voters are expecting their lives to improve as a result of leaving the EU. If that doesn’t happen, they are not going to be very happy.
On that I agree 100%.
However do you also agree that their lives won't improve if nothing changes, will it? Surely the only way to improve their lives is to seize the opportunities Brexiteers see before us, even if Remainers don't see it as an opportunity.
How can their lives improve if we proceed with Brexit in a "damage limitation" mindset?
Still waiting on an actual definition of those opportunities.
1: The UK Parliament rather than the EU determining UK laws. 2: The UK electorate being able to kick out governments that make laws they don't like (not possible with the EU). 3: UK controlling its own money. 4: UK controlling its own trade policies. 5: UK controlling its own borders.
Just off the top of my head. Point 5 is one I don't care about but a new points based immigration system has been announced today on that which is newsworthy.
On 3 - we always have as even Brown knew that the UK using the Euro was a bad idea..
I said money not currency.
Hundreds of millions of pounds a week going to the EU means we weren't controlling it.
Just wondering, Mr Thompson... Do you control your wife's finances?
No, why?
Then why would you expect the UK to control the finances of the whole of the EU? When we were still in it, of course.
I wouldn't.
But if eg I was living in a Home of Multiple Occupancy living with 27 other people and was forced to abide by common rules while living there and forced to share some of my money with my 27 housemates some of whom were wasting it in ways I wasn't impressed with and I knew that I was putting in more money than I was taking out . . . then I'd certainly consider getting a house on my own instead.
@Philip_Thompson it doesn’t matter what was said. Brexit voters are expecting their lives to improve as a result of leaving the EU. If that doesn’t happen, they are not going to be very happy.
On that I agree 100%.
However do you also agree that their lives won't improve if nothing changes, will it? Surely the only way to improve their lives is to seize the opportunities Brexiteers see before us, even if Remainers don't see it as an opportunity.
How can their lives improve if we proceed with Brexit in a "damage limitation" mindset?
Still waiting on an actual definition of those opportunities.
1: The UK Parliament rather than the EU determining UK laws. 2: The UK electorate being able to kick out governments that make laws they don't like (not possible with the EU). 3: UK controlling its own money. 4: UK controlling its own trade policies. 5: UK controlling its own borders.
Just off the top of my head. Point 5 is one I don't care about but a new points based immigration system has been announced today on that which is newsworthy.
On 3 - we always have as even Brown knew that the UK using the Euro was a bad idea..
I said money not currency.
Hundreds of millions of pounds a week going to the EU means we weren't controlling it.
Absolutely. I have the same thing that my tennis club insists on taking a membership from me. I have no control whatsoever. Oh wait, I could resign. But I like being a member so not sure of my remaining options.
As I said to william its a balancing act.
If you think that your tennis club provides value for money then maybe remain a member.
If you don't - and it you perhaps don't even enjoy tennis and want to play golf instead - maybe consider quitting the tennis club?
Buy you yourself have accepted that there are many benefits of being an EU member. In other words you want to play tennis. And the tennis club still requires its membership fees. To complain that the tennis club which you wanted to join charges fees is I must admit a strange line to take.
In the past I joined a gym as I wanted to exercise. After I while I found myself not going to the gym very often and preferred jogging on the road to exercising in the gym. I chose to quit the gym.
Should I have continued to pay Total Fitness (other gyms are available) £45 a month in membership fees, or should I quit and jog on the road instead? Does the fact I still wanted to exercise mean I shouldn't consider the membership fee and what else I could do with £45 a month when weighing up my options?
Absolutely. Good point. Total Fitness with its comprehensive equipment, facilities, lockers, showers, and more vs jogging on the road, rain or shine, in your trackies then going home for a shower (I sincerely hope).
The government is not there to steer us through these difficult times. The government is there to help as best as it can but to let individuals choose their own path as much as possible.
"You can fight on the beaches if possible. You can fight on the landing grounds if it suits you. You can surrender if you think it's for the best."
Just a gentle nudge Scott, no amount of anti Brexit posts is going to stop it happening and maybe the odd post urging the EU to compromise would be sensible
Which might make you feel better, Big_G, but would make zero difference to any negotiation.
Her husband Kevin - also a key worker who runs and maintains a power station on the south Humber bank - took out a £120,000 mortgage with Northern Rock in 2007 at 100% of the value of his house with an unsecured loan on top.
Northern Rock's "Together" mortgage was approved at the time by regulators under the oversight of the Treasury.
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Would you be able to go back to work if your place of work is shut?
There is hard-faced commercial reckoning on this. Many eg City firms moved seamlessly to working from home. Why should they go back to their offices, exposing their staff to the Central Line or whatnot and a potential infection outbreak in their offices? This would mean that no one is in the offices but instead of everyone being at home working, they would be at home recovering or isolating on account of COVID-19.
Common sense for City firms would see the local restaurants go out of business
Indeed, though as mentioned, offices aren't open in a lot of cases. We're not opening ours until September.
Yes, the risk of getting everyone back and then having them all off sick is perceived to be high.
But sadly for the government this doesn't solve the problem of getting customers through the door at K10.
Its not the governments job to get customers through the door at K10. That's K10's managements job.
So all that talk by Rishi (good tip btw I failed to get on, d'oh) about kickstarting the economy via a package of measures is all a bunch of bollocks?
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Its up to each of those businesses to decide based on what suits them.
I will say it again! What is the government trying to achieve? That's the whole point of government guidance, presumably?
The government is there to govern us, god help us. And to steer us through these difficult times. So what does it want to achieve and what policies is it putting in place to achieve that?
Once you understand that then you begin to see why the "guidance" is such a failure.
The government is trying to balance minimising the risk from the virus with minimising the economic damage of restrictions.
The government is not there to steer us through these difficult times. The government is there to help as best as it can but to let individuals choose their own path as much as possible.
That is why the guidance is a success not a failure. Because unless you're an authoritarian dictator it is up for local businesses and local people to determine what to do based upon their own requirements not have a centrally managed diktat from Whitehall that applies to everyone uniformly.
So the government is aimless? Well at least we agree on that.
But all this guidance makes me think that actually they are trying to steer us somewhere. I am just glad we agree that they are failing at that aim.
I don't agree they're failing.
I think they are trying to steer us in the direction of getting through the virus with as little damage as possible while letting people choose how to act as much as possible.
You may want more authoritarianism from government but I do not. People make better decisions than governments do.
Also interesting that Huawei are banking on a future Labour government to reverse the current stance of removing them from UK infrastructure. This could become a real live wire for Starmer if he doesn't address it, Tories will absolutely roast him on national security and patriotism if he doesn't sign up to getting rid of them as well.
Any link, but it doesn't really matter as Starmer isn't in power until at least 2024 and while BT are complaining about 10 years of work I don't believe it's that bad...
I don't think anyone has picked up on this from last week but the Government has decided that they wish to push ahead with making all local councils Unitary and outlined minimum (300,000 population) and preferred (400,000) sizes.
The bun fights in Surrey and North Yorkshire amongst other places are going to be a sight to behold.
And from Tory district councillors who would no longer have a seat
300k minimum would entail pretty much a total redrawing of metropolitans - even where a metropolitan is 300k+, it almost certainly has a neighbour that isn't.
I have to say I didn't really know the applicable populations. However there are only two current English local government area under 300,000 that are not special cases: Rutland, and Herefordshire.
“North Tyneside” is 200k...
NTMBC would be Northumberland already were it not for the electoral implications.
The source I was looking at gave populations for the metropolitan area, where this differed from the historical county, in this case, Tyne & Wear. I see that does not necessarily make sense. My inexperience there.
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Would you be able to go back to work if your place of work is shut?
There is hard-faced commercial reckoning on this. Many eg City firms moved seamlessly to working from home. Why should they go back to their offices, exposing their staff to the Central Line or whatnot and a potential infection outbreak in their offices? This would mean that no one is in the offices but instead of everyone being at home working, they would be at home recovering or isolating on account of COVID-19.
Common sense for City firms would see the local restaurants go out of business
Indeed, though as mentioned, offices aren't open in a lot of cases. We're not opening ours until September.
Yes, the risk of getting everyone back and then having them all off sick is perceived to be high.
But sadly for the government this doesn't solve the problem of getting customers through the door at K10.
Its not the governments job to get customers through the door at K10. That's K10's managements job.
So all that talk by Rishi (good tip btw I failed to get on, d'oh) about kickstarting the economy via a package of measures is all a bunch of bollocks?
Good to know.
No, its providing resources and opportunities - and removing pressures of taxation - but its up to the sector to now make the most of those resources and opportunities.
Its not Sunak's job to get customers through the door at K10. But if customers do go through the doors at K10 then thanks to Sunak's actions the K10 management will be able to make better margins from fewer customers than they would have previously under the old tax regime. But if K10's management don't get any customers through the door then that's on them.
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Its up to each of those businesses to decide based on what suits them.
I will say it again! What is the government trying to achieve? That's the whole point of government guidance, presumably?
The government is there to govern us, god help us. And to steer us through these difficult times. So what does it want to achieve and what policies is it putting in place to achieve that?
