Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
No that's not the basic point.
The basic point is that the English government shouldn't be determined by Scottish MPs.
Given that Health and Education are devolved matters, if the English elect a Tory majority would it be appropriate to have a Labour government with Labour Secretary of States for Health and Education etc because of SNP MPs?
Tony Blair screwed both England and Scotland in different ways with his asymmetric devolution farce.
and isn't it an SKS plan to address that with huge devolution across England akin to Scotland, therefore addressing your concerns?
So he's going to abolish the Secretary of State for Health etc on a UK level and have an English one chosen by an English Parliament?
Or is it not going to be the same as what Scotland has? More power for Councils is not what the Scottish Parliament has.
No
I thought it would be much more localised from what I have read.
More akin to what you see in other western democracies where the national / federal government plays a much smaller part in decision making.
You'd have things like health managed locally in Greater Manchester, West Midlands etc. with budgets and foreign affairs maintained in Westminster.
In any case, the basicv point is that the Tory argument is that Westminstert should not be partly controlled by SNP MPs because it is an English Parliament. Yet it is primarily a UK one and SNP MPs are elected to that parliament.
The Tory attitude is that the English bit should have supremacy. How else can it be explained?
I have never said that, just that there should be a Scottish Parliament as well as an English Parliament
My preference would very much be a Scottish one, Welsh one and one for each 3-8m people in the country.
I'm in Switzerland a country of 8m people in 26 cantons, across the border is Germany there are 84m people with 16 Lander.
Both models seem to work very well, we could and should attempt to replicate in the UK is we really want to level up the playing field.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
No that's not the basic point.
The basic point is that the English government shouldn't be determined by Scottish MPs.
Given that Health and Education are devolved matters, if the English elect a Tory majority would it be appropriate to have a Labour government with Labour Secretary of States for Health and Education etc because of SNP MPs?
Tony Blair screwed both England and Scotland in different ways with his asymmetric devolution farce.
and isn't it an SKS plan to address that with huge devolution across England akin to Scotland, therefore addressing your concerns?
So he's going to abolish the Secretary of State for Health etc on a UK level and have an English one chosen by an English Parliament?
Or is it not going to be the same as what Scotland has? More power for Councils is not what the Scottish Parliament has.
No
I thought it would be much more localised from what I have read.
More akin to what you see in other western democracies where the national / federal government plays a much smaller part in decision making.
You'd have things like health managed locally in Greater Manchester, West Midlands etc. with budgets and foreign affairs maintained in Westminster.
In any case, the basicv point is that the Tory argument is that Westminstert should not be partly controlled by SNP MPs because it is an English Parliament. Yet it is primarily a UK one and SNP MPs are elected to that parliament.
The Tory attitude is that the English bit should have supremacy. How else can it be explained?
For as long as it is the English Parliament yes the English bit should have supremacy.
The Scots chose to abandon most of Westminster by setting up Holyrood.
Oh really? So the Scotland Act wasn't a Westminster act? Mr Blair would be very surprised to hear that. And the arguments over the changes to the Scotland Act ...
What was the reason for what seems a special degree of hatred for the Ukrainians?
It's rather complicated, and absolutely horrific, but basically many Ukrainians sided enthusiastically with the Nazis to save themselves from the Russians, conducting their own atrocities which in some cases even the Nazis thought were over the top. As things developed - badly - the Nazis started rounding up Ukrainians, so it wasn't even successful as a mode of self-preservation. Then as the tide turned the Russians advanced over Ukraine and took a horrendous revenge.
The whole WWII history of Eastern Europe is full of multi-faceted horrors, in which in wasn't just the Nazis and Soviets who were guilty of war crimes, but is relatively unknown in the West.
The Holdomar was before WWII, not after it. It's the reason the Ukrainians were so keen on the Nazis, whom they saw as liberators.
Unfortunately the Nazis weren't so keen on the Ukrainians:
"We are a master race, which must remember that the lowliest German worker is racially and biologically a thousand times more valuable than the population here." - Erich Koch in 1943.
Erich Koch was "Reichskommissar" for Ukraine 1941 to 1944.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
The problem is that while you, or @Big_G_NorthWales, have the power to vote in an MP who controls health, education etc in England, I don't have that power in England to vote on somebody who controls those matters for you.
Yes, I know that there are indirect impacts, but that's not the point. You don't have to be a rabid English nationalist to see that as an issue.
The correct solution is further devolution to England, but for practical reasons that's hard.
The alternative is for Scottish and Welsh MPs to be very careful about what they vote on and why - for example, not buggering about with fox hunting - so as not to draw too much attention to it. Unfortunately, for their own reasons the SNP have taken exactly the opposite course.
I beg to differ, politely. Barring votes with Barnett consequentials, the SNP already are pretty scrupulous. They do not vote on education in England, for instance. You'd hear screaming from the PB Tories on each and every occasion, as if theiue baw hairs were being indivbidually depilated with pliers. That silence is pretty revealing.
It's the Unionist MPs in Scotland that do. As, infamously, the LD MPs in Scotland did - over student grants.
It shouldn't be a matter of "pretty scrupulous". The Tory MPs do not vote on Scottish laws because they can't, not because of policy.
Why were the Scottish MPs entitled to block changes to Sunday Trading laws in England?
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
No that's not the basic point.
The basic point is that the English government shouldn't be determined by Scottish MPs.
Given that Health and Education are devolved matters, if the English elect a Tory majority would it be appropriate to have a Labour government with Labour Secretary of States for Health and Education etc because of SNP MPs?
Tony Blair screwed both England and Scotland in different ways with his asymmetric devolution farce.
The Tories have had ten years to create an English Parliament and solve that problem.
Or to put it another way, 36 years out of the last 60 to come up with some sort of devolution plan of their own, yet nada, zilch, zero.
The Tories introduced EVFEL, which has been the dog that didn't bark so far
Its not good enough. Its just an English veto for English laws, but the Secretary of State etc, the budget etc are still controlled by the whole of the UK not England. It allows an English majority to block a law, but does not allow an English majority to pass a law - see for instance Sunday Trading which had an English majority but got blocked because of Scottish MPs.
To be fair a lot of English Tory MPs also oppose Sunday trading
What was the reason for what seems a special degree of hatred for the Ukrainians?
It's rather complicated, and absolutely horrific, but basically many Ukrainians sided enthusiastically with the Nazis to save themselves from the Russians, conducting their own atrocities which in some cases even the Nazis thought were over the top. As things developed - badly - the Nazis started rounding up Ukrainians, so it wasn't even successful as a mode of self-preservation. Then as the tide turned the Russians advanced over Ukraine and took a horrendous revenge.
The whole WWII history of Eastern Europe is full of multi-faceted horrors, in which in wasn't just the Nazis and Soviets who were guilty of war crimes, but is relatively unknown in the West.
The Holdomar was before WWII, not after it. It's the reason the Ukrainians were so keen on the Nazis, whom they saw as liberators.
Unfortunately the Nazis weren't so keen on the Ukrainians:
"We are a master race, which must remember that the lowliest German worker is racially and biologically a thousand times more valuable than the population here." - Erich Koch in 1943.
Erich Koch was "Reichskommissar" for Ukraine 1941 to 1944.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
The problem is that while you, or @Big_G_NorthWales, have the power to vote in an MP who controls health, education etc in England, I don't have that power in England to vote on somebody who controls those matters for you.
Yes, I know that there are indirect impacts, but that's not the point. You don't have to be a rabid English nationalist to see that as an issue.
The correct solution is further devolution to England, but for practical reasons that's hard.
The alternative is for Scottish and Welsh MPs to be very careful about what they vote on and why - for example, not buggering about with fox hunting - so as not to draw too much attention to it. Unfortunately, for their own reasons the SNP have taken exactly the opposite course.
I beg to differ, politely. Barring votes with Barnett consequentials, the SNP already are pretty scrupulous. They do not vote on education in England, for instance. You'd hear screaming from the PB Tories on each and every occasion, as if theiue baw hairs were being indivbidually depilated with pliers. That silence is pretty revealing.
It's the Unionist MPs in Scotland that do. As, infamously, the LD MPs in Scotland did - over student grants.
It shouldn't be a matter of "pretty scrupulous". The Tory MPs do not vote on Scottish laws because they can't, not because of policy.
Why were the Scottish MPs entitled to block changes to Sunday Trading laws in England?
Common decency, and the cross-border effects. I forget the details, but there was a problem of this kind.
What was the reason for what seems a special degree of hatred for the Ukrainians?
It's rather complicated, and absolutely horrific, but basically many Ukrainians sided enthusiastically with the Nazis to save themselves from the Russians, conducting their own atrocities which in some cases even the Nazis thought were over the top. As things developed - badly - the Nazis started rounding up Ukrainians, so it wasn't even successful as a mode of self-preservation. Then as the tide turned the Russians advanced over Ukraine and took a horrendous revenge.
The whole WWII history of Eastern Europe is full of multi-faceted horrors, in which in wasn't just the Nazis and Soviets who were guilty of war crimes, but is relatively unknown in the West.
The Holdomar was before WWII, not after it. It's the reason the Ukrainians were so keen on the Nazis, whom they saw as liberators.
Unfortunately the Nazis weren't so keen on the Ukrainians:
"We are a master race, which must remember that the lowliest German worker is racially and biologically a thousand times more valuable than the population here." - Erich Koch in 1943.
Erich Koch was "Reichskommissar" for Ukraine 1941 to 1944.
What was the reason for what seems a special degree of hatred for the Ukrainians?
It's rather complicated, and absolutely horrific, but basically many Ukrainians sided enthusiastically with the Nazis to save themselves from the Russians, conducting their own atrocities which in some cases even the Nazis thought were over the top. As things developed - badly - the Nazis started rounding up Ukrainians, so it wasn't even successful as a mode of self-preservation. Then as the tide turned the Russians advanced over Ukraine and took a horrendous revenge.
The whole WWII history of Eastern Europe is full of multi-faceted horrors, in which in wasn't just the Nazis and Soviets who were guilty of war crimes, but is relatively unknown in the West.
The Holdomar was before WWII, not after it. It's the reason the Ukrainians were so keen on the Nazis, whom they saw as liberators.
Unfortunately the Nazis weren't so keen on the Ukrainians:
"We are a master race, which must remember that the lowliest German worker is racially and biologically a thousand times more valuable than the population here." - Erich Koch in 1943.
Erich Koch was "Reichskommissar" for Ukraine 1941 to 1944.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
The problem is that while you, or @Big_G_NorthWales, have the power to vote in an MP who controls health, education etc in England, I don't have that power in England to vote on somebody who controls those matters for you.
Yes, I know that there are indirect impacts, but that's not the point. You don't have to be a rabid English nationalist to see that as an issue.
The correct solution is further devolution to England, but for practical reasons that's hard.
The alternative is for Scottish and Welsh MPs to be very careful about what they vote on and why - for example, not buggering about with fox hunting - so as not to draw too much attention to it. Unfortunately, for their own reasons the SNP have taken exactly the opposite course.
I beg to differ, politely. Barring votes with Barnett consequentials, the SNP already are pretty scrupulous. They do not vote on education in England, for instance. You'd hear screaming from the PB Tories on each and every occasion, as if theiue baw hairs were being indivbidually depilated with pliers. That silence is pretty revealing.
It's the Unionist MPs in Scotland that do. As, infamously, the LD MPs in Scotland did - over student grants.
It shouldn't be a matter of "pretty scrupulous". The Tory MPs do not vote on Scottish laws because they can't, not because of policy.
Why were the Scottish MPs entitled to block changes to Sunday Trading laws in England?
Common decency, and the cross-border effects. I forget the details, but there was a problem of this kind.
Again decency shouldn't be yours to judge. There were no legal cross border effects either, potential knock on consequences but that's true in any change of law. For Scottish laws the English MPs get no say. For English laws the Scottish MPs do. Until that situation is resolved, the Scottish MPs should be treated as second class MPs and subordinate to English MPs. That is the natural consequence of Westminster setting English but not Scottish law.
Scottish independence is the best fix for that IMO. Or the abolition of Holyrood.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
No that's not the basic point.
The basic point is that the English government shouldn't be determined by Scottish MPs.
Given that Health and Education are devolved matters, if the English elect a Tory majority would it be appropriate to have a Labour government with Labour Secretary of States for Health and Education etc because of SNP MPs?
Tony Blair screwed both England and Scotland in different ways with his asymmetric devolution farce.
The Tories have had ten years to create an English Parliament and solve that problem.
Or to put it another way, 36 years out of the last 60 to come up with some sort of devolution plan of their own, yet nada, zilch, zero.
The Tories introduced EVFEL, which has been the dog that didn't bark so far
Its not good enough. Its just an English veto for English laws, but the Secretary of State etc, the budget etc are still controlled by the whole of the UK not England. It allows an English majority to block a law, but does not allow an English majority to pass a law - see for instance Sunday Trading which had an English majority but got blocked because of Scottish MPs.
Quite right too about the budget, because of the Barnett system - that is the only direct control (barring limited borrowing powers) that Scottish representatives have over their govertnments' finances.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
The problem is that while you, or @Big_G_NorthWales, have the power to vote in an MP who controls health, education etc in England, I don't have that power in England to vote on somebody who controls those matters for you.
Yes, I know that there are indirect impacts, but that's not the point. You don't have to be a rabid English nationalist to see that as an issue.
The correct solution is further devolution to England, but for practical reasons that's hard.
The alternative is for Scottish and Welsh MPs to be very careful about what they vote on and why - for example, not buggering about with fox hunting - so as not to draw too much attention to it. Unfortunately, for their own reasons the SNP have taken exactly the opposite course.
I beg to differ, politely. Barring votes with Barnett consequentials, the SNP already are pretty scrupulous. They do not vote on education in England, for instance. You'd hear screaming from the PB Tories on each and every occasion, as if theiue baw hairs were being indivbidually depilated with pliers. That silence is pretty revealing.
