Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. Sign in or register to get started.

Options

politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » As Covid soars to new US peak YouGov polling suggests that Tru

1235»

Comments

  • Options
    eekeek Posts: 25,029
    RobD said:

    FF43 said:

    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.
    We don't need a law, but we do need people to wear masks and the current argument is going to result in people not wearing masks because they don't want to...
  • Options
    PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 76,002
    edited July 2020
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53388444
    Boris to his credit is much clearer than Gove on this. Guidance but not enforcement (yet) - looks to me like Gove is replaying the Tory leadership election in his head....

  • Options
    nichomarnichomar Posts: 7,483
    Spain is rapidly moving to a ‘mask to be worn at all times’ situation apart from when seated eating or drinking even when the 1.5m rule is not challenged. They are responding to 100 outbreaks in the last four weeks since lockdown eased. The autonomous regions are responding based on local conditions but appear serious in trying to avoid it taking off again. Watching our area closely as we have seen large influx of weekenders these last two weeks with the beaches being patrolled to limit numbers and bars and restaurants regularly checked to ensure they maintain hygiene and distNcing rules.
  • Options
    Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,407
    eek said:

    RobD said:

    FF43 said:

    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.
    We don't need a law, but we do need people to wear masks and the current argument is going to result in people not wearing masks because they don't want to...
    Drakeford in Wales has just told us we do not need to wear a mask in shops
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,849
    MaxPB said:

    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.

    It was reported on R4 this morning that mask usage in Scottish shops had gone from around 25% to around 90% as a result (anecdotally, admittedly).

    Agreed; Gove is indeed a plamf.
  • Options
    nichomarnichomar Posts: 7,483
    Zaragoza and Huesca return to Phase 2: The Government of Aragon detects an increase in cases in Zaragoza, the area of influence of the city (Comarca Central), and in the city of Huesca. Therefore, it decides to apply the so-called "flexible Phase 2", as in the regions where it was already applied, announces the Aragonese government.

    14:08 Mandatory mask in Andalusia: the mask will be mandatory from Wednesday in all open and closed spaces in Andalusia, with the exception of family units, and those who do not respect this measure will be imposed sanctions that will be determined tomorrow in the Council Government of the Junta de Andalucía
  • Options
    Andy_CookeAndy_Cooke Posts: 4,819

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    @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?
    It's quite hard to make this into an analogy, because at no point did you come to rely on anything in the gym as we have come to rely on the Single Market (over and above any specific individual trade deal).

    If you'd come to rely on the showers and the sauna in the gym and had to use the swimming pool (again, not the best analogy because you weren't relying on it - maybe you were in training for a triathlon and it had the only swimming pool or swimming facilities for miles in any direction?), and decided that the way the gym was moving on in dictating levels of support you were supposed to give to other facilities and customers (I don't know - maybe it was expected to turn up to special galas and help run the stall? Work with me here...) - you decide to quit the gym.

    But you still need the pool, sauna, and showering facilities. So you as if you could just use those.

    The gym says that that's for members only. Sorry.

    You ask if you can have a special deal.

    They don't want to allow a special deal, because then the other members might decide not to support the galas and the other facilities, either, and that's essential for the gym to keep running. "No cherrypicking," they say.

    I reckon you'd shrug and accept it. Fine, them's the consequences of quitting the gym. But the UK desperately needs that swimming pool and sauna.

    Yeah, as an analogy, it needs work, but that's as close as I can get it to the "quitting the gym" model.
  • Options
    MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,631
    eek said:

    RobD said:

    FF43 said:

    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.
    We don't need a law, but we do need people to wear masks and the current argument is going to result in people not wearing masks because they don't want to...
    I honestly don't mind there being a law added to the temporary covid measures. Masks are proven to lower transmission and countries where they were in widespread use before the outbreak saw much lower levels of transmission and death. If we are to keep the UK from having a very bad second wave then masks have to be part of the solution and if it means mandating them in law, then so be it.
  • Options
    PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 76,002
    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    RobD said:

    FF43 said:

    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.
    We don't need a law, but we do need people to wear masks and the current argument is going to result in people not wearing masks because they don't want to...
    I honestly don't mind there being a law added to the temporary covid measures. Masks are proven to lower transmission and countries where they were in widespread use before the outbreak saw much lower levels of transmission and death. If we are to keep the UK from having a very bad second wave then masks have to be part of the solution and if it means mandating them in law, then so be it.
    Boris sounds like he wants to quickly boil the frog on this one. We're now at the "should wear" stage which ought to get usage up. The "have to" stick is out there.
    Gove is desperately unhelpful mind.
  • Options
    StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 14,598
    FF43 said:

    Compulsory facemasks are for feckless, Scotch barbarians, the genteel English are better than that.

    https://twitter.com/ScotNational/status/1282620032128778240?s=20

    The self-hatred is strong with Gove.
    Always has been: "vitriolic and poisonous, and that's when we're being nice"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50sLS2T-zzc
    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.
    Gove has several attractive features. He gives the impression of being in politics because he has a vision of how he wants to improve things; less establishment, more meritocracy. That's refreshing in comparison with (say) Johnson. It's not that bad a vision either. His personal backstory (although it's not as impressive as (say) Starmer's) is compelling.

    But he's much better at destruction than building. That's not a bad thing in itself; sometimes things need to stop so a better thing can start. (We may be seeing that with city centre economies at the moment). But for whatever reason, Gove has shown little interest in rebuilding after he has destroyed. Whether that's because it's too difficult, or because his temperament favours knocking down, I don't know.

    We saw it at Education. LEAs and University teacher training had problems, but the replacement lack-of-structures are still a mess 5 years after he left the DoE. We're seeing the same with Brexit; saying "we'll Leave" is easy. Working out how to manage trade after we leave is much harder, as we are seeing and will see.

