I'm not attached to the districts, but I am to the counties.
I'd only support it if, say, Hampshire County Council became the unitary.
You really want to be ruled from So’ton?
No, Southampton and Portsmouth would remain separate unitaries. It would be just like how Wiltshire and Dorset County Councils have become the unitary authorities for what was the remaining two-tier area after the first unitaries (Swindon in the case of Wiltshire, Bournemouth and Poole in the case of Dorset) were set up.
Actually I concede that Dorset is slightly different as when the Dorset unitary was set up, it lost Christchurch to the new combined Bournemouth and Poole unitary, but I think the principle is clear.
Having visited them all I probably go for St Vedast-alias-Foster due to the modest Epstein in the Courtyard and All Hallows on the Wall because the ceiling is like a perfect drawing room."
Like Topping I'd go for Hawksmoor's Christ Church, Spitalfields. Possibly my favourite church in the world, not just London. But is it in the City, technically? I think not
So I'd go for either St Brides, Fleet St (Roman foundations in the cellar!), St Stephen Walbrook - Wrenaissance perfection - or St Bartholomew the Great - medieval and picturesque
It's been doing the rounds on various Slack channels all day.
Wow. That is damning. Who TF would want to work there?
It's still the single most desirable bit of CV experience for anyone in banking/investment. It's the equivalent of having a Harvard or Oxford degree so people put up with the shit for two years.
Their analysts might be working 105 hours per week, but they won't be working well.
Having visited them all I probably go for St Vedast-alias-Foster due to the modest Epstein in the Courtyard and All Hallows on the Wall because the ceiling is like a perfect drawing room."
Like Topping I'd go for Hawksmoor's Christ Church, Spitalfields. Possibly my favourite church in the world, not just London. But is it in the City, technically? I think not
So I'd go for either St Brides, Fleet St (Roman foundations in the cellar!), St Stephen Walbrook - Wrenaissance perfection - or St Bartholomew the Great - medieval and picturesque
It's been doing the rounds on various Slack channels all day.
Wow. That is damning. Who TF would want to work there?
It's still the single most desirable bit of CV experience for anyone in banking/investment. It's the equivalent of having a Harvard or Oxford degree so people put up with the shit for two years.
Their analysts might be working 105 hours per week, but they won't be working well.
At some point, their 105 hours of work will result in less output than 20 hours output from a well-rested person. Perhaps I exaggerate, but I doubt by much. And that is not to mention the quality of the work.
I'm not attached to the districts, but I am to the counties.
I'd only support it if, say, Hampshire County Council became the unitary.
Problem is it is fair that some counties, in themselves, probably are too big for single unitaries, but then you get into weird divisions of untiaries. Wiltshire and Swindon(Wiltshire) makes pretty decent sense, but others somewhat less so.
I'm attachhed to the counties too. But I don't necessarily see why counties should have to equal locak government units. What I really want is a sub-unit of the country that is consistent over time so that I can ask a question like 'list all the clubs who have ever been in the football leage whose home ground was in Cheshire' without having to go on a lengthy explanation of what I mean by Cheshire. This is not as trivial as it sounds.
The original plan back before 1974 was to completely scrap the administrative counties for local government, and have a single system of unitary authorities across England which would not map very closely at all to the old counties. The traditional counties would have been retained for geographical and ceremonial purposes but would have had no adminstrative rôle at all. That ended up being dropped as too radical, so we ended up with the fudged system of in many cases greatly altered counties that no-one has been happy with.
Having visited them all I probably go for St Vedast-alias-Foster due to the modest Epstein in the Courtyard and All Hallows on the Wall because the ceiling is like a perfect drawing room."
Like Topping I'd go for Hawksmoor's Christ Church, Spitalfields. Possibly my favourite church in the world, not just London. But is it in the City, technically? I think not
So I'd go for either St Brides, Fleet St (Roman foundations in the cellar!), St Stephen Walbrook - Wrenaissance perfection - or St Bartholomew the Great - medieval and picturesque
It's been doing the rounds on various Slack channels all day.
Wow. That is damning. Who TF would want to work there?
And I thought boarding school hours were bad!
Trying to imagine what a boarding school would be like where the students were up until 5am each night and only got 4 hours for sleeping, eating and grooming.
To get all 4 Yorkshiremen, when I were a lad those were normal working hours for a junior doctor. I remember falling asleep at 3 AM holding the liver retracters. It reaches a point where no amount of coffee and adrenaline can keep you going.
Having visited them all I probably go for St Vedast-alias-Foster due to the modest Epstein in the Courtyard and All Hallows on the Wall because the ceiling is like a perfect drawing room."
Like Topping I'd go for Hawksmoor's Christ Church, Spitalfields. Possibly my favourite church in the world, not just London. But is it in the City, technically? I think not
So I'd go for either St Brides, Fleet St (Roman foundations in the cellar!), St Stephen Walbrook - Wrenaissance perfection - or St Bartholomew the Great - medieval and picturesque
It's been doing the rounds on various Slack channels all day.
Wow. That is damning. Who TF would want to work there?
It's still the single most desirable bit of CV experience for anyone in banking/investment. It's the equivalent of having a Harvard or Oxford degree so people put up with the shit for two years.
Their analysts might be working 105 hours per week, but they won't be working well.
I don't disagree with you and I'm not sure either party really benefits given how low junior analyst salaries and bonuses are it makes sense to hire a few more and spread the workload out better but then again I don't run a multi-billion dollar investment bank so what do I know.
Doubly so in Scotland because everyone knows which party will win the election before it is held.
The likelihood of the SNP losing is zero, so their Parliamentarians also have zero incentive to remove Sturgeon. It might now take the continued (and guaranteed) support of the sock puppets to keep her in office again, but Sturgeon will be back as First Minister. All these inquiries are an irrelevance.
I disagree and expect this will see her out of office in 2021
I would also suggest the Greens may want to keep their distance from Sturgeon
They couldn't even bring themselves to vote against Swinney, they ain't going to bring down the Nats and vote to put Douglas Ross into bat. The notion is laughable.
Here's a possibility (don't laugh).
SNP/Green lose pro-Indy majority.
The 3 Unionist Parties vote down minority SNP Govt.
Everyone votes down minority SCon Govt.
SLab/LibDem/Green minority Govt enters office with Anas as 1st Minister.
Tories abstain and SNP descend into civil war.
Slight problem: Tories abstaining would see SLab minority government voted down too.
Labour will not back a Tory minority government but the Tories might back a minority Labour (+Lib Dem) government. What is needed for a Unionist government, minority or otherwise, is for Labour to overtake the Tories. Its possible but difficult.
It must be a thankless task being a Scottish Tory. Because of their low ceiling of support it's a virtual impossibility for them ever to win a Scottish Parliament election outright, or to obtain any support from anyone else to rule as a minority or in coalition. And the cumulative effect of Brexit, devolution and Labour's stupidity is that the Tories are now the Party of England and it's unlikely that an MP for a Scottish seat will ever hold any cabinet position in London other than SoS for Scotland again. You have to wonder what keeps them going.
The first SNP government got much of its programme through with the support of the Tories. Admittedly Annabel Goldie was a better politician than Davidson, Carlaw or Ross. Labour always voted against, following the Bain principle of always voting against the SNP, even if the vote was a policy they agreed with, and even if the SNP had accepted their amendments. If they picked up the dummy they spat out in 2007, they would have more success.
Having visited them all I probably go for St Vedast-alias-Foster due to the modest Epstein in the Courtyard and All Hallows on the Wall because the ceiling is like a perfect drawing room.
Hawksmoor's Spitalfields all day long.
