I doubt it will happen now. The man will just be an ongoing toothache for Boris with little discernible benefit. Silly to let the story spring up as it did though.
I suspect that those who voted for Boris to become Tory leader and thereby Prime Minister believed that the one thing he would deal with brilliantly would be PMQs, even blindfolded and standing on his head if necessary. Sadly they appear to have seriously misjudged him.
Based on his record of hiding in a fridge to avoid a journalist, and refusing to appear with Andrew Neil...
They bought a dud, but that was never a secret.
A dud that wiped you off the electoral map the very next day? One shudders to imagine what a non-dud might have achieved!
They bought someone who solved a problem for them but has created far bigger issues in his wake.
Yep Boris has delivered Brexit, the question is has he delivered something that will be successfully or something that will go down in history as a disaster and result in the UK splitting into separate bits.
I suspect it's likely to be the latter and it's inevitable while hoping (without hope) for the former. You expect the former and can't imagine the latter.
I suspect looking back in 2023 my prediction will be closer than yours.
LOL, that’s brilliant. How many fortysomethings had the famous poster from the adaptation of Irvine Welch’s book, as a poster on their college room wall in the late nineties?
On the car rental manager issue, I take the point, but what's the solution? 1. Raise manager pay? Seems to me that a more motivated manager retained for longer would have some additional value, but maybe I'm wrong. 2. Reduce minimum wage so agents get paid less, increasing the gap? Manager is still a shitty job at shitty pay. Unless the people who leave within 6 months are going back to being car agents/minimum wage elsewhere, they'll still leave. 3. Keep status quo? Maybe that works for the rental companies. If so, fine for them.
Presumably option 3 does work for the rental companies, or they'd pay managers better to keep them longer. So if you reduce minimum wage (option 2) what makes you think that rental manager pay would not also drop down to be the same amount above rental agent that it is now?
On the point about outsourcing social security obligations - why should governments subsidise businesses? Or, to put it another way, why should companies that pay more subsidise, through taxes, companies that pay less?
This is a valid point, but one we can turn around. Why should it be the responsibility of employers to ensure people have enough to live on, providing they pay the market rate for the job? That kind of social security is rightly the responsibility of governments. The fact is, governments will happily up minimum wage because they can sell it as the government delivering for the people, while not having to pay for any of it.
On car rental management, I think it's a mixture of (1) and (3) and mainly that managers' basic pay needs to be increased so that they are no longer dependent on bonus for upgrades that they don't directly control. The agent gets a smaller bonus, but what if they don't do the upsell? The manager still needs that agent to be at the counter.
I think the key question is why the market rate for semi-skilled labour in the UK is at or just above minimum wage? Why has there been stagnation in the wages of Western European workers over the last 20-30 years?
That is a question that cannot be answered.
Piketty is having a crack at it.
No - the answer is BadThink. Therefore we have no answer.
It's not just immigration. There have been thousands of small blows to the prospects of lower and lower-middle class people over the last 50 years.
Offshoring, Declining union strength and participation, Declining light and heavy industry, Rise of the service sector gig economy, Technology based efficiencies removing lower management The globalisation of supply chains and lower white collar work, etc etc
Capital has been winning since the late 70's, and inequality indicators in the western world show it.
Much of that is enabled by having infinite supply of onshore labour.
I keep making this point - if you look at productivity cost, offshoring is marginal for most things. Often more expensive. Existing supply chains are China's big advantage, now. Not labour costs.
Being able to bring cheap labour onshore, where the benefits of healthcare, law, infrastructiure etc are available is the big enabler.
And when the new help starts getting bolshy and demands the minimum wage or statutory protection, they can be replaced. Which keeps the employers from having to adopt that extremist thing... what's it called? oh yes. Pay rises.
Firstly the labour supply is not infinite for the majority of UK jobs. There are levels of skills and qualifications required to be employed within the UKs developed workforce, But yes immigration from the EU has hit certain sectors harder than others.
I'm arguing that it is not just the menial staff who are affected by the UK's wage stagnation. It is the majority of low wage employment. And it is soon to be the lower-middle wage earners as white collar outsourcing becomes derigour.
China's offshoring boom happened because of capitals 'rational' desire to find lower wage economies to reduce their cost. The industry of the western world did not fly to the east, it was incentivised to move. Senior management chose to upsticks and leave. And in doing so abandoned the western lower classes who were once the bedrock of their businesses.
You say that workers can be replaced to quell demands for better conditions. I ask why is this acceptable? And I'm sure that the squeezing of collective bargaining rights has been instrumental in this.
I know you cannot fight globalisation. But the capital owners in the west no longer need the labour of the western world.
"But the capital owners in the west no longer need the labour of the western world. "
Yes, they do. Outsourcing works in some thing, for a time. Then the locals start demanding wages etc commensurate with their worth. Then the productivity cost returns to parity. This is what is happening in China now.
So bringing cheap labour onshore gets you much of the productivity of a "western" workforce, with lower wages.
When the imported labour learns enough English, skills up etc and starts demanding more money, they are replaced.
It is a return to the early 19th cent. modes of employment.
Assuming that all the outsourced labour comes back... It comes back devalued. It is no longer priced relative to the white collar labour in the UK but at the value of whichever country it was last found in Vietnam, Nigeria etc plus a little extra for the productivity gains.
Did you not say that China advantage is now its supply chains! That is an advantage the west had and that was given up for short term profit. Like in chip manufacture, the chances of China and Taiwans dominance in the silicon world being overhauled by a resurgent west is v-small. 'They' have the productivity gains through their infrastructure now and 'we' do not.
Wouldn't the best way to avoid 19th century work practise to do what the workers of the 19-20th centurys did and embrace collective bargaining?
Compare and contrast with the US. Over there is a president who makes more outrageous comments than Johnson’s IRA smear, and piles up the bullshit, bluster and waffle, on a daily basis. And his party follow him slavishly.
I’m have a very low view of the current Tory party, but they do not yet approach the sheer degradation of the Republicans.
Two teams tooling up on the enemy's enemy basis, cheered on by Yank fuckwits who think it will hasten some Jesus magic.
What are you on about?
Kushner has just spent three days in Abu Dhabi, sitting around a table with Arabs and Israelis, Jews and Muslims, people who have spent 70 years barely acknowledging each other’s existence, as they set up formal diplomatic and trade ties.
It’s genuinely ground-breaking, and one of very few big good news stories to come out of 2020.
On the car rental manager issue, I take the point, but what's the solution? 1. Raise manager pay? Seems to me that a more motivated manager retained for longer would have some additional value, but maybe I'm wrong. 2. Reduce minimum wage so agents get paid less, increasing the gap? Manager is still a shitty job at shitty pay. Unless the people who leave within 6 months are going back to being car agents/minimum wage elsewhere, they'll still leave. 3. Keep status quo? Maybe that works for the rental companies. If so, fine for them.
Presumably option 3 does work for the rental companies, or they'd pay managers better to keep them longer. So if you reduce minimum wage (option 2) what makes you think that rental manager pay would not also drop down to be the same amount above rental agent that it is now?