It's the Unionist MPs in Scotland that do. As, infamously, the LD MPs in Scotland did - over student grants.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
The problem is that while you, or @Big_G_NorthWales, have the power to vote in an MP who controls health, education etc in England, I don't have that power in England to vote on somebody who controls those matters for you.
Yes, I know that there are indirect impacts, but that's not the point. You don't have to be a rabid English nationalist to see that as an issue.
The correct solution is further devolution to England, but for practical reasons that's hard.
The alternative is for Scottish and Welsh MPs to be very careful about what they vote on and why - for example, not buggering about with fox hunting - so as not to draw too much attention to it. Unfortunately, for their own reasons the SNP have taken exactly the opposite course.
I beg to differ, politely. Barring votes with Barnett consequentials, the SNP already are pretty scrupulous. They do not vote on education in England, for instance. You'd hear screaming from the PB Tories on each and every occasion, as if theiue baw hairs were being indivbidually depilated with pliers. That silence is pretty revealing.
It's the Unionist MPs in Scotland that do. As, infamously, the LD MPs in Scotland did - over student grants.
It shouldn't be a matter of "pretty scrupulous". The Tory MPs do not vote on Scottish laws because they can't, not because of policy.
Why were the Scottish MPs entitled to block changes to Sunday Trading laws in England?
Common decency, and the cross-border effects. I forget the details, but there was a problem of this kind.
?! Sunday trading was allowed in Scotland. It was a purely English matter the SNP should not have got involved in.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
The problem is that while you, or @Big_G_NorthWales, have the power to vote in an MP who controls health, education etc in England, I don't have that power in England to vote on somebody who controls those matters for you.
Yes, I know that there are indirect impacts, but that's not the point. You don't have to be a rabid English nationalist to see that as an issue.
The correct solution is further devolution to England, but for practical reasons that's hard.
The alternative is for Scottish and Welsh MPs to be very careful about what they vote on and why - for example, not buggering about with fox hunting - so as not to draw too much attention to it. Unfortunately, for their own reasons the SNP have taken exactly the opposite course.
I beg to differ, politely. Barring votes with Barnett consequentials, the SNP already are pretty scrupulous. They do not vote on education in England, for instance. You'd hear screaming from the PB Tories on each and every occasion, as if theiue baw hairs were being indivbidually depilated with pliers. That silence is pretty revealing.
It's the Unionist MPs in Scotland that do. As, infamously, the LD MPs in Scotland did - over student grants.
OK, so it was five years ago. But it's exactly the sort of thing that does raise the profile of the two classes of MP.
That long ago? No wonder I can't remember the details. But the Scottish LD etc MPs voting for changes to student funding were far more consequential - and in my view quite outrageous, as it happens.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
The problem is that while you, or @Big_G_NorthWales, have the power to vote in an MP who controls health, education etc in England, I don't have that power in England to vote on somebody who controls those matters for you.
Yes, I know that there are indirect impacts, but that's not the point. You don't have to be a rabid English nationalist to see that as an issue.
The correct solution is further devolution to England, but for practical reasons that's hard.
The alternative is for Scottish and Welsh MPs to be very careful about what they vote on and why - for example, not buggering about with fox hunting - so as not to draw too much attention to it. Unfortunately, for their own reasons the SNP have taken exactly the opposite course.
I beg to differ, politely. Barring votes with Barnett consequentials, the SNP already are pretty scrupulous. They do not vote on education in England, for instance. You'd hear screaming from the PB Tories on each and every occasion, as if theiue baw hairs were being indivbidually depilated with pliers. That silence is pretty revealing.
It's the Unionist MPs in Scotland that do. As, infamously, the LD MPs in Scotland did - over student grants.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
No that's not the basic point.
The basic point is that the English government shouldn't be determined by Scottish MPs.
Given that Health and Education are devolved matters, if the English elect a Tory majority would it be appropriate to have a Labour government with Labour Secretary of States for Health and Education etc because of SNP MPs?
Tony Blair screwed both England and Scotland in different ways with his asymmetric devolution farce.
The Tories have had ten years to create an English Parliament and solve that problem.
Or to put it another way, 36 years out of the last 60 to come up with some sort of devolution plan of their own, yet nada, zilch, zero.
The Tories introduced EVFEL, which has been the dog that didn't bark so far
Its not good enough. Its just an English veto for English laws, but the Secretary of State etc, the budget etc are still controlled by the whole of the UK not England. It allows an English majority to block a law, but does not allow an English majority to pass a law - see for instance Sunday Trading which had an English majority but got blocked because of Scottish MPs.
To be fair a lot of English Tory MPs also oppose Sunday trading
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
No that's not the basic point.
The basic point is that the English government shouldn't be determined by Scottish MPs.
Given that Health and Education are devolved matters, if the English elect a Tory majority would it be appropriate to have a Labour government with Labour Secretary of States for Health and Education etc because of SNP MPs?
Tony Blair screwed both England and Scotland in different ways with his asymmetric devolution farce.
and isn't it an SKS plan to address that with huge devolution across England akin to Scotland, therefore addressing your concerns?
So he's going to abolish the Secretary of State for Health etc on a UK level and have an English one chosen by an English Parliament?
Or is it not going to be the same as what Scotland has? More power for Councils is not what the Scottish Parliament has.
No
I thought it would be much more localised from what I have read.
More akin to what you see in other western democracies where the national / federal government plays a much smaller part in decision making.
You'd have things like health managed locally in Greater Manchester, West Midlands etc. with budgets and foreign affairs maintained in Westminster.
In any case, the basicv point is that the Tory argument is that Westminstert should not be partly controlled by SNP MPs because it is an English Parliament. Yet it is primarily a UK one and SNP MPs are elected to that parliament.
The Tory attitude is that the English bit should have supremacy. How else can it be explained?
I have never said that, just that there should be a Scottish Parliament as well as an English Parliament
My preference would very much be a Scottish one, Welsh one and one for each 3-8m people in the country.
I'm in Switzerland a country of 8m people in 26 cantons, across the border is Germany there are 84m people with 16 Lander.
Both models seem to work very well, we could and should attempt to replicate in the UK is we really want to level up the playing field.
The UK is made up of 4 countries, if Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland have their own parliament and assemblies so should England.
Germany and Switzerland are made up of states not countries.
You could give more powers to councils in all 4 home nations too
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
The problem is that while you, or @Big_G_NorthWales, have the power to vote in an MP who controls health, education etc in England, I don't have that power in England to vote on somebody who controls those matters for you.
Yes, I know that there are indirect impacts, but that's not the point. You don't have to be a rabid English nationalist to see that as an issue.
The correct solution is further devolution to England, but for practical reasons that's hard.
The alternative is for Scottish and Welsh MPs to be very careful about what they vote on and why - for example, not buggering about with fox hunting - so as not to draw too much attention to it. Unfortunately, for their own reasons the SNP have taken exactly the opposite course.
I beg to differ, politely. Barring votes with Barnett consequentials, the SNP already are pretty scrupulous. They do not vote on education in England, for instance. You'd hear screaming from the PB Tories on each and every occasion, as if theiue baw hairs were being indivbidually depilated with pliers. That silence is pretty revealing.
It's the Unionist MPs in Scotland that do. As, infamously, the LD MPs in Scotland did - over student grants.
It shouldn't be a matter of "pretty scrupulous". The Tory MPs do not vote on Scottish laws because they can't, not because of policy.
Why were the Scottish MPs entitled to block changes to Sunday Trading laws in England?
Common decency, and the cross-border effects. I forget the details, but there was a problem of this kind.
?! Sunday trading was allowed in Scotland. It was a purely English matter the SNP should not have got involved in.
I don't think it was ever formally allowed in Scotland so much as never legislated against - no need thanks to huge social pressure from the churches - it only loosened up in the last years of the C20. A nice example of the paradox of assiming the existence or otherwise of a phenomenon from laws for or against it ...
I have checked, and the reason for the vote on Sunday trading was that cross-border firms were trying to use it as a reason to change pay rates on Sundays and the unions in Scotland (that kind of union, the ones affiliated normally to Labour) asked the SNP to vote against because of that detriment. So it was never a purely English matter.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
No that's not the basic point.
The basic point is that the English government shouldn't be determined by Scottish MPs.
Given that Health and Education are devolved matters, if the English elect a Tory majority would it be appropriate to have a Labour government with Labour Secretary of States for Health and Education etc because of SNP MPs?
Tony Blair screwed both England and Scotland in different ways with his asymmetric devolution farce.
and isn't it an SKS plan to address that with huge devolution across England akin to Scotland, therefore addressing your concerns?
So he's going to abolish the Secretary of State for Health etc on a UK level and have an English one chosen by an English Parliament?
Or is it not going to be the same as what Scotland has? More power for Councils is not what the Scottish Parliament has.
No
I thought it would be much more localised from what I have read.
More akin to what you see in other western democracies where the national / federal government plays a much smaller part in decision making.
You'd have things like health managed locally in Greater Manchester, West Midlands etc. with budgets and foreign affairs maintained in Westminster.
In any case, the basicv point is that the Tory argument is that Westminstert should not be partly controlled by SNP MPs because it is an English Parliament. Yet it is primarily a UK one and SNP MPs are elected to that parliament.
The Tory attitude is that the English bit should have supremacy. How else can it be explained?
I have never said that, just that there should be a Scottish Parliament as well as an English Parliament
My preference would very much be a Scottish one, Welsh one and one for each 3-8m people in the country.
I'm in Switzerland a country of 8m people in 26 cantons, across the border is Germany there are 84m people with 16 Lander.
Both models seem to work very well, we could and should attempt to replicate in the UK is we really want to level up the playing field.
The UK is made up of 4 countries, if Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland have their own parliament and assemblies so should England.
Germany and Switzerland are made up of states not countries.
You could give more powers to councils in all 4 home nations too
I think you'll find Germany is an accumulation of many different countries. Bavaria, Baden, Hanover, Prussia...
- We were after a takeaway coffee on the seafront, but ended up sitting in and drinking it as it was half price. Cafe owner tipped us off. Full price if we had walked away with it.
- In evening we had a meal in a cafe (three of us) and £46 bill became £23
- In both instances, we would have bought these goods at full price if scheme wasn`t in existence
- the discounts were applied automatically. We didn`t have to ask for them.
This is going to cost a fortune and may not flush out as many scared homies as intended. I think the cost will be considerably greater than the benefit.
From my experience last night I'd say the opposite, there was barely a table free and we went to the same place the week before and there were almost no people there, just the two of us. The discount is definitely convincing people to go out and anecdotally restaurant owners are saying they have seen a surge in table bookings for the Monday-Wednesday period. These are people who may have been comfortable to go anyway, but it's given a needed push to get them in the door and spending money in a sector that badly needs it.
We went out for tea at the local pub last night. It was very busy too. The food bill was cut by 50% and more than reasonable! I can see it getting us out a few more times in the coming month than I might have done otherwise.
Trouble is, from the government`s point of view, they`ll end up getting criticism even though it is their scheme
It`s for August only and I`ll bet that a few days prior to its end Starmer will call for it to be extended. If it is he`ll claim it`s down to his pressure and if it isn`t he`ll criticise the governement for "not supporting a struggling sector and withdrawing vital support". I can see it now.
I don't think that we need a crystal ball for that one. Just like the rather absurd idea that the furlough scheme can be continued which we have already seen. The whole sector is a big employer of less skilled staff and the employment consequences of its inevitable contraction will be significant unfortunately.
I am going to bite on this “less skilled staff” meme. Everyone thinks that holding a plate of food and putting it down on a table is easy and therefore running a cafe or restaurant or pub is easy and unskilled so who cares if such jobs are lost.
It’s bollocks on stilts. In hospitality, every member of staff - front of house - is on show 100% of the time and every interaction with the public has to be pitch perfect because for the visitor the visit is a special occasion. For kitchen staff every meal, every drink has to be perfect too. Everything needs to be done on time, in a friendly way to make the experience pleasant and memorable and enjoyable. There is no downtime when you can hide in your office and grumble and stay away from clients. There are no calls with nuisance colleagues and clients where you can sound ok while rolling your eyes.
Training staff to do this well every single day for hours at a time with all sorts of customers, some of whom can be demanding and rude and difficult, is not as easy as it seems.
And this is just the end result. On top of this you have to manage all the administration, the planning of menus, the ordering, the tax, the VAT, the health and safety and all the other rules, assessing profit margins, working out your offering, keeping existing customers and attracting new ones, identifying new markets, coming up with ideas etc.
Running any business is bloody hard work. In the last few months daughter has probably learnt more than most people do in some theoretical MBA course. To call this unskilled is ridiculous.
It is much much harder than it looks to create a cafe or restaurant or pub that really works well - that has that undefinable atmosphere which draws people in and back - and every member of staff plays their part, both individually and as part of a team.
I have been to lots of cafes in my time. I love the atmosphere and offering of good ones. But there are lots of indifferent ones, a testament to the truism that the real skill is in making something look easier than it is.
Of course I am not going to pretend that it is like being a lawyer or scientist. But let’s face it, quite a lot of legal work can be pretty routine and unskilled and will be replicated by robots or computers. Making people feel welcomed and special, giving them a good time is also a skill and one that should not be quite so easily dismissed by those who have the luxury of working away from people most of the time.
Bluntly, life is going to be pretty tough for our children. Any job will be worthwhile and we should perhaps try and instil a culture of trying to do every job, no matter how apparently menial or lowly, as well as possible. Because what is lowly and routine to you may mean a very great deal to the person on the receiving end. Let alone to the person to whom it brings income and the dignity of work.
Rant over.
And yes, the Half-price deal is helping. She is fully booked, despite the variable weather here.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
The problem is that while you, or @Big_G_NorthWales, have the power to vote in an MP who controls health, education etc in England, I don't have that power in England to vote on somebody who controls those matters for you.
Yes, I know that there are indirect impacts, but that's not the point. You don't have to be a rabid English nationalist to see that as an issue.
The correct solution is further devolution to England, but for practical reasons that's hard.
The alternative is for Scottish and Welsh MPs to be very careful about what they vote on and why - for example, not buggering about with fox hunting - so as not to draw too much attention to it. Unfortunately, for their own reasons the SNP have taken exactly the opposite course.