    We need iconoclasts. Government needs them. We should be careful about giving them absolute freedom.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,849

    FF43 said:

    Compulsory facemasks are for feckless, Scotch barbarians, the genteel English are better than that.

    https://twitter.com/ScotNational/status/1282620032128778240?s=20

    The self-hatred is strong with Gove.
    Always has been: "vitriolic and poisonous, and that's when we're being nice"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50sLS2T-zzc
    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.
    Gove has several attractive features. He gives the impression of being in politics because he has a vision of how he wants to improve things; less establishment, more meritocracy. That's refreshing in comparison with (say) Johnson. It's not that bad a vision either. His personal backstory (although it's not as impressive as (say) Starmer's) is compelling.

    But he's much better at destruction than building. That's not a bad thing in itself; sometimes things need to stop so a better thing can start. (We may be seeing that with city centre economies at the moment). But for whatever reason, Gove has shown little interest in rebuilding after he has destroyed. Whether that's because it's too difficult, or because his temperament favours knocking down, I don't know.

    We saw it at Education. LEAs and University teacher training had problems, but the replacement lack-of-structures are still a mess 5 years after he left the DoE. We're seeing the same with Brexit; saying "we'll Leave" is easy. Working out how to manage trade after we leave is much harder, as we are seeing and will see.

    We need iconoclasts. Government needs them. We should be careful about giving them absolute freedom.
    Worse, he's recruited a similar iconoclast - Cummings - into the highest reaches of government, where he has no one seriously to restrain him.
  • Options
    blairfblairf Posts: 98
    eek said:

    MaxPB said:



    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...
    an issue is the built environment has evolved for that 'old' reality. transport, retail, land use, power, comms etc. etc. all designed with centres that people go in and out of. all the office/retail/F&B/accommodation/leisure space has to 'do' something. In a normal market this gets sorted out by price. But property and transport work on very very long timescales and very very opaque pricing.
  • Options
    AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,849
    There is no justification for this, but it is a clever piece of trolling.

    China sanctions Cruz, Rubio in response to U.S. human rights penalties
    https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/13/china-human-rights-sanctions-american-officials-359371
  • Options
    CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,230

    @Cyclefree -- HMG has just opened applications for its Happy Meal voucherless voucher scheme.

    Restaurants, bars, cafes and other establishments who use the scheme will offer a 50% reduction, up to a maximum of £10 per person, to all diners who eat and/or drink-in throughout August.

    Customers do not need a voucher as participating establishments will just remove the discount from their bill. Businesses simply reclaim the discounted amount through an online service, supported by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). Claims can be made on a weekly basis and will be paid into bank accounts within five working days.


    https://www.gov.uk/government/news/hmrc-invites-hospitality-industry-to-register-for-eat-out-to-help-out

    Thank you.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,849
    Someone clearly hasn't been practicing a great deal what he preaches...

    https://twitter.com/9NewsAUS/status/1282558796737335297
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,175

    Compulsory facemasks are for feckless, Scotch barbarians, the genteel English are better than that.

    https://twitter.com/ScotNational/status/1282620032128778240?s=20

    Boris overruled Gove today and said facemasks should be worn in shops in England

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53388444
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,175
    edited July 2020
    Biden leading in Nebraska 02, last won by a Democrat by Obama in 2008.

    The Hillary states plus PA and MI and NE02 gives him 269 EC votes and then one of Florida or Wisconsin as well gives him the presidency https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1282650021826113536?s=20
  • Options
    williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 48,149
    HYUFD said:
    It was explicit that we might not have a trade agreement. That's why it details what happens in the absence of one.
  • Options
    Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 33,215
    HYUFD said:
    Who had "Brexiteers don't understand Brexit" on their Brexit Bingo card?

    Everybody...
  • Options
    CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,230
    DavidL said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Since it is the 25th anniversary of Srebrenica and what China is doing to the Uighurs is back in the news, time to repost this - https://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2019/12/09/lets-talk-about-islamophobia/.

    On that sort of topic this was a genuinely moving story on the BBC website this weekend: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-53358123

    25 years? How the time has flown.
    Very very moving.

    My best friend’s father’s correspondence from before - and during - the war has just been accepted by the Yad Vashem museum in Israel. He was German Jew, a hotelier, who escaped from Germany and after a traumatic journey through Europe, ended up in Britain, where he listened to German PoW as part of an intelligence project to find out how much they knew of the atrocities which were being committed.

    Like quite a few of his generation, he felt the loss of his German identity at least as much as his persecution as a Jew.
  • Options

    MaxPB said:

    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
    No, he is an opponent of the current govt therefore his view is sensible, pragmatic, reasonable and evidence based as he, like Sturgeon in Scotland can put no foot wrong.
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,175
    Cyclefree said:

    DavidL said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Since it is the 25th anniversary of Srebrenica and what China is doing to the Uighurs is back in the news, time to repost this - https://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2019/12/09/lets-talk-about-islamophobia/.

    On that sort of topic this was a genuinely moving story on the BBC website this weekend: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-53358123

    25 years? How the time has flown.
    Very very moving.

    My best friend’s father’s correspondence from before - and during - the war has just been accepted by the Yad Vashem museum in Israel. He was German Jew, a hotelier, who escaped from Germany and after a traumatic journey through Europe, ended up in Britain, where he listened to German PoW as part of an intelligence project to find out how much they knew of the atrocities which were being committed.

    Like quite a few of his generation, he felt the loss of his German identity at least as much as his persecution as a Jew.
    Went to Yad Vashem last year, a very moving experience
  • Options
    Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    HYUFD said:

    Compulsory facemasks are for feckless, Scotch barbarians, the genteel English are better than that.

    https://twitter.com/ScotNational/status/1282620032128778240?s=20

    Boris overruled Gove today and said facemasks should be worn in shops in England

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53388444
    That's not overruling.

    Gove is saying they should be worn but should not need to be mandatory as good manners should ensure they're worn.
    Boris is saying they should be worn and a review is being done as to whether they should be mandatory.

    There's not much of a difference.
  • Options
    TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 114,609

    HYUFD said:
    It was explicit that we might not have a trade agreement. That's why it details what happens in the absence of one.
    You have to wonder about the idiots who got this deal and voted for it in Parliament.

    I mean how didn’t David Davis spot what was explicit.

