“ The WA was always work in progress as at the end of this year, the UK has a right to a comprehensive agreement, one which treats the UK as a sovereign partner. A failure to observe this must lead to a rejection of the WA.”
Another of Brexit’s negatives - we again have to pay attention to his maunderings.
Not long to have to suffer IDS. Chingford goes red in 2024.
P.S. I am still waiting for an apology for your assertion yesterday that I was both a Tory and a Brexiteer, after a post from Marquee Mark that related the Claire Fox issue to Brexit. It wasn't me guv'.
LOL. Apologies, I hadn't noticed (and in my defence, I was replying to a series of posts of which MM's was the first). I am more than happy to acknowledge you do not espouse such ludicrous views.
Three in our office today. Nice to see the good folk of Yorkshire showing total disregard for the bollocks coming out of government.
Higher take-up on the other side of the Pennines for some reason. Around 20 of them have gone in.
And just how many jobs will be lost by not returning to the office
Jobs in catering and transport do you mean?
Across the spectrum
You seem to have this back to front
People are not there to support businesses, businesses are there to support people both in terms of services and jobs. If the business isn't where it needs to be then the business should move to people not the other way round. Cafe's etc will still be in the same demand just where they need to be has altered
It is not that simple. If hundreds of people come to work in one office block, that means hundreds of people will want to eat lunch or drink coffee at the same time in the same place. If these same people are working from home, they will be scattered over a much wider area, and many of them will have their own coffee and cheese toastie-making facilities at home, so the critical mass of caffeine-starved customers needed to support Starbucks is never achieved.
Who cares. Those people should spend their money where it gives them the most value, not where the government tells them to.
£1000 a year not spent at Starbucks goes somewhere else. And in turn new jobs will be created out of that opportunity, jobs with much better long term resilience.
At what point did we lose faith in the core features of capitalism and the price setting mechanism? Sure capitalism has market failures that must be addressed but we’re getting to the point where people are seeking to undermine the construct entirely, with a quite appallingly loose understanding of what they’re trying to replace it with.
It is worth pointing out that on almost every major education issue of the last seven years, and especially in the three years he has chaired the Education Select Committee, Robert Halfon has made an absolutely right call.
I know there have been questions about his judgement in other fields, but his judgement on education has been impeccable.
Here's what he had to say on the substitute assessment system last month.
We are unconvinced that safeguards—such as additional guidance and practical recommendations—put in place by Ofqual will be sufficient to protect against bias and inaccuracy in calculated grades.
It's worth noting, in that report, he criticises OFQUAL and quotes the Royal Statistical Society, saying that OFQUAL were concealing key parts of their methodology.
And here's what he's saying today.
'Our select committee report predicted a potential Wild West system which favours the well-heeled and the sharp-elbowed, and doesn’t appear fair.'
In a sense, whatever happens on results day is now secondary, because this process has already failed. Nobody will have confidence in the results because it has become apparent that the process was flawed, chaotic and ill-conceived.
Robert Halfon is a brilliant MP both on the Education Select Committee and in Harlow which he has turned from a marginal Blair won in 1997, 2001 and 2005 to a pretty safe Tory seat no longer even in the top 150 Labour target seats
Sounds like he is on the money wrt education in much the same way as Peter Lilley was on the tripartite finsec regulations.
But as mentioned, poring over his wiki page makes for some uncomfortable reading.
From that graph, we really need to ask Ireland what they're doing (or not doing). Prosperous English-speaking nation that is just as accessible by boat from the continent. Yet their applications in 2018-19 look to be less than 10% of ours.
Three in our office today. Nice to see the good folk of Yorkshire showing total disregard for the bollocks coming out of government.
Higher take-up on the other side of the Pennines for some reason. Around 20 of them have gone in.
And just how many jobs will be lost by not returning to the office
Jobs in catering and transport do you mean?
Across the spectrum
You seem to have this back to front
People are not there to support businesses, businesses are there to support people both in terms of services and jobs. If the business isn't where it needs to be then the business should move to people not the other way round. Cafe's etc will still be in the same demand just where they need to be has altered
It is not that simple. If hundreds of people come to work in one office block, that means hundreds of people will want to eat lunch or drink coffee at the same time in the same place. If these same people are working from home, they will be scattered over a much wider area, and many of them will have their own coffee and cheese toastie-making facilities at home, so the critical mass of caffeine-starved customers needed to support Starbucks is never achieved.
Can I refer everyone back to the squeezed middle and cost of living crisis? So many things in this country cost £lots for no apparent reason - and a working culture that essentially heavily taxes people for the basics isn't sustainable. I've thought for a long time that the coffee explosion was unsustainable. People won't be able to afford the daft money the coffee shacks demand for coffee and a snack without taking the money out of another part of the economy. That so many coffee shacks have been surged up in such a short space of time is not a reason to sustain that part of the economy because jobs. What jobs did the people do before working for the 409th local branch of CoffeeShak? And in what businesses did their customers spend their money?
Covid is a massive rapid realignment of the economy. It's already been brutal and its going to get much worse - the imbalance and instability was already there waiting for the black swan event to tip it over the edge. And very quickly we will see rapid change in the next piece of unsustainable lunacy - an army of zero hour workers scuttling around our towns making multiple repeat deliveries in diesel vans. Most of us have done a lot more direct to consumer shopping and we all need to stop.
I would venture that one food van with an efficient route to multiple households does a far more efficient job than the army of people like my parents that seem to drive to the shops three times a day for one item at a time. But I take your point.
RAF flying up & down at 450’ over the Straits of Dover:
Though since it’s our side, not sure what good it can do. The solution lies in catching and prosecuting the people smugglers in France.
The solution really lies in eliminating the pull factor, and making it clear that whether or not you get here, sadly you won't get in.
As I mentioned previously, our asylum processing centres should be overseas. I would suggest one in India, one in Africa, and one in Asia. These are easier for genuine asylum seekers to get to, and present no draw for non-genuine ones.
A retired rear admiral on Sky this morning said they should be quarantined on one of the many cruise ships available, processed and where applicable allowed into the UK and where not, refused entry and returned to the first country that they arrived from that is safe
RAF flying up & down at 450’ over the Straits of Dover:
Though since it’s our side, not sure what good it can do. The solution lies in catching and prosecuting the people smugglers in France.
The solution really lies in eliminating the pull factor, and making it clear that whether or not you get here, sadly you won't get in.
As I mentioned previously, our asylum processing centres should be overseas. I would suggest one in India, one in Africa, and one in Asia. These are easier for genuine asylum seekers to get to, and present no draw for non-genuine ones.
The Daily Mail doesn't help. I mean, if you're in the shoes of someone migrating across the continent and you pick up a paper saying "Anyone getting to the UK gets to stay and gets given free money," as per loads of their headlines, where would you head for?
That's daft. These people aren't getting their info from the DM.
I've explicitly seen it cited as a draw factor. Anywhere that there's any sort of expat community receives the Daily Mail, and it's now, I believe, the most widely circulated paper. And heavily shared online. And it relentlessly pushes the line that any migrant coming to this country gets in, gets to stay, and gets free money. People believe stories they want to believe, and that's a very attractive one.
RAF flying up & down at 450’ over the Straits of Dover:
Though since it’s our side, not sure what good it can do. The solution lies in catching and prosecuting the people smugglers in France.
The solution really lies in eliminating the pull factor, and making it clear that whether or not you get here, sadly you won't get in.
As I mentioned previously, our asylum processing centres should be overseas. I would suggest one in India, one in Africa, and one in Asia. These are easier for genuine asylum seekers to get to, and present no draw for non-genuine ones.
The Daily Mail doesn't help. I mean, if you're in the shoes of someone migrating across the continent and you pick up a paper saying "Anyone getting to the UK gets to stay and gets given free money," as per loads of their headlines, where would you head for?
A major issue is the mythology spread by people smugglers in the home countries. Plus the grass is greener effect.
So you've *heard* that the UK is the promised land. Free health care - in clean hospitals*, the state gives you money for existing** etc etc
Then you're in France. It's actually a bit shit. Going back is impossible.....
The trick is to ask why some solutions are unacceptable - for example, one was to charge the last registered *boat owner* with multiple counts of reckless endangerment of life etc. An extraditable offence. For context - there is a whole game being played about selling boats to the traffickers. Including having them "stolen" in the LeaveTheKeysInItCoverYourEyesAndCountOneMississippiTwo... style. Then claim the insurance.....
*Yes, but have you been to some of the countries in question. **Funny how many people don't know that this is actually an uncommon thing around the world.
From that graph, we really need to ask Ireland what they're doing (or not doing). Prosperous English-speaking nation that is just as accessible by boat from the continent. Yet their applications in 2018-19 look to be less than 10% of ours.
The circa 300 miles from Brest to Kinsale is quite a long way to sail in a dinghy.
From that graph, we really need to ask Ireland what they're doing (or not doing). Prosperous English-speaking nation that is just as accessible by boat from the continent. Yet their applications in 2018-19 look to be less than 10% of ours.
RAF flying up & down at 450’ over the Straits of Dover:
Though since it’s our side, not sure what good it can do. The solution lies in catching and prosecuting the people smugglers in France.
The solution really lies in eliminating the pull factor, and making it clear that whether or not you get here, sadly you won't get in.
As I mentioned previously, our asylum processing centres should be overseas. I would suggest one in India, one in Africa, and one in Asia. These are easier for genuine asylum seekers to get to, and present no draw for non-genuine ones.
A retired rear admiral on Sky this morning said they should be quarantined on one of the many cruise ships available, processed and where applicable allowed into the UK and where not, refused entry and returned to the first country that they arrived from that is safe
If only I were capable of having ideas that shit I could have been an Admiral.
Apart from the fact that it has now been established that cruise ships are unmatched C19 incubators it also ignores the legal and logistical impossibilities of taking randoms back to France without French permission.
From that graph, we really need to ask Ireland what they're doing (or not doing). Prosperous English-speaking nation that is just as accessible by boat from the continent. Yet their applications in 2018-19 look to be less than 10% of ours.
Perhaps you could film a Farage-style video of yourself making the crossing to Ireland from France to highlight the issue?
RAF flying up & down at 450’ over the Straits of Dover:
Though since it’s our side, not sure what good it can do. The solution lies in catching and prosecuting the people smugglers in France.
The solution really lies in eliminating the pull factor, and making it clear that whether or not you get here, sadly you won't get in.
As I mentioned previously, our asylum processing centres should be overseas. I would suggest one in India, one in Africa, and one in Asia. These are easier for genuine asylum seekers to get to, and present no draw for non-genuine ones.
The Daily Mail doesn't help. I mean, if you're in the shoes of someone migrating across the continent and you pick up a paper saying "Anyone getting to the UK gets to stay and gets given free money," as per loads of their headlines, where would you head for?
A major issue is the mythology spread by people smugglers in the home countries. Plus the grass is greener effect.
So you've *heard* that the UK is the promised land. Free health care - in clean hospitals*, the state gives you money for existing** etc etc
Then you're in France. It's actually a bit shit. Going back is impossible.....
The trick is to ask why some solutions are unacceptable - for example, one was to charge the last registered *boat owner* with multiple counts of reckless endangerment of life etc. An extraditable offence. For context - there is a whole game being played about selling boats to the traffickers. Including having them "stolen" in the LeaveTheKeysInItCoverYourEyesAndCountOneMississippiTwo... style. Then claim the insurance.....
*Yes, but have you been to some of the countries in question. **Funny how many people don't know that this is actually an uncommon thing around the world.
I had not thought about your solution on boats. It is a sound idea.
I am coming around to the idea that the solution to criminality - all criminality, is zero-tolerance at the grass roots level. There's really no point in months undercover to 'bring down Mr. Big' is there? That just creates a vacuum that someone else fills in seconds. Make it impossible at the grassroots level though, prosecute all pushers, users, thieves, vandals, traffickers, pimps etc., and you make Mr. Big's task an impossible one.
Three in our office today. Nice to see the good folk of Yorkshire showing total disregard for the bollocks coming out of government.
Higher take-up on the other side of the Pennines for some reason. Around 20 of them have gone in.
And just how many jobs will be lost by not returning to the office
Jobs in catering and transport do you mean?
Across the spectrum
You seem to have this back to front
People are not there to support businesses, businesses are there to support people both in terms of services and jobs. If the business isn't where it needs to be then the business should move to people not the other way round. Cafe's etc will still be in the same demand just where they need to be has altered
It is not that simple. If hundreds of people come to work in one office block, that means hundreds of people will want to eat lunch or drink coffee at the same time in the same place. If these same people are working from home, they will be scattered over a much wider area, and many of them will have their own coffee and cheese toastie-making facilities at home, so the critical mass of caffeine-starved customers needed to support Starbucks is never achieved.
Can I refer everyone back to the squeezed middle and cost of living crisis? So many things in this country cost £lots for no apparent reason - and a working culture that essentially heavily taxes people for the basics isn't sustainable. I've thought for a long time that the coffee explosion was unsustainable. People won't be able to afford the daft money the coffee shacks demand for coffee and a snack without taking the money out of another part of the economy. That so many coffee shacks have been surged up in such a short space of time is not a reason to sustain that part of the economy because jobs. What jobs did the people do before working for the 409th local branch of CoffeeShak? And in what businesses did their customers spend their money?
Covid is a massive rapid realignment of the economy. It's already been brutal and its going to get much worse - the imbalance and instability was already there waiting for the black swan event to tip it over the edge. And very quickly we will see rapid change in the next piece of unsustainable lunacy - an army of zero hour workers scuttling around our towns making multiple repeat deliveries in diesel vans. Most of us have done a lot more direct to consumer shopping and we all need to stop.