On the point about outsourcing social security obligations - why should governments subsidise businesses? Or, to put it another way, why should companies that pay more subsidise, through taxes, companies that pay less?
This is a valid point, but one we can turn around. Why should it be the responsibility of employers to ensure people have enough to live on, providing they pay the market rate for the job? That kind of social security is rightly the responsibility of governments. The fact is, governments will happily up minimum wage because they can sell it as the government delivering for the people, while not having to pay for any of it.
On car rental management, I think it's a mixture of (1) and (3) and mainly that managers' basic pay needs to be increased so that they are no longer dependent on bonus for upgrades that they don't directly control. The agent gets a smaller bonus, but what if they don't do the upsell? The manager still needs that agent to be at the counter.
I think the key question is why the market rate for semi-skilled labour in the UK is at or just above minimum wage? Why has there been stagnation in the wages of Western European workers over the last 20-30 years?
That is a question that cannot be answered.
The returns from neoliberal globalization, deregulation, offshoring of labour and tax avoidance concentrated increasingly in the hands of owners of capital and of professionals in tech/finance and supporting sectors?
Aren't you aware that the labour market is one where unlimited supply can't* reduce price?
*As in, it would be immoral to believe that it could.
Why are you talking in code to me again?
I can take it straight.
It is immoral to believe that unlimited supply of labour to some portions of the labour market could be related to stagnant or even falling wages in those sectors.
Because the source of supply is foreigners.
It's simply a true statement that for any market based economy wages are not immune from supply and demand. Increase the supply of workers (regardless of where they happen to have been born) to a sector but not the demand for them and you create downward pressure on wages in that sector, all else being equal.
I suspect that those who voted for Boris to become Tory leader and thereby Prime Minister believed that the one thing he would deal with brilliantly would be PMQs, even blindfolded and standing on his head if necessary. Sadly they appear to have seriously misjudged him.
Based on his record of hiding in a fridge to avoid a journalist, and refusing to appear with Andrew Neil...
They bought a dud, but that was never a secret.
A dud that wiped you off the electoral map the very next day? One shudders to imagine what a non-dud might have achieved!
They bought someone who solved a problem for them but has created far bigger issues in his wake.
Yep Boris has delivered Brexit, the question is has he delivered something that will be successfully or something that will go down in history as a disaster and result in the UK splitting into separate bits.
I suspect it's likely to be the latter and it's inevitable while hoping (without hope) for the former. You expect the former and can't imagine the latter.
I suspect looking back in 2023 my prediction will be closer than yours.
A large Conservative majority is the strongest defence against holding another independence referendum at all - a hung Parliament or a Labour government dependent on the SNP would quite possibly have been forced to concede one.
Ultimately however the UK leaving the EU, or Scotland leaving the UK (if it happens), will be the result of a democratic process. Either one may turn out to be a disaster in the long term, but if you don't want disasters, then don't give people a vote...
What makes the mind boggle is what the best case scenario looks like for this. Lets assume a miracle occurs when setting up the electronics for the Goods Vehicle Movement Service. Lets assume that HMRC manages to recruit and train the army of red tape officials. So that by 1st January the system actually exists and works. Yes I know that the collected industrial knowledge of government computer schemes, IT professionals and logistics professionals just wet themselves laughing, but assume the experts are wrong.
In this best case scenario we have a truck laden with 35 double stacked pallets. Every class of item with its own separate customs declaration. Every class of item with its own standards declaration. With the costs both in time to complete plus the actual cost of the actual declaration. Logistics works on full vehicles so a lot of mixed loads exists. Trucks will need to be loaded so that they aren't mixing pallets of different standards and so that the stuff that may need inspecting is easy to access. That adds complexity space requirements and costs to the logistics operators before you even load the truck.
Truck sets off, electronic permits obtained. Arrives at the port. Has its customs forms inspected. Has its standards forms inspected. Has the actual product visually inspected as appropriate. Crosses the border onto the boat / train. How long will this take vs now and how much does that time cost? And when the inevitable human / system error occurs? Truck ends up parked for everything open inspection. Driver gets fined £300 for his Kent Access Permit being in error. More delay. More cost.
All because of a political decision to leave the EEA and CU. Save money and cut red tape they said. The opposite in reality. As this government pretends it isn't a direct continuation of the previous 10 years of Tory government can we look forward to Johnson's successor announcing they are going to save British business by cutting through this mountain of EU red tape...?
I think that's a bit over the top. Businesses deal with new compliance requirements all the time from GDPR to IR35 to dealing with VAT on both domestic and international sales.
We do this already for over half our trade at major ports and airports already - including time critical fresh supplies, like smoked salmon to the USA. A system will be worked out for the high volume Dover-Calais route too.
Where I agree there's a challenge is in transition and implementation. And we do need a deal.
Yep. I supect that even most Boris fans would accept that Hunt would have been a much better person to have in charge if they'd known a pandemic was coming. Boris is a dishonest and lazy bluffer, he would find being a PM challenging in the best of circumstances, having to deal with all the day-to-day stuff AND Brexit AND a pandemic is clearly too much for him.
Compare and contrast with the US. Over there is a president who makes more outrageous comments than Johnson’s IRA smear, and piles up the bullshit, bluster and waffle, on a daily basis. And his party follow him slavishly.
I’m have a very low view of the current Tory party, but they do not yet approach the sheer degradation of the Republicans.
Two teams tooling up on the enemy's enemy basis, cheered on by Yank fuckwits who think it will hasten some Jesus magic.
What are you on about?
Kushner has just spent three days in Abu Dhabi, sitting around a table with Arabs and Israelis, Jews and Muslims, people who have spent 70 years barely acknowledging each other’s existence, as they set up formal diplomatic and trade ties.
It’s genuinely ground-breaking, and one of very few big good news stories to come out of 2020.
My LinkedIn is going apeshit with new Amazon jobs.
Dozens and dozens of them.
Do you know anyone who works for them, what are they like as a white-collar employer?
Yes, but he only started 4 weeks ago. And it's in Berlin.
So far he likes it.
Interesting.
I’ve heard anecdotally that their dev guys get worked like video game devs, and the warehouse and delivery work is, well, warehouse and delivery work - but the project and office roles are a pretty good place to be.
Thankfully I just signed a new contract today, so will be busy for at least the next six months opening an industrial facility and large office space.
Yep. I supect that even most Boris fans would accept that Hunt would have been a much better person to have in charge if they'd known a pandemic was coming. Boris is a dishonest and lazy bluffer, he would find being a PM challenging in the best of circumstances, having to deal with all the day-to-day stuff AND Brexit AND a pandemic is clearly too much for him.
Hunt seems utterly - and understandably - relieved that he didn't have to deal with this epochal crisis...
On the car rental manager issue, I take the point, but what's the solution? 1. Raise manager pay? Seems to me that a more motivated manager retained for longer would have some additional value, but maybe I'm wrong. 2. Reduce minimum wage so agents get paid less, increasing the gap? Manager is still a shitty job at shitty pay. Unless the people who leave within 6 months are going back to being car agents/minimum wage elsewhere, they'll still leave. 3. Keep status quo? Maybe that works for the rental companies. If so, fine for them.