    Still that’s not in his twenty most embarrassing tweets about Brexit

    https://twitter.com/bydonkeys/status/1092806135831244808?s=21
  • Options
    NorthofStokeNorthofStoke Posts: 1,758
    The government need someone whispering KISS into their ears at frequent intervals.
  • Options
    FF43FF43 Posts: 15,805

    FF43 said:

    Compulsory facemasks are for feckless, Scotch barbarians, the genteel English are better than that.

    https://twitter.com/ScotNational/status/1282620032128778240?s=20

    The self-hatred is strong with Gove.
    Always has been: "vitriolic and poisonous, and that's when we're being nice"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50sLS2T-zzc
    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.
    Gove has several attractive features. He gives the impression of being in politics because he has a vision of how he wants to improve things; less establishment, more meritocracy. That's refreshing in comparison with (say) Johnson. It's not that bad a vision either. His personal backstory (although it's not as impressive as (say) Starmer's) is compelling.

    But he's much better at destruction than building. That's not a bad thing in itself; sometimes things need to stop so a better thing can start. (We may be seeing that with city centre economies at the moment). But for whatever reason, Gove has shown little interest in rebuilding after he has destroyed. Whether that's because it's too difficult, or because his temperament favours knocking down, I don't know.

    We saw it at Education. LEAs and University teacher training had problems, but the replacement lack-of-structures are still a mess 5 years after he left the DoE. We're seeing the same with Brexit; saying "we'll Leave" is easy. Working out how to manage trade after we leave is much harder, as we are seeing and will see.

    We need iconoclasts. Government needs them. We should be careful about giving them absolute freedom.
    Interesting points about Gove. I did get the impression that he really did care about educational outcomes whem he was Education Minister. This certainly isn't true for many of his predecessors and successors. On the other hand none of his "solutions" have ever been evidence driven or delivered worthwhile results. I would say ideological rather than iconoclastic. Added to the mix is that Gove is completely untrustworthy, both in word and deed.

    I suppose we can charitably say Gove is a complicated character.
  • Options
    nichomarnichomar Posts: 7,483
    Most of the Spanish, supporters of fining to comply with the rules: 73.1% of Spaniards believe that sanctions and fines are necessary to comply with the rules against the coronavirus, such as the use of masks in public spaces or the safety distance, and only 22.4% think that it is enough to trust that people comply with them voluntarily, as follows from the pilot study on Emotional Wellbeing carried out by the Center for Sociological Research (CIS), in which they have participated 937 people (45.9 men and 54.1 women), from June 5 to 8. Eight out of ten respondents consider that during de-escalation many people have started to break the rules.
  • Options
    eekeek Posts: 25,029
    blairf said:

    eek said:

    MaxPB said:



    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...
    an issue is the built environment has evolved for that 'old' reality. transport, retail, land use, power, comms etc. etc. all designed with centres that people go in and out of. all the office/retail/F&B/accommodation/leisure space has to 'do' something. In a normal market this gets sorted out by price. But property and transport work on very very long timescales and very very opaque pricing.
    And that's the problem, things that would occur slowly and naturally over the next 10-15 years are instead going to occur almost instantly.

    I'm struggling to work out whether I will ever need an office (again) for my company - and that has a lot of implications - the most obvious one being that if I'm not working from an office I don't need people local to me or even in this country..
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,367

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    @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?
    It's quite hard to make this into an analogy, because at no point did you come to rely on anything in the gym as we have come to rely on the Single Market (over and above any specific individual trade deal).

    If you'd come to rely on the showers and the sauna in the gym and had to use the swimming pool (again, not the best analogy because you weren't relying on it - maybe you were in training for a triathlon and it had the only swimming pool or swimming facilities for miles in any direction?), and decided that the way the gym was moving on in dictating levels of support you were supposed to give to other facilities and customers (I don't know - maybe it was expected to turn up to special galas and help run the stall? Work with me here...) - you decide to quit the gym.

    But you still need the pool, sauna, and showering facilities. So you as if you could just use those.

    The gym says that that's for members only. Sorry.

    You ask if you can have a special deal.

    They don't want to allow a special deal, because then the other members might decide not to support the galas and the other facilities, either, and that's essential for the gym to keep running. "No cherrypicking," they say.

    I reckon you'd shrug and accept it. Fine, them's the consequences of quitting the gym. But the UK desperately needs that swimming pool and sauna.

    Yeah, as an analogy, it needs work, but that's as close as I can get it to the "quitting the gym" model.
    I'm in exactly this position atm. I pay £75 a month for a leisure club membership which includes boutique gym and luxury heated pool. I wish to just swim now - have tired of the boutique gym - so I have pitched them with a kind of "EEA" deal whereby I will pay £40 and just use the pool. They have rejected my offer because they say - and I quote - it will violate the integrity of their single fee membership and they have no way of policing the border between the pool and the gym. Free movement between the two is an integral part of the club's constitution. I sense I have little chance of getting them to compromise and so I will probably have to walk away and try to strike a "swim deal" with some other (no doubt inferior) entity.
  • Options
    CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,960

    MaxPB said:

    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
    No, he is an opponent of the current govt therefore his view is sensible, pragmatic, reasonable and evidence based as he, like Sturgeon in Scotland can put no foot wrong.
    Er, he runs the current government ...
  • Options
    algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,635
    Cyclefree said:

    @Cyclefree -- HMG has just opened applications for its Happy Meal voucherless voucher scheme.

    Restaurants, bars, cafes and other establishments who use the scheme will offer a 50% reduction, up to a maximum of £10 per person, to all diners who eat and/or drink-in throughout August.

    Customers do not need a voucher as participating establishments will just remove the discount from their bill. Businesses simply reclaim the discounted amount through an online service, supported by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). Claims can be made on a weekly basis and will be paid into bank accounts within five working days.


    https://www.gov.uk/government/news/hmrc-invites-hospitality-industry-to-register-for-eat-out-to-help-out

    Thank you.
    So no chance of fraud then. That's a relief.
  • Options
    CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,960
    Nigelb said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.

    It was reported on R4 this morning that mask usage in Scottish shops had gone from around 25% to around 90% as a result (anecdotally, admittedly).