Once you understand that then you begin to see why the "guidance" is such a failure.
The government is trying to balance minimising the risk from the virus with minimising the economic damage of restrictions.
The government is not there to steer us through these difficult times. The government is there to help as best as it can but to let individuals choose their own path as much as possible.
That is why the guidance is a success not a failure. Because unless you're an authoritarian dictator it is up for local businesses and local people to determine what to do based upon their own requirements not have a centrally managed diktat from Whitehall that applies to everyone uniformly.
So the government is aimless? Well at least we agree on that.
But all this guidance makes me think that actually they are trying to steer us somewhere. I am just glad we agree that they are failing at that aim.
I don't agree they're failing.
I think they are trying to steer us in the direction of getting through the virus with as little damage as possible while letting people choose how to act as much as possible.
You may want more authoritarianism from government but I do not. People make better decisions than governments do.
"Getting through the virus with as little damage as possible"? I think the ambiguity of that statement neatly encapsulates the government's thinking. No wonder you are a fan!
There are two conflicting aims - to avoid economic damage and to avoid health damage.
And by conflating them they are reduced to wholly contradictory messaging and the situation whereby you have restaurants open following government advice, and all the customers nowhere to be seen, also following government advice. With the result that the restaurants are at a high risk of going out of business.
Which leaves the government's aim where?
I don't want more authoritarianism. I want clarity of what the government wants and the policies it is putting in place to achieve that.
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Would you be able to go back to work if your place of work is shut?
There is hard-faced commercial reckoning on this. Many eg City firms moved seamlessly to working from home. Why should they go back to their offices, exposing their staff to the Central Line or whatnot and a potential infection outbreak in their offices? This would mean that no one is in the offices but instead of everyone being at home working, they would be at home recovering or isolating on account of COVID-19.
Common sense for City firms would see the local restaurants go out of business
Indeed, though as mentioned, offices aren't open in a lot of cases. We're not opening ours until September.
Might mean more restaurants out in what up to now has been commuter-land.
Having been to that K10 in the past and also having visited my office on Friday I can probably comment a little on why Johnson came up with his "get back to the office" soundbite. The fact is that hospitality is fading in central London. It was busier on Friday then when I last visited at the end of May but nearly every sandwhich shop and other retail was closed. A smattering of pubs were open including Wetherspoons but they were not busy.
Clearly this information is getting back to central government and the economic impact of the collapse in Central London hospitality will be immense, sort of, certainly for landlords. However for suburban equivalents this could be a great time: I've certainly made use of my high-street cafes far more than I ever could in the past.
For employers and transport systems the government's approach is problematic. I can see that they are trying to highlight that office workers "could go back" and that it reveals something they are probably very worried about. However the official advice is driven by the science and for Central London (which I apologise for banging on about but it is my experience), that will require getting millions of people back onto public transport, which is both risky in terms of the disease and because busses and trains are running reduced capacity (though calling patterns have returned I believe), it is made even harder. Commuters will not be happy sharing corwded carraiges or platforms for a long time.
For employers operating offices where their staff can work from home there is a fear that if they just told their staff to come back (in line with government wishes but currently counter-indicated by their own advice), then if there was a case of an employee becoming ill they could be sued. The human and reputational risk is therefore too high so in practice nothing is likely to change and Central London, as well as other hubs, will continue to struggle as workers stay away.
I can't imagine what government advice would have to be to change that situation.
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Would you be able to go back to work if your place of work is shut?
There is hard-faced commercial reckoning on this. Many eg City firms moved seamlessly to working from home. Why should they go back to their offices, exposing their staff to the Central Line or whatnot and a potential infection outbreak in their offices? This would mean that no one is in the offices but instead of everyone being at home working, they would be at home recovering or isolating on account of COVID-19.
Common sense for City firms would see the local restaurants go out of business
Indeed, though as mentioned, offices aren't open in a lot of cases. We're not opening ours until September.
Might mean more restaurants out in what up to now has been commuter-land.
And a massive shift of lunch and coffee from cafes and restaurants to supermarkets which is going to cause a lot of unemployment.
Exactly. I stopped buying coffees ages ago, and then I began to bring in lunch to the office which is awkward but a very small amount of xl action plugging in my daily breakfast (porridge at Pret), lunch (salad bar at the place round the corner), and coffee (decaf americano at Pret or wherever) left a staggering pre-tax outlay.
Yes, I switched over to bringing my own lunch in early last year for 4 days a week and doing Friday lunches at a proper sit down place rather than awful £5 salads I would eat at my desk every day. It was such a good decision and I saved on average £10-12 per week. We also badgered the company for a new coffee machine which they got and we have no need to go out for coffee because the machine does barista quality, another £10-12 per week saving.
Between the two of us we saved around £2,500 last year just with these small lifestyle changes. Now replicate that among basically all office workers and it's a staggering amount of money no longer being pumped into the economy.
@Philip_Thompson it doesn’t matter what was said. Brexit voters are expecting their lives to improve as a result of leaving the EU. If that doesn’t happen, they are not going to be very happy.
On that I agree 100%.
However do you also agree that their lives won't improve if nothing changes, will it? Surely the only way to improve their lives is to seize the opportunities Brexiteers see before us, even if Remainers don't see it as an opportunity.
How can their lives improve if we proceed with Brexit in a "damage limitation" mindset?
Still waiting on an actual definition of those opportunities.
1: The UK Parliament rather than the EU determining UK laws. 2: The UK electorate being able to kick out governments that make laws they don't like (not possible with the EU). 3: UK controlling its own money. 4: UK controlling its own trade policies. 5: UK controlling its own borders.
Just off the top of my head. Point 5 is one I don't care about but a new points based immigration system has been announced today on that which is newsworthy.
On 3 - we always have as even Brown knew that the UK using the Euro was a bad idea..
I said money not currency.
Hundreds of millions of pounds a week going to the EU means we weren't controlling it.
Absolutely. I have the same thing that my tennis club insists on taking a membership from me. I have no control whatsoever. Oh wait, I could resign. But I like being a member so not sure of my remaining options.
As I said to william its a balancing act.
If you think that your tennis club provides value for money then maybe remain a member.
If you don't - and it you perhaps don't even enjoy tennis and want to play golf instead - maybe consider quitting the tennis club?
Buy you yourself have accepted that there are many benefits of being an EU member. In other words you want to play tennis. And the tennis club still requires its membership fees. To complain that the tennis club which you wanted to join charges fees is I must admit a strange line to take.
In the past I joined a gym as I wanted to exercise. After I while I found myself not going to the gym very often and preferred jogging on the road to exercising in the gym. I chose to quit the gym.
Should I have continued to pay Total Fitness (other gyms are available) £45 a month in membership fees, or should I quit and jog on the road instead? Does the fact I still wanted to exercise mean I shouldn't consider the membership fee and what else I could do with £45 a month when weighing up my options?
Absolutely. Good point. Total Fitness with its comprehensive equipment, facilities, lockers, showers, and more vs jogging on the road, rain or shine, in your trackies then going home for a shower (I sincerely hope).
I think that is not a bad Brexit metaphor tbh.
Good I'm glad we can agree.
Yes we can be tied in to "comprehensive" and expensive arrangements that may not suit us, Total Fitness style - or choose our own path and spend our money how we please by quitting.
I'm glad on this we can agree, it is a metaphor for Brexit. Personally I'm not overly fond on the "comprehensive" expensive system but if you are then you can vote to sign up to it.
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Would you be able to go back to work if your place of work is shut?
There is hard-faced commercial reckoning on this. Many eg City firms moved seamlessly to working from home. Why should they go back to their offices, exposing their staff to the Central Line or whatnot and a potential infection outbreak in their offices? This would mean that no one is in the offices but instead of everyone being at home working, they would be at home recovering or isolating on account of COVID-19.
Common sense for City firms would see the local restaurants go out of business
Indeed, though as mentioned, offices aren't open in a lot of cases. We're not opening ours until September.
Yes, the risk of getting everyone back and then having them all off sick is perceived to be high.
But sadly for the government this doesn't solve the problem of getting customers through the door at K10.
Its not the governments job to get customers through the door at K10. That's K10's managements job.
So all that talk by Rishi (good tip btw I failed to get on, d'oh) about kickstarting the economy via a package of measures is all a bunch of bollocks?
Good to know.
No, its providing resources and opportunities - and removing pressures of taxation - but its up to the sector to now make the most of those resources and opportunities.
Its not Sunak's job to get customers through the door at K10. But if customers do go through the doors at K10 then thanks to Sunak's actions the K10 management will be able to make better margins from fewer customers than they would have previously under the old tax regime. But if K10's management don't get any customers through the door then that's on them.
What if the government had forbidden K10's customers, by advising them to work from home, from going to K10?
Just a gentle nudge Scott, no amount of anti Brexit posts is going to stop it happening and maybe the odd post urging the EU to compromise would be sensible
Which might make you feel better, Big_G, but would make zero difference to any negotiation.
No but the odd post from Remainers on here urging the EU to compromise does no harm. So in that spirit -
I for one hope the EU can see their way to compromising with us in certain areas and I would urge them to do so.