Presumably option 3 does work for the rental companies, or they'd pay managers better to keep them longer. So if you reduce minimum wage (option 2) what makes you think that rental manager pay would not also drop down to be the same amount above rental agent that it is now?
On the point about outsourcing social security obligations - why should governments subsidise businesses? Or, to put it another way, why should companies that pay more subsidise, through taxes, companies that pay less?
This is a valid point, but one we can turn around. Why should it be the responsibility of employers to ensure people have enough to live on, providing they pay the market rate for the job? That kind of social security is rightly the responsibility of governments. The fact is, governments will happily up minimum wage because they can sell it as the government delivering for the people, while not having to pay for any of it.
On car rental management, I think it's a mixture of (1) and (3) and mainly that managers' basic pay needs to be increased so that they are no longer dependent on bonus for upgrades that they don't directly control. The agent gets a smaller bonus, but what if they don't do the upsell? The manager still needs that agent to be at the counter.
I think the key question is why the market rate for semi-skilled labour in the UK is at or just above minimum wage? Why has there been stagnation in the wages of Western European workers over the last 20-30 years?
That is a question that cannot be answered.
Piketty is having a crack at it.
No - the answer is BadThink. Therefore we have no answer.
It's not just immigration. There have been thousands of small blows to the prospects of lower and lower-middle class people over the last 50 years.
Offshoring, Declining union strength and participation, Declining light and heavy industry, Rise of the service sector gig economy, Technology based efficiencies removing lower management The globalisation of supply chains and lower white collar work, etc etc
Capital has been winning since the late 70's, and inequality indicators in the western world show it.
I think free market economics was working well until the turn of the century, which is when Western performance started to stagnate.
That's really what most politics today is about. And economics and cultural issues are linked because as our economic dominance diminishes not only do we not get much richer but we're also less able to resist cultural change including mass international migration.
You can't dictate the terms of how the world works if you don't have the cash.
Compare and contrast with the US. Over there is a president who makes more outrageous comments than Johnson’s IRA smear, and piles up the bullshit, bluster and waffle, on a daily basis. And his party follow him slavishly.
I’m have a very low view of the current Tory party, but they do not yet approach the sheer degradation of the Republicans.
Give them time.
I'd rather not.
Me neither.
Ah, welcome to non-Tory supporter life. You'll find time passes very very slowly.
He did this yesterday over HS2 in PMQs as well. He bends to the slightest criticism as he can't stand the idea he might make an unpopular decision and that someone might not like Boris.
For a while I've been posting detailed factual descriptions of how my industry sees its prospects post no-deal. Apparently its all just "moaning". My advice - stock up. Thank goodness I haven't just taken on an EU client with the task of launching them into the UK market...
Maybe over-sanguine, but if there is a 6 month moratorium on inbound UK border controls, I would expect stock to flow through. Likely to be price rises to cover extra expenses of empty loads on the return trip, admin costs and any import tariffs.
On the car rental manager issue, I take the point, but what's the solution? 1. Raise manager pay? Seems to me that a more motivated manager retained for longer would have some additional value, but maybe I'm wrong. 2. Reduce minimum wage so agents get paid less, increasing the gap? Manager is still a shitty job at shitty pay. Unless the people who leave within 6 months are going back to being car agents/minimum wage elsewhere, they'll still leave. 3. Keep status quo? Maybe that works for the rental companies. If so, fine for them.
Presumably option 3 does work for the rental companies, or they'd pay managers better to keep them longer. So if you reduce minimum wage (option 2) what makes you think that rental manager pay would not also drop down to be the same amount above rental agent that it is now?
On the point about outsourcing social security obligations - why should governments subsidise businesses? Or, to put it another way, why should companies that pay more subsidise, through taxes, companies that pay less?
This is a valid point, but one we can turn around. Why should it be the responsibility of employers to ensure people have enough to live on, providing they pay the market rate for the job? That kind of social security is rightly the responsibility of governments. The fact is, governments will happily up minimum wage because they can sell it as the government delivering for the people, while not having to pay for any of it.
On car rental management, I think it's a mixture of (1) and (3) and mainly that managers' basic pay needs to be increased so that they are no longer dependent on bonus for upgrades that they don't directly control. The agent gets a smaller bonus, but what if they don't do the upsell? The manager still needs that agent to be at the counter.
I think the key question is why the market rate for semi-skilled labour in the UK is at or just above minimum wage? Why has there been stagnation in the wages of Western European workers over the last 20-30 years?
That is a question that cannot be answered.
Piketty is having a crack at it.
No - the answer is BadThink. Therefore we have no answer.
It's not just immigration. There have been thousands of small blows to the prospects of lower and lower-middle class people over the last 50 years.
Offshoring, Declining union strength and participation, Declining light and heavy industry, Rise of the service sector gig economy, Technology based efficiencies removing lower management The globalisation of supply chains and lower white collar work, etc etc
Capital has been winning since the late 70's, and inequality indicators in the western world show it.
I think free market economics was working well until the turn of the century, which is when Western performance started to stagnate.
That's really what most politics today is about. And economics and cultural issues are linked because as our economic dominance diminishes not only do we not get much richer but we're also less able to resist cultural change including mass international migration.
You can't dictate the terms of how the world works if you don't have the cash.
Bill Clinton bet that normalising trade relations with China would bring about democratisation. It hasn't worked out as he hoped.
On the car rental manager issue, I take the point, but what's the solution? 1. Raise manager pay? Seems to me that a more motivated manager retained for longer would have some additional value, but maybe I'm wrong. 2. Reduce minimum wage so agents get paid less, increasing the gap? Manager is still a shitty job at shitty pay. Unless the people who leave within 6 months are going back to being car agents/minimum wage elsewhere, they'll still leave. 3. Keep status quo? Maybe that works for the rental companies. If so, fine for them.
Presumably option 3 does work for the rental companies, or they'd pay managers better to keep them longer. So if you reduce minimum wage (option 2) what makes you think that rental manager pay would not also drop down to be the same amount above rental agent that it is now?
On the point about outsourcing social security obligations - why should governments subsidise businesses? Or, to put it another way, why should companies that pay more subsidise, through taxes, companies that pay less?
This is a valid point, but one we can turn around. Why should it be the responsibility of employers to ensure people have enough to live on, providing they pay the market rate for the job? That kind of social security is rightly the responsibility of governments. The fact is, governments will happily up minimum wage because they can sell it as the government delivering for the people, while not having to pay for any of it.
On car rental management, I think it's a mixture of (1) and (3) and mainly that managers' basic pay needs to be increased so that they are no longer dependent on bonus for upgrades that they don't directly control. The agent gets a smaller bonus, but what if they don't do the upsell? The manager still needs that agent to be at the counter.
I think the key question is why the market rate for semi-skilled labour in the UK is at or just above minimum wage? Why has there been stagnation in the wages of Western European workers over the last 20-30 years?
That is a question that cannot be answered.
Piketty is having a crack at it.
No - the answer is BadThink. Therefore we have no answer.
It's not just immigration. There have been thousands of small blows to the prospects of lower and lower-middle class people over the last 50 years.