    Agreed; Gove is indeed a plamf.
    Thank goodness for that (item 1 I mean, not item 2).
  • Options
    Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    @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?
    It's quite hard to make this into an analogy, because at no point did you come to rely on anything in the gym as we have come to rely on the Single Market (over and above any specific individual trade deal).

    If you'd come to rely on the showers and the sauna in the gym and had to use the swimming pool (again, not the best analogy because you weren't relying on it - maybe you were in training for a triathlon and it had the only swimming pool or swimming facilities for miles in any direction?), and decided that the way the gym was moving on in dictating levels of support you were supposed to give to other facilities and customers (I don't know - maybe it was expected to turn up to special galas and help run the stall? Work with me here...) - you decide to quit the gym.

    But you still need the pool, sauna, and showering facilities. So you as if you could just use those.

    The gym says that that's for members only. Sorry.

    You ask if you can have a special deal.

    They don't want to allow a special deal, because then the other members might decide not to support the galas and the other facilities, either, and that's essential for the gym to keep running. "No cherrypicking," they say.

    I reckon you'd shrug and accept it. Fine, them's the consequences of quitting the gym. But the UK desperately needs that swimming pool and sauna.

    Yeah, as an analogy, it needs work, but that's as close as I can get it to the "quitting the gym" model.
    Actually I think it works as an analogy.

    While I was a member I enjoyed access to the pool and sauna and yes it was something lost after quitting. However while you and Topping may think we rely upon the Single Market/pool access - personally I don't.

    I can see that other countries manage to export to the single market/find access to the pool without being members. The degrees of access might change and certainly if we use the pool/export to the market afterwards then it will have to be respecting the clubs rules but it isn't a catastrophe to lose membership in my eyes even if you are more worried.
  • Options
    CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,960
    algarkirk said:

    Cyclefree said:

    @Cyclefree -- HMG has just opened applications for its Happy Meal voucherless voucher scheme.

    Restaurants, bars, cafes and other establishments who use the scheme will offer a 50% reduction, up to a maximum of £10 per person, to all diners who eat and/or drink-in throughout August.

    Customers do not need a voucher as participating establishments will just remove the discount from their bill. Businesses simply reclaim the discounted amount through an online service, supported by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). Claims can be made on a weekly basis and will be paid into bank accounts within five working days.


    https://www.gov.uk/government/news/hmrc-invites-hospitality-industry-to-register-for-eat-out-to-help-out

    Thank you.
    So no chance of fraud then. That's a relief.
    Also, I was puzzled by the wording "eat-or-drink-in" if it's for food only.
  • Options
    IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,503

    The government need someone whispering KISS into their ears at frequent intervals.

    I’d say that is the very last thing that Johnson needs.
  • Options
    Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,577
    Scott_xP said:
    Quite sad that Gavin Essler swapped being a respected broadcaster to being... this.
  • Options
    FF43FF43 Posts: 15,805
    FF43 said:

    FF43 said:

    Compulsory facemasks are for feckless, Scotch barbarians, the genteel English are better than that.

    https://twitter.com/ScotNational/status/1282620032128778240?s=20

    The self-hatred is strong with Gove.
    Always has been: "vitriolic and poisonous, and that's when we're being nice"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50sLS2T-zzc
    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.
    Gove has several attractive features. He gives the impression of being in politics because he has a vision of how he wants to improve things; less establishment, more meritocracy. That's refreshing in comparison with (say) Johnson. It's not that bad a vision either. His personal backstory (although it's not as impressive as (say) Starmer's) is compelling.

    But he's much better at destruction than building. That's not a bad thing in itself; sometimes things need to stop so a better thing can start. (We may be seeing that with city centre economies at the moment). But for whatever reason, Gove has shown little interest in rebuilding after he has destroyed. Whether that's because it's too difficult, or because his temperament favours knocking down, I don't know.

    We saw it at Education. LEAs and University teacher training had problems, but the replacement lack-of-structures are still a mess 5 years after he left the DoE. We're seeing the same with Brexit; saying "we'll Leave" is easy. Working out how to manage trade after we leave is much harder, as we are seeing and will see.

    We need iconoclasts. Government needs them. We should be careful about giving them absolute freedom.
    Interesting points about Gove. I did get the impression that he really did care about educational outcomes whem he was Education Minister. This certainly isn't true for many of his predecessors and successors. On the other hand none of his "solutions" have ever been evidence driven or delivered worthwhile results. I would say ideological rather than iconoclastic. Added to the mix is that Gove is completely untrustworthy, both in word and deed.

    I suppose we can charitably say Gove is a complicated character.
    I should add in Gove's defence that he was I believe a decent Justice Minister, particularly in comparison to his predecessor Chris Grayling, and he did do some good things at the Ministry of Agriculture, including banning neonicotinoid pesticides and improving animal welfare.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,849
    Interesting thread which guesstimates the modes of transmission for the virus:

    https://twitter.com/jljcolorado/status/1282184696466554883

    He's constructed his own model, and had a look at one of the super spreader events and then considered what it would have looked like outdoors...

    https://twitter.com/jljcolorado/status/1282187740847550465
  • Options
    algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,635
    edited July 2020
    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    RobD said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Are you an idiot? That was crystal clear and entirely logical.

    PMSL

    https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1282616186417668097
    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.
    If a couple smoke 20 a day and pop daily very modestly into the pub over a 50 year term that costs (as of today's prices) over £450,000.

  • Options
    MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 50,154
    kinabalu said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    @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?
    It's quite hard to make this into an analogy, because at no point did you come to rely on anything in the gym as we have come to rely on the Single Market (over and above any specific individual trade deal).

    If you'd come to rely on the showers and the sauna in the gym and had to use the swimming pool (again, not the best analogy because you weren't relying on it - maybe you were in training for a triathlon and it had the only swimming pool or swimming facilities for miles in any direction?), and decided that the way the gym was moving on in dictating levels of support you were supposed to give to other facilities and customers (I don't know - maybe it was expected to turn up to special galas and help run the stall? Work with me here...) - you decide to quit the gym.

    But you still need the pool, sauna, and showering facilities. So you as if you could just use those.

    The gym says that that's for members only. Sorry.