I find the church quite bombastic. Though peal of bells is one of the best to ring in London, and the acoustic is great.
For Hawksmoor I prefer St Mary Woolnoth, just by the statue of Wotsit Peabody near Bank Station.
St Dunstan in the West naturally
With the Orthodox Iconostatis from Bucharest, and the oldest public clock in London iirc :-) .
I think another slightly obscure favourite is St Mary Moorfields, the only RC church in the City.
Having visited them all I probably go for St Vedast-alias-Foster due to the modest Epstein in the Courtyard and All Hallows on the Wall because the ceiling is like a perfect drawing room."
Like Topping I'd go for Hawksmoor's Christ Church, Spitalfields. Possibly my favourite church in the world, not just London. But is it in the City, technically? I think not
So I'd go for either St Brides, Fleet St (Roman foundations in the cellar!), St Stephen Walbrook - Wrenaissance perfection - or St Bartholomew the Great - medieval and picturesque
It's been doing the rounds on various Slack channels all day.
Wow. That is damning. Who TF would want to work there?
It's still the single most desirable bit of CV experience for anyone in banking/investment. It's the equivalent of having a Harvard or Oxford degree so people put up with the shit for two years.
Their analysts might be working 105 hours per week, but they won't be working well.
I have regularly worked 100 plus hour weeks, fortunately I've had excellent employers and bosses who have rewarded both financially and insisted I take a break/holiday afterwards.
As one chap put it to me, if you're consistently working 80 plus hours you're either not planning/delegating properly and/or you're under resourced.
Having visited them all I probably go for St Vedast-alias-Foster due to the modest Epstein in the Courtyard and All Hallows on the Wall because the ceiling is like a perfect drawing room."
Like Topping I'd go for Hawksmoor's Christ Church, Spitalfields. Possibly my favourite church in the world, not just London. But is it in the City, technically? I think not
So I'd go for either St Brides, Fleet St (Roman foundations in the cellar!), St Stephen Walbrook - Wrenaissance perfection - or St Bartholomew the Great - medieval and picturesque
It's been doing the rounds on various Slack channels all day.
Wow. That is damning. Who TF would want to work there?
It's still the single most desirable bit of CV experience for anyone in banking/investment. It's the equivalent of having a Harvard or Oxford degree so people put up with the shit for two years.
Their analysts might be working 105 hours per week, but they won't be working well.
I have regularly worked 100 plus hour weeks, fortunately I've had excellent employers and bosses who have rewarded both financially and insisted I take a break/holiday afterwards.
As one chap put it to me, if you're consistently working 80 plus hours you're either not planning/delegating properly and/or you're under resourced.
I did a couple 100 hour weeks back in November (I hadn't done it since my Census days) and it knocked me for six.
I think part of it depends on the type of work. The data analytics type work frazzles your mind. When it's more routine type work (not any less valuable), then it's perhaps less of a problem.
Having visited them all I probably go for St Vedast-alias-Foster due to the modest Epstein in the Courtyard and All Hallows on the Wall because the ceiling is like a perfect drawing room."
Like Topping I'd go for Hawksmoor's Christ Church, Spitalfields. Possibly my favourite church in the world, not just London. But is it in the City, technically? I think not
So I'd go for either St Brides, Fleet St (Roman foundations in the cellar!), St Stephen Walbrook - Wrenaissance perfection - or St Bartholomew the Great - medieval and picturesque
It's been doing the rounds on various Slack channels all day.
Wow. That is damning. Who TF would want to work there?
It's still the single most desirable bit of CV experience for anyone in banking/investment. It's the equivalent of having a Harvard or Oxford degree so people put up with the shit for two years.
Their analysts might be working 105 hours per week, but they won't be working well.
I have regularly worked 100 plus hour weeks, fortunately I've had excellent employers and bosses who have rewarded both financially and insisted I take a break/holiday afterwards.
As one chap put it to me, if you're consistently working 80 plus hours you're either not planning/delegating properly and/or you're under resourced.
I did a "1 in 2" for 3 months, 130 hours per week, in General Medicine in 1988. After that an 80 hour week seemed pretty cushy...
Blimey BigG.is there no news from which you don't demand the defenestration of an opponent of this Government? It was Khan at the weekend, UVDL earlier today and now Nippy.
Big G's list is longer than that: Macron, Merkel, VDL, Khan, Dick, Williams of Hartlepool (in advance), Sturgeon.
Only Drakeford is truly safe from the Big G axe. Or is he?
Drakeford is top of the list but no idea who Dick is
Cressida - I'm sure you were calling for her to go a few days ago.
Anything names after a Vauxhall.
Though TBF on Twitter the other day someone was calling her Priscilla Dick in a Parl. Committee.
If Sturgeon puts independence first, she will resign. If she puts herself first, she will try to stay. I don’t expect her to resign, even if Hamilton finds she misled Parliament.
There must be a material risk that Hamilton sinks her.
Yes, Salmond has an agenda - but he is also a compelling witness.
Sturgeon is the least convincing witness I can recall. With the possible exception of O J Simpson. Oh ,and a case I worked where I witness changed his story through 10 degrees - and our barrister said nothing, but just drew a small ship, sinking beneath the waves.
I would not want my freedom to be dependent upon Nicola Sturgeon's performance in the witness box.
Doubly so in Scotland because everyone knows which party will win the election before it is held.
The likelihood of the SNP losing is zero, so their Parliamentarians also have zero incentive to remove Sturgeon. It might now take the continued (and guaranteed) support of the sock puppets to keep her in office again, but Sturgeon will be back as First Minister. All these inquiries are an irrelevance.
They won't lose, in the sense of being by some margin the largest party. But they may well fail to secure a majority, which will make it easier for Boris to refuse IndRef2 or, worse still, lose the existing pro-Indy majority (SNP + Green) which would kybosh it completely and probably lead to her leaving office.
It also makes it easier for Boris to refuse her request (tho he would do it anyway). She's weakened.
I wonder if she might just go for UDI, as she sees her indy dream failing along with her career. At that point she'd have nothing to lose. And a lot to gain. Roll the dice?
Wouldn't that depend on where it goes?
I can see Westminster deciding that devolution structures need a 25 year service, and setting up a review of Govt and a high powered enquiry into events. That makes sense imo, given the Clusterfick. But would need some careful handling, and some very careful timing. And they have to wait for the whole process to work through first to the end.
If Sturgeon puts independence first, she will resign. If she puts herself first, she will try to stay. I don’t expect her to resign, even if Hamilton finds she misled Parliament.
I think if Hamilton also finds against her then her position becomes untenable. She can bruh off a "partisan" committee (ignoring the SNP+Green majority) but an independent finding would be tricky.
Doubly so in Scotland because everyone knows which party will win the election before it is held.
The likelihood of the SNP losing is zero, so their Parliamentarians also have zero incentive to remove Sturgeon. It might now take the continued (and guaranteed) support of the sock puppets to keep her in office again, but Sturgeon will be back as First Minister. All these inquiries are an irrelevance.
I disagree and expect this will see her out of office in 2021
I would also suggest the Greens may want to keep their distance from Sturgeon
They couldn't even bring themselves to vote against Swinney, they ain't going to bring down the Nats and vote to put Douglas Ross into bat. The notion is laughable.
Here's a possibility (don't laugh).
SNP/Green lose pro-Indy majority.
The 3 Unionist Parties vote down minority SNP Govt.
Everyone votes down minority SCon Govt.
SLab/LibDem/Green minority Govt enters office with Anas as 1st Minister.
Tories abstain and SNP descend into civil war.
Slight problem: Tories abstaining would see SLab minority government voted down too.