I would venture that one food van with an efficient route to multiple households does a far more efficient job than the army of people like my parents that seem to drive to the shops three times a day for one item at a time. But I take your point.
The coffee thing is related to the lifestyle/social change away from the "boozer" style of pubs. Think of them as pubs without the alcohol.
The next step, which is only really just beginning, is deliveries from warehouse to customer for food. Instead of a member of staff at a supermarket pushing a trolley round....
Chuck in electric vans and some optimisation, and the whole thing could be cheaper and better than the whole drive-to-a-mega-market thing.
Three in our office today. Nice to see the good folk of Yorkshire showing total disregard for the bollocks coming out of government.
Higher take-up on the other side of the Pennines for some reason. Around 20 of them have gone in.
And just how many jobs will be lost by not returning to the office
Jobs in catering and transport do you mean?
Across the spectrum
You seem to have this back to front
People are not there to support businesses, businesses are there to support people both in terms of services and jobs. If the business isn't where it needs to be then the business should move to people not the other way round. Cafe's etc will still be in the same demand just where they need to be has altered
It is not that simple. If hundreds of people come to work in one office block, that means hundreds of people will want to eat lunch or drink coffee at the same time in the same place. If these same people are working from home, they will be scattered over a much wider area, and many of them will have their own coffee and cheese toastie-making facilities at home, so the critical mass of caffeine-starved customers needed to support Starbucks is never achieved.
Who cares. Those people should spend their money where it gives them the most value, not where the government tells them to.
£1000 a year not spent at Starbucks goes somewhere else. And in turn new jobs will be created out of that opportunity, jobs with much better long term resilience.
At what point did we lose faith in the core features of capitalism and the price setting mechanism? Sure capitalism has market failures that must be addressed but we’re getting to the point where people are seeking to undermine the construct entirely, with a quite appallingly loose understanding of what they’re trying to replace it with.
That £1,000 a year not spent at Starbucks might be spent somewhere else abroad, or on imported goods. It might be saved and not spent at all, although here PB's bankers might say that £1,000 might be better invested in British industry by the banks than if left to consumers. And of course our newly-unemployed Starbucks barista will not be spending £1,000 anywhere.
Look, I've been WFH for nearly a decade so can see its advantages as well as its downsides, but let us not pretend there are none, or that "capitalism" will wave its magic wand.
From that graph, we really need to ask Ireland what they're doing (or not doing). Prosperous English-speaking nation that is just as accessible by boat from the continent. Yet their applications in 2018-19 look to be less than 10% of ours.
Their population's under 8% of ours....
I don't see the causation effect there - can you elaborate?
R4 Today 8.10 slot is all about OFQAL and the coming storm. At least OFQAL have published their methodology before they publish their results...
Here's an answer:
Let there be appeals but for every appeal successfully upgraded there has to be someone downgraded in return.
Get a small number of pupils for each school to sit the actual exam. They should be willing volunteers who are chosen by the school. The small number should mean their exams can be held safely. Then a benchmarking exercise can be transparently conducted which isolates a "school effect" and a "prelims/mock exam effect". The result would hold for each candidate that took the exam. Each candidate who did not sit the exam would be given a provisional result combining these effects. The main point of the exercise is to be a filter for university/college entrance. As university and college places will have become more easily available with the absence of large numbers of foreign students this year, the entry conditions would be more lenient across the board and this year's unfortunate cohort less penalised for something outwith their control.
Too late to do it now, and at the time it would have run into the same problem which made getting everyone to do the exam so difficult: the missing couple of months of teaching. Some schools (and even more some parents) would have been able to support their pupils well enough that they were almost as well prepared as a normal year: I was set to spend the time going though past papers for instance. Others would have still had a topic or two to go through and that is much harder when done remotely. It would also have severely affected those with little or no access to remote learning.
This was always going to be a problem with no good solution once the schools were closed. I’m not saying that OFQUAL have done well, as I don’t think they have, but there is no perfect solution. Even @ydoethur ’s solution of looking at work submitted by the schools runs into the problem of standardisation: different schools do mocks at different times (in fact I went to a school that did them in April), homework policies vary hugely (I set a lot of work to be done on line), even past paper work is suspect: was it done under exam conditions or at home “open book”?
In summary: there will be a lot of disappointed students and teachers on Thursday, OFQUAL will have got it wrong, and I’m not sure anyone could have got it right.
RAF flying up & down at 450’ over the Straits of Dover:
Though since it’s our side, not sure what good it can do. The solution lies in catching and prosecuting the people smugglers in France.
The solution really lies in eliminating the pull factor, and making it clear that whether or not you get here, sadly you won't get in.
As I mentioned previously, our asylum processing centres should be overseas. I would suggest one in India, one in Africa, and one in Asia. These are easier for genuine asylum seekers to get to, and present no draw for non-genuine ones.
The Daily Mail doesn't help. I mean, if you're in the shoes of someone migrating across the continent and you pick up a paper saying "Anyone getting to the UK gets to stay and gets given free money," as per loads of their headlines, where would you head for?
A major issue is the mythology spread by people smugglers in the home countries. Plus the grass is greener effect.
So you've *heard* that the UK is the promised land. Free health care - in clean hospitals*, the state gives you money for existing** etc etc
Then you're in France. It's actually a bit shit. Going back is impossible.....
The trick is to ask why some solutions are unacceptable - for example, one was to charge the last registered *boat owner* with multiple counts of reckless endangerment of life etc. An extraditable offence. For context - there is a whole game being played about selling boats to the traffickers. Including having them "stolen" in the LeaveTheKeysInItCoverYourEyesAndCountOneMississippiTwo... style. Then claim the insurance.....
*Yes, but have you been to some of the countries in question. **Funny how many people don't know that this is actually an uncommon thing around the world.
I had not thought about your solution on boats. It is a sound idea.
I am coming around to the idea that the solution to criminality - all criminality, is zero-tolerance at the grass roots level. There's really no point in months undercover to 'bring down Mr. Big' is there? That just creates a vacuum that someone else fills in seconds. Make it impossible at the grassroots level though, prosecute all pushers, users, thieves, vandals, traffickers, pimps etc., and you make Mr. Big's task an impossible one.
That is exactly wrong, I think.
For example, I enjoy the apocalyptic anger my proposal to stamp out criminal employment practises gets -
1) 100k starting fine for the employer. 2) The complainant gets half of any fines. 3) If they are an illegal immigrant (illegally employed) , they co-operate with the investigation and get a conviction - 10 years indefinite leave to remain and clean slate for immigration status.
Shitting on your employees would become as rare as rocking horse poop in 2-3 nanoseconds.
RAF flying up & down at 450’ over the Straits of Dover:
Though since it’s our side, not sure what good it can do. The solution lies in catching and prosecuting the people smugglers in France.
April 4th, 1984. Last night to the flicks. All war films. One very good one of a ship full of refugees being bombed somewhere in the Mediterranean. Audience much amused by shots of a great huge fat man trying to swim away with a helicopter after him, first you saw him wallowing along in the water like a porpoise, then you saw him through the helicopters gunsights, then he was full of holes and the sea round him turned pink and he sank as suddenly as though the holes had let in the water, audience shouting with laughter when he sank.
Sorry I must have missed any suggestion anywhere, by anyone at all, that we should shoot asylum seekers. Unless of course you are gleefully advocating it yourself.
R4 Today 8.10 slot is all about OFQAL and the coming storm. At least OFQAL have published their methodology before they publish their results...
Here's an answer:
Let there be appeals but for every appeal successfully upgraded there has to be someone downgraded in return.
Get a small number of pupils for each school to sit the actual exam. They should be willing volunteers who are chosen by the school. The small number should mean their exams can be held safely. Then a benchmarking exercise can be transparently conducted which isolates a "school effect" and a "prelims/mock exam effect". The result would hold for each candidate that took the exam. Each candidate who did not sit the exam would be given a provisional result combining these effects. The main point of the exercise is to be a filter for university/college entrance. As university and college places will have become more easily available with the absence of large numbers of foreign students this year, the entry conditions would be more lenient across the board and this year's unfortunate cohort less penalised for something outwith their control.
Too late to do it now, and at the time it would have run into the same problem which made getting everyone to do the exam so difficult: the missing couple of months of teaching. Some schools (and even more some parents) would have been able to support their pupils well enough that they were almost as well prepared as a normal year: I was set to spend the time going though past papers for instance. Others would have still had a topic or two to go through and that is much harder when done remotely. It would also have severely affected those with little or no access to remote learning.
This was always going to be a problem with no good solution once the schools were closed. I’m not saying that OFQUAL have done well, as I don’t think they have, but there is no perfect solution. Even @ydoethur ’s solution of looking at work submitted by the schools runs into the problem of standardisation: different schools do mocks at different times (in fact I went to a school that did them in April), homework policies vary hugely (I set a lot of work to be done on line), even past paper work is suspect: was it done under exam conditions or at home “open book”?
In summary: there will be a lot of disappointed students and teachers on Thursday, OFQUAL will have got it wrong, and I’m not sure anyone could have got it right.
Yes, there would have been issues. But they would be issues that could have been worked round. For example, by insisting on five pieces from a common set with a brief note on the conditions they were done under.
The problem is that they are using statistics to adjust something that on their own admission doesn't have a reliable statistical basis, while dismissing the data sent in on the terms they asked for as unreliable because they don't like the answers they got.
Three in our office today. Nice to see the good folk of Yorkshire showing total disregard for the bollocks coming out of government.
Higher take-up on the other side of the Pennines for some reason. Around 20 of them have gone in.
And just how many jobs will be lost by not returning to the office
Jobs in catering and transport do you mean?
Across the spectrum
You seem to have this back to front
People are not there to support businesses, businesses are there to support people both in terms of services and jobs. If the business isn't where it needs to be then the business should move to people not the other way round. Cafe's etc will still be in the same demand just where they need to be has altered
It is not that simple. If hundreds of people come to work in one office block, that means hundreds of people will want to eat lunch or drink coffee at the same time in the same place. If these same people are working from home, they will be scattered over a much wider area, and many of them will have their own coffee and cheese toastie-making facilities at home, so the critical mass of caffeine-starved customers needed to support Starbucks is never achieved.
Who cares. Those people should spend their money where it gives them the most value, not where the government tells them to.
£1000 a year not spent at Starbucks goes somewhere else. And in turn new jobs will be created out of that opportunity, jobs with much better long term resilience.
At what point did we lose faith in the core features of capitalism and the price setting mechanism? Sure capitalism has market failures that must be addressed but we’re getting to the point where people are seeking to undermine the construct entirely, with a quite appallingly loose understanding of what they’re trying to replace it with.
That £1,000 a year not spent at Starbucks might be spent somewhere else abroad, or on imported goods.
RAF flying up & down at 450’ over the Straits of Dover:
Though since it’s our side, not sure what good it can do. The solution lies in catching and prosecuting the people smugglers in France.
The solution really lies in eliminating the pull factor, and making it clear that whether or not you get here, sadly you won't get in.
As I mentioned previously, our asylum processing centres should be overseas. I would suggest one in India, one in Africa, and one in Asia. These are easier for genuine asylum seekers to get to, and present no draw for non-genuine ones.
The Daily Mail doesn't help. I mean, if you're in the shoes of someone migrating across the continent and you pick up a paper saying "Anyone getting to the UK gets to stay and gets given free money," as per loads of their headlines, where would you head for?
A major issue is the mythology spread by people smugglers in the home countries. Plus the grass is greener effect.
So you've *heard* that the UK is the promised land. Free health care - in clean hospitals*, the state gives you money for existing** etc etc
Then you're in France. It's actually a bit shit. Going back is impossible.....
The trick is to ask why some solutions are unacceptable - for example, one was to charge the last registered *boat owner* with multiple counts of reckless endangerment of life etc. An extraditable offence. For context - there is a whole game being played about selling boats to the traffickers. Including having them "stolen" in the LeaveTheKeysInItCoverYourEyesAndCountOneMississippiTwo... style. Then claim the insurance.....
*Yes, but have you been to some of the countries in question. **Funny how many people don't know that this is actually an uncommon thing around the world.
I had not thought about your solution on boats. It is a sound idea.
I am coming around to the idea that the solution to criminality - all criminality, is zero-tolerance at the grass roots level. There's really no point in months undercover to 'bring down Mr. Big' is there? That just creates a vacuum that someone else fills in seconds. Make it impossible at the grassroots level though, prosecute all pushers, users, thieves, vandals, traffickers, pimps etc., and you make Mr. Big's task an impossible one.
That is exactly wrong, I think.
For example, I enjoy the apocalyptic anger my proposal to stamp out criminal employment practises gets -
1) 100k starting fine for the employer. 2) The complainant gets half of any fines. 3) If they are an illegal immigrant (illegally employed) , they co-operate with the investigation and get a conviction - 10 years indefinite leave to remain and clean slate for immigration status.
Shitting on your employees would become as rare as rocking horse poop in 2-3 nanoseconds.
I don't know whether I agree, but I also don't see how that contradicts what I am saying. I am not saying 'just pick on the little guy' as a principle. I am simply recommending zero tolerance of crime at a grass-roots level.
Biden is probably the least intellectual Democratic nominee for president since LBJ but stunts like this do show he has more of the common touch than Hillary and the likes of Kerry and Gore had
Yup, it's a very astute operation. I don't know whether that's down to the candidate or the team, but in practice it doesn't really matter.
R4 Today 8.10 slot is all about OFQAL and the coming storm. At least OFQAL have published their methodology before they publish their results...
Here's an answer:
Let there be appeals but for every appeal successfully upgraded there has to be someone downgraded in return.