    You ask if you can have a special deal.

    They don't want to allow a special deal, because then the other members might decide not to support the galas and the other facilities, either, and that's essential for the gym to keep running. "No cherrypicking," they say.

    I reckon you'd shrug and accept it. Fine, them's the consequences of quitting the gym. But the UK desperately needs that swimming pool and sauna.

    Yeah, as an analogy, it needs work, but that's as close as I can get it to the "quitting the gym" model.
    I'm in exactly this position atm. I pay £75 a month for a leisure club membership which includes boutique gym and luxury heated pool. I wish to just swim now - have tired of the boutique gym - so I have pitched them with a kind of "EEA" deal whereby I will pay £40 and just use the pool. They have rejected my offer because they say - and I quote - it will violate the integrity of their single fee membership and they have no way of policing the border between the pool and the gym. Free movement between the two is an integral part of the club's constitution. I sense I have little chance of getting them to compromise and so I will probably have to walk away and try to strike a "swim deal" with some other (no doubt inferior) entity.
    Or - just take up walking and pay the NHS £75 a month.
  • Options
    Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    Scott_xP said:
    Are you referring to the idiot Remainers who keep fallaciously saying "because it currently duty free" when its not?
  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,335
    Nigelb said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.

    It was reported on R4 this morning that mask usage in Scottish shops had gone from around 25% to around 90% as a result (anecdotally, admittedly).

    Agreed; Gove is indeed a plamf.
    Most people in England will wear a mask in shops if told to, most won't if its optional. If it becomes mandatory, I'd like to know for how long (or what the exit strategy is). I also think it could be targeted. North Devon seems to have had 1 case in the last 30 days. Surely the risk is very small there? We should have much better granular data now - lets use it to inform rational choices.
  • Options
    algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,635

    Scott_xP said:
    Quite sad that Gavin Essler swapped being a respected broadcaster to being... this.
    Are the EU happy for their folks to get such a bad deal when they come to the UK?
  • Options
    IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,503

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    @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?
    It's quite hard to make this into an analogy, because at no point did you come to rely on anything in the gym as we have come to rely on the Single Market (over and above any specific individual trade deal).

    If you'd come to rely on the showers and the sauna in the gym and had to use the swimming pool (again, not the best analogy because you weren't relying on it - maybe you were in training for a triathlon and it had the only swimming pool or swimming facilities for miles in any direction?), and decided that the way the gym was moving on in dictating levels of support you were supposed to give to other facilities and customers (I don't know - maybe it was expected to turn up to special galas and help run the stall? Work with me here...) - you decide to quit the gym.

    But you still need the pool, sauna, and showering facilities. So you as if you could just use those.

    The gym says that that's for members only. Sorry.

    You ask if you can have a special deal.

    They don't want to allow a special deal, because then the other members might decide not to support the galas and the other facilities, either, and that's essential for the gym to keep running. "No cherrypicking," they say.

    I reckon you'd shrug and accept it. Fine, them's the consequences of quitting the gym. But the UK desperately needs that swimming pool and sauna.

    Yeah, as an analogy, it needs work, but that's as close as I can get it to the "quitting the gym" model.
    Actually I think it works as an analogy.

    While I was a member I enjoyed access to the pool and sauna and yes it was something lost after quitting. However while you and Topping may think we rely upon the Single Market/pool access - personally I don't.

    I can see that other countries manage to export to the single market/find access to the pool without being members. The degrees of access might change and certainly if we use the pool/export to the market afterwards then it will have to be respecting the clubs rules but it isn't a catastrophe to lose membership in my eyes even if you are more worried.
    More than any other political proposal, Brexit seems to encourage people into wandering off into increasingly tortuous analogy.

    It can only be that something so self evidently self defeating, when considered directly, suddenly sounds less idiotic if you talk about leaving the golf club or getting divorced or whatever.
  • Options
    PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 76,002
    kinabalu said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    @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?
    It's quite hard to make this into an analogy, because at no point did you come to rely on anything in the gym as we have come to rely on the Single Market (over and above any specific individual trade deal).

    If you'd come to rely on the showers and the sauna in the gym and had to use the swimming pool (again, not the best analogy because you weren't relying on it - maybe you were in training for a triathlon and it had the only swimming pool or swimming facilities for miles in any direction?), and decided that the way the gym was moving on in dictating levels of support you were supposed to give to other facilities and customers (I don't know - maybe it was expected to turn up to special galas and help run the stall? Work with me here...) - you decide to quit the gym.

    But you still need the pool, sauna, and showering facilities. So you as if you could just use those.

    The gym says that that's for members only. Sorry.

    You ask if you can have a special deal.

    They don't want to allow a special deal, because then the other members might decide not to support the galas and the other facilities, either, and that's essential for the gym to keep running. "No cherrypicking," they say.

    I reckon you'd shrug and accept it. Fine, them's the consequences of quitting the gym. But the UK desperately needs that swimming pool and sauna.

    Yeah, as an analogy, it needs work, but that's as close as I can get it to the "quitting the gym" model.
    I'm in exactly this position atm. I pay £75 a month for a leisure club membership which includes boutique gym and luxury heated pool. I wish to just swim now - have tired of the boutique gym - so I have pitched them with a kind of "EEA" deal whereby I will pay £40 and just use the pool. They have rejected my offer because they say - and I quote - it will violate the integrity of their single fee membership and they have no way of policing the border between the pool and the gym. Free movement between the two is an integral part of the club's constitution. I sense I have little chance of getting them to compromise and so I will probably have to walk away and try to strike a "swim deal" with some other (no doubt inferior) entity.
    Have you cut out the ciggies and moderated booze though ?
  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,335
    Nigelb said:

    Someone clearly hasn't been practicing a great deal what he preaches...

    https://twitter.com/9NewsAUS/status/1282558796737335297

    Generally misinterpreted that as Victorians (i.e. from 1837-1901)...
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,849

    Nigelb said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.

    It was reported on R4 this morning that mask usage in Scottish shops had gone from around 25% to around 90% as a result (anecdotally, admittedly).

