It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
It's not just Trump who will be up a creek without a paddle from Nov 3rd to inauguration.
If Biden and the Dems sweep to power, as I am now certain of, then it leaves Boris, Cummings and Farage increasingly isolated. Neither allies to the west nor east. Perhaps we'll open a trade deal with Nigeria?
Nigeria has the biggest population and economy of Africa. With 21st century demographics it is going to be increasingly important on the world stage.
Having a bit of trouble with cops shooting people at the moment, during protests about police brutality.
Nigeria's economy is large BECAUSE of its large population. But its GDP per capita is in the toilet. An awful lot of Nigerians don't have anything approaching middle-class levels of disposable income. For us to compete in that kind of market we'd have to be in the business of cheap manufacture of life's basics. I do not think that is playing the strengths of the UK's key industries. Maybe in a few decades. If you think there's value in getting in at the ground level, that's fine, but its no paddle for the immediate creekage we're in.
I am quite pro-African, having travelled and taught there a fair bit. Unquestionably there are major problems with poverty etc, but also tremendous opportunities. Nigeria has 200 million people, and even if only 10% have middle class lifestyles, that is still a big number, and going to double in the next 30 years.
Nollywood films (a fair few on Netflix) are not gritty documentaries, but really very aspirational and consumerist. Watched by the poor, but show the direction of travel, much like India a few decades back.
Nigerian immigrants to the USA are the best educated of all immigrant ethnicities, for example:
There are big divides of course, and the Muslim North more backward, but Nigeria has a great future, and not just as a diaspora.
I was having this discussion just the other day with some quite liberal people - they seemed stuck in the LIveAid view of Africa.
They seemed almost upset when I mentioned that some old friends of mine in telecoms were prototyping combined mobile phone masts with Starlink for backhaul. Looking at Africa for big sales.
The idea of that is a 5G mast that you put anywhere. It just needs power. The connection to the rest of the world is via Mr Musks satellites. So instantly a remote area gets mobile/internet.
The upset was on the lines of "but people need to eat first" - despite their liberal inclinations, they were completely unaware of the infrastructure revolution in many parts of Africa and it's effects on people's lives.
The mobile telecomms market in Africa is incredibly dynamic, allowing a leap almost directly from a cash economy to electronic money, and banking. My Malawian friends are more sophisticated with this than my English ones.
The poverty in Africa is huge, but that is a long, long way from the whole story, and anyone who has passed through an African Market cannot doubt the entrepreneurial culture!
Indeed. One of my memories from Rwanda was visiting the woman in the village who, by dint of having electricity in her home when many people didn't, had the job of mobile phone charger. Her house was a web of leads and connectors and socket adapters with an almost unbelievable number of phones charging off just a few plug sockets. The phones placed all around the room each had a scrap of paper with the details of the owner and when the charging time they had paid for elapsed, and with a continual stream of people depositing and collecting all this kept her extremely busy.
There were many homes without electricity and many without water, but very few without a mobile phone.
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
I like Monbiot a lot. He`s a good writer - his book "Feral" is excellent. It was an article by Monbiot that persuaded me to vote remain in EU referendum, for environmental (on top of my already pragmatic) reasons. He too was wavering, he disliked the EU but admired their rewilding initiatives.
I'll be the first to own up to not reading the article, so feel free to criticise, but does he draw a comparison to other European countries that are seeing no huge second wave, such as France, Germany, Italy and Spain... Oh wait. Not sure that the UK government is totally to blame for this... maybe, just maybe, there are no easy solutions?
Germany is up to +7,000 cases daily, compared to the UK's +21,000.
As we were a few weeks ago. The wave is hitting lots of places. Just as we were weeks behind Spain. There is no magic formula if you live in western countries with our expectations of free will, and strive to keep the economy and peoples live going.
The implicit message that "no magic formula" means 'it makes little difference' is in stark contrast with YbarddCwsc's last sentence
"There is a lot to learn for the UK, and its scientists, policy-makers and politicians."
Of course there is a lot of randomness and chance in how the pandemic will progress in the future. This should not be used to hide the fact that the UK has consistently done a bit worse in every aspect, over which the government can influence.
Same settlement as Liverpool and Lancashire (and Greater Manchester)
GM didn't get a settlement. Robert Fletcher-Dervish being sent round this morning to say the money taken off the table is still on the table, but ManCock says he'll negotiate borough by borough.
Which is Good News for Rochdale, pox capital of GM. They get to beg. Sit Up. Play Dead. At which point the benevolent Tories throw them a bone. Yay! Haven't been allowed to see my parents since this all started, that isn't about to change either
Have to say I've not paid too much attention to the whole Greater Manchester spat with following the US far too closely for my own health but it seems to me the Gov't has suddenly realised it doesn't have a pot to piss in right now. But people can see the piss overflowing in the Serco, consultants and various poor PPE deal pots. Not great for them.
Stocky: Largely white Brits I take it, rather than migrant workers?
Probably so, but not necessarily. I`d like to hear more from @theProle on this.
Agree it was great insight into a demographic that 75% of PB contributors have no association with on that level.
It's interesting how this kind of breathless reportage from the building sites of Britain is dissected with such anthropological excitement on PB. I mean, are these people really so unknown to people here? I move in pretty bourgeois circles these days, perhaps even the global elite, but I went to a comprehensive school and have done a fair amount of low paid work in the past, and the fact that a lot of working class blokes don't like the EU, or anything vaguely foreign, or indeed have a low opinion of "political correctness gone mad" is hardly news to me.
Spot on. I'd also add that this kind of reportage seems to only ever cover half of the relevant population - namely men.
On this male-dominated site, who's going to give us the equivalent insight into what working class women are thinking? We hear a lot about the views of lads and blokes - not so much about their female equivalents. I suspect they're slightly different. And women do now have the vote, of course.
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
Quite. If you are small or medium sized company, Government contracts can accidentally destroy your entire company. Government is nearly always the worst possible customer.
There is a reason that big companies do this stuff - they can survive the inevitable.
A photo taken somewhere in the East Midlands. That and the sentiment bears out exactly the comment that I posted here last night:
"I don't think that Johnson has quite appreciated that this isn't just about Manchester. It's about the Conservatives being seen to be willing to stuff the North in general in its hour of need, and indeed anywhere north of Watford Gap. People in Liverpool and Lancashire won't be castigating Burnham for seeking a slightly better settlement than the paltry one their leaders got. No, they'll be cheering Burnham on. As are those in the North-East and Yorkshire who know they're next in the firing line, followed by the Midlands. This is a government that thinks nothing of throwing billions in lucrative contracts the way of any of the usual outsourcing suspects lining up to profit from coronavirus, in return for services that repeatedly fail to live up to their billing, yet which draws the line at settling for just a paltry £5m extra for Greater Manchester. Desperate people and businesses left to go hang. All the effort that went into winning seats in the Red Wall and promoting the fiction of Levelling Up is being undone before our eyes because Sunak can't find £5m.
We're due an Opinium poll this weekend."
Sunak and the Treasury werent involved in the final negotiations, it was Boris and No 10.
As the Treasury made clear last night as Sunak threw Boris under the bus.
Let’s not be naive. The Treasury controls the purse strings. It is Sunak who replaced furlough with a markedly less generous scheme which will screw over all those businesses and employees in Tier 2 and 3 regions. The resulting economic pain will be his responsibility as much as it is Johnson’s.
It seems to me that one of the biggest problems/scandals (setting aside the financial aspects) about test and trace is that it has been given crude targets (which it is failing to meet) but no purpose. Like so much of the target based culture (and yes this dates back a long time) is that it never steps back and asks whether the meeting (or otherwise) of targets actually improves outcomes. This of course generates perverse incentives, but also leads to a lack of critical judgement about what the targets/system is actually trying to achieve. I think this helps to explain the lack of public health experts involved in the management of the system - since test and trace has no requirement to deliver improved public health outcomes, it therefore has no need for public health expertise.
Test and trace seems to start and end with an aim of contacting people and telling them they need to self isolate. If people then ignore the requirement to do so it makes no difference whether they contact 5% of potentially affected people, or 95%.
But there is no money for closed businesses and their staff.
Might the lack of a public health expert be the reason for the failure you describe? After all the point of Test and Trace is to find those places where the virus has popped up and squash it down again by isolating the infected people. The aim is not contact but what you do with that information. Public health experts would know that. Supermarket executives would not.
Yes i agree. But my point is that Test and Trace haven't been given a mandate for enforcing self isolation. Or delivering good public health outcomes. Their role starts and ends with contacting people and advising them of the need to self isolate. What happens from then is somebody else's responsibility.
Of course it is failing at it's basic mandate (tracing 80% of contacts). And yes its mandate should be far wider and more extensive. But for it's basic mandate, it's not that surprising that those running it haven't seen much need for a Public health expert.
I really do wonder if these types of quotes are real or just made up by the journalist. "Tory Official 2" - how does anyone know what they did or did not say?
I expect there is some truth in it but listening to 5 live this morning the nuance was that Greater Manchester settlement is approx £29 per head which is the same as Liverpool and Lancashire.
To be honest Burnham was coming under a lot of criticism and Burley on Sky was critical in an interview with a Greater Manchester councillor
I have no doubt Burnham is popular in Greater Manchester and I would expect to see crossover in the polls
However, I have faith in Rishi in getting the balance correct but he is not helped by Boris who is so much out of his depth and their comms is dreadful
The whole mess is basically because the Treasury is trying to do the second round of lockdown in the cheap. The idea was to share responsibility for their penny pinching with local politicians who could then be deemed to have endorsed the support on offer. As it's a row over money, or rather the lack of it, Sunak should be the one taking the responsibility.
And Dan Jarvis of South Yorkshire has just accepted the same deal without the animosity shown by Burnham
Burnham Your new hate figure, must have been in this mornings email from CCHQ We will see similar from the usual suspects later today
I do not hate anyone
Disagree yes
You are rattled
Big G I’m not rattled, I no longer have an iron in this fire, my voting rights are about to expire, I take an interest for my children’s sake I pass the time here waiting to get my wife up for another day of care whilst planning for five hours out for my chemo session which is too long to leave her alone. It provides me with some mental stimulation after a lifetime in politics whilst in the UK
A photo taken somewhere in the East Midlands. That and the sentiment bears out exactly the comment that I posted here last night:
"I don't think that Johnson has quite appreciated that this isn't just about Manchester. It's about the Conservatives being seen to be willing to stuff the North in general in its hour of need, and indeed anywhere north of Watford Gap. People in Liverpool and Lancashire won't be castigating Burnham for seeking a slightly better settlement than the paltry one their leaders got. No, they'll be cheering Burnham on. As are those in the North-East and Yorkshire who know they're next in the firing line, followed by the Midlands. This is a government that thinks nothing of throwing billions in lucrative contracts the way of any of the usual outsourcing suspects lining up to profit from coronavirus, in return for services that repeatedly fail to live up to their billing, yet which draws the line at settling for just a paltry £5m extra for Greater Manchester. Desperate people and businesses left to go hang. All the effort that went into winning seats in the Red Wall and promoting the fiction of Levelling Up is being undone before our eyes because Sunak can't find £5m.
We're due an Opinium poll this weekend."
Sunak and the Treasury werent involved in the final negotiations, it was Boris and No 10.
As the Treasury made clear last night as Sunak threw Boris under the bus.
Let’s not be naive. The Treasury controls the purse strings. It is Sunak who replaced furlough with a markedly less generous scheme which will screw over all those businesses and employees in Tier 2 and 3 regions. The resulting economic pain will be his responsibility as much as it is Johnson’s.
But isn't Number 10 now in much more control of the Treasury than in previous administrations? I mean, that's why Javid was booted, wasn't it?
Stocky: Largely white Brits I take it, rather than migrant workers?
Probably so, but not necessarily. I`d like to hear more from @theProle on this.
Agree it was great insight into a demographic that 75% of PB contributors have no association with on that level.
It's interesting how this kind of breathless reportage from the building sites of Britain is dissected with such anthropological excitement on PB. I mean, are these people really so unknown to people here? I move in pretty bourgeois circles these days, perhaps even the global elite, but I went to a comprehensive school and have done a fair amount of low paid work in the past, and the fact that a lot of working class blokes don't like the EU, or anything vaguely foreign, or indeed have a low opinion of "political correctness gone mad" is hardly news to me.
Spot on. I'd also add that this kind of reportage seems to only ever cover half of the relevant population - namely men.
On this male-dominated site, who's going to give us the equivalent insight into what working class women are thinking? We hear a lot about the views of lads and blokes - not so much about their female equivalents. I suspect they're slightly different. And women do now have the vote, of course.
@Foxy did say that all his female ethnic minority staff open up to him, their white, older, male boss with their innermost feelings.
Same settlement as Liverpool and Lancashire (and Greater Manchester)
GM didn't get a settlement. Robert Fletcher-Dervish being sent round this morning to say the money taken off the table is still on the table, but ManCock says he'll negotiate borough by borough.
Which is Good News for Rochdale, pox capital of GM. They get to beg. Sit Up. Play Dead. At which point the benevolent Tories throw them a bone. Yay! Haven't been allowed to see my parents since this all started, that isn't about to change either
HMG needs to use the cover of its own Manc MPs to bypass Burnham and hand over all the cash anyway. Preferably by five minutes to PMQs.