I beg to differ, politely. Barring votes with Barnett consequentials, the SNP already are pretty scrupulous. They do not vote on education in England, for instance. You'd hear screaming from the PB Tories on each and every occasion, as if theiue baw hairs were being indivbidually depilated with pliers. That silence is pretty revealing.
It's the Unionist MPs in Scotland that do. As, infamously, the LD MPs in Scotland did - over student grants.
It shouldn't be a matter of "pretty scrupulous". The Tory MPs do not vote on Scottish laws because they can't, not because of policy.
Why were the Scottish MPs entitled to block changes to Sunday Trading laws in England?
Common decency, and the cross-border effects. I forget the details, but there was a problem of this kind.
?! Sunday trading was allowed in Scotland. It was a purely English matter the SNP should not have got involved in.
I don't think it was ever formally allowed in Scotland so much as never legislated against - no need thanks to huge social pressure from the churches - it only loosened up in the last years of the C20. A nice example of the paradox of assiming the existence or otherwise of a phenomenon from laws for or against it ...
I have checked, and the reason for the vote on Sunday trading was that cross-border firms were trying to use it as a reason to change pay rates on Sundays and the unions in Scotland (that kind of union, the ones affiliated normally to Labour) asked the SNP to vote against because of that detriment. So it was never a purely English matter.
The Western Isles still bans Sunday trading completely
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
The problem is that while you, or @Big_G_NorthWales, have the power to vote in an MP who controls health, education etc in England, I don't have that power in England to vote on somebody who controls those matters for you.
Yes, I know that there are indirect impacts, but that's not the point. You don't have to be a rabid English nationalist to see that as an issue.
The correct solution is further devolution to England, but for practical reasons that's hard.
The alternative is for Scottish and Welsh MPs to be very careful about what they vote on and why - for example, not buggering about with fox hunting - so as not to draw too much attention to it. Unfortunately, for their own reasons the SNP have taken exactly the opposite course.
I beg to differ, politely. Barring votes with Barnett consequentials, the SNP already are pretty scrupulous. They do not vote on education in England, for instance. You'd hear screaming from the PB Tories on each and every occasion, as if theiue baw hairs were being indivbidually depilated with pliers. That silence is pretty revealing.
It's the Unionist MPs in Scotland that do. As, infamously, the LD MPs in Scotland did - over student grants.
It shouldn't be a matter of "pretty scrupulous". The Tory MPs do not vote on Scottish laws because they can't, not because of policy.
Why were the Scottish MPs entitled to block changes to Sunday Trading laws in England?
Common decency, and the cross-border effects. I forget the details, but there was a problem of this kind.
?! Sunday trading was allowed in Scotland. It was a purely English matter the SNP should not have got involved in.
I don't think it was ever formally allowed in Scotland so much as never legislated against - no need thanks to huge social pressure from the churches - it only loosened up in the last years of the C20. A nice example of the paradox of assiming the existence or otherwise of a phenomenon from laws for or against it ...
I have checked, and the reason for the vote on Sunday trading was that cross-border firms were trying to use it as a reason to change pay rates on Sundays and the unions in Scotland (that kind of union, the ones affiliated normally to Labour) asked the SNP to vote against because of that detriment. So it was never a purely English matter.
It was a purely English matter. The law was purely English.
If unions in Scotland were against a proposed law change in France because it would affect pay rates in Scotland then would that permit Scottish MPs to vote on domestic French law? Of course not. This was domestic English law alone.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
The problem is that while you, or @Big_G_NorthWales, have the power to vote in an MP who controls health, education etc in England, I don't have that power in England to vote on somebody who controls those matters for you.
Yes, I know that there are indirect impacts, but that's not the point. You don't have to be a rabid English nationalist to see that as an issue.
The correct solution is further devolution to England, but for practical reasons that's hard.
The alternative is for Scottish and Welsh MPs to be very careful about what they vote on and why - for example, not buggering about with fox hunting - so as not to draw too much attention to it. Unfortunately, for their own reasons the SNP have taken exactly the opposite course.
I beg to differ, politely. Barring votes with Barnett consequentials, the SNP already are pretty scrupulous. They do not vote on education in England, for instance. You'd hear screaming from the PB Tories on each and every occasion, as if theiue baw hairs were being indivbidually depilated with pliers. That silence is pretty revealing.
It's the Unionist MPs in Scotland that do. As, infamously, the LD MPs in Scotland did - over student grants.
It shouldn't be a matter of "pretty scrupulous". The Tory MPs do not vote on Scottish laws because they can't, not because of policy.
Why were the Scottish MPs entitled to block changes to Sunday Trading laws in England?
Common decency, and the cross-border effects. I forget the details, but there was a problem of this kind.
?! Sunday trading was allowed in Scotland. It was a purely English matter the SNP should not have got involved in.
I don't think it was ever formally allowed in Scotland so much as never legislated against - no need thanks to huge social pressure from the churches - it only loosened up in the last years of the C20. A nice example of the paradox of assiming the existence or otherwise of a phenomenon from laws for or against it ...
I have checked, and the reason for the vote on Sunday trading was that cross-border firms were trying to use it as a reason to change pay rates on Sundays and the unions in Scotland (that kind of union, the ones affiliated normally to Labour) asked the SNP to vote against because of that detriment. So it was never a purely English matter.
The Western Isles still bans Sunday trading completely
Not quite. You're thinking of the northern part - Lewis and Harris - not the southern part.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
The problem is that while you, or @Big_G_NorthWales, have the power to vote in an MP who controls health, education etc in England, I don't have that power in England to vote on somebody who controls those matters for you.
Yes, I know that there are indirect impacts, but that's not the point. You don't have to be a rabid English nationalist to see that as an issue.
The correct solution is further devolution to England, but for practical reasons that's hard.
The alternative is for Scottish and Welsh MPs to be very careful about what they vote on and why - for example, not buggering about with fox hunting - so as not to draw too much attention to it. Unfortunately, for their own reasons the SNP have taken exactly the opposite course.
I beg to differ, politely. Barring votes with Barnett consequentials, the SNP already are pretty scrupulous. They do not vote on education in England, for instance. You'd hear screaming from the PB Tories on each and every occasion, as if theiue baw hairs were being indivbidually depilated with pliers. That silence is pretty revealing.
It's the Unionist MPs in Scotland that do. As, infamously, the LD MPs in Scotland did - over student grants.
It shouldn't be a matter of "pretty scrupulous". The Tory MPs do not vote on Scottish laws because they can't, not because of policy.
Why were the Scottish MPs entitled to block changes to Sunday Trading laws in England?
Common decency, and the cross-border effects. I forget the details, but there was a problem of this kind.
?! Sunday trading was allowed in Scotland. It was a purely English matter the SNP should not have got involved in.
I don't think it was ever formally allowed in Scotland so much as never legislated against - no need thanks to huge social pressure from the churches - it only loosened up in the last years of the C20. A nice example of the paradox of assiming the existence or otherwise of a phenomenon from laws for or against it ...
I have checked, and the reason for the vote on Sunday trading was that cross-border firms were trying to use it as a reason to change pay rates on Sundays and the unions in Scotland (that kind of union, the ones affiliated normally to Labour) asked the SNP to vote against because of that detriment. So it was never a purely English matter.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
The problem is that while you, or @Big_G_NorthWales, have the power to vote in an MP who controls health, education etc in England, I don't have that power in England to vote on somebody who controls those matters for you.
Yes, I know that there are indirect impacts, but that's not the point. You don't have to be a rabid English nationalist to see that as an issue.
The correct solution is further devolution to England, but for practical reasons that's hard.
The alternative is for Scottish and Welsh MPs to be very careful about what they vote on and why - for example, not buggering about with fox hunting - so as not to draw too much attention to it. Unfortunately, for their own reasons the SNP have taken exactly the opposite course.
I beg to differ, politely. Barring votes with Barnett consequentials, the SNP already are pretty scrupulous. They do not vote on education in England, for instance. You'd hear screaming from the PB Tories on each and every occasion, as if theiue baw hairs were being indivbidually depilated with pliers. That silence is pretty revealing.
It's the Unionist MPs in Scotland that do. As, infamously, the LD MPs in Scotland did - over student grants.
It shouldn't be a matter of "pretty scrupulous". The Tory MPs do not vote on Scottish laws because they can't, not because of policy.
Why were the Scottish MPs entitled to block changes to Sunday Trading laws in England?
Common decency, and the cross-border effects. I forget the details, but there was a problem of this kind.
?! Sunday trading was allowed in Scotland. It was a purely English matter the SNP should not have got involved in.
I don't think it was ever formally allowed in Scotland so much as never legislated against - no need thanks to huge social pressure from the churches - it only loosened up in the last years of the C20. A nice example of the paradox of assiming the existence or otherwise of a phenomenon from laws for or against it ...
I have checked, and the reason for the vote on Sunday trading was that cross-border firms were trying to use it as a reason to change pay rates on Sundays and the unions in Scotland (that kind of union, the ones affiliated normally to Labour) asked the SNP to vote against because of that detriment. So it was never a purely English matter.
It was a purely English matter. The law was purely English.
If unions in Scotland were against a proposed law change in France because it would affect pay rates in Scotland then would that permit Scottish MPs to vote on domestic French law? Of course not. This was domestic English law alone.
The companies were not purely English.
But if that and the foxhunting is all you can find, it's pretty small beer compared with the injustice over student funding.
I note that PB is in full Jock-bashing mode. On a “never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake” basis, I’ll pop back when you’ve had your gammon.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
No that's not the basic point.
The basic point is that the English government shouldn't be determined by Scottish MPs.
Given that Health and Education are devolved matters, if the English elect a Tory majority would it be appropriate to have a Labour government with Labour Secretary of States for Health and Education etc because of SNP MPs?
Tony Blair screwed both England and Scotland in different ways with his asymmetric devolution farce.
and isn't it an SKS plan to address that with huge devolution across England akin to Scotland, therefore addressing your concerns?
So he's going to abolish the Secretary of State for Health etc on a UK level and have an English one chosen by an English Parliament?
Or is it not going to be the same as what Scotland has? More power for Councils is not what the Scottish Parliament has.
No
I thought it would be much more localised from what I have read.
More akin to what you see in other western democracies where the national / federal government plays a much smaller part in decision making.
You'd have things like health managed locally in Greater Manchester, West Midlands etc. with budgets and foreign affairs maintained in Westminster.
In any case, the basicv point is that the Tory argument is that Westminstert should not be partly controlled by SNP MPs because it is an English Parliament. Yet it is primarily a UK one and SNP MPs are elected to that parliament.
The Tory attitude is that the English bit should have supremacy. How else can it be explained?
I have never said that, just that there should be a Scottish Parliament as well as an English Parliament
My preference would very much be a Scottish one, Welsh one and one for each 3-8m people in the country.
I'm in Switzerland a country of 8m people in 26 cantons, across the border is Germany there are 84m people with 16 Lander.
Both models seem to work very well, we could and should attempt to replicate in the UK is we really want to level up the playing field.
The UK is made up of 4 countries, if Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland have their own parliament and assemblies so should England.
Germany and Switzerland are made up of states not countries.
You could give more powers to councils in all 4 home nations too
I think you'll find Germany is an accumulation of many different countries. Bavaria, Baden, Hanover, Prussia...
Of those only Bavaria has its own Parliament, Prussia was broken up into most of the North German states, Hanover merged into Lower Saxony, Baden with Wurttemberg
I note that PB is in full Jock-bashing mode. On a “never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake” basis, I’ll pop back when you’ve had your gammon.
Isn't it curious that we have people here advocating the abolition of Holyrood, without a cheep about the fact that this would mean an automatic English majority over very change - or, indeed, none at all - to the Scots legal system? No wonderr it took the reconvention of the parliament in Edinburgh to abolish feudal law in Scotland.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
No that's not the basic point.
The basic point is that the English government shouldn't be determined by Scottish MPs.
Given that Health and Education are devolved matters, if the English elect a Tory majority would it be appropriate to have a Labour government with Labour Secretary of States for Health and Education etc because of SNP MPs?
Tony Blair screwed both England and Scotland in different ways with his asymmetric devolution farce.
and isn't it an SKS plan to address that with huge devolution across England akin to Scotland, therefore addressing your concerns?
So he's going to abolish the Secretary of State for Health etc on a UK level and have an English one chosen by an English Parliament?
Or is it not going to be the same as what Scotland has? More power for Councils is not what the Scottish Parliament has.
No
I thought it would be much more localised from what I have read.
More akin to what you see in other western democracies where the national / federal government plays a much smaller part in decision making.
You'd have things like health managed locally in Greater Manchester, West Midlands etc. with budgets and foreign affairs maintained in Westminster.
In any case, the basicv point is that the Tory argument is that Westminstert should not be partly controlled by SNP MPs because it is an English Parliament. Yet it is primarily a UK one and SNP MPs are elected to that parliament.
The Tory attitude is that the English bit should have supremacy. How else can it be explained?
I have never said that, just that there should be a Scottish Parliament as well as an English Parliament
My preference would very much be a Scottish one, Welsh one and one for each 3-8m people in the country.
I'm in Switzerland a country of 8m people in 26 cantons, across the border is Germany there are 84m people with 16 Lander.
Both models seem to work very well, we could and should attempt to replicate in the UK is we really want to level up the playing field.
The UK is made up of 4 countries, if Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland have their own parliament and assemblies so should England.
Germany and Switzerland are made up of states not countries.
You could give more powers to councils in all 4 home nations too
I think you'll find Germany is an accumulation of many different countries. Bavaria, Baden, Hanover, Prussia...
Of those only Bavaria has its own Parliament, Prussia was broken up into most of the North German states, Hanover merged into Lower Saxony, Baden with Wurttemberg
I think you'll find that Wales and Scotland didn't have their own parliaments until recently either.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
No that's not the basic point.
The basic point is that the English government shouldn't be determined by Scottish MPs.