    Agreed; Gove is indeed a plamf.
    Most people in England will wear a mask in shops if told to, most won't if its optional. If it becomes mandatory, I'd like to know for how long (or what the exit strategy is). I also think it could be targeted. North Devon seems to have had 1 case in the last 30 days. Surely the risk is very small there? We should have much better granular data now - lets use it to inform rational choices.
    Given that it's a prophylactic - and a not massively onerous one - I'd personally favour a universal approach, but I do understand it winds a lot of people up, and a regional approach would be better than no enforcement at all.

    I'd agree, though, that it need to be obviously time limited... availability of vaccine; reduction in number of cases below a defined level ?
    The latter is an interesting one, and Hancock was talking today about 'hundreds' of outbreak events per week caught by track and trace, most of which aren't publicised.
    I suspect there aren't for now all that many areas in the North Devon category.
  • Options
    OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,181

    HYUFD said:

    Compulsory facemasks are for feckless, Scotch barbarians, the genteel English are better than that.

    https://twitter.com/ScotNational/status/1282620032128778240?s=20

    Boris overruled Gove today and said facemasks should be worn in shops in England

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53388444
    That's not overruling.

    Gove is saying they should be worn but should not need to be mandatory as good manners should ensure they're worn.
    Boris is saying they should be worn and a review is being done as to whether they should be mandatory.

    There's not much of a difference.
    There's a huge difference. In matters of life and death we tend not to rely on other people's "good manners". Imagine if we had no laws against drink driving because we felt that we could rely on other people not being rude enough to get in the car half cut. What Gove is saying is that he doesn't really give a shit if people who work in shops are repeatedly exposed to a potentially fatal disease.
  • Options
    Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,577

    Nigelb said:

    Someone clearly hasn't been practicing a great deal what he preaches...

    https://twitter.com/9NewsAUS/status/1282558796737335297

    Generally misinterpreted that as Victorians (i.e. from 1837-1901)...
    Me too. :blush: If anyone has survived from the reign of Victoria, they probably don't need advice on how to stay alive.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,849
    IanB2 said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    @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?
    It's quite hard to make this into an analogy, because at no point did you come to rely on anything in the gym as we have come to rely on the Single Market (over and above any specific individual trade deal).

    If you'd come to rely on the showers and the sauna in the gym and had to use the swimming pool (again, not the best analogy because you weren't relying on it - maybe you were in training for a triathlon and it had the only swimming pool or swimming facilities for miles in any direction?), and decided that the way the gym was moving on in dictating levels of support you were supposed to give to other facilities and customers (I don't know - maybe it was expected to turn up to special galas and help run the stall? Work with me here...) - you decide to quit the gym.

    But you still need the pool, sauna, and showering facilities. So you as if you could just use those.

    The gym says that that's for members only. Sorry.

    You ask if you can have a special deal.

    They don't want to allow a special deal, because then the other members might decide not to support the galas and the other facilities, either, and that's essential for the gym to keep running. "No cherrypicking," they say.

    I reckon you'd shrug and accept it. Fine, them's the consequences of quitting the gym. But the UK desperately needs that swimming pool and sauna.

    Yeah, as an analogy, it needs work, but that's as close as I can get it to the "quitting the gym" model.
    Actually I think it works as an analogy.

    While I was a member I enjoyed access to the pool and sauna and yes it was something lost after quitting. However while you and Topping may think we rely upon the Single Market/pool access - personally I don't.

    I can see that other countries manage to export to the single market/find access to the pool without being members. The degrees of access might change and certainly if we use the pool/export to the market afterwards then it will have to be respecting the clubs rules but it isn't a catastrophe to lose membership in my eyes even if you are more worried.
    More than any other political proposal, Brexit seems to encourage people into wandering off into increasingly tortuous analogy.

    It can only be that something so self evidently self defeating, when considered directly, suddenly sounds less idiotic if you talk about leaving the golf club or getting divorced or whatever.
    Reinforces my own view that almost all analogies obscure rather than illuminate.
  • Options
    CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,230
    MaxPB said:

    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.

    The Tories have a brass neck talking about patriotism and national security given how in bed with the Chinese they are, how it was the current PM who has invited Huawei in, the attacks on the army they are planning, their appointment of a NSA a man who know little about national security and putting Grayling in charge of the Intelligence Committee.

  • Options
    FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,842
    Cyclefree said:

    DavidL said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Since it is the 25th anniversary of Srebrenica and what China is doing to the Uighurs is back in the news, time to repost this - https://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2019/12/09/lets-talk-about-islamophobia/.

    On that sort of topic this was a genuinely moving story on the BBC website this weekend: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-53358123

    25 years? How the time has flown.
    Very very moving.

    My best friend’s father’s correspondence from before - and during - the war has just been accepted by the Yad Vashem museum in Israel. He was German Jew, a hotelier, who escaped from Germany and after a traumatic journey through Europe, ended up in Britain, where he listened to German PoW as part of an intelligence project to find out how much they knew of the atrocities which were being committed.

    Like quite a few of his generation, he felt the loss of his German identity at least as much as his persecution as a Jew.
    You may be interested in this book of their recordings:

    https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1849839492/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_a6fdFbNHPJ7YN

    It shows how casually the prisoners discussed and justified atrocities. Brutality permeated the whole German military.
  • Options
    nichomarnichomar Posts: 7,483
    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.

    It was reported on R4 this morning that mask usage in Scottish shops had gone from around 25% to around 90% as a result (anecdotally, admittedly).

    Agreed; Gove is indeed a plamf.
    Most people in England will wear a mask in shops if told to, most won't if its optional. If it becomes mandatory, I'd like to know for how long (or what the exit strategy is). I also think it could be targeted. North Devon seems to have had 1 case in the last 30 days. Surely the risk is very small there? We should have much better granular data now - lets use it to inform rational choices.
    Given that it's a prophylactic - and a not massively onerous one - I'd personally favour a universal approach, but I do understand it winds a lot of people up, and a regional approach would be better than no enforcement at all.