Stocky: Largely white Brits I take it, rather than migrant workers?
Probably so, but not necessarily. I`d like to hear more from @theProle on this.
Agree it was great insight into a demographic that 75% of PB contributors have no association with on that level.
It's interesting how this kind of breathless reportage from the building sites of Britain is dissected with such anthropological excitement on PB. I mean, are these people really so unknown to people here? I move in pretty bourgeois circles these days, perhaps even the global elite, but I went to a comprehensive school and have done a fair amount of low paid work in the past, and the fact that a lot of working class blokes don't like the EU, or anything vaguely foreign, or indeed have a low opinion of "political correctness gone mad" is hardly news to me.
Maybe it isn't but recognising those people and their views isn't the same as engaging with or addressing them.
It isn't an answer to say it's not news, you know them well, shrug your shoulders, just say they're wrong and move on.
It depends who you are. I am just a private citizen and it's not my job to educate and enlighten the masses, nor am I arrogant enough to think that I could. Live and let live is an entirely rational response to the fact that some people hold views that I disagree with. If I were a politician of course I would have to engage with them and find a way to bring some of them on board, without selling out my core beliefs or alienating other supporters. As the original poster notes, there are left wing economic messages that might resonate with them. Of course it is in the interests of the Tory party and press to play up the right wing cultural messages precisely because they don't want to engage with those economic views (hence create wedge issues like Brexit, statues etc). I just find it odd that these people seem to induce an almost anthropological fascination from some people here, as if they are an uncontacted Amazonian tribe. It makes me think that some people must have had quite a sheltered upbringing. It's also a bit reminiscent of the episode of Peep Show when Jeremy tries to be friends with their builder, or perhaps the Greek art student in Pulp's Common People.
A photo taken somewhere in the East Midlands. That and the sentiment bears out exactly the comment that I posted here last night:
"I don't think that Johnson has quite appreciated that this isn't just about Manchester. It's about the Conservatives being seen to be willing to stuff the North in general in its hour of need, and indeed anywhere north of Watford Gap. People in Liverpool and Lancashire won't be castigating Burnham for seeking a slightly better settlement than the paltry one their leaders got. No, they'll be cheering Burnham on. As are those in the North-East and Yorkshire who know they're next in the firing line, followed by the Midlands. This is a government that thinks nothing of throwing billions in lucrative contracts the way of any of the usual outsourcing suspects lining up to profit from coronavirus, in return for services that repeatedly fail to live up to their billing, yet which draws the line at settling for just a paltry £5m extra for Greater Manchester. Desperate people and businesses left to go hang. All the effort that went into winning seats in the Red Wall and promoting the fiction of Levelling Up is being undone before our eyes because Sunak can't find £5m.
We're due an Opinium poll this weekend."
Sunak and the Treasury werent involved in the final negotiations, it was Boris and No 10.
As the Treasury made clear last night as Sunak threw Boris under the bus.
Let’s not be naive. The Treasury controls the purse strings. It is Sunak who replaced furlough with a markedly less generous scheme which will screw over all those businesses and employees in Tier 2 and 3 regions. The resulting economic pain will be his responsibility as much as it is Johnson’s.
I don't disagree, but for the moment at least Sunak seems to have insulated himself from criticism. Indeed some former Boris fanbois have got quite agitated at this morning's questioning of Sunak's performance.
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
It's facts, rather than paranoia, I'm afraid. The entire modern reach, ethos and form of elite management consultancy wouldn't exist at all without McKinsey's, and its influence has been instrumental in corporate governance and public policy in the UK and the United States particularly, but also well beyond, since the 1980s. It is not a neutral technocratic instrument, but has actually partly shaped the public and private world in its own image.
Stocky: Largely white Brits I take it, rather than migrant workers?
Probably so, but not necessarily. I`d like to hear more from @theProle on this.
Agree it was great insight into a demographic that 75% of PB contributors have no association with on that level.
It's interesting how this kind of breathless reportage from the building sites of Britain is dissected with such anthropological excitement on PB. I mean, are these people really so unknown to people here? I move in pretty bourgeois circles these days, perhaps even the global elite, but I went to a comprehensive school and have done a fair amount of low paid work in the past, and the fact that a lot of working class blokes don't like the EU, or anything vaguely foreign, or indeed have a low opinion of "political correctness gone mad" is hardly news to me.
Spot on. I'd also add that this kind of reportage seems to only ever cover half of the relevant population - namely men.
On this male-dominated site, who's going to give us the equivalent insight into what working class women are thinking? We hear a lot about the views of lads and blokes - not so much about their female equivalents. I suspect they're slightly different. And women do now have the vote, of course.
@Foxy did say that all his female ethnic minority staff open up to him, their white, older, male boss with their innermost feelings.
It's not just Trump who will be up a creek without a paddle from Nov 3rd to inauguration.
If Biden and the Dems sweep to power, as I am now certain of, then it leaves Boris, Cummings and Farage increasingly isolated. Neither allies to the west nor east. Perhaps we'll open a trade deal with Nigeria?
Nigeria has the biggest population and economy of Africa. With 21st century demographics it is going to be increasingly important on the world stage.
Having a bit of trouble with cops shooting people at the moment, during protests about police brutality.
Nigeria's economy is large BECAUSE of its large population. But its GDP per capita is in the toilet. An awful lot of Nigerians don't have anything approaching middle-class levels of disposable income. For us to compete in that kind of market we'd have to be in the business of cheap manufacture of life's basics. I do not think that is playing the strengths of the UK's key industries. Maybe in a few decades. If you think there's value in getting in at the ground level, that's fine, but its no paddle for the immediate creekage we're in.
I am quite pro-African, having travelled and taught there a fair bit. Unquestionably there are major problems with poverty etc, but also tremendous opportunities. Nigeria has 200 million people, and even if only 10% have middle class lifestyles, that is still a big number, and going to double in the next 30 years.
Nollywood films (a fair few on Netflix) are not gritty documentaries, but really very aspirational and consumerist. Watched by the poor, but show the direction of travel, much like India a few decades back.
Nigerian immigrants to the USA are the best educated of all immigrant ethnicities, for example:
There are big divides of course, and the Muslim North more backward, but Nigeria has a great future, and not just as a diaspora.
I was having this discussion just the other day with some quite liberal people - they seemed stuck in the LIveAid view of Africa.
They seemed almost upset when I mentioned that some old friends of mine in telecoms were prototyping combined mobile phone masts with Starlink for backhaul. Looking at Africa for big sales.
The idea of that is a 5G mast that you put anywhere. It just needs power. The connection to the rest of the world is via Mr Musks satellites. So instantly a remote area gets mobile/internet.
The upset was on the lines of "but people need to eat first" - despite their liberal inclinations, they were completely unaware of the infrastructure revolution in many parts of Africa and it's effects on people's lives.
The mobile telecomms market in Africa is incredibly dynamic, allowing a leap almost directly from a cash economy to electronic money, and banking. My Malawian friends are more sophisticated with this than my English ones.
The poverty in Africa is huge, but that is a long, long way from the whole story, and anyone who has passed through an African Market cannot doubt the entrepreneurial culture!
I think you underestimate the ability of humans to ignore things they are tripping over. And rationalise them into their worldview.
So telecoms for Africa become - "Why are you ruining their lives with Facebook, rather than providing drinking water?".
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
I like Monbiot a lot. He`s a good writer - his book "Feral" is excellent. It was an article by Monbiot that persuaded me to vote remain in EU referendum, for environmental (on top of my already pragmatic) reasons. He too was wavering, he disliked the EU but admired their rewilding initiatives.
I'll be the first to own up to not reading the article, so feel free to criticise, but does he draw a comparison to other European countries that are seeing no huge second wave, such as France, Germany, Italy and Spain... Oh wait. Not sure that the UK government is totally to blame for this... maybe, just maybe, there are no easy solutions?
Germany is up to +7,000 cases daily, compared to the UK's +21,000.
Germany of course has done well. Merkel gets an A
But, Johnson, Macron, Pérez-Castejón, Sturgeon, Drakeford are all getting Cs in my mark book.
Merkel is naturally a bit cautious and scientifically trained, both of which help.
It is not just down to good leadership. German's scientists have played a more coherent and consistent role than the UK's scientists. The Robert Koch Institute has been really outstanding.
There is a lot to learn for the UK, and its scientists, policy-makers and politicians.
Always happy to learn from others. Maybe lets wait until the whole pandemic has plated out before awarding the prizes? Spurs were 3-0 up on sunday, ended 3-3. Crude metaphor, but we are seeing some countries that did better on the first wave, doing worse now.
This isn't football. It's more like duplicate bridge. Other countries are facing similar problems and doing better or worse in some areas. That's why we should be watching carefully what other countries are doing well and badly, and adapting accordingly. If we wait until it's all over, it virtually guarantees that we will be in the worse quadrant of countries.
I'm not advocating waiting until it is all over. I think the approaches taken by the UK administrations are very similar to those in other countries - we are all trying to navigate an awful challenge. My point is that we are not uniquely struggling with this, and I wish some on here would accept this more. Not letting personal dislike (hate?) of a party, or politician, cloud the judgement of the policies.
If they are pressing ahead, or trying to, with the double digit rise, then extremely unlikely to view the 2.5% as a problem at all. Nothing to do with which way pensioners vote of course.
Doesn't make sense. Why increase the State Pension by about £12bn over two years when you could bung that money to mates in the private sector? That's a whole Test and Trace scheme.
Cui bono if Sunak breaks his pledge to maintain the pensions triple lock?
There must surely be zero chance of the triple lock being retained if/when the 10-20% earnings rise materialises. They just didn't want to scrap it on the basis of a 2.5% rise when inflation is at 0.5%.
I presume that next year they will come up with some sort of fudge, which seeks to retain the principle of it but doesn't lead to perverse (as opposed to just unaffordable) outcomes. So the "earnings" bit of the equation will probably shift to a 3 year average or something.
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
I like Monbiot a lot. He`s a good writer - his book "Feral" is excellent. It was an article by Monbiot that persuaded me to vote remain in EU referendum, for environmental (on top of my already pragmatic) reasons. He too was wavering, he disliked the EU but admired their rewilding initiatives.
I'll be the first to own up to not reading the article, so feel free to criticise, but does he draw a comparison to other European countries that are seeing no huge second wave, such as France, Germany, Italy and Spain... Oh wait. Not sure that the UK government is totally to blame for this... maybe, just maybe, there are no easy solutions?
Germany is up to +7,000 cases daily, compared to the UK's +21,000.
Germany of course has done well. Merkel gets an A
But, Johnson, Macron, Pérez-Castejón, Sturgeon, Drakeford are all getting Cs in my mark book.
Merkel is naturally a bit cautious and scientifically trained, both of which help.
It is not just down to good leadership. German's scientists have played a more coherent and consistent role than the UK's scientists. The Robert Koch Institute has been really outstanding.
There is a lot to learn for the UK, and its scientists, policy-makers and politicians.
The point about toning down the outrage is important too. Germans are for obvious historical reasons wary of shouty people and the media (with the exception of the Bild-Zeitung) are notably sober.
... There are no consequences for failure for the large outsourcing companies like SERCO and CAPITA. ...
Sorry, but that is total nonsense. Both of them have got into big financial trouble in the past as a result of losses on public sector contracts, as a cursory look at their financial histories shows. So has Interserve, so has Keir, so has Biffa. It's a total myth that these are risk-free for the companies concerned.
And yet despite this history of financial trouble and poor management (and I know quite a lot about some of these companies that I am unable to share on this forum) they keep getting these contracts without any sort of transparent procurement process, with contracts that appear to be a one-way bet for them and they keep on failing at them.
We ought to be very concerned at this because at best it’s very inefficient management by government and a waste of our money at a time when every penny is needed, some of it for more deserving causes. At worst it’s corruption.
It's not just Trump who will be up a creek without a paddle from Nov 3rd to inauguration.
If Biden and the Dems sweep to power, as I am now certain of, then it leaves Boris, Cummings and Farage increasingly isolated. Neither allies to the west nor east. Perhaps we'll open a trade deal with Nigeria?
Nigeria has the biggest population and economy of Africa. With 21st century demographics it is going to be increasingly important on the world stage.
Having a bit of trouble with cops shooting people at the moment, during protests about police brutality.
Nigeria's economy is large BECAUSE of its large population. But its GDP per capita is in the toilet. An awful lot of Nigerians don't have anything approaching middle-class levels of disposable income. For us to compete in that kind of market we'd have to be in the business of cheap manufacture of life's basics. I do not think that is playing the strengths of the UK's key industries. Maybe in a few decades. If you think there's value in getting in at the ground level, that's fine, but its no paddle for the immediate creekage we're in.
I am quite pro-African, having travelled and taught there a fair bit. Unquestionably there are major problems with poverty etc, but also tremendous opportunities. Nigeria has 200 million people, and even if only 10% have middle class lifestyles, that is still a big number, and going to double in the next 30 years.
Nollywood films (a fair few on Netflix) are not gritty documentaries, but really very aspirational and consumerist. Watched by the poor, but show the direction of travel, much like India a few decades back.