Given that Health and Education are devolved matters, if the English elect a Tory majority would it be appropriate to have a Labour government with Labour Secretary of States for Health and Education etc because of SNP MPs?
Tony Blair screwed both England and Scotland in different ways with his asymmetric devolution farce.
and isn't it an SKS plan to address that with huge devolution across England akin to Scotland, therefore addressing your concerns?
So he's going to abolish the Secretary of State for Health etc on a UK level and have an English one chosen by an English Parliament?
Or is it not going to be the same as what Scotland has? More power for Councils is not what the Scottish Parliament has.
No
I thought it would be much more localised from what I have read.
More akin to what you see in other western democracies where the national / federal government plays a much smaller part in decision making.
You'd have things like health managed locally in Greater Manchester, West Midlands etc. with budgets and foreign affairs maintained in Westminster.
In any case, the basicv point is that the Tory argument is that Westminstert should not be partly controlled by SNP MPs because it is an English Parliament. Yet it is primarily a UK one and SNP MPs are elected to that parliament.
The Tory attitude is that the English bit should have supremacy. How else can it be explained?
I have never said that, just that there should be a Scottish Parliament as well as an English Parliament
My preference would very much be a Scottish one, Welsh one and one for each 3-8m people in the country.
I'm in Switzerland a country of 8m people in 26 cantons, across the border is Germany there are 84m people with 16 Lander.
Both models seem to work very well, we could and should attempt to replicate in the UK is we really want to level up the playing field.
The UK is made up of 4 countries, if Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland have their own parliament and assemblies so should England.
Germany and Switzerland are made up of states not countries.
You could give more powers to councils in all 4 home nations too
I think you'll find Germany is an accumulation of many different countries. Bavaria, Baden, Hanover, Prussia...
Of those only Bavaria has its own Parliament, Prussia was broken up into most of the North German states, Hanover merged into Lower Saxony, Baden with Wurttemberg
I think you'll find that Wales and Scotland didn't have their own parliaments until recently either.
Scotland had its own Parliament a long time ago, until they voted to merge with the English Parliament:
I note that PB is in full Jock-bashing mode. On a “never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake” basis, I’ll pop back when you’ve had your gammon.
Isn't it curious that we have people here advocating the abolition of Holyrood, without a cheep about the fact that this would mean an automatic English majority over very change - or, indeed, none at all - to the Scots legal system? No wonderr it took the reconvention of the parliament in Edinburgh to abolish feudal law in Scotland.
That was hardly the dramatic step that you are implying. And it was done following the work of the Scottish law Commission which formed the basis of many bills in the old UK Parliament. There is no doubt that the Scottish Parliament usually passes more Scottish legislation than we had before (although there have been very extended periods with no new bills in recent years). Its just a pity that the Parliamentary draughtsmen are crap and much of what they produce verging on the incomprehensible.
Wilson is a real balloon, you could not find a nastier piece of work.
Attacking the player tells me that you know this is going to be a real problem (and it will be, in 1 single move the SQA have screwed up the entire lives of the a lot of Scotland's poorest 17-18 year olds).
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
No that's not the basic point.
The basic point is that the English government shouldn't be determined by Scottish MPs.
Given that Health and Education are devolved matters, if the English elect a Tory majority would it be appropriate to have a Labour government with Labour Secretary of States for Health and Education etc because of SNP MPs?
Tony Blair screwed both England and Scotland in different ways with his asymmetric devolution farce.
and isn't it an SKS plan to address that with huge devolution across England akin to Scotland, therefore addressing your concerns?
So he's going to abolish the Secretary of State for Health etc on a UK level and have an English one chosen by an English Parliament?
Or is it not going to be the same as what Scotland has? More power for Councils is not what the Scottish Parliament has.
No
I thought it would be much more localised from what I have read.
More akin to what you see in other western democracies where the national / federal government plays a much smaller part in decision making.
You'd have things like health managed locally in Greater Manchester, West Midlands etc. with budgets and foreign affairs maintained in Westminster.
In any case, the basicv point is that the Tory argument is that Westminstert should not be partly controlled by SNP MPs because it is an English Parliament. Yet it is primarily a UK one and SNP MPs are elected to that parliament.
The Tory attitude is that the English bit should have supremacy. How else can it be explained?
I have never said that, just that there should be a Scottish Parliament as well as an English Parliament
My preference would very much be a Scottish one, Welsh one and one for each 3-8m people in the country.
I'm in Switzerland a country of 8m people in 26 cantons, across the border is Germany there are 84m people with 16 Lander.
Both models seem to work very well, we could and should attempt to replicate in the UK is we really want to level up the playing field.
The UK is made up of 4 countries, if Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland have their own parliament and assemblies so should England.
Germany and Switzerland are made up of states not countries.
You could give more powers to councils in all 4 home nations too
I think you'll find Germany is an accumulation of many different countries. Bavaria, Baden, Hanover, Prussia...
Of those only Bavaria has its own Parliament, Prussia was broken up into most of the North German states, Hanover merged into Lower Saxony, Baden with Wurttemberg
I think you'll find that Wales and Scotland didn't have their own parliaments until recently either.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
The problem is that while you, or @Big_G_NorthWales, have the power to vote in an MP who controls health, education etc in England, I don't have that power in England to vote on somebody who controls those matters for you.
Yes, I know that there are indirect impacts, but that's not the point. You don't have to be a rabid English nationalist to see that as an issue.
The correct solution is further devolution to England, but for practical reasons that's hard.
The alternative is for Scottish and Welsh MPs to be very careful about what they vote on and why - for example, not buggering about with fox hunting - so as not to draw too much attention to it. Unfortunately, for their own reasons the SNP have taken exactly the opposite course.
I beg to differ, politely. Barring votes with Barnett consequentials, the SNP already are pretty scrupulous. They do not vote on education in England, for instance. You'd hear screaming from the PB Tories on each and every occasion, as if theiue baw hairs were being indivbidually depilated with pliers. That silence is pretty revealing.
It's the Unionist MPs in Scotland that do. As, infamously, the LD MPs in Scotland did - over student grants.
It shouldn't be a matter of "pretty scrupulous". The Tory MPs do not vote on Scottish laws because they can't, not because of policy.
Why were the Scottish MPs entitled to block changes to Sunday Trading laws in England?
Common decency, and the cross-border effects. I forget the details, but there was a problem of this kind.
?! Sunday trading was allowed in Scotland. It was a purely English matter the SNP should not have got involved in.
I don't think it was ever formally allowed in Scotland so much as never legislated against - no need thanks to huge social pressure from the churches - it only loosened up in the last years of the C20. A nice example of the paradox of assiming the existence or otherwise of a phenomenon from laws for or against it ...
I have checked, and the reason for the vote on Sunday trading was that cross-border firms were trying to use it as a reason to change pay rates on Sundays and the unions in Scotland (that kind of union, the ones affiliated normally to Labour) asked the SNP to vote against because of that detriment. So it was never a purely English matter.
It was a purely English matter. The law was purely English.
If unions in Scotland were against a proposed law change in France because it would affect pay rates in Scotland then would that permit Scottish MPs to vote on domestic French law? Of course not. This was domestic English law alone.
The companies were not purely English.
But if that and the foxhunting is all you can find, it's pretty small beer compared with the injustice over student funding.
Companies being multinational does not justify you being able to interfere in the domestic affairs of a foreign country, which for devolved matters is exactly what England is or should be to Scotland.
Student funding, fox hunting and Sunday trading are three examples so far of the same problem. That the issue hasn't been many more times that is not because Scotland has a self-denying ordinance, it is because the Parliamentary arithmetic means it has been moot normally.
In the event of a hypothetical Tory English majority but Labour+SNP UK majority that will cease to be the case. Those three examples could spin into hundreds of examples over a five year period.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
No that's not the basic point.
The basic point is that the English government shouldn't be determined by Scottish MPs.
Given that Health and Education are devolved matters, if the English elect a Tory majority would it be appropriate to have a Labour government with Labour Secretary of States for Health and Education etc because of SNP MPs?
Tony Blair screwed both England and Scotland in different ways with his asymmetric devolution farce.
and isn't it an SKS plan to address that with huge devolution across England akin to Scotland, therefore addressing your concerns?
So he's going to abolish the Secretary of State for Health etc on a UK level and have an English one chosen by an English Parliament?
Or is it not going to be the same as what Scotland has? More power for Councils is not what the Scottish Parliament has.
No
I thought it would be much more localised from what I have read.
More akin to what you see in other western democracies where the national / federal government plays a much smaller part in decision making.
You'd have things like health managed locally in Greater Manchester, West Midlands etc. with budgets and foreign affairs maintained in Westminster.
In any case, the basicv point is that the Tory argument is that Westminstert should not be partly controlled by SNP MPs because it is an English Parliament. Yet it is primarily a UK one and SNP MPs are elected to that parliament.
The Tory attitude is that the English bit should have supremacy. How else can it be explained?
I have never said that, just that there should be a Scottish Parliament as well as an English Parliament
My preference would very much be a Scottish one, Welsh one and one for each 3-8m people in the country.
I'm in Switzerland a country of 8m people in 26 cantons, across the border is Germany there are 84m people with 16 Lander.
Both models seem to work very well, we could and should attempt to replicate in the UK is we really want to level up the playing field.
The UK is made up of 4 countries, if Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland have their own parliament and assemblies so should England.
Germany and Switzerland are made up of states not countries.
You could give more powers to councils in all 4 home nations too
I think you'll find Germany is an accumulation of many different countries. Bavaria, Baden, Hanover, Prussia...
Of those only Bavaria has its own Parliament, Prussia was broken up into most of the North German states, Hanover merged into Lower Saxony, Baden with Wurttemberg
I think you'll find that Wales and Scotland didn't have their own parliaments until recently either.
Scotland had its own Parliament a long time ago, until they voted to merge with the English Parliament:
- We were after a takeaway coffee on the seafront, but ended up sitting in and drinking it as it was half price. Cafe owner tipped us off. Full price if we had walked away with it.
- In evening we had a meal in a cafe (three of us) and £46 bill became £23
- In both instances, we would have bought these goods at full price if scheme wasn`t in existence
- the discounts were applied automatically. We didn`t have to ask for them.
This is going to cost a fortune and may not flush out as many scared homies as intended. I think the cost will be considerably greater than the benefit.
From my experience last night I'd say the opposite, there was barely a table free and we went to the same place the week before and there were almost no people there, just the two of us. The discount is definitely convincing people to go out and anecdotally restaurant owners are saying they have seen a surge in table bookings for the Monday-Wednesday period. These are people who may have been comfortable to go anyway, but it's given a needed push to get them in the door and spending money in a sector that badly needs it.
We went out for tea at the local pub last night. It was very busy too. The food bill was cut by 50% and more than reasonable! I can see it getting us out a few more times in the coming month than I might have done otherwise.
Trouble is, from the government`s point of view, they`ll end up getting criticism even though it is their scheme
It`s for August only and I`ll bet that a few days prior to its end Starmer will call for it to be extended. If it is he`ll claim it`s down to his pressure and if it isn`t he`ll criticise the governement for "not supporting a struggling sector and withdrawing vital support". I can see it now.
I don't think that we need a crystal ball for that one. Just like the rather absurd idea that the furlough scheme can be continued which we have already seen. The whole sector is a big employer of less skilled staff and the employment consequences of its inevitable contraction will be significant unfortunately.
I am going to bite on this “less skilled staff” meme. Everyone thinks that holding a plate of food and putting it down on a table is easy and therefore running a cafe or restaurant or pub is easy and unskilled so who cares if such jobs are lost.
It’s bollocks on stilts. In hospitality, every member of staff - front of house - is on show 100% of the time and every interaction with the public has to be pitch perfect because for the visitor the visit is a special occasion. For kitchen staff every meal, every drink has to be perfect too. Everything needs to be done on time, in a friendly way to make the experience pleasant and memorable and enjoyable. There is no downtime when you can hide in your office and grumble and stay away from clients. There are no calls with nuisance colleagues and clients where you can sound ok while rolling your eyes.
Training staff to do this well every single day for hours at a time with all sorts of customers, some of whom can be demanding and rude and difficult, is not as easy as it seems.
And this is just the end result. On top of this you have to manage all the administration, the planning of menus, the ordering, the tax, the VAT, the health and safety and all the other rules, assessing profit margins, working out your offering, keeping existing customers and attracting new ones, identifying new markets, coming up with ideas etc.
Running any business is bloody hard work. In the last few months daughter has probably learnt more than most people do in some theoretical MBA course. To call this unskilled is ridiculous.
It is much much harder than it looks to create a cafe or restaurant or pub that really works well - that has that undefinable atmosphere which draws people in and back - and every member of staff plays their part, both individually and as part of a team.
I have been to lots of cafes in my time. I love the atmosphere and offering of good ones. But there are lots of indifferent ones, a testament to the truism that the real skill is in making something look easier than it is.
Of course I am not going to pretend that it is like being a lawyer or scientist. But let’s face it, quite a lot of legal work can be pretty routine and unskilled and will be replicated by robots or computers. Making people feel welcomed and special, giving them a good time is also a skill and one that should not be quite so easily dismissed by those who have the luxury of working away from people most of the time.
Bluntly, life is going to be pretty tough for our children. Any job will be worthwhile and we should perhaps try and instil a culture of trying to do every job, no matter how apparently menial or lowly, as well as possible. Because what is lowly and routine to you may mean a very great deal to the person on the receiving end. Let alone to the person to whom it brings income and the dignity of work.
Rant over.
And yes, the Half-price deal is helping. She is fully booked, despite the variable weather here.
I hesitated when I typed that and am willing to take my bollocking in good grace. You are absolutely right.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
No that's not the basic point.
The basic point is that the English government shouldn't be determined by Scottish MPs.
Given that Health and Education are devolved matters, if the English elect a Tory majority would it be appropriate to have a Labour government with Labour Secretary of States for Health and Education etc because of SNP MPs?
Tony Blair screwed both England and Scotland in different ways with his asymmetric devolution farce.
and isn't it an SKS plan to address that with huge devolution across England akin to Scotland, therefore addressing your concerns?