Get a small number of pupils for each school to sit the actual exam. They should be willing volunteers who are chosen by the school. The small number should mean their exams can be held safely. Then a benchmarking exercise can be transparently conducted which isolates a "school effect" and a "prelims/mock exam effect". The result would hold for each candidate that took the exam. Each candidate who did not sit the exam would be given a provisional result combining these effects. The main point of the exercise is to be a filter for university/college entrance. As university and college places will have become more easily available with the absence of large numbers of foreign students this year, the entry conditions would be more lenient across the board and this year's unfortunate cohort less penalised for something outwith their control.
Too late to do it now, and at the time it would have run into the same problem which made getting everyone to do the exam so difficult: the missing couple of months of teaching. Some schools (and even more some parents) would have been able to support their pupils well enough that they were almost as well prepared as a normal year: I was set to spend the time going though past papers for instance. Others would have still had a topic or two to go through and that is much harder when done remotely. It would also have severely affected those with little or no access to remote learning.
This was always going to be a problem with no good solution once the schools were closed. I’m not saying that OFQUAL have done well, as I don’t think they have, but there is no perfect solution. Even @ydoethur ’s solution of looking at work submitted by the schools runs into the problem of standardisation: different schools do mocks at different times (in fact I went to a school that did them in April), homework policies vary hugely (I set a lot of work to be done on line), even past paper work is suspect: was it done under exam conditions or at home “open book”?
In summary: there will be a lot of disappointed students and teachers on Thursday, OFQUAL will have got it wrong, and I’m not sure anyone could have got it right.
Unfortunately, we are where we are, and so are the A-level results. But if I were HMG I'd be calling for universities to get their acceptances out as quickly as possible, and decline to hear any grade appeals from people admitted to university anyway. Yes, it's sad young Emma's all-A* record is broken but she's got into Cambridge or Hull anyway so it does not matter.
Three in our office today. Nice to see the good folk of Yorkshire showing total disregard for the bollocks coming out of government.
Higher take-up on the other side of the Pennines for some reason. Around 20 of them have gone in.
And just how many jobs will be lost by not returning to the office
Jobs in catering and transport do you mean?
Across the spectrum
You seem to have this back to front
People are not there to support businesses, businesses are there to support people both in terms of services and jobs. If the business isn't where it needs to be then the business should move to people not the other way round. Cafe's etc will still be in the same demand just where they need to be has altered
It is not that simple. If hundreds of people come to work in one office block, that means hundreds of people will want to eat lunch or drink coffee at the same time in the same place. If these same people are working from home, they will be scattered over a much wider area, and many of them will have their own coffee and cheese toastie-making facilities at home, so the critical mass of caffeine-starved customers needed to support Starbucks is never achieved.
Can I refer everyone back to the squeezed middle and cost of living crisis? So many things in this country cost £lots for no apparent reason - and a working culture that essentially heavily taxes people for the basics isn't sustainable. I've thought for a long time that the coffee explosion was unsustainable. People won't be able to afford the daft money the coffee shacks demand for coffee and a snack without taking the money out of another part of the economy. That so many coffee shacks have been surged up in such a short space of time is not a reason to sustain that part of the economy because jobs. What jobs did the people do before working for the 409th local branch of CoffeeShak? And in what businesses did their customers spend their money?
Covid is a massive rapid realignment of the economy. It's already been brutal and its going to get much worse - the imbalance and instability was already there waiting for the black swan event to tip it over the edge. And very quickly we will see rapid change in the next piece of unsustainable lunacy - an army of zero hour workers scuttling around our towns making multiple repeat deliveries in diesel vans. Most of us have done a lot more direct to consumer shopping and we all need to stop.
I would venture that one food van with an efficient route to multiple households does a far more efficient job than the army of people like my parents that seem to drive to the shops three times a day for one item at a time. But I take your point.
D2C is not only here to stay, its going to expand significantly. What we need is an efficient final mile solution - a local delivery hub where all inbound parcels get delivered (at the end of a spoke from an area hub preferably) and then everything loaded onto the same vehicle much the way the postman delivers stuff sent from a myriad of sources.
The people trying to no confidence Starmer in his own constituency are literally batshit insane.
I think it’s time to call bullshit and kick them all out.
What?!
Is this Momentum Camden massing a no confidence motion because as DPP he worked with the police to prosecute working class and BAME people and "supports Zionism without qualification".
You do have to laugh. Whatever happened to respecting the mandate of the elected leader?
Three in our office today. Nice to see the good folk of Yorkshire showing total disregard for the bollocks coming out of government.
Higher take-up on the other side of the Pennines for some reason. Around 20 of them have gone in.
And just how many jobs will be lost by not returning to the office
Jobs in catering and transport do you mean?
Across the spectrum
You seem to have this back to front
People are not there to support businesses, businesses are there to support people both in terms of services and jobs. If the business isn't where it needs to be then the business should move to people not the other way round. Cafe's etc will still be in the same demand just where they need to be has altered
It is not that simple. If hundreds of people come to work in one office block, that means hundreds of people will want to eat lunch or drink coffee at the same time in the same place. If these same people are working from home, they will be scattered over a much wider area, and many of them will have their own coffee and cheese toastie-making facilities at home, so the critical mass of caffeine-starved customers needed to support Starbucks is never achieved.
Can I refer everyone back to the squeezed middle and cost of living crisis? So many things in this country cost £lots for no apparent reason - and a working culture that essentially heavily taxes people for the basics isn't sustainable. I've thought for a long time that the coffee explosion was unsustainable. People won't be able to afford the daft money the coffee shacks demand for coffee and a snack without taking the money out of another part of the economy. That so many coffee shacks have been surged up in such a short space of time is not a reason to sustain that part of the economy because jobs. What jobs did the people do before working for the 409th local branch of CoffeeShak? And in what businesses did their customers spend their money?
Covid is a massive rapid realignment of the economy. It's already been brutal and its going to get much worse - the imbalance and instability was already there waiting for the black swan event to tip it over the edge. And very quickly we will see rapid change in the next piece of unsustainable lunacy - an army of zero hour workers scuttling around our towns making multiple repeat deliveries in diesel vans. Most of us have done a lot more direct to consumer shopping and we all need to stop.
I would venture that one food van with an efficient route to multiple households does a far more efficient job than the army of people like my parents that seem to drive to the shops three times a day for one item at a time. But I take your point.
D2C is not only here to stay, its going to expand significantly. What we need is an efficient final mile solution - a local delivery hub where all inbound parcels get delivered (at the end of a spoke from an area hub preferably) and then everything loaded onto the same vehicle much the way the postman delivers stuff sent from a myriad of sources.
And at some point soon, that will likely be the first real world use for autonomous vehicles. Limiting them to relatively small areas, travelling at low speeds, would massively reduce the complexity of the self-driving problem. Perhaps Amazon will acquire Waymo at some point ?
RAF flying up & down at 450’ over the Straits of Dover:
Though since it’s our side, not sure what good it can do. The solution lies in catching and prosecuting the people smugglers in France.
The solution really lies in eliminating the pull factor, and making it clear that whether or not you get here, sadly you won't get in.
As I mentioned previously, our asylum processing centres should be overseas. I would suggest one in India, one in Africa, and one in Asia. These are easier for genuine asylum seekers to get to, and present no draw for non-genuine ones.
The Daily Mail doesn't help. I mean, if you're in the shoes of someone migrating across the continent and you pick up a paper saying "Anyone getting to the UK gets to stay and gets given free money," as per loads of their headlines, where would you head for?
A major issue is the mythology spread by people smugglers in the home countries. Plus the grass is greener effect.
So you've *heard* that the UK is the promised land. Free health care - in clean hospitals*, the state gives you money for existing** etc etc
Then you're in France. It's actually a bit shit. Going back is impossible.....
The trick is to ask why some solutions are unacceptable - for example, one was to charge the last registered *boat owner* with multiple counts of reckless endangerment of life etc. An extraditable offence. For context - there is a whole game being played about selling boats to the traffickers. Including having them "stolen" in the LeaveTheKeysInItCoverYourEyesAndCountOneMississippiTwo... style. Then claim the insurance.....
*Yes, but have you been to some of the countries in question. **Funny how many people don't know that this is actually an uncommon thing around the world.
I had not thought about your solution on boats. It is a sound idea.
I am coming around to the idea that the solution to criminality - all criminality, is zero-tolerance at the grass roots level. There's really no point in months undercover to 'bring down Mr. Big' is there? That just creates a vacuum that someone else fills in seconds. Make it impossible at the grassroots level though, prosecute all pushers, users, thieves, vandals, traffickers, pimps etc., and you make Mr. Big's task an impossible one.
That is exactly wrong, I think.
For example, I enjoy the apocalyptic anger my proposal to stamp out criminal employment practises gets -
1) 100k starting fine for the employer. 2) The complainant gets half of any fines. 3) If they are an illegal immigrant (illegally employed) , they co-operate with the investigation and get a conviction - 10 years indefinite leave to remain and clean slate for immigration status.
Shitting on your employees would become as rare as rocking horse poop in 2-3 nanoseconds.
I don't know whether I agree, but I also don't see how that contradicts what I am saying. I am not saying 'just pick on the little guy' as a principle. I am simply recommending zero tolerance of crime at a grass-roots level.
I meant, go for the big obvious guys, with a financial footprint. The little guys are cash in hand, not rich, don't own property....
Under my proposal, the scumbags in Leicester would have been in the shit, long ago, for example.
Three in our office today. Nice to see the good folk of Yorkshire showing total disregard for the bollocks coming out of government.
Higher take-up on the other side of the Pennines for some reason. Around 20 of them have gone in.
And just how many jobs will be lost by not returning to the office
Jobs in catering and transport do you mean?
Across the spectrum
You seem to have this back to front
People are not there to support businesses, businesses are there to support people both in terms of services and jobs. If the business isn't where it needs to be then the business should move to people not the other way round. Cafe's etc will still be in the same demand just where they need to be has altered
It is not that simple. If hundreds of people come to work in one office block, that means hundreds of people will want to eat lunch or drink coffee at the same time in the same place. If these same people are working from home, they will be scattered over a much wider area, and many of them will have their own coffee and cheese toastie-making facilities at home, so the critical mass of caffeine-starved customers needed to support Starbucks is never achieved.
Can I refer everyone back to the squeezed middle and cost of living crisis? So many things in this country cost £lots for no apparent reason - and a working culture that essentially heavily taxes people for the basics isn't sustainable. I've thought for a long time that the coffee explosion was unsustainable. People won't be able to afford the daft money the coffee shacks demand for coffee and a snack without taking the money out of another part of the economy. That so many coffee shacks have been surged up in such a short space of time is not a reason to sustain that part of the economy because jobs. What jobs did the people do before working for the 409th local branch of CoffeeShak? And in what businesses did their customers spend their money?
Covid is a massive rapid realignment of the economy. It's already been brutal and its going to get much worse - the imbalance and instability was already there waiting for the black swan event to tip it over the edge. And very quickly we will see rapid change in the next piece of unsustainable lunacy - an army of zero hour workers scuttling around our towns making multiple repeat deliveries in diesel vans. Most of us have done a lot more direct to consumer shopping and we all need to stop.
I would venture that one food van with an efficient route to multiple households does a far more efficient job than the army of people like my parents that seem to drive to the shops three times a day for one item at a time. But I take your point.
D2C is not only here to stay, its going to expand significantly. What we need is an efficient final mile solution - a local delivery hub where all inbound parcels get delivered (at the end of a spoke from an area hub preferably) and then everything loaded onto the same vehicle much the way the postman delivers stuff sent from a myriad of sources.
A lot of that can be done with better routing algorithms to combine deliveries straight from the warehouse
R4 Today 8.10 slot is all about OFQAL and the coming storm. At least OFQAL have published their methodology before they publish their results...
Here's an answer:
Let there be appeals but for every appeal successfully upgraded there has to be someone downgraded in return.
Get a small number of pupils for each school to sit the actual exam. They should be willing volunteers who are chosen by the school. The small number should mean their exams can be held safely. Then a benchmarking exercise can be transparently conducted which isolates a "school effect" and a "prelims/mock exam effect". The result would hold for each candidate that took the exam. Each candidate who did not sit the exam would be given a provisional result combining these effects. The main point of the exercise is to be a filter for university/college entrance. As university and college places will have become more easily available with the absence of large numbers of foreign students this year, the entry conditions would be more lenient across the board and this year's unfortunate cohort less penalised for something outwith their control.
Too late to do it now, and at the time it would have run into the same problem which made getting everyone to do the exam so difficult: the missing couple of months of teaching. Some schools (and even more some parents) would have been able to support their pupils well enough that they were almost as well prepared as a normal year: I was set to spend the time going though past papers for instance. Others would have still had a topic or two to go through and that is much harder when done remotely. It would also have severely affected those with little or no access to remote learning.
This was always going to be a problem with no good solution once the schools were closed. I’m not saying that OFQUAL have done well, as I don’t think they have, but there is no perfect solution. Even @ydoethur ’s solution of looking at work submitted by the schools runs into the problem of standardisation: different schools do mocks at different times (in fact I went to a school that did them in April), homework policies vary hugely (I set a lot of work to be done on line), even past paper work is suspect: was it done under exam conditions or at home “open book”?
In summary: there will be a lot of disappointed students and teachers on Thursday, OFQUAL will have got it wrong, and I’m not sure anyone could have got it right.
We have to make the best of a bad job. But perhaps the fact that the exam filter is kaput is not such a disaster as university entrance should be much easier for several reasons - less demand from abroad because Covid, less demand from home students because of Covid-related downgrading of the university experience and the gradual dawning on young people that it is only a route to workplace success for particular professions/subjects.
Three in our office today. Nice to see the good folk of Yorkshire showing total disregard for the bollocks coming out of government.
Higher take-up on the other side of the Pennines for some reason. Around 20 of them have gone in.