Offshoring, Declining union strength and participation, Declining light and heavy industry, Rise of the service sector gig economy, Technology based efficiencies removing lower management The globalisation of supply chains and lower white collar work, etc etc
Capital has been winning since the late 70's, and inequality indicators in the western world show it.
I think free market economics was working well until the turn of the century, which is when Western performance started to stagnate.
That's really what most politics today is about. And economics and cultural issues are linked because as our economic dominance diminishes not only do we not get much richer but we're also less able to resist cultural change including mass international migration.
You can't dictate the terms of how the world works if you don't have the cash.
If you look at productivity in skilled work, then you get numbers that say *London* is cheaper than *Mumbai*. A company I worked for did a report on this across the various business units around the work
The productivity cost has levelled up.
Using cheap labour instead of investing in increasing worker productivity is a problem. Importing flesh robots is simpler than debugging an automated production line.
On the car rental manager issue, I take the point, but what's the solution? 1. Raise manager pay? Seems to me that a more motivated manager retained for longer would have some additional value, but maybe I'm wrong. 2. Reduce minimum wage so agents get paid less, increasing the gap? Manager is still a shitty job at shitty pay. Unless the people who leave within 6 months are going back to being car agents/minimum wage elsewhere, they'll still leave. 3. Keep status quo? Maybe that works for the rental companies. If so, fine for them.
Presumably option 3 does work for the rental companies, or they'd pay managers better to keep them longer. So if you reduce minimum wage (option 2) what makes you think that rental manager pay would not also drop down to be the same amount above rental agent that it is now?
On the point about outsourcing social security obligations - why should governments subsidise businesses? Or, to put it another way, why should companies that pay more subsidise, through taxes, companies that pay less?
This is a valid point, but one we can turn around. Why should it be the responsibility of employers to ensure people have enough to live on, providing they pay the market rate for the job? That kind of social security is rightly the responsibility of governments. The fact is, governments will happily up minimum wage because they can sell it as the government delivering for the people, while not having to pay for any of it.
On car rental management, I think it's a mixture of (1) and (3) and mainly that managers' basic pay needs to be increased so that they are no longer dependent on bonus for upgrades that they don't directly control. The agent gets a smaller bonus, but what if they don't do the upsell? The manager still needs that agent to be at the counter.
I think the key question is why the market rate for semi-skilled labour in the UK is at or just above minimum wage? Why has there been stagnation in the wages of Western European workers over the last 20-30 years?
That is a question that cannot be answered.
Piketty is having a crack at it.
No - the answer is BadThink. Therefore we have no answer.
It's not just immigration. There have been thousands of small blows to the prospects of lower and lower-middle class people over the last 50 years.
Offshoring, Declining union strength and participation, Declining light and heavy industry, Rise of the service sector gig economy, Technology based efficiencies removing lower management The globalisation of supply chains and lower white collar work, etc etc
Capital has been winning since the late 70's, and inequality indicators in the western world show it.
Much of that is enabled by having infinite supply of onshore labour.
I keep making this point - if you look at productivity cost, offshoring is marginal for most things. Often more expensive. Existing supply chains are China's big advantage, now. Not labour costs.
Being able to bring cheap labour onshore, where the benefits of healthcare, law, infrastructiure etc are available is the big enabler.
And when the new help starts getting bolshy and demands the minimum wage or statutory protection, they can be replaced. Which keeps the employers from having to adopt that extremist thing... what's it called? oh yes. Pay rises.
Firstly the labour supply is not infinite for the majority of UK jobs. There are levels of skills and qualifications required to be employed within the UKs developed workforce, But yes immigration from the EU has hit certain sectors harder than others.
I'm arguing that it is not just the menial staff who are affected by the UK's wage stagnation. It is the majority of low wage employment. And it is soon to be the lower-middle wage earners as white collar outsourcing becomes derigour.
China's offshoring boom happened because of capitals 'rational' desire to find lower wage economies to reduce their cost. The industry of the western world did not fly to the east, it was incentivised to move. Senior management chose to upsticks and leave. And in doing so abandoned the western lower classes who were once the bedrock of their businesses.
You say that workers can be replaced to quell demands for better conditions. I ask why is this acceptable? And I'm sure that the squeezing of collective bargaining rights has been instrumental in this.
I know you cannot fight globalisation. But the capital owners in the west no longer need the labour of the western world.
It's a complex debate but just to add one point: if outscoring jobs becomes that widespread then all Western countries will go full on protectionist.
You'll have all the working and middle classes worried about the same thing and that's the vast majority of those who vote.
'Hearing the alarm'? Sometimes I'd give a thousand quid to be able to ignore it and go back to sleep. As for 'Not having to make lunch' - my option usually entailed trudging to a nearby garage in the driving rain to spend £7 on an M&S Meal Deal. Fuck that.
I haven't had to worry about an alarm in 6 months.
Not that I sleep in anyway with a baby but my zone can be between 6.15-7.30am every day and I never know which. Plus I can have a leisurely breakfast and shower from 8.15-9am once I get back from the nursery.
The wierd thing is that everyone knew this 14 months ago, but he still got elected leader and won a large majority in the GE.
And we wonder how Americans can choose Trump to be their president
This article I posted above is insightful. The disturbing thing, whether you are a Conservative or not, is that current Conservative voters don't care about integrity and competence. Labour can't win on those grounds.
What makes the mind boggle is what the best case scenario looks like for this. Lets assume a miracle occurs when setting up the electronics for the Goods Vehicle Movement Service. Lets assume that HMRC manages to recruit and train the army of red tape officials. So that by 1st January the system actually exists and works. Yes I know that the collected industrial knowledge of government computer schemes, IT professionals and logistics professionals just wet themselves laughing, but assume the experts are wrong.
In this best case scenario we have a truck laden with 35 double stacked pallets. Every class of item with its own separate customs declaration. Every class of item with its own standards declaration. With the costs both in time to complete plus the actual cost of the actual declaration. Logistics works on full vehicles so a lot of mixed loads exists. Trucks will need to be loaded so that they aren't mixing pallets of different standards and so that the stuff that may need inspecting is easy to access. That adds complexity space requirements and costs to the logistics operators before you even load the truck.
Truck sets off, electronic permits obtained. Arrives at the port. Has its customs forms inspected. Has its standards forms inspected. Has the actual product visually inspected as appropriate. Crosses the border onto the boat / train. How long will this take vs now and how much does that time cost? And when the inevitable human / system error occurs? Truck ends up parked for everything open inspection. Driver gets fined £300 for his Kent Access Permit being in error. More delay. More cost.
All because of a political decision to leave the EEA and CU. Save money and cut red tape they said. The opposite in reality. As this government pretends it isn't a direct continuation of the previous 10 years of Tory government can we look forward to Johnson's successor announcing they are going to save British business by cutting through this mountain of EU red tape...?
I think that's a bit over the top. Businesses deal with new compliance requirements all the time from GDPR to IR35 to dealing with VAT on both domestic and international sales.
We do this already for over half our trade at major ports and airports already - including time critical fresh supplies, like smoked salmon to the USA. A system will be worked out for the high volume Dover-Calais route too.
Where I agree there's a challenge is in transition and implementation. And we do need a deal.
