Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.
A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.
We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.
I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.
When (not if) most workplaces are adapted for home-working, the main problem for employees is that it doesn’t really matter for owners and managers if personnel are at home in London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Naples, Zurich, Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta, Toronto or Santiago.
Many people have romantic ideas of moving to nice places like Devon, the Cotswolds, the Hebrides or rural France, and working from home there. While this is certainly going to happen in the short term (the Scottish rural property market is red-hot), in the long-term most are gonna be screwed by more productive foreign workers.
That depends on what level of infrequent personal attendance or contact or travel is residual when everything settles down.
Our property market on the island is also hot at the moment with stories of some properties selling unseen.
There's a lot of experimenting going on. I heard of an interesting stretch - an American office-worker currently expected to wfh for her London employer (not a senior position but quite an intense one) and keen to see her family proposed to wfh - in Colorado. She offered to start work at 6 every morning to help with the time difference. Her employer said yes, if you fulfil what we expect of you each day it's actually no concern of ours where you're living.
Wouldn't work for every kind of job, but the fact that it's happening at all is a novelty.
My daughter got a new job yesterday with the SSSC who regulate social care workers in Scotland. We are absolutely delighted for her, its her first graduate level job and a real opportunity but it did make me think about WFH once again.
She has been told that no one will be in the office until after Christmas at the earliest, that all of her training for her new post will be online and that she will subsequently WFH for months. As a newbie in the organisation I think that this is a tremendous challenge for her. How does she get to know her team members, to socialise with them, to build the networks that can help her when she is unsure what to do? How does she find ways to expand her role and acquire the additional experience that might help her seek promotion one day?
I think WFH works tolerably well for people who already have all of that in place and for people established in their role. For those just starting out, like my daughter, it's a whole other ball game. Those promoting it seem to me to have something of the "I'm alright Jack" mentality about it and are giving insufficient thought or concern about the next generation.
Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.
A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.
We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.
I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.
When (not if) most workplaces are adapted for home-working, the main problem for employees is that it doesn’t really matter for owners and managers if personnel are at home in London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Naples, Zurich, Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta, Toronto or Santiago.
Many people have romantic ideas of moving to nice places like Devon, the Cotswolds, the Hebrides or rural France, and working from home there. While this is certainly going to happen in the short term (the Scottish rural property market is red-hot), in the long-term most are gonna be screwed by more productive foreign workers.
The problems entailed by the move to wfh are routinely not just understated but entirely ignored on this site. There is a huge skew on the site to people with nice houses with room to work in (Are there more bedrooms than residents? is a good test), and who are naturally ungregarious to the point that their idea of/substitute for social interaction is wibbling on an Internet politics site, and who are at a late enough stage in their careers that hustling for self-promotion (a notably face to face activity) is no longer a necessity. A hostile government is another spoke in the wheel of the idea, and the point the government makes that wfhers are vulnerable to sacking may be nasty but it is also correct.
Good post and good points. PBers are generally speaking hopelessy disconnected from ordinary voters and how normal people live and think. A lot of folk around here even wear that as a badge of pride (Charles springs to mind).
Ain't that true, I'm quite new here and anticipated a political betting site with impartial analysis. Its actually 90% white collar liberals with little interest in or understanding of betting.
That's not a problem, I like white collar liberals, but they're completely unaware of what goes on in the lives of ordinary working people. Pret, among others, are shedding 1000s of jobs, I don't suppose there's too many baristas or sandwich makers on here.
Which political environment is full of baristas and sandwich makers?
My daughter got a new job yesterday with the SSSC who regulate social care workers in Scotland. We are absolutely delighted for her, its her first graduate level job and a real opportunity but it did make me think about WFH once again.
She has been told that no one will be in the office until after Christmas at the earliest, that all of her training for her new post will be online and that she will subsequently WFH for months. As a newbie in the organisation I think that this is a tremendous challenge for her. How does she get to know her team members, to socialise with them, to build the networks that can help her when she is unsure what to do? How does she find ways to expand her role and acquire the additional experience that might help her seek promotion one day?
I think WFH works tolerably well for people who already have all of that in place and for people established in their role. For those just starting out, like my daughter, it's a whole other ball game. Those promoting it seem to me to have something of the "I'm alright Jack" mentality about it and are giving insufficient thought or concern about the next generation.
Congratulations to your daughter.
Week beginning the 14th of September, I'll be training a newbie, remotely.
It is a challenge, I've kinda planned it out, but it is those visual clues I won't be able to pick up on that worries me.
In old money Biden is 10/11 with Trump 11/10, I'm genuinely amazed. I really thought a year ago the Democrats would have walked in with any candidate.
That might still be the case but despite every media outlet painting Trump in such a bad light (over here) the Americans clearly see it differently. I don't follow the US enough to make a judgement, my point is the view where it counts is nowhere near as negative as the view from here.
Actually with punters on Betfair very heavily British, you can say British punters have a less negative/pessimistic view on Trump's chances than most Americans, after all Biden leads the polls.
My daughter got a new job yesterday with the SSSC who regulate social care workers in Scotland. We are absolutely delighted for her, its her first graduate level job and a real opportunity but it did make me think about WFH once again.
She has been told that no one will be in the office until after Christmas at the earliest, that all of her training for her new post will be online and that she will subsequently WFH for months. As a newbie in the organisation I think that this is a tremendous challenge for her. How does she get to know her team members, to socialise with them, to build the networks that can help her when she is unsure what to do? How does she find ways to expand her role and acquire the additional experience that might help her seek promotion one day?
I think WFH works tolerably well for people who already have all of that in place and for people established in their role. For those just starting out, like my daughter, it's a whole other ball game. Those promoting it seem to me to have something of the "I'm alright Jack" mentality about it and are giving insufficient thought or concern about the next generation.
Congratulations to your daughter.
Week beginning the 14th of September, I'll be training a newbie, remotely.
It is a challenge, I've kinda planned it out, but it is those visual clues I won't be able to pick up on that worries me.
I remember when I started out with 3 other trainees. We all helped each other a huge amount, we became good friends and learned from each other about which partners you had to be careful around and which were more approachable and willing to help. I am sure you will do your best but its not just the relationship with the boss that is important for growing into the role.
How is that David Frost being out of his depth? Aside from anything else, there will be a new Parliament and possible a new Government in four years time. Does Barnier want frost to get his crystal ball out and predict what their policy on industrial subsidies will be? Looks like pointless delaying tactics to me.
Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.
A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.
We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.
I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.
When (not if) most workplaces are adapted for home-working, the main problem for employees is that it doesn’t really matter for owners and managers if personnel are at home in London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Naples, Zurich, Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta, Toronto or Santiago.
Many people have romantic ideas of moving to nice places like Devon, the Cotswolds, the Hebrides or rural France, and working from home there. While this is certainly going to happen in the short term (the Scottish rural property market is red-hot), in the long-term most are gonna be screwed by more productive foreign workers.
That depends on what level of infrequent personal attendance or contact or travel is residual when everything settles down.
Our property market on the island is also hot at the moment with stories of some properties selling unseen.
There's a lot of experimenting going on. I heard of an interesting stretch - an American office-worker currently expected to wfh for her London employer (not a senior position but quite an intense one) and keen to see her family proposed to wfh - in Colorado. She offered to start work at 6 every morning to help with the time difference. Her employer said yes, if you fulfil what we expect of you each day it's actually no concern of ours where you're living.
Wouldn't work for every kind of job, but the fact that it's happening at all is a novelty.
Working in another country's time zone is not a novelty for Indian call centre workers, or Romanian IT support teams. However, your acquaintance and/or her employer, or those like her, will soon run into problems regarding foreign employment law and tax systems.
Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.
A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.
We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.
I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.
When (not if) most workplaces are adapted for home-working, the main problem for employees is that it doesn’t really matter for owners and managers if personnel are at home in London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Naples, Zurich, Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta, Toronto or Santiago.
Many people have romantic ideas of moving to nice places like Devon, the Cotswolds, the Hebrides or rural France, and working from home there. While this is certainly going to happen in the short term (the Scottish rural property market is red-hot), in the long-term most are gonna be screwed by more productive foreign workers.
That depends on what level of infrequent personal attendance or contact or travel is residual when everything settles down.
Our property market on the island is also hot at the moment with stories of some properties selling unseen.
There's a lot of experimenting going on. I heard of an interesting stretch - an American office-worker currently expected to wfh for her London employer (not a senior position but quite an intense one) and keen to see her family proposed to wfh - in Colorado. She offered to start work at 6 every morning to help with the time difference. Her employer said yes, if you fulfil what we expect of you each day it's actually no concern of ours where you're living.
Wouldn't work for every kind of job, but the fact that it's happening at all is a novelty.
Will Black Lives Matter end up helping Donald Trump?
Amid the radicalism of BLM – with its absurd demand to “defund” the police - Mr Trump’s strong message on law and order may win wider appeal
Right now, Joe Biden is ahead in the polls, but not by a landslide – and, as in 2016, voters could be hiding their true intentions, particularly given the sensitivity of the issues under discussion.
(Telegraph leader)
Of course, the bit about voters hiding their true intentions in 2016 is just something they've made up.
The idea that "white police shoots unarmed black person" being in the headlines or "Trump supporter shoots BLM protesters" might temporarily suppress Trump's polling is plausible. However, Trump's national average polling over at 538 has been pretty stable since before May 25 (when George Floyd was killed):
My daughter got a new job yesterday with the SSSC who regulate social care workers in Scotland. We are absolutely delighted for her, its her first graduate level job and a real opportunity but it did make me think about WFH once again.
She has been told that no one will be in the office until after Christmas at the earliest, that all of her training for her new post will be online and that she will subsequently WFH for months. As a newbie in the organisation I think that this is a tremendous challenge for her. How does she get to know her team members, to socialise with them, to build the networks that can help her when she is unsure what to do? How does she find ways to expand her role and acquire the additional experience that might help her seek promotion one day?
I think WFH works tolerably well for people who already have all of that in place and for people established in their role. For those just starting out, like my daughter, it's a whole other ball game. Those promoting it seem to me to have something of the "I'm alright Jack" mentality about it and are giving insufficient thought or concern about the next generation.
Congratulations to your daughter.
Week beginning the 14th of September, I'll be training a newbie, remotely.
It is a challenge, I've kinda planned it out, but it is those visual clues I won't be able to pick up on that worries me.
I remember when I started out with 3 other trainees. We all helped each other a huge amount, we became good friends and learned from each other about which partners you had to be careful around and which were more approachable and willing to help. I am sure you will do your best but its not just the relationship with the boss that is important for growing into the role.
I'm really proud that when with my last two jobs moves, most of my staff joined me when I moved, it meant I was doing something right.
One of the things that helps me is a sense of humour, and knowing your audience is useful for that, not sure I'll be able to do that via a videochat.
The generation I really do worry for is those who should be at university, that's where most of my best/deepest/longest standing friendships started, I'm not sure you can get that via remote learning on a zoom call.
How is that David Frost being out of his depth? Aside from anything else, there will be a new Parliament and possible a new Government in four years time. Does Barnier want frost to get his crystal ball out and predict what their policy on industrial subsidies will be? Looks like pointless delaying tactics to me.
It's negotiation by timetabling, the same nonsense we had during the original negotiations where the EU refused to discuss the future relationship until we had agreed what had to be paid in respect of the old one. Frost says that he isn't playing that game again and he is right to do so.
Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.
A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.
We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.
I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.
When (not if) most workplaces are adapted for home-working, the main problem for employees is that it doesn’t really matter for owners and managers if personnel are at home in London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Naples, Zurich, Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta, Toronto or Santiago.
Many people have romantic ideas of moving to nice places like Devon, the Cotswolds, the Hebrides or rural France, and working from home there. While this is certainly going to happen in the short term (the Scottish rural property market is red-hot), in the long-term most are gonna be screwed by more productive foreign workers.
The problems entailed by the move to wfh are routinely not just understated but entirely ignored on this site. There is a huge skew on the site to people with nice houses with room to work in (Are there more bedrooms than residents? is a good test), and who are naturally ungregarious to the point that their idea of/substitute for social interaction is wibbling on an Internet politics site, and who are at a late enough stage in their careers that hustling for self-promotion (a notably face to face activity) is no longer a necessity. A hostile government is another spoke in the wheel of the idea, and the point the government makes that wfhers are vulnerable to sacking may be nasty but it is also correct.
Good post and good points. PBers are generally speaking hopelessy disconnected from ordinary voters and how normal people live and think. A lot of folk around here even wear that as a badge of pride (Charles springs to mind).
Ain't that true, I'm quite new here and anticipated a political betting site with impartial analysis. Its actually 90% white collar liberals with little interest in or understanding of betting.
That's not a problem, I like white collar liberals, but they're completely unaware of what goes on in the lives of ordinary working people. Pret, among others, are shedding 1000s of jobs, I don't suppose there's too many baristas or sandwich makers on here.
I've worked as both a barista and a sandwich maker, and I'm currently unemployed, so I guess everybody should listen to me.
I'm sure people do listen but you're a tiny minority in terms of occupation and circumstance.
I listen to no one who earns below six figures, and advise all others to do the same. The wealthy know what's what.
In old money Biden is 10/11 with Trump 11/10, I'm genuinely amazed. I really thought a year ago the Democrats would have walked in with any candidate.
That might still be the case but despite every media outlet painting Trump in such a bad light (over here) the Americans clearly see it differently. I don't follow the US enough to make a judgement, my point is the view where it counts is nowhere near as negative as the view from here.
It isn't a massive secret. A lot of American are incredibly racist in a way you simply don't see here.
Yeah, yeah clutch your pearls at my terribleness but the research is abundantly clear.
A huge section of poor rural white Americans will repeatedly choose options that are economically bad for them as long as it ensures equally bad if not worse outcomes for Black people.
White supremicism is a mainstream political viewpoint in America.
Betting on American politics without understanding how deeply ingrained their racism is is a sure fire way to the poor house.
I've only been once, to NY so I can't comment, but you make my point about the mainstream media here as opposed to tens of millions of Americans.
With absolutely no financial gain on my part, the BBC meltdown should Trump get back in will be sumptuous. And further confirmation of how detached they are.
I'm sorry, and don't take this personally, but the people claiming they are going to enjoy "the BBC meltdown should Trump get back in" come across as arseholes.
I neither take it personally or care tbh. The BBC is there to report the news in an unbiased way (haha) with regard to Trump that simply doesn't happen.
The BBC has never been afraid to take bit of a view on foreign leaders. It isn't afraid to be critical of Bolsonaro, Orban or Erdogan either. I am old enough to remember the reporting on Soviet leaders back in the day, which I am sure the stalinists complained was biased.
I agree with the consensus on some foreign leaders and not others, but in both cases I'd prefer the BBC to be scrupulously neutral, rather than to reflect my thinking or that of most viewers. It'd just be interesting to see more coverage of pro-Trump people so we could understand what was happening - it wouldn't mean we'd agree with it. Similarly, I gather that Xi, Orban and Bolsanaro still have plenty of fans, but we don't hear much about what makes them feel that way. Ed Balls' tour of Trump heartland was a good exception.
On topic, I'd guess that Trump's key supporters are people who feel his policies - especially economic policies - are good for them, and are willing to put up with any amount of what they'd readily call asshole behaviour if they feel they personally will be better off. As in Britain, though, the weak spot of populism is a perception of erratic incompetence. Biden's message should be relentlessly focused on Trump being the risky, unpredictable option.
My daughter got a new job yesterday with the SSSC who regulate social care workers in Scotland. We are absolutely delighted for her, its her first graduate level job and a real opportunity but it did make me think about WFH once again.
She has been told that no one will be in the office until after Christmas at the earliest, that all of her training for her new post will be online and that she will subsequently WFH for months. As a newbie in the organisation I think that this is a tremendous challenge for her. How does she get to know her team members, to socialise with them, to build the networks that can help her when she is unsure what to do? How does she find ways to expand her role and acquire the additional experience that might help her seek promotion one day?
I think WFH works tolerably well for people who already have all of that in place and for people established in their role. For those just starting out, like my daughter, it's a whole other ball game. Those promoting it seem to me to have something of the "I'm alright Jack" mentality about it and are giving insufficient thought or concern about the next generation.
And this from a member of the I’m Alright Jack Party.
Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.
A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.
We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.
I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.
When (not if) most workplaces are adapted for home-working, the main problem for employees is that it doesn’t really matter for owners and managers if personnel are at home in London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Naples, Zurich, Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta, Toronto or Santiago.
Many people have romantic ideas of moving to nice places like Devon, the Cotswolds, the Hebrides or rural France, and working from home there. While this is certainly going to happen in the short term (the Scottish rural property market is red-hot), in the long-term most are gonna be screwed by more productive foreign workers.
The problems entailed by the move to wfh are routinely not just understated but entirely ignored on this site. There is a huge skew on the site to people with nice houses with room to work in (Are there more bedrooms than residents? is a good test), and who are naturally ungregarious to the point that their idea of/substitute for social interaction is wibbling on an Internet politics site, and who are at a late enough stage in their careers that hustling for self-promotion (a notably face to face activity) is no longer a necessity. A hostile government is another spoke in the wheel of the idea, and the point the government makes that wfhers are vulnerable to sacking may be nasty but it is also correct.
Good post and good points. PBers are generally speaking hopelessy disconnected from ordinary voters and how normal people live and think. A lot of folk around here even wear that as a badge of pride (Charles springs to mind).
Ain't that true, I'm quite new here and anticipated a political betting site with impartial analysis. Its actually 90% white collar liberals with little interest in or understanding of betting.
That's not a problem, I like white collar liberals, but they're completely unaware of what goes on in the lives of ordinary working people. Pret, among others, are shedding 1000s of jobs, I don't suppose there's too many baristas or sandwich makers on here.
I've worked as both a barista and a sandwich maker, and I'm currently unemployed, so I guess everybody should listen to me.
I'm sure people do listen but you're a tiny minority in terms of occupation and circumstance.
I listen to no one who earns below six figures, and advise all others to do the same. The wealthy know what's what.
Why would you listen to someone who has to earn money?
In old money Biden is 10/11 with Trump 11/10, I'm genuinely amazed. I really thought a year ago the Democrats would have walked in with any candidate.
That might still be the case but despite every media outlet painting Trump in such a bad light (over here) the Americans clearly see it differently. I don't follow the US enough to make a judgement, my point is the view where it counts is nowhere near as negative as the view from here.
It isn't a massive secret. A lot of American are incredibly racist in a way you simply don't see here.
Yeah, yeah clutch your pearls at my terribleness but the research is abundantly clear.
A huge section of poor rural white Americans will repeatedly choose options that are economically bad for them as long as it ensures equally bad if not worse outcomes for Black people.
White supremicism is a mainstream political viewpoint in America.
Betting on American politics without understanding how deeply ingrained their racism is is a sure fire way to the poor house.
A lot of it manifests as fear, leading to desired separation.
Indeed, the great Evangelical political awakening was not due to Roe vs Wade (the Southern Baptist Council welcomed the decision) but due to the federal government stripping their Whites only colleges of charity status (started by Nixon ironically enough).
I've told the story here before of how I walked to the dog park in Buffalo through a perfectly decent, indeed friendly, 'black neighbourhood' and was then taken aside by successive white dog owners warning me that I had put my life at risk by arriving from that direction. I also remember a discussion with my Kentucky friend about people from the other side of her town and how they should stay in their neighbourhood and not come into her part of town, when I was a little slow in realising what she was talking about. And Americans visiting Europe ask lots of questions about where it is and isnt safe to walk in places where no European would even give this a thought. The first thing a white American does in a strange city appears to be finding out where the 'black neighbourhood' is so that they dont go there.
All cities are a bit patchy, but I remember being in NYC in a reasonable mid price hotel, and walking distance to most sights. Fox jr and I thought a visit to the docks to see the USS Intrepid*, just 5 blocks or so away, but in the other direction. It started getting seedy after a couple of blocks, and after two more we were stepping over unconscious hobos. We caught a taxi back. Go the wrong way in America and you are in a different city.
My daughter got a new job yesterday with the SSSC who regulate social care workers in Scotland. We are absolutely delighted for her, its her first graduate level job and a real opportunity but it did make me think about WFH once again.
She has been told that no one will be in the office until after Christmas at the earliest, that all of her training for her new post will be online and that she will subsequently WFH for months. As a newbie in the organisation I think that this is a tremendous challenge for her. How does she get to know her team members, to socialise with them, to build the networks that can help her when she is unsure what to do? How does she find ways to expand her role and acquire the additional experience that might help her seek promotion one day?
I think WFH works tolerably well for people who already have all of that in place and for people established in their role. For those just starting out, like my daughter, it's a whole other ball game. Those promoting it seem to me to have something of the "I'm alright Jack" mentality about it and are giving insufficient thought or concern about the next generation.
Congratulations to your daughter.
Week beginning the 14th of September, I'll be training a newbie, remotely.
It is a challenge, I've kinda planned it out, but it is those visual clues I won't be able to pick up on that worries me.
I remember when I started out with 3 other trainees. We all helped each other a huge amount, we became good friends and learned from each other about which partners you had to be careful around and which were more approachable and willing to help. I am sure you will do your best but its not just the relationship with the boss that is important for growing into the role.
One of the things that helps me is a sense of humour, and knowing your audience is useful for that, not sure I'll be able to do that via a videochat.
Especially when your sense of humour manifests itself in your footwear...
Interested to see those floated proposals to ditch district and county councils. Sensible idea to simplify things, but I'd fear given massive numbers of tory councillors will oppose it along with the opposition, various compromise solutions will mess up any gain.
My daughter got a new job yesterday with the SSSC who regulate social care workers in Scotland. We are absolutely delighted for her, its her first graduate level job and a real opportunity but it did make me think about WFH once again.
She has been told that no one will be in the office until after Christmas at the earliest, that all of her training for her new post will be online and that she will subsequently WFH for months. As a newbie in the organisation I think that this is a tremendous challenge for her. How does she get to know her team members, to socialise with them, to build the networks that can help her when she is unsure what to do? How does she find ways to expand her role and acquire the additional experience that might help her seek promotion one day?
I think WFH works tolerably well for people who already have all of that in place and for people established in their role. For those just starting out, like my daughter, it's a whole other ball game. Those promoting it seem to me to have something of the "I'm alright Jack" mentality about it and are giving insufficient thought or concern about the next generation.
And this from a member of the I’m Alright Jack Party.
