Hunting in a slump is never fun, particularly since I imagine work in solicitors’ offices has declined with fewer property transactions and the courts all shut.
Divorce lawyers are going to be busy though...
I think the problem is that people are understandably wary about investing in the training of new people in a socially distanced world.
Doesn’t help me though of course.
Sorry to hear you are struggling to get a start. It is a difficult time. My daughter started work last November and has yet to spend a single day in the office. In my experience most smaller firms are back in the office and have been for some time. Larger firms with more sophisticated IT systems have a lot of people working from home and probably more still on furlough. And business with people in that position is unlikely to be thinking too much about employing more people.
In short I suspect that the smaller firms are the better bet right now.
Thank you for your thoughts.
It’s my experience too that smaller firms are mostly back in their offices while the bigger firms are not. However of course smaller firms are more wary and risk-adverse with their recruitment. I’ve been targeting both smaller firms and larger firms but as @AlastairMeeks has previously advised, and I agree with him, larger firms seem to value my previous engineering career work experience and “non-traditional” background more. Despite this I’d probably prefer to work for a small to medium sized firm.
We ride on!
I work for an SME, we're not all back but there are a certain number of people in our offices from day to day as certain tasks can't be completed from home. I think you might have more luck once the official advice is changed to employer's disgression as more SMEs will be fully back with that.
My biggest problem with SME law firms is getting any kind of response at all!
There’s a few local smaller high-street firms I’d absolutely love to work for. So I spend ages crafting a concise, but informative covering email as part of a speculative application, but then get no acknowledgement whatsoever even when I chase them up.
Of course I could ring, and have done, but mostly I get fobbed off by secretaries in any case when doing so, and it always feels rude to be like: “in reference to my email 4 weeks ago that you haven’t replied to”.
I don’t think she will be now. Even the Scottish press have gone quiet, so the Greens and her own party rebels have no reason to bring her down.
The only way that could change is if something else comes out during the campaign and that causes SNP voters to stay at home, leaving her well short on forming a government. But that doesn’t seem likely at the moment either.
The two reports due to be concluded will be the moment for Sturgeon to survive or go
But the apparent lack of interest in the Tory VoNC has already given us the answer, sadly. She has been badly wounded but will go on until at least after the election when Angus Robertson will be in situ to take over.
Considering this is a politics site I'm wondering if all the people who think that someone who leaves the monarchy should never speak to the media about the monarchy ever again apply the same philosophy to ex politicians?
Should someone who used to be in politics like Ed Balls, Portillo, Blair or anyone else "leave it behind" the moment they leave Parliament? Never speak to the media about politics ever again? Never write a memoir? Have nothing to say ever again on politics?
Should a Cricketer never speak about Cricket ever again once he stops batting or bowling for the last time?
If not it seems rank hypocrisy to apply that standard to Harry and Meghan. I couldn't care less about royal gossip but they're as free to talk as any other free person is - and celebrities speaking about their own lives and things they've left behind is as old as time.
I think you are deliberately missing and misrepresenting the core objection, in that it's how they speak that is the issue. They are playing a media game whilst constantly moaning about media games.
As I said, if they have tales to tell, do it. Trailing for weeks in advance, leaking titbits and so on, that's what you do if you are hawking a product.
What it tells me is they dont care all that much about what they are saying as they are doing it in a way to manage a brand they can sell, rather than just say straight up what they mean if it is important. It would be huge news regardless
And yes the main royals do that. But they aren't pretending not to want to play the royal and media game.
I'd like to see Meghan go back to acting and Harry could do any number of things now, they seem happier together than he was previously so great for them. But the careful orchestration of royal esque media management makes their disdain for such things look hypocritical.
Either you play the game or you dont. They are, whilst pretending they aren't.
Except they've not complained about media "games" they've complained about abuse by media that has gone so far it contributed to the death of his mother and then his wife has been abused so much even courts have found the Mail's actions to be illegal.
Abuse is not a game.
If someone says they don't want a parent to act like Fritzl then that doesn't mean they don't want parents to exist. If someone says they don't want the media to treat them as the Mail has then that doesn't mean they don't want the media to exist.
The BBC are not covering themselves in glory today.
On a day when they could have led with the budget, the first minister of Scotland being accused of perjury, a global pandemic, schools being sent back with impossible safety measures, an academy chain going bust and all hell breaking loose in and over Northern Ireland...
...they led with the Duchess of Sussex giving an interview.
I sometimes wonder if they want to keep the licence fee.
Royals = big press. Even the publicly funded bits cannot help themselves.
Honestly the whole thing is just a nonsense - clearly there have been leaks against Harry and Meghan in recent days no doubt because of their interview, but equally clearly you cant expect a great deal of sympathy when your whole deal appears to be complaining about media attention and royal status whilst making use of both of those things.
If you are happier out of it, fine. If you have takes to tell, just do it already not this orchestrated media game of hints and clips and build up. That just makes it look like it's not important to them. And the rest of the royals can remember that playing things with a straight bat is preferable - just ignore it, as getting engaged will only rebound.
Meghan & Harry don't count as Royals anymore. She is the new Mrs Simpson - irrelevant.
Except that they are trying to leverage off something they have walked away from, and are not happy with the consequences of their chosen course of action.
She is stirring the pot for her own reasons. It won't end well.
And after the disgusting way they've both been treated, why shouldn't they?
Good for them.
Whatever. I don't buy your narrative.
Fishing in things you say you have left is never a good idea.
If you are leaving something behind you ... leave it behind you.
So they can be abused, treated like shit and are just supposed to take it and not speak about their own lives?
They're free people, free to make their own choices and do whatever they damn please. They don't owe the UK media or the monarchy anything. After the way they've been treated they absolutely can and should do whatever they want.
Their lives, their choice.
And as they are press averse stop doing the opposite
Retire from public life and do their own thing
Are they "press averse" or "press abuse averse".
Being against abuse by the press doesn't mean being against good press. Being in public life doesn't give the media the right to hound someone to death or break the law to harass them.
Nothing wrong with the pitch, just a fair contest between bat and ball tbh
It's a won the toss, win the game pitch. England are mentally tired. Root's wicket in particular - caught leaden footed on the crease - is indisputable evidence of that. In form he would have cashed in on this.
Considering this is a politics site I'm wondering if all the people who think that someone who leaves the monarchy should never speak to the media about the monarchy ever again apply the same philosophy to ex politicians?
Should someone who used to be in politics like Ed Balls, Portillo, Blair or anyone else "leave it behind" the moment they leave Parliament? Never speak to the media about politics ever again? Never write a memoir? Have nothing to say ever again on politics?
Should a Cricketer never speak about Cricket ever again once he stops batting or bowling for the last time?
If not it seems rank hypocrisy to apply that standard to Harry and Meghan. I couldn't care less about royal gossip but they're as free to talk as any other free person is - and celebrities speaking about their own lives and things they've left behind is as old as time.
Ostensibly they left the Royal setup because they didn't want the public attention and now they are purposefully setting out to gain public attention.
I think they've been very shabbily treated by the media, but there is a suggestion of hypocrisy about their recent actions.
After they criticised the Daily Mail for treating them atrociously - and as the recent court case showed the Mail acted illegally too - and they were giving interviews to the Mail then I would agree its hypocritical.
As far as I know they've never complained about the way Oprah has treated them so why shouldn't they talk to Oprah?
Mail on the naughty list, Oprah on the nice list as far as they're concerned. I don't see how that's weird.
They could have taken the legal action against the Mail as Royals, and given interviews to Oprah as Royals. So why did they leave the family?
It obviously wasn't for a quiet life out of the public spotlight, as you might have been forgiven for assuming last year. It seems to be solely so that they can monetise their celebrity - which in Harry's case rests solely on his family connections.
They're taking the piss and pretending it's a moral crusade against the media and the royal family. Please.
The BBC are not covering themselves in glory today.
On a day when they could have led with the budget, the first minister of Scotland being accused of perjury, a global pandemic, schools being sent back with impossible safety measures, an academy chain going bust and all hell breaking loose in and over Northern Ireland...
...they led with the Duchess of Sussex giving an interview.
I sometimes wonder if they want to keep the licence fee.
Royals = big press. Even the publicly funded bits cannot help themselves.
Honestly the whole thing is just a nonsense - clearly there have been leaks against Harry and Meghan in recent days no doubt because of their interview, but equally clearly you cant expect a great deal of sympathy when your whole deal appears to be complaining about media attention and royal status whilst making use of both of those things.
If you are happier out of it, fine. If you have takes to tell, just do it already not this orchestrated media game of hints and clips and build up. That just makes it look like it's not important to them. And the rest of the royals can remember that playing things with a straight bat is preferable - just ignore it, as getting engaged will only rebound.
Meghan & Harry don't count as Royals anymore. She is the new Mrs Simpson - irrelevant.
Except that they are trying to leverage off something they have walked away from, and are not happy with the consequences of their chosen course of action.
She is stirring the pot for her own reasons. It won't end well.
And after the disgusting way they've both been treated, why shouldn't they?
Good for them.
Whatever. I don't buy your narrative.
Fishing in things you say you have left is never a good idea.
If you are leaving something behind you ... leave it behind you.
So they can be abused, treated like shit and are just supposed to take it and not speak about their own lives?
They're free people, free to make their own choices and do whatever they damn please. They don't owe the UK media or the monarchy anything. After the way they've been treated they absolutely can and should do whatever they want.
Their lives, their choice.
Allegedly abused. Allegedly treated like shit etc.
Of course they are free to do whatever they want, however starting a so-called "new chapter" (BBC headline) by giving high profile interviews 15 months after "moving on" does not seem wise.
I've made 2 points:
1 - This couple are minor celebs and I don't think relevant. 2 - Not moving on does not seem very wise.
If you have issues with your family, playing out the drama in the press is questionable.
"Allegedly"?
His mother was hounded to death in Paris. His wife's privacy was illegally invaded by the Mail as convicted by the courts.
Neither of that is "allegedly". The press are acting like scum, good for them moving on and dealing with the likes of Oprah instead.
Moving on by dealing with classier elements of the media seems entirely reasonable. That Oprah is classier than our own gutter press says a lot.
I don’t think she will be now. Even the Scottish press have gone quiet, so the Greens and her own party rebels have no reason to bring her down.
The only way that could change is if something else comes out during the campaign and that causes SNP voters to stay at home, leaving her well short on forming a government. But that doesn’t seem likely at the moment either.
The two reports due to be concluded will be the moment for Sturgeon to survive or go
But the apparent lack of interest in the Tory VoNC has already given us the answer, sadly. She has been badly wounded but will go on until at least after the election when Angus Robertson will be in situ to take over.
I agree that now is not the time to VONC but as I understand it the Greens have said this morning they will await the conclusions of the two reports before taking further action
Sturgeon may well survive but her future must be in doubt and it is too early to detect just how this will impact Holyrood 21 but I still expect the SNP to win a majority
1. Mr Salmond has lodged a formal complaint with the Permanent Secretary to the Scottish Government under the civil service code, on the conduct of the official who is alleged to have breached civil service rules, by disclosing the name of a complainant in the Scottish Government process. 2. A letter has been sent to the Parliamentary Committee Convener supplying further requested evidence but also noting that we could complete our evidence if the Parliament would serve a Section 23 Order on Levy & McRae as suggested last Friday. 3. Mr Salmond will be interviewed by Mr James Hamilton, Independent Investigator on the Ministerial Code, this week. 4. The requested information that was supplied today is a) the minutes of the Commission and Diligence of late December 2018, b) the minute of proceedings of the Court decision of 8th January 2019 at which the Government decisions were found to be “unlawful”, “procedurally unfair” and “tainted by apparent bias” and c) a specific witness statement requested by the Committee. 5. That witness statement provides further corroboration for Mr Salmond’s evidence before the Committee. On all key points with varying accounts Mr Salmond was asked by the Committee to provide corroboration and has now done so with multiple independent witnesses. The First Minister has not provided the Committee with any such corroboration.
The First Minister has not provided the Committee with any such corroboration - because none exists.
Some people seem to have a much more vocal and visceral dislike of Meghan & Harry than they do of Prince Andrew, who as far as I know is still taking money from the public purse.
Considering this is a politics site I'm wondering if all the people who think that someone who leaves the monarchy should never speak to the media about the monarchy ever again apply the same philosophy to ex politicians?
Should someone who used to be in politics like Ed Balls, Portillo, Blair or anyone else "leave it behind" the moment they leave Parliament? Never speak to the media about politics ever again? Never write a memoir? Have nothing to say ever again on politics?
Should a Cricketer never speak about Cricket ever again once he stops batting or bowling for the last time?
If not it seems rank hypocrisy to apply that standard to Harry and Meghan. I couldn't care less about royal gossip but they're as free to talk as any other free person is - and celebrities speaking about their own lives and things they've left behind is as old as time.
Ostensibly they left the Royal setup because they didn't want the public attention and now they are purposefully setting out to gain public attention.
I think they've been very shabbily treated by the media, but there is a suggestion of hypocrisy about their recent actions.
After they criticised the Daily Mail for treating them atrociously - and as the recent court case showed the Mail acted illegally too - and they were giving interviews to the Mail then I would agree its hypocritical.
As far as I know they've never complained about the way Oprah has treated them so why shouldn't they talk to Oprah?
Mail on the naughty list, Oprah on the nice list as far as they're concerned. I don't see how that's weird.
They could have taken the legal action against the Mail as Royals, and given interviews to Oprah as Royals. So why did they leave the family?
It obviously wasn't for a quiet life out of the public spotlight, as you might have been forgiven for assuming last year. It seems to be solely so that they can monetise their celebrity - which in Harry's case rests solely on his family connections.
They're taking the piss and pretending it's a moral crusade against the media and the royal family. Please.
Possibly because the media here have treated them like shit you'd scrape off your shoe for their own clicks and entertainment while the American press treats them like people?
There's nothing special about the monarchy and the media, both of which should have learnt their lesson after his mother was hounded to death but didn't so good for them for doing what's in their own best interests. So should anyone in a free society. 👍
Some people seem to have a much more vocal and visceral dislike of Meghan & Harry than they do of Prince Andrew, who as far as I know is still taking money from the public purse.
Hunting in a slump is never fun, particularly since I imagine work in solicitors’ offices has declined with fewer property transactions and the courts all shut.
Divorce lawyers are going to be busy though...
I think the problem is that people are understandably wary about investing in the training of new people in a socially distanced world.
Doesn’t help me though of course.
Sorry to hear you are struggling to get a start. It is a difficult time. My daughter started work last November and has yet to spend a single day in the office. In my experience most smaller firms are back in the office and have been for some time. Larger firms with more sophisticated IT systems have a lot of people working from home and probably more still on furlough. And business with people in that position is unlikely to be thinking too much about employing more people.
In short I suspect that the smaller firms are the better bet right now.
Thank you for your thoughts.