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Would you be able to go back to work if your place of work is shut?
There is hard-faced commercial reckoning on this. Many eg City firms moved seamlessly to working from home. Why should they go back to their offices, exposing their staff to the Central Line or whatnot and a potential infection outbreak in their offices? This would mean that no one is in the offices but instead of everyone being at home working, they would be at home recovering or isolating on account of COVID-19.
Common sense for City firms would see the local restaurants go out of business
Indeed, though as mentioned, offices aren't open in a lot of cases. We're not opening ours until September.
Yes, the risk of getting everyone back and then having them all off sick is perceived to be high.
But sadly for the government this doesn't solve the problem of getting customers through the door at K10.
Its not the governments job to get customers through the door at K10. That's K10's managements job.
So all that talk by Rishi (good tip btw I failed to get on, d'oh) about kickstarting the economy via a package of measures is all a bunch of bollocks?
Good to know.
No, its providing resources and opportunities - and removing pressures of taxation - but its up to the sector to now make the most of those resources and opportunities.
Its not Sunak's job to get customers through the door at K10. But if customers do go through the doors at K10 then thanks to Sunak's actions the K10 management will be able to make better margins from fewer customers than they would have previously under the old tax regime. But if K10's management don't get any customers through the door then that's on them.
What if the government had forbidden K10's customers, by advising them to work from home, from going to K10?
Exactly; no one lives there therefore that restaurant is not viable without the offices surrounding it providing it with a stream of custom at lunchtime and in the evening. On a weekend that area has fewer people in it than a country lane.
That applies to nearly all restaurants in the Square Mile.
And apparently Michael Gove does understand that and is trying to get customers through the door, hence the nudge and wink about going back to the office.
Without an actual change to the situation though it won't change a thing.
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Would you be able to go back to work if your place of work is shut?
There is hard-faced commercial reckoning on this. Many eg City firms moved seamlessly to working from home. Why should they go back to their offices, exposing their staff to the Central Line or whatnot and a potential infection outbreak in their offices? This would mean that no one is in the offices but instead of everyone being at home working, they would be at home recovering or isolating on account of COVID-19.
Common sense for City firms would see the local restaurants go out of business
Indeed, though as mentioned, offices aren't open in a lot of cases. We're not opening ours until September.
Might mean more restaurants out in what up to now has been commuter-land.
And a massive shift of lunch and coffee from cafes and restaurants to supermarkets which is going to cause a lot of unemployment.
Exactly. I stopped buying coffees ages ago, and then I began to bring in lunch to the office which is awkward but a very small amount of xl action plugging in my daily breakfast (porridge at Pret), lunch (salad bar at the place round the corner), and coffee (decaf americano at Pret or wherever) left a staggering pre-tax outlay.
Yes, I switched over to bringing my own lunch in early last year for 4 days a week and doing Friday lunches at a proper sit down place rather than awful £5 salads I would eat at my desk every day. It was such a good decision and I saved on average £10-12 per week. We also badgered the company for a new coffee machine which they got and we have no need to go out for coffee because the machine does barista quality, another £10-12 per week saving.
Between the two of us we saved around £2,500 last year just with these small lifestyle changes. Now replicate that among basically all office workers and it's a staggering amount of money no longer being pumped into the economy.
I can't bring myself to be upset by the sudden death of twatty coffee culture and bijou lunch choices that charge £lots for £little. WFH is a positive shift for so many reasons, and more people staying locally will mean more opportunities for local businesses as opposed to the one in the middle of town/city
It is remarkable that four years on, proponents of Brexit have failed to articulate a single upside. Mostly it's been about pretending the many downsides don't exist. Usually with big changes you see pluses and minuses.
I am not including personal upsides for Johnson and more jobs for those that deal with red tape.
Fundamentally it’s the freedom to choose our own destiny.
You don’t value that highly and therefore emphasis the economic aspects.
That’s your right, of course, but it’s incorrect say that the upsides have not been articulated
I am talking about demonstrable tyre-hitting-the-road benefits to Brexit, which so far there have been none,, nor have you articulated any, against the many demonstrable tyre-hitting-the-road costs and losses.
You can talk airy-fairy national destiny (which somehow doesn't apply to Scotland) and I can talk airy-fairy Peace in Europe and those things don't mean a thing unless we can point to people getting some practical benefit out of them.
That’s not what you said. You are narrowing down on to a field that you think favours your argument - ie you are saying “none of the things you value are worth anything therefore the over balance of the equation is negative”.
Well, no shit
(And those aspects do apply to Scotland as well. I’m not sure where you got the idea that they don’t. It’s not the same as having a referendum every 6 years)
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Would you be able to go back to work if your place of work is shut?
There is hard-faced commercial reckoning on this. Many eg City firms moved seamlessly to working from home. Why should they go back to their offices, exposing their staff to the Central Line or whatnot and a potential infection outbreak in their offices? This would mean that no one is in the offices but instead of everyone being at home working, they would be at home recovering or isolating on account of COVID-19.
Common sense for City firms would see the local restaurants go out of business
Indeed, though as mentioned, offices aren't open in a lot of cases. We're not opening ours until September.
Might mean more restaurants out in what up to now has been commuter-land.
And a massive shift of lunch and coffee from cafes and restaurants to supermarkets which is going to cause a lot of unemployment.
Exactly. I stopped buying coffees ages ago, and then I began to bring in lunch to the office which is awkward but a very small amount of xl action plugging in my daily breakfast (porridge at Pret), lunch (salad bar at the place round the corner), and coffee (decaf americano at Pret or wherever) left a staggering pre-tax outlay.
I'm just picturing you both on the tube with your Snoopy lunchboxes :-) .
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Would you be able to go back to work if your place of work is shut?
There is hard-faced commercial reckoning on this. Many eg City firms moved seamlessly to working from home. Why should they go back to their offices, exposing their staff to the Central Line or whatnot and a potential infection outbreak in their offices? This would mean that no one is in the offices but instead of everyone being at home working, they would be at home recovering or isolating on account of COVID-19.
Common sense for City firms would see the local restaurants go out of business
Indeed, though as mentioned, offices aren't open in a lot of cases. We're not opening ours until September.
Might mean more restaurants out in what up to now has been commuter-land.
And a massive shift of lunch and coffee from cafes and restaurants to supermarkets which is going to cause a lot of unemployment.
Exactly. I stopped buying coffees ages ago, and then I began to bring in lunch to the office which is awkward but a very small amount of xl action plugging in my daily breakfast (porridge at Pret), lunch (salad bar at the place round the corner), and coffee (decaf americano at Pret or wherever) left a staggering pre-tax outlay.
Yes, I switched over to bringing my own lunch in early last year for 4 days a week and doing Friday lunches at a proper sit down place rather than awful £5 salads I would eat at my desk every day. It was such a good decision and I saved on average £10-12 per week. We also badgered the company for a new coffee machine which they got and we have no need to go out for coffee because the machine does barista quality, another £10-12 per week saving.
Between the two of us we saved around £2,500 last year just with these small lifestyle changes. Now replicate that among basically all office workers and it's a staggering amount of money no longer being pumped into the economy.
Yep agree. It actually amazes me when I see people queuing at Starbucks for a coffee at three quid a pop.
@Philip_Thompson it doesn’t matter what was said. Brexit voters are expecting their lives to improve as a result of leaving the EU. If that doesn’t happen, they are not going to be very happy.
On that I agree 100%.
However do you also agree that their lives won't improve if nothing changes, will it? Surely the only way to improve their lives is to seize the opportunities Brexiteers see before us, even if Remainers don't see it as an opportunity.
How can their lives improve if we proceed with Brexit in a "damage limitation" mindset?
Still waiting on an actual definition of those opportunities.
1: The UK Parliament rather than the EU determining UK laws. 2: The UK electorate being able to kick out governments that make laws they don't like (not possible with the EU). 3: UK controlling its own money. 4: UK controlling its own trade policies. 5: UK controlling its own borders.
Just off the top of my head. Point 5 is one I don't care about but a new points based immigration system has been announced today on that which is newsworthy.
On 3 - we always have as even Brown knew that the UK using the Euro was a bad idea..
I said money not currency.
Hundreds of millions of pounds a week going to the EU means we weren't controlling it.
Absolutely. I have the same thing that my tennis club insists on taking a membership from me. I have no control whatsoever. Oh wait, I could resign. But I like being a member so not sure of my remaining options.
As I said to william its a balancing act.
If you think that your tennis club provides value for money then maybe remain a member.
If you don't - and it you perhaps don't even enjoy tennis and want to play golf instead - maybe consider quitting the tennis club?
Buy you yourself have accepted that there are many benefits of being an EU member. In other words you want to play tennis. And the tennis club still requires its membership fees. To complain that the tennis club which you wanted to join charges fees is I must admit a strange line to take.
In the past I joined a gym as I wanted to exercise. After I while I found myself not going to the gym very often and preferred jogging on the road to exercising in the gym. I chose to quit the gym.