Aren't they encouraging people to go back to the office?
My daughter got a new job yesterday with the SSSC who regulate social care workers in Scotland. We are absolutely delighted for her, its her first graduate level job and a real opportunity but it did make me think about WFH once again.
She has been told that no one will be in the office until after Christmas at the earliest, that all of her training for her new post will be online and that she will subsequently WFH for months. As a newbie in the organisation I think that this is a tremendous challenge for her. How does she get to know her team members, to socialise with them, to build the networks that can help her when she is unsure what to do? How does she find ways to expand her role and acquire the additional experience that might help her seek promotion one day?
I think WFH works tolerably well for people who already have all of that in place and for people established in their role. For those just starting out, like my daughter, it's a whole other ball game. Those promoting it seem to me to have something of the "I'm alright Jack" mentality about it and are giving insufficient thought or concern about the next generation.
Congratulations to your daughter.
Week beginning the 14th of September, I'll be training a newbie, remotely.
It is a challenge, I've kinda planned it out, but it is those visual clues I won't be able to pick up on that worries me.
I remember when I started out with 3 other trainees. We all helped each other a huge amount, we became good friends and learned from each other about which partners you had to be careful around and which were more approachable and willing to help. I am sure you will do your best but its not just the relationship with the boss that is important for growing into the role.
One of the things that helps me is a sense of humour, and knowing your audience is useful for that, not sure I'll be able to do that via a videochat.
Especially when your sense of humour manifests itself in your footwear...
I only wear black or brown footwear at work.
My shoe tastes for work are very sober, if expensive.
Some businesses are going to use WFH as an excuse to jettison expensive office space altogether, but in most cases what we're most likely going to end up with is a part office-based, part home-working hybrid model with a great deal more flexibility built in. That should be to the overwhelming net benefit of employees.
The thing about a hybrid model is it only saves the employer a pile of cash if they can have a physically smaller office space. That means either your hybrid is "half the staff are 100% wfh and the other half always in the office", or you're in the world of hot-desking, which I think is generally rather disliked. Everybody's desk/chair/computer must be interchangeable. For me at least (desk usually a profusion of random papers and notes, computer a desktop with big monitors) hotdesking seems wildly impractical.
If people are only in the office infrequently then you're not bringing them in to the office to work at a standard desk all day - what would be the point?
You're bringing them in to the office to spend face-to-face time with other people, working on things together. That calls for a different space than an open plan shed crammed with hot desks.
My daughter got a new job yesterday with the SSSC who regulate social care workers in Scotland. We are absolutely delighted for her, its her first graduate level job and a real opportunity but it did make me think about WFH once again.
She has been told that no one will be in the office until after Christmas at the earliest, that all of her training for her new post will be online and that she will subsequently WFH for months. As a newbie in the organisation I think that this is a tremendous challenge for her. How does she get to know her team members, to socialise with them, to build the networks that can help her when she is unsure what to do? How does she find ways to expand her role and acquire the additional experience that might help her seek promotion one day?
I think WFH works tolerably well for people who already have all of that in place and for people established in their role. For those just starting out, like my daughter, it's a whole other ball game. Those promoting it seem to me to have something of the "I'm alright Jack" mentality about it and are giving insufficient thought or concern about the next generation.
Congratulations to your daughter.
Week beginning the 14th of September, I'll be training a newbie, remotely.
It is a challenge, I've kinda planned it out, but it is those visual clues I won't be able to pick up on that worries me.
I remember when I started out with 3 other trainees. We all helped each other a huge amount, we became good friends and learned from each other about which partners you had to be careful around and which were more approachable and willing to help. I am sure you will do your best but its not just the relationship with the boss that is important for growing into the role.
I'm really proud that when with my last two jobs moves, most of my staff joined me when I moved, it meant I was doing something right.
One of the things that helps me is a sense of humour, and knowing your audience is useful for that, not sure I'll be able to do that via a videochat.
The generation I really do worry for is those who should be at university, that's where most of my best/deepest/longest standing friendships started, I'm not sure you can get that via remote learning on a zoom call.
My son will start University in September/October next year. I very much hope that we have a working vaccine by then so he can properly enjoy and benefit from the experience.
How is that David Frost being out of his depth? Aside from anything else, there will be a new Parliament and possible a new Government in four years time. Does Barnier want frost to get his crystal ball out and predict what their policy on industrial subsidies will be? Looks like pointless delaying tactics to me.
It's negotiation by timetabling, the same nonsense we had during the original negotiations where the EU refused to discuss the future relationship until we had agreed what had to be paid in respect of the old one. Frost says that he isn't playing that game again and he is right to do so.
Is this like the guy driving home from the Golf Club in his Jag who decides to show that he is in the right by carving up an 18-wheel juggernaut and then slamming on the brakes in front of it?
In old money Biden is 10/11 with Trump 11/10, I'm genuinely amazed. I really thought a year ago the Democrats would have walked in with any candidate.
That might still be the case but despite every media outlet painting Trump in such a bad light (over here) the Americans clearly see it differently. I don't follow the US enough to make a judgement, my point is the view where it counts is nowhere near as negative as the view from here.
Actually with punters on Betfair very heavily British, you can say British punters have a less negative/pessimistic view on Trump's chances than most Americans, after all Biden leads the polls.
Betfair and predict it are almost perfectly aligned - no mcain or Romney like arbitrage available
My daughter got a new job yesterday with the SSSC who regulate social care workers in Scotland. We are absolutely delighted for her, its her first graduate level job and a real opportunity but it did make me think about WFH once again.
She has been told that no one will be in the office until after Christmas at the earliest, that all of her training for her new post will be online and that she will subsequently WFH for months. As a newbie in the organisation I think that this is a tremendous challenge for her. How does she get to know her team members, to socialise with them, to build the networks that can help her when she is unsure what to do? How does she find ways to expand her role and acquire the additional experience that might help her seek promotion one day?
I think WFH works tolerably well for people who already have all of that in place and for people established in their role. For those just starting out, like my daughter, it's a whole other ball game. Those promoting it seem to me to have something of the "I'm alright Jack" mentality about it and are giving insufficient thought or concern about the next generation.
And this from a member of the I’m Alright Jack Party.
I am not a member of any party Stuart. FWIW on here I argue that the Tories need to encourage first time buyers, protect the homeless, work to improve the lot of those in the gig economy and really seek to address the failure of our state schools in creating equality of opportunity amongst many other things. It's disappointing that the Scottish government seems so indifferent to all of these matters where it conflicts with their mad obsession with independence.
How is that David Frost being out of his depth? Aside from anything else, there will be a new Parliament and possible a new Government in four years time. Does Barnier want frost to get his crystal ball out and predict what their policy on industrial subsidies will be? Looks like pointless delaying tactics to me.
It's negotiation by timetabling, the same nonsense we had during the original negotiations where the EU refused to discuss the future relationship until we had agreed what had to be paid in respect of the old one. Frost says that he isn't playing that game again and he is right to do so.
Is this like the guy driving home from the Golf Club in his Jag who decides to show that he is in the right by carving up an 18-wheel juggernaut and then slamming on the brakes in front of it?
My daughter got a new job yesterday with the SSSC who regulate social care workers in Scotland. We are absolutely delighted for her, its her first graduate level job and a real opportunity but it did make me think about WFH once again.
She has been told that no one will be in the office until after Christmas at the earliest, that all of her training for her new post will be online and that she will subsequently WFH for months. As a newbie in the organisation I think that this is a tremendous challenge for her. How does she get to know her team members, to socialise with them, to build the networks that can help her when she is unsure what to do? How does she find ways to expand her role and acquire the additional experience that might help her seek promotion one day?
I think WFH works tolerably well for people who already have all of that in place and for people established in their role. For those just starting out, like my daughter, it's a whole other ball game. Those promoting it seem to me to have something of the "I'm alright Jack" mentality about it and are giving insufficient thought or concern about the next generation.
And this from a member of the I’m Alright Jack Party.
David’s a member of the SNP?
I didn’t know that, I always had him down as a sort of wettish Tory.
How is that David Frost being out of his depth? Aside from anything else, there will be a new Parliament and possible a new Government in four years time. Does Barnier want frost to get his crystal ball out and predict what their policy on industrial subsidies will be? Looks like pointless delaying tactics to me.
"Does Barnier want frost to get his crystal ball out and predict what their policy on industrial subsidies will be?" No, just what they will be on January 1st 2021.
The Liberal Democrats are a complete irrelevance but before OGH bans mention of them altogether as a waste of precious bits and bytes on pb's expensive new server, we can perhaps offer the new leader some advice.
The LibDems are no longer our third party and thus almost guaranteed an invitation to political discussion shows. The SNP has three times as many MPs; the DUP almost as many.
Ed Davey needs to emulate chat show Charlie to get those television invitations pouring in. Luckily Davey scored a first in PPE at Oxford, in the same cohort as David Cameron. Davey needs to rack his brain for anecdotes about Boris, Gove and all the other Tory big cheeses he was at Oxford with. And stories from his time in government that make him seem a more serious player than Keir Starmer.
Instead what we got on the day he was elected was a promise to listen, to travel up and down the country listening to people. Not unlike Rory Stewart, and a fat lot of good it did him. I am your leader, let me follow you!
Meanwhile in other news... Forecasters predict this bank holiday Monday could be the coldest on record for some parts of the UK as temperatures are expected to be well below average for the time of year.
"On record" not as impressive as people might assume given that the Bank Holiday was moved to the colder end of August only about 50 years ago, and only existed at all since 1871.
In terms of records we're still currently on track to set a new record for warmest year in the Central England Temperature, which runs from 1659.
We are fcked, aren't we? One of the many flaws in the "let's plant lots of trees" plan is that planting lots of mustard and cress would be more appropriate to the timescale we are working to.
My daughter got a new job yesterday with the SSSC who regulate social care workers in Scotland. We are absolutely delighted for her, its her first graduate level job and a real opportunity but it did make me think about WFH once again.
She has been told that no one will be in the office until after Christmas at the earliest, that all of her training for her new post will be online and that she will subsequently WFH for months. As a newbie in the organisation I think that this is a tremendous challenge for her. How does she get to know her team members, to socialise with them, to build the networks that can help her when she is unsure what to do? How does she find ways to expand her role and acquire the additional experience that might help her seek promotion one day?
I think WFH works tolerably well for people who already have all of that in place and for people established in their role. For those just starting out, like my daughter, it's a whole other ball game. Those promoting it seem to me to have something of the "I'm alright Jack" mentality about it and are giving insufficient thought or concern about the next generation.
I have been doing versions of this for fifteen years and it is entirely possible to manage and train people remotely. It does require training to be more systematic when you can't just observe others and it also requires your colleagues to make time available to you, which they may or may not do off their own bats. My advice to your daughter is to be a little bit pushy. If she sets up one-to-ones in her manager's and colleagues' diaries to go over the requirement, most times they will accept them.
From what you have said earlier, your daughter has had an uphill struggle to find suitable work in these grim times. Well done her to land this role.
How is that David Frost being out of his depth? Aside from anything else, there will be a new Parliament and possible a new Government in four years time. Does Barnier want frost to get his crystal ball out and predict what their policy on industrial subsidies will be? Looks like pointless delaying tactics to me.