Nigerian immigrants to the USA are the best educated of all immigrant ethnicities, for example:
There are big divides of course, and the Muslim North more backward, but Nigeria has a great future, and not just as a diaspora.
I was having this discussion just the other day with some quite liberal people - they seemed stuck in the LIveAid view of Africa.
They seemed almost upset when I mentioned that some old friends of mine in telecoms were prototyping combined mobile phone masts with Starlink for backhaul. Looking at Africa for big sales.
The idea of that is a 5G mast that you put anywhere. It just needs power. The connection to the rest of the world is via Mr Musks satellites. So instantly a remote area gets mobile/internet.
The upset was on the lines of "but people need to eat first" - despite their liberal inclinations, they were completely unaware of the infrastructure revolution in many parts of Africa and it's effects on people's lives.
The attitude that you can only ever do one thing at a time is incredibly frustrating.
Also, I think we take for granted the value of information at our fingertips. I know there was a forecasting project for Lake Victoria fishing boats that the Met Office was involved in where the weather warnings were to be sent by text message.
A modern telecommunications infrastructure can do so much in saving lives and growing economies. These countries can benefit from that at the same time as benefiting from the introduction of metal ploughs - they don't have to follow the same sequence of development.
... There are no consequences for failure for the large outsourcing companies like SERCO and CAPITA. ...
Sorry, but that is total nonsense. Both of them have got into big financial trouble in the past as a result of losses on public sector contracts, as a cursory look at their financial histories shows. So has Interserve, so has Keir, so has Biffa. It's a total myth that these are risk-free for the companies concerned.
I appreciate that Richard. Perhaps i didn't quite express it properly. There is of course the potential for financial failure. But there are very little consequences for performance failure. Which is what primarily matters to the public sector. And when these massive companies fail completely they it may cost them money. But be under no illusion that it costs the public sector millions as well. Because there is very little to replace them.
I think that is about the quality or otherwise of the contractual conditions set by the public-sector client. In any contract, the supplier will try to provide what you've asked for, and if the performance metrics are badly designed (and especially if they are heavily loaded with extraneous politically-motivated stuff) you won't get good results.
However, the same is true, perhaps even more true, of services provided by the public sector. Anyone with knowledge of the NHS will be very aware of just how inefficient it is in many respects.
A photo taken somewhere in the East Midlands. That and the sentiment bears out exactly the comment that I posted here last night:
"I don't think that Johnson has quite appreciated that this isn't just about Manchester. It's about the Conservatives being seen to be willing to stuff the North in general in its hour of need, and indeed anywhere north of Watford Gap. People in Liverpool and Lancashire won't be castigating Burnham for seeking a slightly better settlement than the paltry one their leaders got. No, they'll be cheering Burnham on. As are those in the North-East and Yorkshire who know they're next in the firing line, followed by the Midlands. This is a government that thinks nothing of throwing billions in lucrative contracts the way of any of the usual outsourcing suspects lining up to profit from coronavirus, in return for services that repeatedly fail to live up to their billing, yet which draws the line at settling for just a paltry £5m extra for Greater Manchester. Desperate people and businesses left to go hang. All the effort that went into winning seats in the Red Wall and promoting the fiction of Levelling Up is being undone before our eyes because Sunak can't find £5m.
We're due an Opinium poll this weekend."
Sunak and the Treasury werent involved in the final negotiations, it was Boris and No 10.
As the Treasury made clear last night as Sunak threw Boris under the bus.
Let’s not be naive. The Treasury controls the purse strings. It is Sunak who replaced furlough with a markedly less generous scheme which will screw over all those businesses and employees in Tier 2 and 3 regions. The resulting economic pain will be his responsibility as much as it is Johnson’s.
The Furlough and Self Employed schemes were incredibly generous, that seems to have been forgotten. No Country in the world did more.
... There are no consequences for failure for the large outsourcing companies like SERCO and CAPITA. ...
Sorry, but that is total nonsense. Both of them have got into big financial trouble in the past as a result of losses on public sector contracts, as a cursory look at their financial histories shows. So has Interserve, so has Keir, so has Biffa. It's a total myth that these are risk-free for the companies concerned.
The fact they they have managed to turn a few of their intended one-way bets into major losses tends to make rather than undermine the original case, I'd suggest?
A photo taken somewhere in the East Midlands. That and the sentiment bears out exactly the comment that I posted here last night:
"I don't think that Johnson has quite appreciated that this isn't just about Manchester. It's about the Conservatives being seen to be willing to stuff the North in general in its hour of need, and indeed anywhere north of Watford Gap. People in Liverpool and Lancashire won't be castigating Burnham for seeking a slightly better settlement than the paltry one their leaders got. No, they'll be cheering Burnham on. As are those in the North-East and Yorkshire who know they're next in the firing line, followed by the Midlands. This is a government that thinks nothing of throwing billions in lucrative contracts the way of any of the usual outsourcing suspects lining up to profit from coronavirus, in return for services that repeatedly fail to live up to their billing, yet which draws the line at settling for just a paltry £5m extra for Greater Manchester. Desperate people and businesses left to go hang. All the effort that went into winning seats in the Red Wall and promoting the fiction of Levelling Up is being undone before our eyes because Sunak can't find £5m.
We're due an Opinium poll this weekend."
Sunak and the Treasury werent involved in the final negotiations, it was Boris and No 10.
As the Treasury made clear last night as Sunak threw Boris under the bus.
Let’s not be naive. The Treasury controls the purse strings. It is Sunak who replaced furlough with a markedly less generous scheme which will screw over all those businesses and employees in Tier 2 and 3 regions. The resulting economic pain will be his responsibility as much as it is Johnson’s.
The Furlough and Self Employed schemes were incredibly generous, that seems to have been forgotten. No Country in the world did more.
Perhaps we were worst in appreciating that this would turn into a long haul, though?
A photo taken somewhere in the East Midlands. That and the sentiment bears out exactly the comment that I posted here last night:
"I don't think that Johnson has quite appreciated that this isn't just about Manchester. It's about the Conservatives being seen to be willing to stuff the North in general in its hour of need, and indeed anywhere north of Watford Gap. People in Liverpool and Lancashire won't be castigating Burnham for seeking a slightly better settlement than the paltry one their leaders got. No, they'll be cheering Burnham on. As are those in the North-East and Yorkshire who know they're next in the firing line, followed by the Midlands. This is a government that thinks nothing of throwing billions in lucrative contracts the way of any of the usual outsourcing suspects lining up to profit from coronavirus, in return for services that repeatedly fail to live up to their billing, yet which draws the line at settling for just a paltry £5m extra for Greater Manchester. Desperate people and businesses left to go hang. All the effort that went into winning seats in the Red Wall and promoting the fiction of Levelling Up is being undone before our eyes because Sunak can't find £5m.
We're due an Opinium poll this weekend."
Sunak and the Treasury werent involved in the final negotiations, it was Boris and No 10.
As the Treasury made clear last night as Sunak threw Boris under the bus.
Let’s not be naive. The Treasury controls the purse strings. It is Sunak who replaced furlough with a markedly less generous scheme which will screw over all those businesses and employees in Tier 2 and 3 regions. The resulting economic pain will be his responsibility as much as it is Johnson’s.
The Furlough and Self Employed schemes were incredibly generous, that seems to have been forgotten. No Country in the world did more.
Perhaps we were worst in appreciating that this would turn into a long haul, though?
Maybe, but to try and portray this Governement as penny pinching during this pandemic is bizarre. Even the shadow chancellor said the spending had been cavalier.
If they are pressing ahead, or trying to, with the double digit rise, then extremely unlikely to view the 2.5% as a problem at all. Nothing to do with which way pensioners vote of course.
Doesn't make sense. Why increase the State Pension by about £12bn over two years when you could bung that money to mates in the private sector? That's a whole Test and Trace scheme.
Cui bono if Sunak breaks his pledge to maintain the pensions triple lock?
There must surely be zero chance of the triple lock being retained if/when the 10-20% earnings rise materialises. They just didn't want to scrap it on the basis of a 2.5% rise when inflation is at 0.5%.
I presume that next year they will come up with some sort of fudge, which seeks to retain the principle of it but doesn't lead to perverse (as opposed to just unaffordable) outcomes. So the "earnings" bit of the equation will probably shift to a 3 year average or something.
More likely is they will look at income tax on pensions rather than breaking the triple lock. First, Sunak won't want to be breaking manifesto pledges unless he really, really wants a sinecure at Facebook alongside Nick Clegg; it will end his chances of succeeding Boris in Number 10 (which is why I expect his Cabinet rivals will keep up a whispering campaign). Second, most pensioners are not wealthy and at the bottom end it is just about which benefits pot they are paid from.
It seems to me that one of the biggest problems/scandals (setting aside the financial aspects) about test and trace is that it has been given crude targets (which it is failing to meet) but no purpose. Like so much of the target based culture (and yes this dates back a long time) is that it never steps back and asks whether the meeting (or otherwise) of targets actually improves outcomes. This of course generates perverse incentives, but also leads to a lack of critical judgement about what the targets/system is actually trying to achieve. I think this helps to explain the lack of public health experts involved in the management of the system - since test and trace has no requirement to deliver improved public health outcomes, it therefore has no need for public health expertise.
Test and trace seems to start and end with an aim of contacting people and telling them they need to self isolate. If people then ignore the requirement to do so it makes no difference whether they contact 5% of potentially affected people, or 95%.
But there is no money for closed businesses and their staff.
Might the lack of a public health expert be the reason for the failure you describe? After all the point of Test and Trace is to find those places where the virus has popped up and squash it down again by isolating the infected people. The aim is not contact but what you do with that information. Public health experts would know that. Supermarket executives would not.
Yes i agree. But my point is that Test and Trace haven't been given a mandate for enforcing self isolation. Or delivering good public health outcomes. Their role starts and ends with contacting people and advising them of the need to self isolate. What happens from then is somebody else's responsibility.
Of course it is failing at it's basic mandate (tracing 80% of contacts). And yes its mandate should be far wider and more extensive. But for it's basic mandate, it's not that surprising that those running it haven't seen much need for a Public health expert.
And who gave them the mandate? What has that not been publicly discussed in Parliament? This is what happens when decisions are made behind closed doors with no transparency: the wrong mandate, the wrong providers, the wrong people in charge, money wasted and a public health and resulting economic crisis made very much worse while private companies make money at our expense and boast about the profits they are making.
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
The downsides of a Freemasons-type secret organisation and of a cozy chumocracy aren't that far apart ISTM.
I really do wonder if these types of quotes are real or just made up by the journalist. "Tory Official 2" - how does anyone know what they did or did not say?
I expect there is some truth in it but listening to 5 live this morning the nuance was that Greater Manchester settlement is approx £29 per head which is the same as Liverpool and Lancashire.
To be honest Burnham was coming under a lot of criticism and Burley on Sky was critical in an interview with a Greater Manchester councillor
I have no doubt Burnham is popular in Greater Manchester and I would expect to see crossover in the polls
However, I have faith in Rishi in getting the balance correct but he is not helped by Boris who is so much out of his depth and their comms is dreadful
The whole mess is basically because the Treasury is trying to do the second round of lockdown in the cheap. The idea was to share responsibility for their penny pinching with local politicians who could then be deemed to have endorsed the support on offer. As it's a row over money, or rather the lack of it, Sunak should be the one taking the responsibility.
And Dan Jarvis of South Yorkshire has just accepted the same deal without the animosity shown by Burnham
I understand that you are big on deference and civility, Big_G. This government has forfeited the right to deference.
A photo taken somewhere in the East Midlands. That and the sentiment bears out exactly the comment that I posted here last night:
"I don't think that Johnson has quite appreciated that this isn't just about Manchester. It's about the Conservatives being seen to be willing to stuff the North in general in its hour of need, and indeed anywhere north of Watford Gap. People in Liverpool and Lancashire won't be castigating Burnham for seeking a slightly better settlement than the paltry one their leaders got. No, they'll be cheering Burnham on. As are those in the North-East and Yorkshire who know they're next in the firing line, followed by the Midlands. This is a government that thinks nothing of throwing billions in lucrative contracts the way of any of the usual outsourcing suspects lining up to profit from coronavirus, in return for services that repeatedly fail to live up to their billing, yet which draws the line at settling for just a paltry £5m extra for Greater Manchester. Desperate people and businesses left to go hang. All the effort that went into winning seats in the Red Wall and promoting the fiction of Levelling Up is being undone before our eyes because Sunak can't find £5m.
We're due an Opinium poll this weekend."
Sunak and the Treasury werent involved in the final negotiations, it was Boris and No 10.
As the Treasury made clear last night as Sunak threw Boris under the bus.
Let’s not be naive. The Treasury controls the purse strings. It is Sunak who replaced furlough with a markedly less generous scheme which will screw over all those businesses and employees in Tier 2 and 3 regions. The resulting economic pain will be his responsibility as much as it is Johnson’s.
The Furlough and Self Employed schemes were incredibly generous, that seems to have been forgotten. No Country in the world did more.
Turning the taps off in the middle is so stupid. That money is now wasted if we get the unemployment and bankruptcy anyway plus the debt. The treasury should be seeing this through with a generous targeted scheme. It’s not. It’s penny pinching and expecting those least able to protect themselves to pay the price.