It’s my experience too that smaller firms are mostly back in their offices while the bigger firms are not. However of course smaller firms are more wary and risk-adverse with their recruitment. I’ve been targeting both smaller firms and larger firms but as @AlastairMeeks has previously advised, and I agree with him, larger firms seem to value my previous engineering career work experience and “non-traditional” background more. Despite this I’d probably prefer to work for a small to medium sized firm.
We ride on!
Good luck with the job hunt.
In my dealings with solicitors I usually target local firms with several branches, who are large enough to have a few specialisms if I need it, but sub-regional so that they aren't horribly impersonal.
Say 40-100 staff in several branches, rather than 250 staff in a small office block in the regional city dreaming about being in the Magic Circle.
I think Johnson will lead Tories into next election but I totally agree with Mike that things with Rishi are going to get strained.
At least Brown thought he had been to a Islington eatery and discussed the definite handover in a second term. Sunak hasn't even that excuse for pushing already but he is clearly firing up to take over.
Some people seem to have a much more vocal and visceral dislike of Meghan & Harry than they do of Prince Andrew, who as far as I know is still taking money from the public purse.
Weird and irrational.
If Andy is guilty of what many people seem to think he's guilty of, then clearly he is worthy of a lot more contempt.
The BBC are not covering themselves in glory today.
On a day when they could have led with the budget, the first minister of Scotland being accused of perjury, a global pandemic, schools being sent back with impossible safety measures, an academy chain going bust and all hell breaking loose in and over Northern Ireland...
...they led with the Duchess of Sussex giving an interview.
I sometimes wonder if they want to keep the licence fee.
Royals = big press. Even the publicly funded bits cannot help themselves.
Honestly the whole thing is just a nonsense - clearly there have been leaks against Harry and Meghan in recent days no doubt because of their interview, but equally clearly you cant expect a great deal of sympathy when your whole deal appears to be complaining about media attention and royal status whilst making use of both of those things.
If you are happier out of it, fine. If you have takes to tell, just do it already not this orchestrated media game of hints and clips and build up. That just makes it look like it's not important to them. And the rest of the royals can remember that playing things with a straight bat is preferable - just ignore it, as getting engaged will only rebound.
Meghan & Harry don't count as Royals anymore. She is the new Mrs Simpson - irrelevant.
Except that they are trying to leverage off something they have walked away from, and are not happy with the consequences of their chosen course of action.
She is stirring the pot for her own reasons. It won't end well.
And after the disgusting way they've both been treated, why shouldn't they?
Good for them.
Whatever. I don't buy your narrative.
Fishing in things you say you have left is never a good idea.
If you are leaving something behind you ... leave it behind you.
So they can be abused, treated like shit and are just supposed to take it and not speak about their own lives?
They're free people, free to make their own choices and do whatever they damn please. They don't owe the UK media or the monarchy anything. After the way they've been treated they absolutely can and should do whatever they want.
Their lives, their choice.
And as they are press averse stop doing the opposite
Retire from public life and do their own thing
Are they "press averse" or "press abuse averse".
Being against abuse by the press doesn't mean being against good press. Being in public life doesn't give the media the right to hound someone to death or break the law to harass them.
Some people seem to have a much more vocal and visceral dislike of Meghan & Harry than they do of Prince Andrew, who as far as I know is still taking money from the public purse.
Weird and irrational.
If Andy is guilty of what many people seem to think he's guilty of, then clearly is worthy of a lot more contempt.
But he's not in the news at the moment. They are.
They're in the news for committing a crime or doing something wrong are they? What?
It seems to me they are in the news for the evil crime of *checks notes* speaking to Oprah.
Does every guest who speaks to Oprah get attacked and criticised this much? They should be able to speak to Oprah as much as they want with the same amount of criticism for it that any other guest Oprah has gets.
The BBC are not covering themselves in glory today.
On a day when they could have led with the budget, the first minister of Scotland being accused of perjury, a global pandemic, schools being sent back with impossible safety measures, an academy chain going bust and all hell breaking loose in and over Northern Ireland...
...they led with the Duchess of Sussex giving an interview.
I sometimes wonder if they want to keep the licence fee.
Royals = big press. Even the publicly funded bits cannot help themselves.
Honestly the whole thing is just a nonsense - clearly there have been leaks against Harry and Meghan in recent days no doubt because of their interview, but equally clearly you cant expect a great deal of sympathy when your whole deal appears to be complaining about media attention and royal status whilst making use of both of those things.
If you are happier out of it, fine. If you have takes to tell, just do it already not this orchestrated media game of hints and clips and build up. That just makes it look like it's not important to them. And the rest of the royals can remember that playing things with a straight bat is preferable - just ignore it, as getting engaged will only rebound.
Meghan & Harry don't count as Royals anymore. She is the new Mrs Simpson - irrelevant.
Except that they are trying to leverage off something they have walked away from, and are not happy with the consequences of their chosen course of action.
She is stirring the pot for her own reasons. It won't end well.
And after the disgusting way they've both been treated, why shouldn't they?
Good for them.
Whatever. I don't buy your narrative.
Fishing in things you say you have left is never a good idea.
If you are leaving something behind you ... leave it behind you.
So they can be abused, treated like shit and are just supposed to take it and not speak about their own lives?
They're free people, free to make their own choices and do whatever they damn please. They don't owe the UK media or the monarchy anything. After the way they've been treated they absolutely can and should do whatever they want.
Their lives, their choice.
Allegedly abused. Allegedly treated like shit etc.
Of course they are free to do whatever they want, however starting a so-called "new chapter" (BBC headline) by giving high profile interviews 15 months after "moving on" does not seem wise.
I've made 2 points:
1 - This couple are minor celebs and I don't think relevant. 2 - Not moving on does not seem very wise.
If you have issues with your family, playing out the drama in the press is questionable.
"Allegedly"?
His mother was hounded to death in Paris. His wife's privacy was illegally invaded by the Mail as convicted by the courts.
Neither of that is "allegedly". The press are acting like scum, good for them moving on and dealing with the likes of Oprah instead.
Moving on by dealing with classier elements of the media seems entirely reasonable. That Oprah is classier than our own gutter press says a lot.
Making a living off media coverage is a game of tango, and it takes 2 to dance.
It seems to me that that might justify an attitude to media.
The BBC are not covering themselves in glory today.
On a day when they could have led with the budget, the first minister of Scotland being accused of perjury, a global pandemic, schools being sent back with impossible safety measures, an academy chain going bust and all hell breaking loose in and over Northern Ireland...
...they led with the Duchess of Sussex giving an interview.
I sometimes wonder if they want to keep the licence fee.
Royals = big press. Even the publicly funded bits cannot help themselves.
Honestly the whole thing is just a nonsense - clearly there have been leaks against Harry and Meghan in recent days no doubt because of their interview, but equally clearly you cant expect a great deal of sympathy when your whole deal appears to be complaining about media attention and royal status whilst making use of both of those things.
If you are happier out of it, fine. If you have takes to tell, just do it already not this orchestrated media game of hints and clips and build up. That just makes it look like it's not important to them. And the rest of the royals can remember that playing things with a straight bat is preferable - just ignore it, as getting engaged will only rebound.
Meghan & Harry don't count as Royals anymore. She is the new Mrs Simpson - irrelevant.
Except that they are trying to leverage off something they have walked away from, and are not happy with the consequences of their chosen course of action.
She is stirring the pot for her own reasons. It won't end well.
And after the disgusting way they've both been treated, why shouldn't they?
Good for them.
Whatever. I don't buy your narrative.
Fishing in things you say you have left is never a good idea.
If you are leaving something behind you ... leave it behind you.
So they can be abused, treated like shit and are just supposed to take it and not speak about their own lives?
They're free people, free to make their own choices and do whatever they damn please. They don't owe the UK media or the monarchy anything. After the way they've been treated they absolutely can and should do whatever they want.
Their lives, their choice.
Allegedly abused. Allegedly treated like shit etc.
Of course they are free to do whatever they want, however starting a so-called "new chapter" (BBC headline) by giving high profile interviews 15 months after "moving on" does not seem wise.
I've made 2 points:
1 - This couple are minor celebs and I don't think relevant. 2 - Not moving on does not seem very wise.
If you have issues with your family, playing out the drama in the press is questionable.
"Allegedly"?
His mother was hounded to death in Paris. His wife's privacy was illegally invaded by the Mail as convicted by the courts.
Neither of that is "allegedly". The press are acting like scum, good for them moving on and dealing with the likes of Oprah instead.
Moving on by dealing with classier elements of the media seems entirely reasonable. That Oprah is classier than our own gutter press says a lot.
Making a living off media coverage is a game of tango, and it takes 2 to dance.
It seems to me that that might justify an attitude to media.
It does not justify the Royal Family stuff.
Anyhoo. Time for the day.
Absolutely it does. They've chosen to dance with Oprah so that should come with whatever attention that Oprah's guests normally get. Which is her audience.
Some people seem to have a much more vocal and visceral dislike of Meghan & Harry than they do of Prince Andrew, who as far as I know is still taking money from the public purse.
Weird and irrational.
If Andy is guilty of what many people seem to think he's guilty of, then clearly he is worthy of a lot more contempt.
But he's not in the news at the moment. They are.
Andrew hasn't been in the news for a while. Just goes to show it is possible if you are a member of the royal family and don't want publicity then it is very achievable. All you need to do is be quiet and not make a drama.
Also worth looking at Princess Anne for an example. She goes about all her royal duties with dignity and then seems to live a very quiet and simple life otherwise with minimal press intrusion.
Some people seem to have a much more vocal and visceral dislike of Meghan & Harry than they do of Prince Andrew, who as far as I know is still taking money from the public purse.
Weird and irrational.
If Andy is guilty of what many people seem to think he's guilty of, then clearly is worthy of a lot more contempt.
But he's not in the news at the moment. They are.
They're in the news for committing a crime or doing something wrong are they? What?
It seems to me they are in the news for the evil crime of *checks notes* speaking to Oprah.
Does every guest who speaks to Oprah get attacked and criticised this much? They should be able to speak to Oprah as much as they want with the same amount of criticism for it that any other guest Oprah has gets.
Personally I don't care, but our media does so I'm inclined to form a view. They want me to have sympathy for them. I don't.
Re Rishi he is my hope for the future and I am content for him to take over as soon as a vacancy arises and I am not convinced Boris will lead into GE 2024
Some people seem to have a much more vocal and visceral dislike of Meghan & Harry than they do of Prince Andrew, who as far as I know is still taking money from the public purse.
Weird and irrational.
If Andy is guilty of what many people seem to think he's guilty of, then clearly is worthy of a lot more contempt.
But he's not in the news at the moment. They are.
They're in the news for committing a crime or doing something wrong are they? What?
It seems to me they are in the news for the evil crime of *checks notes* speaking to Oprah.
Does every guest who speaks to Oprah get attacked and criticised this much? They should be able to speak to Oprah as much as they want with the same amount of criticism for it that any other guest Oprah has gets.
Personally I don't care, but our media does so I'm inclined to form a view. They want me to have sympathy for them. I don't.
The media was responsible for the death of his mother and criminally harassing his wife.
Some people seem to have a much more vocal and visceral dislike of Meghan & Harry than they do of Prince Andrew, who as far as I know is still taking money from the public purse.
Weird and irrational.
If Andy is guilty of what many people seem to think he's guilty of, then clearly is worthy of a lot more contempt.
But he's not in the news at the moment. They are.
They're in the news for committing a crime or doing something wrong are they? What?
It seems to me they are in the news for the evil crime of *checks notes* speaking to Oprah.
Does every guest who speaks to Oprah get attacked and criticised this much? They should be able to speak to Oprah as much as they want with the same amount of criticism for it that any other guest Oprah has gets.
Personally I don't care, but our media does so I'm inclined to form a view. They want me to have sympathy for them. I don't.
The media was responsible for the death of his mother and criminally harassing his wife....
You already know I am a Sunak fanboi and there was an awful lot in that budget that was good. Frankly, the stuff that has made the hard right wince is the stuff that I like the most. I was on here before the budget saying that Sunak could do two things: promote investment for growth, and redefine "benefits" back to a social safety net. He has smashed the first point out of the park.
Lets put it this way. The 130% super deduction absolutely motivates me to invest heavily into my 7 month old business. The office space I am now in needs a full refit and almost all of that will sit under Capital Allowances, I am proposing to my main client a sizeable expansion in scope of the work I am doing for them, and the super deduction helps provide my business with more cash to invest into that.
Too many businesses have battened down the hatches and sat on cash. This will provoke a 2 year blizzard of business investment which provides jobs which means more taxes which means more jobs - the virtuous circle. I know that the proposed 25% rate for the biggest companies is concerning to some of you. However, it is *proposed* and there are bound to be future announcements to at the very least deflate away chunks of the rise.
All in, it does exactly what was needed. yes there there are a lot of things he missed - we DO need to address unpaid carers and the self employed who fell through the chasm and the iniquities of UC. But what was there was good. Really good. Its no wonder his Next PM rating is so high - he would be so much better than Shagger.
Some people seem to have a much more vocal and visceral dislike of Meghan & Harry than they do of Prince Andrew, who as far as I know is still taking money from the public purse.
Weird and irrational.
If Andy is guilty of what many people seem to think he's guilty of, then clearly is worthy of a lot more contempt.
But he's not in the news at the moment. They are.
They're in the news for committing a crime or doing something wrong are they? What?
It seems to me they are in the news for the evil crime of *checks notes* speaking to Oprah.
Does every guest who speaks to Oprah get attacked and criticised this much? They should be able to speak to Oprah as much as they want with the same amount of criticism for it that any other guest Oprah has gets.
Personally I don't care, but our media does so I'm inclined to form a view. They want me to have sympathy for them. I don't.
The media was responsible for the death of his mother and criminally harassing his wife.
If that doesn't deserve sympathy what does?
I have sympathy for anyone who loses a parent at such a young age and I have particular sympathy for him and his brother for the way they were put on show for the funeral.
You already know I am a Sunak fanboi and there was an awful lot in that budget that was good. Frankly, the stuff that has made the hard right wince is the stuff that I like the most. I was on here before the budget saying that Sunak could do two things: promote investment for growth, and redefine "benefits" back to a social safety net. He has smashed the first point out of the park.
Lets put it this way. The 130% super deduction absolutely motivates me to invest heavily into my 7 month old business. The office space I am now in needs a full refit and almost all of that will sit under Capital Allowances, I am proposing to my main client a sizeable expansion in scope of the work I am doing for them, and the super deduction helps provide my business with more cash to invest into that.
Too many businesses have battened down the hatches and sat on cash. This will provoke a 2 year blizzard of business investment which provides jobs which means more taxes which means more jobs - the virtuous circle. I know that the proposed 25% rate for the biggest companies is concerning to some of you. However, it is *proposed* and there are bound to be future announcements to at the very least deflate away chunks of the rise.