Should I have continued to pay Total Fitness (other gyms are available) £45 a month in membership fees, or should I quit and jog on the road instead? Does the fact I still wanted to exercise mean I shouldn't consider the membership fee and what else I could do with £45 a month when weighing up my options?
Absolutely. Good point. Total Fitness with its comprehensive equipment, facilities, lockers, showers, and more vs jogging on the road, rain or shine, in your trackies then going home for a shower (I sincerely hope).
I think that is not a bad Brexit metaphor tbh.
Good I'm glad we can agree.
Yes we can be tied in to "comprehensive" and expensive arrangements that may not suit us, Total Fitness style - or choose our own path and spend our money how we please by quitting.
I'm glad on this we can agree, it is a metaphor for Brexit. Personally I'm not overly fond on the "comprehensive" expensive system but if you are then you can vote to sign up to it.
I am going to lunch now (home made) happy in the knowledge that we agree on this.
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Its up to each of those businesses to decide based on what suits them.
I will say it again! What is the government trying to achieve? That's the whole point of government guidance, presumably?
The government is there to govern us, god help us. And to steer us through these difficult times. So what does it want to achieve and what policies is it putting in place to achieve that?
Once you understand that then you begin to see why the "guidance" is such a failure.
The government is trying to balance minimising the risk from the virus with minimising the economic damage of restrictions.
The government is not there to steer us through these difficult times. The government is there to help as best as it can but to let individuals choose their own path as much as possible.
That is why the guidance is a success not a failure. Because unless you're an authoritarian dictator it is up for local businesses and local people to determine what to do based upon their own requirements not have a centrally managed diktat from Whitehall that applies to everyone uniformly.
So the government is aimless? Well at least we agree on that.
But all this guidance makes me think that actually they are trying to steer us somewhere. I am just glad we agree that they are failing at that aim.
I don't agree they're failing.
I think they are trying to steer us in the direction of getting through the virus with as little damage as possible while letting people choose how to act as much as possible.
You may want more authoritarianism from government but I do not. People make better decisions than governments do.
This is a dubious assertion. I've spent (real terms) about a quarter of a million pounds on cigarettes.
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Its up to each of those businesses to decide based on what suits them.
I will say it again! What is the government trying to achieve? That's the whole point of government guidance, presumably?
The government is there to govern us, god help us. And to steer us through these difficult times. So what does it want to achieve and what policies is it putting in place to achieve that?
Once you understand that then you begin to see why the "guidance" is such a failure.
The government is trying to balance minimising the risk from the virus with minimising the economic damage of restrictions.
The government is not there to steer us through these difficult times. The government is there to help as best as it can but to let individuals choose their own path as much as possible.
That is why the guidance is a success not a failure. Because unless you're an authoritarian dictator it is up for local businesses and local people to determine what to do based upon their own requirements not have a centrally managed diktat from Whitehall that applies to everyone uniformly.
So the government is aimless? Well at least we agree on that.
But all this guidance makes me think that actually they are trying to steer us somewhere. I am just glad we agree that they are failing at that aim.
I don't agree they're failing.
I think they are trying to steer us in the direction of getting through the virus with as little damage as possible while letting people choose how to act as much as possible.
You may want more authoritarianism from government but I do not. People make better decisions than governments do.
"Getting through the virus with as little damage as possible"? I think the ambiguity of that statement neatly encapsulates the government's thinking. No wonder you are a fan!
There are two conflicting aims - to avoid economic damage and to avoid health damage.
And by conflating them they are reduced to wholly contradictory messaging and the situation whereby you have restaurants open following government advice, and all the customers nowhere to be seen, also following government advice. With the result that the restaurants are at a high risk of going out of business.
Which leaves the government's aim where?
I don't want more authoritarianism. I want clarity of what the government wants and the policies it is putting in place to achieve that.
We are fundamentally approaching this from differing philosophies then. You want "clarity", I don't. There are few things worse than unjustified "clarity" from a government.
Yes that leaves us with contradictory aims. Guess what, life's complicated. There are always contradictory aims in real life, that's what making decisions are all about. If there weren't contradictory aims then decision making would be easy.
Life is messy and complicated. Get used to it. You want the government taking responsibility for all your difficult decisions do you? I can think of nothing worse than that!
Thank goodness we have a government in place that entrusts people to make difficult decisions based on the evidence they have before them rather than one that is arrogant enough to think it knows best in all circumstances ever.
Just a gentle nudge Scott, no amount of anti Brexit posts is going to stop it happening and maybe the odd post urging the EU to compromise would be sensible
I must admit it’s the “no cherry picking” argument that is the most irritating
That’s EXACTLY what a deal is. You give me something I want, I’ll give you something you want.
If you don’t want to do a deal then don’t waste our time
I agree with that 100% Charles, but might this not be a case of us wanting stuff but not giving anything in exchange.
Clearly the EU makes deals with non EU countries so gives stuff away in exchange for something in return so why is this different.
The message coming across (whether accurate or not) is we want to keep the benefits of EU membership that we enjoyed and don't seem to understand that we need to give something in exchange.
It’s possible. I would be surprised, but it’s possible (not following the detail). If our negotiators are expecting something for nothing then they are idiots.
I’d expect in this case they are offering a reciprocal right of access.
Effectively all the change means is that you need to hire a local lawyer in addition to your existing team so it’s an extra cost for no benefit except the lawyers. However as most of the core teams are London based the EU sees this as extra revenue for their citizens while most of the litigants wanting access to the the IK courts will hire U.K. lawyers anyway.
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Would you be able to go back to work if your place of work is shut?
There is hard-faced commercial reckoning on this. Many eg City firms moved seamlessly to working from home. Why should they go back to their offices, exposing their staff to the Central Line or whatnot and a potential infection outbreak in their offices? This would mean that no one is in the offices but instead of everyone being at home working, they would be at home recovering or isolating on account of COVID-19.
Common sense for City firms would see the local restaurants go out of business
Indeed, though as mentioned, offices aren't open in a lot of cases. We're not opening ours until September.
Might mean more restaurants out in what up to now has been commuter-land.
And a massive shift of lunch and coffee from cafes and restaurants to supermarkets which is going to cause a lot of unemployment.
Exactly. I stopped buying coffees ages ago, and then I began to bring in lunch to the office which is awkward but a very small amount of xl action plugging in my daily breakfast (porridge at Pret), lunch (salad bar at the place round the corner), and coffee (decaf americano at Pret or wherever) left a staggering pre-tax outlay.
Yes, I switched over to bringing my own lunch in early last year for 4 days a week and doing Friday lunches at a proper sit down place rather than awful £5 salads I would eat at my desk every day. It was such a good decision and I saved on average £10-12 per week. We also badgered the company for a new coffee machine which they got and we have no need to go out for coffee because the machine does barista quality, another £10-12 per week saving.
Between the two of us we saved around £2,500 last year just with these small lifestyle changes. Now replicate that among basically all office workers and it's a staggering amount of money no longer being pumped into the economy.
I can't bring myself to be upset by the sudden death of twatty coffee culture and bijou lunch choices that charge £lots for £little. WFH is a positive shift for so many reasons, and more people staying locally will mean more opportunities for local businesses as opposed to the one in the middle of town/city
Yeah, fuck those businesses and all of the, err, workers, I guess.
The whole point is that WFH people don't go out for lunch or coffee at all and the only businesses that benefit are supermarkets who can increase sales of food with very little incremental employment necessary.
@Philip_Thompson it doesn’t matter what was said. Brexit voters are expecting their lives to improve as a result of leaving the EU. If that doesn’t happen, they are not going to be very happy.
On that I agree 100%.
However do you also agree that their lives won't improve if nothing changes, will it? Surely the only way to improve their lives is to seize the opportunities Brexiteers see before us, even if Remainers don't see it as an opportunity.
How can their lives improve if we proceed with Brexit in a "damage limitation" mindset?
Still waiting on an actual definition of those opportunities.
1: The UK Parliament rather than the EU determining UK laws. 2: The UK electorate being able to kick out governments that make laws they don't like (not possible with the EU). 3: UK controlling its own money. 4: UK controlling its own trade policies. 5: UK controlling its own borders.
Just off the top of my head. Point 5 is one I don't care about but a new points based immigration system has been announced today on that which is newsworthy.
On 3 - we always have as even Brown knew that the UK using the Euro was a bad idea..
I said money not currency.
Hundreds of millions of pounds a week going to the EU means we weren't controlling it.
Absolutely. I have the same thing that my tennis club insists on taking a membership from me. I have no control whatsoever. Oh wait, I could resign. But I like being a member so not sure of my remaining options.
As I said to william its a balancing act.
If you think that your tennis club provides value for money then maybe remain a member.
If you don't - and it you perhaps don't even enjoy tennis and want to play golf instead - maybe consider quitting the tennis club?
Buy you yourself have accepted that there are many benefits of being an EU member. In other words you want to play tennis. And the tennis club still requires its membership fees. To complain that the tennis club which you wanted to join charges fees is I must admit a strange line to take.
In the past I joined a gym as I wanted to exercise. After I while I found myself not going to the gym very often and preferred jogging on the road to exercising in the gym. I chose to quit the gym.