    I'd agree, though, that it need to be obviously time limited... availability of vaccine; reduction in number of cases below a defined level ?
    The latter is an interesting one, and Hancock was talking today about 'hundreds' of outbreak events per week caught by track and trace, most of which aren't publicised.
    I suspect there aren't for now all that many areas in the North Devon category.
    North Devon gets lots of tourists so may see the benefit soon of the influx
  • Options
    Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,013
    New thread.
  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,335
    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.

    It was reported on R4 this morning that mask usage in Scottish shops had gone from around 25% to around 90% as a result (anecdotally, admittedly).

    Agreed; Gove is indeed a plamf.
    Most people in England will wear a mask in shops if told to, most won't if its optional. If it becomes mandatory, I'd like to know for how long (or what the exit strategy is). I also think it could be targeted. North Devon seems to have had 1 case in the last 30 days. Surely the risk is very small there? We should have much better granular data now - lets use it to inform rational choices.
    Given that it's a prophylactic - and a not massively onerous one - I'd personally favour a universal approach, but I do understand it winds a lot of people up, and a regional approach would be better than no enforcement at all.

    I'd agree, though, that it need to be obviously time limited... availability of vaccine; reduction in number of cases below a defined level ?
    The latter is an interesting one, and Hancock was talking today about 'hundreds' of outbreak events per week caught by track and trace, most of which aren't publicised.
    I suspect there aren't for now all that many areas in the North Devon category.
    Slightly suspect about the 100's of outbreaks through? Does that mean a household where one positive test leads to 2-3 more being an outbreak? Its a classic bit of language, where people assume it means things like the Herefordshire farm, but it is defined as 2 or three linked cases.
  • Options
    nichomarnichomar Posts: 7,483

    Scott_xP said:
    Are you referring to the idiot Remainers who keep fallaciously saying "because it currently duty free" when its not?
    I don’t it’s currently duty paid and from Spain that’s a far better deal than duty free, I’ve not seen any ‘idiot remainers’ .........
  • Options
    nichomarnichomar Posts: 7,483
    algarkirk said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Quite sad that Gavin Essler swapped being a respected broadcaster to being... this.
    Are the EU happy for their folks to get such a bad deal when they come to the UK?
    How many have second homes in the UK?
  • Options
    FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,842
    Scott_xP said:
    Presumably the same angry Brexiteers that voted through the "oven ready deal" without proper parliamentary debate. In a world beyond stupid lives a Brexiteef fuming over this.
  • Options
    nichomarnichomar Posts: 7,483

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.

    It was reported on R4 this morning that mask usage in Scottish shops had gone from around 25% to around 90% as a result (anecdotally, admittedly).

    Agreed; Gove is indeed a plamf.
    Most people in England will wear a mask in shops if told to, most won't if its optional. If it becomes mandatory, I'd like to know for how long (or what the exit strategy is). I also think it could be targeted. North Devon seems to have had 1 case in the last 30 days. Surely the risk is very small there? We should have much better granular data now - lets use it to inform rational choices.
    Given that it's a prophylactic - and a not massively onerous one - I'd personally favour a universal approach, but I do understand it winds a lot of people up, and a regional approach would be better than no enforcement at all.

    I'd agree, though, that it need to be obviously time limited... availability of vaccine; reduction in number of cases below a defined level ?
    The latter is an interesting one, and Hancock was talking today about 'hundreds' of outbreak events per week caught by track and trace, most of which aren't publicised.
    I suspect there aren't for now all that many areas in the North Devon category.
    Slightly suspect about the 100's of outbreaks through? Does that mean a household where one positive test leads to 2-3 more being an outbreak? Its a classic bit of language, where people assume it means things like the Herefordshire farm, but it is defined as 2 or three linked cases.
    Out here an outbreak looks like more than one isolated case, with 100 in last four weeks causing alarm.
  • Options
    FF43FF43 Posts: 15,805
    IanB2 said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    @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?
    It's quite hard to make this into an analogy, because at no point did you come to rely on anything in the gym as we have come to rely on the Single Market (over and above any specific individual trade deal).

    If you'd come to rely on the showers and the sauna in the gym and had to use the swimming pool (again, not the best analogy because you weren't relying on it - maybe you were in training for a triathlon and it had the only swimming pool or swimming facilities for miles in any direction?), and decided that the way the gym was moving on in dictating levels of support you were supposed to give to other facilities and customers (I don't know - maybe it was expected to turn up to special galas and help run the stall? Work with me here...) - you decide to quit the gym.

    But you still need the pool, sauna, and showering facilities. So you as if you could just use those.

    The gym says that that's for members only. Sorry.

    You ask if you can have a special deal.

    They don't want to allow a special deal, because then the other members might decide not to support the galas and the other facilities, either, and that's essential for the gym to keep running. "No cherrypicking," they say.

    I reckon you'd shrug and accept it. Fine, them's the consequences of quitting the gym. But the UK desperately needs that swimming pool and sauna.

    Yeah, as an analogy, it needs work, but that's as close as I can get it to the "quitting the gym" model.
    Actually I think it works as an analogy.

    While I was a member I enjoyed access to the pool and sauna and yes it was something lost after quitting. However while you and Topping may think we rely upon the Single Market/pool access - personally I don't.

    I can see that other countries manage to export to the single market/find access to the pool without being members. The degrees of access might change and certainly if we use the pool/export to the market afterwards then it will have to be respecting the clubs rules but it isn't a catastrophe to lose membership in my eyes even if you are more worried.
    More than any other political proposal, Brexit seems to encourage people into wandering off into increasingly tortuous analogy.

    It can only be that something so self evidently self defeating, when considered directly, suddenly sounds less idiotic if you talk about leaving the golf club or getting divorced or whatever.
    What is self-evident in any other context becomes "scare-mongering" when up against ideology. If you leave the golf club, self-evidently you won't be playing golf there anymore. You don't ask and you don't get offered. You don't say the club is punishing you, denying you freedom, nor do you actively wish its destruction nor talk about implausibly far away clubs you might join instead. When you leave your golf club you don't pretend you are leaving because you are a world-leading golfer and the club is holding you back.
  • Options
    Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,848
    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    RobD said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Are you an idiot? That was crystal clear and entirely logical.