I really hope you land the header bet, Mike, and I agree the odds are value. But I think Biden will just miss it. A clear overall win, yes, but not quite Texas.
I've just received an email from "Donald J. Trump" addressed to "supporter" basically begging for money. Or for me to download his app.
Couple of red flags though. For one I have never signed up for emails from the Republicans so I have no idea how they got my email address, for another my email address they have sent it to is incorrect (there is a dot in my email missing, so it still comes to me but I always put the dot in when registering for anything).
Not sure if this is a scammer trying to rinse people and it's somehow gotten through my spam filter or "legitimate"? Not that it will affect how I ignore it either way.
The email supposedly has come from a domain ending in @victory.donaldtrump.com with a reply to ending in @campaigns.rnchq.com
A photo taken somewhere in the East Midlands. That and the sentiment bears out exactly the comment that I posted here last night:
"I don't think that Johnson has quite appreciated that this isn't just about Manchester. It's about the Conservatives being seen to be willing to stuff the North in general in its hour of need, and indeed anywhere north of Watford Gap. People in Liverpool and Lancashire won't be castigating Burnham for seeking a slightly better settlement than the paltry one their leaders got. No, they'll be cheering Burnham on. As are those in the North-East and Yorkshire who know they're next in the firing line, followed by the Midlands. This is a government that thinks nothing of throwing billions in lucrative contracts the way of any of the usual outsourcing suspects lining up to profit from coronavirus, in return for services that repeatedly fail to live up to their billing, yet which draws the line at settling for just a paltry £5m extra for Greater Manchester. Desperate people and businesses left to go hang. All the effort that went into winning seats in the Red Wall and promoting the fiction of Levelling Up is being undone before our eyes because Sunak can't find £5m.
We're due an Opinium poll this weekend."
Sunak and the Treasury werent involved in the final negotiations, it was Boris and No 10.
As the Treasury made clear last night as Sunak threw Boris under the bus.
Let’s not be naive. The Treasury controls the purse strings. It is Sunak who replaced furlough with a markedly less generous scheme which will screw over all those businesses and employees in Tier 2 and 3 regions. The resulting economic pain will be his responsibility as much as it is Johnson’s.
The Furlough and Self Employed schemes were incredibly generous, that seems to have been forgotten. No Country in the world did more.
Perhaps we were worst in appreciating that this would turn into a long haul, though?
Maybe, but to try and portray this Governement as penny pinching during this pandemic is bizarre. Even the shadow chancellor said the spending had been cavalier.
Yet it probably is right that the Government is now seeing that this could go on until next summer and is looking for something that costs rather less than its original scheme.
I've just received an email from "Donald J. Trump" addressed to "supporter" basically begging for money. Or for me to download his app.
Couple of red flags though. For one I have never signed up for emails from the Republicans so I have no idea how they got my email address, for another my email address they have sent it to is incorrect (there is a dot in my email missing, so it still comes to me but I always put the dot in when registering for anything).
Not sure if this is a scammer trying to rinse people and it's somehow gotten through my spam filter or "legitimate"? Not that it will affect how I ignore it either way.
The email supposedly has come from a domain ending in @victory.donaldtrump.com with a reply to ending in @campaigns.rnchq.com
Same settlement as Liverpool and Lancashire (and Greater Manchester)
GM didn't get a settlement. Robert Fletcher-Dervish being sent round this morning to say the money taken off the table is still on the table, but ManCock says he'll negotiate borough by borough.
Which is Good News for Rochdale, pox capital of GM. They get to beg. Sit Up. Play Dead. At which point the benevolent Tories throw them a bone. Yay! Haven't been allowed to see my parents since this all started, that isn't about to change either
HMG needs to use the cover of its own Manc MPs to bypass Burnham and hand over all the cash anyway. Preferably by five minutes to PMQs.
Entertainingly many of the Tory MPs had switched off their reponses to their tweets of their letter. Because they know that their line is massively against what their constituents are thinking.
However, if you are proposing that ManCock hands the £60m only to the places with Tory MPs then yes that's a marvellous idea for Labour
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
I like Monbiot a lot. He`s a good writer - his book "Feral" is excellent. It was an article by Monbiot that persuaded me to vote remain in EU referendum, for environmental (on top of my already pragmatic) reasons. He too was wavering, he disliked the EU but admired their rewilding initiatives.
I'll be the first to own up to not reading the article, so feel free to criticise, but does he draw a comparison to other European countries that are seeing no huge second wave, such as France, Germany, Italy and Spain... Oh wait. Not sure that the UK government is totally to blame for this... maybe, just maybe, there are no easy solutions?
Germany is up to +7,000 cases daily, compared to the UK's +21,000.
Germany of course has done well. Merkel gets an A
But, Johnson, Macron, Pérez-Castejón, Sturgeon, Drakeford are all getting Cs in my mark book.
Merkel is naturally a bit cautious and scientifically trained, both of which help.
It is not just down to good leadership. German's scientists have played a more coherent and consistent role than the UK's scientists. The Robert Koch Institute has been really outstanding.
There is a lot to learn for the UK, and its scientists, policy-makers and politicians.
The key is political leadership that knows enough science to test and challenge the advice given in a constructive way as opposed to jumping to every warning, no matter how inconsistent with everyone else's experience. Hunt would have been better for us, if not Merkel standard.
Agreed. I have no idea how he might have measured up against Merkel, but I’ve absolutely no doubt how he would have done so against the present shambles.
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
The downsides of a Freemasons-type secret organisation and of a cozy chumocracy aren't that far apart ISTM.
There's very little need for secrecy or conspiracy when so many people have swallowed the idea that the operation and influence of elite management consultancy is simply neutral technocracy, as natural as the sun, rain and the seasons.
New Labour performed almost as much policy on this basis, for instance, unremarked, as the Tories.
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
It's facts, rather than paranoia, I'm afraid. The modern reach, ethos and form of elite management consultancy wouldn't exist at all without McKinsey's, and its influence has been instrumental in corporate governance and public policy in the UK and the United States, and far beyond, since the turn of the 1980s. It is not a neutral technocratic instrument.
I'm afraid you asserting your opinion is a fact doesn't make it so. Some of its ex-employees have held and do hold senior corporate and political positions but that's because it employs extremely talented people who are happy to work hard for long hours - like William Hague, for example; it's not a conspiracy. It would be fair to say that operating at that level allowed them to network and build contacts with influential people at CEO level but it's secretly "controlling" anything - clients have to choose to take its advice.
Management consultancy (helping organisations improve performance) is a fairly recent profession and grew significantly in the 1980s because that was when corporations and businesses started moving away from a traditional hierarchical models just as the world got more complex in people, tax, strategy and technology, and more competitive in how it did things. It's that same evolution into more sophisticated business models that allowed GDP to rise so much at the same time. It wasn't a dark art of McKinsey that brought it all about.
Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't like to work for them. They still have an "up or out" policy, you are reviewed every six months and they work brutal hours and extensively travel. You're under constant stress. But, that said, those I know who've worked there have learnt a huge amount and found the experience very useful for their subsequent careers.
... There are no consequences for failure for the large outsourcing companies like SERCO and CAPITA. ...
Sorry, but that is total nonsense. Both of them have got into big financial trouble in the past as a result of losses on public sector contracts, as a cursory look at their financial histories shows. So has Interserve, so has Keir, so has Biffa. It's a total myth that these are risk-free for the companies concerned.
I appreciate that Richard. Perhaps i didn't quite express it properly. There is of course the potential for financial failure. But there are very little consequences for performance failure. Which is what primarily matters to the public sector. And when these massive companies fail completely they it may cost them money. But be under no illusion that it costs the public sector millions as well. Because there is very little to replace them.
I think that is about the quality or otherwise of the contractual conditions set by the public-sector client. In any contract, the supplier will try to provide what you've asked for, and if the performance metrics are badly designed (and especially if they are heavily loaded with extraneous politically-motivated stuff) you won't get good results.
However, the same is true, perhaps even more true, of services provided by the public sector. Anyone with knowledge of the NHS will be very aware of just how inefficient it is in many respects.
There are doubtless many low-level inefficiencies in the NHS, and the reforms of the last several governments of both colours have made it over-bureaucratic, but is it not still true that it is more efficient than foreign healthcare systems? Indeed, that always used to be the complaint, not least from the right: the NHS is topping the league for efficiency but is mid-table at actually saving lives.
If they are pressing ahead, or trying to, with the double digit rise, then extremely unlikely to view the 2.5% as a problem at all. Nothing to do with which way pensioners vote of course.
Doesn't make sense. Why increase the State Pension by about £12bn over two years when you could bung that money to mates in the private sector? That's a whole Test and Trace scheme.
Cui bono if Sunak breaks his pledge to maintain the pensions triple lock?
There must surely be zero chance of the triple lock being retained if/when the 10-20% earnings rise materialises. They just didn't want to scrap it on the basis of a 2.5% rise when inflation is at 0.5%.
I presume that next year they will come up with some sort of fudge, which seeks to retain the principle of it but doesn't lead to perverse (as opposed to just unaffordable) outcomes. So the "earnings" bit of the equation will probably shift to a 3 year average or something.
More likely is they will look at income tax on pensions rather than breaking the triple lock. First, Sunak won't want to be breaking manifesto pledges unless he really, really wants a sinecure at Facebook alongside Nick Clegg; it will end his chances of succeeding Boris in Number 10 (which is why I expect his Cabinet rivals will keep up a whispering campaign). Second, most pensioners are not wealthy and at the bottom end it is just about which benefits pot they are paid from.
The second bit is actually all important. A lot of pensioners won't claim for what they should get until Age Concern comes round and tells them what and how to claim for things (and then does it for them).
It's far better to treat it as a type of universal income and then tax everything against it.
The email I supposedly got from Trump, minus pictures etc.
URGENT: Biden campaign is currently spending more than $24 million on ads in 16 states
I need to know that I can count on you right now.
I have led the BIGGEST and FASTEST Financial Recovery in History. Next year will be even BETTER unless Sleepy Joe and Phony Kamala take the White House. They’ve promised to raise your taxes by $4 TRILLION - in which case, the economy that I’ve rebuilt would CRASH.
But, the Liberal media refuses to tell the truth about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ CORRUPT agenda - they want to TRICK the American People into voting for them. THEY WOULD DESTROY OUR NATION!
We can’t let them get away with this. My team just launched a new ad to FIGHT BACK against their biased coverage and EXPOSE the TRUTH about what this Liberal duo would do to our economy.
The American People deserve to know what they’d be getting into if they elect Sleepy Joe and Phony Kamala. That’s why your support is so important right now.
We need to make sure we FLOOD the airwaves with our new ad, which is why I’m calling on my best supporters to help raise $2,000,000 by 11:59 PM TONIGHT. When you step up, your gift will even be 800%-MATCHED.
This is of the utmost importance. I need you to step up.
Please contribute ANY AMOUNT IMMEDIATELY to our Official Trump Ad Blitz Fund and your gift will be 800%-MATCHED. >>
President Trump needs you to step up
TRUMP AD BLITZ FUND
SUPPORTER: (My email though incorrect snipped) CONTRIBUTION STATUS: MISSING 800%-MATCH: NOT USED DEADLINE: 11:59 PM TONIGHT
CONTRIBUTE $5 = $45
CONTRIBUTE $20 = $180
CONTRIBUTE $15 = $135
CONTRIBUTE $10 = $90
CONTRIBUTE $5 = $45
CONTRIBUTE ANY AMOUNT
If the Fake News won’t report the FACTS about the Left’s UNHINGED ticket, then WE WILL!
I want to know who stood with me during this crucial time. I’ve asked to see a list of EVERY Patriot who steps up to help us reach our $2,000,000 goal by 11:59 PM TONIGHT. I hope I see your name.
Please contribute ANY AMOUNT TODAY to our Official Trump Ad Blitz Fund and get on the list of Patriots my team hands me.
Thank you,
President Trump Signature Headshot Donald J. Trump President of the United States
The email I supposedly got from Trump, minus pictures etc.
URGENT: Biden campaign is currently spending more than $24 million on ads in 16 states
I need to know that I can count on you right now.
I have led the BIGGEST and FASTEST Financial Recovery in History. Next year will be even BETTER unless Sleepy Joe and Phony Kamala take the White House. They’ve promised to raise your taxes by $4 TRILLION - in which case, the economy that I’ve rebuilt would CRASH.
But, the Liberal media refuses to tell the truth about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ CORRUPT agenda - they want to TRICK the American People into voting for them. THEY WOULD DESTROY OUR NATION!
We can’t let them get away with this. My team just launched a new ad to FIGHT BACK against their biased coverage and EXPOSE the TRUTH about what this Liberal duo would do to our economy.
The American People deserve to know what they’d be getting into if they elect Sleepy Joe and Phony Kamala. That’s why your support is so important right now.
We need to make sure we FLOOD the airwaves with our new ad, which is why I’m calling on my best supporters to help raise $2,000,000 by 11:59 PM TONIGHT. When you step up, your gift will even be 800%-MATCHED.
This is of the utmost importance. I need you to step up.