Labour will not back a Tory minority government but the Tories might back a minority Labour (+Lib Dem) government. What is needed for a Unionist government, minority or otherwise, is for Labour to overtake the Tories. Its possible but difficult.
So Tories should vote tactically for Labour. In the way we've supported Ian Murray, as we've been doing here in Edinburgh South for a while.
Doubly so in Scotland because everyone knows which party will win the election before it is held.
The likelihood of the SNP losing is zero, so their Parliamentarians also have zero incentive to remove Sturgeon. It might now take the continued (and guaranteed) support of the sock puppets to keep her in office again, but Sturgeon will be back as First Minister. All these inquiries are an irrelevance.
I disagree and expect this will see her out of office in 2021
I would also suggest the Greens may want to keep their distance from Sturgeon
They couldn't even bring themselves to vote against Swinney, they ain't going to bring down the Nats and vote to put Douglas Ross into bat. The notion is laughable.
Here's a possibility (don't laugh).
SNP/Green lose pro-Indy majority.
The 3 Unionist Parties vote down minority SNP Govt.
Everyone votes down minority SCon Govt.
SLab/LibDem/Green minority Govt enters office with Anas as 1st Minister.
Tories abstain and SNP descend into civil war.
Slight problem: Tories abstaining would see SLab minority government voted down too.
Labour will not back a Tory minority government but the Tories might back a minority Labour (+Lib Dem) government. What is needed for a Unionist government, minority or otherwise, is for Labour to overtake the Tories. Its possible but difficult.
It must be a thankless task being a Scottish Tory. Because of their low ceiling of support it's a virtual impossibility for them ever to win a Scottish Parliament election outright, or to obtain any support from anyone else to rule as a minority or in coalition. And the cumulative effect of Brexit, devolution and Labour's stupidity is that the Tories are now the Party of England and it's unlikely that an MP for a Scottish seat will ever hold any cabinet position in London other than SoS for Scotland again. You have to wonder what keeps them going.
The first SNP government got much of its programme through with the support of the Tories. Admittedly Annabel Goldie was a better politician than Davidson, Carlaw or Ross. Labour always voted against, following the Bain principle of always voting against the SNP, even if the vote was a policy they agreed with, and even if the SNP had accepted their amendments. If they picked up the dummy they spat out in 2007, they would have more success.
The result of taking a few crumbs from the SNP table was a reduced number of Tories and an outright SNP majority at the next election. Again, not a happy experience for them.
If Sturgeon puts independence first, she will resign. If she puts herself first, she will try to stay. I don’t expect her to resign, even if Hamilton finds she misled Parliament.
I think if Hamilton also finds against her then her position becomes untenable. She can bruh off a "partisan" committee (ignoring the SNP+Green majority) but an independent finding would be tricky.
It'd certainly surely be the least expected outcome if the committee found against her but Hamilton found for her, accepting that they don't have exactly the same remits.
I was told next Tuesday is a Day of Remembrance for those lost to the coronavirus in the past year.
This doesn't seem to have been well advertised so far - given there have been 125,000 excess deaths, it's entirely appropriate to take the time, before we concentrate on life, to remember those who won't be there to enjoy it with us.
I would like to propose that we find some suitable land somewhere to plant a new wood as a memorial to the dead. At one tree per dead, at mature broadleaf tree density, it would be about half the size of Richmond Park - I think the scale would get across well the size of the loss.
And then, unlike with something that puts an exact number on the dead, the fuzzy numbers involved would represent the inevitable uncertainty in counting the dead.
Excellent post and a great idea. Hope an MP is reading this.
Yes - as an additional idea... make it an arboretum. A mono-culture wood is a soulless place.....
Having visited them all I probably go for St Vedast-alias-Foster due to the modest Epstein in the Courtyard and All Hallows on the Wall because the ceiling is like a perfect drawing room.
Hawksmoor's Spitalfields all day long.
I find the church quite bombastic. Though peal of bells is one of the best to ring in London, and the acoustic is great.
For Hawksmoor I prefer St Mary Woolnoth, just by the statue of Wotsit Peabody near Bank Station.
St Dunstan in the West naturally
I hadn't thought of you as being of Romanian Orthodox faith.
They rent it at weekends. It took me 5 years but I got them to pay a fair rent 😁
If Sturgeon puts independence first, she will resign. If she puts herself first, she will try to stay. I don’t expect her to resign, even if Hamilton finds she misled Parliament.
I think if Hamilton also finds against her then her position becomes untenable. She can bruh off a "partisan" committee (ignoring the SNP+Green majority) but an independent finding would be tricky.
Trying to call the Committee's verdict 'partisan' (in the sense of being partisan *against* her) would be quite the breathtaking act of ingratitude for Fabiani's dutiful obstructionism on her behalf.
Having visited them all I probably go for St Vedast-alias-Foster due to the modest Epstein in the Courtyard and All Hallows on the Wall because the ceiling is like a perfect drawing room."
Like Topping I'd go for Hawksmoor's Christ Church, Spitalfields. Possibly my favourite church in the world, not just London. But is it in the City, technically? I think not
So I'd go for either St Brides, Fleet St (Roman foundations in the cellar!), St Stephen Walbrook - Wrenaissance perfection - or St Bartholomew the Great - medieval and picturesque
It's been doing the rounds on various Slack channels all day.
Wow. That is damning. Who TF would want to work there?
It's still the single most desirable bit of CV experience for anyone in banking/investment. It's the equivalent of having a Harvard or Oxford degree so people put up with the shit for two years.
Their analysts might be working 105 hours per week, but they won't be working well.
I have regularly worked 100 plus hour weeks, fortunately I've had excellent employers and bosses who have rewarded both financially and insisted I take a break/holiday afterwards.
As one chap put it to me, if you're consistently working 80 plus hours you're either not planning/delegating properly and/or you're under resourced.
I did a couple 100 hour weeks back in November (I hadn't done it since my Census days) and it knocked me for six.
I think part of it depends on the type of work. The data analytics type work frazzles your mind. When it's more routine type work (not any less valuable), then it's perhaps less of a problem.
I did a few hundred hour weeks in 2020.
I resent the 100+ week I did over Christmas because of Boris Johnson's Brexit deal because that ruined Christmas.
I did a few 100+ hour weeks in March and April as I rewrote the companies best practices in a WFH and pandemic environment, that took some effort, liaising with regulators and outside counsel as some of the things I was proposing went against 20 years of professional experience.
I found that oddly exhilarating as I felt like I was doing excellent for a higher and noble process as it allowed the firm to successfully operate in a pandemic world which allowed us to trade and avoid any job losses or financial disasters.
Central Scotland looks close. They might only need to increase their vote by +0.7pp there. Glasgow, they might need +2.5pp for an extra seat. Highlands & Islands, +4pp. Lothian, +6pp (?). Mid Scotland & Fife, +6pp (?). North East Scotland, +0.7pp. South Scotland, +0.7pp. West Scotland, +5.9pp.
What odds did you bet at?
They're not currently polling that much better than before the last election, but I'd have thought it would be an obvious shift for some Independence minded voters.
Bear in mind Andy Wightman in H&I - he is not an official Green but might taken a seat from the same broad pool of voters.
Having visited them all I probably go for St Vedast-alias-Foster due to the modest Epstein in the Courtyard and All Hallows on the Wall because the ceiling is like a perfect drawing room."
Like Topping I'd go for Hawksmoor's Christ Church, Spitalfields. Possibly my favourite church in the world, not just London. But is it in the City, technically? I think not
So I'd go for either St Brides, Fleet St (Roman foundations in the cellar!), St Stephen Walbrook - Wrenaissance perfection - or St Bartholomew the Great - medieval and picturesque
Doubly so in Scotland because everyone knows which party will win the election before it is held.