All in, it does exactly what was needed. yes there there are a lot of things he missed - we DO need to address unpaid carers and the self employed who fell through the chasm and the iniquities of UC. But what was there was good. Really good. Its no wonder his Next PM rating is so high - he would be so much better than Shagger.
As I have already lamented work got in the way of what was a very interesting news day yesterday but from going through comments on here and in the media it appears that SKS really did not come up to the mark. His frankly bizarre focus at PMQs was reminiscent of the worst days of Corbyn and his budget response seems to have caused barely a ripple.
Of course it is hard for Labour to effectively oppose a budget that was far more Labour than Tory in outlook with large deficits, large tax increases, large amounts of public spending and a bit of shuffling of civil servants chucked in. Its a problem Labour have to handle though. The Tories had the same problem at a fundamental level under Blair despite Brown's bombastic announcements of tuppance ha'pny on this and that and fiendishly complex schemes on the other. Labour are facing a Labour government in everything but name and they need to think hard about this.
For what it's worth, Huffington Post rated his response as one of his best performances yet, and the focus on Yemen at PMQs was also commended as likely to echo the unease felt by the Cameron wing while unlikely to get reported for the wider public. As for the content, as I said yesterday, Labour would be supporting social services and the NHS much more (the fact that NHS funding is being cut by £8 billion while £28 billion is going on subsidising business investment is very Tory), but it's difficult to get attention unless you're noisily aggressive, and he's taken the view that it wouldn't go down well at the moment.
I'm not thrilled by his approach either, but it's a coherent strategy: build a reputation for being calm and constructive, so you are believed later when the Tory chickens come home to roost.
This morning's reflections on the budget: 1. Taxation hike very real indeed, both in corporation tax and income tax, probably more than is realised given likely inflationary pressures. 2. Tax increases extend right down the income scale given the freeze in the basic rate threshold. 3. While taxation increases are being put off, the assault on the poor via universal credit can be resumed early. Buy shares in baliffs. 4. Public spending cuts brushed over but clearly very deep in departmental budgets. Can the country stand another bout of extreme austerity over 2022-2025? 5. No effort to claw back taxation from those businesses that have profited from Covid in the past year. 6. Corporation tax increase targeted at UK based companies, which makes it even more extraordinary that there's absolutely no attempt to target businesses that trade here without being in the UK tax jurisdiction, including all those online companies eg. Amazon. 7. Retail support measures very short term in 2021 only, business rates continue with absolutely nothing to encourage long term investment in the high street or rebalance retail taxation from property towards online sales. 8. Investment incentives could turn out to be a very large tax avoidance loophole.
Best not to judge Sunak's prospects on the immediate reaction to the budget. I think Johnson will be happy to let him own it. I don't think that this Budget will be looked on favourably in a year's time.
F1: feels a bit tightly clustered having testing and the first race so close together. On the plus side, that means there isn't much time for teams with poor reliability to remedy things.
You already know I am a Sunak fanboi and there was an awful lot in that budget that was good. Frankly, the stuff that has made the hard right wince is the stuff that I like the most. I was on here before the budget saying that Sunak could do two things: promote investment for growth, and redefine "benefits" back to a social safety net. He has smashed the first point out of the park.
Lets put it this way. The 130% super deduction absolutely motivates me to invest heavily into my 7 month old business. The office space I am now in needs a full refit and almost all of that will sit under Capital Allowances, I am proposing to my main client a sizeable expansion in scope of the work I am doing for them, and the super deduction helps provide my business with more cash to invest into that.
Too many businesses have battened down the hatches and sat on cash. This will provoke a 2 year blizzard of business investment which provides jobs which means more taxes which means more jobs - the virtuous circle. I know that the proposed 25% rate for the biggest companies is concerning to some of you. However, it is *proposed* and there are bound to be future announcements to at the very least deflate away chunks of the rise.
All in, it does exactly what was needed. yes there there are a lot of things he missed - we DO need to address unpaid carers and the self employed who fell through the chasm and the iniquities of UC. But what was there was good. Really good. Its no wonder his Next PM rating is so high - he would be so much better than Shagger.
My only real concern about the super deduction is that whilst it will be great for domestic employment, will it mean that domestic suppliers can't cope with demand - and we suck in imports?
I have no interest in the Harry & Megan saga. His mum was hounded to death. He served his country with two tours in Afghanistan. He founded the Invictus Games. He doesn't want to be a front line royal and frankly I can't blame him.
The vitriol aimed at him because he married an American/black woman is pathetic.
Thinking about reopening, I'd make one small change - delay nightclubs back another month. I know people in them tend to be low risk but transmission would be lower if there's another month of the youngest adult cohort being vaccinated 1st jab + delay by that point. If rollout speed picks up I could revise that view.
Some people seem to have a much more vocal and visceral dislike of Meghan & Harry than they do of Prince Andrew, who as far as I know is still taking money from the public purse.
Weird and irrational.
If Andy is guilty of what many people seem to think he's guilty of, then clearly is worthy of a lot more contempt.
But he's not in the news at the moment. They are.
They're in the news for committing a crime or doing something wrong are they? What?
It seems to me they are in the news for the evil crime of *checks notes* speaking to Oprah.
Does every guest who speaks to Oprah get attacked and criticised this much? They should be able to speak to Oprah as much as they want with the same amount of criticism for it that any other guest Oprah has gets.
Personally I don't care, but our media does so I'm inclined to form a view. They want me to have sympathy for them. I don't.
The media was responsible for the death of his mother and criminally harassing his wife....
The Mail and anyone else without a good word to say about them would be well advised to pretend these two don't exist. Its not as if its front page news when anyone else speaks to Oprah, or her guests would always be front page news.
But they expect to be able to cash on in the clicks just because these two have the audacity to do what any normal celebrity is entitled to do which is talk to people they want to talk to.
I have no interest in the Harry & Megan saga. His mum was hounded to death. He served his country with two tours in Afghanistan. He founded the Invictus Games. He doesn't want to be a front line royal and frankly I can't blame him.
The vitriol aimed at him because he married an American/black woman is pathetic.
Some people seem to have a much more vocal and visceral dislike of Meghan & Harry than they do of Prince Andrew, who as far as I know is still taking money from the public purse.
Weird and irrational.
If Andy is guilty of what many people seem to think he's guilty of, then clearly is worthy of a lot more contempt.
But he's not in the news at the moment. They are.
They're in the news for committing a crime or doing something wrong are they? What?
It seems to me they are in the news for the evil crime of *checks notes* speaking to Oprah.
Does every guest who speaks to Oprah get attacked and criticised this much? They should be able to speak to Oprah as much as they want with the same amount of criticism for it that any other guest Oprah has gets.
Personally I don't care, but our media does so I'm inclined to form a view. They want me to have sympathy for them. I don't.
The media was responsible for the death of his mother and criminally harassing his wife....
You already know I am a Sunak fanboi and there was an awful lot in that budget that was good. Frankly, the stuff that has made the hard right wince is the stuff that I like the most. I was on here before the budget saying that Sunak could do two things: promote investment for growth, and redefine "benefits" back to a social safety net. He has smashed the first point out of the park.
Lets put it this way. The 130% super deduction absolutely motivates me to invest heavily into my 7 month old business. The office space I am now in needs a full refit and almost all of that will sit under Capital Allowances, I am proposing to my main client a sizeable expansion in scope of the work I am doing for them, and the super deduction helps provide my business with more cash to invest into that.
Too many businesses have battened down the hatches and sat on cash. This will provoke a 2 year blizzard of business investment which provides jobs which means more taxes which means more jobs - the virtuous circle. I know that the proposed 25% rate for the biggest companies is concerning to some of you. However, it is *proposed* and there are bound to be future announcements to at the very least deflate away chunks of the rise.
All in, it does exactly what was needed. yes there there are a lot of things he missed - we DO need to address unpaid carers and the self employed who fell through the chasm and the iniquities of UC. But what was there was good. Really good. Its no wonder his Next PM rating is so high - he would be so much better than Shagger.
I find myself agreeing with you 100%
I agree on some of that. There is a very wide reform agenda to be addressed, and some of it may be far easier to address before we are out of the current crisis.
The BBC are not covering themselves in glory today.
On a day when they could have led with the budget, the first minister of Scotland being accused of perjury, a global pandemic, schools being sent back with impossible safety measures, an academy chain going bust and all hell breaking loose in and over Northern Ireland...
...they led with the Duchess of Sussex giving an interview.
I sometimes wonder if they want to keep the licence fee.
Royals = big press. Even the publicly funded bits cannot help themselves.
Honestly the whole thing is just a nonsense - clearly there have been leaks against Harry and Meghan in recent days no doubt because of their interview, but equally clearly you cant expect a great deal of sympathy when your whole deal appears to be complaining about media attention and royal status whilst making use of both of those things.
If you are happier out of it, fine. If you have takes to tell, just do it already not this orchestrated media game of hints and clips and build up. That just makes it look like it's not important to them. And the rest of the royals can remember that playing things with a straight bat is preferable - just ignore it, as getting engaged will only rebound.
Meghan & Harry don't count as Royals anymore. She is the new Mrs Simpson - irrelevant.
Except that they are trying to leverage off something they have walked away from, and are not happy with the consequences of their chosen course of action.
She is stirring the pot for her own reasons. It won't end well.
And after the disgusting way they've both been treated, why shouldn't they?
Good for them.
Whatever. I don't buy your narrative.
Fishing in things you say you have left is never a good idea.
If you are leaving something behind you ... leave it behind you.
So they can be abused, treated like shit and are just supposed to take it and not speak about their own lives?
They're free people, free to make their own choices and do whatever they damn please. They don't owe the UK media or the monarchy anything. After the way they've been treated they absolutely can and should do whatever they want.
Their lives, their choice.
Allegedly abused. Allegedly treated like shit etc.
Of course they are free to do whatever they want, however starting a so-called "new chapter" (BBC headline) by giving high profile interviews 15 months after "moving on" does not seem wise.
I've made 2 points:
1 - This couple are minor celebs and I don't think relevant. 2 - Not moving on does not seem very wise.
If you have issues with your family, playing out the drama in the press is questionable.
"Allegedly"?
His mother was hounded to death in Paris. His wife's privacy was illegally invaded by the Mail as convicted by the courts.
Neither of that is "allegedly". The press are acting like scum, good for them moving on and dealing with the likes of Oprah instead.
Moving on by dealing with classier elements of the media seems entirely reasonable. That Oprah is classier than our own gutter press says a lot.
Making a living off media coverage is a game of tango, and it takes 2 to dance.
It seems to me that that might justify an attitude to media.
It does not justify the Royal Family stuff.
Anyhoo. Time for the day.
Absolutely it does. They've chosen to dance with Oprah so that should come with whatever attention that Oprah's guests normally get. Which is her audience.
"Couple talks to Oprah" is not BBC or press news.
I admire Harry for walking away from the Royal Family and the circus that entails and doing, probably, the right thing for his family. I don't care whether the driver was Meghan or Harry - if I had a job that caused distress for my wife and particularly if it meant that the press were attacking her daily, then I would leave that job. I love my wife and the promises I made to her on our wedding day trump everything else - it would be the right thing to do, no matter what anyone else thought.
I can see they can be open to some criticism if they claimed they wanted to escape media attention and then do media interviews. Friendly media yes, but it - of course - invites wider media attention. If they really want to escape publicity, as opposed to constant harassment by British tabloids (if they ever claimed that) then they'd be better living a quiet life and not doing interviews. But it's their choice/mistake. I can understand the need to "have their say" given the way they are attacked here, but it does open them up, rightly or wrongly, to public scrutiny like any other celebrity couple doing interviews.
On a personal level, one of my wife's former colleagues was at Eton (on a scholarship) with Harry and had a very low opinion of him there (although mostly what he describes is Harry being disliked and bullied, rather than things that were bad about Harry per se). He may well be an unpleasant person; it's quite possible that if I knew him I'd dislike him intensely, but that's irrelevant.
You already know I am a Sunak fanboi and there was an awful lot in that budget that was good. Frankly, the stuff that has made the hard right wince is the stuff that I like the most. I was on here before the budget saying that Sunak could do two things: promote investment for growth, and redefine "benefits" back to a social safety net. He has smashed the first point out of the park.
Lets put it this way. The 130% super deduction absolutely motivates me to invest heavily into my 7 month old business. The office space I am now in needs a full refit and almost all of that will sit under Capital Allowances, I am proposing to my main client a sizeable expansion in scope of the work I am doing for them, and the super deduction helps provide my business with more cash to invest into that.
Too many businesses have battened down the hatches and sat on cash. This will provoke a 2 year blizzard of business investment which provides jobs which means more taxes which means more jobs - the virtuous circle. I know that the proposed 25% rate for the biggest companies is concerning to some of you. However, it is *proposed* and there are bound to be future announcements to at the very least deflate away chunks of the rise.
All in, it does exactly what was needed. yes there there are a lot of things he missed - we DO need to address unpaid carers and the self employed who fell through the chasm and the iniquities of UC. But what was there was good. Really good. Its no wonder his Next PM rating is so high - he would be so much better than Shagger.
I find myself agreeing with you 100%
I think I mentioned yesterday that a couple of people I know with business made an explicit link between the tax rate and the investment allowance - they see it is a direct push (more a hard shove) to invest profits in the business.
The comment was made that this is one of the few things that the French employment system/tax gets right. Investment in equipment is a extremely high there. It is interesting to see the amount of machinery used on a French domestic building site vs the UK bring-me-more-eastern-europeans approach.
Some people seem to have a much more vocal and visceral dislike of Meghan & Harry than they do of Prince Andrew, who as far as I know is still taking money from the public purse.
Weird and irrational.
If Andy is guilty of what many people seem to think he's guilty of, then clearly is worthy of a lot more contempt.
But he's not in the news at the moment. They are.
They're in the news for committing a crime or doing something wrong are they? What?
It seems to me they are in the news for the evil crime of *checks notes* speaking to Oprah.
Does every guest who speaks to Oprah get attacked and criticised this much? They should be able to speak to Oprah as much as they want with the same amount of criticism for it that any other guest Oprah has gets.
Personally I don't care, but our media does so I'm inclined to form a view. They want me to have sympathy for them. I don't.
The media was responsible for the death of his mother and criminally harassing his wife.
If that doesn't deserve sympathy what does?
I have sympathy for anyone who loses a parent at such a young age and I have particular sympathy for him and his brother for the way they were put on show for the funeral.
But that's not what this is all about, is it?
What else is it about?
He's done his duty, he's founded charities, he's served in Afghanistan now he has left the country, now and he's speaking to the American media as any celebrity in America does without being front page news.
What more should he do? Other than disappear altogether which isn't expected of anyone else ever in any walk of life and is absolutely unreasonable to expect of anyone.