Please contribute ANY AMOUNT IMMEDIATELY to our Official Trump Ad Blitz Fund and your gift will be 800%-MATCHED. >>
President Trump needs you to step up
TRUMP AD BLITZ FUND
SUPPORTER: (My email though incorrect snipped) CONTRIBUTION STATUS: MISSING 800%-MATCH: NOT USED DEADLINE: 11:59 PM TONIGHT
CONTRIBUTE $5 = $45
CONTRIBUTE $20 = $180
CONTRIBUTE $15 = $135
CONTRIBUTE $10 = $90
CONTRIBUTE $5 = $45
CONTRIBUTE ANY AMOUNT
If the Fake News won’t report the FACTS about the Left’s UNHINGED ticket, then WE WILL!
I want to know who stood with me during this crucial time. I’ve asked to see a list of EVERY Patriot who steps up to help us reach our $2,000,000 goal by 11:59 PM TONIGHT. I hope I see your name.
Please contribute ANY AMOUNT TODAY to our Official Trump Ad Blitz Fund and get on the list of Patriots my team hands me.
Thank you,
President Trump Signature Headshot Donald J. Trump President of the United States
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
The downsides of a Freemasons-type secret organisation and of a cozy chumocracy aren't that far apart ISTM.
I'd say there is: one is asserting there's a secret conspiracy to reshape the world to its vision (which is bonkers) and the other is an example of market failure where you have uncompetitive practices with high-barriers to entry which conveniently work too well for too many.
Blaming all the world's ills on McKinsey and the Freemasons would be as mad as me blaming all the UK's ills on the EU, UN and World Bank (which I don't, by the way).
I've just received an email from "Donald J. Trump" addressed to "supporter" basically begging for money. Or for me to download his app.
Couple of red flags though. For one I have never signed up for emails from the Republicans so I have no idea how they got my email address, for another my email address they have sent it to is incorrect (there is a dot in my email missing, so it still comes to me but I always put the dot in when registering for anything).
Not sure if this is a scammer trying to rinse people and it's somehow gotten through my spam filter or "legitimate"? Not that it will affect how I ignore it either way.
The email supposedly has come from a domain ending in @victory.donaldtrump.com with a reply to ending in @campaigns.rnchq.com
Sending domains are easily faked. You should check where the app is to be downloaded from (or better still, just delete the email if you (or generic pb readers) are not au fait with these things). The obvious suspicion is that the app is not what it claims to be and is some sort of malware.
Stocky: Largely white Brits I take it, rather than migrant workers?
Probably so, but not necessarily. I`d like to hear more from @theProle on this.
Agree it was great insight into a demographic that 75% of PB contributors have no association with on that level.
It's interesting how this kind of breathless reportage from the building sites of Britain is dissected with such anthropological excitement on PB. I mean, are these people really so unknown to people here? I move in pretty bourgeois circles these days, perhaps even the global elite, but I went to a comprehensive school and have done a fair amount of low paid work in the past, and the fact that a lot of working class blokes don't like the EU, or anything vaguely foreign, or indeed have a low opinion of "political correctness gone mad" is hardly news to me.
Spot on. I'd also add that this kind of reportage seems to only ever cover half of the relevant population - namely men.
On this male-dominated site, who's going to give us the equivalent insight into what working class women are thinking? We hear a lot about the views of lads and blokes - not so much about their female equivalents. I suspect they're slightly different. And women do now have the vote, of course.
I can guarantee that, if a few dozen people work on the engineering shop floor at Stocky's place, that there are at least two pro-EU types on that shop floor in small numbers - one will mouth off about it and be thought a bit of a nob, one will be a quiet knowledgeable one who people go to for info and who may not realise is pro-EU. Stocky will be able to make these people in his head.
That's not to say that the anti-EU types don't have decent lifecraft and intelligence. My summer holiday jobs at home were almost invariably in manufacturing and I encountered plenty who hadn't done much at school but had a sort of basic knowhow that was pretty compelling to an 18 year old bookhead. And I worked in both male and female environments, generally piece work in the latter case and saw a lot of the same thing. Then I went back to posh uni and looked at who the hell was seeking to lead these people.
And, even now, in practical IT, it's a pretty egalitarian mix, leftier leaning grads and towny non grads doing the same roles, so I don't feel on a liberal island, even though from outside you could think that.
I just wish liberals would pitch their liberalism far more routinely to and amongst these people, not only to widen their audience but to sharpen and even modify their message. The liberal pitch to a working town, going beyond the I'm proud of my country too' schtick, is a tough route, but a winning route.
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
It's facts, rather than paranoia, I'm afraid. The modern reach, ethos and form of elite management consultancy wouldn't exist at all without McKinsey's, and its influence has been instrumental in corporate governance and public policy in the UK and the United States, and far beyond, since the turn of the 1980s. It is not a neutral technocratic instrument.
I'm afraid you asserting your opinion is a fact doesn't make it so. Some of its ex-employees have held and do hold senior corporate and political positions but that's because it employs extremely talented people who are happy to work hard for long hours - like William Hague, for example; it's not a conspiracy. It would be fair to say that operating at that level allowed them to network and build contacts with influential people at CEO level but it's secretly "controlling" anything - clients have to choose to take its advice.
Management consultancy (helping organisations improve performance) is a fairly recent profession and grew significantly in the 1980s because that was when corporations and businesses started moving away from a traditional hierarchical models just as the world got more complex in people, tax, strategy and technology, and more competitive in how it did things. It's that same evolution into more sophisticated business models that allowed GDP to rise so much at the same time. It wasn't a dark art of McKinsey that brought it all about.
Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't like to work for them. They still have an "up or out" policy, you are reviewed every six months and they work brutal hours and extensively travel. You're under constant stress. But, that said, those I know who've worked there have learnt a huge amount and found the experience very useful for their subsequent careers.
The 1980’s you say. And the period since then has been the epitome, has it not, of brilliant management in lots of private sector organisations. And of a GDP built on solid foundations ...... Or perhaps not.
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
Oh, I agree. The only reason I don’t think it an excellent article is that it is written for the already persuaded - and Monbiot doesn’t get to the meat of the argument until it’s half way through. If he could restrain his outrage a bit when writing, he’d be a lot better.
I've just received an email from "Donald J. Trump" addressed to "supporter" basically begging for money. Or for me to download his app.
Couple of red flags though. For one I have never signed up for emails from the Republicans so I have no idea how they got my email address, for another my email address they have sent it to is incorrect (there is a dot in my email missing, so it still comes to me but I always put the dot in when registering for anything).
Not sure if this is a scammer trying to rinse people and it's somehow gotten through my spam filter or "legitimate"? Not that it will affect how I ignore it either way.
The email supposedly has come from a domain ending in @victory.donaldtrump.com with a reply to ending in @campaigns.rnchq.com
LOL. You've been profiled!
LOL!
Though that they couldn't even get the email address right says a lot about the profiling ...
My email address is a pretty easy one to fake so a lot of spam comes to me. Normally all caught by the spam filter though, surprised this one got through.
I've just received an email from "Donald J. Trump" addressed to "supporter" basically begging for money. Or for me to download his app.
Couple of red flags though. For one I have never signed up for emails from the Republicans so I have no idea how they got my email address, for another my email address they have sent it to is incorrect (there is a dot in my email missing, so it still comes to me but I always put the dot in when registering for anything).
Not sure if this is a scammer trying to rinse people and it's somehow gotten through my spam filter or "legitimate"? Not that it will affect how I ignore it either way.
The email supposedly has come from a domain ending in @victory.donaldtrump.com with a reply to ending in @campaigns.rnchq.com
LOL. You've been profiled!
LOL!
Though that they couldn't even get the email address right says a lot about the profiling ...
My email address is a pretty easy one to fake so a lot of spam comes to me. Normally all caught by the spam filter though, surprised this one got through.
If you stick with takebackcontrol@hotmail.com you are going to get a lot of spam, tbf.
I've just received an email from "Donald J. Trump" addressed to "supporter" basically begging for money. Or for me to download his app.
Couple of red flags though. For one I have never signed up for emails from the Republicans so I have no idea how they got my email address, for another my email address they have sent it to is incorrect (there is a dot in my email missing, so it still comes to me but I always put the dot in when registering for anything).
Not sure if this is a scammer trying to rinse people and it's somehow gotten through my spam filter or "legitimate"? Not that it will affect how I ignore it either way.
The email supposedly has come from a domain ending in @victory.donaldtrump.com with a reply to ending in @campaigns.rnchq.com
LOL. You've been profiled!
LOL!
Though that they couldn't even get the email address right says a lot about the profiling ...
My email address is a pretty easy one to fake so a lot of spam comes to me. Normally all caught by the spam filter though, surprised this one got through.
I have a very old gmail account (from when they were first released) which I only use as an emergency account to access things if everything else fails.
The amount of Donald Trump begging emails I get in there is a sight to behold - there are 55 today and nothing else.
Same settlement as Liverpool and Lancashire (and Greater Manchester)
GM didn't get a settlement. Robert Fletcher-Dervish being sent round this morning to say the money taken off the table is still on the table, but ManCock says he'll negotiate borough by borough.
Which is Good News for Rochdale, pox capital of GM. They get to beg. Sit Up. Play Dead. At which point the benevolent Tories throw them a bone. Yay! Haven't been allowed to see my parents since this all started, that isn't about to change either
HMG needs to use the cover of its own Manc MPs to bypass Burnham and hand over all the cash anyway. Preferably by five minutes to PMQs.
Entertainingly many of the Tory MPs had switched off their reponses to their tweets of their letter. Because they know that their line is massively against what their constituents are thinking.
However, if you are proposing that ManCock hands the £60m only to the places with Tory MPs then yes that's a marvellous idea for Labour
No, I'm proposing HMG hands over all the dosh to all those affected, but credits the Tory MPs for their persuasiveness.
... There are no consequences for failure for the large outsourcing companies like SERCO and CAPITA. ...
Sorry, but that is total nonsense. Both of them have got into big financial trouble in the past as a result of losses on public sector contracts, as a cursory look at their financial histories shows. So has Interserve, so has Keir, so has Biffa. It's a total myth that these are risk-free for the companies concerned.
I appreciate that Richard. Perhaps i didn't quite express it properly. There is of course the potential for financial failure. But there are very little consequences for performance failure. Which is what primarily matters to the public sector. And when these massive companies fail completely they it may cost them money. But be under no illusion that it costs the public sector millions as well. Because there is very little to replace them.
I think that is about the quality or otherwise of the contractual conditions set by the public-sector client. In any contract, the supplier will try to provide what you've asked for, and if the performance metrics are badly designed (and especially if they are heavily loaded with extraneous politically-motivated stuff) you won't get good results.
However, the same is true, perhaps even more true, of services provided by the public sector. Anyone with knowledge of the NHS will be very aware of just how inefficient it is in many respects.
There are doubtless many low-level inefficiencies in the NHS, and the reforms of the last several governments of both colours have made it over-bureaucratic, but is it not still true that it is more efficient than foreign healthcare systems? Indeed, that always used to be the complaint, not least from the right: the NHS is topping the league for efficiency but is mid-table at actually saving lives.
I guess it depends on how you define efficiency? I've always found the NHS to be a superb example of a bog-standard service. Everything I've ever needed taken care off, and no bill at the end, but certainly no frills. I have nothing but admiration for those that work in the NHS. As a nation, I think sometimes we expect too much from it, and many of us take too little care of our own health until the consequences are laid bare. Of course some issues are just bad luck (many cancers, despite what some would have you believe are NOT related to lifestyle). I live a reasonably healthy lifestyle but in the last 10 years have had two patella tendon ruptures (playing sport, to stay healthy...) and a bout of leukemia, not lifestyle related. For all three I received the care I needed to recover. Some touches of the care were superb - the nurse who went to the canteen to buy me a meal as I'd missed the food on the ward on my first day there is just one example. However some of the care was basic in the extreme. My NHS physio for the last knee repair totalled no more than 30 mins total, over 4 sessions. Quick, but luckily effective, and a representation of the NHS as a whole.
I've just received an email from "Donald J. Trump" addressed to "supporter" basically begging for money. Or for me to download his app.
Couple of red flags though. For one I have never signed up for emails from the Republicans so I have no idea how they got my email address, for another my email address they have sent it to is incorrect (there is a dot in my email missing, so it still comes to me but I always put the dot in when registering for anything).
Not sure if this is a scammer trying to rinse people and it's somehow gotten through my spam filter or "legitimate"? Not that it will affect how I ignore it either way.
The email supposedly has come from a domain ending in @victory.donaldtrump.com with a reply to ending in @campaigns.rnchq.com
Sending domains are easily faked. You should check where the app is to be downloaded from (or better still, just delete the email if you (or generic pb readers) are not au fait with these things). The obvious suspicion is that the app is not what it claims to be and is some sort of malware.
Indeed. I once had the shock of my life when I received a ransom email from myself. I really did think for a few minutes that they'd hacked my email, how else could they have sent me an email from my own account. Turns out you can fake that. I had a nasty few hours til I investigated fully.