It's negotiation by timetabling, the same nonsense we had during the original negotiations where the EU refused to discuss the future relationship until we had agreed what had to be paid in respect of the old one. Frost says that he isn't playing that game again and he is right to do so.
Is this like the guy driving home from the Golf Club in his Jag who decides to show that he is in the right by carving up an 18-wheel juggernaut and then slamming on the brakes in front of it?
The only thing you got right in that analogy is that the EU is a juggernaut....
How is that David Frost being out of his depth? Aside from anything else, there will be a new Parliament and possible a new Government in four years time. Does Barnier want frost to get his crystal ball out and predict what their policy on industrial subsidies will be? Looks like pointless delaying tactics to me.
It's negotiation by timetabling, the same nonsense we had during the original negotiations where the EU refused to discuss the future relationship until we had agreed what had to be paid in respect of the old one. Frost says that he isn't playing that game again and he is right to do so.
Is this like the guy driving home from the Golf Club in his Jag who decides to show that he is in the right by carving up an 18-wheel juggernaut and then slamming on the brakes in front of it?
The only thing you got right in that analogy is that the EU is a juggernaut....
It's an excellent analogy. You're just touchy about people mocking your XJ. Which you washed only last Saturday.
The Liberal Democrats are a complete irrelevance but before OGH bans mention of them altogether as a waste of precious bits and bytes on pb's expensive new server, we can perhaps offer the new leader some advice.
The LibDems are no longer our third party and thus almost guaranteed an invitation to political discussion shows. The SNP has three times as many MPs; the DUP almost as many.
Ed Davey needs to emulate chat show Charlie to get those television invitations pouring in. Luckily Davey scored a first in PPE at Oxford, in the same cohort as David Cameron. Davey needs to rack his brain for anecdotes about Boris, Gove and all the other Tory big cheeses he was at Oxford with. And stories from his time in government that make him seem a more serious player than Keir Starmer.
Instead what we got on the day he was elected was a promise to listen, to travel up and down the country listening to people. Not unlike Rory Stewart, and a fat lot of good it did him. I am your leader, let me follow you!
Does the listening include all those who want brexit
How is that David Frost being out of his depth? Aside from anything else, there will be a new Parliament and possible a new Government in four years time. Does Barnier want frost to get his crystal ball out and predict what their policy on industrial subsidies will be? Looks like pointless delaying tactics to me.
It's negotiation by timetabling, the same nonsense we had during the original negotiations where the EU refused to discuss the future relationship until we had agreed what had to be paid in respect of the old one. Frost says that he isn't playing that game again and he is right to do so.
Is this like the guy driving home from the Golf Club in his Jag who decides to show that he is in the right by carving up an 18-wheel juggernaut and then slamming on the brakes in front of it?
As the pivoting articulated trailer begins to remove the Jaguar's roof the driver still enjoys the smug satisfaction of knowing he holds all the cards.
The Liberal Democrats are a complete irrelevance but before OGH bans mention of them altogether as a waste of precious bits and bytes on pb's expensive new server, we can perhaps offer the new leader some advice.
The LibDems are no longer our third party and thus almost guaranteed an invitation to political discussion shows. The SNP has three times as many MPs; the DUP almost as many.
Ed Davey needs to emulate chat show Charlie to get those television invitations pouring in. Luckily Davey scored a first in PPE at Oxford, in the same cohort as David Cameron. Davey needs to rack his brain for anecdotes about Boris, Gove and all the other Tory big cheeses he was at Oxford with. And stories from his time in government that make him seem a more serious player than Keir Starmer.
Instead what we got on the day he was elected was a promise to listen, to travel up and down the country listening to people. Not unlike Rory Stewart, and a fat lot of good it did him. I am your leader, let me follow you!
Were there any ideas emanting from either candidate in their election campaign? If so, they didn't make it to the outside world....
If I were a senior LibDem, I'd be giving up on Westminster. For at least the next ten years. Meantime, become a nationally important party of local government. It's what they are good at. Nobody believes they will be a governing party in any other context. So become very, very good at local governance.
It would get them over the issue of the height of their ambition being as a junior partner in a coalition. Because that went so well last time. And everybody knows it - hence their continued slide in seats. But they can still make a real improvement at a local level - especially if that is their sole focus.
The root cause of their refusal to negotiate is that the Brexiteer government is unwilling to be open with the people (or probably themselves) is that Brexit has consequences, all of which are negative.
They can't commit to obligations with a negative effect. Which means they can't negotiate. The whole purpose of treaties is that they are commitments to obligations.
I will be surprised if Harris is not President by 2023. The Democrats choice this time around is truly bizarre. A man who was not the sharpest knife in the drawer at any stage who is clearly fading. What on earth were they thinking? This is one of the most demanding jobs in the world, it ages and exhausts much younger and fitter men. I just don't see how anyone can seriously argue that Biden is capable of fulfilling such a role.
If I was an American I would vote for Biden because Trump is malevolent and malignant, apparently indifferent to the damage he has done to US institutions and institutional structures but I would do so with a heavy heart and very much reliant upon the fact that Harris seems competent and capable if not particularly sociable. An enhanced role for her has to be a part of the deal from the beginning leading to her taking over completely mid term.
Who would you have preferred from the Dem contenders?
The root cause of their refusal to negotiate is that the Brexiteer government is unwilling to be open with the people (or probably themselves) is that Brexit has consequences, all of which are negative.
They can't commit to obligations with a negative effect. Which means they can't negotiate. The whole purpose of treaties is that they are commitments to obligations.
As has long been observed, the Brexit trade negotiations are perhaps the only trade negotiations in history whose aim is to worsen terms of trade.
All cities are a bit patchy, but I remember being in NYC in a reasonable mid price hotel, and walking distance to most sights. Fox jr and I thought a visit to the docks to see the USS Intrepid*, just 5 blocks or so away, but in the other direction. It started getting seedy after a couple of blocks, and after two more we were stepping over unconscious hobos. We caught a taxi back. Go the wrong way in America and you are in a different city.
Race and class are intermingled in people's attitudes in subtle ways. I think America and Britain have largely got past thinking that ALL people of another race are aliens who they'd never vote for - people have different views about Rishi but I don't believe many care that he's of Asian background, and in the US nobody seems much bothered by Harris being black. That, as far as it goes, is genuine progress.
But social division in the States is so much more prominent and, as in Britain, disproportionately affecting ethnic minorities. Semi-racists who are now fine with a black guy in a smart suit feel the old prejuidices surging up when they see a black guy who looks rough. If they go to a poor area in the US it's probably both got a lot of black people and a lot of people who look rough and/or in bad shape, and the old fears swamp the viewer. That's not something people feel in, say, Tower Hamlets - the politics there have had a troubled history, but it feels perfectly orderly and safe. It's one of the ways that the lack of a secure social structure for everyone in the US makes it more vulnerable to unrest and tension than most modern European countries, though it does happen over here too.
Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.
A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.
We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.
I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.
When (not if) most workplaces are adapted for home-working, the main problem for employees is that it doesn’t really matter for owners and managers if personnel are at home in London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Naples, Zurich, Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta, Toronto or Santiago.
Many people have romantic ideas of moving to nice places like Devon, the Cotswolds, the Hebrides or rural France, and working from home there. While this is certainly going to happen in the short term (the Scottish rural property market is red-hot), in the long-term most are gonna be screwed by more productive foreign workers.
The problems entailed by the move to wfh are routinely not just understated but entirely ignored on this site. There is a huge skew on the site to people with nice houses with room to work in (Are there more bedrooms than residents? is a good test), and who are naturally ungregarious to the point that their idea of/substitute for social interaction is wibbling on an Internet politics site, and who are at a late enough stage in their careers that hustling for self-promotion (a notably face to face activity) is no longer a necessity. A hostile government is another spoke in the wheel of the idea, and the point the government makes that wfhers are vulnerable to sacking may be nasty but it is also correct.
Good post and good points. PBers are generally speaking hopelessy disconnected from ordinary voters and how normal people live and think. A lot of folk around here even wear that as a badge of pride (Charles springs to mind).
Ain't that true, I'm quite new here and anticipated a political betting site with impartial analysis. Its actually 90% white collar liberals with little interest in or understanding of betting.
That's not a problem, I like white collar liberals, but they're completely unaware of what goes on in the lives of ordinary working people. Pret, among others, are shedding 1000s of jobs, I don't suppose there's too many baristas or sandwich makers on here.
WFH not for me, all those sick folk hanging around in my front yard...
I came across this this morning. Oxford vaccine out November 3rd if phase 3 trials supportive. Only €3 a dose too.
According to statements made by AstraZeneca, the price of a dose of this vaccine will be around three euros. There are big differences between the prices announced for the different vaccines in development: Sinopharm's Chinese vaccine would cost 120 euros, GSK-Sanofi's around 10 euros and Moderna's around 30 euros.
Price gouging? Or do the others really cost up to 40 times more to manufacture?
The Liberal Democrats are a complete irrelevance but before OGH bans mention of them altogether as a waste of precious bits and bytes on pb's expensive new server, we can perhaps offer the new leader some advice.
The LibDems are no longer our third party and thus almost guaranteed an invitation to political discussion shows. The SNP has three times as many MPs; the DUP almost as many.
Ed Davey needs to emulate chat show Charlie to get those television invitations pouring in. Luckily Davey scored a first in PPE at Oxford, in the same cohort as David Cameron. Davey needs to rack his brain for anecdotes about Boris, Gove and all the other Tory big cheeses he was at Oxford with. And stories from his time in government that make him seem a more serious player than Keir Starmer.
Instead what we got on the day he was elected was a promise to listen, to travel up and down the country listening to people. Not unlike Rory Stewart, and a fat lot of good it did him. I am your leader, let me follow you!
I think 'listening' just signifies a policy change on something. He'll have already decided what he 'hear loud and clear' from this listening exercise.
The root cause of their refusal to negotiate is that the Brexiteer government is unwilling to be open with the people (or probably themselves) is that Brexit has consequences, all of which are negative.
They can't commit to obligations with a negative effect. Which means they can't negotiate. The whole purpose of treaties is that they are commitments to obligations.
As has long been observed, the Brexit trade negotiations are perhaps the only trade negotiations in history whose aim is to worsen terms of trade.
Observed, but not by this government. Which is why they are paralysed. They can't admit that the effect of Brexit is to make things worse, therefore they can't negotiate to make them worse.
Edit. Which is why you need a Remainer to do the negotiation. Someone who accepts their (more sensible position) has lost and it's all now about damage limitation.
The root cause of their refusal to negotiate is that the Brexiteer government is unwilling to be open with the people (or probably themselves) is that Brexit has consequences, all of which are negative.
They can't commit to obligations with a negative effect. Which means they can't negotiate. The whole purpose of treaties is that they are commitments to obligations.
As has long been observed, the Brexit trade negotiations are perhaps the only trade negotiations in history whose aim is to worsen terms of trade.
Observed, but not by this government. Which is why they are paralysed. They can't admit that the effect of Brexit is to make things worse, therefore they can't negotiate to make them worse.
I think we might pop in to Halfords to pick up a new Chamois for the weekend.
Following the discussion in the previous thread re: where is the north, I did a bit of doodling.
If you divide the UK into thirds based on constituency populations and boundaries, and OS grid north, this is what you get. It seems Hendon is in the Midlands.
Strangley enough, the line delineating the "North" is where a lot of people put it. Sheffield is North, but only just. Same for Liverpool.