What's the alternative of signalling to the markets that you're prepared to tax more (The corp tax can always be tinkered with as it's not in yet), a loss in confidence in the currency, higher borrowing costs, more debt, a need to tax even more... By signalling he's fully prepared to push tax up Sunak has likely saved future tax rises to the counterfactual of not doing so. It was a well aimed budget.
Thinking about reopening, I'd make one small change - delay nightclubs back another month. I know people in them tend to be low risk but transmission would be lower if there's another month of the youngest adult cohort being vaccinated 1st jab + delay by that point. If rollout speed picks up I could revise that view.
The change that needs to be made is the five week gap between stages. They claim they need three weeks to collect the data of any change, a week to analyse and then a week to give the next stage public notice of opening (e.g. give hairdressers a week's notice).
It's ridiculous. We have just shown with vaccine approval that the real world data can be analysed in real-time as it comes in. There is no need for the 4th week of analysis they have had added in.
The BBC are not covering themselves in glory today.
On a day when they could have led with the budget, the first minister of Scotland being accused of perjury, a global pandemic, schools being sent back with impossible safety measures, an academy chain going bust and all hell breaking loose in and over Northern Ireland...
...they led with the Duchess of Sussex giving an interview.
I sometimes wonder if they want to keep the licence fee.
Royals = big press. Even the publicly funded bits cannot help themselves.
Honestly the whole thing is just a nonsense - clearly there have been leaks against Harry and Meghan in recent days no doubt because of their interview, but equally clearly you cant expect a great deal of sympathy when your whole deal appears to be complaining about media attention and royal status whilst making use of both of those things.
If you are happier out of it, fine. If you have takes to tell, just do it already not this orchestrated media game of hints and clips and build up. That just makes it look like it's not important to them. And the rest of the royals can remember that playing things with a straight bat is preferable - just ignore it, as getting engaged will only rebound.
Meghan & Harry don't count as Royals anymore. She is the new Mrs Simpson - irrelevant.
Except that they are trying to leverage off something they have walked away from, and are not happy with the consequences of their chosen course of action.
She is stirring the pot for her own reasons. It won't end well.
And after the disgusting way they've both been treated, why shouldn't they?
Good for them.
Whatever. I don't buy your narrative.
Fishing in things you say you have left is never a good idea.
If you are leaving something behind you ... leave it behind you.
So they can be abused, treated like shit and are just supposed to take it and not speak about their own lives?
They're free people, free to make their own choices and do whatever they damn please. They don't owe the UK media or the monarchy anything. After the way they've been treated they absolutely can and should do whatever they want.
Their lives, their choice.
And as they are press averse stop doing the opposite
Retire from public life and do their own thing
Are they "press averse" or "press abuse averse".
Being against abuse by the press doesn't mean being against good press. Being in public life doesn't give the media the right to hound someone to death or break the law to harass them.
I quite agree. The media should ignore them.
Yep. If the media narrative is right, then it will punish them/drive them crazy, which is - per media narrative - what they deserve. If the media narrative is wrong and they really don't want to be harassed, then everyone will be happy (except those trying to sell papers/page clicks, perhaps).
Some people seem to have a much more vocal and visceral dislike of Meghan & Harry than they do of Prince Andrew, who as far as I know is still taking money from the public purse.
Weird and irrational.
If Andy is guilty of what many people seem to think he's guilty of, then clearly is worthy of a lot more contempt.
But he's not in the news at the moment. They are.
They're in the news for committing a crime or doing something wrong are they? What?
It seems to me they are in the news for the evil crime of *checks notes* speaking to Oprah.
Does every guest who speaks to Oprah get attacked and criticised this much? They should be able to speak to Oprah as much as they want with the same amount of criticism for it that any other guest Oprah has gets.
Personally I don't care, but our media does so I'm inclined to form a view. They want me to have sympathy for them. I don't.
The media was responsible for the death of his mother and criminally harassing his wife....
Some people seem to have a much more vocal and visceral dislike of Meghan & Harry than they do of Prince Andrew, who as far as I know is still taking money from the public purse.
Weird and irrational.
If Andy is guilty of what many people seem to think he's guilty of, then clearly is worthy of a lot more contempt.
But he's not in the news at the moment. They are.
They're in the news for committing a crime or doing something wrong are they? What?
It seems to me they are in the news for the evil crime of *checks notes* speaking to Oprah.
Does every guest who speaks to Oprah get attacked and criticised this much? They should be able to speak to Oprah as much as they want with the same amount of criticism for it that any other guest Oprah has gets.
Personally I don't care, but our media does so I'm inclined to form a view. They want me to have sympathy for them. I don't.
The media was responsible for the death of his mother and criminally harassing his wife.
If that doesn't deserve sympathy what does?
I have sympathy for anyone who loses a parent at such a young age and I have particular sympathy for him and his brother for the way they were put on show for the funeral.
But that's not what this is all about, is it?
What else is it about?
He's done his duty, he's founded charities, he's served in Afghanistan now he has left the country, now and he's speaking to the American media as any celebrity in America does without being front page news.
What more should he do? Other than disappear altogether which isn't expected of anyone else ever in any walk of life and is absolutely unreasonable to expect of anyone.
They think they were treated badly by the Monarchy. The Monarchy sees it differently.
Hunting in a slump is never fun, particularly since I imagine work in solicitors’ offices has declined with fewer property transactions and the courts all shut.
Divorce lawyers are going to be busy though...
I think the problem is that people are understandably wary about investing in the training of new people in a socially distanced world.
Doesn’t help me though of course.
Sorry to hear you are struggling to get a start. It is a difficult time. My daughter started work last November and has yet to spend a single day in the office. In my experience most smaller firms are back in the office and have been for some time. Larger firms with more sophisticated IT systems have a lot of people working from home and probably more still on furlough. And business with people in that position is unlikely to be thinking too much about employing more people.
In short I suspect that the smaller firms are the better bet right now.
Thank you for your thoughts.
It’s my experience too that smaller firms are mostly back in their offices while the bigger firms are not. However of course smaller firms are more wary and risk-adverse with their recruitment. I’ve been targeting both smaller firms and larger firms but as @AlastairMeeks has previously advised, and I agree with him, larger firms seem to value my previous engineering career work experience and “non-traditional” background more. Despite this I’d probably prefer to work for a small to medium sized firm.
We ride on!
Engineering Employers Federation/Engineering trade unions? Had a very helpful, if unrewarding conversation with a solicitor (I think) in a firm contracted to my insurers yesterday. Thought I might have a small property claim, but the chap said not.
This morning's reflections on the budget: 1. Taxation hike very real indeed, both in corporation tax and income tax, probably more than is realised given likely inflationary pressures. 2. Tax increases extend right down the income scale given the freeze in the basic rate threshold. 3. While taxation increases are being put off, the assault on the poor via universal credit can be resumed early. Buy shares in baliffs. 4. Public spending cuts brushed over but clearly very deep in departmental budgets. Can the country stand another bout of extreme austerity over 2022-2025? 5. No effort to claw back taxation from those businesses that have profited from Covid in the past year. 6. Corporation tax increase targeted at UK based companies, which makes it even more extraordinary that there's absolutely no attempt to target businesses that trade here without being in the UK tax jurisdiction, including all those online companies eg. Amazon. 7. Retail support measures very short term in 2021 only, business rates continue with absolutely nothing to encourage long term investment in the high street or rebalance retail taxation from property towards online sales. 8. Investment incentives could turn out to be a very large tax avoidance loophole.
Best not to judge Sunak's prospects on the immediate reaction to the budget. I think Johnson will be happy to let him own it. I don't think that this Budget will be looked on favourably in a year's time.
You're absolutely right to shine light on the stuff that is missing. UC is a nasty spiteful bludgeon used to beat the poor into submission. The Tories get away with it because the bludgeoning started under Labour and Starmer's Labour have no alternative to propose. On the short term measures we know that any financial announcement is soon followed by another - there will be more support because there has to be. Extending furlough out to September is a sign of the direction of travel on such matters.
I do want to pick you - and a load of left leaning twitterati - up on the "investment is a tax dodge" narrative. It really isn't. Taking money that should be paid as tax and gifting it to the owner/owner's wife/shady off-shore trust could be classed as such. Investment is not, for a simple reason.
I had an electrician in this morning to look at my office. He will quote for investment into replacement low energy lights. Those lights are made by a company who provides jobs, shipped to a wholesaler who provide jobs, provides work for the sparky - all of whom then pay tax, have money, can buy stuff which gives other people a job. The money my business will save in electricity bills will get spent on other things that provide jobs.
We have to stop talking about investment as either a "tax dodge" or "how can we afford it". Movement of cash through the economy is literally what our prosperity is built on. Too much cash has been stopped up and horded, these measures enable it to be spent and create jobs and growth and tax revenues.
Thinking about reopening, I'd make one small change - delay nightclubs back another month. I know people in them tend to be low risk but transmission would be lower if there's another month of the youngest adult cohort being vaccinated 1st jab + delay by that point. If rollout speed picks up I could revise that view.
The change that needs to be made is the five week gap between stages. They claim they need three weeks to collect the data of any change, a week to analyse and then a week to give the next stage public notice of opening (e.g. give hairdressers a week's notice).
It's ridiculous. We have just shown with vaccine approval that the real world data can be analysed in real-time as it comes in. There is no need for the 4th week of analysis they have had added in.
I doubt the vaccine approval real time analysis took less than a week.
Hunting in a slump is never fun, particularly since I imagine work in solicitors’ offices has declined with fewer property transactions and the courts all shut.
Divorce lawyers are going to be busy though...
I think the problem is that people are understandably wary about investing in the training of new people in a socially distanced world.
Doesn’t help me though of course.
Sorry to hear you are struggling to get a start. It is a difficult time. My daughter started work last November and has yet to spend a single day in the office. In my experience most smaller firms are back in the office and have been for some time. Larger firms with more sophisticated IT systems have a lot of people working from home and probably more still on furlough. And business with people in that position is unlikely to be thinking too much about employing more people.
In short I suspect that the smaller firms are the better bet right now.
Thank you for your thoughts.
It’s my experience too that smaller firms are mostly back in their offices while the bigger firms are not. However of course smaller firms are more wary and risk-adverse with their recruitment. I’ve been targeting both smaller firms and larger firms but as @AlastairMeeks has previously advised, and I agree with him, larger firms seem to value my previous engineering career work experience and “non-traditional” background more. Despite this I’d probably prefer to work for a small to medium sized firm.
We ride on!
Engineering Employers Federation/Engineering trade unions? Had a very helpful, if unrewarding conversation with a solicitor (I think) in a firm contracted to my insurers yesterday. Thought I might have a small property claim, but the chap said not.
Thank you for your thoughts also!
I will look into that as a potential avenue. Although Ideally (beggars can’t be choosers) I want to work in a private client-facing role rather than a B2B role, that could work.
You already know I am a Sunak fanboi and there was an awful lot in that budget that was good. Frankly, the stuff that has made the hard right wince is the stuff that I like the most. I was on here before the budget saying that Sunak could do two things: promote investment for growth, and redefine "benefits" back to a social safety net. He has smashed the first point out of the park.
Lets put it this way. The 130% super deduction absolutely motivates me to invest heavily into my 7 month old business. The office space I am now in needs a full refit and almost all of that will sit under Capital Allowances, I am proposing to my main client a sizeable expansion in scope of the work I am doing for them, and the super deduction helps provide my business with more cash to invest into that.
Too many businesses have battened down the hatches and sat on cash. This will provoke a 2 year blizzard of business investment which provides jobs which means more taxes which means more jobs - the virtuous circle. I know that the proposed 25% rate for the biggest companies is concerning to some of you. However, it is *proposed* and there are bound to be future announcements to at the very least deflate away chunks of the rise.
All in, it does exactly what was needed. yes there there are a lot of things he missed - we DO need to address unpaid carers and the self employed who fell through the chasm and the iniquities of UC. But what was there was good. Really good. Its no wonder his Next PM rating is so high - he would be so much better than Shagger.
My only real concern about the super deduction is that whilst it will be great for domestic employment, will it mean that domestic suppliers can't cope with demand - and we suck in imports?
Imports mainly from Europe which are now more expensive thanks to import VAT and duty and handling costs...
There is one way to drive capacity in domestic manufacturing - create demand. If we continue to allow investment to be shut down, demand isn't there, export is now a nightmare, so they make less / go bust. I'd rather provoke a blizzard of investment - the super deduction also allows manufacturers to increase capacity.
For too many decades this country has gone backwards when it comes to manufacturing and infrastructure. The focus has been absurdly short term - the next election, the next quarterly profits statement. Time that we accept our roads and railways and airports and broadband and education system and hospitals are sub-par, that manufacturing has largely been sold off or shut down, and that we either do something about it or we face an ever-worsening balance of payments crisis.
Investment - to deliver a return on that investment - is not "subsidy" or "socialism" or a "tax dodge". It is Growth. Jobs. Prosperity. National Pride...
Thinking about reopening, I'd make one small change - delay nightclubs back another month. I know people in them tend to be low risk but transmission would be lower if there's another month of the youngest adult cohort being vaccinated 1st jab + delay by that point. If rollout speed picks up I could revise that view.
The change that needs to be made is the five week gap between stages. They claim they need three weeks to collect the data of any change, a week to analyse and then a week to give the next stage public notice of opening (e.g. give hairdressers a week's notice).
It's ridiculous. We have just shown with vaccine approval that the real world data can be analysed in real-time as it comes in. There is no need for the 4th week of analysis they have had added in.
There's a good reason to try and get cases as low as possible here (Which is achieved with a slow unlockdown pace) - and that's sequencing. If cases are low enough we can sequence everything, I'm not sure what that level is but it's something that would be very positive for checking nothing is slipping through.
The BBC are not covering themselves in glory today.
On a day when they could have led with the budget, the first minister of Scotland being accused of perjury, a global pandemic, schools being sent back with impossible safety measures, an academy chain going bust and all hell breaking loose in and over Northern Ireland...
...they led with the Duchess of Sussex giving an interview.
I sometimes wonder if they want to keep the licence fee.
Royals = big press. Even the publicly funded bits cannot help themselves.
Honestly the whole thing is just a nonsense - clearly there have been leaks against Harry and Meghan in recent days no doubt because of their interview, but equally clearly you cant expect a great deal of sympathy when your whole deal appears to be complaining about media attention and royal status whilst making use of both of those things.
If you are happier out of it, fine. If you have takes to tell, just do it already not this orchestrated media game of hints and clips and build up. That just makes it look like it's not important to them. And the rest of the royals can remember that playing things with a straight bat is preferable - just ignore it, as getting engaged will only rebound.
Meghan & Harry don't count as Royals anymore. She is the new Mrs Simpson - irrelevant.
Except that they are trying to leverage off something they have walked away from, and are not happy with the consequences of their chosen course of action.