The likelihood of the SNP losing is zero, so their Parliamentarians also have zero incentive to remove Sturgeon. It might now take the continued (and guaranteed) support of the sock puppets to keep her in office again, but Sturgeon will be back as First Minister. All these inquiries are an irrelevance.
I disagree and expect this will see her out of office in 2021
I would also suggest the Greens may want to keep their distance from Sturgeon
They couldn't even bring themselves to vote against Swinney, they ain't going to bring down the Nats and vote to put Douglas Ross into bat. The notion is laughable.
Here's a possibility (don't laugh).
SNP/Green lose pro-Indy majority.
The 3 Unionist Parties vote down minority SNP Govt.
Everyone votes down minority SCon Govt.
SLab/LibDem/Green minority Govt enters office with Anas as 1st Minister.
Tories abstain and SNP descend into civil war.
Slight problem: Tories abstaining would see SLab minority government voted down too.
Labour will not back a Tory minority government but the Tories might back a minority Labour (+Lib Dem) government. What is needed for a Unionist government, minority or otherwise, is for Labour to overtake the Tories. Its possible but difficult.
So Tories should vote tactically for Labour. In the way we've supported Ian Murray, as we've been doing here in Edinburgh South for a while.
It depends where they are. For the Scottish toon council I am in Angus South. Voting anyone other than Tory would be nuts. For Westminster I am in Dundee West. I may well vote Labour then.
The best hope for Unionism is that Labour starts to win back some of the acres and acres of ground lost to the SNP in the central belt, especially the west. Sarwar is a massive step up on Leonard but so is my daughter's cat and he has never been elected to anything, despite what he clearly thinks. Can Sarwar start to win back those Glasgow seats? A Tory in most of them should vote Labour for the Constituency and Tory on the list.
If we're on the subject of favourite Churches, then can I say this is the kind of Church scene I'd like to see again soon.
The Unitarian Church in Nottingham, aka Pitcher & Piano
I am not spiritually minded, but I find a church being repurposed as a pub, vaguely depressing.
St Paul’s Chapel in Aberystwyth is also now a pub (the Academy).
One of my lecturers refused to drink in it because an atheist he thought repurposing a chapel as a pub was very offensive.
Quite who it was offensive to, he didn’t say.
I think some people forget how populations move. We have moved from 90% rural to 90% urban, and they all built these beautiful memorials to themselves that someone has to look after - Rural Norfolk and the City of London are the same.
Even the City of London has only half as many churches as before the Fire.
If Sturgeon puts independence first, she will resign. If she puts herself first, she will try to stay. I don’t expect her to resign, even if Hamilton finds she misled Parliament.
There must be a material risk that Hamilton sinks her.
Yes, Salmond has an agenda - but he is also a compelling witness.
Sturgeon is the least convincing witness I can recall. With the possible exception of O J Simpson. Oh ,and a case I worked where I witness changed his story through 10 degrees - and our barrister said nothing, but just drew a small ship, sinking beneath the waves.
I would not want my freedom to be dependent upon Nicola Sturgeon's performance in the witness box.
10 degrees? Christ that's good. I can't remember the last client I had that switched only 10 degrees under pressure.
In terms of North Yorkshire re-organisation, I have no definitive views; I only recently moved here. The county council view in its documentation seems to be based on bigger is better, keep the N. Yorkshire brand. The City of York seems to want the status quo with its unitary status. For the districts/boroughs they claim that the split in half will be more responsive to local needs, also will save money and fits the way people move/work in the county. No idea what the SoS will decide.
The first sentence of the German health ministry's message to reassure people about AstraZeneca says that the EMA will "publish a warning about it" but recommend to continue its use. They argue that stopping and starting vaccinations shows people that they should trust it.
"still outweighs" - like there is an ongoing live debate and hmm, we shall see. Then the word "risks". So there ARE risks. And why even mention "blood clots". Those are the two words that scream out. This jab gives you BLOOD CLOTS
Fuckin eejits. Just say "We have decided it is a safe and effective vaccine". Tuck all the other stuff away, which really is trivial in comparison, on some obscure website
Though our own press conference did cover the same ground, with 5 cases of of CVST and DIC in 11 million vaccines. It may well prove to be a very rare side effect, and is certainly needing further surveillance. Whether there are any other risk factors in the cases remains to be seen. Best carry on for now but be vigilant.
Sure, just don't put it in your one big official tweet, that has now been retweeted several thousand times. Madness. Can they not see how it looks? Are they just dim? This is basic PR
By all means inform the public of some very rare, possible, unproven, but scary-sounding risks in a dense Pdf in your hard-to-find website. Not on bloody Twitter.
I do wonder if there is still a faint agenda to smear AZ, in favour of the others, who, of course, make a profit
Their tweet is highly congruent with Whitty in the press conference:
"Professor Chris Whitty said "all of medicine is about the potential risks of a treatment" and says the key question is "are the benefits big enough to justify that".
With the vaccine, there is an "incredibly small potential risk" against "the really very substantial protections these vaccines give".
In order to reassure, you have to stick to the truth.
In terms of North Yorkshire re-organisation, I have no definitive views; I only recently moved here. The county council view in its documentation seems to be based on bigger is better, keep the N. Yorkshire brand. The City of York seems to want the status quo with its unitary status. For the districts/boroughs they claim that the split in half will be more responsive to local needs, also will save money and fits the way people move/work in the county. No idea what the SoS will decide.
If you split it at all, a Daleside and a Moorside would make sense, but Selby would then be the difficulty: it would fit best into an expanded Vale of York unitary.
I'm not attached to the districts, but I am to the counties.
I'd only support it if, say, Hampshire County Council became the unitary.
Problem is it is fair that some counties, in themselves, probably are too big for single unitaries, but then you get into weird divisions of untiaries. Wiltshire and Swindon(Wiltshire) makes pretty decent sense, but others somewhat less so.
I'm attachhed to the counties too. But I don't necessarily see why counties should have to equal locak government units. What I really want is a sub-unit of the country that is consistent over time so that I can ask a question like 'list all the clubs who have ever been in the football leage whose home ground was in Cheshire' without having to go on a lengthy explanation of what I mean by Cheshire. This is not as trivial as it sounds.
The original plan back before 1974 was to completely scrap the administrative counties for local government, and have a single system of unitary authorities across England which would not map very closely at all to the old counties. The traditional counties would have been retained for geographical and ceremonial purposes but would have had no adminstrative rôle at all. That ended up being dropped as too radical, so we ended up with the fudged system of in many cases greatly altered counties that no-one has been happy with.
Ted Heath was never forgiven., in Herefordshire, for uniting Herefordshire and Worcestershire, under Worcester. Two ancient, proud but significantly different counties: Worcester much more urban, touching Brum, a bit boring but quite pretty, suburban - whereas Herefordshire was (and is) profoundly rural, poorer, very beautiful, bordering Wales
Stupidity in spades. Heath was such a tin-eared DICK
I am about to watch 'The Red Shoes' - I don't know if I'll particularly enjoy the subject matter, but it is apparently one of the best British films ever made, at No. 9 no less:
Doubly so in Scotland because everyone knows which party will win the election before it is held.
The likelihood of the SNP losing is zero, so their Parliamentarians also have zero incentive to remove Sturgeon. It might now take the continued (and guaranteed) support of the sock puppets to keep her in office again, but Sturgeon will be back as First Minister. All these inquiries are an irrelevance.