A photo taken somewhere in the East Midlands. That and the sentiment bears out exactly the comment that I posted here last night:
"I don't think that Johnson has quite appreciated that this isn't just about Manchester. It's about the Conservatives being seen to be willing to stuff the North in general in its hour of need, and indeed anywhere north of Watford Gap. People in Liverpool and Lancashire won't be castigating Burnham for seeking a slightly better settlement than the paltry one their leaders got. No, they'll be cheering Burnham on. As are those in the North-East and Yorkshire who know they're next in the firing line, followed by the Midlands. This is a government that thinks nothing of throwing billions in lucrative contracts the way of any of the usual outsourcing suspects lining up to profit from coronavirus, in return for services that repeatedly fail to live up to their billing, yet which draws the line at settling for just a paltry £5m extra for Greater Manchester. Desperate people and businesses left to go hang. All the effort that went into winning seats in the Red Wall and promoting the fiction of Levelling Up is being undone before our eyes because Sunak can't find £5m.
We're due an Opinium poll this weekend."
Sunak and the Treasury werent involved in the final negotiations, it was Boris and No 10.
As the Treasury made clear last night as Sunak threw Boris under the bus.
Let’s not be naive. The Treasury controls the purse strings. It is Sunak who replaced furlough with a markedly less generous scheme which will screw over all those businesses and employees in Tier 2 and 3 regions. The resulting economic pain will be his responsibility as much as it is Johnson’s.
The Furlough and Self Employed schemes were incredibly generous, that seems to have been forgotten. No Country in the world did more.
Perhaps we were worst in appreciating that this would turn into a long haul, though?
Maybe, but to try and portray this Governement as penny pinching during this pandemic is bizarre. Even the shadow chancellor said the spending had been cavalier.
Yet it probably is right that the Government is now seeing that this could go on until next summer and is looking for something that costs rather less than its original scheme.
Which was the OP's point, I believe?
It was, but from the discussions on here and the TV you wouuld think that this Government has been penny pinching and that it was picking on the people from Manchester. I am sure there are millions of people from the GM area that have benefited from the Furlough and Self Employed scheme. Hundreds of billions have been spent on supporting people and businesses during the pandemic and people are pretending that this has not happened.
Stocky: Largely white Brits I take it, rather than migrant workers?
Probably so, but not necessarily. I`d like to hear more from @theProle on this.
Agree it was great insight into a demographic that 75% of PB contributors have no association with on that level.
It's interesting how this kind of breathless reportage from the building sites of Britain is dissected with such anthropological excitement on PB. I mean, are these people really so unknown to people here? I move in pretty bourgeois circles these days, perhaps even the global elite, but I went to a comprehensive school and have done a fair amount of low paid work in the past, and the fact that a lot of working class blokes don't like the EU, or anything vaguely foreign, or indeed have a low opinion of "political correctness gone mad" is hardly news to me.
Maybe it isn't but recognising those people and their views isn't the same as engaging with or addressing them.
It isn't an answer to say it's not news, you know them well, shrug your shoulders, just say they're wrong and move on.
It depends who you are. I am just a private citizen and it's not my job to educate and enlighten the masses, nor am I arrogant enough to think that I could. Live and let live is an entirely rational response to the fact that some people hold views that I disagree with. If I were a politician of course I would have to engage with them and find a way to bring some of them on board, without selling out my core beliefs or alienating other supporters. As the original poster notes, there are left wing economic messages that might resonate with them. Of course it is in the interests of the Tory party and press to play up the right wing cultural messages precisely because they don't want to engage with those economic views (hence create wedge issues like Brexit, statues etc). I just find it odd that these people seem to induce an almost anthropological fascination from some people here, as if they are an uncontacted Amazonian tribe. It makes me think that some people must have had quite a sheltered upbringing. It's also a bit reminiscent of the episode of Peep Show when Jeremy tries to be friends with their builder, or perhaps the Greek art student in Pulp's Common People.
I think your answer highlights the problem: engaging with them on economics is looking to find something that "resonates" but engaging with them on cultural messages is "playing up" to them. It's clear you find only one of those sets of concerns as legitimate.
The Tories have not created a wedge issue of statues, which didn't exist until 6 months ago. No-one from the centre-right involved in or agitating for any to come down in order to 'spark' a conflict. I think the real objection is that the Tories are now putting up a counter-argument to left-modernist views on things like white privilege, "racist" statues, gender recognition, and these views are indeed in line with many in the working class, and indeed plenty in the middle class, who see it for the nonsense it really is.
This is both unexpected, and unwelcomed, from those who've had it their own way for far too long, so is labelled as them starting a culture war when it's really just expanding the field of political debate.
I've just received an email from "Donald J. Trump" addressed to "supporter" basically begging for money. Or for me to download his app.
Couple of red flags though. For one I have never signed up for emails from the Republicans so I have no idea how they got my email address, for another my email address they have sent it to is incorrect (there is a dot in my email missing, so it still comes to me but I always put the dot in when registering for anything).
Not sure if this is a scammer trying to rinse people and it's somehow gotten through my spam filter or "legitimate"? Not that it will affect how I ignore it either way.
The email supposedly has come from a domain ending in @victory.donaldtrump.com with a reply to ending in @campaigns.rnchq.com
Sending domains are easily faked. You should check where the app is to be downloaded from (or better still, just delete the email if you (or generic pb readers) are not au fait with these things). The obvious suspicion is that the app is not what it claims to be and is some sort of malware.
Indeed. I once had the shock of my life when I received a ransom email from myself. I really did think for a few minutes that they'd hacked my email, how else could they have sent me an email from my own account. Turns out you can fake that. I had a nasty few hours til I investigated fully.
Same settlement as Liverpool and Lancashire (and Greater Manchester)
GM didn't get a settlement. Robert Fletcher-Dervish being sent round this morning to say the money taken off the table is still on the table, but ManCock says he'll negotiate borough by borough.
Which is Good News for Rochdale, pox capital of GM. They get to beg. Sit Up. Play Dead. At which point the benevolent Tories throw them a bone. Yay! Haven't been allowed to see my parents since this all started, that isn't about to change either
HMG needs to use the cover of its own Manc MPs to bypass Burnham and hand over all the cash anyway. Preferably by five minutes to PMQs.
Entertainingly many of the Tory MPs had switched off their reponses to their tweets of their letter. Because they know that their line is massively against what their constituents are thinking.
However, if you are proposing that ManCock hands the £60m only to the places with Tory MPs then yes that's a marvellous idea for Labour
No, I'm proposing HMG hands over all the dosh to all those affected, but credits the Tory MPs for their persuasiveness.
That works for Labour as well. Tory MPs - not all of them, just these ones - capitulate to government and fail to get YOU their constituents the absolute minimum cash needed.
There is no upside for the Tories. They have sent Jenrick on this morning. To explain how the government haven't got £5m. But he gave away £45m of public money to a Tory donor and didn't have to resign...
I've just received an email from "Donald J. Trump" addressed to "supporter" basically begging for money. Or for me to download his app.
Couple of red flags though. For one I have never signed up for emails from the Republicans so I have no idea how they got my email address, for another my email address they have sent it to is incorrect (there is a dot in my email missing, so it still comes to me but I always put the dot in when registering for anything).
Not sure if this is a scammer trying to rinse people and it's somehow gotten through my spam filter or "legitimate"? Not that it will affect how I ignore it either way.
The email supposedly has come from a domain ending in @victory.donaldtrump.com with a reply to ending in @campaigns.rnchq.com
Sending domains are easily faked. You should check where the app is to be downloaded from (or better still, just delete the email if you (or generic pb readers) are not au fait with these things). The obvious suspicion is that the app is not what it claims to be and is some sort of malware.
Indeed. I once had the shock of my life when I received a ransom email from myself. I really did think for a few minutes that they'd hacked my email, how else could they have sent me an email from my own account. Turns out you can fake that. I had a nasty few hours til I investigated fully.
I've just received an email from "Donald J. Trump" addressed to "supporter" basically begging for money. Or for me to download his app.
Couple of red flags though. For one I have never signed up for emails from the Republicans so I have no idea how they got my email address, for another my email address they have sent it to is incorrect (there is a dot in my email missing, so it still comes to me but I always put the dot in when registering for anything).
Not sure if this is a scammer trying to rinse people and it's somehow gotten through my spam filter or "legitimate"? Not that it will affect how I ignore it either way.
The email supposedly has come from a domain ending in @victory.donaldtrump.com with a reply to ending in @campaigns.rnchq.com
Send him some money and then report him for breaking US fundraising law.
I've just received an email from "Donald J. Trump" addressed to "supporter" basically begging for money. Or for me to download his app.
Couple of red flags though. For one I have never signed up for emails from the Republicans so I have no idea how they got my email address, for another my email address they have sent it to is incorrect (there is a dot in my email missing, so it still comes to me but I always put the dot in when registering for anything).
Not sure if this is a scammer trying to rinse people and it's somehow gotten through my spam filter or "legitimate"? Not that it will affect how I ignore it either way.
The email supposedly has come from a domain ending in @victory.donaldtrump.com with a reply to ending in @campaigns.rnchq.com
Sending domains are easily faked. You should check where the app is to be downloaded from (or better still, just delete the email if you (or generic pb readers) are not au fait with these things). The obvious suspicion is that the app is not what it claims to be and is some sort of malware.
Indeed. I once had the shock of my life when I received a ransom email from myself. I really did think for a few minutes that they'd hacked my email, how else could they have sent me an email from my own account. Turns out you can fake that. I had a nasty few hours til I investigated fully.
A ransom demand from yourself! Did you pay it?
Haha, you know what I mean. It was an email which had all the appearance of being from my own account. But wasn't really. Pity I didn't pay up, I could have used the extra money that month
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
The downsides of a Freemasons-type secret organisation and of a cozy chumocracy aren't that far apart ISTM.
I'd say there is: one is asserting there's a secret conspiracy to reshape the world to its vision (which is bonkers) and the other is an example of market failure where you have uncompetitive practices with high-barriers to entry which conveniently work too well for too many.
Blaming all the world's ills on McKinsey and the Freemasons would be as mad as me blaming all the UK's ills on the EU, UN and World Bank (which I don't, by the way).
But who is chums with who, or who went to the same school or college, is pretty secret (or at least not evident or widely known) up until the chum gets this or that senior leadership role without any apparent qualifications.
And the difference between an organised conspiracy and a group of people moving in the same circles with the same preconceived view of the world is a fine line. Largely because if you think of an organised conspiracy and dig into it, things will probably prove to be more of a chumocracy in the first place, large multi-layered conspiracies being almost impossible to organise with any degree of ruthless efficiency.
Stocky: Largely white Brits I take it, rather than migrant workers?
Probably so, but not necessarily. I`d like to hear more from @theProle on this.
Agree it was great insight into a demographic that 75% of PB contributors have no association with on that level.
It's interesting how this kind of breathless reportage from the building sites of Britain is dissected with such anthropological excitement on PB. I mean, are these people really so unknown to people here? I move in pretty bourgeois circles these days, perhaps even the global elite, but I went to a comprehensive school and have done a fair amount of low paid work in the past, and the fact that a lot of working class blokes don't like the EU, or anything vaguely foreign, or indeed have a low opinion of "political correctness gone mad" is hardly news to me.
Maybe it isn't but recognising those people and their views isn't the same as engaging with or addressing them.
It isn't an answer to say it's not news, you know them well, shrug your shoulders, just say they're wrong and move on.
It depends who you are. I am just a private citizen and it's not my job to educate and enlighten the masses, nor am I arrogant enough to think that I could. Live and let live is an entirely rational response to the fact that some people hold views that I disagree with. If I were a politician of course I would have to engage with them and find a way to bring some of them on board, without selling out my core beliefs or alienating other supporters. As the original poster notes, there are left wing economic messages that might resonate with them. Of course it is in the interests of the Tory party and press to play up the right wing cultural messages precisely because they don't want to engage with those economic views (hence create wedge issues like Brexit, statues etc). I just find it odd that these people seem to induce an almost anthropological fascination from some people here, as if they are an uncontacted Amazonian tribe. It makes me think that some people must have had quite a sheltered upbringing. It's also a bit reminiscent of the episode of Peep Show when Jeremy tries to be friends with their builder, or perhaps the Greek art student in Pulp's Common People.
I think your answer highlights the problem: engaging with them on economics is looking to find something that "resonates" but engaging with them on cultural messages is "playing up" to them. It's clear you find only one of those sets of concerns as legitimate.
The Tories have not created a wedge issue of statues, which didn't exist until 6 months ago. No-one from the centre-right involved in or agitating for any to come down in order to 'spark' a conflict. I think the real objection is that the Tories are now putting up a counter-argument to left-modernist views on things like white privilege, "racist" statues, gender recognition, and these views are indeed in line with many in the working class, and indeed plenty in the middle class, who see it for the nonsense it really is.
This is both unexpected, and unwelcomed, from those who've had it their own way for far too long, so is labelled as them starting a culture war when it's really just expanding the field of political debate.
But there is white privilege and there are racist statues, these issues need addressing and are not nonsense.
I've just received an email from "Donald J. Trump" addressed to "supporter" basically begging for money. Or for me to download his app.
Couple of red flags though. For one I have never signed up for emails from the Republicans so I have no idea how they got my email address, for another my email address they have sent it to is incorrect (there is a dot in my email missing, so it still comes to me but I always put the dot in when registering for anything).