She is stirring the pot for her own reasons. It won't end well.
And after the disgusting way they've both been treated, why shouldn't they?
Good for them.
Whatever. I don't buy your narrative.
Fishing in things you say you have left is never a good idea.
If you are leaving something behind you ... leave it behind you.
So they can be abused, treated like shit and are just supposed to take it and not speak about their own lives?
They're free people, free to make their own choices and do whatever they damn please. They don't owe the UK media or the monarchy anything. After the way they've been treated they absolutely can and should do whatever they want.
Their lives, their choice.
They essentially have the Hobson's choice of:
1. Letting the gutter media (it used to be gutter press) say what it likes about them.
2. Trying to set the record straight, using the media to do so, and then being accused of being rank hypocrites for not taking it all lying down.
All this about completely overhauling their lives, giving up all privileges and royal funding, and breaking irretrievably with their family in an effort to escape scrutiny, only to still find themselves still being pursued relentlessly.
This morning's reflections on the budget: 1. Taxation hike very real indeed, both in corporation tax and income tax, probably more than is realised given likely inflationary pressures. 2. Tax increases extend right down the income scale given the freeze in the basic rate threshold. 3. While taxation increases are being put off, the assault on the poor via universal credit can be resumed early. Buy shares in baliffs. 4. Public spending cuts brushed over but clearly very deep in departmental budgets. Can the country stand another bout of extreme austerity over 2022-2025? 5. No effort to claw back taxation from those businesses that have profited from Covid in the past year. 6. Corporation tax increase targeted at UK based companies, which makes it even more extraordinary that there's absolutely no attempt to target businesses that trade here without being in the UK tax jurisdiction, including all those online companies eg. Amazon. 7. Retail support measures very short term in 2021 only, business rates continue with absolutely nothing to encourage long term investment in the high street or rebalance retail taxation from property towards online sales. 8. Investment incentives could turn out to be a very large tax avoidance loophole.
Best not to judge Sunak's prospects on the immediate reaction to the budget. I think Johnson will be happy to let him own it. I don't think that this Budget will be looked on favourably in a year's time.
You're absolutely right to shine light on the stuff that is missing. UC is a nasty spiteful bludgeon used to beat the poor into submission. The Tories get away with it because the bludgeoning started under Labour and Starmer's Labour have no alternative to propose. On the short term measures we know that any financial announcement is soon followed by another - there will be more support because there has to be. Extending furlough out to September is a sign of the direction of travel on such matters.
I do want to pick you - and a load of left leaning twitterati - up on the "investment is a tax dodge" narrative. It really isn't. Taking money that should be paid as tax and gifting it to the owner/owner's wife/shady off-shore trust could be classed as such. Investment is not, for a simple reason.
I had an electrician in this morning to look at my office. He will quote for investment into replacement low energy lights. Those lights are made by a company who provides jobs, shipped to a wholesaler who provide jobs, provides work for the sparky - all of whom then pay tax, have money, can buy stuff which gives other people a job. The money my business will save in electricity bills will get spent on other things that provide jobs.
We have to stop talking about investment as either a "tax dodge" or "how can we afford it". Movement of cash through the economy is literally what our prosperity is built on. Too much cash has been stopped up and horded, these measures enable it to be spent and create jobs and growth and tax revenues.
Investment in equipment has long been a problem in UK business. The classic behaviour has been to try and sweat the assets of a business (including the workforce) until it dies a slow death, then flog the corpse.
"A bad workman blames his tools" - is generally bollocks. To do a good quality job, efficiently, requires top-of-the-line equipment.
Thinking about reopening, I'd make one small change - delay nightclubs back another month. I know people in them tend to be low risk but transmission would be lower if there's another month of the youngest adult cohort being vaccinated 1st jab + delay by that point. If rollout speed picks up I could revise that view.
The change that needs to be made is the five week gap between stages. They claim they need three weeks to collect the data of any change, a week to analyse and then a week to give the next stage public notice of opening (e.g. give hairdressers a week's notice).
It's ridiculous. We have just shown with vaccine approval that the real world data can be analysed in real-time as it comes in. There is no need for the 4th week of analysis they have had added in.
There's a good reason to try and get cases as low as possible here (Which is achieved with a slow unlockdown pace) - and that's sequencing. If cases are low enough we can sequence everything, I'm not sure what that level is but it's something that would be very positive for checking nothing is slipping through.
That’s a very good point. I hadn’t thought of that.
This morning's reflections on the budget: 1. Taxation hike very real indeed, both in corporation tax and income tax, probably more than is realised given likely inflationary pressures. 2. Tax increases extend right down the income scale given the freeze in the basic rate threshold. 3. While taxation increases are being put off, the assault on the poor via universal credit can be resumed early. Buy shares in baliffs. 4. Public spending cuts brushed over but clearly very deep in departmental budgets. Can the country stand another bout of extreme austerity over 2022-2025? 5. No effort to claw back taxation from those businesses that have profited from Covid in the past year. 6. Corporation tax increase targeted at UK based companies, which makes it even more extraordinary that there's absolutely no attempt to target businesses that trade here without being in the UK tax jurisdiction, including all those online companies eg. Amazon. 7. Retail support measures very short term in 2021 only, business rates continue with absolutely nothing to encourage long term investment in the high street or rebalance retail taxation from property towards online sales. 8. Investment incentives could turn out to be a very large tax avoidance loophole.
Best not to judge Sunak's prospects on the immediate reaction to the budget. I think Johnson will be happy to let him own it. I don't think that this Budget will be looked on favourably in a year's time.
You're absolutely right to shine light on the stuff that is missing. UC is a nasty spiteful bludgeon used to beat the poor into submission. The Tories get away with it because the bludgeoning started under Labour and Starmer's Labour have no alternative to propose. On the short term measures we know that any financial announcement is soon followed by another - there will be more support because there has to be. Extending furlough out to September is a sign of the direction of travel on such matters.
I do want to pick you - and a load of left leaning twitterati - up on the "investment is a tax dodge" narrative. It really isn't. Taking money that should be paid as tax and gifting it to the owner/owner's wife/shady off-shore trust could be classed as such. Investment is not, for a simple reason.
I had an electrician in this morning to look at my office. He will quote for investment into replacement low energy lights. Those lights are made by a company who provides jobs, shipped to a wholesaler who provide jobs, provides work for the sparky - all of whom then pay tax, have money, can buy stuff which gives other people a job. The money my business will save in electricity bills will get spent on other things that provide jobs.
We have to stop talking about investment as either a "tax dodge" or "how can we afford it". Movement of cash through the economy is literally what our prosperity is built on. Too much cash has been stopped up and horded, these measures enable it to be spent and create jobs and growth and tax revenues.
Quite right. Some years ago the CAB of which I was then a trustee found some research which showed that pretty well all the money paid out I. benefits was spent on local goods and services, thus benefiting the area where the claimants lived.
You already know I am a Sunak fanboi and there was an awful lot in that budget that was good. Frankly, the stuff that has made the hard right wince is the stuff that I like the most. I was on here before the budget saying that Sunak could do two things: promote investment for growth, and redefine "benefits" back to a social safety net. He has smashed the first point out of the park.
Lets put it this way. The 130% super deduction absolutely motivates me to invest heavily into my 7 month old business. The office space I am now in needs a full refit and almost all of that will sit under Capital Allowances, I am proposing to my main client a sizeable expansion in scope of the work I am doing for them, and the super deduction helps provide my business with more cash to invest into that.
Too many businesses have battened down the hatches and sat on cash. This will provoke a 2 year blizzard of business investment which provides jobs which means more taxes which means more jobs - the virtuous circle. I know that the proposed 25% rate for the biggest companies is concerning to some of you. However, it is *proposed* and there are bound to be future announcements to at the very least deflate away chunks of the rise.
All in, it does exactly what was needed. yes there there are a lot of things he missed - we DO need to address unpaid carers and the self employed who fell through the chasm and the iniquities of UC. But what was there was good. Really good. Its no wonder his Next PM rating is so high - he would be so much better than Shagger.
My only real concern about the super deduction is that whilst it will be great for domestic employment, will it mean that domestic suppliers can't cope with demand - and we suck in imports?
Imports mainly from Europe which are now more expensive thanks to import VAT and duty and handling costs...
There is one way to drive capacity in domestic manufacturing - create demand. If we continue to allow investment to be shut down, demand isn't there, export is now a nightmare, so they make less / go bust. I'd rather provoke a blizzard of investment - the super deduction also allows manufacturers to increase capacity.
For too many decades this country has gone backwards when it comes to manufacturing and infrastructure. The focus has been absurdly short term - the next election, the next quarterly profits statement. Time that we accept our roads and railways and airports and broadband and education system and hospitals are sub-par, that manufacturing has largely been sold off or shut down, and that we either do something about it or we face an ever-worsening balance of payments crisis.
Investment - to deliver a return on that investment - is not "subsidy" or "socialism" or a "tax dodge". It is Growth. Jobs. Prosperity. National Pride...
So long as it is actual investment, not Brownian calling every penny of expenditure as "investment", I 100% agree with you.
I expect HMRC will have very clear rules as to what actually is investment here.
This morning's reflections on the budget: 1. Taxation hike very real indeed, both in corporation tax and income tax, probably more than is realised given likely inflationary pressures. 2. Tax increases extend right down the income scale given the freeze in the basic rate threshold. 3. While taxation increases are being put off, the assault on the poor via universal credit can be resumed early. Buy shares in baliffs. 4. Public spending cuts brushed over but clearly very deep in departmental budgets. Can the country stand another bout of extreme austerity over 2022-2025? 5. No effort to claw back taxation from those businesses that have profited from Covid in the past year. 6. Corporation tax increase targeted at UK based companies, which makes it even more extraordinary that there's absolutely no attempt to target businesses that trade here without being in the UK tax jurisdiction, including all those online companies eg. Amazon. 7. Retail support measures very short term in 2021 only, business rates continue with absolutely nothing to encourage long term investment in the high street or rebalance retail taxation from property towards online sales. 8. Investment incentives could turn out to be a very large tax avoidance loophole.
Best not to judge Sunak's prospects on the immediate reaction to the budget. I think Johnson will be happy to let him own it. I don't think that this Budget will be looked on favourably in a year's time.
You're absolutely right to shine light on the stuff that is missing. UC is a nasty spiteful bludgeon used to beat the poor into submission. The Tories get away with it because the bludgeoning started under Labour and Starmer's Labour have no alternative to propose. On the short term measures we know that any financial announcement is soon followed by another - there will be more support because there has to be. Extending furlough out to September is a sign of the direction of travel on such matters.
I do want to pick you - and a load of left leaning twitterati - up on the "investment is a tax dodge" narrative. It really isn't. Taking money that should be paid as tax and gifting it to the owner/owner's wife/shady off-shore trust could be classed as such. Investment is not, for a simple reason.
I had an electrician in this morning to look at my office. He will quote for investment into replacement low energy lights. Those lights are made by a company who provides jobs, shipped to a wholesaler who provide jobs, provides work for the sparky - all of whom then pay tax, have money, can buy stuff which gives other people a job. The money my business will save in electricity bills will get spent on other things that provide jobs.
We have to stop talking about investment as either a "tax dodge" or "how can we afford it". Movement of cash through the economy is literally what our prosperity is built on. Too much cash has been stopped up and horded, these measures enable it to be spent and create jobs and growth and tax revenues.
Investment in equipment has long been a problem in UK business. The classic behaviour has been to try and sweat the assets of a business (including the workforce) until it dies a slow death, then flog the corpse.
"A bad workman blames his tools" - is generally bollocks. To do a good quality job, efficiently, requires top-of-the-line equipment.
I think Britain has a general cultural aversion to investment of any kind with a certain degree of risk.
You can see it when you watch Dragons Den vs Shark Tank. They are happy to throw money at high risk investments on Shark Tank knowing that at least some of them will stick. On Dragons Den they’ll ask for 90% of the company for a tiny amount of money.
Hunting in a slump is never fun, particularly since I imagine work in solicitors’ offices has declined with fewer property transactions and the courts all shut.
Divorce lawyers are going to be busy though...
I think the problem is that people are understandably wary about investing in the training of new people in a socially distanced world.
Doesn’t help me though of course.
Sorry to hear you are struggling to get a start. It is a difficult time. My daughter started work last November and has yet to spend a single day in the office. In my experience most smaller firms are back in the office and have been for some time. Larger firms with more sophisticated IT systems have a lot of people working from home and probably more still on furlough. And business with people in that position is unlikely to be thinking too much about employing more people.
In short I suspect that the smaller firms are the better bet right now.
Thank you for your thoughts.
It’s my experience too that smaller firms are mostly back in their offices while the bigger firms are not. However of course smaller firms are more wary and risk-adverse with their recruitment. I’ve been targeting both smaller firms and larger firms but as @AlastairMeeks has previously advised, and I agree with him, larger firms seem to value my previous engineering career work experience and “non-traditional” background more. Despite this I’d probably prefer to work for a small to medium sized firm.
We ride on!
Engineering Employers Federation/Engineering trade unions? Had a very helpful, if unrewarding conversation with a solicitor (I think) in a firm contracted to my insurers yesterday. Thought I might have a small property claim, but the chap said not.
Thank you for your thoughts also!
I will look into that as a potential avenue. Although Ideally (beggars can’t be choosers) I want to work in a private client-facing role rather than a B2B role, that could work.
It's always easier to apply for a job when one already has one; employers see an interested person who wants to move, not someone who, for whatever reason, hasn't got a job.
Terrible though it is, it is fascinating to watch the ebb and flow of COVID infections through the country. At the moment watching infection rates draw back to reveal many of the same places we thought problematic last summer as residual hotspots, yet knowing those places were only mid-table at peak.
And, though the heavier bias towards the South East of the second wave was different, as evidenced by the cumulative death rates by LTLA (the highest overall death tolls concentrate heavily in the eye of the Kentish COVID storm and the Welsh valleys), the most explosive outbreaks by infection rates hit many of the same places as in the first wave.
Last summer I had a geographic creep theory, that the places that didn't banish COVID in June were at the borders between where the first wave had been bad and where it hadn't. That suggests the wash back this time should be a little further east, a little further south west, in places like Bristol, York, Cambridge, Nottingham. There's some hint of that in the rural parts of the East Midlands, but I wouldn't say it is strong. Mainly, it does seem to drawing back to the same locations as before.
So, it seems to me we can tentatively ascribe roles to places a COVID wave in the UK, with 3 types of location:
Explosive outbreak locations: These have rapid onset, high peak rates, and rapid decline of rates (as a kind of limited, ruleset-specific herd immunity kicks in during lockdown). London, Liverpool, Valleys and possibly Birmingham (pattern a bit more mixed here) seem to match.
Reservoir locations: Slightly slower onset, lower peak, but slower decline and stay at relatively high rates over the trough: parts of Manchester, Blackburn, West and South Yorkshire, Leicester, Peterborough and Middlesbrough fulfil this.