And just how many jobs will be lost by not returning to the office
Jobs in catering and transport do you mean?
Across the spectrum
You seem to have this back to front
People are not there to support businesses, businesses are there to support people both in terms of services and jobs. If the business isn't where it needs to be then the business should move to people not the other way round. Cafe's etc will still be in the same demand just where they need to be has altered
It is not that simple. If hundreds of people come to work in one office block, that means hundreds of people will want to eat lunch or drink coffee at the same time in the same place. If these same people are working from home, they will be scattered over a much wider area, and many of them will have their own coffee and cheese toastie-making facilities at home, so the critical mass of caffeine-starved customers needed to support Starbucks is never achieved.
Can I refer everyone back to the squeezed middle and cost of living crisis? So many things in this country cost £lots for no apparent reason - and a working culture that essentially heavily taxes people for the basics isn't sustainable. I've thought for a long time that the coffee explosion was unsustainable. People won't be able to afford the daft money the coffee shacks demand for coffee and a snack without taking the money out of another part of the economy. That so many coffee shacks have been surged up in such a short space of time is not a reason to sustain that part of the economy because jobs. What jobs did the people do before working for the 409th local branch of CoffeeShak? And in what businesses did their customers spend their money?
Covid is a massive rapid realignment of the economy. It's already been brutal and its going to get much worse - the imbalance and instability was already there waiting for the black swan event to tip it over the edge. And very quickly we will see rapid change in the next piece of unsustainable lunacy - an army of zero hour workers scuttling around our towns making multiple repeat deliveries in diesel vans. Most of us have done a lot more direct to consumer shopping and we all need to stop.
I would venture that one food van with an efficient route to multiple households does a far more efficient job than the army of people like my parents that seem to drive to the shops three times a day for one item at a time. But I take your point.
D2C is not only here to stay, its going to expand significantly. What we need is an efficient final mile solution - a local delivery hub where all inbound parcels get delivered (at the end of a spoke from an area hub preferably) and then everything loaded onto the same vehicle much the way the postman delivers stuff sent from a myriad of sources.
A lot of that can be done with better routing algorithms to combine deliveries straight from the warehouse
Warehouses plural. A lot of competing retailers selling the same stuff, who use the various competing courier firms, many of whom then have self-employed contractors doing the actual delivery. Its combining my orders from Doc Marten and Amazon and Brewdog so that they all arrive in one drop - thats the key.
The people trying to no confidence Starmer in his own constituency are literally batshit insane.
I think it’s time to call bullshit and kick them all out.
What?!
Is this Momentum Camden massing a no confidence motion because as DPP he worked with the police to prosecute working class and BAME people and "supports Zionism without qualification".
You do have to laugh. Whatever happened to respecting the mandate of the elected leader?
Sacha Baron Cohen *has* to do the movie about these people.
R4 Today 8.10 slot is all about OFQAL and the coming storm. At least OFQAL have published their methodology before they publish their results...
Here's an answer:
Let there be appeals but for every appeal successfully upgraded there has to be someone downgraded in return.
Get a small number of pupils for each school to sit the actual exam. They should be willing volunteers who are chosen by the school. The small number should mean their exams can be held safely. Then a benchmarking exercise can be transparently conducted which isolates a "school effect" and a "prelims/mock exam effect". The result would hold for each candidate that took the exam. Each candidate who did not sit the exam would be given a provisional result combining these effects. The main point of the exercise is to be a filter for university/college entrance. As university and college places will have become more easily available with the absence of large numbers of foreign students this year, the entry conditions would be more lenient across the board and this year's unfortunate cohort less penalised for something outwith their control.
Too late to do it now, and at the time it would have run into the same problem which made getting everyone to do the exam so difficult: the missing couple of months of teaching. Some schools (and even more some parents) would have been able to support their pupils well enough that they were almost as well prepared as a normal year: I was set to spend the time going though past papers for instance. Others would have still had a topic or two to go through and that is much harder when done remotely. It would also have severely affected those with little or no access to remote learning.
This was always going to be a problem with no good solution once the schools were closed. I’m not saying that OFQUAL have done well, as I don’t think they have, but there is no perfect solution. Even @ydoethur ’s solution of looking at work submitted by the schools runs into the problem of standardisation: different schools do mocks at different times (in fact I went to a school that did them in April), homework policies vary hugely (I set a lot of work to be done on line), even past paper work is suspect: was it done under exam conditions or at home “open book”?
In summary: there will be a lot of disappointed students and teachers on Thursday, OFQUAL will have got it wrong, and I’m not sure anyone could have got it right.
Yes, there would have been issues. But they would be issues that could have been worked round. For example, by insisting on five pieces from a common set with a brief note on the conditions they were done under.
The problem is that they are using statistics to adjust something that on their own admission doesn't have a reliable statistical basis, while dismissing the data sent in on the terms they asked for as unreliable because they don't like the answers they got.
And if you have four sets with four different teachers each of which has been doing their own thing? We largely do self-marking at A-level: I would take in a couple of pieces each half term to keep them honest but for the rest give them the mark scheme. And I don’t hold onto the work: how were we supposed to provide anyone with examples of the students work if the students have it at home?
The one thing we did have in school was the work they had done for the practical part of the qualification, but that is not even part of the main A-level.
Biden on his bike draws attention to his age as a negative. As does his dodgy facelift.
Where's the confidence in his age and experience? In his achievements? He's not facing a younger, green opponent, but he's facing someone very inexperienced politically, which his years of experience contrast favourably with. I would be trying to sell him as a slick operator - a professional. No school like the old school. Instead they seem to be dubiously trying to reclaim lost vigour.
Having joined this conversation late, due to having spent the time from 8-9.30 at the gym and then having THINGS TO DO, I am horrified at the ageism here. Joe Biden Jr is, at 78 several years younger than myself, and, partly as a result of said gym, I feel as mentally fit as ever.
Three in our office today. Nice to see the good folk of Yorkshire showing total disregard for the bollocks coming out of government.
Higher take-up on the other side of the Pennines for some reason. Around 20 of them have gone in.
And just how many jobs will be lost by not returning to the office
Jobs in catering and transport do you mean?
Across the spectrum
You seem to have this back to front
People are not there to support businesses, businesses are there to support people both in terms of services and jobs. If the business isn't where it needs to be then the business should move to people not the other way round. Cafe's etc will still be in the same demand just where they need to be has altered
It is not that simple. If hundreds of people come to work in one office block, that means hundreds of people will want to eat lunch or drink coffee at the same time in the same place. If these same people are working from home, they will be scattered over a much wider area, and many of them will have their own coffee and cheese toastie-making facilities at home, so the critical mass of caffeine-starved customers needed to support Starbucks is never achieved.
Can I refer everyone back to the squeezed middle and cost of living crisis? So many things in this country cost £lots for no apparent reason - and a working culture that essentially heavily taxes people for the basics isn't sustainable. I've thought for a long time that the coffee explosion was unsustainable. People won't be able to afford the daft money the coffee shacks demand for coffee and a snack without taking the money out of another part of the economy. That so many coffee shacks have been surged up in such a short space of time is not a reason to sustain that part of the economy because jobs. What jobs did the people do before working for the 409th local branch of CoffeeShak? And in what businesses did their customers spend their money?
Covid is a massive rapid realignment of the economy. It's already been brutal and its going to get much worse - the imbalance and instability was already there waiting for the black swan event to tip it over the edge. And very quickly we will see rapid change in the next piece of unsustainable lunacy - an army of zero hour workers scuttling around our towns making multiple repeat deliveries in diesel vans. Most of us have done a lot more direct to consumer shopping and we all need to stop.
I would venture that one food van with an efficient route to multiple households does a far more efficient job than the army of people like my parents that seem to drive to the shops three times a day for one item at a time. But I take your point.
D2C is not only here to stay, its going to expand significantly. What we need is an efficient final mile solution - a local delivery hub where all inbound parcels get delivered (at the end of a spoke from an area hub preferably) and then everything loaded onto the same vehicle much the way the postman delivers stuff sent from a myriad of sources.
A lot of that can be done with better routing algorithms to combine deliveries straight from the warehouse
Warehouses plural. A lot of competing retailers selling the same stuff, who use the various competing courier firms, many of whom then have self-employed contractors doing the actual delivery. Its combining my orders from Doc Marten and Amazon and Brewdog so that they all arrive in one drop - thats the key.
Which is why Amazon is winning so far - their thing is having a single mega-warehouse for an area and trying to "encourage" their "partners" to use it.
Three in our office today. Nice to see the good folk of Yorkshire showing total disregard for the bollocks coming out of government.
Higher take-up on the other side of the Pennines for some reason. Around 20 of them have gone in.
And just how many jobs will be lost by not returning to the office
Jobs in catering and transport do you mean?
Across the spectrum
You seem to have this back to front
People are not there to support businesses, businesses are there to support people both in terms of services and jobs. If the business isn't where it needs to be then the business should move to people not the other way round. Cafe's etc will still be in the same demand just where they need to be has altered
It is not that simple. If hundreds of people come to work in one office block, that means hundreds of people will want to eat lunch or drink coffee at the same time in the same place. If these same people are working from home, they will be scattered over a much wider area, and many of them will have their own coffee and cheese toastie-making facilities at home, so the critical mass of caffeine-starved customers needed to support Starbucks is never achieved.
Who cares. Those people should spend their money where it gives them the most value, not where the government tells them to.
£1000 a year not spent at Starbucks goes somewhere else. And in turn new jobs will be created out of that opportunity, jobs with much better long term resilience.
At what point did we lose faith in the core features of capitalism and the price setting mechanism? Sure capitalism has market failures that must be addressed but we’re getting to the point where people are seeking to undermine the construct entirely, with a quite appallingly loose understanding of what they’re trying to replace it with.
That £1,000 a year not spent at Starbucks might be spent somewhere else abroad, or on imported goods.
Starbucks grows coffee in the UK?
I suspect the cost of the coffee is a very small proportion of the price of a cup. The cost of the licence to use the Starbucks name on the other hand...
Let me guess: Woke-ists saying Scotland good / England bad, Canada good / USA bad, New Zealand good / Australia bad. How original and predictable.
Fear not, I'm sure Spikedonline will be along shortly with something more to your taste. That's the great thing about the marketplace of ideas that one agrees with.
Three in our office today. Nice to see the good folk of Yorkshire showing total disregard for the bollocks coming out of government.
Higher take-up on the other side of the Pennines for some reason. Around 20 of them have gone in.
And just how many jobs will be lost by not returning to the office
Jobs in catering and transport do you mean?
Across the spectrum
You seem to have this back to front
People are not there to support businesses, businesses are there to support people both in terms of services and jobs. If the business isn't where it needs to be then the business should move to people not the other way round. Cafe's etc will still be in the same demand just where they need to be has altered
It is not that simple. If hundreds of people come to work in one office block, that means hundreds of people will want to eat lunch or drink coffee at the same time in the same place. If these same people are working from home, they will be scattered over a much wider area, and many of them will have their own coffee and cheese toastie-making facilities at home, so the critical mass of caffeine-starved customers needed to support Starbucks is never achieved.
Who cares. Those people should spend their money where it gives them the most value, not where the government tells them to.
£1000 a year not spent at Starbucks goes somewhere else. And in turn new jobs will be created out of that opportunity, jobs with much better long term resilience.
At what point did we lose faith in the core features of capitalism and the price setting mechanism? Sure capitalism has market failures that must be addressed but we’re getting to the point where people are seeking to undermine the construct entirely, with a quite appallingly loose understanding of what they’re trying to replace it with.
That £1,000 a year not spent at Starbucks might be spent somewhere else abroad, or on imported goods.
Starbucks grows coffee in the UK?
I suspect the cost of the coffee is a very small proportion of the price of a cup. The cost of the licence to use the Starbucks name on the other hand...
When you buy a cup of coffee in Starbucks, you are paying for the building, the decor, the wifi, the service, the equipment, the employment of the staff, etc etc.
Biden on his bike draws attention to his age as a negative. As does his dodgy facelift.
Where's the confidence in his age and experience? In his achievements? He's not facing a younger, green opponent, but he's facing someone very inexperienced politically, which his years of experience contrast favourably with. I would be trying to sell him as a slick operator - a professional. No school like the old school. Instead they seem to be dubiously trying to reclaim lost vigour.
Having joined this conversation late, due to having spent the time from 8-9.30 at the gym and then having THINGS TO DO, I am horrified at the ageism here. Joe Biden Jr is, at 78 several years younger than myself, and, partly as a result of said gym, I feel as mentally fit as ever.
On the other hand, out genial host, the esteemed septuagenarian Mr. Smithson, is firmly of the opinion that the presidency is best held by someone under 70. (I should add that this is not my opinion.)
Three in our office today. Nice to see the good folk of Yorkshire showing total disregard for the bollocks coming out of government.
Higher take-up on the other side of the Pennines for some reason. Around 20 of them have gone in.
And just how many jobs will be lost by not returning to the office
Jobs in catering and transport do you mean?
Across the spectrum
You seem to have this back to front
People are not there to support businesses, businesses are there to support people both in terms of services and jobs. If the business isn't where it needs to be then the business should move to people not the other way round. Cafe's etc will still be in the same demand just where they need to be has altered
It is not that simple. If hundreds of people come to work in one office block, that means hundreds of people will want to eat lunch or drink coffee at the same time in the same place. If these same people are working from home, they will be scattered over a much wider area, and many of them will have their own coffee and cheese toastie-making facilities at home, so the critical mass of caffeine-starved customers needed to support Starbucks is never achieved.
Who cares. Those people should spend their money where it gives them the most value, not where the government tells them to.
£1000 a year not spent at Starbucks goes somewhere else. And in turn new jobs will be created out of that opportunity, jobs with much better long term resilience.