So he's going to abolish the Secretary of State for Health etc on a UK level and have an English one chosen by an English Parliament?
Or is it not going to be the same as what Scotland has? More power for Councils is not what the Scottish Parliament has.
No
I thought it would be much more localised from what I have read.
More akin to what you see in other western democracies where the national / federal government plays a much smaller part in decision making.
You'd have things like health managed locally in Greater Manchester, West Midlands etc. with budgets and foreign affairs maintained in Westminster.
In any case, the basicv point is that the Tory argument is that Westminstert should not be partly controlled by SNP MPs because it is an English Parliament. Yet it is primarily a UK one and SNP MPs are elected to that parliament.
The Tory attitude is that the English bit should have supremacy. How else can it be explained?
For as long as it is the English Parliament yes the English bit should have supremacy.
The Scots chose to abandon most of Westminster by setting up Holyrood.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
The problem is that while you, or @Big_G_NorthWales, have the power to vote in an MP who controls health, education etc in England, I don't have that power in England to vote on somebody who controls those matters for you.
Yes, I know that there are indirect impacts, but that's not the point. You don't have to be a rabid English nationalist to see that as an issue.
The correct solution is further devolution to England, but for practical reasons that's hard.
The alternative is for Scottish and Welsh MPs to be very careful about what they vote on and why - for example, not buggering about with fox hunting - so as not to draw too much attention to it. Unfortunately, for their own reasons the SNP have taken exactly the opposite course.
I beg to differ, politely. Barring votes with Barnett consequentials, the SNP already are pretty scrupulous. They do not vote on education in England, for instance. You'd hear screaming from the PB Tories on each and every occasion, as if theiue baw hairs were being indivbidually depilated with pliers. That silence is pretty revealing.
It's the Unionist MPs in Scotland that do. As, infamously, the LD MPs in Scotland did - over student grants.
OK, so it was five years ago. But it's exactly the sort of thing that does raise the profile of the two classes of MP.
That long ago? No wonder I can't remember the details. But the Scottish LD etc MPs voting for changes to student funding were far more consequential - and in my view quite outrageous, as it happens.
Yes and that fox hunting one was only done because it had consequences for Scotland.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
No that's not the basic point.
The basic point is that the English government shouldn't be determined by Scottish MPs.
Given that Health and Education are devolved matters, if the English elect a Tory majority would it be appropriate to have a Labour government with Labour Secretary of States for Health and Education etc because of SNP MPs?
Tony Blair screwed both England and Scotland in different ways with his asymmetric devolution farce.
and isn't it an SKS plan to address that with huge devolution across England akin to Scotland, therefore addressing your concerns?
So he's going to abolish the Secretary of State for Health etc on a UK level and have an English one chosen by an English Parliament?
Or is it not going to be the same as what Scotland has? More power for Councils is not what the Scottish Parliament has.
No
I thought it would be much more localised from what I have read.
More akin to what you see in other western democracies where the national / federal government plays a much smaller part in decision making.
You'd have things like health managed locally in Greater Manchester, West Midlands etc. with budgets and foreign affairs maintained in Westminster.
In any case, the basicv point is that the Tory argument is that Westminstert should not be partly controlled by SNP MPs because it is an English Parliament. Yet it is primarily a UK one and SNP MPs are elected to that parliament.
The Tory attitude is that the English bit should have supremacy. How else can it be explained?
I have never said that, just that there should be a Scottish Parliament as well as an English Parliament
My preference would very much be a Scottish one, Welsh one and one for each 3-8m people in the country.
I'm in Switzerland a country of 8m people in 26 cantons, across the border is Germany there are 84m people with 16 Lander.
Both models seem to work very well, we could and should attempt to replicate in the UK is we really want to level up the playing field.
The UK is made up of 4 countries, if Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland have their own parliament and assemblies so should England.
Germany and Switzerland are made up of states not countries.
You could give more powers to councils in all 4 home nations too
I think you'll find Germany is an accumulation of many different countries. Bavaria, Baden, Hanover, Prussia...
Of those only Bavaria has its own Parliament, Prussia was broken up into most of the North German states, Hanover merged into Lower Saxony, Baden with Wurttemberg
I think you'll find that Wales and Scotland didn't have their own parliaments until recently either.
Scotland had its own Parliament a long time ago, until they voted to merge with the English Parliament:
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
The problem is that while you, or @Big_G_NorthWales, have the power to vote in an MP who controls health, education etc in England, I don't have that power in England to vote on somebody who controls those matters for you.
Yes, I know that there are indirect impacts, but that's not the point. You don't have to be a rabid English nationalist to see that as an issue.
The correct solution is further devolution to England, but for practical reasons that's hard.
The alternative is for Scottish and Welsh MPs to be very careful about what they vote on and why - for example, not buggering about with fox hunting - so as not to draw too much attention to it. Unfortunately, for their own reasons the SNP have taken exactly the opposite course.
I beg to differ, politely. Barring votes with Barnett consequentials, the SNP already are pretty scrupulous. They do not vote on education in England, for instance. You'd hear screaming from the PB Tories on each and every occasion, as if theiue baw hairs were being indivbidually depilated with pliers. That silence is pretty revealing.
It's the Unionist MPs in Scotland that do. As, infamously, the LD MPs in Scotland did - over student grants.
OK, so it was five years ago. But it's exactly the sort of thing that does raise the profile of the two classes of MP.
That long ago? No wonder I can't remember the details. But the Scottish LD etc MPs voting for changes to student funding were far more consequential - and in my view quite outrageous, as it happens.
Yes and that fox hunting one was only done because it had consequences for Scotland.
No, Malcolm. It would have brought the law in England into line with the law in Scotland.
The reason that the SNP intended to vote on it was explained by Sturgeon herself:
Ms Sturgeon told the BBC it would be in Scotland’s “enlightened self-interest” to oppose laws that would privatise parts of the English National Health Service, for example, saying privatisation would have a knock-on impact in Scotland.
“If SNP MPs can be in a position of holding the balance of power at Westminster, we can help to further progressive politics across the UK, as well as in Scotland,” she said.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
No that's not the basic point.
The basic point is that the English government shouldn't be determined by Scottish MPs.
Given that Health and Education are devolved matters, if the English elect a Tory majority would it be appropriate to have a Labour government with Labour Secretary of States for Health and Education etc because of SNP MPs?
Tony Blair screwed both England and Scotland in different ways with his asymmetric devolution farce.
and isn't it an SKS plan to address that with huge devolution across England akin to Scotland, therefore addressing your concerns?
So he's going to abolish the Secretary of State for Health etc on a UK level and have an English one chosen by an English Parliament?
Or is it not going to be the same as what Scotland has? More power for Councils is not what the Scottish Parliament has.
No
I thought it would be much more localised from what I have read.
More akin to what you see in other western democracies where the national / federal government plays a much smaller part in decision making.
You'd have things like health managed locally in Greater Manchester, West Midlands etc. with budgets and foreign affairs maintained in Westminster.
In any case, the basicv point is that the Tory argument is that Westminstert should not be partly controlled by SNP MPs because it is an English Parliament. Yet it is primarily a UK one and SNP MPs are elected to that parliament.
The Tory attitude is that the English bit should have supremacy. How else can it be explained?
For as long as it is the English Parliament yes the English bit should have supremacy.
The Scots chose to abandon most of Westminster by setting up Holyrood.
Utter bollox ,
Its not "bollox", the Scots voted to abandon having Westminster control their Health, Education etc by having those laws set in Holyrood. They should therefore have no role in either setting those laws in Westminster nor in determining which party has the Secretary of State for those issues.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
The problem is that while you, or @Big_G_NorthWales, have the power to vote in an MP who controls health, education etc in England, I don't have that power in England to vote on somebody who controls those matters for you.
Yes, I know that there are indirect impacts, but that's not the point. You don't have to be a rabid English nationalist to see that as an issue.
The correct solution is further devolution to England, but for practical reasons that's hard.
The alternative is for Scottish and Welsh MPs to be very careful about what they vote on and why - for example, not buggering about with fox hunting - so as not to draw too much attention to it. Unfortunately, for their own reasons the SNP have taken exactly the opposite course.
I beg to differ, politely. Barring votes with Barnett consequentials, the SNP already are pretty scrupulous. They do not vote on education in England, for instance. You'd hear screaming from the PB Tories on each and every occasion, as if theiue baw hairs were being indivbidually depilated with pliers. That silence is pretty revealing.
It's the Unionist MPs in Scotland that do. As, infamously, the LD MPs in Scotland did - over student grants.
It shouldn't be a matter of "pretty scrupulous". The Tory MPs do not vote on Scottish laws because they can't, not because of policy.
Why were the Scottish MPs entitled to block changes to Sunday Trading laws in England?
Common decency, and the cross-border effects. I forget the details, but there was a problem of this kind.
?! Sunday trading was allowed in Scotland. It was a purely English matter the SNP should not have got involved in.
I don't think it was ever formally allowed in Scotland so much as never legislated against - no need thanks to huge social pressure from the churches - it only loosened up in the last years of the C20. A nice example of the paradox of assiming the existence or otherwise of a phenomenon from laws for or against it ...
I have checked, and the reason for the vote on Sunday trading was that cross-border firms were trying to use it as a reason to change pay rates on Sundays and the unions in Scotland (that kind of union, the ones affiliated normally to Labour) asked the SNP to vote against because of that detriment. So it was never a purely English matter.
The Western Isles still bans Sunday trading completely
Not quite. You're thinking of the northern part - Lewis and Harris - not the southern part.
His usual load of tripe re Scotland. You would think having made such a fool of himself over lack of knowledge that he would have learned by now to not try and pontificate when he has no clue what he is talking about.
- We were after a takeaway coffee on the seafront, but ended up sitting in and drinking it as it was half price. Cafe owner tipped us off. Full price if we had walked away with it.
- In evening we had a meal in a cafe (three of us) and £46 bill became £23
- In both instances, we would have bought these goods at full price if scheme wasn`t in existence
- the discounts were applied automatically. We didn`t have to ask for them.
This is going to cost a fortune and may not flush out as many scared homies as intended. I think the cost will be considerably greater than the benefit.
From my experience last night I'd say the opposite, there was barely a table free and we went to the same place the week before and there were almost no people there, just the two of us. The discount is definitely convincing people to go out and anecdotally restaurant owners are saying they have seen a surge in table bookings for the Monday-Wednesday period. These are people who may have been comfortable to go anyway, but it's given a needed push to get them in the door and spending money in a sector that badly needs it.
We went out for tea at the local pub last night. It was very busy too. The food bill was cut by 50% and more than reasonable! I can see it getting us out a few more times in the coming month than I might have done otherwise.
Trouble is, from the government`s point of view, they`ll end up getting criticism even though it is their scheme
It`s for August only and I`ll bet that a few days prior to its end Starmer will call for it to be extended. If it is he`ll claim it`s down to his pressure and if it isn`t he`ll criticise the governement for "not supporting a struggling sector and withdrawing vital support". I can see it now.
I don't think that we need a crystal ball for that one. Just like the rather absurd idea that the furlough scheme can be continued which we have already seen. The whole sector is a big employer of less skilled staff and the employment consequences of its inevitable contraction will be significant unfortunately.
I am going to bite on this “less skilled staff” meme. Everyone thinks that holding a plate of food and putting it down on a table is easy and therefore running a cafe or restaurant or pub is easy and unskilled so who cares if such jobs are lost.
It’s bollocks on stilts. In hospitality, every member of staff - front of house - is on show 100% of the time and every interaction with the public has to be pitch perfect because for the visitor the visit is a special occasion. For kitchen staff every meal, every drink has to be perfect too. Everything needs to be done on time, in a friendly way to make the experience pleasant and memorable and enjoyable. There is no downtime when you can hide in your office and grumble and stay away from clients. There are no calls with nuisance colleagues and clients where you can sound ok while rolling your eyes.
Training staff to do this well every single day for hours at a time with all sorts of customers, some of whom can be demanding and rude and difficult, is not as easy as it seems.
And this is just the end result. On top of this you have to manage all the administration, the planning of menus, the ordering, the tax, the VAT, the health and safety and all the other rules, assessing profit margins, working out your offering, keeping existing customers and attracting new ones, identifying new markets, coming up with ideas etc.
Running any business is bloody hard work. In the last few months daughter has probably learnt more than most people do in some theoretical MBA course. To call this unskilled is ridiculous.
It is much much harder than it looks to create a cafe or restaurant or pub that really works well - that has that undefinable atmosphere which draws people in and back - and every member of staff plays their part, both individually and as part of a team.
I have been to lots of cafes in my time. I love the atmosphere and offering of good ones. But there are lots of indifferent ones, a testament to the truism that the real skill is in making something look easier than it is.
Of course I am not going to pretend that it is like being a lawyer or scientist. But let’s face it, quite a lot of legal work can be pretty routine and unskilled and will be replicated by robots or computers. Making people feel welcomed and special, giving them a good time is also a skill and one that should not be quite so easily dismissed by those who have the luxury of working away from people most of the time.
Bluntly, life is going to be pretty tough for our children. Any job will be worthwhile and we should perhaps try and instil a culture of trying to do every job, no matter how apparently menial or lowly, as well as possible. Because what is lowly and routine to you may mean a very great deal to the person on the receiving end. Let alone to the person to whom it brings income and the dignity of work.
Rant over.
And yes, the Half-price deal is helping. She is fully booked, despite the variable weather here.
He said, and you quoted at first, "less skilled", not "unskilled". But I get what you mean. I guess it's used as short hand for a job you don't need a degree/formal qualification for?
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
The problem is that while you, or @Big_G_NorthWales, have the power to vote in an MP who controls health, education etc in England, I don't have that power in England to vote on somebody who controls those matters for you.
Yes, I know that there are indirect impacts, but that's not the point. You don't have to be a rabid English nationalist to see that as an issue.
The correct solution is further devolution to England, but for practical reasons that's hard.