Less affected locations: Onset later, moderate peaks, quick recovery: SW peninsula, parts of East Anglia, north Lincs, rural Scotland and Wales.
The less affected locations seem obvious enough, more distant from population centres, more rural, less crowded, more outdoorsy places.
The difference between reservoir locations and explosive locations are slightly less obvious, perhaps Leicester, Blackburn, Middlesbrough have a mix of poor housing but enough distance from the main centres to play the reservoir role naturally. London is a superficially obvious place for the most intense outbreaks, but what about the pattern difference between Liverpool and Manchester. Manchester is more in the hills, and perhaps gets outdoors slower in the spring, but the difference has been too stark, and was already established in the first wave.
Perhaps it was already set by seeding, perhaps Liverpool was set into its enduring explosive cycle pattern as soon as Athletico Madrid landed, while Manchester was set into its gradualist reservoir cycle by its having a little distance from any similar event.
Still got plenty of cash, and prospects for more due almost entirely to the profile Harry gained as a member of the Royal Family.
It's quite complicated. He's often been unhappy in the Firm, although more recently seemed to have carved out a niche with the Invictus Games and charities such as the Lesotho one.
I don't care much about the celebrity side of things, and thus may've missed stuff, but it seems that while some of the abuse his wife got was racist a majority was unpleasant but run-of-the-mill stuff (which Kate also received in large quantities).
The telling event, I think, was the attempt by the pair to maintain the status as Royals whilst simultaneously being totally free to enrich themselves. Given the choice, they preferred the latter to the former.
This morning's reflections on the budget: 1. Taxation hike very real indeed, both in corporation tax and income tax, probably more than is realised given likely inflationary pressures. 2. Tax increases extend right down the income scale given the freeze in the basic rate threshold. 3. While taxation increases are being put off, the assault on the poor via universal credit can be resumed early. Buy shares in baliffs. 4. Public spending cuts brushed over but clearly very deep in departmental budgets. Can the country stand another bout of extreme austerity over 2022-2025? 5. No effort to claw back taxation from those businesses that have profited from Covid in the past year. 6. Corporation tax increase targeted at UK based companies, which makes it even more extraordinary that there's absolutely no attempt to target businesses that trade here without being in the UK tax jurisdiction, including all those online companies eg. Amazon. 7. Retail support measures very short term in 2021 only, business rates continue with absolutely nothing to encourage long term investment in the high street or rebalance retail taxation from property towards online sales. 8. Investment incentives could turn out to be a very large tax avoidance loophole.
Best not to judge Sunak's prospects on the immediate reaction to the budget. I think Johnson will be happy to let him own it. I don't think that this Budget will be looked on favourably in a year's time.
You're absolutely right to shine light on the stuff that is missing. UC is a nasty spiteful bludgeon used to beat the poor into submission. The Tories get away with it because the bludgeoning started under Labour and Starmer's Labour have no alternative to propose. On the short term measures we know that any financial announcement is soon followed by another - there will be more support because there has to be. Extending furlough out to September is a sign of the direction of travel on such matters.
I do want to pick you - and a load of left leaning twitterati - up on the "investment is a tax dodge" narrative. It really isn't. Taking money that should be paid as tax and gifting it to the owner/owner's wife/shady off-shore trust could be classed as such. Investment is not, for a simple reason.
I had an electrician in this morning to look at my office. He will quote for investment into replacement low energy lights. Those lights are made by a company who provides jobs, shipped to a wholesaler who provide jobs, provides work for the sparky - all of whom then pay tax, have money, can buy stuff which gives other people a job. The money my business will save in electricity bills will get spent on other things that provide jobs.
We have to stop talking about investment as either a "tax dodge" or "how can we afford it". Movement of cash through the economy is literally what our prosperity is built on. Too much cash has been stopped up and horded, these measures enable it to be spent and create jobs and growth and tax revenues.
I said "could", not "would" deliberately. Yes some of those investment incentives will be used as you say. But some will no doubt find ways of abusing them. I would be more comfortable with those incentives if they weren't so extreme as to amount to not only giving goods away free but giving free cashback to boot. Extreme tax incentivisation can have bizarre and unforseen consequences. Remember all those supposed green energy incentives in Northern Ireland that brought down the government?
Hang in there, Mr. Gallowgate. There will be a vacancy as the Head of the Scottish Civil Service soon. If you self-id a trans, you should be a shoo-in.
What was interesting to me about the budget was the lack of specific green policy (maybe I wasn't concentrating and missed it?). And then it clicked. The time limited 130% super deduction is a pretty powerful incentive for amongst others, Musk to pull the trigger on his Somerset Gigafactory.
Hang in there, Mr. Gallowgate. There will be a vacancy as the Head of the Scottish Civil Service soon. If you self-id a trans, you should be a shoo-in.
The BBC are not covering themselves in glory today.
On a day when they could have led with the budget, the first minister of Scotland being accused of perjury, a global pandemic, schools being sent back with impossible safety measures, an academy chain going bust and all hell breaking loose in and over Northern Ireland...
...they led with the Duchess of Sussex giving an interview.
I sometimes wonder if they want to keep the licence fee.
Royals = big press. Even the publicly funded bits cannot help themselves.
Honestly the whole thing is just a nonsense - clearly there have been leaks against Harry and Meghan in recent days no doubt because of their interview, but equally clearly you cant expect a great deal of sympathy when your whole deal appears to be complaining about media attention and royal status whilst making use of both of those things.
If you are happier out of it, fine. If you have takes to tell, just do it already not this orchestrated media game of hints and clips and build up. That just makes it look like it's not important to them. And the rest of the royals can remember that playing things with a straight bat is preferable - just ignore it, as getting engaged will only rebound.
Meghan & Harry don't count as Royals anymore. She is the new Mrs Simpson - irrelevant.
Except that they are trying to leverage off something they have walked away from, and are not happy with the consequences of their chosen course of action.
She is stirring the pot for her own reasons. It won't end well.
And after the disgusting way they've both been treated, why shouldn't they?
Good for them.
Whatever. I don't buy your narrative.
Fishing in things you say you have left is never a good idea.
If you are leaving something behind you ... leave it behind you.
So they can be abused, treated like shit and are just supposed to take it and not speak about their own lives?
They're free people, free to make their own choices and do whatever they damn please. They don't owe the UK media or the monarchy anything. After the way they've been treated they absolutely can and should do whatever they want.
Their lives, their choice.
Allegedly abused. Allegedly treated like shit etc.
Of course they are free to do whatever they want, however starting a so-called "new chapter" (BBC headline) by giving high profile interviews 15 months after "moving on" does not seem wise.
I've made 2 points:
1 - This couple are minor celebs and I don't think relevant. 2 - Not moving on does not seem very wise.
If you have issues with your family, playing out the drama in the press is questionable.
"Allegedly"?
His mother was hounded to death in Paris. His wife's privacy was illegally invaded by the Mail as convicted by the courts.
Neither of that is "allegedly". The press are acting like scum, good for them moving on and dealing with the likes of Oprah instead.
Moving on by dealing with classier elements of the media seems entirely reasonable. That Oprah is classier than our own gutter press says a lot.
Making a living off media coverage is a game of tango, and it takes 2 to dance.
It seems to me that that might justify an attitude to media.
It does not justify the Royal Family stuff.
Anyhoo. Time for the day.
Absolutely it does. They've chosen to dance with Oprah so that should come with whatever attention that Oprah's guests normally get. Which is her audience.
"Couple talks to Oprah" is not BBC or press news.
I admire Harry for walking away from the Royal Family and the circus that entails and doing, probably, the right thing for his family. I don't care whether the driver was Meghan or Harry - if I had a job that caused distress for my wife and particularly if it meant that the press were attacking her daily, then I would leave that job. I love my wife and the promises I made to her on our wedding day trump everything else - it would be the right thing to do, no matter what anyone else thought.
I can see they can be open to some criticism if they claimed they wanted to escape media attention and then do media interviews. Friendly media yes, but it - of course - invites wider media attention. If they really want to escape publicity, as opposed to constant harassment by British tabloids (if they ever claimed that) then they'd be better living a quiet life and not doing interviews. But it's their choice/mistake. I can understand the need to "have their say" given the way they are attacked here, but it does open them up, rightly or wrongly, to public scrutiny like any other celebrity couple doing interviews.
On a personal level, one of my wife's former colleagues was at Eton (on a scholarship) with Harry and had a very low opinion of him there (although mostly what he describes is Harry being disliked and bullied, rather than things that were bad about Harry per se). He may well be an unpleasant person; it's quite possible that if I knew him I'd dislike him intensely, but that's irrelevant.
Slightly tangentially, I can't help admiring Rick Astley. He was, it is incredible to recall, the biggest selling pop star of 1987. Charming but awkward-looking shop assistant from Newton-le-Willows outselling Madonna, Prince, and all those other fellas. He had an absolutely incredible voice, but this was kind of masked by Pete Waterman making him sing throwaway and over-produced songs. But anyway, improbably, he had it all - fame, wealth, adulation. In this country, at least, he was bigger news than no-longer-prince Harry is now. He was off to tour America. But then decided that the limelight wasn't for him. I think the decision was actually made as Pete Waterman was driving him to the airport; Pete tried to talk him round, but to no avail. Rick went back to being (I think) a retail assistant, and the wider world heard almost no more from him. THAT is how you step out of the limelight.
Anyway, Pete Waterman probably ended up making more money out of all this than Rick Astley, money which was later spent on steam trains and in funding rail apprenticeships. So next time you ride a heritage railway, or see a gang working beside the railway, remember, it was probably all paid for by 'Never Gonna Give you up'.
The BBC are not covering themselves in glory today.
On a day when they could have led with the budget, the first minister of Scotland being accused of perjury, a global pandemic, schools being sent back with impossible safety measures, an academy chain going bust and all hell breaking loose in and over Northern Ireland...
...they led with the Duchess of Sussex giving an interview.
I sometimes wonder if they want to keep the licence fee.
Royals = big press. Even the publicly funded bits cannot help themselves.
Honestly the whole thing is just a nonsense - clearly there have been leaks against Harry and Meghan in recent days no doubt because of their interview, but equally clearly you cant expect a great deal of sympathy when your whole deal appears to be complaining about media attention and royal status whilst making use of both of those things.
If you are happier out of it, fine. If you have takes to tell, just do it already not this orchestrated media game of hints and clips and build up. That just makes it look like it's not important to them. And the rest of the royals can remember that playing things with a straight bat is preferable - just ignore it, as getting engaged will only rebound.
Meghan & Harry don't count as Royals anymore. She is the new Mrs Simpson - irrelevant.
Except that they are trying to leverage off something they have walked away from, and are not happy with the consequences of their chosen course of action.
She is stirring the pot for her own reasons. It won't end well.
And after the disgusting way they've both been treated, why shouldn't they?
Good for them.
To quote Nicola, 'I don't accept that characterisation.'
The BBC are not covering themselves in glory today.
On a day when they could have led with the budget, the first minister of Scotland being accused of perjury, a global pandemic, schools being sent back with impossible safety measures, an academy chain going bust and all hell breaking loose in and over Northern Ireland...
...they led with the Duchess of Sussex giving an interview.
I sometimes wonder if they want to keep the licence fee.
Royals = big press. Even the publicly funded bits cannot help themselves.
Honestly the whole thing is just a nonsense - clearly there have been leaks against Harry and Meghan in recent days no doubt because of their interview, but equally clearly you cant expect a great deal of sympathy when your whole deal appears to be complaining about media attention and royal status whilst making use of both of those things.
If you are happier out of it, fine. If you have takes to tell, just do it already not this orchestrated media game of hints and clips and build up. That just makes it look like it's not important to them. And the rest of the royals can remember that playing things with a straight bat is preferable - just ignore it, as getting engaged will only rebound.
Meghan & Harry don't count as Royals anymore. She is the new Mrs Simpson - irrelevant.
Except that they are trying to leverage off something they have walked away from, and are not happy with the consequences of their chosen course of action.
She is stirring the pot for her own reasons. It won't end well.
And after the disgusting way they've both been treated, why shouldn't they?
Good for them.
Whatever. I don't buy your narrative.
Fishing in things you say you have left is never a good idea.
If you are leaving something behind you ... leave it behind you.
So they can be abused, treated like shit and are just supposed to take it and not speak about their own lives?
They're free people, free to make their own choices and do whatever they damn please. They don't owe the UK media or the monarchy anything. After the way they've been treated they absolutely can and should do whatever they want.
Their lives, their choice.
They essentially have the Hobson's choice of:
1. Letting the gutter media (it used to be gutter press) say what it likes about them.
2. Trying to set the record straight, using the media to do so, and then being accused of being rank hypocrites for not taking it all lying down.
All this about completely overhauling their lives, giving up all privileges and royal funding, and breaking irretrievably with their family in an effort to escape scrutiny, only to still find themselves still being pursued relentlessly.
They stir it up themselves with there ever more bizarre money grasping schemes. They are loaded , why not just live in their 10 Million , 30 bathroom mansion and get the adulation of the LA nutjob luvvies instead of wanting the whole world to gush over them. A more odious pair I have yet to see.
What was interesting to me about the budget was the lack of specific green policy (maybe I wasn't concentrating and missed it?). And then it clicked. The time limited 130% super deduction is a pretty powerful incentive for amongst others, Musk to pull the trigger on his Somerset Gigafactory.
The BBC are not covering themselves in glory today.
On a day when they could have led with the budget, the first minister of Scotland being accused of perjury, a global pandemic, schools being sent back with impossible safety measures, an academy chain going bust and all hell breaking loose in and over Northern Ireland...
...they led with the Duchess of Sussex giving an interview.
I sometimes wonder if they want to keep the licence fee.
Royals = big press. Even the publicly funded bits cannot help themselves.
Honestly the whole thing is just a nonsense - clearly there have been leaks against Harry and Meghan in recent days no doubt because of their interview, but equally clearly you cant expect a great deal of sympathy when your whole deal appears to be complaining about media attention and royal status whilst making use of both of those things.
If you are happier out of it, fine. If you have takes to tell, just do it already not this orchestrated media game of hints and clips and build up. That just makes it look like it's not important to them. And the rest of the royals can remember that playing things with a straight bat is preferable - just ignore it, as getting engaged will only rebound.
Meghan & Harry don't count as Royals anymore. She is the new Mrs Simpson - irrelevant.
Except that they are trying to leverage off something they have walked away from, and are not happy with the consequences of their chosen course of action.
She is stirring the pot for her own reasons. It won't end well.
And after the disgusting way they've both been treated, why shouldn't they?
Good for them.
To quote Nicola, 'I don't accept that characterisation.'