They won't lose, in the sense of being by some margin the largest party. But they may well fail to secure a majority, which will make it easier for Boris to refuse IndRef2 or, worse still, lose the existing pro-Indy majority (SNP + Green) which would kybosh it completely and probably lead to her leaving office.
It also makes it easier for Boris to refuse her request (tho he would do it anyway). She's weakened.
I wonder if she might just go for UDI, as she sees her indy dream failing along with her career. At that point she'd have nothing to lose. And a lot to gain. Roll the dice?
Not if half of Scotland proceeds to ignore her by coninuing to follow Westminster. Civil strife and administrative chaos would ensue.
I was told next Tuesday is a Day of Remembrance for those lost to the coronavirus in the past year.
This doesn't seem to have been well advertised so far - given there have been 125,000 excess deaths, it's entirely appropriate to take the time, before we concentrate on life, to remember those who won't be there to enjoy it with us.
I would like to propose that we find some suitable land somewhere to plant a new wood as a memorial to the dead. At one tree per dead, at mature broadleaf tree density, it would be about half the size of Richmond Park - I think the scale would get across well the size of the loss.
And then, unlike with something that puts an exact number on the dead, the fuzzy numbers involved would represent the inevitable uncertainty in counting the dead.
Excellent post and a great idea. Hope an MP is reading this.
Yes - as an additional idea... make it an arboretum. A mono-culture wood is a soulless place.....
We have created an arboretum in memory of my Dad
Lovely tribute.
If you are ever flying over south Devon, don't be surprised to see an arboretum in the shape of a running dog. My neighbour planted thousands of trees in memory of Takka, his favourite dog. A friend had a light aircraft and would take photos, so that my neighbour could tweak it a little.
Having visited them all I probably go for St Vedast-alias-Foster due to the modest Epstein in the Courtyard and All Hallows on the Wall because the ceiling is like a perfect drawing room."
Like Topping I'd go for Hawksmoor's Christ Church, Spitalfields. Possibly my favourite church in the world, not just London. But is it in the City, technically? I think not
So I'd go for either St Brides, Fleet St (Roman foundations in the cellar!), St Stephen Walbrook - Wrenaissance perfection - or St Bartholomew the Great - medieval and picturesque
It's been doing the rounds on various Slack channels all day.
Wow. That is damning. Who TF would want to work there?
It's still the single most desirable bit of CV experience for anyone in banking/investment. It's the equivalent of having a Harvard or Oxford degree so people put up with the shit for two years.
Their analysts might be working 105 hours per week, but they won't be working well.
I have regularly worked 100 plus hour weeks, fortunately I've had excellent employers and bosses who have rewarded both financially and insisted I take a break/holiday afterwards.
As one chap put it to me, if you're consistently working 80 plus hours you're either not planning/delegating properly and/or you're under resourced.
I did a "1 in 2" for 3 months, 130 hours per week, in General Medicine in 1988. After that an 80 hour week seemed pretty cushy...
I work about 1-2 hours a day. Have never had a proper job (apart from one morning - literally, one, and I was sacked by lunch). The most I work is about 10 hours a day for a week or two, then back to 1-2 hours a day.
BUT, in a very real sense, I am always working. It may look like I am staring vaguely out of the window eating a fine unpasteurised Brie, but I am actually thinking. Gestating. Imagining the next flint sex toy.
The first sentence of the German health ministry's message to reassure people about AstraZeneca says that the EMA will "publish a warning about it" but recommend to continue its use. They argue that stopping and starting vaccinations shows people that they should trust it.
"still outweighs" - like there is an ongoing live debate and hmm, we shall see. Then the word "risks". So there ARE risks. And why even mention "blood clots". Those are the two words that scream out. This jab gives you BLOOD CLOTS
Fuckin eejits. Just say "We have decided it is a safe and effective vaccine". Tuck all the other stuff away, which really is trivial in comparison, on some obscure website
Though our own press conference did cover the same ground, with 5 cases of of CVST and DIC in 11 million vaccines. It may well prove to be a very rare side effect, and is certainly needing further surveillance. Whether there are any other risk factors in the cases remains to be seen. Best carry on for now but be vigilant.
Sure, just don't put it in your one big official tweet, that has now been retweeted several thousand times. Madness. Can they not see how it looks? Are they just dim? This is basic PR
By all means inform the public of some very rare, possible, unproven, but scary-sounding risks in a dense Pdf in your hard-to-find website. Not on bloody Twitter.
I do wonder if there is still a faint agenda to smear AZ, in favour of the others, who, of course, make a profit
Their tweet is highly congruent with Whitty in the press conference:
"Professor Chris Whitty said "all of medicine is about the potential risks of a treatment" and says the key question is "are the benefits big enough to justify that".
With the vaccine, there is an "incredibly small potential risk" against "the really very substantial protections these vaccines give".
In order to reassure, you have to stick to the truth.
Don't, ever, get a job in PR. You'd be terrible
I suspect @Foxy adds more to the sum of human happiness as a medic than he (or anyone) ever would in PR.
Having visited them all I probably go for St Vedast-alias-Foster due to the modest Epstein in the Courtyard and All Hallows on the Wall because the ceiling is like a perfect drawing room."
Like Topping I'd go for Hawksmoor's Christ Church, Spitalfields. Possibly my favourite church in the world, not just London. But is it in the City, technically? I think not
So I'd go for either St Brides, Fleet St (Roman foundations in the cellar!), St Stephen Walbrook - Wrenaissance perfection - or St Bartholomew the Great - medieval and picturesque
It's been doing the rounds on various Slack channels all day.
Wow. That is damning. Who TF would want to work there?
It's still the single most desirable bit of CV experience for anyone in banking/investment. It's the equivalent of having a Harvard or Oxford degree so people put up with the shit for two years.
Their analysts might be working 105 hours per week, but they won't be working well.
I have regularly worked 100 plus hour weeks, fortunately I've had excellent employers and bosses who have rewarded both financially and insisted I take a break/holiday afterwards.
As one chap put it to me, if you're consistently working 80 plus hours you're either not planning/delegating properly and/or you're under resourced.
I did a "1 in 2" for 3 months, 130 hours per week, in General Medicine in 1988. After that an 80 hour week seemed pretty cushy...
I work about 1-2 hours a day. Have never had a proper job (apart from one morning - literally, one, and I was sacked by lunch). The most I work is about 10 hours a day for a week or two, then back to 1-2 hours a day.
BUT, in a very real sense, I am always working. It may look like I am staring vaguely out of the window eating a fine unpasteurised Brie, but I am actually thinking. Gestating. Imagining the next flint sex toy.
Having visited them all I probably go for St Vedast-alias-Foster due to the modest Epstein in the Courtyard and All Hallows on the Wall because the ceiling is like a perfect drawing room."
Like Topping I'd go for Hawksmoor's Christ Church, Spitalfields. Possibly my favourite church in the world, not just London. But is it in the City, technically? I think not
So I'd go for either St Brides, Fleet St (Roman foundations in the cellar!), St Stephen Walbrook - Wrenaissance perfection - or St Bartholomew the Great - medieval and picturesque
It's been doing the rounds on various Slack channels all day.
Wow. That is damning. Who TF would want to work there?
It's still the single most desirable bit of CV experience for anyone in banking/investment. It's the equivalent of having a Harvard or Oxford degree so people put up with the shit for two years.
Their analysts might be working 105 hours per week, but they won't be working well.
I have regularly worked 100 plus hour weeks, fortunately I've had excellent employers and bosses who have rewarded both financially and insisted I take a break/holiday afterwards.
As one chap put it to me, if you're consistently working 80 plus hours you're either not planning/delegating properly and/or you're under resourced.