The alternative is for Scottish and Welsh MPs to be very careful about what they vote on and why - for example, not buggering about with fox hunting - so as not to draw too much attention to it. Unfortunately, for their own reasons the SNP have taken exactly the opposite course.
I beg to differ, politely. Barring votes with Barnett consequentials, the SNP already are pretty scrupulous. They do not vote on education in England, for instance. You'd hear screaming from the PB Tories on each and every occasion, as if theiue baw hairs were being indivbidually depilated with pliers. That silence is pretty revealing.
It's the Unionist MPs in Scotland that do. As, infamously, the LD MPs in Scotland did - over student grants.
It shouldn't be a matter of "pretty scrupulous". The Tory MPs do not vote on Scottish laws because they can't, not because of policy.
Why were the Scottish MPs entitled to block changes to Sunday Trading laws in England?
Common decency, and the cross-border effects. I forget the details, but there was a problem of this kind.
These erses don't care Carnyx, fact it was down to it having major impacts on Scotland does not penetrate their Little Englander pea rains.
I don't think the SQA have screwed up. Penny to a pound, results would be far more in line with the adjusted grades if full exams had taken place than those handed out by pupil's teachers.
No wonder we have continual grade inflation if this is the reaction to reality.
- We were after a takeaway coffee on the seafront, but ended up sitting in and drinking it as it was half price. Cafe owner tipped us off. Full price if we had walked away with it.
- In evening we had a meal in a cafe (three of us) and £46 bill became £23
- In both instances, we would have bought these goods at full price if scheme wasn`t in existence
- the discounts were applied automatically. We didn`t have to ask for them.
This is going to cost a fortune and may not flush out as many scared homies as intended. I think the cost will be considerably greater than the benefit.
From my experience last night I'd say the opposite, there was barely a table free and we went to the same place the week before and there were almost no people there, just the two of us. The discount is definitely convincing people to go out and anecdotally restaurant owners are saying they have seen a surge in table bookings for the Monday-Wednesday period. These are people who may have been comfortable to go anyway, but it's given a needed push to get them in the door and spending money in a sector that badly needs it.
We went out for tea at the local pub last night. It was very busy too. The food bill was cut by 50% and more than reasonable! I can see it getting us out a few more times in the coming month than I might have done otherwise.
Trouble is, from the government`s point of view, they`ll end up getting criticism even though it is their scheme
It`s for August only and I`ll bet that a few days prior to its end Starmer will call for it to be extended. If it is he`ll claim it`s down to his pressure and if it isn`t he`ll criticise the governement for "not supporting a struggling sector and withdrawing vital support". I can see it now.
I don't think that we need a crystal ball for that one. Just like the rather absurd idea that the furlough scheme can be continued which we have already seen. The whole sector is a big employer of less skilled staff and the employment consequences of its inevitable contraction will be significant unfortunately.
I am going to bite on this “less skilled staff” meme. Everyone thinks that holding a plate of food and putting it down on a table is easy and therefore running a cafe or restaurant or pub is easy and unskilled so who cares if such jobs are lost.
It’s bollocks on stilts. In hospitality, every member of staff - front of house - is on show 100% of the time and every interaction with the public has to be pitch perfect because for the visitor the visit is a special occasion. For kitchen staff every meal, every drink has to be perfect too. Everything needs to be done on time, in a friendly way to make the experience pleasant and memorable and enjoyable. There is no downtime when you can hide in your office and grumble and stay away from clients. There are no calls with nuisance colleagues and clients where you can sound ok while rolling your eyes.
Training staff to do this well every single day for hours at a time with all sorts of customers, some of whom can be demanding and rude and difficult, is not as easy as it seems.
And this is just the end result. On top of this you have to manage all the administration, the planning of menus, the ordering, the tax, the VAT, the health and safety and all the other rules, assessing profit margins, working out your offering, keeping existing customers and attracting new ones, identifying new markets, coming up with ideas etc.
Running any business is bloody hard work. In the last few months daughter has probably learnt more than most people do in some theoretical MBA course. To call this unskilled is ridiculous.
It is much much harder than it looks to create a cafe or restaurant or pub that really works well - that has that undefinable atmosphere which draws people in and back - and every member of staff plays their part, both individually and as part of a team.
I have been to lots of cafes in my time. I love the atmosphere and offering of good ones. But there are lots of indifferent ones, a testament to the truism that the real skill is in making something look easier than it is.
Of course I am not going to pretend that it is like being a lawyer or scientist. But let’s face it, quite a lot of legal work can be pretty routine and unskilled and will be replicated by robots or computers. Making people feel welcomed and special, giving them a good time is also a skill and one that should not be quite so easily dismissed by those who have the luxury of working away from people most of the time.
Bluntly, life is going to be pretty tough for our children. Any job will be worthwhile and we should perhaps try and instil a culture of trying to do every job, no matter how apparently menial or lowly, as well as possible. Because what is lowly and routine to you may mean a very great deal to the person on the receiving end. Let alone to the person to whom it brings income and the dignity of work.
Rant over.
And yes, the Half-price deal is helping. She is fully booked, despite the variable weather here.
He said, and you quoted at first, "less skilled", not "unskilled". But I get what you mean. I guess it's used as short hand for a job you don't need a degree/formal qualification for?
Sturgeon would be utterly heart broken if she had to can Swinney.
Totally devastated. She would be beside herself with grief.
Can't begin to imagine the smirk look of abject despair she would have
I've always quite liked him, his tenure as the cab sec for finance was prudent as they come.
Swiney, for me has alsways been summed up by this entry on his Bio Leader of the Scottish National Party 26 September 2000 – 3 September 2004 Preceded by Alex Salmond Succeeded by Alex Salmond
The 2003 election campaign was diabolical, a shambles.
- We were after a takeaway coffee on the seafront, but ended up sitting in and drinking it as it was half price. Cafe owner tipped us off. Full price if we had walked away with it.
- In evening we had a meal in a cafe (three of us) and £46 bill became £23
- In both instances, we would have bought these goods at full price if scheme wasn`t in existence
- the discounts were applied automatically. We didn`t have to ask for them.
This is going to cost a fortune and may not flush out as many scared homies as intended. I think the cost will be considerably greater than the benefit.
From my experience last night I'd say the opposite, there was barely a table free and we went to the same place the week before and there were almost no people there, just the two of us. The discount is definitely convincing people to go out and anecdotally restaurant owners are saying they have seen a surge in table bookings for the Monday-Wednesday period. These are people who may have been comfortable to go anyway, but it's given a needed push to get them in the door and spending money in a sector that badly needs it.
We went out for tea at the local pub last night. It was very busy too. The food bill was cut by 50% and more than reasonable! I can see it getting us out a few more times in the coming month than I might have done otherwise.
Trouble is, from the government`s point of view, they`ll end up getting criticism even though it is their scheme
It`s for August only and I`ll bet that a few days prior to its end Starmer will call for it to be extended. If it is he`ll claim it`s down to his pressure and if it isn`t he`ll criticise the governement for "not supporting a struggling sector and withdrawing vital support". I can see it now.
I don't think that we need a crystal ball for that one. Just like the rather absurd idea that the furlough scheme can be continued which we have already seen. The whole sector is a big employer of less skilled staff and the employment consequences of its inevitable contraction will be significant unfortunately.
I am going to bite on this “less skilled staff” meme. Everyone thinks that holding a plate of food and putting it down on a table is easy and therefore running a cafe or restaurant or pub is easy and unskilled so who cares if such jobs are lost.
It’s bollocks on stilts. In hospitality, every member of staff - front of house - is on show 100% of the time and every interaction with the public has to be pitch perfect because for the visitor the visit is a special occasion. For kitchen staff every meal, every drink has to be perfect too. Everything needs to be done on time, in a friendly way to make the experience pleasant and memorable and enjoyable. There is no downtime when you can hide in your office and grumble and stay away from clients. There are no calls with nuisance colleagues and clients where you can sound ok while rolling your eyes.
Training staff to do this well every single day for hours at a time with all sorts of customers, some of whom can be demanding and rude and difficult, is not as easy as it seems.
And this is just the end result. On top of this you have to manage all the administration, the planning of menus, the ordering, the tax, the VAT, the health and safety and all the other rules, assessing profit margins, working out your offering, keeping existing customers and attracting new ones, identifying new markets, coming up with ideas etc.
Running any business is bloody hard work. In the last few months daughter has probably learnt more than most people do in some theoretical MBA course. To call this unskilled is ridiculous.
It is much much harder than it looks to create a cafe or restaurant or pub that really works well - that has that undefinable atmosphere which draws people in and back - and every member of staff plays their part, both individually and as part of a team.
I have been to lots of cafes in my time. I love the atmosphere and offering of good ones. But there are lots of indifferent ones, a testament to the truism that the real skill is in making something look easier than it is.
Of course I am not going to pretend that it is like being a lawyer or scientist. But let’s face it, quite a lot of legal work can be pretty routine and unskilled and will be replicated by robots or computers. Making people feel welcomed and special, giving them a good time is also a skill and one that should not be quite so easily dismissed by those who have the luxury of working away from people most of the time.
Bluntly, life is going to be pretty tough for our children. Any job will be worthwhile and we should perhaps try and instil a culture of trying to do every job, no matter how apparently menial or lowly, as well as possible. Because what is lowly and routine to you may mean a very great deal to the person on the receiving end. Let alone to the person to whom it brings income and the dignity of work.
Rant over.
And yes, the Half-price deal is helping. She is fully booked, despite the variable weather here.
He said, and you quoted at first, "less skilled", not "unskilled". But I get what you mean. I guess it's used as short hand for a job you don't need a degree/formal qualification for?
Thanks (and you are right about what I meant) but I have already held my hands up to this one.
I don't think the SQA have screwed up. Penny to a pound, results would be far more in line with the adjusted grades if full exams had taken place than those handed out by pupil's teachers.
No wonder we have continual grade inflation if this is the reaction to reality.
We should know for sure next year, providing we get exams then. If there's a sudden 15% surge in the most deprived quintile's grades (I think that was the effect of the 'predicted' marks ?) then I'll freely admit I was wrong.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
The problem is that while you, or @Big_G_NorthWales, have the power to vote in an MP who controls health, education etc in England, I don't have that power in England to vote on somebody who controls those matters for you.
Yes, I know that there are indirect impacts, but that's not the point. You don't have to be a rabid English nationalist to see that as an issue.
The correct solution is further devolution to England, but for practical reasons that's hard.
The alternative is for Scottish and Welsh MPs to be very careful about what they vote on and why - for example, not buggering about with fox hunting - so as not to draw too much attention to it. Unfortunately, for their own reasons the SNP have taken exactly the opposite course.
I beg to differ, politely. Barring votes with Barnett consequentials, the SNP already are pretty scrupulous. They do not vote on education in England, for instance. You'd hear screaming from the PB Tories on each and every occasion, as if theiue baw hairs were being indivbidually depilated with pliers. That silence is pretty revealing.
It's the Unionist MPs in Scotland that do. As, infamously, the LD MPs in Scotland did - over student grants.
It shouldn't be a matter of "pretty scrupulous". The Tory MPs do not vote on Scottish laws because they can't, not because of policy.
Why were the Scottish MPs entitled to block changes to Sunday Trading laws in England?
Common decency, and the cross-border effects. I forget the details, but there was a problem of this kind.
Again decency shouldn't be yours to judge. There were no legal cross border effects either, potential knock on consequences but that's true in any change of law. For Scottish laws the English MPs get no say. For English laws the Scottish MPs do. Until that situation is resolved, the Scottish MPs should be treated as second class MPs and subordinate to English MPs. That is the natural consequence of Westminster setting English but not Scottish law.
Scottish independence is the best fix for that IMO. Or the abolition of Holyrood.
There were issues that affected Scottish retail laws and trading , it was well justified and SNP offered them a solution if they excluded Scotland but the erses refused. It would have meant Scotland closing shops.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
The problem is that while you, or @Big_G_NorthWales, have the power to vote in an MP who controls health, education etc in England, I don't have that power in England to vote on somebody who controls those matters for you.
Yes, I know that there are indirect impacts, but that's not the point. You don't have to be a rabid English nationalist to see that as an issue.
The correct solution is further devolution to England, but for practical reasons that's hard.
The alternative is for Scottish and Welsh MPs to be very careful about what they vote on and why - for example, not buggering about with fox hunting - so as not to draw too much attention to it. Unfortunately, for their own reasons the SNP have taken exactly the opposite course.
I beg to differ, politely. Barring votes with Barnett consequentials, the SNP already are pretty scrupulous. They do not vote on education in England, for instance. You'd hear screaming from the PB Tories on each and every occasion, as if theiue baw hairs were being indivbidually depilated with pliers. That silence is pretty revealing.
It's the Unionist MPs in Scotland that do. As, infamously, the LD MPs in Scotland did - over student grants.
It shouldn't be a matter of "pretty scrupulous". The Tory MPs do not vote on Scottish laws because they can't, not because of policy.
Why were the Scottish MPs entitled to block changes to Sunday Trading laws in England?
Common decency, and the cross-border effects. I forget the details, but there was a problem of this kind.
These erses don't care Carnyx, fact it was down to it having major impacts on Scotland does not penetrate their Little Englander pea rains.
Impacting Scotland isn't sufficient. We live in an interconnected world. Scottish law changes can impact on England, even American law changes impact England, our MPs don't get to vote on either Scottish or American laws though.
Scottish MPs should vote on laws that apply to Scotland. If the law doesn't apply to Scotland then indirectly "impacting" Scotland should be no more sufficient than it is reciprocally.
I don't think the SQA have screwed up. Penny to a pound, results would be far more in line with the adjusted grades if full exams had taken place than those handed out by pupil's teachers.
No wonder we have continual grade inflation if this is the reaction to reality.
It's also maybe no wonder nobody has confidence in the exam system if the bosses think results should changed by algorithms based on an unsupported piece of research 25 years old rather than, y'know, actual fucking evidence that they were too lazy or stupid to ask for.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
The problem is that while you, or @Big_G_NorthWales, have the power to vote in an MP who controls health, education etc in England, I don't have that power in England to vote on somebody who controls those matters for you.