At what point did we lose faith in the core features of capitalism and the price setting mechanism? Sure capitalism has market failures that must be addressed but we’re getting to the point where people are seeking to undermine the construct entirely, with a quite appallingly loose understanding of what they’re trying to replace it with.
That £1,000 a year not spent at Starbucks might be spent somewhere else abroad, or on imported goods.
Starbucks grows coffee in the UK?
I suspect the cost of the coffee is a very small proportion of the price of a cup. The cost of the licence to use the Starbucks name on the other hand...
When you buy a cup of coffee in Starbucks, you are paying for the building, the decor, the wifi, the service, the equipment, the employment of the staff, etc etc.
The actual coffee is a perk they throw in.
And often all I want is somewhere to sit for an hour or two to read or talk to a friend: the coffee is indeed as you say, a bonus.
Although it is still enough of a bonus that I normally go somewhere with better coffee than Starbucks...
Biden on his bike draws attention to his age as a negative. As does his dodgy facelift.
Where's the confidence in his age and experience? In his achievements? He's not facing a younger, green opponent, but he's facing someone very inexperienced politically, which his years of experience contrast favourably with. I would be trying to sell him as a slick operator - a professional. No school like the old school. Instead they seem to be dubiously trying to reclaim lost vigour.
Having joined this conversation late, due to having spent the time from 8-9.30 at the gym and then having THINGS TO DO, I am horrified at the ageism here. Joe Biden Jr is, at 78 several years younger than myself, and, partly as a result of said gym, I feel as mentally fit as ever.
Good for you! I’m in my about thirty years younger than you and, having been for a walk, feeling ancient.
Biden on his bike draws attention to his age as a negative. As does his dodgy facelift.
Where's the confidence in his age and experience? In his achievements? He's not facing a younger, green opponent, but he's facing someone very inexperienced politically, which his years of experience contrast favourably with. I would be trying to sell him as a slick operator - a professional. No school like the old school. Instead they seem to be dubiously trying to reclaim lost vigour.
Having joined this conversation late, due to having spent the time from 8-9.30 at the gym and then having THINGS TO DO, I am horrified at the ageism here. Joe Biden Jr is, at 78 several years younger than myself, and, partly as a result of said gym, I feel as mentally fit as ever.
I quite agree. It's a drawback only if we see it as one.
Three in our office today. Nice to see the good folk of Yorkshire showing total disregard for the bollocks coming out of government.
Higher take-up on the other side of the Pennines for some reason. Around 20 of them have gone in.
And just how many jobs will be lost by not returning to the office
Jobs in catering and transport do you mean?
Across the spectrum
You seem to have this back to front
People are not there to support businesses, businesses are there to support people both in terms of services and jobs. If the business isn't where it needs to be then the business should move to people not the other way round. Cafe's etc will still be in the same demand just where they need to be has altered
It is not that simple. If hundreds of people come to work in one office block, that means hundreds of people will want to eat lunch or drink coffee at the same time in the same place. If these same people are working from home, they will be scattered over a much wider area, and many of them will have their own coffee and cheese toastie-making facilities at home, so the critical mass of caffeine-starved customers needed to support Starbucks is never achieved.
Can I refer everyone back to the squeezed middle and cost of living crisis? So many things in this country cost £lots for no apparent reason - and a working culture that essentially heavily taxes people for the basics isn't sustainable. I've thought for a long time that the coffee explosion was unsustainable. People won't be able to afford the daft money the coffee shacks demand for coffee and a snack without taking the money out of another part of the economy. That so many coffee shacks have been surged up in such a short space of time is not a reason to sustain that part of the economy because jobs. What jobs did the people do before working for the 409th local branch of CoffeeShak? And in what businesses did their customers spend their money?
Covid is a massive rapid realignment of the economy. It's already been brutal and its going to get much worse - the imbalance and instability was already there waiting for the black swan event to tip it over the edge. And very quickly we will see rapid change in the next piece of unsustainable lunacy - an army of zero hour workers scuttling around our towns making multiple repeat deliveries in diesel vans. Most of us have done a lot more direct to consumer shopping and we all need to stop.
I would venture that one food van with an efficient route to multiple households does a far more efficient job than the army of people like my parents that seem to drive to the shops three times a day for one item at a time. But I take your point.
D2C is not only here to stay, its going to expand significantly. What we need is an efficient final mile solution - a local delivery hub where all inbound parcels get delivered (at the end of a spoke from an area hub preferably) and then everything loaded onto the same vehicle much the way the postman delivers stuff sent from a myriad of sources.
And at some point soon, that will likely be the first real world use for autonomous vehicles. Limiting them to relatively small areas, travelling at low speeds, would massively reduce the complexity of the self-driving problem. Perhaps Amazon will acquire Waymo at some point ?
Urban areas are one of the hardest things for self driving vehicles to get right. There are just so many possible scenarios each of which is quite likely. Breaking hard to avoid hitting a child who has runout into the road, but not breaking hard to avoid a dog, who has run out into the road is just one example. Chaotic double parking is another. These scenarios are common but each case is non-standard. Getting an algorithm to cope requires a monumental level of machine learning.
I do accept that slow speeds mean that accidents are less serious, but I think the public and authorites will not be tolerant of a self driving car that has more accidents than a human driver, even if the accidents are at 10 mph.
Three in our office today. Nice to see the good folk of Yorkshire showing total disregard for the bollocks coming out of government.
Higher take-up on the other side of the Pennines for some reason. Around 20 of them have gone in.
And just how many jobs will be lost by not returning to the office
Jobs in catering and transport do you mean?
Across the spectrum
You seem to have this back to front
People are not there to support businesses, businesses are there to support people both in terms of services and jobs. If the business isn't where it needs to be then the business should move to people not the other way round. Cafe's etc will still be in the same demand just where they need to be has altered
It is not that simple. If hundreds of people come to work in one office block, that means hundreds of people will want to eat lunch or drink coffee at the same time in the same place. If these same people are working from home, they will be scattered over a much wider area, and many of them will have their own coffee and cheese toastie-making facilities at home, so the critical mass of caffeine-starved customers needed to support Starbucks is never achieved.
Who cares. Those people should spend their money where it gives them the most value, not where the government tells them to.
£1000 a year not spent at Starbucks goes somewhere else. And in turn new jobs will be created out of that opportunity, jobs with much better long term resilience.
At what point did we lose faith in the core features of capitalism and the price setting mechanism? Sure capitalism has market failures that must be addressed but we’re getting to the point where people are seeking to undermine the construct entirely, with a quite appallingly loose understanding of what they’re trying to replace it with.
That £1,000 a year not spent at Starbucks might be spent somewhere else abroad, or on imported goods.
Starbucks grows coffee in the UK?
I suspect the cost of the coffee is a very small proportion of the price of a cup. The cost of the licence to use the Starbucks name on the other hand...
When you buy a cup of coffee in Starbucks, you are paying for the building, the decor, the wifi, the service, the equipment, the employment of the staff, etc etc.
The actual coffee is a perk they throw in.
And often all I want is somewhere to sit for an hour or two to read or talk to a friend: the coffee is indeed as you say, a bonus.
Although it is still enough of a bonus that I normally go somewhere with better coffee than Starbucks...
Yup
It goes back to the Brick Lane cereal place row - the cost is in having the place there at all. The coffee price is a way of paying for it. As opposed to renting a chair and table by the hour. In the style of Edward Lloyd.....
Three in our office today. Nice to see the good folk of Yorkshire showing total disregard for the bollocks coming out of government.
Higher take-up on the other side of the Pennines for some reason. Around 20 of them have gone in.
And just how many jobs will be lost by not returning to the office
Jobs in catering and transport do you mean?
Across the spectrum
You seem to have this back to front
People are not there to support businesses, businesses are there to support people both in terms of services and jobs. If the business isn't where it needs to be then the business should move to people not the other way round. Cafe's etc will still be in the same demand just where they need to be has altered
It is not that simple. If hundreds of people come to work in one office block, that means hundreds of people will want to eat lunch or drink coffee at the same time in the same place. If these same people are working from home, they will be scattered over a much wider area, and many of them will have their own coffee and cheese toastie-making facilities at home, so the critical mass of caffeine-starved customers needed to support Starbucks is never achieved.
Can I refer everyone back to the squeezed middle and cost of living crisis? So many things in this country cost £lots for no apparent reason - and a working culture that essentially heavily taxes people for the basics isn't sustainable. I've thought for a long time that the coffee explosion was unsustainable. People won't be able to afford the daft money the coffee shacks demand for coffee and a snack without taking the money out of another part of the economy. That so many coffee shacks have been surged up in such a short space of time is not a reason to sustain that part of the economy because jobs. What jobs did the people do before working for the 409th local branch of CoffeeShak? And in what businesses did their customers spend their money?
Covid is a massive rapid realignment of the economy. It's already been brutal and its going to get much worse - the imbalance and instability was already there waiting for the black swan event to tip it over the edge. And very quickly we will see rapid change in the next piece of unsustainable lunacy - an army of zero hour workers scuttling around our towns making multiple repeat deliveries in diesel vans. Most of us have done a lot more direct to consumer shopping and we all need to stop.
I would venture that one food van with an efficient route to multiple households does a far more efficient job than the army of people like my parents that seem to drive to the shops three times a day for one item at a time. But I take your point.
D2C is not only here to stay, its going to expand significantly. What we need is an efficient final mile solution - a local delivery hub where all inbound parcels get delivered (at the end of a spoke from an area hub preferably) and then everything loaded onto the same vehicle much the way the postman delivers stuff sent from a myriad of sources.
And at some point soon, that will likely be the first real world use for autonomous vehicles. Limiting them to relatively small areas, travelling at low speeds, would massively reduce the complexity of the self-driving problem. Perhaps Amazon will acquire Waymo at some point ?
Limiting self-driving vans to small areas will make no difference at all, since space for storing maps is not the problem. And in any case, there'd need to be a human on board to take the parcel from van to door.
Otherwise, what was described is what already happens with Amazon and the usual parcel firms (including the Royal Mail). Parcels are sent to local hubs then loaded onto vans for final delivery. Supermarket deliveries are a slightly special case.
Three in our office today. Nice to see the good folk of Yorkshire showing total disregard for the bollocks coming out of government.
Higher take-up on the other side of the Pennines for some reason. Around 20 of them have gone in.
And just how many jobs will be lost by not returning to the office
Jobs in catering and transport do you mean?
Across the spectrum
You seem to have this back to front
People are not there to support businesses, businesses are there to support people both in terms of services and jobs. If the business isn't where it needs to be then the business should move to people not the other way round. Cafe's etc will still be in the same demand just where they need to be has altered
It is not that simple. If hundreds of people come to work in one office block, that means hundreds of people will want to eat lunch or drink coffee at the same time in the same place. If these same people are working from home, they will be scattered over a much wider area, and many of them will have their own coffee and cheese toastie-making facilities at home, so the critical mass of caffeine-starved customers needed to support Starbucks is never achieved.
Can I refer everyone back to the squeezed middle and cost of living crisis? So many things in this country cost £lots for no apparent reason - and a working culture that essentially heavily taxes people for the basics isn't sustainable. I've thought for a long time that the coffee explosion was unsustainable. People won't be able to afford the daft money the coffee shacks demand for coffee and a snack without taking the money out of another part of the economy. That so many coffee shacks have been surged up in such a short space of time is not a reason to sustain that part of the economy because jobs. What jobs did the people do before working for the 409th local branch of CoffeeShak? And in what businesses did their customers spend their money?
Covid is a massive rapid realignment of the economy. It's already been brutal and its going to get much worse - the imbalance and instability was already there waiting for the black swan event to tip it over the edge. And very quickly we will see rapid change in the next piece of unsustainable lunacy - an army of zero hour workers scuttling around our towns making multiple repeat deliveries in diesel vans. Most of us have done a lot more direct to consumer shopping and we all need to stop.
I would venture that one food van with an efficient route to multiple households does a far more efficient job than the army of people like my parents that seem to drive to the shops three times a day for one item at a time. But I take your point.
D2C is not only here to stay, its going to expand significantly. What we need is an efficient final mile solution - a local delivery hub where all inbound parcels get delivered (at the end of a spoke from an area hub preferably) and then everything loaded onto the same vehicle much the way the postman delivers stuff sent from a myriad of sources.
And at some point soon, that will likely be the first real world use for autonomous vehicles. Limiting them to relatively small areas, travelling at low speeds, would massively reduce the complexity of the self-driving problem. Perhaps Amazon will acquire Waymo at some point ?
Limiting self-driving vans to small areas will make no difference at all, since space for storing maps is not the problem. And in any case, there'd need to be a human on board to take the parcel from van to door.
Otherwise, what was described is what already happens with Amazon and the usual parcel firms (including the Royal Mail). Parcels are sent to local hubs then loaded onto vans for final delivery. Supermarket deliveries are a slightly special case.
I think you have missed my point - what I described does not already happen. There are a literal army of people in a flotilla of vans. I've had three separate drops in a single day all from different retailers using different couriers. The answer can't be "use Amazon" (who are horrendously expensive to route product through and unresponsive to work with).
Three in our office today. Nice to see the good folk of Yorkshire showing total disregard for the bollocks coming out of government.
Higher take-up on the other side of the Pennines for some reason. Around 20 of them have gone in.
And just how many jobs will be lost by not returning to the office
Jobs in catering and transport do you mean?
Across the spectrum
You seem to have this back to front
People are not there to support businesses, businesses are there to support people both in terms of services and jobs. If the business isn't where it needs to be then the business should move to people not the other way round. Cafe's etc will still be in the same demand just where they need to be has altered
It is not that simple. If hundreds of people come to work in one office block, that means hundreds of people will want to eat lunch or drink coffee at the same time in the same place. If these same people are working from home, they will be scattered over a much wider area, and many of them will have their own coffee and cheese toastie-making facilities at home, so the critical mass of caffeine-starved customers needed to support Starbucks is never achieved.