Should I have continued to pay Total Fitness (other gyms are available) £45 a month in membership fees, or should I quit and jog on the road instead? Does the fact I still wanted to exercise mean I shouldn't consider the membership fee and what else I could do with £45 a month when weighing up my options?
Absolutely. Good point. Total Fitness with its comprehensive equipment, facilities, lockers, showers, and more vs jogging on the road, rain or shine, in your trackies then going home for a shower (I sincerely hope).
I think that is not a bad Brexit metaphor tbh.
Good I'm glad we can agree.
Yes we can be tied in to "comprehensive" and expensive arrangements that may not suit us, Total Fitness style - or choose our own path and spend our money how we please by quitting.
I'm glad on this we can agree, it is a metaphor for Brexit. Personally I'm not overly fond on the "comprehensive" expensive system but if you are then you can vote to sign up to it.
I am going to lunch now (home made) happy in the knowledge that we agree on this.
A metaphor for our age.
For the best, I should probably stop procrastinating and get to work anyway.
For the benefit of Scott getting to work in this instance means getting my browser off this website and logging on to the site I need to log onto to get my work done instead of procrastinating right now. It doesn't mean getting in a car and driving somewhere. Because its possible to get to work at home.
Just a gentle nudge Scott, no amount of anti Brexit posts is going to stop it happening and maybe the odd post urging the EU to compromise would be sensible
Which might make you feel better, Big_G, but would make zero difference to any negotiation.
No but the odd post from Remainers on here urging the EU to compromise does no harm. So in that spirit -
I for one hope the EU can see their way to compromising with us in certain areas and I would urge them to do so.
They won't compromise on the integrity of their external border nor should we expect then to. I hope they can compromise in that "we want to negotiate our own deals" doesn't mean we will be implementing then tomorrow as (a) they'll be worse than we have now and (b) they'll take years to negotiate.
Until then the compromise is that we have the *right* to d our own thing which we choose not to implement and they allow us to remain participants in the EEA and CU from the outside.
Also interesting that Huawei are banking on a future Labour government to reverse the current stance of removing them from UK infrastructure. This could become a real live wire for Starmer if he doesn't address it, Tories will absolutely roast him on national security and patriotism if he doesn't sign up to getting rid of them as well.
Maybe. But what if it's framed as a choice between standing up to China and better tech? I'd like to think voters are more interested in a 'high moral ground' foreign and trade policy than they are in its tangible costs but are they?
Fundamentally it’s the freedom to choose our own destiny.
You don’t value that highly and therefore emphasis the economic aspects.
That’s your right, of course, but it’s incorrect say that the upsides have not been articulated
I'd be open to considering that (it's argued by Lexit supporters), but I don't think it's real, any more than the right of, say, Birmingham City Council to choose Birmingham's own destiny. In the real world as it is today, most of the important choices that weren't already held by individual nations are in fact multilateral.
We can rweak and we can whinge that other countries aren't facilitating our wishes, but in the end it's an illusion to think we now control our destiny much more than we did before. In many ways, rather less, as we no longer directly influence the decisions made that affect us.
I disagree (as is my sovereign right).
For example we have been able to take a strong line against China over Hong Kong. Germany has taken a very different position because of their business interests.
The trade off is:
Strong U.K. (plus possibly stronger Five Eye) position * diplomatic weight of UK vs marginally stronger EU position * diplomatic weight of the EU.
I think the trade off enhances our overall objective - but absolutely we need to work to convince others.
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Would you be able to go back to work if your place of work is shut?
There is hard-faced commercial reckoning on this. Many eg City firms moved seamlessly to working from home. Why should they go back to their offices, exposing their staff to the Central Line or whatnot and a potential infection outbreak in their offices? This would mean that no one is in the offices but instead of everyone being at home working, they would be at home recovering or isolating on account of COVID-19.
Common sense for City firms would see the local restaurants go out of business
Indeed, though as mentioned, offices aren't open in a lot of cases. We're not opening ours until September.
Yes, the risk of getting everyone back and then having them all off sick is perceived to be high.
But sadly for the government this doesn't solve the problem of getting customers through the door at K10.
Its not the governments job to get customers through the door at K10. That's K10's managements job.
So all that talk by Rishi (good tip btw I failed to get on, d'oh) about kickstarting the economy via a package of measures is all a bunch of bollocks?
Good to know.
No, its providing resources and opportunities - and removing pressures of taxation - but its up to the sector to now make the most of those resources and opportunities.
Its not Sunak's job to get customers through the door at K10. But if customers do go through the doors at K10 then thanks to Sunak's actions the K10 management will be able to make better margins from fewer customers than they would have previously under the old tax regime. But if K10's management don't get any customers through the door then that's on them.
What if the government had forbidden K10's customers, by advising them to work from home, from going to K10?
They haven't forbidden them. In the past they did which is why the furlough existed but people can still travel to K10 if they choose to do so, K10 just need to make themselves attractive to being a destination rather than relying upon passing trade.
Also interesting that Huawei are banking on a future Labour government to reverse the current stance of removing them from UK infrastructure. This could become a real live wire for Starmer if he doesn't address it, Tories will absolutely roast him on national security and patriotism if he doesn't sign up to getting rid of them as well.
Maybe. But what if it's framed as a choice between standing up to China and better tech? I'd like to think voters are more interested in a 'high moral ground' foreign and trade policy than they are in its tangible costs but are they?
I don't think Labour would want to go into the next election labelled as soft on China.
Just a gentle nudge Scott, no amount of anti Brexit posts is going to stop it happening and maybe the odd post urging the EU to compromise would be sensible
Which might make you feel better, Big_G, but would make zero difference to any negotiation.
No but the odd post from Remainers on here urging the EU to compromise does no harm. So in that spirit -
I for one hope the EU can see their way to compromising with us in certain areas and I would urge them to do so.
They won't compromise on the integrity of their external border nor should we expect then to. I hope they can compromise in that "we want to negotiate our own deals" doesn't mean we will be implementing then tomorrow as (a) they'll be worse than we have now and (b) they'll take years to negotiate.
Until then the compromise is that we have the *right* to d our own thing which we choose not to implement and they allow us to remain participants in the EEA and CU from the outside.
Yes. I'm sure this will be the animating spirit of the Deal - that we will have the right in future to do various things that we will not be doing.
Also interesting that Huawei are banking on a future Labour government to reverse the current stance of removing them from UK infrastructure. This could become a real live wire for Starmer if he doesn't address it, Tories will absolutely roast him on national security and patriotism if he doesn't sign up to getting rid of them as well.
Any link, but it doesn't really matter as Starmer isn't in power until at least 2024 and while BT are complaining about 10 years of work I don't believe it's that bad...
Mutual recognition of professional standards is not uncommon
Edit: but I suppose it is too much to ask for to expect the EU lawyers to break down non tariff barriers that protect EU lawyers from competition
Is it common? Which countries allow lawyers to practise based on their registration in other countries? I would have thought the EU was nearly unique.
I don’t know lawyers specifically but certainly doctors, nurses, vets and accountants all have a system in place.
Something is either unique or it is not. OK, pedantic.
However, so far as my (ex) professional registration is concerned, I could have registered to work in other countries, my qualification being recognised by the relevant bodies.And EU pharmacists could, and did, register here. However I couldn't go across to Germany without re-registering, and likewise a German or Spanish pharmacist couldn't practice here without first registering. And registering is quite expensive.
There is now a process for the foreign recognition of legal standing across the EU, however, it's used by very few people.
If I am an English qualified lawyer, it's likely that I am hired for that knowledge in Germany. It's not clear to me how I could practise German law up to a standard anyone would want to pay me for, without a body of practice similar to becoming a German lawyer.
Nevertheless this access right must be valuable, otherwise the UK government wouldn't be pushing for it (and the EU rejecting it).
I suspect this is a net cost for the U.K. they are trying to eliminate
@Philip_Thompson it doesn’t matter what was said. Brexit voters are expecting their lives to improve as a result of leaving the EU. If that doesn’t happen, they are not going to be very happy.
On that I agree 100%.
However do you also agree that their lives won't improve if nothing changes, will it? Surely the only way to improve their lives is to seize the opportunities Brexiteers see before us, even if Remainers don't see it as an opportunity.
How can their lives improve if we proceed with Brexit in a "damage limitation" mindset?
Still waiting on an actual definition of those opportunities.
1: The UK Parliament rather than the EU determining UK laws. 2: The UK electorate being able to kick out governments that make laws they don't like (not possible with the EU). 3: UK controlling its own money. 4: UK controlling its own trade policies. 5: UK controlling its own borders.
Just off the top of my head. Point 5 is one I don't care about but a new points based immigration system has been announced today on that which is newsworthy.
The UK was able to have a points based immigration system before. The reason for not having one was simply an assessment that it wasn't deemed the best solution. Immigration was however subject to a freedom of movement requirement for EU citizens. Freedom surely counts as "opportunity", no?
We could have a point based immigration system with EU migrants? Are you 100% sure?