    PMSL

    https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1282616186417668097
    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.
    False when I was in the office I took a packed lunch at ate at my desk. Now I no longer pay train fare I repurpose that money to get out for a coffee at lunchtime to get a break from being in the house 24/7
  • Options
    Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,577
    Foxy said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Presumably the same angry Brexiteers that voted through the "oven ready deal" without proper parliamentary debate. In a world beyond stupid lives a Brexiteef fuming over this.
    There's an awful lot of post match analysis going on when we're not even at half time.
  • Options
    Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,848
    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    RobD said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Are you an idiot? That was crystal clear and entirely logical.

    PMSL

    https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1282616186417668097
    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.
    As for your other assertion this one is also false. Working from home for people like me means we are now in a position to do thinks like evening classes which tends to start at around 7pm and too early for those of us that have to commute.

    I would much rather socialise with people I have common interests with that the random hotch potch of people at the office. For me at least working from home makes my life a lot more interesting and vibrant rather than the current get up sit on a train sit at a desk sit on a train sit at home all evening.
  • Options
    Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,577
    FF43 said:

    IanB2 said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    @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?
    It's quite hard to make this into an analogy, because at no point did you come to rely on anything in the gym as we have come to rely on the Single Market (over and above any specific individual trade deal).

    If you'd come to rely on the showers and the sauna in the gym and had to use the swimming pool (again, not the best analogy because you weren't relying on it - maybe you were in training for a triathlon and it had the only swimming pool or swimming facilities for miles in any direction?), and decided that the way the gym was moving on in dictating levels of support you were supposed to give to other facilities and customers (I don't know - maybe it was expected to turn up to special galas and help run the stall? Work with me here...) - you decide to quit the gym.

    But you still need the pool, sauna, and showering facilities. So you as if you could just use those.

    The gym says that that's for members only. Sorry.

    You ask if you can have a special deal.

    They don't want to allow a special deal, because then the other members might decide not to support the galas and the other facilities, either, and that's essential for the gym to keep running. "No cherrypicking," they say.

    I reckon you'd shrug and accept it. Fine, them's the consequences of quitting the gym. But the UK desperately needs that swimming pool and sauna.

    Yeah, as an analogy, it needs work, but that's as close as I can get it to the "quitting the gym" model.
    Actually I think it works as an analogy.

    While I was a member I enjoyed access to the pool and sauna and yes it was something lost after quitting. However while you and Topping may think we rely upon the Single Market/pool access - personally I don't.

    I can see that other countries manage to export to the single market/find access to the pool without being members. The degrees of access might change and certainly if we use the pool/export to the market afterwards then it will have to be respecting the clubs rules but it isn't a catastrophe to lose membership in my eyes even if you are more worried.
    More than any other political proposal, Brexit seems to encourage people into wandering off into increasingly tortuous analogy.

    It can only be that something so self evidently self defeating, when considered directly, suddenly sounds less idiotic if you talk about leaving the golf club or getting divorced or whatever.
    What is self-evident in any other context becomes "scare-mongering" when up against ideology. If you leave the golf club, self-evidently you won't be playing golf there anymore. You don't ask and you don't get offered. You don't say the club is punishing you, denying you freedom, nor do you actively wish its destruction nor talk about implausibly far away clubs you might join instead. When you leave your golf club you don't pretend you are leaving because you are a world-leading golfer and the club is holding you back.
    Your analogy would make a shred of sense if a bad deal, or even no deal, meant the end of trading with the EU. Clearly it doesn't. India trades with the EU. Australia trades with the EU. South Africa trades with the EU. So will we, when we leave. I have no idea why remainers continually conflate trading with the EU on an enhanced basis, with trading with it at all. Evidently remainers think if they shout 'turning our back on our largest trading partner' loud enough, the great unwashed won't notice the distinction. The sort of sloppy, patronising guff they lost the referendum with.

    So the golf club in your analogy *frequently* accepts non-members playing on a casual basis. What we (and they) are trying to negotiate is a privileged form of access based on mutually beneficial lines, like a new form of corporate membership. It is wholly doable, and doesn't go against anything the club has done before, or indeed is doing now.
  • Options
    FF43FF43 Posts: 15,805

    FF43 said:

    IanB2 said:

    <
    More than any other political proposal, Brexit seems to encourage people into wandering off into increasingly tortuous analogy.

    It can only be that something so self evidently self defeating, when considered directly, suddenly sounds less idiotic if you talk about leaving the golf club or getting divorced or whatever.

    What is self-evident in any other context becomes "scare-mongering" when up against ideology. If you leave the golf club, self-evidently you won't be playing golf there anymore. You don't ask and you don't get offered. You don't say the club is punishing you, denying you freedom, nor do you actively wish its destruction nor talk about implausibly far away clubs you might join instead. When you leave your golf club you don't pretend you are leaving because you are a world-leading golfer and the club is holding you back.
    Your analogy would make a shred of sense if a bad deal, or even no deal, meant the end of trading with the EU. Clearly it doesn't. India trades with the EU. Australia trades with the EU. South Africa trades with the EU. So will we, when we leave. I have no idea why remainers continually conflate trading with the EU on an enhanced basis, with trading with it at all. Evidently remainers think if they shout 'turning our back on our largest trading partner' loud enough, the great unwashed won't notice the distinction. The sort of sloppy, patronising guff they lost the referendum with.

    So the golf club in your analogy *frequently* accepts non-members playing on a casual basis. What we (and they) are trying to negotiate is a privileged form of access based on mutually beneficial lines, like a new form of corporate membership. It is wholly doable, and doesn't go against anything the club has done before, or indeed is doing now.
    I was really agreeing with Ian that Brexit leads to all sorts of inappropriate analogies. I admit I have been guilty of a few myself. I was trying to work out why we reach for these analogies and think it's because Brexit ideology blinds people to truth that would be self-evident in other contexts. eg golf club membership. So we leave the club because at least some of us don't value membership and don't care if we export less, are less wealthy and have fewer opportunities and so on - things that aren't important to those people. Fine. But let's not pretend that things will or ought to carry on as before or some sort of substitute can be slotted in.
This discussion has been closed.