Yes, I know that there are indirect impacts, but that's not the point. You don't have to be a rabid English nationalist to see that as an issue.
The correct solution is further devolution to England, but for practical reasons that's hard.
The alternative is for Scottish and Welsh MPs to be very careful about what they vote on and why - for example, not buggering about with fox hunting - so as not to draw too much attention to it. Unfortunately, for their own reasons the SNP have taken exactly the opposite course.
I beg to differ, politely. Barring votes with Barnett consequentials, the SNP already are pretty scrupulous. They do not vote on education in England, for instance. You'd hear screaming from the PB Tories on each and every occasion, as if theiue baw hairs were being indivbidually depilated with pliers. That silence is pretty revealing.
It's the Unionist MPs in Scotland that do. As, infamously, the LD MPs in Scotland did - over student grants.
It shouldn't be a matter of "pretty scrupulous". The Tory MPs do not vote on Scottish laws because they can't, not because of policy.
Why were the Scottish MPs entitled to block changes to Sunday Trading laws in England?
Common decency, and the cross-border effects. I forget the details, but there was a problem of this kind.
Again decency shouldn't be yours to judge. There were no legal cross border effects either, potential knock on consequences but that's true in any change of law. For Scottish laws the English MPs get no say. For English laws the Scottish MPs do. Until that situation is resolved, the Scottish MPs should be treated as second class MPs and subordinate to English MPs. That is the natural consequence of Westminster setting English but not Scottish law.
Scottish independence is the best fix for that IMO. Or the abolition of Holyrood.
There were issues that affected Scottish retail laws and trading , it was well justified and SNP offered them a solution if they excluded Scotland but the erses refused. It would have meant Scotland closing shops.
The law didn't affect Scotland so no it doesn't justify it. If the shoe was on the other foot, if Holyrood was changing a Scottish only law that would affect English retail and trading then would English MPs have got a vote on that? No, of course not.
- We were after a takeaway coffee on the seafront, but ended up sitting in and drinking it as it was half price. Cafe owner tipped us off. Full price if we had walked away with it.
- In evening we had a meal in a cafe (three of us) and £46 bill became £23
- In both instances, we would have bought these goods at full price if scheme wasn`t in existence
- the discounts were applied automatically. We didn`t have to ask for them.
This is going to cost a fortune and may not flush out as many scared homies as intended. I think the cost will be considerably greater than the benefit.
From my experience last night I'd say the opposite, there was barely a table free and we went to the same place the week before and there were almost no people there, just the two of us. The discount is definitely convincing people to go out and anecdotally restaurant owners are saying they have seen a surge in table bookings for the Monday-Wednesday period. These are people who may have been comfortable to go anyway, but it's given a needed push to get them in the door and spending money in a sector that badly needs it.
We went out for tea at the local pub last night. It was very busy too. The food bill was cut by 50% and more than reasonable! I can see it getting us out a few more times in the coming month than I might have done otherwise.
Trouble is, from the government`s point of view, they`ll end up getting criticism even though it is their scheme
It`s for August only and I`ll bet that a few days prior to its end Starmer will call for it to be extended. If it is he`ll claim it`s down to his pressure and if it isn`t he`ll criticise the governement for "not supporting a struggling sector and withdrawing vital support". I can see it now.
I don't think that we need a crystal ball for that one. Just like the rather absurd idea that the furlough scheme can be continued which we have already seen. The whole sector is a big employer of less skilled staff and the employment consequences of its inevitable contraction will be significant unfortunately.
I am going to bite on this “less skilled staff” meme. Everyone thinks that holding a plate of food and putting it down on a table is easy and therefore running a cafe or restaurant or pub is easy and unskilled so who cares if such jobs are lost.
It’s bollocks on stilts. In hospitality, every member of staff - front of house - is on show 100% of the time and every interaction with the public has to be pitch perfect because for the visitor the visit is a special occasion. For kitchen staff every meal, every drink has to be perfect too. Everything needs to be done on time, in a friendly way to make the experience pleasant and memorable and enjoyable. There is no downtime when you can hide in your office and grumble and stay away from clients. There are no calls with nuisance colleagues and clients where you can sound ok while rolling your eyes.
Training staff to do this well every single day for hours at a time with all sorts of customers, some of whom can be demanding and rude and difficult, is not as easy as it seems.
And this is just the end result. On top of this you have to manage all the administration, the planning of menus, the ordering, the tax, the VAT, the health and safety and all the other rules, assessing profit margins, working out your offering, keeping existing customers and attracting new ones, identifying new markets, coming up with ideas etc.
Running any business is bloody hard work. In the last few months daughter has probably learnt more than most people do in some theoretical MBA course. To call this unskilled is ridiculous.
It is much much harder than it looks to create a cafe or restaurant or pub that really works well - that has that undefinable atmosphere which draws people in and back - and every member of staff plays their part, both individually and as part of a team.
I have been to lots of cafes in my time. I love the atmosphere and offering of good ones. But there are lots of indifferent ones, a testament to the truism that the real skill is in making something look easier than it is.
Of course I am not going to pretend that it is like being a lawyer or scientist. But let’s face it, quite a lot of legal work can be pretty routine and unskilled and will be replicated by robots or computers. Making people feel welcomed and special, giving them a good time is also a skill and one that should not be quite so easily dismissed by those who have the luxury of working away from people most of the time.
Bluntly, life is going to be pretty tough for our children. Any job will be worthwhile and we should perhaps try and instil a culture of trying to do every job, no matter how apparently menial or lowly, as well as possible. Because what is lowly and routine to you may mean a very great deal to the person on the receiving end. Let alone to the person to whom it brings income and the dignity of work.
Rant over.
And yes, the Half-price deal is helping. She is fully booked, despite the variable weather here.
He said, and you quoted at first, "less skilled", not "unskilled". But I get what you mean. I guess it's used as short hand for a job you don't need a degree/formal qualification for?
I wonder what Lewis Hamilton would think of the accusation that his job is "less skilled".
Wilson is a real balloon, you could not find a nastier piece of work.
Attacking the player tells me that you know this is going to be a real problem (and it will be, in 1 single move the SQA have screwed up the entire lives of the a lot of Scotland's poorest 17-18 year olds).
Just to confirm, you're in favour of a year-on-year 19.8 point increase in pass rate figures for the 20% of most deprived kids based entirely on teachers' estimates?
I'm not sure about tinkering about the edges solutions for large structural problems, but in this case I'm for it just to see the raging.
- We were after a takeaway coffee on the seafront, but ended up sitting in and drinking it as it was half price. Cafe owner tipped us off. Full price if we had walked away with it.
- In evening we had a meal in a cafe (three of us) and £46 bill became £23
- In both instances, we would have bought these goods at full price if scheme wasn`t in existence
- the discounts were applied automatically. We didn`t have to ask for them.
This is going to cost a fortune and may not flush out as many scared homies as intended. I think the cost will be considerably greater than the benefit.
From my experience last night I'd say the opposite, there was barely a table free and we went to the same place the week before and there were almost no people there, just the two of us. The discount is definitely convincing people to go out and anecdotally restaurant owners are saying they have seen a surge in table bookings for the Monday-Wednesday period. These are people who may have been comfortable to go anyway, but it's given a needed push to get them in the door and spending money in a sector that badly needs it.
We went out for tea at the local pub last night. It was very busy too. The food bill was cut by 50% and more than reasonable! I can see it getting us out a few more times in the coming month than I might have done otherwise.
Trouble is, from the government`s point of view, they`ll end up getting criticism even though it is their scheme
It`s for August only and I`ll bet that a few days prior to its end Starmer will call for it to be extended. If it is he`ll claim it`s down to his pressure and if it isn`t he`ll criticise the governement for "not supporting a struggling sector and withdrawing vital support". I can see it now.
I don't think that we need a crystal ball for that one. Just like the rather absurd idea that the furlough scheme can be continued which we have already seen. The whole sector is a big employer of less skilled staff and the employment consequences of its inevitable contraction will be significant unfortunately.
I am going to bite on this “less skilled staff” meme. Everyone thinks that holding a plate of food and putting it down on a table is easy and therefore running a cafe or restaurant or pub is easy and unskilled so who cares if such jobs are lost.
It’s bollocks on stilts. In hospitality, every member of staff - front of house - is on show 100% of the time and every interaction with the public has to be pitch perfect because for the visitor the visit is a special occasion. For kitchen staff every meal, every drink has to be perfect too. Everything needs to be done on time, in a friendly way to make the experience pleasant and memorable and enjoyable. There is no downtime when you can hide in your office and grumble and stay away from clients. There are no calls with nuisance colleagues and clients where you can sound ok while rolling your eyes.
Training staff to do this well every single day for hours at a time with all sorts of customers, some of whom can be demanding and rude and difficult, is not as easy as it seems.
And this is just the end result. On top of this you have to manage all the administration, the planning of menus, the ordering, the tax, the VAT, the health and safety and all the other rules, assessing profit margins, working out your offering, keeping existing customers and attracting new ones, identifying new markets, coming up with ideas etc.
Running any business is bloody hard work. In the last few months daughter has probably learnt more than most people do in some theoretical MBA course. To call this unskilled is ridiculous.
It is much much harder than it looks to create a cafe or restaurant or pub that really works well - that has that undefinable atmosphere which draws people in and back - and every member of staff plays their part, both individually and as part of a team.
I have been to lots of cafes in my time. I love the atmosphere and offering of good ones. But there are lots of indifferent ones, a testament to the truism that the real skill is in making something look easier than it is.
Of course I am not going to pretend that it is like being a lawyer or scientist. But let’s face it, quite a lot of legal work can be pretty routine and unskilled and will be replicated by robots or computers. Making people feel welcomed and special, giving them a good time is also a skill and one that should not be quite so easily dismissed by those who have the luxury of working away from people most of the time.
Bluntly, life is going to be pretty tough for our children. Any job will be worthwhile and we should perhaps try and instil a culture of trying to do every job, no matter how apparently menial or lowly, as well as possible. Because what is lowly and routine to you may mean a very great deal to the person on the receiving end. Let alone to the person to whom it brings income and the dignity of work.
Rant over.
And yes, the Half-price deal is helping. She is fully booked, despite the variable weather here.
He said, and you quoted at first, "less skilled", not "unskilled". But I get what you mean. I guess it's used as short hand for a job you don't need a degree/formal qualification for?
I wonder what Lewis Hamilton would think of the accusation that his job is "less skilled".
Don't really care! We'll have to wait for someone to make that accusation I suppose
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
The problem is that while you, or @Big_G_NorthWales, have the power to vote in an MP who controls health, education etc in England, I don't have that power in England to vote on somebody who controls those matters for you.
Yes, I know that there are indirect impacts, but that's not the point. You don't have to be a rabid English nationalist to see that as an issue.
The correct solution is further devolution to England, but for practical reasons that's hard.
The alternative is for Scottish and Welsh MPs to be very careful about what they vote on and why - for example, not buggering about with fox hunting - so as not to draw too much attention to it. Unfortunately, for their own reasons the SNP have taken exactly the opposite course.
I beg to differ, politely. Barring votes with Barnett consequentials, the SNP already are pretty scrupulous. They do not vote on education in England, for instance. You'd hear screaming from the PB Tories on each and every occasion, as if theiue baw hairs were being indivbidually depilated with pliers. That silence is pretty revealing.
It's the Unionist MPs in Scotland that do. As, infamously, the LD MPs in Scotland did - over student grants.
It shouldn't be a matter of "pretty scrupulous". The Tory MPs do not vote on Scottish laws because they can't, not because of policy.
Why were the Scottish MPs entitled to block changes to Sunday Trading laws in England?
Common decency, and the cross-border effects. I forget the details, but there was a problem of this kind.
?! Sunday trading was allowed in Scotland. It was a purely English matter the SNP should not have got involved in.
I don't think it was ever formally allowed in Scotland so much as never legislated against - no need thanks to huge social pressure from the churches - it only loosened up in the last years of the C20. A nice example of the paradox of assiming the existence or otherwise of a phenomenon from laws for or against it ...
I have checked, and the reason for the vote on Sunday trading was that cross-border firms were trying to use it as a reason to change pay rates on Sundays and the unions in Scotland (that kind of union, the ones affiliated normally to Labour) asked the SNP to vote against because of that detriment. So it was never a purely English matter.
It was a purely English matter. The law was purely English.
If unions in Scotland were against a proposed law change in France because it would affect pay rates in Scotland then would that permit Scottish MPs to vote on domestic French law? Of course not. This was domestic English law alone.
The companies were not purely English.
But if that and the foxhunting is all you can find, it's pretty small beer compared with the injustice over student funding.
Companies being multinational does not justify you being able to interfere in the domestic affairs of a foreign country, which for devolved matters is exactly what England is or should be to Scotland.
Student funding, fox hunting and Sunday trading are three examples so far of the same problem. That the issue hasn't been many more times that is not because Scotland has a self-denying ordinance, it is because the Parliamentary arithmetic means it has been moot normally.
In the event of a hypothetical Tory English majority but Labour+SNP UK majority that will cease to be the case. Those three examples could spin into hundreds of examples over a five year period.
That is the problem.
It was the Unionists themselves that caused the student funding problem. A major vote the SNP abstained on, as they will continue to abstain on truly English only matters.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
No that's not the basic point.
The basic point is that the English government shouldn't be determined by Scottish MPs.
Given that Health and Education are devolved matters, if the English elect a Tory majority would it be appropriate to have a Labour government with Labour Secretary of States for Health and Education etc because of SNP MPs?
Tony Blair screwed both England and Scotland in different ways with his asymmetric devolution farce.
and isn't it an SKS plan to address that with huge devolution across England akin to Scotland, therefore addressing your concerns?
So he's going to abolish the Secretary of State for Health etc on a UK level and have an English one chosen by an English Parliament?
Or is it not going to be the same as what Scotland has? More power for Councils is not what the Scottish Parliament has.
No
I thought it would be much more localised from what I have read.
More akin to what you see in other western democracies where the national / federal government plays a much smaller part in decision making.