My right hand has only two fingers and a thumb and I can manage perfectly well so I am going to cut off two fingers of my left hand also.
For sheer, unbridled incompetence, the Johnson government is now well set to outperform even Attlee's Tanganyika groundnut scheme, previously the gold standard. They are taking us into a massive mess on 1st January, whereby 80,000 trucks a day carrying four-fifths of our food imports will be expected to comply with a bureaucratic nightmare of customs declarations using no less than ten brand-new computer systems, none of which has been tested, and - wait for it, this is the best bit - three of which are still in the design phase. Yes, you read that right: in just four months, our food supplies will depend on computer systems which don't yet exist.
Note that this is all true irrespective of whether there is a last-minute trade deal with the EU.
This really is utterly staggering, but it's not a surprise. Experts have been warning about it for many months. To have any chance of avoiding chaos, by now we should have been months into large-scale testing by the haulage industry. Instead the systems aren't yet written.
How on earth did we end up with a government - a Conservative government, for heaven's sake - so utterly out with the fairies?
Two teams tooling up on the enemy's enemy basis, cheered on by Yank fuckwits who think it will hasten some Jesus magic.
What are you on about?
Kushner has just spent three days in Abu Dhabi, sitting around a table with Arabs and Israelis, Jews and Muslims, people who have spent 70 years barely acknowledging each other’s existence, as they set up formal diplomatic and trade ties.
It’s genuinely ground-breaking, and one of very few big good news stories to come out of 2020.
Really? Or is it the Yanks piling in on one side of the Middle East cold war (Israel+Saudi+UAE+Egypt versus Iran+Qatar+Houthi Yemen). I'll leave out Turkey from the Iranian side, because Erdogan is a duplicitous and psychotic turd even in this company.
On the agenda: weapons sales, apartheid-style societies, poleaxing the Shia.
Not on the agenda: nuclear non-proliferation, extrajudicial assassination of journalists, free press.
My LinkedIn is going apeshit with new Amazon jobs.
Dozens and dozens of them.
Do you know anyone who works for them, what are they like as a white-collar employer?
Yes, but he only started 4 weeks ago. And it's in Berlin.
So far he likes it.
Interesting.
I’ve heard anecdotally that their dev guys get worked like video game devs, and the warehouse and delivery work is, well, warehouse and delivery work - but the project and office roles are a pretty good place to be.
Thankfully I just signed a new contract today, so will be busy for at least the next six months opening an industrial facility and large office space.
Wait till they are doing Saturn V scaled launches. Every week.....
Indeed. Yet another nailed landing, I could watch these all day. Quite amazing how quickly they’ve moved on the technology of what is quite literally rocket science, in such a short time.
On the car rental manager issue, I take the point, but what's the solution? 1. Raise manager pay? Seems to me that a more motivated manager retained for longer would have some additional value, but maybe I'm wrong. 2. Reduce minimum wage so agents get paid less, increasing the gap? Manager is still a shitty job at shitty pay. Unless the people who leave within 6 months are going back to being car agents/minimum wage elsewhere, they'll still leave. 3. Keep status quo? Maybe that works for the rental companies. If so, fine for them.
Presumably option 3 does work for the rental companies, or they'd pay managers better to keep them longer. So if you reduce minimum wage (option 2) what makes you think that rental manager pay would not also drop down to be the same amount above rental agent that it is now?
On the point about outsourcing social security obligations - why should governments subsidise businesses? Or, to put it another way, why should companies that pay more subsidise, through taxes, companies that pay less?
This is a valid point, but one we can turn around. Why should it be the responsibility of employers to ensure people have enough to live on, providing they pay the market rate for the job? That kind of social security is rightly the responsibility of governments. The fact is, governments will happily up minimum wage because they can sell it as the government delivering for the people, while not having to pay for any of it.
On car rental management, I think it's a mixture of (1) and (3) and mainly that managers' basic pay needs to be increased so that they are no longer dependent on bonus for upgrades that they don't directly control. The agent gets a smaller bonus, but what if they don't do the upsell? The manager still needs that agent to be at the counter.
I think the key question is why the market rate for semi-skilled labour in the UK is at or just above minimum wage? Why has there been stagnation in the wages of Western European workers over the last 20-30 years?
That is a question that cannot be answered.
Piketty is having a crack at it.
No - the answer is BadThink. Therefore we have no answer.
It's not just immigration. There have been thousands of small blows to the prospects of lower and lower-middle class people over the last 50 years.
Offshoring, Declining union strength and participation, Declining light and heavy industry, Rise of the service sector gig economy, Technology based efficiencies removing lower management The globalisation of supply chains and lower white collar work, etc etc
Capital has been winning since the late 70's, and inequality indicators in the western world show it.
I think free market economics was working well until the turn of the century, which is when Western performance started to stagnate.
That's really what most politics today is about. And economics and cultural issues are linked because as our economic dominance diminishes not only do we not get much richer but we're also less able to resist cultural change including mass international migration.
You can't dictate the terms of how the world works if you don't have the cash.
Bill Clinton bet that normalising trade relations with China would bring about democratisation. It hasn't worked out as he hoped.
To be fair to him this was a broad political consensus at the time.
On the car rental manager issue, I take the point, but what's the solution? 1. Raise manager pay? Seems to me that a more motivated manager retained for longer would have some additional value, but maybe I'm wrong. 2. Reduce minimum wage so agents get paid less, increasing the gap? Manager is still a shitty job at shitty pay. Unless the people who leave within 6 months are going back to being car agents/minimum wage elsewhere, they'll still leave. 3. Keep status quo? Maybe that works for the rental companies. If so, fine for them.
Presumably option 3 does work for the rental companies, or they'd pay managers better to keep them longer. So if you reduce minimum wage (option 2) what makes you think that rental manager pay would not also drop down to be the same amount above rental agent that it is now?
On the point about outsourcing social security obligations - why should governments subsidise businesses? Or, to put it another way, why should companies that pay more subsidise, through taxes, companies that pay less?
This is a valid point, but one we can turn around. Why should it be the responsibility of employers to ensure people have enough to live on, providing they pay the market rate for the job? That kind of social security is rightly the responsibility of governments. The fact is, governments will happily up minimum wage because they can sell it as the government delivering for the people, while not having to pay for any of it.
On car rental management, I think it's a mixture of (1) and (3) and mainly that managers' basic pay needs to be increased so that they are no longer dependent on bonus for upgrades that they don't directly control. The agent gets a smaller bonus, but what if they don't do the upsell? The manager still needs that agent to be at the counter.
I think the key question is why the market rate for semi-skilled labour in the UK is at or just above minimum wage? Why has there been stagnation in the wages of Western European workers over the last 20-30 years?
That is a question that cannot be answered.
Piketty is having a crack at it.
No - the answer is BadThink. Therefore we have no answer.
It's not just immigration. There have been thousands of small blows to the prospects of lower and lower-middle class people over the last 50 years.
Offshoring, Declining union strength and participation, Declining light and heavy industry, Rise of the service sector gig economy, Technology based efficiencies removing lower management The globalisation of supply chains and lower white collar work, etc etc
Capital has been winning since the late 70's, and inequality indicators in the western world show it.