Shading is based on population density. Each primary colour has roughly the same population total.
In old money Biden is 10/11 with Trump 11/10, I'm genuinely amazed. I really thought a year ago the Democrats would have walked in with any candidate.
That might still be the case but despite every media outlet painting Trump in such a bad light (over here) the Americans clearly see it differently. I don't follow the US enough to make a judgement, my point is the view where it counts is nowhere near as negative as the view from here.
It isn't a massive secret. A lot of American are incredibly racist in a way you simply don't see here.
Yeah, yeah clutch your pearls at my terribleness but the research is abundantly clear.
A huge section of poor rural white Americans will repeatedly choose options that are economically bad for them as long as it ensures equally bad if not worse outcomes for Black people.
White supremicism is a mainstream political viewpoint in America.
Betting on American politics without understanding how deeply ingrained their racism is is a sure fire way to the poor house.
I've only been once, to NY so I can't comment, but you make my point about the mainstream media here as opposed to tens of millions of Americans.
With absolutely no financial gain on my part, the BBC meltdown should Trump get back in will be sumptuous. And further confirmation of how detached they are.
I'm sorry, and don't take this personally, but the people claiming they are going to enjoy "the BBC meltdown should Trump get back in" come across as arseholes.
I neither take it personally or care tbh. The BBC is there to report the news in an unbiased way (haha) with regard to Trump that simply doesn't happen.
The BBC has never been afraid to take bit of a view on foreign leaders. It isn't afraid to be critical of Bolsonaro, Orban or Erdogan either. I am old enough to remember the reporting on Soviet leaders back in the day, which I am sure the stalinists complained was biased.
I agree with the consensus on some foreign leaders and not others, but in both cases I'd prefer the BBC to be scrupulously neutral, rather than to reflect my thinking or that of most viewers. It'd just be interesting to see more coverage of pro-Trump people so we could understand what was happening - it wouldn't mean we'd agree with it. Similarly, I gather that Xi, Orban and Bolsanaro still have plenty of fans, but we don't hear much about what makes them feel that way. Ed Balls' tour of Trump heartland was a good exception.
On topic, I'd guess that Trump's key supporters are people who feel his policies - especially economic policies - are good for them, and are willing to put up with any amount of what they'd readily call asshole behaviour if they feel they personally will be better off. As in Britain, though, the weak spot of populism is a perception of erratic incompetence. Biden's message should be relentlessly focused on Trump being the risky, unpredictable option.
More culture wars than economics. For many at the bottom, Trump is the man stopping the Democrats seizing their guns and using them to shoot unborn babies. Tax cuts were for the donors, not the factory workers. Who knows what the president really thinks about gun control or abortion; neither has exercised him much in the past.
Trump is not really a populist so much as posing as a one in order to win votes. The wall got him elected; no point in actually building it. The donors got their tax cuts. The evangelicals got Jerusalem. It's not populism so much as transactional offers that you might expect in the commercial deals he is known for.
How is that David Frost being out of his depth? Aside from anything else, there will be a new Parliament and possible a new Government in four years time. Does Barnier want frost to get his crystal ball out and predict what their policy on industrial subsidies will be? Looks like pointless delaying tactics to me.
It's negotiation by timetabling, the same nonsense we had during the original negotiations where the EU refused to discuss the future relationship until we had agreed what had to be paid in respect of the old one. Frost says that he isn't playing that game again and he is right to do so.
Is this like the guy driving home from the Golf Club in his Jag who decides to show that he is in the right by carving up an 18-wheel juggernaut and then slamming on the brakes in front of it?
The only thing you got right in that analogy is that the EU is a juggernaut....
It's an excellent analogy. You're just touchy about people mocking your XJ. Which you washed only last Saturday.
Don't think I have ever been in a jag, let alone owned one.
If you knew my history of car ownership, you certainly wouldn't be trying to make that point! I gave a 1.1 Renault Clio to a friend's son when he went to Uni, it having by then done 240,000 miles. I did the same again with another friend when it had done 160,000.... (Urban driving: always drive something where the other guy going into a space has far more paintwork to lose...!)
Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.
A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.
We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.
I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.
When (not if) most workplaces are adapted for home-working, the main problem for employees is that it doesn’t really matter for owners and managers if personnel are at home in London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Naples, Zurich, Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta, Toronto or Santiago.
Many people have romantic ideas of moving to nice places like Devon, the Cotswolds, the Hebrides or rural France, and working from home there. While this is certainly going to happen in the short term (the Scottish rural property market is red-hot), in the long-term most are gonna be screwed by more productive foreign workers.
That depends on what level of infrequent personal attendance or contact or travel is residual when everything settles down.
Our property market on the island is also hot at the moment with stories of some properties selling unseen.
There's a lot of experimenting going on. I heard of an interesting stretch - an American office-worker currently expected to wfh for her London employer (not a senior position but quite an intense one) and keen to see her family proposed to wfh - in Colorado. She offered to start work at 6 every morning to help with the time difference. Her employer said yes, if you fulfil what we expect of you each day it's actually no concern of ours where you're living.
Wouldn't work for every kind of job, but the fact that it's happening at all is a novelty.
My niece who works from home for a Dublin employer has moved from Dublin to Lanzarote with no complaints from her employer.
My daughter got a new job yesterday with the SSSC who regulate social care workers in Scotland. We are absolutely delighted for her, its her first graduate level job and a real opportunity but it did make me think about WFH once again.
She has been told that no one will be in the office until after Christmas at the earliest, that all of her training for her new post will be online and that she will subsequently WFH for months. As a newbie in the organisation I think that this is a tremendous challenge for her. How does she get to know her team members, to socialise with them, to build the networks that can help her when she is unsure what to do? How does she find ways to expand her role and acquire the additional experience that might help her seek promotion one day?
I think WFH works tolerably well for people who already have all of that in place and for people established in their role. For those just starting out, like my daughter, it's a whole other ball game. Those promoting it seem to me to have something of the "I'm alright Jack" mentality about it and are giving insufficient thought or concern about the next generation.
Firstly, congratulations to your daughter. I've remotely trained a couple of juniors in the last few weeks that we've taken on. It isn't easy, especially since it was their first real job out of university. My tips on socialising and getting to know other colleagues is 4 person zoom chats at around 3pm for 15 minutes every other day, rotating people in and out of the chat. It's a good informal way for the existing team to get to know the new people and for the new people to get to know the existing team outside of meetings when there isn't any chance to talk.
I schedule these in advance and just ask people to put their name down for at least two of them, over a three week period both of them felt like part of the team and one even came out to the pub last Friday for team drinks.
Following the discussion in the previous thread re: where is the north, I did a bit of doodling.
If you divide the UK into thirds based on constituency populations and boundaries, and OS grid north, this is what you get. It seems Hendon is in the Midlands.
Strangley enough, the line delineating the "North" is where a lot of people put it. Sheffield is North, but only just. Same for Liverpool.
Shading is based on population density. Each primary colour has roughly the same population total.
Love it.
So @AlastairMeeks not so far off with Old Street Station.
Working in another country's time zone is not a novelty for Indian call centre workers, or Romanian IT support teams. However, your acquaintance and/or her employer, or those like her, will soon run into problems regarding foreign employment law and tax systems.
I don't think it's a permanent arrangement - more like a month or two.
How is that David Frost being out of his depth? Aside from anything else, there will be a new Parliament and possible a new Government in four years time. Does Barnier want frost to get his crystal ball out and predict what their policy on industrial subsidies will be? Looks like pointless delaying tactics to me.
It's negotiation by timetabling, the same nonsense we had during the original negotiations where the EU refused to discuss the future relationship until we had agreed what had to be paid in respect of the old one. Frost says that he isn't playing that game again and he is right to do so.
Very well said David.
Barnier and his supporters are frustrated that the UK Isn't playing into his game like May and Robbins did - when Barnier was running rings around Robbins and May. He's pressing the same buttons but its not working anymore. POBWAS.
Time for the EU to start negotiations proper - or to prepare for No Deal.
Following the discussion in the previous thread re: where is the north, I did a bit of doodling.
If you divide the UK into thirds based on constituency populations and boundaries, and OS grid north, this is what you get. It seems Hendon is in the Midlands.
Strangley enough, the line delineating the "North" is where a lot of people put it. Sheffield is North, but only just. Same for Liverpool.
Shading is based on population density. Each primary colour has roughly the same population total.
Love it.
So @AlastairMeeks not so far off with Old Street Station.
How is that David Frost being out of his depth? Aside from anything else, there will be a new Parliament and possible a new Government in four years time. Does Barnier want frost to get his crystal ball out and predict what their policy on industrial subsidies will be? Looks like pointless delaying tactics to me.
It's negotiation by timetabling, the same nonsense we had during the original negotiations where the EU refused to discuss the future relationship until we had agreed what had to be paid in respect of the old one. Frost says that he isn't playing that game again and he is right to do so.
Is this like the guy driving home from the Golf Club in his Jag who decides to show that he is in the right by carving up an 18-wheel juggernaut and then slamming on the brakes in front of it?
The only thing you got right in that analogy is that the EU is a juggernaut....
It's an excellent analogy. You're just touchy about people mocking your XJ. Which you washed only last Saturday.
Don't think I have ever been in a jag, let alone owned one.
If you knew my history of car ownership, you certainly wouldn't be trying to make that point! I gave a 1.1 Renault Clio to a friend's son when he went to Uni, it having by then done 240,000 miles. I did the same again with another friend when it had done 160,000.... (Urban driving: always drive something where the other guy going into a space has far more paintwork to lose...!)
It's a good policy. Unlike our approach to the EU trade negotiations....
The root cause of their refusal to negotiate is that the Brexiteer government is unwilling to be open with the people (or probably themselves) is that Brexit has consequences, all of which are negative.
They can't commit to obligations with a negative effect. Which means they can't negotiate. The whole purpose of treaties is that they are commitments to obligations.
Again, being asked to predict policy is surely foolish. Who would have predicted the furlough scheme before the coronavirus hit us - even when it hit us initially? The idea behind the trade deal is to set out what is or is not acceptable in terms of state aid. I cannot see how David Frost's prediction on Government policy is helpful in this regard. If the EU is worried that we'll do something that has a negative impact on them, explicitly ban it in the provisions of the trade deal. There's something a bit desperate sounding about this request.
The Liberal Democrats are a complete irrelevance but before OGH bans mention of them altogether as a waste of precious bits and bytes on pb's expensive new server, we can perhaps offer the new leader some advice.
The LibDems are no longer our third party and thus almost guaranteed an invitation to political discussion shows. The SNP has three times as many MPs; the DUP almost as many.
Ed Davey needs to emulate chat show Charlie to get those television invitations pouring in. Luckily Davey scored a first in PPE at Oxford, in the same cohort as David Cameron. Davey needs to rack his brain for anecdotes about Boris, Gove and all the other Tory big cheeses he was at Oxford with. And stories from his time in government that make him seem a more serious player than Keir Starmer.
Instead what we got on the day he was elected was a promise to listen, to travel up and down the country listening to people. Not unlike Rory Stewart, and a fat lot of good it did him. I am your leader, let me follow you!
Were there any ideas emanting from either candidate in their election campaign? If so, they didn't make it to the outside world....