This morning's reflections on the budget: 1. Taxation hike very real indeed, both in corporation tax and income tax, probably more than is realised given likely inflationary pressures. 2. Tax increases extend right down the income scale given the freeze in the basic rate threshold. 3. While taxation increases are being put off, the assault on the poor via universal credit can be resumed early. Buy shares in baliffs. 4. Public spending cuts brushed over but clearly very deep in departmental budgets. Can the country stand another bout of extreme austerity over 2022-2025? 5. No effort to claw back taxation from those businesses that have profited from Covid in the past year. 6. Corporation tax increase targeted at UK based companies, which makes it even more extraordinary that there's absolutely no attempt to target businesses that trade here without being in the UK tax jurisdiction, including all those online companies eg. Amazon. 7. Retail support measures very short term in 2021 only, business rates continue with absolutely nothing to encourage long term investment in the high street or rebalance retail taxation from property towards online sales. 8. Investment incentives could turn out to be a very large tax avoidance loophole.
Best not to judge Sunak's prospects on the immediate reaction to the budget. I think Johnson will be happy to let him own it. I don't think that this Budget will be looked on favourably in a year's time.
You're absolutely right to shine light on the stuff that is missing. UC is a nasty spiteful bludgeon used to beat the poor into submission. The Tories get away with it because the bludgeoning started under Labour and Starmer's Labour have no alternative to propose. On the short term measures we know that any financial announcement is soon followed by another - there will be more support because there has to be. Extending furlough out to September is a sign of the direction of travel on such matters.
I do want to pick you - and a load of left leaning twitterati - up on the "investment is a tax dodge" narrative. It really isn't. Taking money that should be paid as tax and gifting it to the owner/owner's wife/shady off-shore trust could be classed as such. Investment is not, for a simple reason.
I had an electrician in this morning to look at my office. He will quote for investment into replacement low energy lights. Those lights are made by a company who provides jobs, shipped to a wholesaler who provide jobs, provides work for the sparky - all of whom then pay tax, have money, can buy stuff which gives other people a job. The money my business will save in electricity bills will get spent on other things that provide jobs.
We have to stop talking about investment as either a "tax dodge" or "how can we afford it". Movement of cash through the economy is literally what our prosperity is built on. Too much cash has been stopped up and horded, these measures enable it to be spent and create jobs and growth and tax revenues.
I said "could", not "would" deliberately. Yes some of those investment incentives will be used as you say. But some will no doubt find ways of abusing them. I would be more comfortable with those incentives if they weren't so extreme as to amount to not only giving goods away free but giving free cashback to boot. Extreme tax incentivisation can have bizarre and unforseen consequences. Remember all those supposed green energy incentives in Northern Ireland that brought down the government?
We don't have enough manufacturing in this country and we definitely don't invest in productivity the way the rest of the world does (we really do operate on the basis of throw more manual labour at the problem).
The super deduction makes perfect sense in resolving some of those issues and being time limited it's possible to see the impact prior to say extending it.
Still got plenty of cash, and prospects for more due almost entirely to the profile Harry gained as a member of the Royal Family.
How much cash has he got though since he sacked off being a royal? He joined up in 2005 so he's on the AFPS05 pension scheme and is therefore fucked. (Though not quite as horribly fucked as anyone on AFPS15, thank you Spreadsheet Phil.)
It's obvious why he's doing all those shit interviews, etc - to make it rain.
We'll know precisely where we are with Covid come the autumn (Hopefully at a very low level of circulation) so maybe some new stuff/tweaks in the statement. This budget addressed the big stuff.
I look every morning at the South Africa case rates. They began tentative unlocking on 1 Feb (although still very tight) with a further relaxation a few days ago. While I'm fully supportinve of the current measures here, in SA lockdown actually pushed those in the dense townships closer together, so counterintuitively lockdown actually meant less physical distancing, resulting in some of the most at-risk parts of the country tentatively reaching some population immunity at an enormous cost in lives - https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-rips-through-south-african-townships-leaving-a-generation-facing-a-world-without-adults-12229065
It's sometimes worth stating the obvious, and that is that Rishi is a slam dunk for PM if Boris stands down.
Note - he is "Rishi", not Sunak. His brand is already well-established and immensely well-received.
He does human. I think his bird-like frame, a touch of vulnerability, helps quite considerably. Not a touch of arrogance so far as I can see which is a significant attribute. Also some dashes of humour and self-deprecation.
It's a killer combination.
Reminds me (a bit) of Reagan. Voters will give him slack because they like him and want him to do well, even if things go less than optimally.
Huge task for Labour to take him down. Remarkable after 11 years of Tory Government.
Hang in there, Mr. Gallowgate. There will be a vacancy as the Head of the Scottish Civil Service soon. If you self-id a trans, you should be a shoo-in.
I knew all hope wasn’t lost!
You're a strong candidate, and there will be a certain rejection/getting to the next stage ratio. Just relish every rejection as a step closer to the acceptance. Burn through those rejections!
The BBC are not covering themselves in glory today.
On a day when they could have led with the budget, the first minister of Scotland being accused of perjury, a global pandemic, schools being sent back with impossible safety measures, an academy chain going bust and all hell breaking loose in and over Northern Ireland...
...they led with the Duchess of Sussex giving an interview.
I sometimes wonder if they want to keep the licence fee.
Royals = big press. Even the publicly funded bits cannot help themselves.
Honestly the whole thing is just a nonsense - clearly there have been leaks against Harry and Meghan in recent days no doubt because of their interview, but equally clearly you cant expect a great deal of sympathy when your whole deal appears to be complaining about media attention and royal status whilst making use of both of those things.
If you are happier out of it, fine. If you have takes to tell, just do it already not this orchestrated media game of hints and clips and build up. That just makes it look like it's not important to them. And the rest of the royals can remember that playing things with a straight bat is preferable - just ignore it, as getting engaged will only rebound.
Meghan & Harry don't count as Royals anymore. She is the new Mrs Simpson - irrelevant.
Except that they are trying to leverage off something they have walked away from, and are not happy with the consequences of their chosen course of action.
She is stirring the pot for her own reasons. It won't end well.
And after the disgusting way they've both been treated, why shouldn't they?
Good for them.
Whatever. I don't buy your narrative.
Fishing in things you say you have left is never a good idea.
If you are leaving something behind you ... leave it behind you.
So they can be abused, treated like shit and are just supposed to take it and not speak about their own lives?
They're free people, free to make their own choices and do whatever they damn please. They don't owe the UK media or the monarchy anything. After the way they've been treated they absolutely can and should do whatever they want.
Their lives, their choice.
They essentially have the Hobson's choice of:
1. Letting the gutter media (it used to be gutter press) say what it likes about them.
2. Trying to set the record straight, using the media to do so, and then being accused of being rank hypocrites for not taking it all lying down.
All this about completely overhauling their lives, giving up all privileges and royal funding, and breaking irretrievably with their family in an effort to escape scrutiny, only to still find themselves still being pursued relentlessly.
They stir it up themselves with there ever more bizarre money grasping schemes. They are loaded , why not just live in their 10 Million , 30 bathroom mansion and get the adulation of the LA nutjob luvvies instead of wanting the whole world to gush over them. A more odious pair I have yet to see.
The BBC are not covering themselves in glory today.
On a day when they could have led with the budget, the first minister of Scotland being accused of perjury, a global pandemic, schools being sent back with impossible safety measures, an academy chain going bust and all hell breaking loose in and over Northern Ireland...
...they led with the Duchess of Sussex giving an interview.
I sometimes wonder if they want to keep the licence fee.
Royals = big press. Even the publicly funded bits cannot help themselves.
Honestly the whole thing is just a nonsense - clearly there have been leaks against Harry and Meghan in recent days no doubt because of their interview, but equally clearly you cant expect a great deal of sympathy when your whole deal appears to be complaining about media attention and royal status whilst making use of both of those things.
If you are happier out of it, fine. If you have takes to tell, just do it already not this orchestrated media game of hints and clips and build up. That just makes it look like it's not important to them. And the rest of the royals can remember that playing things with a straight bat is preferable - just ignore it, as getting engaged will only rebound.
Meghan & Harry don't count as Royals anymore. She is the new Mrs Simpson - irrelevant.
Except that they are trying to leverage off something they have walked away from, and are not happy with the consequences of their chosen course of action.
She is stirring the pot for her own reasons. It won't end well.
And after the disgusting way they've both been treated, why shouldn't they?
Good for them.
Whatever. I don't buy your narrative.
Fishing in things you say you have left is never a good idea.
If you are leaving something behind you ... leave it behind you.
So they can be abused, treated like shit and are just supposed to take it and not speak about their own lives?
They're free people, free to make their own choices and do whatever they damn please. They don't owe the UK media or the monarchy anything. After the way they've been treated they absolutely can and should do whatever they want.
Their lives, their choice.
They essentially have the Hobson's choice of:
1. Letting the gutter media (it used to be gutter press) say what it likes about them.
2. Trying to set the record straight, using the media to do so, and then being accused of being rank hypocrites for not taking it all lying down.
All this about completely overhauling their lives, giving up all privileges and royal funding, and breaking irretrievably with their family in an effort to escape scrutiny, only to still find themselves still being pursued relentlessly.
They stir it up themselves with there ever more bizarre money grasping schemes. They are loaded , why not just live in their 10 Million , 30 bathroom mansion and get the adulation of the LA nutjob luvvies instead of wanting the whole world to gush over them. A more odious pair I have yet to see.
Ian Brady and Myra Hindley say hi!
OK, and if you includes the West's and limit to UK , 3rd worst.
Terrible though it is, it is fascinating to watch the ebb and flow of COVID infections through the country. At the moment watching infection rates draw back to reveal many of the same places we thought problematic last summer as residual hotspots, yet knowing those places were only mid-table at peak.
And, though the heavier bias towards the South East of the second wave was different, as evidenced by the cumulative death rates by LTLA (the highest overall death tolls concentrate heavily in the eye of the Kentish COVID storm and the Welsh valleys), the most explosive outbreaks by infection rates hit many of the same places as in the first wave.
Last summer I had a geographic creep theory, that the places that didn't banish COVID in June were at the borders between where the first wave had been bad and where it hadn't. That suggests the wash back this time should be a little further east, a little further south west, in places like Bristol, York, Cambridge, Nottingham. There's some hint of that in the rural parts of the East Midlands, but I wouldn't say it is strong. Mainly, it does seem to drawing back to the same locations as before.
So, it seems to me we can tentatively ascribe roles to places a COVID wave in the UK, with 3 types of location:
Explosive outbreak locations: These have rapid onset, high peak rates, and rapid decline of rates (as a kind of limited, ruleset-specific herd immunity kicks in during lockdown). London, Liverpool, Valleys and possibly Birmingham (pattern a bit more mixed here) seem to match.
Reservoir locations: Slightly slower onset, lower peak, but slower decline and stay at relatively high rates over the trough: parts of Manchester, Blackburn, West and South Yorkshire, Leicester, Peterborough and Middlesbrough fulfil this.
Less affected locations: Onset later, moderate peaks, quick recovery: SW peninsula, parts of East Anglia, north Lincs, rural Scotland and Wales.
The less affected locations seem obvious enough, more distant from population centres, more rural, less crowded, more outdoorsy places.
The difference between reservoir locations and explosive locations are slightly less obvious, perhaps Leicester, Blackburn, Middlesbrough have a mix of poor housing but enough distance from the main centres to play the reservoir role naturally. London is a superficially obvious place for the most intense outbreaks, but what about the pattern difference between Liverpool and Manchester. Manchester is more in the hills, and perhaps gets outdoors slower in the spring, but the difference has been too stark, and was already established in the first wave.
Perhaps it was already set by seeding, perhaps Liverpool was set into its enduring explosive cycle pattern as soon as Athletico Madrid landed, while Manchester was set into its gradualist reservoir cycle by its having a little distance from any similar event.
I'd noticed something similar.
GM dropped down to near the bottom of the list in January, but is now close to the top again. We are declining steadily here, just not as fast as elsewhere. Which reflects the pattern of last year, with GM, West Yorkshire and Leciester the places with the slowest ebb.
I am fascinated why this should be so.
What these areas have in common is relatively high levels of South Asian populations. We know that at the last low tide, South Asians were a hugely disproportionate number of positive tests. I wonder if this is true this time around as well? And if so, why? Is it to do with households with high levels of occupancy? Is it that South Asians are more often employed in jobs with high levels of public interaction? Alternatively, is it more a case of the ebb being slower in areas with more working class populations, due to the nature of the jobs involved?
Or as pro-rata suggests, could it be climactic? Does the virus recede more slowly in hilly areas (hills = more dampness in the air = better environments for virus?) This is why the textile mills were located in these areas in te first place (cotton, in particular, weaves better in humid conditions) - and therefore why these areas are more Asian than most.
If I was doing a geography dissertation next year, this would undoubtedly be it.
It's sometimes worth stating the obvious, and that is that Rishi is a slam dunk for PM if Boris stands down.
Note - he is "Rishi", not Sunak. His brand is already well-established and immensely well-received.
He does human. I think his bird-like frame, a touch of vulnerability, helps quite considerably. Not a touch of arrogance so far as I can see which is a significant attribute. Also some dashes of humour and self-deprecation.
It's a killer combination.
Reminds me (a bit) of Reagan. Voters will give him slack because they like him and want him to do well, even if things go less than optimally.
Huge task for Labour to take him down. Remarkable after 11 years of Tory Government.
You are taking him on his word, and we will be back to sustained 2019 levels of economic performance in 18 months time.
You (and he) may be correct, but based on historical evidence, good luck with that. Unless of course the Brexit bonus unicorns grazing the sunlit uplands do indeed come to pass.
The evidence suggests to me that when the job retention support stops the economic picture for many people and many businesses will be brutal. If Sunak is still holding that parcel when the music stops, he will not be as popular as he is now.
Still got plenty of cash, and prospects for more due almost entirely to the profile Harry gained as a member of the Royal Family.
How much cash has he got though since he sacked off being a royal? He joined up in 2005 so he's on the AFPS05 pension scheme and is therefore fucked. (Though not quite as horribly fucked as anyone on AFPS15, thank you Spreadsheet Phil.)
It's obvious why he's doing all those shit interviews, etc - to make it rain.
Comments
There’s a few local smaller high-street firms I’d absolutely love to work for. So I spend ages crafting a concise, but informative covering email as part of a speculative application, but then get no acknowledgement whatsoever even when I chase them up.
Of course I could ring, and have done, but mostly I get fobbed off by secretaries in any case when doing so, and it always feels rude to be like: “in reference to my email 4 weeks ago that you haven’t replied to”.
Abuse is not a game.
If someone says they don't want a parent to act like Fritzl then that doesn't mean they don't want parents to exist.
If someone says they don't want the media to treat them as the Mail has then that doesn't mean they don't want the media to exist.
Being against abuse by the press doesn't mean being against good press. Being in public life doesn't give the media the right to hound someone to death or break the law to harass them.