Not sure if this is a scammer trying to rinse people and it's somehow gotten through my spam filter or "legitimate"? Not that it will affect how I ignore it either way.
The email supposedly has come from a domain ending in @victory.donaldtrump.com with a reply to ending in @campaigns.rnchq.com
Sending domains are easily faked. You should check where the app is to be downloaded from (or better still, just delete the email if you (or generic pb readers) are not au fait with these things). The obvious suspicion is that the app is not what it claims to be and is some sort of malware.
Indeed. I once had the shock of my life when I received a ransom email from myself. I really did think for a few minutes that they'd hacked my email, how else could they have sent me an email from my own account. Turns out you can fake that. I had a nasty few hours til I investigated fully.
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
It's facts, rather than paranoia, I'm afraid. The modern reach, ethos and form of elite management consultancy wouldn't exist at all without McKinsey's, and its influence has been instrumental in corporate governance and public policy in the UK and the United States, and far beyond, since the turn of the 1980s. It is not a neutral technocratic instrument.
I'm afraid you asserting your opinion is a fact doesn't make it so. Some of its ex-employees have held and do hold senior corporate and political positions but that's because it employs extremely talented people who are happy to work hard for long hours - like William Hague, for example; it's not a conspiracy. It would be fair to say that operating at that level allowed them to network and build contacts with influential people at CEO level but it's secretly "controlling" anything - clients have to choose to take its advice.
Management consultancy (helping organisations improve performance) is a fairly recent profession and grew significantly in the 1980s because that was when corporations and businesses started moving away from a traditional hierarchical models just as the world got more complex in people, tax, strategy and technology, and more competitive in how it did things. It's that same evolution into more sophisticated business models that allowed GDP to rise so much at the same time. It wasn't a dark art of McKinsey that brought it all about.
Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't like to work for them. They still have an "up or out" policy, you are reviewed every six months and they work brutal hours and extensively travel. You're under constant stress. But, that said, those I know who've worked there have learnt a huge amount and found the experience very useful for their subsequent careers.
I would say the ultimate influence of McKinsey's has been very far from anti-hierarchical, and date back to the late 60s and early 70s, just anticipating the New Right. It was instrumental as early as about 1965-66 in the concepts of removing middle management and hugely rewarding those chosen at the top, in turn, that in several businesses have often led to more, rather than less, hierarchical management. The emphasis on rationalisation through the ultra-rewarding of elite management has also sometimes contributed not just to the toleration, but even celebration, of greater inequality.
A great example of the influence of McKinsey's is broadcasting and public culture in Britain. John Birt instigated a rationalising blueprint that cut out huge layers of sometimes ambiguous and eccentric middle management. This middle layer was by turns wasteful, highly developed and inspired, and crudely and simplistically hacking it out hugely damaged the BBC's distinctive ecosystem, with wide-ranging consequences for the degradation of our entire public culture. It wasn't actually his blueprint at all ; but McKinsey's.
A photo taken somewhere in the East Midlands. That and the sentiment bears out exactly the comment that I posted here last night:
"I don't think that Johnson has quite appreciated that this isn't just about Manchester. It's about the Conservatives being seen to be willing to stuff the North in general in its hour of need, and indeed anywhere north of Watford Gap. People in Liverpool and Lancashire won't be castigating Burnham for seeking a slightly better settlement than the paltry one their leaders got. No, they'll be cheering Burnham on. As are those in the North-East and Yorkshire who know they're next in the firing line, followed by the Midlands. This is a government that thinks nothing of throwing billions in lucrative contracts the way of any of the usual outsourcing suspects lining up to profit from coronavirus, in return for services that repeatedly fail to live up to their billing, yet which draws the line at settling for just a paltry £5m extra for Greater Manchester. Desperate people and businesses left to go hang. All the effort that went into winning seats in the Red Wall and promoting the fiction of Levelling Up is being undone before our eyes because Sunak can't find £5m.
We're due an Opinium poll this weekend."
Sunak and the Treasury werent involved in the final negotiations, it was Boris and No 10.
As the Treasury made clear last night as Sunak threw Boris under the bus.
Let’s not be naive. The Treasury controls the purse strings. It is Sunak who replaced furlough with a markedly less generous scheme which will screw over all those businesses and employees in Tier 2 and 3 regions. The resulting economic pain will be his responsibility as much as it is Johnson’s.
The Furlough and Self Employed schemes were incredibly generous, that seems to have been forgotten. No Country in the world did more.
Perhaps we were worst in appreciating that this would turn into a long haul, though?
Maybe, but to try and portray this Governement as penny pinching during this pandemic is bizarre. Even the shadow chancellor said the spending had been cavalier.
Yet it probably is right that the Government is now seeing that this could go on until next summer and is looking for something that costs rather less than its original scheme.
Which was the OP's point, I believe?
It was, but from the discussions on here and the TV you wouuld think that this Government has been penny pinching and that it was picking on the people from Manchester. I am sure there are millions of people from the GM area that have benefited from the Furlough and Self Employed scheme. Hundreds of billions have been spent on supporting people and businesses during the pandemic and people are pretending that this has not happened.
No-one is pretending that this has not happened. They are querying why, having done that, the government is introducing a much less generous scheme which incentivises firms to lay off staff, which does nothing for those in the supply chain and nothing at all for those under Tier 2 restrictions. The likely effect of this is that we get both the increased debt and the bankruptcies and unemployment: a lose-lose outcome.
You put you gyms in, you take your gyms out, you put your soft play area in, shake it all about, thats what T3 is all about.
Entertaining as it is this is a sensible move. Tier 3 has to be a universal set of rules. If we end up with different rules for different places then its not a Tier is it.
"No one knows who Kamala Harris is". Well, apart from Senator of the most populous State in the Union. Hey ho.
Even so how many of us or even the American electorate know much about her? The point Steyn was making is that she will be the prime minister figure running the show while Joe Biden will take the constitutional monarch role. That's not far fetched, and it seems to be implied by the way she presents herself. It's inevitable. Biden is 77 and not obviously "young for his age". (Though the Youtube video that followed on was an interview with Roger Penrose sharp as a pin aged 89, so age is not the only thing.)
You put you gyms in, you take your gyms out, you put your soft play area in, shake it all about, thats what T3 is all about.
Entertaining as it is this is a sensible move. Tier 3 has to be a universal set of rules. If we end up with different rules for different places then its not a Tier is it.
Absolutely no classes is a rule I'd have for gyms.
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
It's facts, rather than paranoia, I'm afraid. The modern reach, ethos and form of elite management consultancy wouldn't exist at all without McKinsey's, and its influence has been instrumental in corporate governance and public policy in the UK and the United States, and far beyond, since the turn of the 1980s. It is not a neutral technocratic instrument.
I'm afraid you asserting your opinion is a fact doesn't make it so. Some of its ex-employees have held and do hold senior corporate and political positions but that's because it employs extremely talented people who are happy to work hard for long hours - like William Hague, for example; it's not a conspiracy. It would be fair to say that operating at that level allowed them to network and build contacts with influential people at CEO level but it's secretly "controlling" anything - clients have to choose to take its advice.
Management consultancy (helping organisations improve performance) is a fairly recent profession and grew significantly in the 1980s because that was when corporations and businesses started moving away from a traditional hierarchical models just as the world got more complex in people, tax, strategy and technology, and more competitive in how it did things. It's that same evolution into more sophisticated business models that allowed GDP to rise so much at the same time. It wasn't a dark art of McKinsey that brought it all about.
Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't like to work for them. They still have an "up or out" policy, you are reviewed every six months and they work brutal hours and extensively travel. You're under constant stress. But, that said, those I know who've worked there have learnt a huge amount and found the experience very useful for their subsequent careers.
The 1980’s you say. And the period since then has been the epitome, has it not, of brilliant management in lots of private sector organisations. And of a GDP built on solid foundations ...... Or perhaps not.
Of course there have been problems, not least in the financial services industry, but world GDP (GWP) has increased from around 18tn in 1980 to around 81trn today - a four-fold increase in real terms. In England, from £15k per head in 1980 to almost £30k per head today - so we are twice as wealthy.
That doesn't mean we still have problems - including examples of poor practice, corruption, management failures and huge entitlement - but it does mean our 'new' services driven economy has delivered great improvements in the quality of life.
I've just received an email from "Donald J. Trump" addressed to "supporter" basically begging for money. Or for me to download his app.
Couple of red flags though. For one I have never signed up for emails from the Republicans so I have no idea how they got my email address, for another my email address they have sent it to is incorrect (there is a dot in my email missing, so it still comes to me but I always put the dot in when registering for anything).
Not sure if this is a scammer trying to rinse people and it's somehow gotten through my spam filter or "legitimate"? Not that it will affect how I ignore it either way.
The email supposedly has come from a domain ending in @victory.donaldtrump.com with a reply to ending in @campaigns.rnchq.com
LOL. You've been profiled!
LOL!
Though that they couldn't even get the email address right says a lot about the profiling ...
My email address is a pretty easy one to fake so a lot of spam comes to me. Normally all caught by the spam filter though, surprised this one got through.
I have a very old gmail account (from when they were first released) which I only use as an emergency account to access things if everything else fails.
The amount of Donald Trump begging emails I get in there is a sight to behold - there are 55 today and nothing else.
Ok thanks. My email is very old too, also from when they were first released but I still use it as my personal email. This is the first one of these I've seen though.
Was curious if the Trump campaign is so broke they're spamming everyone desperate for cash, or if it's fraudsters. I have no intention of clicking on the email again either way though if the campaign is so broke they're spamming people randomly that would be a bad sign for their campaign.
You put you gyms in, you take your gyms out, you put your soft play area in, shake it all about, thats what T3 is all about.
Entertaining as it is this is a sensible move. Tier 3 has to be a universal set of rules. If we end up with different rules for different places then its not a Tier is it.
Well i did point out at the time the lunacy of saying we are simplifying the rules, but T3 was set by negotiation.
You put you gyms in, you take your gyms out, you put your soft play area in, shake it all about, thats what T3 is all about.
Entertaining as it is this is a sensible move. Tier 3 has to be a universal set of rules. If we end up with different rules for different places then its not a Tier is it.
The Regulations as passed by Parliament are very clear:
17.—(1) A person responsible for carrying on a restricted business, or providing a restricted service, in the Tier 3 area must cease to carry on that business or provide that service.
19.—(1) The restricted businesses and restricted services for the purposes of this Part of this Schedule are those falling within sub-paragraphs (2), (3) or (4).
(4) The following businesses and services fall within this sub-paragraph— (i)indoor gyms, fitness and dance studios;
So presumably we can look forward to an amendment?
I really do wonder if these types of quotes are real or just made up by the journalist. "Tory Official 2" - how does anyone know what they did or did not say?
I expect there is some truth in it but listening to 5 live this morning the nuance was that Greater Manchester settlement is approx £29 per head which is the same as Liverpool and Lancashire.
To be honest Burnham was coming under a lot of criticism and Burley on Sky was critical in an interview with a Greater Manchester councillor
I have no doubt Burnham is popular in Greater Manchester and I would expect to see crossover in the polls
However, I have faith in Rishi in getting the balance correct but he is not helped by Boris who is so much out of his depth and their comms is dreadful
The whole mess is basically because the Treasury is trying to do the second round of lockdown in the cheap. The idea was to share responsibility for their penny pinching with local politicians who could then be deemed to have endorsed the support on offer. As it's a row over money, or rather the lack of it, Sunak should be the one taking the responsibility.
And Dan Jarvis of South Yorkshire has just accepted the same deal without the animosity shown by Burnham
Burnham Your new hate figure, must have been in this mornings email from CCHQ We will see similar from the usual suspects later today
There will be more than a few nervously chomping on their cornflakes this morning and I don't just mean Johnson/Cummings. The attention to detail at his press conference yesterday was staggering. From his donkey jacket to his horn rimmed specs. This was Brando in 'On The Waterfront' This is not the Andy Burnham of three years ago who looked silly in long trousers.
If Starmer doesn't cut it Labour knows someone who will.
Stocky: Largely white Brits I take it, rather than migrant workers?
Probably so, but not necessarily. I`d like to hear more from @theProle on this.
Agree it was great insight into a demographic that 75% of PB contributors have no association with on that level.
It's interesting how this kind of breathless reportage from the building sites of Britain is dissected with such anthropological excitement on PB. I mean, are these people really so unknown to people here? I move in pretty bourgeois circles these days, perhaps even the global elite, but I went to a comprehensive school and have done a fair amount of low paid work in the past, and the fact that a lot of working class blokes don't like the EU, or anything vaguely foreign, or indeed have a low opinion of "political correctness gone mad" is hardly news to me.
Maybe it isn't but recognising those people and their views isn't the same as engaging with or addressing them.
It isn't an answer to say it's not news, you know them well, shrug your shoulders, just say they're wrong and move on.