I think free market economics was working well until the turn of the century, which is when Western performance started to stagnate.
That's really what most politics today is about. And economics and cultural issues are linked because as our economic dominance diminishes not only do we not get much richer but we're also less able to resist cultural change including mass international migration.
You can't dictate the terms of how the world works if you don't have the cash.
I think what has happened is that around about the time of the IMF programme the UK started dismantling the constraints on capitalism that had been put in place after WW2, a process that was accelerated under Thatcher and has not been meaningfully rolled back by any of her successors. That has led to an economy that has favoured capital and those with education - and in a society like the UK that retains feudal characteristics that has favoured the well connected too. Initially the main losers were those most favoured by the post war setup - organised Labour in the public and private sectors. And because capitalism is a dynamic form of economic organisation, there were economic gains that disguised the extent of the redistribution towards the top at first. Some in the middle and towards the bottom could be bought off. But council houses can only be sold once, to give one example. And so the children and grandchildren of those who bought their council house are stuck paying half their income in rent, unable to afford the same standard of living as their parents or to save for a deposit on a place of their own. It's not a case of the system stopping working well - it continues to work well for the people it's meant to work well for, believe me! It's just that over time the number of people excluded from its benefits increases, until the number of losers is so big that it takes in the median voter. At this point the people who want the system to continue have to come up with a distraction, so the median voter doesn't vote to change the system. Hence Brexit. Hence immigration. Hence dinghies in the channel and migrants. Hence "cultural Marxism". Hence Rule Britannia. Anything to keep the plates spinning and prevent people from recognising what is really going on.
For sheer, unbridled incompetence, the Johnson government is now well set to outperform even Attlee's Tanganyika groundnut scheme, previously the gold standard. They are taking us into a massive mess on 1st January, whereby 80,000 trucks a day carrying four-fifths of our food imports will be expected to comply with a bureaucratic nightmare of customs declarations using no less than ten brand-new computer systems, none of which has been tested, and - wait for it, this is the best bit - three of which are still in the design phase. Yes, you read that right: in just four months, our food supplies will depend on computer systems which don't yet exist.
Note that this is all true irrespective of whether there is a last-minute trade deal with the EU.
This really is utterly staggering, but it's not a surprise. Experts have been warning about it for many months. To have any chance of avoiding chaos, by now we should have been months into large-scale testing by the haulage industry. Instead the systems aren't yet written.
How on earth did we end up with a government - a Conservative government, for heaven's sake - so utterly out with the fairies?
What's really inexplicable is that a pandemic is the perfect excuse for a delay. Boris could even plausibly say he didn't want a delay but the pandemic made it impossible to leave just yet. It baffles me, only a tiny fringe of Brexiteers are really going to worry about us taking a bit more time given the circumstances.
On the car rental manager issue, I take the point, but what's the solution? 1. Raise manager pay? Seems to me that a more motivated manager retained for longer would have some additional value, but maybe I'm wrong. 2. Reduce minimum wage so agents get paid less, increasing the gap? Manager is still a shitty job at shitty pay. Unless the people who leave within 6 months are going back to being car agents/minimum wage elsewhere, they'll still leave. 3. Keep status quo? Maybe that works for the rental companies. If so, fine for them.
Presumably option 3 does work for the rental companies, or they'd pay managers better to keep them longer. So if you reduce minimum wage (option 2) what makes you think that rental manager pay would not also drop down to be the same amount above rental agent that it is now?
On the point about outsourcing social security obligations - why should governments subsidise businesses? Or, to put it another way, why should companies that pay more subsidise, through taxes, companies that pay less?
This is a valid point, but one we can turn around. Why should it be the responsibility of employers to ensure people have enough to live on, providing they pay the market rate for the job? That kind of social security is rightly the responsibility of governments. The fact is, governments will happily up minimum wage because they can sell it as the government delivering for the people, while not having to pay for any of it.
On car rental management, I think it's a mixture of (1) and (3) and mainly that managers' basic pay needs to be increased so that they are no longer dependent on bonus for upgrades that they don't directly control. The agent gets a smaller bonus, but what if they don't do the upsell? The manager still needs that agent to be at the counter.
I think the key question is why the market rate for semi-skilled labour in the UK is at or just above minimum wage? Why has there been stagnation in the wages of Western European workers over the last 20-30 years?
That is a question that cannot be answered.
Piketty is having a crack at it.
No - the answer is BadThink. Therefore we have no answer.
It's not just immigration. There have been thousands of small blows to the prospects of lower and lower-middle class people over the last 50 years.
Offshoring, Declining union strength and participation, Declining light and heavy industry, Rise of the service sector gig economy, Technology based efficiencies removing lower management The globalisation of supply chains and lower white collar work, etc etc
Capital has been winning since the late 70's, and inequality indicators in the western world show it.
I think free market economics was working well until the turn of the century, which is when Western performance started to stagnate.
That's really what most politics today is about. And economics and cultural issues are linked because as our economic dominance diminishes not only do we not get much richer but we're also less able to resist cultural change including mass international migration.
You can't dictate the terms of how the world works if you don't have the cash.
I think what has happened is that around about the time of the IMF programme the UK started dismantling the constraints on capitalism that had been put in place after WW2, a process that was accelerated under Thatcher and has not been meaningfully rolled back by any of her successors. That has led to an economy that has favoured capital and those with education - and in a society like the UK that retains feudal characteristics that has favoured the well connected too. Initially the main losers were those most favoured by the post war setup - organised Labour in the public and private sectors. And because capitalism is a dynamic form of economic organisation, there were economic gains that disguised the extent of the redistribution towards the top at first. Some in the middle and towards the bottom could be bought off. But council houses can only be sold once, to give one example. And so the children and grandchildren of those who bought their council house are stuck paying half their income in rent, unable to afford the same standard of living as their parents or to save for a deposit on a place of their own. It's not a case of the system stopping working well - it continues to work well for the people it's meant to work well for, believe me! It's just that over time the number of people excluded from its benefits increases, until the number of losers is so big that it takes in the median voter. At this point the people who want the system to continue have to come up with a distraction, so the median voter doesn't vote to change the system. Hence Brexit. Hence immigration. Hence dinghies in the channel and migrants. Hence "cultural Marxism". Hence Rule Britannia. Anything to keep the plates spinning and prevent people from recognising what is really going on.
Excellent post. Also the reason why I have sympathy with "left behinds" that voted for Leave and Johnson, despite both being so inimical to their interest.
The wierd thing is that everyone knew this 14 months ago, but he still got elected leader and won a large majority in the GE.
And we wonder how Americans can choose Trump to be their president
This article I posted above is insightful. The disturbing thing, whether you are a Conservative or not, is that current Conservative voters don't care about integrity and competence. Labour can't win on those grounds.
'Hearing the alarm'? Sometimes I'd give a thousand quid to be able to ignore it and go back to sleep. As for 'Not having to make lunch' - my option usually entailed trudging to a nearby garage in the driving rain to spend £7 on an M&S Meal Deal. Fuck that.
I haven't had to worry about an alarm in 6 months.