Yes with non-EU migrants (we didn't have a points based system before, but we could have done if we had wanted to - we didn't) Immigration is a national competency under the EU so in principle we could have had one with other EU members, with the very significant proviso that freedom of movement is maintained and all EU nationalities get equal treatment.
So you might say that's a No in practice. However, whatever system we do come up with now will be reciprocated by the EU and must also include equal treatment of EU nationals to be agreed by them. The UK will probably have preferential access for EU citizens in the interest of practicality where the points are somewhat less meaningful.
The loss of freedom of movement damages us economically, as well as being a restriction of personal liberty
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Would you be able to go back to work if your place of work is shut?
There is hard-faced commercial reckoning on this. Many eg City firms moved seamlessly to working from home. Why should they go back to their offices, exposing their staff to the Central Line or whatnot and a potential infection outbreak in their offices? This would mean that no one is in the offices but instead of everyone being at home working, they would be at home recovering or isolating on account of COVID-19.
Common sense for City firms would see the local restaurants go out of business
Indeed, though as mentioned, offices aren't open in a lot of cases. We're not opening ours until September.
Might mean more restaurants out in what up to now has been commuter-land.
And a massive shift of lunch and coffee from cafes and restaurants to supermarkets which is going to cause a lot of unemployment.
Exactly. I stopped buying coffees ages ago, and then I began to bring in lunch to the office which is awkward but a very small amount of xl action plugging in my daily breakfast (porridge at Pret), lunch (salad bar at the place round the corner), and coffee (decaf americano at Pret or wherever) left a staggering pre-tax outlay.
Yes, I switched over to bringing my own lunch in early last year for 4 days a week and doing Friday lunches at a proper sit down place rather than awful £5 salads I would eat at my desk every day. It was such a good decision and I saved on average £10-12 per week. We also badgered the company for a new coffee machine which they got and we have no need to go out for coffee because the machine does barista quality, another £10-12 per week saving.
Between the two of us we saved around £2,500 last year just with these small lifestyle changes. Now replicate that among basically all office workers and it's a staggering amount of money no longer being pumped into the economy.
I can't bring myself to be upset by the sudden death of twatty coffee culture and bijou lunch choices that charge £lots for £little. WFH is a positive shift for so many reasons, and more people staying locally will mean more opportunities for local businesses as opposed to the one in the middle of town/city
Yeah, fuck those businesses and all of the, err, workers, I guess.
The whole point is that WFH people don't go out for lunch or coffee at all and the only businesses that benefit are supermarkets who can increase sales of food with very little incremental employment necessary.
Hang on a minute, isn't this capitalism? Businesses rise and fall, sectors and industries the same. It's been self-evident for months that millions on furlough are already redundant. "Go back to the office you plebs" won't save them - when companies can allow WFH, save all the operating costs of an office and give their employees a big work - life balance improvement are you saying they can't be allowed to do that because of fucking Pret?
Also interesting that Huawei are banking on a future Labour government to reverse the current stance of removing them from UK infrastructure. This could become a real live wire for Starmer if he doesn't address it, Tories will absolutely roast him on national security and patriotism if he doesn't sign up to getting rid of them as well.
Any link, but it doesn't really matter as Starmer isn't in power until at least 2024 and while BT are complaining about 10 years of work I don't believe it's that bad...
Except for the word election there there is zero mention of Labour and Starmer. In fact the election is only there as it's about the final excuse Huawei has to delay the inevitable.
And this isn't a political decision - it's a national security one which means Huawei has to be shown the door now China has revealed Huawei's true colours.
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Would you be able to go back to work if your place of work is shut?
There is hard-faced commercial reckoning on this. Many eg City firms moved seamlessly to working from home. Why should they go back to their offices, exposing their staff to the Central Line or whatnot and a potential infection outbreak in their offices? This would mean that no one is in the offices but instead of everyone being at home working, they would be at home recovering or isolating on account of COVID-19.
Common sense for City firms would see the local restaurants go out of business
Indeed, though as mentioned, offices aren't open in a lot of cases. We're not opening ours until September.
Might mean more restaurants out in what up to now has been commuter-land.
And a massive shift of lunch and coffee from cafes and restaurants to supermarkets which is going to cause a lot of unemployment.
Exactly. I stopped buying coffees ages ago, and then I began to bring in lunch to the office which is awkward but a very small amount of xl action plugging in my daily breakfast (porridge at Pret), lunch (salad bar at the place round the corner), and coffee (decaf americano at Pret or wherever) left a staggering pre-tax outlay.
Yes, I switched over to bringing my own lunch in early last year for 4 days a week and doing Friday lunches at a proper sit down place rather than awful £5 salads I would eat at my desk every day. It was such a good decision and I saved on average £10-12 per week. We also badgered the company for a new coffee machine which they got and we have no need to go out for coffee because the machine does barista quality, another £10-12 per week saving.
Between the two of us we saved around £2,500 last year just with these small lifestyle changes. Now replicate that among basically all office workers and it's a staggering amount of money no longer being pumped into the economy.
I can't bring myself to be upset by the sudden death of twatty coffee culture and bijou lunch choices that charge £lots for £little. WFH is a positive shift for so many reasons, and more people staying locally will mean more opportunities for local businesses as opposed to the one in the middle of town/city
Yeah, fuck those businesses and all of the, err, workers, I guess.
The whole point is that WFH people don't go out for lunch or coffee at all and the only businesses that benefit are supermarkets who can increase sales of food with very little incremental employment necessary.
Hang on a minute, isn't this capitalism? Businesses rise and fall, sectors and industries the same. It's been self-evident for months that millions on furlough are already redundant. "Go back to the office you plebs" won't save them - when companies can allow WFH, save all the operating costs of an office and give their employees a big work - life balance improvement are you saying they can't be allowed to do that because of fucking Pret?
We're on a hybrid model here. 90% WFH but office is being used as a hub for filing and a physical presence for meetings. We pretty much all have cars though and own our own premises (And everyone has plenty of space) so it's different I think to a large complex with lifts etc where each company has a floor and so forth.
If Pickard is an idiot too it doesn't change things.
If you can work from home then do so, if you can't and its safe to go back to work then go back to work. What part of that do you and Pickard struggle with?
Lets take the case of a waitress and a restaurant that has now reopened - it is legal now for her to go back to work. If its safe to do so then what do you propose for her? Should she work from home in your eyes, as a waitress? Or should she go back to work?
If you want to be a deliberate idiot all it shows is that you are an idiot.
The issue is the office blocks around the restaurant.
What is the advice for them? Restaurants and waitresses fine. But the government needs to solve the dilemma of the customers. That is why the advice is so confusing.
What is an office manager to do? The guidance is to work from home = don't rearrange the office yet. The message is get back to work = rearrange the office.
But you see no problem.
As the government are saying they should use their own common sense and decide what suits them.
If they see no good reason to bring people back in and are fine with continuing to work from home they should do so.
If they see a good reason to bring people back in and it is safe to do so then they should do so.
They should use their own common sense. Which is the government's advice. There is no problem, the office managers hopefully aren't complete and utter idiots pretending to be (or actually being) dumb.
The government's advice, as we are trying to tell you, is all over the place. But if the advice is use your common sense, what is the point of their guidance? Let alone conflicting guidance?
What does the government want and what policies is it going to put in place to achieve that? I mean that is the question governments should be asking.
Return of economic health? Go to work. Minimisation of the virus? Don't go to work. Balance of the two? Manage the situation and set out policies designed to achieve that.
No one has a problem with the complexity of the issue, nor the challenges of solving for the best possible outcome. But the government's messaging at the most basic level (what do we want and how do we achieve it) is failing.
The advice is clear. Go to work if you can, that work should be at home if it can be.
So on this basis staff at K10 Japanese Restaurant on Appold Street in the heart of the City in London should go back to work while everyone at the surrounding office buildings should stay at home?
Would you be able to go back to work if your place of work is shut?
There is hard-faced commercial reckoning on this. Many eg City firms moved seamlessly to working from home. Why should they go back to their offices, exposing their staff to the Central Line or whatnot and a potential infection outbreak in their offices? This would mean that no one is in the offices but instead of everyone being at home working, they would be at home recovering or isolating on account of COVID-19.
Common sense for City firms would see the local restaurants go out of business
Indeed, though as mentioned, offices aren't open in a lot of cases. We're not opening ours until September.
Might mean more restaurants out in what up to now has been commuter-land.
And a massive shift of lunch and coffee from cafes and restaurants to supermarkets which is going to cause a lot of unemployment.
Exactly. I stopped buying coffees ages ago, and then I began to bring in lunch to the office which is awkward but a very small amount of xl action plugging in my daily breakfast (porridge at Pret), lunch (salad bar at the place round the corner), and coffee (decaf americano at Pret or wherever) left a staggering pre-tax outlay.
Yes, I switched over to bringing my own lunch in early last year for 4 days a week and doing Friday lunches at a proper sit down place rather than awful £5 salads I would eat at my desk every day. It was such a good decision and I saved on average £10-12 per week. We also badgered the company for a new coffee machine which they got and we have no need to go out for coffee because the machine does barista quality, another £10-12 per week saving.