You'd have things like health managed locally in Greater Manchester, West Midlands etc. with budgets and foreign affairs maintained in Westminster.
In any case, the basicv point is that the Tory argument is that Westminstert should not be partly controlled by SNP MPs because it is an English Parliament. Yet it is primarily a UK one and SNP MPs are elected to that parliament.
The Tory attitude is that the English bit should have supremacy. How else can it be explained?
For as long as it is the English Parliament yes the English bit should have supremacy.
The Scots chose to abandon most of Westminster by setting up Holyrood.
Utter bollox ,
Its not "bollox", the Scots voted to abandon having Westminster control their Health, Education etc by having those laws set in Holyrood. They should therefore have no role in either setting those laws in Westminster nor in determining which party has the Secretary of State for those issues.
Rubbish, as long as Westminster tie Scottish spending to being a % of English spending then the decisions have direct and dire consequences for Scotland.
Sturgeon would be utterly heart broken if she had to can Swinney.
Totally devastated. She would be beside herself with grief.
Can't begin to imagine the smirk look of abject despair she would have
I've always quite liked him, his tenure as the cab sec for finance was prudent as they come.
He was a much better Finance Secretary than he has been Education Secretary. Education has been one disaster after another since he took over. By no means all his fault but hapless doesn't begin to cover it.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
The problem is that while you, or @Big_G_NorthWales, have the power to vote in an MP who controls health, education etc in England, I don't have that power in England to vote on somebody who controls those matters for you.
Yes, I know that there are indirect impacts, but that's not the point. You don't have to be a rabid English nationalist to see that as an issue.
The correct solution is further devolution to England, but for practical reasons that's hard.
The alternative is for Scottish and Welsh MPs to be very careful about what they vote on and why - for example, not buggering about with fox hunting - so as not to draw too much attention to it. Unfortunately, for their own reasons the SNP have taken exactly the opposite course.
I beg to differ, politely. Barring votes with Barnett consequentials, the SNP already are pretty scrupulous. They do not vote on education in England, for instance. You'd hear screaming from the PB Tories on each and every occasion, as if theiue baw hairs were being indivbidually depilated with pliers. That silence is pretty revealing.
It's the Unionist MPs in Scotland that do. As, infamously, the LD MPs in Scotland did - over student grants.
It shouldn't be a matter of "pretty scrupulous". The Tory MPs do not vote on Scottish laws because they can't, not because of policy.
Why were the Scottish MPs entitled to block changes to Sunday Trading laws in England?
Common decency, and the cross-border effects. I forget the details, but there was a problem of this kind.
These erses don't care Carnyx, fact it was down to it having major impacts on Scotland does not penetrate their Little Englander pea rains.
Impacting Scotland isn't sufficient. We live in an interconnected world. Scottish law changes can impact on England, even American law changes impact England, our MPs don't get to vote on either Scottish or American laws though.
Scottish MPs should vote on laws that apply to Scotland. If the law doesn't apply to Scotland then indirectly "impacting" Scotland should be no more sufficient than it is reciprocally.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
The problem is that while you, or @Big_G_NorthWales, have the power to vote in an MP who controls health, education etc in England, I don't have that power in England to vote on somebody who controls those matters for you.
Yes, I know that there are indirect impacts, but that's not the point. You don't have to be a rabid English nationalist to see that as an issue.
The correct solution is further devolution to England, but for practical reasons that's hard.
The alternative is for Scottish and Welsh MPs to be very careful about what they vote on and why - for example, not buggering about with fox hunting - so as not to draw too much attention to it. Unfortunately, for their own reasons the SNP have taken exactly the opposite course.
I beg to differ, politely. Barring votes with Barnett consequentials, the SNP already are pretty scrupulous. They do not vote on education in England, for instance. You'd hear screaming from the PB Tories on each and every occasion, as if theiue baw hairs were being indivbidually depilated with pliers. That silence is pretty revealing.
It's the Unionist MPs in Scotland that do. As, infamously, the LD MPs in Scotland did - over student grants.
It shouldn't be a matter of "pretty scrupulous". The Tory MPs do not vote on Scottish laws because they can't, not because of policy.
Why were the Scottish MPs entitled to block changes to Sunday Trading laws in England?
Common decency, and the cross-border effects. I forget the details, but there was a problem of this kind.
Again decency shouldn't be yours to judge. There were no legal cross border effects either, potential knock on consequences but that's true in any change of law. For Scottish laws the English MPs get no say. For English laws the Scottish MPs do. Until that situation is resolved, the Scottish MPs should be treated as second class MPs and subordinate to English MPs. That is the natural consequence of Westminster setting English but not Scottish law.
Scottish independence is the best fix for that IMO. Or the abolition of Holyrood.
There were issues that affected Scottish retail laws and trading , it was well justified and SNP offered them a solution if they excluded Scotland but the erses refused. It would have meant Scotland closing shops.
The law didn't affect Scotland so no it doesn't justify it. If the shoe was on the other foot, if Holyrood was changing a Scottish only law that would affect English retail and trading then would English MPs have got a vote on that? No, of course not.
Unlikely but Starmer does not need poll parity anyway, on the latest Opinium poll he will be PM with SNP and LD support even if the Tories have won a majority in England
But you and your other Tory chums keep telling us that it's impossible for SKS to be PM with SNP support because your lot will whip up so much hysteria about the Scottish MPs being allowed to vote in the Commons about who the Government is.
I thought that was rather the point of being a MP.
It would be rather accepting a poisoned chalice for the SNP though. Being part of a UK Government and calling the shots. It rather undermines the whole point.
Doesn't affect the basic point - that it is the Tories themselves who try and deny MPs from my country the right to take part in the Parliament to which theyt have been elected.
Just think about that.
What other category of MP will they try it on next?
No that's not the basic point.
The basic point is that the English government shouldn't be determined by Scottish MPs.
Given that Health and Education are devolved matters, if the English elect a Tory majority would it be appropriate to have a Labour government with Labour Secretary of States for Health and Education etc because of SNP MPs?
Tony Blair screwed both England and Scotland in different ways with his asymmetric devolution farce.
and isn't it an SKS plan to address that with huge devolution across England akin to Scotland, therefore addressing your concerns?
So he's going to abolish the Secretary of State for Health etc on a UK level and have an English one chosen by an English Parliament?
Or is it not going to be the same as what Scotland has? More power for Councils is not what the Scottish Parliament has.
No
I thought it would be much more localised from what I have read.
More akin to what you see in other western democracies where the national / federal government plays a much smaller part in decision making.
You'd have things like health managed locally in Greater Manchester, West Midlands etc. with budgets and foreign affairs maintained in Westminster.
In any case, the basicv point is that the Tory argument is that Westminstert should not be partly controlled by SNP MPs because it is an English Parliament. Yet it is primarily a UK one and SNP MPs are elected to that parliament.
The Tory attitude is that the English bit should have supremacy. How else can it be explained?
I have never said that, just that there should be a Scottish Parliament as well as an English Parliament
My preference would very much be a Scottish one, Welsh one and one for each 3-8m people in the country.
I'm in Switzerland a country of 8m people in 26 cantons, across the border is Germany there are 84m people with 16 Lander.
Both models seem to work very well, we could and should attempt to replicate in the UK is we really want to level up the playing field.
The UK is made up of 4 countries, if Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland have their own parliament and assemblies so should England.
Germany and Switzerland are made up of states not countries.
You could give more powers to councils in all 4 home nations too
I think you'll find Germany is an accumulation of many different countries. Bavaria, Baden, Hanover, Prussia...
That's not really relevant. If you go back even further "Germany" was the majority of an empire in central Europe.
Germany is indeed made up of states. But what is the German name for a German state? It is "Land". Bavaria and each of the other 15 states is ein Bundesland ie "a federal country" and Germany- Deutschland is also ein Land ie Country. The German language suffers just as much as English does in terms of the contortions of language needed to define country and nation.
Comments
I'm in Switzerland a country of 8m people in 26 cantons, across the border is Germany there are 84m people with 16 Lander.
Both models seem to work very well, we could and should attempt to replicate in the UK is we really want to level up the playing field.
It is instructive to think about individual republics.
Ukraine for example lost 5 million civilians in WW2, on top of the 4 million Stalin had killed by starvation a decade earlier.
Why were the Scottish MPs entitled to block changes to Sunday Trading laws in England?
A dreamy, very short innings.
Scottish independence is the best fix for that IMO. Or the abolition of Holyrood.
Totally devastated. She would be beside herself with grief.
Can't begin to imagine the
smirklook of abject despair she would haveEdit - OK, that's now clear!!
Germany and Switzerland are made up of states not countries.
You could give more powers to councils in all 4 home nations too
I have checked, and the reason for the vote on Sunday trading was that cross-border firms were trying to use it as a reason to change pay rates on Sundays and the unions in Scotland (that kind of union, the ones affiliated normally to Labour) asked the SNP to vote against because of that detriment. So it was never a purely English matter.
It’s bollocks on stilts. In hospitality, every member of staff - front of house - is on show 100% of the time and every interaction with the public has to be pitch perfect because for the visitor the visit is a special occasion. For kitchen staff every meal, every drink has to be perfect too. Everything needs to be done on time, in a friendly way to make the experience pleasant and memorable and enjoyable. There is no downtime when you can hide in your office and grumble and stay away from clients. There are no calls with nuisance colleagues and clients where you can sound ok while rolling your eyes.
Training staff to do this well every single day for hours at a time with all sorts of customers, some of whom can be demanding and rude and difficult, is not as easy as it seems.
And this is just the end result. On top of this you have to manage all the administration, the planning of menus, the ordering, the tax, the VAT, the health and safety and all the other rules, assessing profit margins, working out your offering, keeping existing customers and attracting new ones, identifying new markets, coming up with ideas etc.
Running any business is bloody hard work. In the last few months daughter has probably learnt more than most people do in some theoretical MBA course. To call this unskilled is ridiculous.
It is much much harder than it looks to create a cafe or restaurant or pub that really works well - that has that undefinable atmosphere which draws people in and back - and every member of staff plays their part, both individually and as part of a team.
I have been to lots of cafes in my time. I love the atmosphere and offering of good ones. But there are lots of indifferent ones, a testament to the truism that the real skill is in making something look easier than it is.
Of course I am not going to pretend that it is like being a lawyer or scientist. But let’s face it, quite a lot of legal work can be pretty routine and unskilled and will be replicated by robots or computers. Making people feel welcomed and special, giving them a good time is also a skill and one that should not be quite so easily dismissed by those who have the luxury of working away from people most of the time.
Bluntly, life is going to be pretty tough for our children. Any job will be worthwhile and we should perhaps try and instil a culture of trying to do every job, no matter how apparently menial or lowly, as well as possible. Because what is lowly and routine to you may mean a very great deal to the person on the receiving end. Let alone to the person to whom it brings income and the dignity of work.
Rant over.
And yes, the Half-price deal is helping. She is fully booked, despite the variable weather here.
If unions in Scotland were against a proposed law change in France because it would affect pay rates in Scotland then would that permit Scottish MPs to vote on domestic French law? Of course not. This was domestic English law alone.
But if that and the foxhunting is all you can find, it's pretty small beer compared with the injustice over student funding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_of_Scotland
There is no doubt that the Scottish Parliament usually passes more Scottish legislation than we had before (although there have been very extended periods with no new bills in recent years). Its just a pity that the Parliamentary draughtsmen are crap and much of what they produce verging on the incomprehensible.
https://twitter.com/zerohedge/status/1290645651139829762
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1290631945001619457?s=20
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1290630982643724290?s=20
Student funding, fox hunting and Sunday trading are three examples so far of the same problem. That the issue hasn't been many more times that is not because Scotland has a self-denying ordinance, it is because the Parliamentary arithmetic means it has been moot normally.
In the event of a hypothetical Tory English majority but Labour+SNP UK majority that will cease to be the case. Those three examples could spin into hundreds of examples over a five year period.
That is the problem.
Meanwhile the Auckland pizzerias are full of punters paying full whack.
Kiwi fruit on pizza. Yum!
The reason that the SNP intended to vote on it was explained by Sturgeon herself:
https://www.ft.com/content/4ccb187e-a1a1-11e4-b176-00144feab7de
Ms Sturgeon told the BBC it would be in Scotland’s “enlightened self-interest” to oppose laws that would privatise parts of the English National Health Service, for example, saying privatisation would have a knock-on impact in Scotland.
“If SNP MPs can be in a position of holding the balance of power at Westminster, we can help to further progressive politics across the UK, as well as in Scotland,” she said.
Penny to a pound, results would be far more in line with the adjusted grades if full exams had taken place than those handed out by pupil's teachers.
No wonder we have continual grade inflation if this is the reaction to reality.
Leader of the Scottish National Party
26 September 2000 – 3 September 2004
Preceded by Alex Salmond
Succeeded by Alex Salmond
The 2003 election campaign was diabolical, a shambles.
Scottish MPs should vote on laws that apply to Scotland. If the law doesn't apply to Scotland then indirectly "impacting" Scotland should be no more sufficient than it is reciprocally.
I'm not sure about tinkering about the edges solutions for large structural problems, but in this case I'm for it just to see the raging.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-53648638
Good poll for Boris to be fair
But the It was the Unionists themselves that caused the student funding problem. A major vote the SNP abstained on, as they will continue to abstain on truly English only matters.
I would have suggested Audi were yellow for backing down over bananas.
Germany is indeed made up of states. But what is the German name for a German state? It is "Land". Bavaria and each of the other 15 states is ein Bundesland ie "a federal country" and Germany- Deutschland is also ein Land ie Country. The German language suffers just as much as English does in terms of the contortions of language needed to define country and nation.
"2020 vs 2016
Top Battlegrounds: Biden+2.1 [2020: Dem+5.5, 2016: Dem+3.4]
RCP National Average: Biden+0.8 [2020: Dem+7.4, 2016: Dem+6.6]
Fav Ratings: Trump+4.3 [2020: Dem+11.0, 2016: Dem+15.3]"
https://www.realclearpolitics.com