I did a "1 in 2" for 3 months, 130 hours per week, in General Medicine in 1988. After that an 80 hour week seemed pretty cushy...
I work about 1-2 hours a day. Have never had a proper job (apart from one morning - literally, one, and I was sacked by lunch). The most I work is about 10 hours a day for a week or two, then back to 1-2 hours a day.
BUT, in a very real sense, I am always working. It may look like I am staring vaguely out of the window eating a fine unpasteurised Brie, but I am actually thinking. Gestating. Imagining the next flint sex toy.
I am about to watch 'The Red Shoes' - I don't know if I'll particularly enjoy the subject matter, but it is apparently one of the best British films ever made, at No. 9 no less:
BUT, in a very real sense, I am always working. It may look like I am staring vaguely out of the window eating a fine unpasteurised Brie, but I am actually thinking. Gestating. Imagining the next flint sex toy.
Having visited them all I probably go for St Vedast-alias-Foster due to the modest Epstein in the Courtyard and All Hallows on the Wall because the ceiling is like a perfect drawing room."
Like Topping I'd go for Hawksmoor's Christ Church, Spitalfields. Possibly my favourite church in the world, not just London. But is it in the City, technically? I think not
So I'd go for either St Brides, Fleet St (Roman foundations in the cellar!), St Stephen Walbrook - Wrenaissance perfection - or St Bartholomew the Great - medieval and picturesque
If Sturgeon puts independence first, she will resign. If she puts herself first, she will try to stay. I don’t expect her to resign, even if Hamilton finds she misled Parliament.
I think if Hamilton also finds against her then her position becomes untenable. She can bruh off a "partisan" committee (ignoring the SNP+Green majority) but an independent finding would be tricky.
Trying to call the Committee's verdict 'partisan' (in the sense of being partisan *against* her) would be quite the breathtaking act of ingratitude for Fabiani's dutiful obstructionism on her behalf.
There has to be a chance that this report is going to eviscerate Sturgeon's credibility.
"The First Minister came before this Committee and lied and lied and lied again. But she did it so badly, the only people claiming to believe her were the SNP stooges on the Committee. We, the majority of this Committee, were not taken in...."
As an aside, when I got my vaccine at the LA Dodgers stadium, the staff were chucking used vials into a big trash bin.
It seems insane, given the worldwide vial shortage, that they binned them rather than recycling them.
Don't the septics have a different attitude to recycling all round?
Presumably it was a medical waste container. That should then be handled separately from general waste. In the US, pharmaceutical waste should be in a blue container. Interested to know if it was.
That would not preclude decontamination/sterilization and subsequent recycling. But there may not be facilities for that, as in general the costs of recycling glass are greater than just making new.
This isn't quite true, you want your cullet to contain existing glass I think. But it wouldn't matter that the existing glass comes from vials or bottles - though all vials would be clear.
Having visited them all I probably go for St Vedast-alias-Foster due to the modest Epstein in the Courtyard and All Hallows on the Wall because the ceiling is like a perfect drawing room."
Like Topping I'd go for Hawksmoor's Christ Church, Spitalfields. Possibly my favourite church in the world, not just London. But is it in the City, technically? I think not
So I'd go for either St Brides, Fleet St (Roman foundations in the cellar!), St Stephen Walbrook - Wrenaissance perfection - or St Bartholomew the Great - medieval and picturesque
It's been doing the rounds on various Slack channels all day.
Wow. That is damning. Who TF would want to work there?
It's still the single most desirable bit of CV experience for anyone in banking/investment. It's the equivalent of having a Harvard or Oxford degree so people put up with the shit for two years.
Their analysts might be working 105 hours per week, but they won't be working well.
I have regularly worked 100 plus hour weeks, fortunately I've had excellent employers and bosses who have rewarded both financially and insisted I take a break/holiday afterwards.
As one chap put it to me, if you're consistently working 80 plus hours you're either not planning/delegating properly and/or you're under resourced.
I did a "1 in 2" for 3 months, 130 hours per week, in General Medicine in 1988. After that an 80 hour week seemed pretty cushy...
I work about 1-2 hours a day. Have never had a proper job (apart from one morning - literally, one, and I was sacked by lunch). The most I work is about 10 hours a day for a week or two, then back to 1-2 hours a day.
BUT, in a very real sense, I am always working. It may look like I am staring vaguely out of the window eating a fine unpasteurised Brie, but I am actually thinking. Gestating. Imagining the next flint sex toy.
Like a cow chewing the cud. Making milk
My late wife RIP...was doing 1 in 2s when I met her, a nightmare for her and for me. It was a form of punishment via sleep deprivation
The knock on consequences of the collapse of Greensill for the Scottish government are genuinely frightening. Guarantees from the Scottish government sitting on hundreds of millions of bonds by an insolvent group which never made money but lived on grants, the vast majority of which money barely touched Scotland, let alone created employment here.
Doubly so in Scotland because everyone knows which party will win the election before it is held.
The likelihood of the SNP losing is zero, so their Parliamentarians also have zero incentive to remove Sturgeon. It might now take the continued (and guaranteed) support of the sock puppets to keep her in office again, but Sturgeon will be back as First Minister. All these inquiries are an irrelevance.
I disagree and expect this will see her out of office in 2021
I would also suggest the Greens may want to keep their distance from Sturgeon
They couldn't even bring themselves to vote against Swinney, they ain't going to bring down the Nats and vote to put Douglas Ross into bat. The notion is laughable.
Here's a possibility (don't laugh).
SNP/Green lose pro-Indy majority.
The 3 Unionist Parties vote down minority SNP Govt.
Everyone votes down minority SCon Govt.
SLab/LibDem/Green minority Govt enters office with Anas as 1st Minister.
Tories abstain and SNP descend into civil war.
Slight problem: Tories abstaining would see SLab minority government voted down too.
Labour will not back a Tory minority government but the Tories might back a minority Labour (+Lib Dem) government. What is needed for a Unionist government, minority or otherwise, is for Labour to overtake the Tories. Its possible but difficult.
So Tories should vote tactically for Labour. In the way we've supported Ian Murray, as we've been doing here in Edinburgh South for a while.
It depends where they are. For the Scottish toon council I am in Angus South. Voting anyone other than Tory would be nuts. For Westminster I am in Dundee West. I may well vote Labour then.
The best hope for Unionism is that Labour starts to win back some of the acres and acres of ground lost to the SNP in the central belt, especially the west. Sarwar is a massive step up on Leonard but so is my daughter's cat and he has never been elected to anything, despite what he clearly thinks. Can Sarwar start to win back those Glasgow seats? A Tory in most of them should vote Labour for the Constituency and Tory on the list.
I was looking at a recent Scottish opinion poll (God, the fun we have in lockdown) and I noticed support for Rejoining the EU in Scotland is 47%. High, but massively down on the Scottish Remain vote in 2016. And who can blame the Scots for being more eurosceptic, after the shite we've seen from Brussels, and EU capitals, in recent months
I wonder if there is an opening here for SLAB. The SNP are committed to Rejoin. Perhaps SLAB, offering UK EEA or EFTA membership (but not Rejoin) might entice a few waverers who don't necessarily want Indy but DO want the Single Market and Freedom of Movement
To me this is the obvious way for Labour to evolve, UK-wide. EEA or EFTA. Clear blue water distancing themselves from the Tories. They can sell it as pro-business (and business will like it) and immigration is not going to be a major issue for a looooooooong time, because Covid
Labour should simply give up on the Red Wall, and go for soft Remainery Tories and Lib Dems in non-WWC England (and soft Nats in Scotland). Patriotic but pragmatic. We will get rid of the red tape.