Can I refer everyone back to the squeezed middle and cost of living crisis? So many things in this country cost £lots for no apparent reason - and a working culture that essentially heavily taxes people for the basics isn't sustainable. I've thought for a long time that the coffee explosion was unsustainable. People won't be able to afford the daft money the coffee shacks demand for coffee and a snack without taking the money out of another part of the economy. That so many coffee shacks have been surged up in such a short space of time is not a reason to sustain that part of the economy because jobs. What jobs did the people do before working for the 409th local branch of CoffeeShak? And in what businesses did their customers spend their money?
Covid is a massive rapid realignment of the economy. It's already been brutal and its going to get much worse - the imbalance and instability was already there waiting for the black swan event to tip it over the edge. And very quickly we will see rapid change in the next piece of unsustainable lunacy - an army of zero hour workers scuttling around our towns making multiple repeat deliveries in diesel vans. Most of us have done a lot more direct to consumer shopping and we all need to stop.
I would venture that one food van with an efficient route to multiple households does a far more efficient job than the army of people like my parents that seem to drive to the shops three times a day for one item at a time. But I take your point.
D2C is not only here to stay, its going to expand significantly. What we need is an efficient final mile solution - a local delivery hub where all inbound parcels get delivered (at the end of a spoke from an area hub preferably) and then everything loaded onto the same vehicle much the way the postman delivers stuff sent from a myriad of sources.
And at some point soon, that will likely be the first real world use for autonomous vehicles. Limiting them to relatively small areas, travelling at low speeds, would massively reduce the complexity of the self-driving problem. Perhaps Amazon will acquire Waymo at some point ?
Limiting self-driving vans to small areas will make no difference at all, since space for storing maps is not the problem...
Indeed; for the brute force (Waymo) approach, very accurate mapping is one of the problems. That's a lot easier to do if confined to large urban areas.
Three in our office today. Nice to see the good folk of Yorkshire showing total disregard for the bollocks coming out of government.
Higher take-up on the other side of the Pennines for some reason. Around 20 of them have gone in.
And just how many jobs will be lost by not returning to the office
Jobs in catering and transport do you mean?
Across the spectrum
You seem to have this back to front
People are not there to support businesses, businesses are there to support people both in terms of services and jobs. If the business isn't where it needs to be then the business should move to people not the other way round. Cafe's etc will still be in the same demand just where they need to be has altered
It is not that simple. If hundreds of people come to work in one office block, that means hundreds of people will want to eat lunch or drink coffee at the same time in the same place. If these same people are working from home, they will be scattered over a much wider area, and many of them will have their own coffee and cheese toastie-making facilities at home, so the critical mass of caffeine-starved customers needed to support Starbucks is never achieved.
Who cares. Those people should spend their money where it gives them the most value, not where the government tells them to.
£1000 a year not spent at Starbucks goes somewhere else. And in turn new jobs will be created out of that opportunity, jobs with much better long term resilience.
At what point did we lose faith in the core features of capitalism and the price setting mechanism? Sure capitalism has market failures that must be addressed but we’re getting to the point where people are seeking to undermine the construct entirely, with a quite appallingly loose understanding of what they’re trying to replace it with.
That £1,000 a year not spent at Starbucks might be spent somewhere else abroad, or on imported goods.
Starbucks grows coffee in the UK?
I suspect the cost of the coffee is a very small proportion of the price of a cup. The cost of the licence to use the Starbucks name on the other hand...
When you buy a cup of coffee in Starbucks, you are paying for the building, the decor, the wifi, the service, the equipment, the employment of the staff, etc etc.
The actual coffee is a perk they throw in.
And often all I want is somewhere to sit for an hour or two to read or talk to a friend: the coffee is indeed as you say, a bonus.
Although it is still enough of a bonus that I normally go somewhere with better coffee than Starbucks...
Yup
It goes back to the Brick Lane cereal place row - the cost is in having the place there at all. The coffee price is a way of paying for it. As opposed to renting a chair and table by the hour. In the style of Edward Lloyd.....
People have apparently wanted to do a Starbucks only themed round juices and smoothies and found it unworkable because fruit juice costs actual money whereas coffee is, comparatively speaking, virtually free.
What D2C needs to be sustainable is the equivalent of the postie. Doesn't matter what I order or from where it all gets delivered by the same route. Compete for local contracts if you like but once the contract is awarded ParcelCo delivers literally everything in that area. In an electric van. You only get a bespoke delivery for outsize stuff like a washing machine. Big reduction in the number of vehicles scuttling around, reduction of overlapping waste, make deliver to home actually cover its costs.
Three in our office today. Nice to see the good folk of Yorkshire showing total disregard for the bollocks coming out of government.
Higher take-up on the other side of the Pennines for some reason. Around 20 of them have gone in.
And just how many jobs will be lost by not returning to the office
Jobs in catering and transport do you mean?
Across the spectrum
You seem to have this back to front
People are not there to support businesses, businesses are there to support people both in terms of services and jobs. If the business isn't where it needs to be then the business should move to people not the other way round. Cafe's etc will still be in the same demand just where they need to be has altered
It is not that simple. If hundreds of people come to work in one office block, that means hundreds of people will want to eat lunch or drink coffee at the same time in the same place. If these same people are working from home, they will be scattered over a much wider area, and many of them will have their own coffee and cheese toastie-making facilities at home, so the critical mass of caffeine-starved customers needed to support Starbucks is never achieved.
Who cares. Those people should spend their money where it gives them the most value, not where the government tells them to.
£1000 a year not spent at Starbucks goes somewhere else. And in turn new jobs will be created out of that opportunity, jobs with much better long term resilience.
At what point did we lose faith in the core features of capitalism and the price setting mechanism? Sure capitalism has market failures that must be addressed but we’re getting to the point where people are seeking to undermine the construct entirely, with a quite appallingly loose understanding of what they’re trying to replace it with.
That £1,000 a year not spent at Starbucks might be spent somewhere else abroad, or on imported goods.
Starbucks grows coffee in the UK?
I suspect the cost of the coffee is a very small proportion of the price of a cup. The cost of the licence to use the Starbucks name on the other hand...
When you buy a cup of coffee in Starbucks, you are paying for the building, the decor, the wifi, the service, the equipment, the employment of the staff, etc etc.
The actual coffee is a perk they throw in.
And often all I want is somewhere to sit for an hour or two to read or talk to a friend: the coffee is indeed as you say, a bonus.
Although it is still enough of a bonus that I normally go somewhere with better coffee than Starbucks...
Yup
It goes back to the Brick Lane cereal place row - the cost is in having the place there at all. The coffee price is a way of paying for it. As opposed to renting a chair and table by the hour. In the style of Edward Lloyd.....
People have apparently wanted to do a Starbucks only themed round juices and smoothies and found it unworkable because fruit juice costs actual money whereas coffee is, comparatively speaking, virtually free.
Crussh have been doing precisely that since 1998 and have 35 stores so not unworkable at all. Its not as scale-able as starbucks but then not many smoothie drinkers could come back for half a dozen smoothies a day as some coffee drinkers do.
Biden on his bike draws attention to his age as a negative. As does his dodgy facelift.
Where's the confidence in his age and experience? In his achievements? He's not facing a younger, green opponent, but he's facing someone very inexperienced politically, which his years of experience contrast favourably with. I would be trying to sell him as a slick operator - a professional. No school like the old school. Instead they seem to be dubiously trying to reclaim lost vigour.
Having joined this conversation late, due to having spent the time from 8-9.30 at the gym and then having THINGS TO DO, I am horrified at the ageism here. Joe Biden Jr is, at 78 several years younger than myself, and, partly as a result of said gym, I feel as mentally fit as ever.
I don't want to be unkind but didn't you recently give up your bike because you had lost your sense of balance? Old age comes to us all, the challenges of being POTUS thankfully do not.
Why would Canada, Australia and New Zealand want anything to do with the UK?
That's the bit I can't understand.
Cos we're the UK and the UK is great.
Don't mention that's it's not impossible New Zealand leaves the Commonwealth. Their PM is pro a referendum on removing the Monarchy, as is my understanding.
Three in our office today. Nice to see the good folk of Yorkshire showing total disregard for the bollocks coming out of government.
Higher take-up on the other side of the Pennines for some reason. Around 20 of them have gone in.
And just how many jobs will be lost by not returning to the office
Jobs in catering and transport do you mean?
Across the spectrum
You seem to have this back to front
People are not there to support businesses, businesses are there to support people both in terms of services and jobs. If the business isn't where it needs to be then the business should move to people not the other way round. Cafe's etc will still be in the same demand just where they need to be has altered
It is not that simple. If hundreds of people come to work in one office block, that means hundreds of people will want to eat lunch or drink coffee at the same time in the same place. If these same people are working from home, they will be scattered over a much wider area, and many of them will have their own coffee and cheese toastie-making facilities at home, so the critical mass of caffeine-starved customers needed to support Starbucks is never achieved.
Can I refer everyone back to the squeezed middle and cost of living crisis? So many things in this country cost £lots for no apparent reason - and a working culture that essentially heavily taxes people for the basics isn't sustainable. I've thought for a long time that the coffee explosion was unsustainable. People won't be able to afford the daft money the coffee shacks demand for coffee and a snack without taking the money out of another part of the economy. That so many coffee shacks have been surged up in such a short space of time is not a reason to sustain that part of the economy because jobs. What jobs did the people do before working for the 409th local branch of CoffeeShak? And in what businesses did their customers spend their money?
Covid is a massive rapid realignment of the economy. It's already been brutal and its going to get much worse - the imbalance and instability was already there waiting for the black swan event to tip it over the edge. And very quickly we will see rapid change in the next piece of unsustainable lunacy - an army of zero hour workers scuttling around our towns making multiple repeat deliveries in diesel vans. Most of us have done a lot more direct to consumer shopping and we all need to stop.
I would venture that one food van with an efficient route to multiple households does a far more efficient job than the army of people like my parents that seem to drive to the shops three times a day for one item at a time. But I take your point.
D2C is not only here to stay, its going to expand significantly. What we need is an efficient final mile solution - a local delivery hub where all inbound parcels get delivered (at the end of a spoke from an area hub preferably) and then everything loaded onto the same vehicle much the way the postman delivers stuff sent from a myriad of sources.
And at some point soon, that will likely be the first real world use for autonomous vehicles. Limiting them to relatively small areas, travelling at low speeds, would massively reduce the complexity of the self-driving problem. Perhaps Amazon will acquire Waymo at some point ?
Limiting self-driving vans to small areas will make no difference at all, since space for storing maps is not the problem. And in any case, there'd need to be a human on board to take the parcel from van to door.
Otherwise, what was described is what already happens with Amazon and the usual parcel firms (including the Royal Mail). Parcels are sent to local hubs then loaded onto vans for final delivery. Supermarket deliveries are a slightly special case.
I think you have missed my point - what I described does not already happen. There are a literal army of people in a flotilla of vans. I've had three separate drops in a single day all from different retailers using different couriers. The answer can't be "use Amazon" (who are horrendously expensive to route product through and unresponsive to work with).
And also have insane delivery routes. Our local Amazon deliveries are no longer handled by the Leeds deport (which was slightly insane, but just about plausible) but are now sent from Carlisle
RAF flying up & down at 450’ over the Straits of Dover:
Though since it’s our side, not sure what good it can do. The solution lies in catching and prosecuting the people smugglers in France.
The solution really lies in eliminating the pull factor, and making it clear that whether or not you get here, sadly you won't get in.
As I mentioned previously, our asylum processing centres should be overseas. I would suggest one in India, one in Africa, and one in Asia. These are easier for genuine asylum seekers to get to, and present no draw for non-genuine ones.
The Daily Mail doesn't help. I mean, if you're in the shoes of someone migrating across the continent and you pick up a paper saying "Anyone getting to the UK gets to stay and gets given free money," as per loads of their headlines, where would you head for?
A major issue is the mythology spread by people smugglers in the home countries. Plus the grass is greener effect.
So you've *heard* that the UK is the promised land. Free health care - in clean hospitals*, the state gives you money for existing** etc etc
Then you're in France. It's actually a bit shit. Going back is impossible.....
The trick is to ask why some solutions are unacceptable - for example, one was to charge the last registered *boat owner* with multiple counts of reckless endangerment of life etc. An extraditable offence. For context - there is a whole game being played about selling boats to the traffickers. Including having them "stolen" in the LeaveTheKeysInItCoverYourEyesAndCountOneMississippiTwo... style. Then claim the insurance.....
*Yes, but have you been to some of the countries in question. **Funny how many people don't know that this is actually an uncommon thing around the world.
I had not thought about your solution on boats. It is a sound idea.
I am coming around to the idea that the solution to criminality - all criminality, is zero-tolerance at the grass roots level. There's really no point in months undercover to 'bring down Mr. Big' is there? That just creates a vacuum that someone else fills in seconds. Make it impossible at the grassroots level though, prosecute all pushers, users, thieves, vandals, traffickers, pimps etc., and you make Mr. Big's task an impossible one.
That is exactly wrong, I think.
For example, I enjoy the apocalyptic anger my proposal to stamp out criminal employment practises gets -
1) 100k starting fine for the employer. 2) The complainant gets half of any fines. 3) If they are an illegal immigrant (illegally employed) , they co-operate with the investigation and get a conviction - 10 years indefinite leave to remain and clean slate for immigration status.
Shitting on your employees would become as rare as rocking horse poop in 2-3 nanoseconds.