Between the two of us we saved around £2,500 last year just with these small lifestyle changes. Now replicate that among basically all office workers and it's a staggering amount of money no longer being pumped into the economy.
I can't bring myself to be upset by the sudden death of twatty coffee culture and bijou lunch choices that charge £lots for £little. WFH is a positive shift for so many reasons, and more people staying locally will mean more opportunities for local businesses as opposed to the one in the middle of town/city
Yeah, fuck those businesses and all of the, err, workers, I guess.
The whole point is that WFH people don't go out for lunch or coffee at all and the only businesses that benefit are supermarkets who can increase sales of food with very little incremental employment necessary.
Hang on a minute, isn't this capitalism? Businesses rise and fall, sectors and industries the same. It's been self-evident for months that millions on furlough are already redundant. "Go back to the office you plebs" won't save them - when companies can allow WFH, save all the operating costs of an office and give their employees a big work - life balance improvement are you saying they can't be allowed to do that because of fucking Pret?
No, what I'm suggesting is that this rush by office based companies to save money by getting everyone to WFH permanently is going to have a lot of downsides economically and socially. We're going to become a more boring and less dynamic society.
…He also remembered a time when his sons had come home crying because the children of a nearby family had called them "Jewish pigs" and beaten them up. Instead of consoling his sons, he'd been angry with them and punished them for not defending themselves. He wrote more than once asking for forgiveness. "With all that happened later on, the incident really stuck in his head. He wrote how full of remorse he was," says Vittorio. "He took that regret to his death.”…
…But by the time Daniele and his parents-in-law had been put on a train to Auschwitz on 2 September 1944 "he had understood", says Vittorio. Astonishingly, Daniele continued to write. Vittorio says he knew one of the workers on the train, who delivered a final letter to Anna, written within sight of the death camp. "He gave him a letter that he brought to us and in that letter he'd written, 'From the distance you can see the smoke. There's so much smoke here. This is hell.’”…
Masks are either useful in preventing the spread of Covid 19, or they are not. If they are useful, you make it a requirement for everyone to wear them. You don't have to go Gestapo, simply explain to people why they are being asked to wear them and make it clear that they are not optional.
This is how the world ends. Not with bang but with a simper.
In the rich and capacious dictionary of Scottish insults, many of which can be applied to Gove, plamf seems the one that gets it just right when I see his smirking puss.
plamf Plamf is a Scottish word used to insult people, or in the gentle ribbing of friends.
It actually means "one who enjoys sniffing another's underwear". Haw you ya plamf! Get away fae ma washin' ya plamf!
The Scottish mask rules are what should be rolled out nationally. They are easy to follow and don't cause much inconvenience. Gove is a complete idiot and causing unnecessary confusion with his idiotic personal agenda.
Masks are either useful in preventing the spread of Covid 19, or they are not. If they are useful, you make it a requirement for everyone to wear them. You don't have to go Gestapo, simply explain to people why they are being asked to wear them and make it clear that they are not optional.
If they are not useful, you do something else.
Isn't that Gove's point? They should be used, but you shouldn't have to have a law about it.
The Scottish mask rules are what should be rolled out nationally. They are easy to follow and don't cause much inconvenience. Gove is a complete idiot and causing unnecessary confusion with his idiotic personal agenda.
…He also remembered a time when his sons had come home crying because the children of a nearby family had called them "Jewish pigs" and beaten them up. Instead of consoling his sons, he'd been angry with them and punished them for not defending themselves. He wrote more than once asking for forgiveness. "With all that happened later on, the incident really stuck in his head. He wrote how full of remorse he was," says Vittorio. "He took that regret to his death.”…
…But by the time Daniele and his parents-in-law had been put on a train to Auschwitz on 2 September 1944 "he had understood", says Vittorio. Astonishingly, Daniele continued to write. Vittorio says he knew one of the workers on the train, who delivered a final letter to Anna, written within sight of the death camp. "He gave him a letter that he brought to us and in that letter he'd written, 'From the distance you can see the smoke. There's so much smoke here. This is hell.’”…
On an related point R4 is dramatising Primo Levi's The Periodic Table at the moment. Some of their 'great works' dramas can be a bit hit and miss, but I'd really recommend this one.
I have never understood why anyone has ever rated Gove, including people whose opinions I normally respect. He is even more dishonest than Johnson. Johnson lies as he breathes. He will tell a falsehood because the truth is inconvenient, is less interesting or because he feels like it. Gove calculates as he lies. Gove doesn't have the mitigation of being competent.
The Scottish mask rules are what should be rolled out nationally. They are easy to follow and don't cause much inconvenience. Gove is a complete idiot and causing unnecessary confusion with his idiotic personal agenda.
Gove is being too clever by half. It's some odd version of libertarianism & good manners he's got in his head that we ought to live by. As you say just adopt the Scottish rules.
Masks are either useful in preventing the spread of Covid 19, or they are not. If they are useful, you make it a requirement for everyone to wear them. You don't have to go Gestapo, simply explain to people why they are being asked to wear them and make it clear that they are not optional.
If they are not useful, you do something else.
Isn't that Gove's point? They should be used, but you shouldn't have to have a law about it.
The first part of that message is being lost with his fannying around the question.
The Scottish mask rules are what should be rolled out nationally. They are easy to follow and don't cause much inconvenience. Gove is a complete idiot and causing unnecessary confusion with his idiotic personal agenda.
Does that apply to Mark Drakeford of Wales who has just ruled the use of face masks out for shops
Hang on a minute, isn't this capitalism? Businesses rise and fall, sectors and industries the same. It's been self-evident for months that millions on furlough are already redundant. "Go back to the office you plebs" won't save them - when companies can allow WFH, save all the operating costs of an office and give their employees a big work - life balance improvement are you saying they can't be allowed to do that because of fucking Pret?
No, what I'm suggesting is that this rush by office based companies to save money by getting everyone to WFH permanently is going to have a lot of downsides economically and socially. We're going to become a more boring and less dynamic society.
The thing is people used to work from an office as it was the only way work could be easily distributed and done.
That is no longer the case, the only thing Covid has done is bring 15 years of communications improvements to ahead and made it obvious to most firms that a lot of their thinking regarding homeworking was just completely wrong.
And the consequence of that is that we are going to see a set of changes that would have occurred over the next 10 years anyway have either already occurred or will occur in the next 3-6 months.
Which means the entire service industry that was based around how things were for the last 20 years is just going to disappear immediately rather than gradually...
Masks are either useful in preventing the spread of Covid 19, or they are not. If they are useful, you make it a requirement for everyone to wear them. You don't have to go Gestapo, simply explain to people why they are being asked to wear them and make it clear that they are not optional.
If they are not useful, you do something else.
Isn't that Gove's point? They should be used, but you shouldn't have to have a law about it.
If that's Gove's point he's not making it clearly. I didn't hear the necessary words such as "compulsory", "mandatory" or " you are required".
Comments
Twit; just seen retail manager!
Fuckit, I'm changing my vote. Brexit it is.
HOW shall we f8ck off, master?
Blyth Valley is 98% White and British born. Their perception of the “immigration problem” is entirely fictional.
Common sense for City firms would see the local restaurants go out of business
Because the UK never registers new arrivals, unlike in Germany, for example, where you must register if you'll be resident for more than two weeks, there is no real means of tracking immigrants coming in under FoM but that was a UK choice. All the ranting seen about EU migrants claiming benefits was driven by the fact that the UK didn't want to enforce the rights it could under FoM legislation. It also chose not to block FoM from accession countries which most EU countries.
Again these are choice various UK governments of various stripes did not take.
If you think that your tennis club provides value for money then maybe remain a member.
If you don't - and it you perhaps don't even enjoy tennis and want to play golf instead - maybe consider quitting the tennis club?
Blair/Brown should've held that referendum. They didn't because they feared losing it (which was likely). But the resulting u-turn was a Pyrrhic victory for pro-EU types.
Those who still hold pro-EU views might want to consider what changes would move things their way, rather than confining themselves to tittering about the generally incompetent way the Government's going things (not aided by EU duplicity over the Canada deal, which was on offer up until the moment we wanted it, and decades of UK politicians of all parties integrating us ever more and thus making any departure all the more difficult).
It's faintly perverse that pro-EU politicians had such a habit of being sceptical in opposition and quietly acquiescent in office, in addition to using the EU as scapegoats for measures that need not have been so bad. I'd accuse them of deliberately increasing sceptical sentiment, but for the lack of cunning which became so apparent in 2016.
Actually accession "blocks" were only ever a temporary transition issue. The "blocks" if they'd been applied would have expired about a decade ago anyway. Indeed when Romania became an EU nation then the transition restrictions where applied - and after the restrictions expired hundreds of thousands of Romanians moved to the UK despite the "block" that you talked about having been in place for the longest possible period.
Indeed Romanian now for years now is the second-highest non-UK nationality to be living in the UK even higher than either Irish or Indian.
The government is there to govern us, god help us. And to steer us through these difficult times. So what does it want to achieve and what policies is it putting in place to achieve that?
Once you understand that then you begin to see why the "guidance" is such a failure.