The first sentence of the German health ministry's message to reassure people about AstraZeneca says that the EMA will "publish a warning about it" but recommend to continue its use. They argue that stopping and starting vaccinations shows people that they should trust it.
"still outweighs" - like there is an ongoing live debate and hmm, we shall see. Then the word "risks". So there ARE risks. And why even mention "blood clots". Those are the two words that scream out. This jab gives you BLOOD CLOTS
Fuckin eejits. Just say "We have decided it is a safe and effective vaccine". Tuck all the other stuff away, which really is trivial in comparison, on some obscure website
Though our own press conference did cover the same ground, with 5 cases of of CVST and DIC in 11 million vaccines. It may well prove to be a very rare side effect, and is certainly needing further surveillance. Whether there are any other risk factors in the cases remains to be seen. Best carry on for now but be vigilant.
Sure, just don't put it in your one big official tweet, that has now been retweeted several thousand times. Madness. Can they not see how it looks? Are they just dim? This is basic PR
By all means inform the public of some very rare, possible, unproven, but scary-sounding risks in a dense Pdf in your hard-to-find website. Not on bloody Twitter.
I do wonder if there is still a faint agenda to smear AZ, in favour of the others, who, of course, make a profit
Their tweet is highly congruent with Whitty in the press conference:
"Professor Chris Whitty said "all of medicine is about the potential risks of a treatment" and says the key question is "are the benefits big enough to justify that".
With the vaccine, there is an "incredibly small potential risk" against "the really very substantial protections these vaccines give".
In order to reassure, you have to stick to the truth.
Don't, ever, get a job in PR. You'd be terrible
I suspect @Foxy adds more to the sum of human happiness as a medic than he (or anyone) ever would in PR.
Maybe, maybe not. I have to break a lot of bad news, and that doesn't make people happy.
@Leon is right, PR has a role in some bits of an economy, but not my cup of tea. I have a Presbyterian soul.
A US private investigator has told BBC News he was paid by the Sun newspaper to obtain personal information about the Duchess of Sussex in the early days of her relationship with Prince Harry.
But Daniel Hanks says he unlawfully accessed detailed information including Meghan's social security number.
The Sun's publisher said it requested legitimate research and instructed Mr Hanks he must act lawfully.
Meghan and Harry said it was a "moment of reflection" for the media industry.
BBC News has seen the so-called "comprehensive report on Meghan and her family" which the investigator, also known as Danno Hanks, passed to the Sun.
It included her phone number, addresses and social security number as well as information on her family members. His report also included information on her ex-husband and a former boyfriend.
The knock on consequences of the collapse of Greensill for the Scottish government are genuinely frightening. Guarantees from the Scottish government sitting on hundreds of millions of bonds by an insolvent group which never made money but lived on grants, the vast majority of which money barely touched Scotland, let alone created employment here.
Presumably on a 5-4 split, with the Greens needing clear green water between them and the SNP. Wonder if that will make post election negotiations on supporting a minority administration somewhat fraught 😉
Doubly so in Scotland because everyone knows which party will win the election before it is held.
The likelihood of the SNP losing is zero, so their Parliamentarians also have zero incentive to remove Sturgeon. It might now take the continued (and guaranteed) support of the sock puppets to keep her in office again, but Sturgeon will be back as First Minister. All these inquiries are an irrelevance.
I disagree and expect this will see her out of office in 2021
I would also suggest the Greens may want to keep their distance from Sturgeon
They couldn't even bring themselves to vote against Swinney, they ain't going to bring down the Nats and vote to put Douglas Ross into bat. The notion is laughable.
Here's a possibility (don't laugh).
SNP/Green lose pro-Indy majority.
The 3 Unionist Parties vote down minority SNP Govt.
Everyone votes down minority SCon Govt.
SLab/LibDem/Green minority Govt enters office with Anas as 1st Minister.
Tories abstain and SNP descend into civil war.
Slight problem: Tories abstaining would see SLab minority government voted down too.
Labour will not back a Tory minority government but the Tories might back a minority Labour (+Lib Dem) government. What is needed for a Unionist government, minority or otherwise, is for Labour to overtake the Tories. Its possible but difficult.
So Tories should vote tactically for Labour. In the way we've supported Ian Murray, as we've been doing here in Edinburgh South for a while.
It depends where they are. For the Scottish toon council I am in Angus South. Voting anyone other than Tory would be nuts. For Westminster I am in Dundee West. I may well vote Labour then.
The best hope for Unionism is that Labour starts to win back some of the acres and acres of ground lost to the SNP in the central belt, especially the west. Sarwar is a massive step up on Leonard but so is my daughter's cat and he has never been elected to anything, despite what he clearly thinks. Can Sarwar start to win back those Glasgow seats? A Tory in most of them should vote Labour for the Constituency and Tory on the list.
I was looking at a recent Scottish opinion poll (God, the fun we have in lockdown) and I noticed support for Rejoining the EU in Scotland is 47%. High, but massively down on the Scottish Remain vote in 2016. And who can blame the Scots for being more eurosceptic, after the shite we've seen from Brussels, and EU capitals, in recent months
I wonder if there is an opening here for SLAB. The SNP are committed to Rejoin. Perhaps SLAB, offering UK EEA or EFTA membership (but not Rejoin) might entice a few waverers who don't necessarily want Indy but DO want the Single Market and Freedom of Movement
To me this is the obvious way for Labour to evolve, UK-wide. EEA or EFTA. Clear blue water distancing themselves from the Tories. They can sell it as pro-business (and business will like it) and immigration is not going to be a major issue for a looooooooong time, because Covid
Labour should simply give up on the Red Wall, and go for soft Remainery Tories and Lib Dems in non-WWC England (and soft Nats in Scotland). Patriotic but pragmatic. We will get rid of the red tape.
If Labour tries to reopen the Brexit debate for 2024 they'll lose even worse than in 2019. I'd expect Boris to win a 120+ seat majority. Rejoin (and that's what it will be turned into by the Tory party) will be a real minority interest by then and Labour would be insane to let Boris get the leave band back together.
No, I think the best thing for SLAB to do is simply sidestep the EU debate and pitch on being the lefty unionist voice, not working with the Tories and not working with the SNP and promising not to make Douglas Ross FM if there is a Unionist majority.
Having visited them all I probably go for St Vedast-alias-Foster due to the modest Epstein in the Courtyard and All Hallows on the Wall because the ceiling is like a perfect drawing room."
Like Topping I'd go for Hawksmoor's Christ Church, Spitalfields. Possibly my favourite church in the world, not just London. But is it in the City, technically? I think not
So I'd go for either St Brides, Fleet St (Roman foundations in the cellar!), St Stephen Walbrook - Wrenaissance perfection - or St Bartholomew the Great - medieval and picturesque
It's been doing the rounds on various Slack channels all day.
Wow. That is damning. Who TF would want to work there?
It's still the single most desirable bit of CV experience for anyone in banking/investment. It's the equivalent of having a Harvard or Oxford degree so people put up with the shit for two years.
Their analysts might be working 105 hours per week, but they won't be working well.
I have regularly worked 100 plus hour weeks, fortunately I've had excellent employers and bosses who have rewarded both financially and insisted I take a break/holiday afterwards.
As one chap put it to me, if you're consistently working 80 plus hours you're either not planning/delegating properly and/or you're under resourced.
I did a "1 in 2" for 3 months, 130 hours per week, in General Medicine in 1988. After that an 80 hour week seemed pretty cushy...
I work about 1-2 hours a day. Have never had a proper job (apart from one morning - literally, one, and I was sacked by lunch). The most I work is about 10 hours a day for a week or two, then back to 1-2 hours a day.