If I were a senior LibDem, I'd be giving up on Westminster. For at least the next ten years. Meantime, become a nationally important party of local government. It's what they are good at. Nobody believes they will be a governing party in any other context. So become very, very good at local governance.
It would get them over the issue of the height of their ambition being as a junior partner in a coalition. Because that went so well last time. And everybody knows it - hence their continued slide in seats. But they can still make a real improvement at a local level - especially if that is their sole focus.
The Libdems may still be recovering from the political damage that being part of the 2010-15 coalition government did, but that coalition government was a hell of a lot better than the conservative majority govt that followed, a hell of a lot better than the conservative govt propped up the DUP that followed that, and a hell of a lot better than the conservative majority government that followed that.
I would also argue that if Labour had failed to get a majority in 1997, 2001, or 2005, a Labour-LibDem coalition government would have been much better than the Labour majority governments we actually had.
My daughter got a new job yesterday with the SSSC who regulate social care workers in Scotland. We are absolutely delighted for her, its her first graduate level job and a real opportunity but it did make me think about WFH once again.
She has been told that no one will be in the office until after Christmas at the earliest, that all of her training for her new post will be online and that she will subsequently WFH for months. As a newbie in the organisation I think that this is a tremendous challenge for her. How does she get to know her team members, to socialise with them, to build the networks that can help her when she is unsure what to do? How does she find ways to expand her role and acquire the additional experience that might help her seek promotion one day?
I think WFH works tolerably well for people who already have all of that in place and for people established in their role. For those just starting out, like my daughter, it's a whole other ball game. Those promoting it seem to me to have something of the "I'm alright Jack" mentality about it and are giving insufficient thought or concern about the next generation.
Firstly, congratulations to your daughter. I've remotely trained a couple of juniors in the last few weeks that we've taken on. It isn't easy, especially since it was their first real job out of university. My tips on socialising and getting to know other colleagues is 4 person zoom chats at around 3pm for 15 minutes every other day, rotating people in and out of the chat. It's a good informal way for the existing team to get to know the new people and for the new people to get to know the existing team outside of meetings when there isn't any chance to talk.
I schedule these in advance and just ask people to put their name down for at least two of them, over a three week period both of them felt like part of the team and one even came out to the pub last Friday for team drinks.
Thanks Max, I'll pass that idea on. There seem to be a few people starting at the same time so hopefully that will help.
Following the discussion in the previous thread re: where is the north, I did a bit of doodling.
If you divide the UK into thirds based on constituency populations and boundaries, and OS grid north, this is what you get. It seems Hendon is in the Midlands.
Strangley enough, the line delineating the "North" is where a lot of people put it. Sheffield is North, but only just. Same for Liverpool.
Shading is based on population density. Each primary colour has roughly the same population total.
Love it.
So @AlastairMeeks not so far off with Old Street Station.
For the Midlands, not the North.
Ah that is true. But still Hendon in the Midlands is still moving the window.
Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.
A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.
We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.
I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.
You know, the ignorance most politicians have around IT has deeper knock-on issues than just their foolishness about databases, or online capabilities, or IT security. A modern IT network, so interrelated and interdependent, doing so much out of sight that's essential (and so much that isn't essential sometimes) can be a useful mental model for an economy,
Any IT professional knows that a controlled shutdown followed by a controlled startup is far, far preferable to allowing something to crash down in an uncontrolled and damaging shutdown.
That's what a lot of the less-informed commentators on the economics side seem unable to grasp about restrictions and lockdowns. A controlled shutdown allows for a controlled startup back to where we were. An uncontrolled shutdown (which is what we see when a controlled one isn't used) causes permanent damage.
Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.
A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.
We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.
I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.
When (not if) most workplaces are adapted for home-working, the main problem for employees is that it doesn’t really matter for owners and managers if personnel are at home in London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Naples, Zurich, Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta, Toronto or Santiago.
Many people have romantic ideas of moving to nice places like Devon, the Cotswolds, the Hebrides or rural France, and working from home there. While this is certainly going to happen in the short term (the Scottish rural property market is red-hot), in the long-term most are gonna be screwed by more productive foreign workers.
The problems entailed by the move to wfh are routinely not just understated but entirely ignored on this site. There is a huge skew on the site to people with nice houses with room to work in (Are there more bedrooms than residents? is a good test), and who are naturally ungregarious to the point that their idea of/substitute for social interaction is wibbling on an Internet politics site, and who are at a late enough stage in their careers that hustling for self-promotion (a notably face to face activity) is no longer a necessity. A hostile government is another spoke in the wheel of the idea, and the point the government makes that wfhers are vulnerable to sacking may be nasty but it is also correct.
Good post and good points. PBers are generally speaking hopelessy disconnected from ordinary voters and how normal people live and think. A lot of folk around here even wear that as a badge of pride (Charles springs to mind).
Ain't that true, I'm quite new here and anticipated a political betting site with impartial analysis. Its actually 90% white collar liberals with little interest in or understanding of betting.
That's not a problem, I like white collar liberals, but they're completely unaware of what goes on in the lives of ordinary working people. Pret, among others, are shedding 1000s of jobs, I don't suppose there's too many baristas or sandwich makers on here.
WFH not for me, all those sick folk hanging around in my front yard...
I came across this this morning. Oxford vaccine out November 3rd if phase 3 trials supportive. Only €3 a dose too.
If a vaccine comes out on the day of the election then that could really influence the results could it not? I'd imagine that would be a major boost to Trump.
Following the discussion in the previous thread re: where is the north, I did a bit of doodling.
If you divide the UK into thirds based on constituency populations and boundaries, and OS grid north, this is what you get. It seems Hendon is in the Midlands.
Strangley enough, the line delineating the "North" is where a lot of people put it. Sheffield is North, but only just. Same for Liverpool.
Shading is based on population density. Each primary colour has roughly the same population total.
Love it.
So @AlastairMeeks not so far off with Old Street Station.
For the Midlands, not the North.
Ah that is true. But still Hendon in the Midlands is still moving the window.
Too much of the M4 corridor in the Midlands. Should be in the south. Swap it for south Wales. Barry and Porthcawl? No way would they want to be soft southerners.....
My daughter got a new job yesterday with the SSSC who regulate social care workers in Scotland. We are absolutely delighted for her, its her first graduate level job and a real opportunity but it did make me think about WFH once again.
She has been told that no one will be in the office until after Christmas at the earliest, that all of her training for her new post will be online and that she will subsequently WFH for months. As a newbie in the organisation I think that this is a tremendous challenge for her. How does she get to know her team members, to socialise with them, to build the networks that can help her when she is unsure what to do? How does she find ways to expand her role and acquire the additional experience that might help her seek promotion one day?
I think WFH works tolerably well for people who already have all of that in place and for people established in their role. For those just starting out, like my daughter, it's a whole other ball game. Those promoting it seem to me to have something of the "I'm alright Jack" mentality about it and are giving insufficient thought or concern about the next generation.
I have been doing versions of this for fifteen years and it is entirely possible to manage and train people remotely. It does require training to be more systematic when you can't just observe others and it also requires your colleagues to make time available to you, which they may or may not do off their own bats. My advice to your daughter is to be a little bit pushy. If she sets up one-to-ones in her manager's and colleagues' diaries to go over the requirement, most times they will accept them.
From what you have said earlier, your daughter has had an uphill struggle to find suitable work in these grim times. Well done her to land this role.
I would hope that she fits in some days out shadowing Social workers. Anyone who wants some credibility as a regulator needs to understand work at the coalface. Regulating is different to doing it, but shouldn't be totally detached either.
Following the discussion in the previous thread re: where is the north, I did a bit of doodling.
If you divide the UK into thirds based on constituency populations and boundaries, and OS grid north, this is what you get. It seems Hendon is in the Midlands.
Strangley enough, the line delineating the "North" is where a lot of people put it. Sheffield is North, but only just. Same for Liverpool.
Shading is based on population density. Each primary colour has roughly the same population total.
Love it.
So @AlastairMeeks not so far off with Old Street Station.
For the Midlands, not the North.
Ah that is true. But still Hendon in the Midlands is still moving the window.
I put the boundaries as North/Midlands border as Sandbach Services on the M6, South/Midlands border as Watford Gap on the M1. Seems reasonably close to that map, at least on the North side which is what matters
As the prospective Head of UK Market for what we hope will be a scaleable food brand importing from the EU I look forward immensely to dealing with this catastrofuck.
I will be surprised if Harris is not President by 2023. The Democrats choice this time around is truly bizarre. A man who was not the sharpest knife in the drawer at any stage who is clearly fading. What on earth were they thinking? This is one of the most demanding jobs in the world, it ages and exhausts much younger and fitter men. I just don't see how anyone can seriously argue that Biden is capable of fulfilling such a role.
If I was an American I would vote for Biden because Trump is malevolent and malignant, apparently indifferent to the damage he has done to US institutions and institutional structures but I would do so with a heavy heart and very much reliant upon the fact that Harris seems competent and capable if not particularly sociable. An enhanced role for her has to be a part of the deal from the beginning leading to her taking over completely mid term.
Who would you have preferred from the Dem contenders?
It was not a strong field. If I had been involved in Democrat management I would have been wondering about why some of their governors were not in the race such as Whitmer or Walz from Minnesota (both of these would probably nail down a key swing state too).
Ideally you want someone late 40s early 50s with good public service records and some experience of actually running things. Buttigieg was interesting but probably too inexperienced. Biden is just too old, bordering on senile, too Washington insider.
The root cause of their refusal to negotiate is that the Brexiteer government is unwilling to be open with the people (or probably themselves) is that Brexit has consequences, all of which are negative.
They can't commit to obligations with a negative effect. Which means they can't negotiate. The whole purpose of treaties is that they are commitments to obligations.
Yes. "We won't let foreigners dictate our laws" doesn't fit well with the American government dictating a downgrading in food standards and deregulation of pharma markets and corresponding whopping cost increases. So instead we get NDAs.
The bigger and more important you are to the counter-party the better the deal you get. We are making ourselves smaller and less important than the EU deals we are tearing up. The UK bilateral deals will be worse than we have now.
How long before Trump is favourite in the betting?
Wisconsin Poll Do you approve or disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling the response to protests about the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis? Approve: 34% Disapprove: 58%
The Liberal Democrats are a complete irrelevance but before OGH bans mention of them altogether as a waste of precious bits and bytes on pb's expensive new server, we can perhaps offer the new leader some advice.
The LibDems are no longer our third party and thus almost guaranteed an invitation to political discussion shows. The SNP has three times as many MPs; the DUP almost as many.
Ed Davey needs to emulate chat show Charlie to get those television invitations pouring in. Luckily Davey scored a first in PPE at Oxford, in the same cohort as David Cameron. Davey needs to rack his brain for anecdotes about Boris, Gove and all the other Tory big cheeses he was at Oxford with. And stories from his time in government that make him seem a more serious player than Keir Starmer.
Instead what we got on the day he was elected was a promise to listen, to travel up and down the country listening to people. Not unlike Rory Stewart, and a fat lot of good it did him. I am your leader, let me follow you!
Does the listening include all those who want brexit
What’s brexit got to do with anything, it’s now about how well or badly the government performs in a wide range of issues, if the government fail to leave the transition painlessly then that becomes an issue, if they stoke up the next wave of covid by dithering then that is an issue.