In reality the gradual glide path downwards the UK was on will continue and eventually there will be enough people looking at EU membership both as a good idea to stop that and also out of nostalgia for pre-2016 (after all nostalgia did it for Leave), that EEA, SM, CU, associate and finally full membership will follow.
Its just gravity and time.
Should I have continued to pay Total Fitness (other gyms are available) £45 a month in membership fees, or should I quit and jog on the road instead? Does the fact I still wanted to exercise mean I shouldn't consider the membership fee and what else I could do with £45 a month when weighing up my options?
But don't underestimate the power of inertia. That's one of the most remarkable things about the vote to leave succeeding.
Pro-EU types consistently siding with the EU against the UK helps reinforce the Us and Them mentality which should be the natural mindset of sceptics. It looks unpatriotic, gleeful, and vindictive. But worst of all, it's just dumb.
Like the 'Little England' line. Like 'back of the queue'. It makes all the right-on people who agree with the cool kids giggle, and does nothing at all for everyone else.
Anyway, I must be off for a bit.
The government is not there to steer us through these difficult times. The government is there to help as best as it can but to let individuals choose their own path as much as possible.
That is why the guidance is a success not a failure. Because unless you're an authoritarian dictator it is up for local businesses and local people to determine what to do based upon their own requirements not have a centrally managed diktat from Whitehall that applies to everyone uniformly.
But sadly for the government this doesn't solve the problem of getting customers through the door at K10.
That's not saying the Government shouldn't do something. That was the big problem with Thatcherism. the mines and so on were closed and the workers were, too often, just left to get on with it.
But all this guidance makes me think that actually they are trying to steer us somewhere. I am just glad we agree that they are failing at that aim.
But if eg I was living in a Home of Multiple Occupancy living with 27 other people and was forced to abide by common rules while living there and forced to share some of my money with my 27 housemates some of whom were wasting it in ways I wasn't impressed with and I knew that I was putting in more money than I was taking out . . . then I'd certainly consider getting a house on my own instead.
I think that is not a bad Brexit metaphor tbh.
Her husband Kevin - also a key worker who runs and maintains a power station on the south Humber bank - took out a £120,000 mortgage with Northern Rock in 2007 at 100% of the value of his house with an unsecured loan on top.
Northern Rock's "Together" mortgage was approved at the time by regulators under the oversight of the Treasury.
Is it any wonder things went tits up in 2007-08?
Good to know.
I think they are trying to steer us in the direction of getting through the virus with as little damage as possible while letting people choose how to act as much as possible.
You may want more authoritarianism from government but I do not. People make better decisions than governments do.
Its not Sunak's job to get customers through the door at K10. But if customers do go through the doors at K10 then thanks to Sunak's actions the K10 management will be able to make better margins from fewer customers than they would have previously under the old tax regime. But if K10's management don't get any customers through the door then that's on them.
There are two conflicting aims - to avoid economic damage and to avoid health damage.
And by conflating them they are reduced to wholly contradictory messaging and the situation whereby you have restaurants open following government advice, and all the customers nowhere to be seen, also following government advice. With the result that the restaurants are at a high risk of going out of business.
Which leaves the government's aim where?
I don't want more authoritarianism. I want clarity of what the government wants and the policies it is putting in place to achieve that.
Clearly this information is getting back to central government and the economic impact of the collapse in Central London hospitality will be immense, sort of, certainly for landlords. However for suburban equivalents this could be a great time: I've certainly made use of my high-street cafes far more than I ever could in the past.
For employers and transport systems the government's approach is problematic. I can see that they are trying to highlight that office workers "could go back" and that it reveals something they are probably very worried about. However the official advice is driven by the science and for Central London (which I apologise for banging on about but it is my experience), that will require getting millions of people back onto public transport, which is both risky in terms of the disease and because busses and trains are running reduced capacity (though calling patterns have returned I believe), it is made even harder. Commuters will not be happy sharing corwded carraiges or platforms for a long time.
For employers operating offices where their staff can work from home there is a fear that if they just told their staff to come back (in line with government wishes but currently counter-indicated by their own advice), then if there was a case of an employee becoming ill they could be sued. The human and reputational risk is therefore too high so in practice nothing is likely to change and Central London, as well as other hubs, will continue to struggle as workers stay away.
I can't imagine what government advice would have to be to change that situation.
"Get your vaccines here"
Between the two of us we saved around £2,500 last year just with these small lifestyle changes. Now replicate that among basically all office workers and it's a staggering amount of money no longer being pumped into the economy.
Yes we can be tied in to "comprehensive" and expensive arrangements that may not suit us, Total Fitness style - or choose our own path and spend our money how we please by quitting.
I'm glad on this we can agree, it is a metaphor for Brexit. Personally I'm not overly fond on the "comprehensive" expensive system but if you are then you can vote to sign up to it.
https://twitter.com/ScotNational/status/1282620032128778240?s=20
I for one hope the EU can see their way to compromising with us in certain areas and I would urge them to do so.
That applies to nearly all restaurants in the Square Mile.
And apparently Michael Gove does understand that and is trying to get customers through the door, hence the nudge and wink about going back to the office.
Without an actual change to the situation though it won't change a thing.
Well, no shit
(And those aspects do apply to Scotland as well. I’m not sure where you got the idea that they don’t. It’s not the same as having a referendum every 6 years)
A metaphor for our age.
Yes that leaves us with contradictory aims. Guess what, life's complicated. There are always contradictory aims in real life, that's what making decisions are all about. If there weren't contradictory aims then decision making would be easy.
Life is messy and complicated. Get used to it. You want the government taking responsibility for all your difficult decisions do you? I can think of nothing worse than that!
Thank goodness we have a government in place that entrusts people to make difficult decisions based on the evidence they have before them rather than one that is arrogant enough to think it knows best in all circumstances ever.
I’d expect in this case they are offering a reciprocal right of access.
Effectively all the change means is that you need to hire a local lawyer in addition to your existing team so it’s an extra cost for no benefit except the lawyers. However as most of the core teams are London based the EU sees this as extra revenue for their citizens while most of the litigants wanting access to the the IK courts will hire U.K. lawyers anyway.
The whole point is that WFH people don't go out for lunch or coffee at all and the only businesses that benefit are supermarkets who can increase sales of food with very little incremental employment necessary.
For the benefit of Scott getting to work in this instance means getting my browser off this website and logging on to the site I need to log onto to get my work done instead of procrastinating right now. It doesn't mean getting in a car and driving somewhere. Because its possible to get to work at home.
Until then the compromise is that we have the *right* to d our own thing which we choose not to implement and they allow us to remain participants in the EEA and CU from the outside.
For example we have been able to take a strong line against China over Hong Kong. Germany has taken a very different position because of their business interests.
The trade off is:
Strong U.K. (plus possibly stronger Five Eye) position * diplomatic weight of UK vs marginally stronger EU position * diplomatic weight of the EU.
I think the trade off enhances our overall objective - but absolutely we need to work to convince others.
Its hard - they may fail - but that's life.
So you might say that's a No in practice. However, whatever system we do come up with now will be reciprocated by the EU and must also include equal treatment of EU nationals to be agreed by them. The UK will probably have preferential access for EU citizens in the interest of practicality where the points are somewhat less meaningful.
The loss of freedom of movement damages us economically, as well as being a restriction of personal liberty
And this isn't a political decision - it's a national security one which means Huawei has to be shown the door now China has revealed Huawei's true colours.
…He also remembered a time when his sons had come home crying because the children of a nearby family had called them "Jewish pigs" and beaten them up. Instead of consoling his sons, he'd been angry with them and punished them for not defending themselves. He wrote more than once asking for forgiveness.
"With all that happened later on, the incident really stuck in his head. He wrote how full of remorse he was," says Vittorio. "He took that regret to his death.”…
…But by the time Daniele and his parents-in-law had been put on a train to Auschwitz on 2 September 1944 "he had understood", says Vittorio. Astonishingly, Daniele continued to write. Vittorio says he knew one of the workers on the train, who delivered a final letter to Anna, written within sight of the death camp.
"He gave him a letter that he brought to us and in that letter he'd written, 'From the distance you can see the smoke. There's so much smoke here. This is hell.’”…
https://twitter.com/jamesrbuk/status/1282637856780034050
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50sLS2T-zzc
If they are not useful, you do something else.
plamf
Plamf is a Scottish word used to insult people, or in the gentle ribbing of friends.
It actually means "one who enjoys sniffing another's underwear".
Haw you ya plamf!
Get away fae ma washin' ya plamf!
Gove did not say "English". He said he trusted people and businesses to decide for themselves.
The National are standing on their heads ventilating bullshit, as per usual.
So no change there, then.
That is no longer the case, the only thing Covid has done is bring 15 years of communications improvements to ahead and made it obvious to most firms that a lot of their thinking regarding homeworking was just completely wrong.
And the consequence of that is that we are going to see a set of changes that would have occurred over the next 10 years anyway have either already occurred or will occur in the next 3-6 months.
Which means the entire service industry that was based around how things were for the last 20 years is just going to disappear immediately rather than gradually...