England are mentally tired. Root's wicket in particular - caught leaden footed on the crease - is indisputable evidence of that. In form he would have cashed in on this.
It obviously wasn't for a quiet life out of the public spotlight, as you might have been forgiven for assuming last year. It seems to be solely so that they can monetise their celebrity - which in Harry's case rests solely on his family connections.
They're taking the piss and pretending it's a moral crusade against the media and the royal family. Please.
His mother was hounded to death in Paris.
His wife's privacy was illegally invaded by the Mail as convicted by the courts.
Neither of that is "allegedly". The press are acting like scum, good for them moving on and dealing with the likes of Oprah instead.
Moving on by dealing with classier elements of the media seems entirely reasonable. That Oprah is classier than our own gutter press says a lot.
Sturgeon may well survive but her future must be in doubt and it is too early to detect just how this will impact Holyrood 21 but I still expect the SNP to win a majority
He's not going quietly into that night....
Weird and irrational.
There's nothing special about the monarchy and the media, both of which should have learnt their lesson after his mother was hounded to death but didn't so good for them for doing what's in their own best interests. So should anyone in a free society. 👍
In my dealings with solicitors I usually target local firms with several branches, who are large enough to have a few specialisms if I need it, but sub-regional so that they aren't horribly impersonal.
Say 40-100 staff in several branches, rather than 250 staff in a small office block in the regional city dreaming about being in the Magic Circle.
Not sure if that helps
I think Johnson will lead Tories into next election but I totally agree with Mike that things with Rishi are going to get strained.
At least Brown thought he had been to a Islington eatery and discussed the definite handover in a second term. Sunak hasn't even that excuse for pushing already but he is clearly firing up to take over.
But he's not in the news at the moment. They are.
The media should ignore them.
It seems to me they are in the news for the evil crime of *checks notes* speaking to Oprah.
Does every guest who speaks to Oprah get attacked and criticised this much? They should be able to speak to Oprah as much as they want with the same amount of criticism for it that any other guest Oprah has gets.
It seems to me that that might justify an attitude to media.
It does not justify the Royal Family stuff.
Anyhoo. Time for the day.
"Couple talks to Oprah" is not BBC or press news.
Also worth looking at Princess Anne for an example. She goes about all her royal duties with dignity and then seems to live a very quiet and simple life otherwise with minimal press intrusion.
If that doesn't deserve sympathy what does?
Lets put it this way. The 130% super deduction absolutely motivates me to invest heavily into my 7 month old business. The office space I am now in needs a full refit and almost all of that will sit under Capital Allowances, I am proposing to my main client a sizeable expansion in scope of the work I am doing for them, and the super deduction helps provide my business with more cash to invest into that.
Too many businesses have battened down the hatches and sat on cash. This will provoke a 2 year blizzard of business investment which provides jobs which means more taxes which means more jobs - the virtuous circle. I know that the proposed 25% rate for the biggest companies is concerning to some of you. However, it is *proposed* and there are bound to be future announcements to at the very least deflate away chunks of the rise.
All in, it does exactly what was needed. yes there there are a lot of things he missed - we DO need to address unpaid carers and the self employed who fell through the chasm and the iniquities of UC. But what was there was good. Really good. Its no wonder his Next PM rating is so high - he would be so much better than Shagger.
But that's not what this is all about, is it?
I'm not thrilled by his approach either, but it's a coherent strategy: build a reputation for being calm and constructive, so you are believed later when the Tory chickens come home to roost.
1. Taxation hike very real indeed, both in corporation tax and income tax, probably more than is realised given likely inflationary pressures.
2. Tax increases extend right down the income scale given the freeze in the basic rate threshold.
3. While taxation increases are being put off, the assault on the poor via universal credit can be resumed early. Buy shares in baliffs.
4. Public spending cuts brushed over but clearly very deep in departmental budgets. Can the country stand another bout of extreme austerity over 2022-2025?
5. No effort to claw back taxation from those businesses that have profited from Covid in the past year.
6. Corporation tax increase targeted at UK based companies, which makes it even more extraordinary that there's absolutely no attempt to target businesses that trade here without being in the UK tax jurisdiction, including all those online companies eg. Amazon.
7. Retail support measures very short term in 2021 only, business rates continue with absolutely nothing to encourage long term investment in the high street or rebalance retail taxation from property towards online sales.
8. Investment incentives could turn out to be a very large tax avoidance loophole.
Best not to judge Sunak's prospects on the immediate reaction to the budget. I think Johnson will be happy to let him own it. I don't think that this Budget will be looked on favourably in a year's time.
F1: feels a bit tightly clustered having testing and the first race so close together. On the plus side, that means there isn't much time for teams with poor reliability to remedy things.
The vitriol aimed at him because he married an American/black woman is pathetic.
The Mail and anyone else without a good word to say about them would be well advised to pretend these two don't exist. Its not as if its front page news when anyone else speaks to Oprah, or her guests would always be front page news.
But they expect to be able to cash on in the clicks just because these two have the audacity to do what any normal celebrity is entitled to do which is talk to people they want to talk to.
"our choice will be between a high tax and a very high tax party."
"This was an avoidably bad Budget that will haunt the Tories for years to come."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/03/03/tories-have-trashed-thatcherism-embraced-europes-politics-decline/
I can see they can be open to some criticism if they claimed they wanted to escape media attention and then do media interviews. Friendly media yes, but it - of course - invites wider media attention. If they really want to escape publicity, as opposed to constant harassment by British tabloids (if they ever claimed that) then they'd be better living a quiet life and not doing interviews. But it's their choice/mistake. I can understand the need to "have their say" given the way they are attacked here, but it does open them up, rightly or wrongly, to public scrutiny like any other celebrity couple doing interviews.
On a personal level, one of my wife's former colleagues was at Eton (on a scholarship) with Harry and had a very low opinion of him there (although mostly what he describes is Harry being disliked and bullied, rather than things that were bad about Harry per se). He may well be an unpleasant person; it's quite possible that if I knew him I'd dislike him intensely, but that's irrelevant.
The comment was made that this is one of the few things that the French employment system/tax gets right. Investment in equipment is a extremely high there. It is interesting to see the amount of machinery used on a French domestic building site vs the UK bring-me-more-eastern-europeans approach.
He's done his duty, he's founded charities, he's served in Afghanistan now he has left the country, now and he's speaking to the American media as any celebrity in America does without being front page news.
What more should he do? Other than disappear altogether which isn't expected of anyone else ever in any walk of life and is absolutely unreasonable to expect of anyone.
By signalling he's fully prepared to push tax up Sunak has likely saved future tax rises to the counterfactual of not doing so. It was a well aimed budget.
It's ridiculous. We have just shown with vaccine approval that the real world data can be analysed in real-time as it comes in. There is no need for the 4th week of analysis they have had added in.
I do want to pick you - and a load of left leaning twitterati - up on the "investment is a tax dodge" narrative. It really isn't. Taking money that should be paid as tax and gifting it to the owner/owner's wife/shady off-shore trust could be classed as such. Investment is not, for a simple reason.
I had an electrician in this morning to look at my office. He will quote for investment into replacement low energy lights. Those lights are made by a company who provides jobs, shipped to a wholesaler who provide jobs, provides work for the sparky - all of whom then pay tax, have money, can buy stuff which gives other people a job. The money my business will save in electricity bills will get spent on other things that provide jobs.
We have to stop talking about investment as either a "tax dodge" or "how can we afford it". Movement of cash through the economy is literally what our prosperity is built on. Too much cash has been stopped up and horded, these measures enable it to be spent and create jobs and growth and tax revenues.
I will look into that as a potential avenue. Although Ideally (beggars can’t be choosers) I want to work in a private client-facing role rather than a B2B role, that could work.
There is one way to drive capacity in domestic manufacturing - create demand. If we continue to allow investment to be shut down, demand isn't there, export is now a nightmare, so they make less / go bust. I'd rather provoke a blizzard of investment - the super deduction also allows manufacturers to increase capacity.
For too many decades this country has gone backwards when it comes to manufacturing and infrastructure. The focus has been absurdly short term - the next election, the next quarterly profits statement. Time that we accept our roads and railways and airports and broadband and education system and hospitals are sub-par, that manufacturing has largely been sold off or shut down, and that we either do something about it or we face an ever-worsening balance of payments crisis.
Investment - to deliver a return on that investment - is not "subsidy" or "socialism" or a "tax dodge". It is Growth. Jobs. Prosperity. National Pride...
1. Letting the gutter media (it used to be gutter press) say what it likes about them.
2. Trying to set the record straight, using the media to do so, and then being accused of being rank hypocrites for not taking it all lying down.
All this about completely overhauling their lives, giving up all privileges and royal funding, and breaking irretrievably with their family in an effort to escape scrutiny, only to still find themselves still being pursued relentlessly.
"A bad workman blames his tools" - is generally bollocks. To do a good quality job, efficiently, requires top-of-the-line equipment.
I expect HMRC will have very clear rules as to what actually is investment here.
You can see it when you watch Dragons Den vs Shark Tank. They are happy to throw money at high risk investments on Shark Tank knowing that at least some of them will stick. On Dragons Den they’ll ask for 90% of the company for a tiny amount of money.
And, though the heavier bias towards the South East of the second wave was different, as evidenced by the cumulative death rates by LTLA (the highest overall death tolls concentrate heavily in the eye of the Kentish COVID storm and the Welsh valleys), the most explosive outbreaks by infection rates hit many of the same places as in the first wave.
Last summer I had a geographic creep theory, that the places that didn't banish COVID in June were at the borders between where the first wave had been bad and where it hadn't. That suggests the wash back this time should be a little further east, a little further south west, in places like Bristol, York, Cambridge, Nottingham. There's some hint of that in the rural parts of the East Midlands, but I wouldn't say it is strong. Mainly, it does seem to drawing back to the same locations as before.
So, it seems to me we can tentatively ascribe roles to places a COVID wave in the UK, with 3 types of location:
Explosive outbreak locations: These have rapid onset, high peak rates, and rapid decline of rates (as a kind of limited, ruleset-specific herd immunity kicks in during lockdown). London, Liverpool, Valleys and possibly Birmingham (pattern a bit more mixed here) seem to match.
Reservoir locations: Slightly slower onset, lower peak, but slower decline and stay at relatively high rates over the trough: parts of Manchester, Blackburn, West and South Yorkshire, Leicester, Peterborough and Middlesbrough fulfil this.
Less affected locations: Onset later, moderate peaks, quick recovery: SW peninsula, parts of East Anglia, north Lincs, rural Scotland and Wales.
The less affected locations seem obvious enough, more distant from population centres, more rural, less crowded, more outdoorsy places.
The difference between reservoir locations and explosive locations are slightly less obvious, perhaps Leicester, Blackburn, Middlesbrough have a mix of poor housing but enough distance from the main centres to play the reservoir role naturally. London is a superficially obvious place for the most intense outbreaks, but what about the pattern difference between Liverpool and Manchester. Manchester is more in the hills, and perhaps gets outdoors slower in the spring, but the difference has been too stark, and was already established in the first wave.
Perhaps it was already set by seeding, perhaps Liverpool was set into its enduring explosive cycle pattern as soon as Athletico Madrid landed, while Manchester was set into its gradualist reservoir cycle by its having a little distance from any similar event.
https://twitter.com/PipsFunFacts/status/1367401532304539652
Still got plenty of cash, and prospects for more due almost entirely to the profile Harry gained as a member of the Royal Family.
It's quite complicated. He's often been unhappy in the Firm, although more recently seemed to have carved out a niche with the Invictus Games and charities such as the Lesotho one.
I don't care much about the celebrity side of things, and thus may've missed stuff, but it seems that while some of the abuse his wife got was racist a majority was unpleasant but run-of-the-mill stuff (which Kate also received in large quantities).
The telling event, I think, was the attempt by the pair to maintain the status as Royals whilst simultaneously being totally free to enrich themselves. Given the choice, they preferred the latter to the former.
THAT is how you step out of the limelight.
Anyway, Pete Waterman probably ended up making more money out of all this than Rick Astley, money which was later spent on steam trains and in funding rail apprenticeships. So next time you ride a heritage railway, or see a gang working beside the railway, remember, it was probably all paid for by 'Never Gonna Give you up'.
Australian study finds a ‘coordinated effort by CCP’s propaganda apparatus’ to distract from critical BBC reports and redirect narrative"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/04/chinas-communist-party-ran-campaign-to-discredit-bbc-thinktank-finds
The super deduction makes perfect sense in resolving some of those issues and being time limited it's possible to see the impact prior to say extending it.
It's obvious why he's doing all those shit interviews, etc - to make it rain.
There is a pretty mammoth incentive there surely to get as much FTTP investment as possible done in the next 2 years.
This budget addressed the big stuff.
Note - he is "Rishi", not Sunak. His brand is already well-established and immensely well-received.
He does human. I think his bird-like frame, a touch of vulnerability, helps quite considerably. Not a touch of arrogance so far as I can see which is a significant attribute. Also some dashes of humour and self-deprecation.
It's a killer combination.
Reminds me (a bit) of Reagan. Voters will give him slack because they like him and want him to do well, even if things go less than optimally.
Huge task for Labour to take him down. Remarkable after 11 years of Tory Government.
The sort of BBC moans we see in the comments here are folded in with the propaganda.
https://twitter.com/JakeWallis_ASPI/status/1367343161438203906
Meanwhile, this is Haas' new livery:
https://twitter.com/HaasF1Team/status/1367386180388593664
GM dropped down to near the bottom of the list in January, but is now close to the top again. We are declining steadily here, just not as fast as elsewhere. Which reflects the pattern of last year, with GM, West Yorkshire and Leciester the places with the slowest ebb.
I am fascinated why this should be so.
What these areas have in common is relatively high levels of South Asian populations. We know that at the last low tide, South Asians were a hugely disproportionate number of positive tests. I wonder if this is true this time around as well? And if so, why? Is it to do with households with high levels of occupancy? Is it that South Asians are more often employed in jobs with high levels of public interaction? Alternatively, is it more a case of the ebb being slower in areas with more working class populations, due to the nature of the jobs involved?
Or as pro-rata suggests, could it be climactic? Does the virus recede more slowly in hilly areas (hills = more dampness in the air = better environments for virus?) This is why the textile mills were located in these areas in te first place (cotton, in particular, weaves better in humid conditions) - and therefore why these areas are more Asian than most.
If I was doing a geography dissertation next year, this would undoubtedly be it.
You (and he) may be correct, but based on historical evidence, good luck with that. Unless of course the Brexit bonus unicorns grazing the sunlit uplands do indeed come to pass.
The evidence suggests to me that when the job retention support stops the economic picture for many people and many businesses will be brutal. If Sunak is still holding that parcel when the music stops, he will not be as popular as he is now.
Our news shouldn't be celebrity gossip.