The Liberal Democrats are a complete irrelevance but before OGH bans mention of them altogether as a waste of precious bits and bytes on pb's expensive new server, we can perhaps offer the new leader some advice.
The LibDems are no longer our third party and thus almost guaranteed an invitation to political discussion shows. The SNP has three times as many MPs; the DUP almost as many.
Ed Davey needs to emulate chat show Charlie to get those television invitations pouring in. Luckily Davey scored a first in PPE at Oxford, in the same cohort as David Cameron. Davey needs to rack his brain for anecdotes about Boris, Gove and all the other Tory big cheeses he was at Oxford with. And stories from his time in government that make him seem a more serious player than Keir Starmer.
Instead what we got on the day he was elected was a promise to listen, to travel up and down the country listening to people. Not unlike Rory Stewart, and a fat lot of good it did him. I am your leader, let me follow you!
Were there any ideas emanting from either candidate in their election campaign? If so, they didn't make it to the outside world....
If I were a senior LibDem, I'd be giving up on Westminster. For at least the next ten years. Meantime, become a nationally important party of local government. It's what they are good at. Nobody believes they will be a governing party in any other context. So become very, very good at local governance.
It would get them over the issue of the height of their ambition being as a junior partner in a coalition. Because that went so well last time. And everybody knows it - hence their continued slide in seats. But they can still make a real improvement at a local level - especially if that is their sole focus.
The Libdems may still be recovering from the political damage that being part of the 2010-15 coalition government did, but that coalition government was a hell of a lot better than the conservative majority govt that followed, a hell of a lot better than the conservative govt propped up the DUP that followed that, and a hell of a lot better than the conservative majority government that followed that.
I would also argue that if Labour had failed to get a majority in 1997, 2001, or 2005, a Labour-LibDem coalition government would have been much better than the Labour majority governments we actually had.
Trouble is, voters don't believe your assertions of a "hell of a lot better". Hence your Westminster seats keep going down down, deeper and down. But hey, I'm happy for you to continue with that status quo....
My daughter got a new job yesterday with the SSSC who regulate social care workers in Scotland. We are absolutely delighted for her, its her first graduate level job and a real opportunity but it did make me think about WFH once again.
She has been told that no one will be in the office until after Christmas at the earliest, that all of her training for her new post will be online and that she will subsequently WFH for months. As a newbie in the organisation I think that this is a tremendous challenge for her. How does she get to know her team members, to socialise with them, to build the networks that can help her when she is unsure what to do? How does she find ways to expand her role and acquire the additional experience that might help her seek promotion one day?
I think WFH works tolerably well for people who already have all of that in place and for people established in their role. For those just starting out, like my daughter, it's a whole other ball game. Those promoting it seem to me to have something of the "I'm alright Jack" mentality about it and are giving insufficient thought or concern about the next generation.
Firstly, congratulations to your daughter. I've remotely trained a couple of juniors in the last few weeks that we've taken on. It isn't easy, especially since it was their first real job out of university. My tips on socialising and getting to know other colleagues is 4 person zoom chats at around 3pm for 15 minutes every other day, rotating people in and out of the chat. It's a good informal way for the existing team to get to know the new people and for the new people to get to know the existing team outside of meetings when there isn't any chance to talk.
I schedule these in advance and just ask people to put their name down for at least two of them, over a three week period both of them felt like part of the team and one even came out to the pub last Friday for team drinks.
Thanks Max, I'll pass that idea on. There seem to be a few people starting at the same time so hopefully that will help.
I have a great set of hints on remote working if you PM me an email (and are happy to do that!). Otherwise I can cut and paste it on here.
In old money Biden is 10/11 with Trump 11/10, I'm genuinely amazed. I really thought a year ago the Democrats would have walked in with any candidate.
That might still be the case but despite every media outlet painting Trump in such a bad light (over here) the Americans clearly see it differently. I don't follow the US enough to make a judgement, my point is the view where it counts is nowhere near as negative as the view from here.
Actually with punters on Betfair very heavily British, you can say British punters have a less negative/pessimistic view on Trump's chances than most Americans, after all Biden leads the polls.
I will be surprised if Harris is not President by 2023. The Democrats choice this time around is truly bizarre. A man who was not the sharpest knife in the drawer at any stage who is clearly fading. What on earth were they thinking? This is one of the most demanding jobs in the world, it ages and exhausts much younger and fitter men. I just don't see how anyone can seriously argue that Biden is capable of fulfilling such a role.
If I was an American I would vote for Biden because Trump is malevolent and malignant, apparently indifferent to the damage he has done to US institutions and institutional structures but I would do so with a heavy heart and very much reliant upon the fact that Harris seems competent and capable if not particularly sociable. An enhanced role for her has to be a part of the deal from the beginning leading to her taking over completely mid term.
Who would you have preferred from the Dem contenders?
It was not a strong field. If I had been involved in Democrat management I would have been wondering about why some of their governors were not in the race such as Whitmer or Walz from Minnesota (both of these would probably nail down a key swing state too).
Ideally you want someone late 40s early 50s with good public service records and some experience of actually running things. Buttigieg was interesting but probably too inexperienced. Biden is just too old, bordering on senile, too Washington insider.
I agree with you, though possibly Biden/Harris is a good combined ticket on a "safe pair of hands" basis versus Trump/Pence. There is a tendency for a President's successor to be an overreaction to their predecessors perceived flaws, so perhaps the safe pair of hands Washington insider is exactly what is needed after Trump?
I'm still not a fan of Biden, but at least it wasn't Sanders.
The root cause of their refusal to negotiate is that the Brexiteer government is unwilling to be open with the people (or probably themselves) is that Brexit has consequences, all of which are negative.
They can't commit to obligations with a negative effect. Which means they can't negotiate. The whole purpose of treaties is that they are commitments to obligations.
Yes. "We won't let foreigners dictate our laws" doesn't fit well with the American government dictating a downgrading in food standards and deregulation of pharma markets and corresponding whopping cost increases. So instead we get NDAs.
The bigger and more important you are to the counter-party the better the deal you get. We are making ourselves smaller and less important than the EU deals we are tearing up. The UK bilateral deals will be worse than we have now.
The effect of no trade deal will be to make whatever delicacy you're importing from the EU a little more expensive. Will this make you stop? I doubt it, because the effect will be marginal, and presumably you have a product that has a good mark up, and trades strongly on positive country of origin associations. If it is going to kill anyone's product, either way, it's not the right product.
I will be surprised if Harris is not President by 2023. The Democrats choice this time around is truly bizarre. A man who was not the sharpest knife in the drawer at any stage who is clearly fading. What on earth were they thinking? This is one of the most demanding jobs in the world, it ages and exhausts much younger and fitter men. I just don't see how anyone can seriously argue that Biden is capable of fulfilling such a role.
If I was an American I would vote for Biden because Trump is malevolent and malignant, apparently indifferent to the damage he has done to US institutions and institutional structures but I would do so with a heavy heart and very much reliant upon the fact that Harris seems competent and capable if not particularly sociable. An enhanced role for her has to be a part of the deal from the beginning leading to her taking over completely mid term.
Who would you have preferred from the Dem contenders?
It was not a strong field. If I had been involved in Democrat management I would have been wondering about why some of their governors were not in the race such as Whitmer or Walz from Minnesota (both of these would probably nail down a key swing state too).
Ideally you want someone late 40s early 50s with good public service records and some experience of actually running things. Buttigieg was interesting but probably too inexperienced. Biden is just too old, bordering on senile, too Washington insider.
You also need somebody with no skeletons in the cupboard and is willing to have his and all those around him lives put under the microscope. You would have to wonder why someone would.
Following the discussion in the previous thread re: where is the north, I did a bit of doodling.
If you divide the UK into thirds based on constituency populations and boundaries, and OS grid north, this is what you get. It seems Hendon is in the Midlands.
Strangley enough, the line delineating the "North" is where a lot of people put it. Sheffield is North, but only just. Same for Liverpool.
Shading is based on population density. Each primary colour has roughly the same population total.
Love it.
So @AlastairMeeks not so far off with Old Street Station.
For the Midlands, not the North.
Ah that is true. But still Hendon in the Midlands is still moving the window.
I put the boundaries as North/Midlands border as Sandbach Services on the M6, South/Midlands border as Watford Gap on the M1. Seems reasonably close to that map, at least on the North side which is what matters
Yes I saw that. You're a bit North for the start of the Midlands. As I said, the demarcation is the Black Cat Roundabout. Because Northampton is in the midlands and your line would have it in the South.
The root cause of their refusal to negotiate is that the Brexiteer government is unwilling to be open with the people (or probably themselves) is that Brexit has consequences, all of which are negative.
They can't commit to obligations with a negative effect. Which means they can't negotiate. The whole purpose of treaties is that they are commitments to obligations.
As has long been observed, the Brexit trade negotiations are perhaps the only trade negotiations in history whose aim is to worsen terms of trade.
Observed, but not by this government. Which is why they are paralysed. They can't admit that the effect of Brexit is to make things worse, therefore they can't negotiate to make them worse.
Edit. Which is why you need a Remainer to do the negotiation. Someone who accepts their (more sensible position) has lost and it's all now about damage limitation.
A Remainer would not be allowed to compromise by Leavers, while a Leaver can do so. We saw that with May and Johnson on the Withdrawal Agreement.
That doesn't mean that we will certainly see a compromise, or that it will be accepted by most Leavers if we do, but there simply isn't the trust to make it possible with a Remainer in charge.
The root cause of their refusal to negotiate is that the Brexiteer government is unwilling to be open with the people (or probably themselves) is that Brexit has consequences, all of which are negative.
They can't commit to obligations with a negative effect. Which means they can't negotiate. The whole purpose of treaties is that they are commitments to obligations.
Again, being asked to predict policy is surely foolish. Who would have predicted the furlough scheme before the coronavirus hit us - even when it hit us initially? The idea behind the trade deal is to set out what is or is not acceptable in terms of state aid. I cannot see how David Frost's prediction on Government policy is helpful in this regard. If the EU is worried that we'll do something that has a negative impact on them, explicitly ban it in the provisions of the trade deal. There's something a bit desperate sounding about this request.
The whole purpose of treaties is to constrain policy. You are getting the other side to commit to doing things that you suspect they might not want to do when the time comes, or to prevent them from doing them. As State Aid is the most important ask of the other side you need to have some idea of what you are prepared to commit to. The UK might not be prepared to commit to anything, in which case it won't have any treaties with anyone. Certainly no-one will make any commitments to you.
"Meanwhile in the betting the Trump recovery continues and on the Betfair exchange overnight he has edged to a 47% chance just 5% behind Biden."
Yep, Trump has the Mo in the betting at the moment, no question about it. He's 2.1 now, a price which anticipates Biden's poll lead narrowing quite significantly and quite soon. Let's see if that happens.
Work from home - my mental health struggles adjusting to this new decade have played out on here so I'm probably not the most obvious advocate for WFH. But I am - it is economic and societal progress. We needed offices and commuting when white collar jobs could only be carried out in a central location. Technology has largely eradicated this need and the things people complain gently about (Zoom functionality etc) will be ironed out once this crash test phase becomes normal.
Yes, it means a sizeable shift in economic activity. But to pair it back it is removing a wholly redundant economic activity - the commute. We have literally structured our environment around the need to work centrally, creating myriad problems. The removal of the commute means we lose jobs as fewer people travel, fewer people waste money on twatty coffee they'd rather not buy etc etc. But arguing against this progress is to argue against the progress of the industrial revolution or the internet.