Not that I sleep in anyway with a baby but my zone can be between 6.15-7.30am every day and I never know which. Plus I can have a leisurely breakfast and shower from 8.15-9am once I get back from the nursery.
I love that.
Worth remembering that you are part of 20% (and shrinking), WFH full time
For sheer, unbridled incompetence, the Johnson government is now well set to outperform even Attlee's Tanganyika groundnut scheme, previously the gold standard. They are taking us into a massive mess on 1st January, whereby 80,000 trucks a day carrying four-fifths of our food imports will be expected to comply with a bureaucratic nightmare of customs declarations using no less than ten brand-new computer systems, none of which has been tested, and - wait for it, this is the best bit - three of which are still in the design phase. Yes, you read that right: in just four months, our food supplies will depend on computer systems which don't yet exist.
Note that this is all true irrespective of whether there is a last-minute trade deal with the EU.
This really is utterly staggering, but it's not a surprise. Experts have been warning about it for many months. To have any chance of avoiding chaos, by now we should have been months into large-scale testing by the haulage industry. Instead the systems aren't yet written.
How on earth did we end up with a government - a Conservative government, for heaven's sake - so utterly out with the fairies?
What's really inexplicable is that a pandemic is the perfect excuse for a delay. Boris could even plausibly say he didn't want a delay but the pandemic made it impossible to leave just yet. It baffles me, only a tiny fringe of Brexiteers are really going to worry about us taking a bit more time given the circumstances.
To further add to the above. It isn't a Conservative government. It isn't even a Brexit government. It is a tiny fringe of Brexiteers' government. Thus Brexit is more important than the economy or pandemic or anything else at all. That is the explanation. It is only baffling to the uninitiated.
For sheer, unbridled incompetence, the Johnson government is now well set to outperform even Attlee's Tanganyika groundnut scheme, previously the gold standard. They are taking us into a massive mess on 1st January, whereby 80,000 trucks a day carrying four-fifths of our food imports will be expected to comply with a bureaucratic nightmare of customs declarations using no less than ten brand-new computer systems, none of which has been tested, and - wait for it, this is the best bit - three of which are still in the design phase. Yes, you read that right: in just four months, our food supplies will depend on computer systems which don't yet exist.
Note that this is all true irrespective of whether there is a last-minute trade deal with the EU.
This really is utterly staggering, but it's not a surprise. Experts have been warning about it for many months. To have any chance of avoiding chaos, by now we should have been months into large-scale testing by the haulage industry. Instead the systems aren't yet written.
How on earth did we end up with a government - a Conservative government, for heaven's sake - so utterly out with the fairies?
What's really inexplicable is that a pandemic is the perfect excuse for a delay. Boris could even plausibly say he didn't want a delay but the pandemic made it impossible to leave just yet. It baffles me, only a tiny fringe of Brexiteers are really going to worry about us taking a bit more time given the circumstances.
He - presumably - doesn't want someone else to be the Great Helmsman. He wants to slide down his rope and wave his little Union Flags with the fireworks bursting all around on Brexit Day (or at least the one where the plug really is pulled).
Edit: and he is - perhaps, from what PBers and others say - in a race with his own, not so much mortality but morbidity in the medical sense, from catching that very virus.
Two teams tooling up on the enemy's enemy basis, cheered on by Yank fuckwits who think it will hasten some Jesus magic.
What are you on about?
Kushner has just spent three days in Abu Dhabi, sitting around a table with Arabs and Israelis, Jews and Muslims, people who have spent 70 years barely acknowledging each other’s existence, as they set up formal diplomatic and trade ties.
It’s genuinely ground-breaking, and one of very few big good news stories to come out of 2020.
Really? Or is it the Yanks piling in on one side of the Middle East cold war (Israel+Saudi+UAE+Egypt versus Iran+Qatar+Houthi Yemen). I'll leave out Turkey from the Iranian side, because Erdogan is a duplicitous and psychotic turd even in this company.
On the agenda: weapons sales, apartheid-style societies, poleaxing the Shia.
Not on the agenda: nuclear non-proliferation, extrajudicial assassination of journalists, free press.
Err, not quite. On the agenda were diplomatic ties, embassies opening, communications links trade links and plans for companies in both countries to invest in the other.
And yes, the UAE has strong links to the Palestinian communities, the wider plan is to get the whole region involved in making peace. The US delegation also spoke to Oman, Bahrain and even Saudi Arabia about the normalisation of relations with Israel.
Wait till they are doing Saturn V scaled launches. Every week.....
Indeed. Yet another nailed landing, I could watch these all day. Quite amazing how quickly they’ve moved on the technology of what is quite literally rocket science, in such a short time.
I think the long term value of SpaceX is staggering. Truly global quick internet (Loads of places have crap service at the moment) is the medium term cash raiser (Perhaps Starlink will be floated publicly ?) but I think the real monetisation will come when SpaceX gains the capability to mine asteroids. Specifically rare earths. He can even bake them back into his Tesla batteries
And yes, the UAE has strong links to the Palestinian communities, the wider plan is to get the whole region involved in making peace. The US delegation also spoke to Oman, Bahrain and even Saudi Arabia about the normalisation of relations with Israel.
Yep. I supect that even most Boris fans would accept that Hunt would have been a much better person to have in charge if they'd known a pandemic was coming. Boris is a dishonest and lazy bluffer, he would find being a PM challenging in the best of circumstances, having to deal with all the day-to-day stuff AND Brexit AND a pandemic is clearly too much for him.
So we can either take this as a Republican-biased outlier or...
It's an internal poll. I treat this with the same contempt I treat internal Dem polls.
Minnesota definitely looks to be leaning republican, I expect Biden will hold mind. At any rate team Joe knows it needs to play defense here unlike Wisconsin 2016, ignored by the Clinton campaign.
My Youtube feed has served up yesterday's PMQs. Blimey, hadn't realised it was *that* bad. Not just what he said. But the utterly incoherent rambling way that he said it.
He did this yesterday over HS2 in PMQs as well. He bends to the slightest criticism as he can't stand the idea he might make an unpopular decision and that someone might not like Boris.
That's not what being a PM is about.
Not in the slightest.
For one thing there's criticism on this subject from both sides. He's facing a lot of criticism from the Mail and others for the lack of a get back to the office campaign... And if he's standing up to that criticism then that is a good thing.
For another thing there never has been a back to the office campaign. Yes someone, unclear who, floated the idea to the Telegraph and others over the weekend but it was a kite flying exercise that was immediately shot down by the Health Secretary and was almost universally panned on here as a terrible, terrible idea.
If something is a terrible idea then not going ahead with it is a good thing not a bad thing. I said here last weekend to CHB and others this whole story was media garbage and I did not believe for a second this campaign would ever see the light of day ... but that if it did I would condemn it. So I am glad to have been shown to be right.
Every government throughout all of time has had kites flown, that doesn't make them policy or inevitable and nor does it make it a u turn if it's not proceeded with. Sometimes the kite is no more than that someone who wants a change of policy overbriefs to a friendly journalist to try and show its popular to make it happen. Well the opposite resulted. Good thing it's not happening.