In your world I am sure no criminal gang would ever dream of paying a middle manager at a large firm to hire people illegally and split the proceeds between the gang, the hirer and the employee whilst the shareholders (i.e. pension funds i.e everyone else) pay out the crazy fines.
Three in our office today. Nice to see the good folk of Yorkshire showing total disregard for the bollocks coming out of government.
Higher take-up on the other side of the Pennines for some reason. Around 20 of them have gone in.
And just how many jobs will be lost by not returning to the office
Jobs in catering and transport do you mean?
Across the spectrum
You seem to have this back to front
People are not there to support businesses, businesses are there to support people both in terms of services and jobs. If the business isn't where it needs to be then the business should move to people not the other way round. Cafe's etc will still be in the same demand just where they need to be has altered
It is not that simple. If hundreds of people come to work in one office block, that means hundreds of people will want to eat lunch or drink coffee at the same time in the same place. If these same people are working from home, they will be scattered over a much wider area, and many of them will have their own coffee and cheese toastie-making facilities at home, so the critical mass of caffeine-starved customers needed to support Starbucks is never achieved.
Can I refer everyone back to the squeezed middle and cost of living crisis? So many things in this country cost £lots for no apparent reason - and a working culture that essentially heavily taxes people for the basics isn't sustainable. I've thought for a long time that the coffee explosion was unsustainable. People won't be able to afford the daft money the coffee shacks demand for coffee and a snack without taking the money out of another part of the economy. That so many coffee shacks have been surged up in such a short space of time is not a reason to sustain that part of the economy because jobs. What jobs did the people do before working for the 409th local branch of CoffeeShak? And in what businesses did their customers spend their money?
Covid is a massive rapid realignment of the economy. It's already been brutal and its going to get much worse - the imbalance and instability was already there waiting for the black swan event to tip it over the edge. And very quickly we will see rapid change in the next piece of unsustainable lunacy - an army of zero hour workers scuttling around our towns making multiple repeat deliveries in diesel vans. Most of us have done a lot more direct to consumer shopping and we all need to stop.
I would venture that one food van with an efficient route to multiple households does a far more efficient job than the army of people like my parents that seem to drive to the shops three times a day for one item at a time. But I take your point.
D2C is not only here to stay, its going to expand significantly. What we need is an efficient final mile solution - a local delivery hub where all inbound parcels get delivered (at the end of a spoke from an area hub preferably) and then everything loaded onto the same vehicle much the way the postman delivers stuff sent from a myriad of sources.
And at some point soon, that will likely be the first real world use for autonomous vehicles. Limiting them to relatively small areas, travelling at low speeds, would massively reduce the complexity of the self-driving problem. Perhaps Amazon will acquire Waymo at some point ?
Limiting self-driving vans to small areas will make no difference at all, since space for storing maps is not the problem. And in any case, there'd need to be a human on board to take the parcel from van to door.
Otherwise, what was described is what already happens with Amazon and the usual parcel firms (including the Royal Mail). Parcels are sent to local hubs then loaded onto vans for final delivery. Supermarket deliveries are a slightly special case.
I think you have missed my point - what I described does not already happen. There are a literal army of people in a flotilla of vans. I've had three separate drops in a single day all from different retailers using different couriers. The answer can't be "use Amazon" (who are horrendously expensive to route product through and unresponsive to work with).
And also have insane delivery routes. Our local Amazon deliveries are no longer handled by the Leeds deport (which was slightly insane, but just about plausible) but are now sent from Carlisle
That’s better than one delivery I had which was sent to the Glasgow office. I’m 25 miles from London.
And at some point soon, that will likely be the first real world use for autonomous vehicles. Limiting them to relatively small areas, travelling at low speeds, would massively reduce the complexity of the self-driving problem. Perhaps Amazon will acquire Waymo at some point ?
Amazon bought a self-driving vehicle company called Zoox recently, and that's not their only self-driving vehicle project.
What D2C needs to be sustainable is the equivalent of the postie. Doesn't matter what I order or from where it all gets delivered by the same route. Compete for local contracts if you like but once the contract is awarded ParcelCo delivers literally everything in that area. In an electric van. You only get a bespoke delivery for outsize stuff like a washing machine. Big reduction in the number of vehicles scuttling around, reduction of overlapping waste, make deliver to home actually cover its costs.
The problem with that is who awards the contract. If I find as a customer the delivery company contracted routinely gives me crap service I can currently buy from another online place that uses a different firm. Under your model I am stuck with it.
Logically there are only 3 classes of entity that can award that contract
A) the mail order firms which means realisticly amazon gets to choose B ) The council which is a recipe for greased palms C) The customers in the area and I can't see that happening
Why would Canada, Australia and New Zealand want anything to do with the UK?
That's the bit I can't understand.
Cos we're the UK and the UK is great.
Don't mention that's it's not impossible New Zealand leaves the Commonwealth. Their PM is pro a referendum on removing the Monarchy, as is my understanding.
Removing the monarchy is not the same as leaving the commonwealth
Why would Canada, Australia and New Zealand want anything to do with the UK?
That's the bit I can't understand.
We can't exist as Juche Britain, so closer links with CANZUK, India, the USA are and always were the necessary corollary to moving away from the EU. This is that fact being applied in practise. I know you're not a fan of the current form of Brexit, but what were you expecting with *any* Brexit.
RAF flying up & down at 450’ over the Straits of Dover:
Though since it’s our side, not sure what good it can do. The solution lies in catching and prosecuting the people smugglers in France.
The solution really lies in eliminating the pull factor, and making it clear that whether or not you get here, sadly you won't get in.
As I mentioned previously, our asylum processing centres should be overseas. I would suggest one in India, one in Africa, and one in Asia. These are easier for genuine asylum seekers to get to, and present no draw for non-genuine ones.
The Daily Mail doesn't help. I mean, if you're in the shoes of someone migrating across the continent and you pick up a paper saying "Anyone getting to the UK gets to stay and gets given free money," as per loads of their headlines, where would you head for?
A major issue is the mythology spread by people smugglers in the home countries. Plus the grass is greener effect.
So you've *heard* that the UK is the promised land. Free health care - in clean hospitals*, the state gives you money for existing** etc etc
Then you're in France. It's actually a bit shit. Going back is impossible.....
The trick is to ask why some solutions are unacceptable - for example, one was to charge the last registered *boat owner* with multiple counts of reckless endangerment of life etc. An extraditable offence. For context - there is a whole game being played about selling boats to the traffickers. Including having them "stolen" in the LeaveTheKeysInItCoverYourEyesAndCountOneMississippiTwo... style. Then claim the insurance.....
*Yes, but have you been to some of the countries in question. **Funny how many people don't know that this is actually an uncommon thing around the world.
I had not thought about your solution on boats. It is a sound idea.
I am coming around to the idea that the solution to criminality - all criminality, is zero-tolerance at the grass roots level. There's really no point in months undercover to 'bring down Mr. Big' is there? That just creates a vacuum that someone else fills in seconds. Make it impossible at the grassroots level though, prosecute all pushers, users, thieves, vandals, traffickers, pimps etc., and you make Mr. Big's task an impossible one.
That is exactly wrong, I think.
For example, I enjoy the apocalyptic anger my proposal to stamp out criminal employment practises gets -
1) 100k starting fine for the employer. 2) The complainant gets half of any fines. 3) If they are an illegal immigrant (illegally employed) , they co-operate with the investigation and get a conviction - 10 years indefinite leave to remain and clean slate for immigration status.
Shitting on your employees would become as rare as rocking horse poop in 2-3 nanoseconds.
In your world I am sure no criminal gang would ever dream of paying a middle manager at a large firm to hire people illegally and split the proceeds between the gang, the hirer and the employee whilst the shareholders (i.e. pension funds i.e everyone else) pay out the crazy fines.
You are aware of the fines for employing illegal immigrants at the moment?
Three in our office today. Nice to see the good folk of Yorkshire showing total disregard for the bollocks coming out of government.
Higher take-up on the other side of the Pennines for some reason. Around 20 of them have gone in.
And just how many jobs will be lost by not returning to the office
Jobs in catering and transport do you mean?
Across the spectrum
You seem to have this back to front
People are not there to support businesses, businesses are there to support people both in terms of services and jobs. If the business isn't where it needs to be then the business should move to people not the other way round. Cafe's etc will still be in the same demand just where they need to be has altered
It is not that simple. If hundreds of people come to work in one office block, that means hundreds of people will want to eat lunch or drink coffee at the same time in the same place. If these same people are working from home, they will be scattered over a much wider area, and many of them will have their own coffee and cheese toastie-making facilities at home, so the critical mass of caffeine-starved customers needed to support Starbucks is never achieved.
Can I refer everyone back to the squeezed middle and cost of living crisis? So many things in this country cost £lots for no apparent reason - and a working culture that essentially heavily taxes people for the basics isn't sustainable. I've thought for a long time that the coffee explosion was unsustainable. People won't be able to afford the daft money the coffee shacks demand for coffee and a snack without taking the money out of another part of the economy. That so many coffee shacks have been surged up in such a short space of time is not a reason to sustain that part of the economy because jobs. What jobs did the people do before working for the 409th local branch of CoffeeShak? And in what businesses did their customers spend their money?
Covid is a massive rapid realignment of the economy. It's already been brutal and its going to get much worse - the imbalance and instability was already there waiting for the black swan event to tip it over the edge. And very quickly we will see rapid change in the next piece of unsustainable lunacy - an army of zero hour workers scuttling around our towns making multiple repeat deliveries in diesel vans. Most of us have done a lot more direct to consumer shopping and we all need to stop.
I would venture that one food van with an efficient route to multiple households does a far more efficient job than the army of people like my parents that seem to drive to the shops three times a day for one item at a time. But I take your point.
D2C is not only here to stay, its going to expand significantly. What we need is an efficient final mile solution - a local delivery hub where all inbound parcels get delivered (at the end of a spoke from an area hub preferably) and then everything loaded onto the same vehicle much the way the postman delivers stuff sent from a myriad of sources.
And at some point soon, that will likely be the first real world use for autonomous vehicles. Limiting them to relatively small areas, travelling at low speeds, would massively reduce the complexity of the self-driving problem. Perhaps Amazon will acquire Waymo at some point ?
Limiting self-driving vans to small areas will make no difference at all, since space for storing maps is not the problem. And in any case, there'd need to be a human on board to take the parcel from van to door.
Otherwise, what was described is what already happens with Amazon and the usual parcel firms (including the Royal Mail). Parcels are sent to local hubs then loaded onto vans for final delivery. Supermarket deliveries are a slightly special case.
I think you have missed my point - what I described does not already happen. There are a literal army of people in a flotilla of vans. I've had three separate drops in a single day all from different retailers using different couriers. The answer can't be "use Amazon" (who are horrendously expensive to route product through and unresponsive to work with).
The army with its flotilla of vans are all delivering goods from local hubs. That is how parcel firms work, even in the days when the Royal Mail had a monopoly. Recreating that monopoly so you only get one van a day makes no real difference if the aggregate capacity needed is three vans a day for your area.
Why would Canada, Australia and New Zealand want anything to do with the UK?
That's the bit I can't understand.
Cos we're the UK and the UK is great.
Don't mention that's it's not impossible New Zealand leaves the Commonwealth. Their PM is pro a referendum on removing the Monarchy, as is my understanding.
Abolishing the Monarchy and leaving the Commonwealth are 2 different things. The Commonwealth is rather popular among its members.
Why would Canada, Australia and New Zealand want anything to do with the UK?
That's the bit I can't understand.
Cos we're the UK and the UK is great.
Don't mention that's it's not impossible New Zealand leaves the Commonwealth. Their PM is pro a referendum on removing the Monarchy, as is my understanding.
Removing the monarchy is not the same as leaving the commonwealth
I didn't mean to imply it was. I meant that a leader who is pro removing the Monarchy may well be interested in leaving the Commonwealth as well, it doesn't seem a massive stretch to me.
Which countries in the Commonwealth don't have the Monarchy?
Why would Canada, Australia and New Zealand want anything to do with the UK?
That's the bit I can't understand.
Cos we're the UK and the UK is great.
Don't mention that's it's not impossible New Zealand leaves the Commonwealth. Their PM is pro a referendum on removing the Monarchy, as is my understanding.
Removing the monarchy is not the same as leaving the commonwealth
I didn't mean to imply it was. I meant that a leader who is pro removing the Monarchy may well be interested in leaving the Commonwealth as well, it doesn't seem a massive stretch to me.
Which countries in the Commonwealth don't have the Monarchy?
Why would Canada, Australia and New Zealand want anything to do with the UK?
That's the bit I can't understand.
Cos we're the UK and the UK is great.
Don't mention that's it's not impossible New Zealand leaves the Commonwealth. Their PM is pro a referendum on removing the Monarchy, as is my understanding.
Abolishing the Monarchy and leaving the Commonwealth are 2 different things. The Commonwealth is rather popular among its members.
No no, I get that, my language was clumsy. To me it didn't seem a massive stretch that the leader might also wish to leave the Commonwealth.
What D2C needs to be sustainable is the equivalent of the postie. Doesn't matter what I order or from where it all gets delivered by the same route. Compete for local contracts if you like but once the contract is awarded ParcelCo delivers literally everything in that area. In an electric van. You only get a bespoke delivery for outsize stuff like a washing machine. Big reduction in the number of vehicles scuttling around, reduction of overlapping waste, make deliver to home actually cover its costs.
The problem with that is who awards the contract. If I find as a customer the delivery company contracted routinely gives me crap service I can currently buy from another online place that uses a different firm. Under your model I am stuck with it.