It depends who you are. I am just a private citizen and it's not my job to educate and enlighten the masses, nor am I arrogant enough to think that I could. Live and let live is an entirely rational response to the fact that some people hold views that I disagree with. If I were a politician of course I would have to engage with them and find a way to bring some of them on board, without selling out my core beliefs or alienating other supporters. As the original poster notes, there are left wing economic messages that might resonate with them. Of course it is in the interests of the Tory party and press to play up the right wing cultural messages precisely because they don't want to engage with those economic views (hence create wedge issues like Brexit, statues etc). I just find it odd that these people seem to induce an almost anthropological fascination from some people here, as if they are an uncontacted Amazonian tribe. It makes me think that some people must have had quite a sheltered upbringing. It's also a bit reminiscent of the episode of Peep Show when Jeremy tries to be friends with their builder, or perhaps the Greek art student in Pulp's Common People.
You're onto something here.
"The Night They Drove Coal Dixie Down (but we kept on singing!): The romanticisation of the miners' strike and the working class generally by the British middle class Left."
This is a book I've always wanted to write if I could do more than titles.
But now it's the Right doing it and it's in a far more pernicious fashion. Because what they at the same time caricature and celebrate is not the collectivist solidarity and sense of community of these salt-of-the-earths but the rather unevolved - or in PC speak "traditional" - social values and attitudes that some of them have.
I hate it - and I hate even more that in recent times it's working. June 23rd. Dec 12th. I won't add "etc" since I hope the tide is going out on all this crap, starting with Nov 3rd.
Comments
I do not expect to eat such a pizza after November 3rd.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
There were many homes without electricity and many without water, but very few without a mobile phone.
"There is a lot to learn for the UK, and its scientists, policy-makers and politicians."
Of course there is a lot of randomness and chance in how the pandemic will progress in the future. This should not be used to hide the fact that the UK has consistently done a bit worse in every aspect, over which the government can influence.
Which is Good News for Rochdale, pox capital of GM. They get to beg. Sit Up. Play Dead. At which point the benevolent Tories throw them a bone. Yay! Haven't been allowed to see my parents since this all started, that isn't about to change either
Not great for them.
There is a reason that big companies do this stuff - they can survive the inevitable.
Of course it is failing at it's basic mandate (tracing 80% of contacts). And yes its mandate should be far wider and more extensive. But for it's basic mandate, it's not that surprising that those running it haven't seen much need for a Public health expert.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/pennsylvania/
There have been some bad coronavirus outbreaks at the Welsh hospitals (Morriston, Royal Glamorgan, etc)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-54482966
And the Betsi Cadwaladr Health Board has been in special measures for years and years.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-52963232
It would be more of a scandal if anyone was interested in Wales, other than the Welsh.
If I were a politician of course I would have to engage with them and find a way to bring some of them on board, without selling out my core beliefs or alienating other supporters. As the original poster notes, there are left wing economic messages that might resonate with them. Of course it is in the interests of the Tory party and press to play up the right wing cultural messages precisely because they don't want to engage with those economic views (hence create wedge issues like Brexit, statues etc).
I just find it odd that these people seem to induce an almost anthropological fascination from some people here, as if they are an uncontacted Amazonian tribe. It makes me think that some people must have had quite a sheltered upbringing. It's also a bit reminiscent of the episode of Peep Show when Jeremy tries to be friends with their builder, or perhaps the Greek art student in Pulp's Common People.
So telecoms for Africa become - "Why are you ruining their lives with Facebook, rather than providing drinking water?".
I presume that next year they will come up with some sort of fudge, which seeks to retain the principle of it but doesn't lead to perverse (as opposed to just unaffordable) outcomes. So the "earnings" bit of the equation will probably shift to a 3 year average or something.
We ought to be very concerned at this because at best it’s very inefficient management by government and a waste of our money at a time when every penny is needed, some of it for more deserving causes. At worst it’s corruption.
Also, I think we take for granted the value of information at our fingertips. I know there was a forecasting project for Lake Victoria fishing boats that the Met Office was involved in where the weather warnings were to be sent by text message.
A modern telecommunications infrastructure can do so much in saving lives and growing economies. These countries can benefit from that at the same time as benefiting from the introduction of metal ploughs - they don't have to follow the same sequence of development.
However, the same is true, perhaps even more true, of services provided by the public sector. Anyone with knowledge of the NHS will be very aware of just how inefficient it is in many respects.
No Country in the world did more.
All that gone under firebreak as i understand it? Wedding seem to still be allowed but not receptions.
This government has forfeited the right to deference.
Couple of red flags though. For one I have never signed up for emails from the Republicans so I have no idea how they got my email address, for another my email address they have sent it to is incorrect (there is a dot in my email missing, so it still comes to me but I always put the dot in when registering for anything).
Not sure if this is a scammer trying to rinse people and it's somehow gotten through my spam filter or "legitimate"? Not that it will affect how I ignore it either way.
The email supposedly has come from a domain ending in @victory.donaldtrump.com with a reply to ending in @campaigns.rnchq.com
Which was the OP's point, I believe?
However, if you are proposing that ManCock hands the £60m only to the places with Tory MPs then yes that's a marvellous idea for Labour
I have no idea how he might have measured up against Merkel, but I’ve absolutely no doubt how he would have done so against the present shambles.
New Labour performed almost as much policy on this basis, for instance, unremarked, as the Tories.
Management consultancy (helping organisations improve performance) is a fairly recent profession and grew significantly in the 1980s because that was when corporations and businesses started moving away from a traditional hierarchical models just as the world got more complex in people, tax, strategy and technology, and more competitive in how it did things. It's that same evolution into more sophisticated business models that allowed GDP to rise so much at the same time. It wasn't a dark art of McKinsey that brought it all about.
Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't like to work for them. They still have an "up or out" policy, you are reviewed every six months and they work brutal hours and extensively travel. You're under constant stress. But, that said, those I know who've worked there have learnt a huge amount and found the experience very useful for their subsequent careers.
It's far better to treat it as a type of universal income and then tax everything against it.
URGENT: Biden campaign is currently spending more than $24 million on ads in 16 states
I need to know that I can count on you right now.
I have led the BIGGEST and FASTEST Financial Recovery in History. Next year will be even BETTER unless Sleepy Joe and Phony Kamala take the White House. They’ve promised to raise your taxes by $4 TRILLION - in which case, the economy that I’ve rebuilt would CRASH.
But, the Liberal media refuses to tell the truth about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ CORRUPT agenda - they want to TRICK the American People into voting for them. THEY WOULD DESTROY OUR NATION!
We can’t let them get away with this. My team just launched a new ad to FIGHT BACK against their biased coverage and EXPOSE the TRUTH about what this Liberal duo would do to our economy.
The American People deserve to know what they’d be getting into if they elect Sleepy Joe and Phony Kamala. That’s why your support is so important right now.
We need to make sure we FLOOD the airwaves with our new ad, which is why I’m calling on my best supporters to help raise $2,000,000 by 11:59 PM TONIGHT. When you step up, your gift will even be 800%-MATCHED.
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Please contribute ANY AMOUNT IMMEDIATELY to our Official Trump Ad Blitz Fund and your gift will be 800%-MATCHED. >>
President Trump needs you to step up
TRUMP AD BLITZ FUND
SUPPORTER: (My email though incorrect snipped)
CONTRIBUTION STATUS: MISSING
800%-MATCH: NOT USED
DEADLINE: 11:59 PM TONIGHT
CONTRIBUTE $5 = $45
CONTRIBUTE $20 = $180
CONTRIBUTE $15 = $135
CONTRIBUTE $10 = $90
CONTRIBUTE $5 = $45
CONTRIBUTE ANY AMOUNT
If the Fake News won’t report the FACTS about the Left’s UNHINGED ticket, then WE WILL!
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https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/tx/texas_trump_vs_biden-6818.html
https://order-order.com/2020/10/21/barnier-a-deal-is-in-reach-if-both-sides-compromise/
Blaming all the world's ills on McKinsey and the Freemasons would be as mad as me blaming all the UK's ills on the EU, UN and World Bank (which I don't, by the way).
That's not to say that the anti-EU types don't have decent lifecraft and intelligence. My summer holiday jobs at home were almost invariably in manufacturing and I encountered plenty who hadn't done much at school but had a sort of basic knowhow that was pretty compelling to an 18 year old bookhead. And I worked in both male and female environments, generally piece work in the latter case and saw a lot of the same thing. Then I went back to posh uni and looked at who the hell was seeking to lead these people.
And, even now, in practical IT, it's a pretty egalitarian mix, leftier leaning grads and towny non grads doing the same roles, so I don't feel on a liberal island, even though from outside you could think that.
I just wish liberals would pitch their liberalism far more routinely to and amongst these people, not only to widen their audience but to sharpen and even modify their message. The liberal pitch to a working town, going beyond the I'm proud of my country too' schtick, is a tough route, but a winning route.
The only reason I don’t think it an excellent article is that it is written for the already persuaded - and Monbiot doesn’t get to the meat of the argument until it’s half way through. If he could restrain his outrage a bit when writing, he’d be a lot better.
Though that they couldn't even get the email address right says a lot about the profiling ...
My email address is a pretty easy one to fake so a lot of spam comes to me. Normally all caught by the spam filter though, surprised this one got through.
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1318792740340117505?s=20
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1318793028820230144?s=20
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1318793301827424256?s=20
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1318793556174213120?s=20
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1318793972387643392?s=20
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1318794375342755841?s=20
The amount of Donald Trump begging emails I get in there is a sight to behold - there are 55 today and nothing else.
Turns out you can fake that. I had a nasty few hours til I investigated fully.
The Tories have not created a wedge issue of statues, which didn't exist until 6 months ago. No-one from the centre-right involved in or agitating for any to come down in order to 'spark' a conflict. I think the real objection is that the Tories are now putting up a counter-argument to left-modernist views on things like white privilege, "racist" statues, gender recognition, and these views are indeed in line with many in the working class, and indeed plenty in the middle class, who see it for the nonsense it really is.
This is both unexpected, and unwelcomed, from those who've had it their own way for far too long, so is labelled as them starting a culture war when it's really just expanding the field of political debate.
There is no upside for the Tories. They have sent Jenrick on this morning. To explain how the government haven't got £5m. But he gave away £45m of public money to a Tory donor and didn't have to resign...
Pity I didn't pay up, I could have used the extra money that month
And the difference between an organised conspiracy and a group of people moving in the same circles with the same preconceived view of the world is a fine line. Largely because if you think of an organised conspiracy and dig into it, things will probably prove to be more of a chumocracy in the first place, large multi-layered conspiracies being almost impossible to organise with any degree of ruthless efficiency.
A great example of the influence of McKinsey's is broadcasting and public culture in Britain. John Birt instigated a rationalising blueprint that cut out huge layers of sometimes ambiguous and eccentric middle management. This middle layer was by turns wasteful, highly developed and inspired, and crudely and simplistically hacking it out hugely damaged the BBC's distinctive ecosystem, with wide-ranging consequences for the degradation of our entire public culture. It wasn't actually his blueprint at all ; but McKinsey's.
National: Biden 52, Trump 46
Arizona: Biden 53, Trump 45
Georgia: Biden 49, Trump 49
Iowa: Biden 49, Trump 49
Texas: Trump 51, Biden 47
Ohio: Trump 51, Biden 48
Florida: Trump 49, Biden 49
Nevada: Biden 51, Trump 48
Kansas: Trump 51, Biden 48
Colorada: Biden 58, Trump 41
New Hampshire: Biden 57, Trump 41
Maine: Biden 56, Trump 43
Minnesota: Biden 55, Trump 43
Virginia: Biden 55, Trump 43
Wisconsin: Biden 55, Trump 43
New Mexico: Biden 53, Trump 45
Michigan: Biden 53, Trump 45
Pennsylvania: Biden 52, Trump 46
North Carolina: Biden 52, Trump 46
District of Columbia: Biden 88, Trump 10
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-54627352
You put you gyms in, you take your gyms out, you put your soft play area in, shake it all about, thats what T3 is all about.
That doesn't mean we still have problems - including examples of poor practice, corruption, management failures and huge entitlement - but it does mean our 'new' services driven economy has delivered great improvements in the quality of life.
Two things can be true at the same time.
Was curious if the Trump campaign is so broke they're spamming everyone desperate for cash, or if it's fraudsters. I have no intention of clicking on the email again either way though if the campaign is so broke they're spamming people randomly that would be a bad sign for their campaign.
17.—(1) A person responsible for carrying on a restricted business, or providing a restricted service, in the Tier 3 area must cease to carry on that business or provide that service.
19.—(1) The restricted businesses and restricted services for the purposes of this Part of this Schedule are those falling within sub-paragraphs (2), (3) or (4).
(4) The following businesses and services fall within this sub-paragraph—
(i)indoor gyms, fitness and dance studios;
So presumably we can look forward to an amendment?
If Starmer doesn't cut it Labour knows someone who will.
"The Night They Drove Coal Dixie Down (but we kept on singing!):
The romanticisation of the miners' strike and the working class generally by the British middle class Left."
This is a book I've always wanted to write if I could do more than titles.
But now it's the Right doing it and it's in a far more pernicious fashion. Because what they at the same time caricature and celebrate is not the collectivist solidarity and sense of community of these salt-of-the-earths but the rather unevolved - or in PC speak "traditional" - social values and attitudes that some of them have.
I hate it - and I hate even more that in recent times it's working. June 23rd. Dec 12th. I won't add "etc" since I hope the tide is going out on all this crap, starting with Nov 3rd.