Comments
https://twitter.com/GuidoFawkes/status/1301494284403781635?s=09
Yep Boris has delivered Brexit, the question is has he delivered something that will be successfully or something that will go down in history as a disaster and result in the UK splitting into separate bits.
I suspect it's likely to be the latter and it's inevitable while hoping (without hope) for the former. You expect the former and can't imagine the latter.
I suspect looking back in 2023 my prediction will be closer than yours.
Two teams tooling up on the enemy's enemy basis, cheered on by Yank fuckwits who think it will hasten some Jesus magic.
Did you not say that China advantage is now its supply chains! That is an advantage the west had and that was given up for short term profit. Like in chip manufacture, the chances of China and Taiwans dominance in the silicon world being overhauled by a resurgent west is v-small. 'They' have the productivity gains through their infrastructure now and 'we' do not.
Wouldn't the best way to avoid 19th century work practise to do what the workers of the 19-20th centurys did and embrace collective bargaining?
So far he likes it.
Kushner has just spent three days in Abu Dhabi, sitting around a table with Arabs and Israelis, Jews and Muslims, people who have spent 70 years barely acknowledging each other’s existence, as they set up formal diplomatic and trade ties.
It’s genuinely ground-breaking, and one of very few big good news stories to come out of 2020.
https://twitter.com/TheNationalUAE/status/1300432824718307328
Ultimately however the UK leaving the EU, or Scotland leaving the UK (if it happens), will be the result of a democratic process. Either one may turn out to be a disaster in the long term, but if you don't want disasters, then don't give people a vote...
We do this already for over half our trade at major ports and airports already - including time critical fresh supplies, like smoked salmon to the USA. A system will be worked out for the high volume Dover-Calais route too.
Where I agree there's a challenge is in transition and implementation. And we do need a deal.
A genuinely Unionist Government at Westminster is the strongest defence.
Sadly the Little Englanders currently in charge is the strongest argument the SNP have ever had.
https://thebulwark.com/why-this-pro-life-conservative-is-voting-for-biden/
I’ve heard anecdotally that their dev guys get worked like video game devs, and the warehouse and delivery work is, well, warehouse and delivery work - but the project and office roles are a pretty good place to be.
Thankfully I just signed a new contract today, so will be busy for at least the next six months opening an industrial facility and large office space.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/jeremy-hunt-dodged-bullet-losing-boris-johnson-a4538111.html
That's really what most politics today is about. And economics and cultural issues are linked because as our economic dominance diminishes not only do we not get much richer but we're also less able to resist cultural change including mass international migration.
You can't dictate the terms of how the world works if you don't have the cash.
A trusted node–free eight-user metropolitan quantum communication network
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/36/eaba0959
He did this yesterday over HS2 in PMQs as well. He bends to the slightest criticism as he can't stand the idea he might make an unpopular decision and that someone might not like Boris.
That's not what being a PM is about.
Exporters are screwed however.
The productivity cost has levelled up.
Using cheap labour instead of investing in increasing worker productivity is a problem. Importing flesh robots is simpler than debugging an automated production line.
https://twitter.com/tedlieu/status/1301405207453003776
You'll have all the working and middle classes worried about the same thing and that's the vast majority of those who vote.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=_j4xR7LMCGY
Not that I sleep in anyway with a baby but my zone can be between 6.15-7.30am every day and I never know which. Plus I can have a leisurely breakfast and shower from 8.15-9am once I get back from the nursery.
I love that.
https://twitter.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1301187599864864771
So we can either take this as a Republican-biased outlier or...
What's the big deal?
Note that this is all true irrespective of whether there is a last-minute trade deal with the EU.
This really is utterly staggering, but it's not a surprise. Experts have been warning about it for many months. To have any chance of avoiding chaos, by now we should have been months into large-scale testing by the haulage industry. Instead the systems aren't yet written.
How on earth did we end up with a government - a Conservative government, for heaven's sake - so utterly out with the fairies?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-03/u-k-races-to-fix-critical-gaps-exposed-in-brexit-border-plan
On the agenda: weapons sales, apartheid-style societies, poleaxing the Shia.
Not on the agenda: nuclear non-proliferation, extrajudicial assassination of journalists, free press.
Big day tomorrow with payrolls....
It's a Brexit Government.
By definition, away with the fairies...
Initially the main losers were those most favoured by the post war setup - organised Labour in the public and private sectors. And because capitalism is a dynamic form of economic organisation, there were economic gains that disguised the extent of the redistribution towards the top at first. Some in the middle and towards the bottom could be bought off. But council houses can only be sold once, to give one example. And so the children and grandchildren of those who bought their council house are stuck paying half their income in rent, unable to afford the same standard of living as their parents or to save for a deposit on a place of their own.
It's not a case of the system stopping working well - it continues to work well for the people it's meant to work well for, believe me! It's just that over time the number of people excluded from its benefits increases, until the number of losers is so big that it takes in the median voter.
At this point the people who want the system to continue have to come up with a distraction, so the median voter doesn't vote to change the system. Hence Brexit. Hence immigration. Hence dinghies in the channel and migrants. Hence "cultural Marxism". Hence Rule Britannia. Anything to keep the plates spinning and prevent people from recognising what is really going on.
(i) Having a leader with a pronounced anti-western world view.
(ii) Being more socially progressive than the average Brit.
I hope it was (i) because that has been fixed.
And I hope it was not (ii) since imo that cannot and should not be fixed. It's where the party should be.
(Oh, and good afternoon everyone)
It isn't a Conservative government.
It isn't even a Brexit government.
It is a tiny fringe of Brexiteers' government.
Thus Brexit is more important than the economy or pandemic or anything else at all.
That is the explanation. It is only baffling to the uninitiated.
Edit: and he is - perhaps, from what PBers and others say - in a race with his own, not so much mortality but morbidity in the medical sense, from catching that very virus.
And yes, the UAE has strong links to the Palestinian communities, the wider plan is to get the whole region involved in making peace. The US delegation also spoke to Oman, Bahrain and even Saudi Arabia about the normalisation of relations with Israel.
"No one," said Abbott, "however smart, however well-educated, however experienced … is the suppository of all wisdom."
I feel he'll fit in very well with the operation currently inserting unpleasant and ineffective medicine up the British bottom.
Arf arf.
For one thing there's criticism on this subject from both sides. He's facing a lot of criticism from the Mail and others for the lack of a get back to the office campaign... And if he's standing up to that criticism then that is a good thing.
For another thing there never has been a back to the office campaign. Yes someone, unclear who, floated the idea to the Telegraph and others over the weekend but it was a kite flying exercise that was immediately shot down by the Health Secretary and was almost universally panned on here as a terrible, terrible idea.
If something is a terrible idea then not going ahead with it is a good thing not a bad thing. I said here last weekend to CHB and others this whole story was media garbage and I did not believe for a second this campaign would ever see the light of day ... but that if it did I would condemn it. So I am glad to have been shown to be right.
Every government throughout all of time has had kites flown, that doesn't make them policy or inevitable and nor does it make it a u turn if it's not proceeded with. Sometimes the kite is no more than that someone who wants a change of policy overbriefs to a friendly journalist to try and show its popular to make it happen. Well the opposite resulted. Good thing it's not happening.