If nothing else we face an Environmental catastrophe that governments have been slow responding to. A significant drop in pointless commuting and a move towards distributed living will have a positive impact to the environment, to our health and thus bring economic benefits.
Having been made redundant this week I feel the pain of the tens of thousands also being made redundant. Its in everyone's best interests that we drive positive economic transformation (Build Back Better if you like...) and do so quickly. Rather than finding ways to force pointless consumption to preserve low paid jobs of employers who have interesting takes on tax (*cough Starbucks*).
As the prospective Head of UK Market for what we hope will be a scaleable food brand importing from the EU I look forward immensely to dealing with this catastrofuck.
Good to see how well HMG have used the four plus years to prepare for this event.
Lol Uber has never made any money, will never make any money and has an app that any competitor could make. Interesting example they chose, this is probably the worst example of a modern capitalist company there is
I will be surprised if Harris is not President by 2023. The Democrats choice this time around is truly bizarre. A man who was not the sharpest knife in the drawer at any stage who is clearly fading. What on earth were they thinking? This is one of the most demanding jobs in the world, it ages and exhausts much younger and fitter men. I just don't see how anyone can seriously argue that Biden is capable of fulfilling such a role.
If I was an American I would vote for Biden because Trump is malevolent and malignant, apparently indifferent to the damage he has done to US institutions and institutional structures but I would do so with a heavy heart and very much reliant upon the fact that Harris seems competent and capable if not particularly sociable. An enhanced role for her has to be a part of the deal from the beginning leading to her taking over completely mid term.
Who would you have preferred from the Dem contenders?
It was not a strong field. If I had been involved in Democrat management I would have been wondering about why some of their governors were not in the race such as Whitmer or Walz from Minnesota (both of these would probably nail down a key swing state too).
Ideally you want someone late 40s early 50s with good public service records and some experience of actually running things. Buttigieg was interesting but probably too inexperienced. Biden is just too old, bordering on senile, too Washington insider.
Sherrod Brown would currently be walking it if he had ran.
Following the discussion in the previous thread re: where is the north, I did a bit of doodling.
If you divide the UK into thirds based on constituency populations and boundaries, and OS grid north, this is what you get. It seems Hendon is in the Midlands.
Strangley enough, the line delineating the "North" is where a lot of people put it. Sheffield is North, but only just. Same for Liverpool.
Shading is based on population density. Each primary colour has roughly the same population total.
Love it.
So @AlastairMeeks not so far off with Old Street Station.
For the Midlands, not the North.
Ah that is true. But still Hendon in the Midlands is still moving the window.
Too much of the M4 corridor in the Midlands. Should be in the south. Swap it for south Wales. Barry and Porthcawl? No way would they want to be soft southerners.....
Excuse me! The Vale of Glamorgan is far too genteel to be in the North! Tend to agree with Bridgend County Borough (and Rhonnda, Cynon Taff) though.
Comments
Wouldn't work for every kind of job, but the fact that it's happening at all is a novelty.
She has been told that no one will be in the office until after Christmas at the earliest, that all of her training for her new post will be online and that she will subsequently WFH for months. As a newbie in the organisation I think that this is a tremendous challenge for her. How does she get to know her team members, to socialise with them, to build the networks that can help her when she is unsure what to do? How does she find ways to expand her role and acquire the additional experience that might help her seek promotion one day?
I think WFH works tolerably well for people who already have all of that in place and for people established in their role. For those just starting out, like my daughter, it's a whole other ball game. Those promoting it seem to me to have something of the "I'm alright Jack" mentality about it and are giving insufficient thought or concern about the next generation.
The London rent savings are irresistible. .
Week beginning the 14th of September, I'll be training a newbie, remotely.
It is a challenge, I've kinda planned it out, but it is those visual clues I won't be able to pick up on that worries me.
The idea that "white police shoots unarmed black person" being in the headlines or "Trump supporter shoots BLM protesters" might temporarily suppress Trump's polling is plausible. However, Trump's national average polling over at 538 has been pretty stable since before May 25 (when George Floyd was killed):
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/national/
On May 24 Trump was at 43.1%
Most recent is Trump 42.2%
In between the peak was 43.4% and the lowest was 41.1%
One of the things that helps me is a sense of humour, and knowing your audience is useful for that, not sure I'll be able to do that via a videochat.
The generation I really do worry for is those who should be at university, that's where most of my best/deepest/longest standing friendships started, I'm not sure you can get that via remote learning on a zoom call.
On topic, I'd guess that Trump's key supporters are people who feel his policies - especially economic policies - are good for them, and are willing to put up with any amount of what they'd readily call asshole behaviour if they feel they personally will be better off. As in Britain, though, the weak spot of populism is a perception of erratic incompetence. Biden's message should be relentlessly focused on Trump being the risky, unpredictable option.
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My shoe tastes for work are very sober, if expensive.
You're bringing them in to the office to spend face-to-face time with other people, working on things together. That calls for a different space than an open plan shed crammed with hot desks.
I didn’t know that, I always had him down as a sort of wettish Tory.
No, just what they will be on January 1st 2021.
The LibDems are no longer our third party and thus almost guaranteed an invitation to political discussion shows. The SNP has three times as many MPs; the DUP almost as many.
Ed Davey needs to emulate chat show Charlie to get those television invitations pouring in. Luckily Davey scored a first in PPE at Oxford, in the same cohort as David Cameron. Davey needs to rack his brain for anecdotes about Boris, Gove and all the other Tory big cheeses he was at Oxford with. And stories from his time in government that make him seem a more serious player than Keir Starmer.
Instead what we got on the day he was elected was a promise to listen, to travel up and down the country listening to people. Not unlike Rory Stewart, and a fat lot of good it did him. I am your leader, let me follow you!
How long before Trump is favourite in the betting?
From what you have said earlier, your daughter has had an uphill struggle to find suitable work in these grim times. Well done her to land this role.
If I were a senior LibDem, I'd be giving up on Westminster. For at least the next ten years. Meantime, become a nationally important party of local government. It's what they are good at. Nobody believes they will be a governing party in any other context. So become very, very good at local governance.
It would get them over the issue of the height of their ambition being as a junior partner in a coalition. Because that went so well last time. And everybody knows it - hence their continued slide in seats. But they can still make a real improvement at a local level - especially if that is their sole focus.
They can't commit to obligations with a negative effect. Which means they can't negotiate. The whole purpose of treaties is that they are commitments to obligations.
That is not to say Trump can't win, but not on the back of Dan's thesis.
But social division in the States is so much more prominent and, as in Britain, disproportionately affecting ethnic minorities. Semi-racists who are now fine with a black guy in a smart suit feel the old prejuidices surging up when they see a black guy who looks rough. If they go to a poor area in the US it's probably both got a lot of black people and a lot of people who look rough and/or in bad shape, and the old fears swamp the viewer. That's not something people feel in, say, Tower Hamlets - the politics there have had a troubled history, but it feels perfectly orderly and safe. It's one of the ways that the lack of a secure social structure for everyone in the US makes it more vulnerable to unrest and tension than most modern European countries, though it does happen over here too.
Price gouging? Or do the others really cost up to 40 times more to manufacture?
Edit. Which is why you need a Remainer to do the negotiation. Someone who accepts their (more sensible position) has lost and it's all now about damage limitation.
Trump is not really a populist so much as posing as a one in order to win votes. The wall got him elected; no point in actually building it. The donors got their tax cuts. The evangelicals got Jerusalem. It's not populism so much as transactional offers that you might expect in the commercial deals he is known for.
If you knew my history of car ownership, you certainly wouldn't be trying to make that point! I gave a 1.1 Renault Clio to a friend's son when he went to Uni, it having by then done 240,000 miles. I did the same again with another friend when it had done 160,000.... (Urban driving: always drive something where the other guy going into a space has far more paintwork to lose...!)
I schedule these in advance and just ask people to put their name down for at least two of them, over a three week period both of them felt like part of the team and one even came out to the pub last Friday for team drinks.
Barnier and his supporters are frustrated that the UK Isn't playing into his game like May and Robbins did - when Barnier was running rings around Robbins and May. He's pressing the same buttons but its not working anymore. POBWAS.
Time for the EU to start negotiations proper - or to prepare for No Deal.
I would also argue that if Labour had failed to get a majority in 1997, 2001, or 2005, a Labour-LibDem coalition government would have been much better than the Labour majority governments we actually had.
Any IT professional knows that a controlled shutdown followed by a controlled startup is far, far preferable to allowing something to crash down in an uncontrolled and damaging shutdown.
That's what a lot of the less-informed commentators on the economics side seem unable to grasp about restrictions and lockdowns. A controlled shutdown allows for a controlled startup back to where we were. An uncontrolled shutdown (which is what we see when a controlled one isn't used) causes permanent damage.
If a vaccine comes out on the day of the election then that could really influence the results could it not? I'd imagine that would be a major boost to Trump.
Ideally you want someone late 40s early 50s with good public service records and some experience of actually running things. Buttigieg was interesting but probably too inexperienced. Biden is just too old, bordering on senile, too Washington insider.
The bigger and more important you are to the counter-party the better the deal you get. We are making ourselves smaller and less important than the EU deals we are tearing up. The UK bilateral deals will be worse than we have now.
Do you approve or disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling the response to protests about the death
of George Floyd in Minneapolis?
Approve: 34%
Disapprove: 58%
What’s brexit got to do with anything, it’s now about how well or badly the government performs in a wide range of issues, if the government fail to leave the transition painlessly then that becomes an issue, if they stoke up the next wave of covid by dithering then that is an issue.
I'm still not a fan of Biden, but at least it wasn't Sanders.
That doesn't mean that we will certainly see a compromise, or that it will be accepted by most Leavers if we do, but there simply isn't the trust to make it possible with a Remainer in charge.
My first bet of the year on the election was Dems to win @ 2.5 back in February.
Two point Five. Outrageous value,
Definitely looks like it is happening. Absolutely disgraceful.
Yep, Trump has the Mo in the betting at the moment, no question about it. He's 2.1 now, a price which anticipates Biden's poll lead narrowing quite significantly and quite soon. Let's see if that happens.
Yes, it means a sizeable shift in economic activity. But to pair it back it is removing a wholly redundant economic activity - the commute. We have literally structured our environment around the need to work centrally, creating myriad problems. The removal of the commute means we lose jobs as fewer people travel, fewer people waste money on twatty coffee they'd rather not buy etc etc. But arguing against this progress is to argue against the progress of the industrial revolution or the internet.
If nothing else we face an Environmental catastrophe that governments have been slow responding to. A significant drop in pointless commuting and a move towards distributed living will have a positive impact to the environment, to our health and thus bring economic benefits.
Having been made redundant this week I feel the pain of the tens of thousands also being made redundant. Its in everyone's best interests that we drive positive economic transformation (Build Back Better if you like...) and do so quickly. Rather than finding ways to force pointless consumption to preserve low paid jobs of employers who have interesting takes on tax (*cough Starbucks*).
Lol Uber has never made any money, will never make any money and has an app that any competitor could make. Interesting example they chose, this is probably the worst example of a modern capitalist company there is
*Sadly looks at book*