Logically there are only 3 classes of entity that can award that contract
A) the mail order firms which means realisticly amazon gets to choose B ) The council which is a recipe for greased palms C) The customers in the area and I can't see that happening
I can see the potential for drift into mediocrity - but how is that any different to any of the other monopoly providers we have? My mum wants to send me a cheque through the post the monopoly supplier is Royal Mail. I want fibre broadband? The monopoly supplier is Virgin. I want utilities? Can chose who I buy off but the infrastructure company owns the supply route.
I'm starting with the simple premise that competition in its current form is unsustainable. It will coalesce into a primary delivery route whether thats Amazon buying out the competition or ParcelCo being let out on a national framework like any other utility.
Why would Canada, Australia and New Zealand want anything to do with the UK?
That's the bit I can't understand.
Cos we're the UK and the UK is great.
Don't mention that's it's not impossible New Zealand leaves the Commonwealth. Their PM is pro a referendum on removing the Monarchy, as is my understanding.
Removing the monarchy is not the same as leaving the commonwealth
I didn't mean to imply it was. I meant that a leader who is pro removing the Monarchy may well be interested in leaving the Commonwealth as well, it doesn't seem a massive stretch to me.
Which countries in the Commonwealth don't have the Monarchy?
Why would Canada, Australia and New Zealand want anything to do with the UK?
That's the bit I can't understand.
Cos we're the UK and the UK is great.
Don't mention that's it's not impossible New Zealand leaves the Commonwealth. Their PM is pro a referendum on removing the Monarchy, as is my understanding.
Removing the monarchy is not the same as leaving the commonwealth
I didn't mean to imply it was. I meant that a leader who is pro removing the Monarchy may well be interested in leaving the Commonwealth as well, it doesn't seem a massive stretch to me.
Which countries in the Commonwealth don't have the Monarchy?
Why would Canada, Australia and New Zealand want anything to do with the UK?
That's the bit I can't understand.
Cos we're the UK and the UK is great.
Don't mention that's it's not impossible New Zealand leaves the Commonwealth. Their PM is pro a referendum on removing the Monarchy, as is my understanding.
Removing the monarchy is not the same as leaving the commonwealth
I didn't mean to imply it was. I meant that a leader who is pro removing the Monarchy may well be interested in leaving the Commonwealth as well, it doesn't seem a massive stretch to me.
Which countries in the Commonwealth don't have the Monarchy?
India for one.
It's most of them as I've been schooled above, fair enough, hold my hands up to being ignorant.
Although I do recall reading that the PM of NZ was interested in leaving the Commonwealth but I accept that's not what I was really arguing above.
Why would Canada, Australia and New Zealand want anything to do with the UK?
That's the bit I can't understand.
Cos we're the UK and the UK is great.
Don't mention that's it's not impossible New Zealand leaves the Commonwealth. Their PM is pro a referendum on removing the Monarchy, as is my understanding.
Abolishing the Monarchy and leaving the Commonwealth are 2 different things. The Commonwealth is rather popular among its members.
No no, I get that, my language was clumsy. To me it didn't seem a massive stretch that the leader might also wish to leave the Commonwealth.
I'm happy to be wrong, no qualms about that. As you know I'm okay to hold my hands up when I am and clearly I was here. Hope you will respect me for that
Why would Canada, Australia and New Zealand want anything to do with the UK?
That's the bit I can't understand.
Cos we're the UK and the UK is great.
Don't mention that's it's not impossible New Zealand leaves the Commonwealth. Their PM is pro a referendum on removing the Monarchy, as is my understanding.
Abolishing the Monarchy and leaving the Commonwealth are 2 different things. The Commonwealth is rather popular among its members.
No no, I get that, my language was clumsy. To me it didn't seem a massive stretch that the leader might also wish to leave the Commonwealth.
Why on earth would they.
It is popular amongst its 54 members
No idea, it's something I recall reading but it wasn't what I was arguing above.
Why would Canada, Australia and New Zealand want anything to do with the UK?
That's the bit I can't understand.
Cos we're the UK and the UK is great.
Don't mention that's it's not impossible New Zealand leaves the Commonwealth. Their PM is pro a referendum on removing the Monarchy, as is my understanding.
Removing the monarchy is not the same as leaving the commonwealth
I didn't mean to imply it was. I meant that a leader who is pro removing the Monarchy may well be interested in leaving the Commonwealth as well, it doesn't seem a massive stretch to me.
Which countries in the Commonwealth don't have the Monarchy?
The Commonwealth has more than 50 members - only 16 of them (including the UK) are "Commonwealth Realms" with Lizzie as Head of State.
Why would Canada, Australia and New Zealand want anything to do with the UK?
That's the bit I can't understand.
Cos we're the UK and the UK is great.
Don't mention that's it's not impossible New Zealand leaves the Commonwealth. Their PM is pro a referendum on removing the Monarchy, as is my understanding.
Removing the monarchy is not the same as leaving the commonwealth
I didn't mean to imply it was. I meant that a leader who is pro removing the Monarchy may well be interested in leaving the Commonwealth as well, it doesn't seem a massive stretch to me.
Which countries in the Commonwealth don't have the Monarchy?
Why would Canada, Australia and New Zealand want anything to do with the UK?
That's the bit I can't understand.
Cos we're the UK and the UK is great.
Don't mention that's it's not impossible New Zealand leaves the Commonwealth. Their PM is pro a referendum on removing the Monarchy, as is my understanding.
Removing the monarchy is not the same as leaving the commonwealth
I didn't mean to imply it was. I meant that a leader who is pro removing the Monarchy may well be interested in leaving the Commonwealth as well, it doesn't seem a massive stretch to me.
Which countries in the Commonwealth don't have the Monarchy?
The Commonwealth has more than 50 members - only 16 of them (including the UK) are "Commonwealth Realms" with Lizzie as Head of State.
Yeah I'm clearly ignorant on such matters, I won't argue any further.
Why would Canada, Australia and New Zealand want anything to do with the UK?
That's the bit I can't understand.
Cos we're the UK and the UK is great.
Don't mention that's it's not impossible New Zealand leaves the Commonwealth. Their PM is pro a referendum on removing the Monarchy, as is my understanding.
Removing the monarchy is not the same as leaving the commonwealth
I didn't mean to imply it was. I meant that a leader who is pro removing the Monarchy may well be interested in leaving the Commonwealth as well, it doesn't seem a massive stretch to me.
Which countries in the Commonwealth don't have the Monarchy?
The Commonwealth has more than 50 members - only 16 of them (including the UK) are "Commonwealth Realms" with Lizzie as Head of State.
Yeah I'm clearly ignorant on such matters, I won't argue any further.
There are a few people I know who wouldn’t let a little thing like that stop them!
I wish everyone on this forum would demonstrate the same ability to learn: I expect I am guilty of holding on to positions long after they have been shown to be wrong.
Why would Canada, Australia and New Zealand want anything to do with the UK?
That's the bit I can't understand.
We can't exist as Juche Britain, so closer links with CANZUK, India, the USA are and always were the necessary corollary to moving away from the EU. This is that fact being applied in practise. I know you're not a fan of the current form of Brexit, but what were you expecting with *any* Brexit.
Yes, the Brexiteers need to make up their minds between "slap on the tariffs to protect British industry and agriculture" and "zero tariffs so we can buy lots of cheap stuff".
Comments
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=File:Number_of_first-time_asylum_applicants_(non-EU-27_citizens),_2018_and_2019_(thousands).png
Apologies, I hadn't noticed (and in my defence, I was replying to a series of posts of which MM's was the first).
I am more than happy to acknowledge you do not espouse such ludicrous views.
£1000 a year not spent at Starbucks goes somewhere else. And in turn new jobs will be created out of that opportunity, jobs with much better long term resilience.
At what point did we lose faith in the core features of capitalism and the price setting mechanism? Sure capitalism has market failures that must be addressed but we’re getting to the point where people are seeking to undermine the construct entirely, with a quite appallingly loose understanding of what they’re trying to replace it with.
But as mentioned, poring over his wiki page makes for some uncomfortable reading.
Bring on the drones...
https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Prime-Air/b?ie=UTF8&node=8037720011
Test
People believe stories they want to believe, and that's a very attractive one.
So you've *heard* that the UK is the promised land. Free health care - in clean hospitals*, the state gives you money for existing** etc etc
Then you're in France. It's actually a bit shit. Going back is impossible.....
The trick is to ask why some solutions are unacceptable - for example, one was to charge the last registered *boat owner* with multiple counts of reckless endangerment of life etc. An extraditable offence. For context - there is a whole game being played about selling boats to the traffickers. Including having them "stolen" in the LeaveTheKeysInItCoverYourEyesAndCountOneMississippiTwo... style. Then claim the insurance.....
*Yes, but have you been to some of the countries in question.
**Funny how many people don't know that this is actually an uncommon thing around the world.
Apart from the fact that it has now been established that cruise ships are unmatched C19 incubators it also ignores the legal and logistical impossibilities of taking randoms back to France without French permission.
That's not to say Scotland has done particularly well though.
https://tinyurl.com/y4nh85rs
I am coming around to the idea that the solution to criminality - all criminality, is zero-tolerance at the grass roots level. There's really no point in months undercover to 'bring down Mr. Big' is there? That just creates a vacuum that someone else fills in seconds. Make it impossible at the grassroots level though, prosecute all pushers, users, thieves, vandals, traffickers, pimps etc., and you make Mr. Big's task an impossible one.
The next step, which is only really just beginning, is deliveries from warehouse to customer for food. Instead of a member of staff at a supermarket pushing a trolley round....
Chuck in electric vans and some optimisation, and the whole thing could be cheaper and better than the whole drive-to-a-mega-market thing.
Look, I've been WFH for nearly a decade so can see its advantages as well as its downsides, but let us not pretend there are none, or that "capitalism" will wave its magic wand.
(Quite naughty of you)
This was always going to be a problem with no good solution once the schools were closed. I’m not saying that OFQUAL have done well, as I don’t think they have, but there is no perfect solution. Even @ydoethur ’s solution of looking at work submitted by the schools runs into the problem of standardisation: different schools do mocks at different times (in fact I went to a school that did them in April), homework policies vary hugely (I set a lot of work to be done on line), even past paper work is suspect: was it done under exam conditions or at home “open book”?
In summary: there will be a lot of disappointed students and teachers on Thursday, OFQUAL will have got it wrong, and I’m not sure anyone could have got it right.
For example, I enjoy the apocalyptic anger my proposal to stamp out criminal employment practises gets -
1) 100k starting fine for the employer.
2) The complainant gets half of any fines.
3) If they are an illegal immigrant (illegally employed) , they co-operate with the investigation and get a conviction - 10 years indefinite leave to remain and clean slate for immigration status.
Shitting on your employees would become as rare as rocking horse poop in 2-3 nanoseconds.
The problem is that they are using statistics to adjust something that on their own admission doesn't have a reliable statistical basis, while dismissing the data sent in on the terms they asked for as unreliable because they don't like the answers they got.
My sense of disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined
You do have to laugh. Whatever happened to respecting the mandate of the elected leader?
Perhaps Amazon will acquire Waymo at some point ?
Under my proposal, the scumbags in Leicester would have been in the shit, long ago, for example.
https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2020/07/23/hindsight-is-a-wonderful-thing/
Keir staying silent which I think is a smart move
In the style of The Death Of Stalin.
Jason Isaacs as Starmer.....
The one thing we did have in school was the work they had done for the practical part of the qualification, but that is not even part of the main A-level.
I suspect the cost of the coffee is a very small proportion of the price of a cup. The cost of the licence to use the Starbucks name on the other hand...
The actual coffee is a perk they throw in.
(I should add that this is not my opinion.)
Although it is still enough of a bonus that I normally go somewhere with better coffee than Starbucks...
I do accept that slow speeds mean that accidents are less serious, but I think the public and authorites will not be tolerant of a self driving car that has more accidents than a human driver, even if the accidents are at 10 mph.
It goes back to the Brick Lane cereal place row - the cost is in having the place there at all. The coffee price is a way of paying for it. As opposed to renting a chair and table by the hour. In the style of Edward Lloyd.....
Otherwise, what was described is what already happens with Amazon and the usual parcel firms (including the Royal Mail). Parcels are sent to local hubs then loaded onto vans for final delivery. Supermarket deliveries are a slightly special case.
That's the bit I can't understand.
Don't mention that's it's not impossible New Zealand leaves the Commonwealth. Their PM is pro a referendum on removing the Monarchy, as is my understanding.
It's the other way round on economics.
Logically there are only 3 classes of entity that can award that contract
A) the mail order firms which means realisticly amazon gets to choose
B ) The council which is a recipe for greased palms
C) The customers in the area and I can't see that happening
https://twitter.com/stockotrader/status/1292765171795066880?s=20
They did an engine check once it was on the ground but they still haven't found what they're looking for (stolen from thread).
I know you're not a fan of the current form of Brexit, but what were you expecting with *any* Brexit.
Which countries in the Commonwealth don't have the Monarchy?
Huh, TIL!
I'm starting with the simple premise that competition in its current form is unsustainable. It will coalesce into a primary delivery route whether thats Amazon buying out the competition or ParcelCo being let out on a national framework like any other utility.
Although I do recall reading that the PM of NZ was interested in leaving the Commonwealth but I accept that's not what I was really arguing above.
It is popular amongst its 54 members
Cromwell used the name during his rule during the 1650s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_England
On New Zealand my eldest emigrated there in 2003 and has a Kiwi passport
He now is married and since 2015 has lived with his wife in Vancouver
Canada and Nova Scotia feature quite a lot in our Scottish family, many of their forebears having created a new life there in the early 1900s
I wish everyone on this forum would demonstrate the same ability to learn: I expect I am guilty of holding on to positions long after they have been shown to be wrong.
"slap on the tariffs to protect British industry and agriculture" and
"zero tariffs so we can buy lots of cheap stuff".