BUT, in a very real sense, I am always working. It may look like I am staring vaguely out of the window eating a fine unpasteurised Brie, but I am actually thinking. Gestating. Imagining the next flint sex toy.
Like a cow chewing the cud. Making milk
Nothing to brag about, just saying.
Er, I wasn't bragging. If anything, I was guiltily confessing.
I often look at people working waaaaaaaaaay harder than me, yet earning a tenth what I do, and I feel an unnamed discomfort. Conscience calling, I think.
I just got lucky. Genetically. I can carve a fine sex toy out of travertine. It could have been the next baby along. Pure dumb stupid luck
Having visited them all I probably go for St Vedast-alias-Foster due to the modest Epstein in the Courtyard and All Hallows on the Wall because the ceiling is like a perfect drawing room."
Like Topping I'd go for Hawksmoor's Christ Church, Spitalfields. Possibly my favourite church in the world, not just London. But is it in the City, technically? I think not
So I'd go for either St Brides, Fleet St (Roman foundations in the cellar!), St Stephen Walbrook - Wrenaissance perfection - or St Bartholomew the Great - medieval and picturesque
It's been doing the rounds on various Slack channels all day.
Wow. That is damning. Who TF would want to work there?
It's still the single most desirable bit of CV experience for anyone in banking/investment. It's the equivalent of having a Harvard or Oxford degree so people put up with the shit for two years.
Their analysts might be working 105 hours per week, but they won't be working well.
I have regularly worked 100 plus hour weeks, fortunately I've had excellent employers and bosses who have rewarded both financially and insisted I take a break/holiday afterwards.
As one chap put it to me, if you're consistently working 80 plus hours you're either not planning/delegating properly and/or you're under resourced.
I did a "1 in 2" for 3 months, 130 hours per week, in General Medicine in 1988. After that an 80 hour week seemed pretty cushy...
I work about 1-2 hours a day. Have never had a proper job (apart from one morning - literally, one, and I was sacked by lunch). The most I work is about 10 hours a day for a week or two, then back to 1-2 hours a day.
BUT, in a very real sense, I am always working. It may look like I am staring vaguely out of the window eating a fine unpasteurised Brie, but I am actually thinking. Gestating. Imagining the next flint sex toy.
Like a cow chewing the cud. Making milk
My late wife RIP...was doing 1 in 2s when I met her, a nightmare for her and for me. It was a form of punishment via sleep deprivation
Appalling ignorance on my part - what does 1 in 2 mean?
The knock on consequences of the collapse of Greensill for the Scottish government are genuinely frightening. Guarantees from the Scottish government sitting on hundreds of millions of bonds by an insolvent group which never made money but lived on grants, the vast majority of which money barely touched Scotland, let alone created employment here.
Sounds like there's quite a story there.....
Its just a matter of days until Liberty go down. And when they do and the guarantees are called upon the shit will hit the fan, big time. Normally SNP industrial policy only costs £30m a pop. This is the big one.
I am about to watch 'The Red Shoes' - I don't know if I'll particularly enjoy the subject matter, but it is apparently one of the best British films ever made, at No. 9 no less:
The knock on consequences of the collapse of Greensill for the Scottish government are genuinely frightening. Guarantees from the Scottish government sitting on hundreds of millions of bonds by an insolvent group which never made money but lived on grants, the vast majority of which money barely touched Scotland, let alone created employment here.
I'm afraid I don't understand that. Please could you explain what it means?
The knock on consequences of the collapse of Greensill for the Scottish government are genuinely frightening. Guarantees from the Scottish government sitting on hundreds of millions of bonds by an insolvent group which never made money but lived on grants, the vast majority of which money barely touched Scotland, let alone created employment here.
When did the Fort William smelter last make money? Whoever thought it could? The Kinlochleven one disappeared years ago and became a climbing wall...
I am about to watch 'The Red Shoes' - I don't know if I'll particularly enjoy the subject matter, but it is apparently one of the best British films ever made, at No. 9 no less:
The first sentence of the German health ministry's message to reassure people about AstraZeneca says that the EMA will "publish a warning about it" but recommend to continue its use. They argue that stopping and starting vaccinations shows people that they should trust it.
"still outweighs" - like there is an ongoing live debate and hmm, we shall see. Then the word "risks". So there ARE risks. And why even mention "blood clots". Those are the two words that scream out. This jab gives you BLOOD CLOTS
Fuckin eejits. Just say "We have decided it is a safe and effective vaccine". Tuck all the other stuff away, which really is trivial in comparison, on some obscure website
Though our own press conference did cover the same ground, with 5 cases of of CVST and DIC in 11 million vaccines. It may well prove to be a very rare side effect, and is certainly needing further surveillance. Whether there are any other risk factors in the cases remains to be seen. Best carry on for now but be vigilant.
Sure, just don't put it in your one big official tweet, that has now been retweeted several thousand times. Madness. Can they not see how it looks? Are they just dim? This is basic PR
By all means inform the public of some very rare, possible, unproven, but scary-sounding risks in a dense Pdf in your hard-to-find website. Not on bloody Twitter.
I do wonder if there is still a faint agenda to smear AZ, in favour of the others, who, of course, make a profit
Their tweet is highly congruent with Whitty in the press conference:
"Professor Chris Whitty said "all of medicine is about the potential risks of a treatment" and says the key question is "are the benefits big enough to justify that".
With the vaccine, there is an "incredibly small potential risk" against "the really very substantial protections these vaccines give".
In order to reassure, you have to stick to the truth.
Don't, ever, get a job in PR. You'd be terrible
Public Health communications is not PR. PR can be a one-off. Public health communications is about enduring trust. Telling the brutal truth is a part of that process, particularly when public anxiety is at its highest. This is, in part, why Trump's downplaying of the pandemic at the outset was so damaging.
I'm with Foxy on this one. You have to give the bad news straight, but then provide the reassurance in the form of what you are doing about it, and what Joe Public can do themselves to help mitigate their personal risk and the risks to their loved ones.
Doubly so in Scotland because everyone knows which party will win the election before it is held.
The likelihood of the SNP losing is zero, so their Parliamentarians also have zero incentive to remove Sturgeon. It might now take the continued (and guaranteed) support of the sock puppets to keep her in office again, but Sturgeon will be back as First Minister. All these inquiries are an irrelevance.
I disagree and expect this will see her out of office in 2021
I would also suggest the Greens may want to keep their distance from Sturgeon
They couldn't even bring themselves to vote against Swinney, they ain't going to bring down the Nats and vote to put Douglas Ross into bat. The notion is laughable.
Here's a possibility (don't laugh).
SNP/Green lose pro-Indy majority.
The 3 Unionist Parties vote down minority SNP Govt.
Everyone votes down minority SCon Govt.
SLab/LibDem/Green minority Govt enters office with Anas as 1st Minister.
Tories abstain and SNP descend into civil war.
Slight problem: Tories abstaining would see SLab minority government voted down too.
Labour will not back a Tory minority government but the Tories might back a minority Labour (+Lib Dem) government. What is needed for a Unionist government, minority or otherwise, is for Labour to overtake the Tories. Its possible but difficult.
So Tories should vote tactically for Labour. In the way we've supported Ian Murray, as we've been doing here in Edinburgh South for a while.
It depends where they are. For the Scottish toon council I am in Angus South. Voting anyone other than Tory would be nuts. For Westminster I am in Dundee West. I may well vote Labour then.
The best hope for Unionism is that Labour starts to win back some of the acres and acres of ground lost to the SNP in the central belt, especially the west. Sarwar is a massive step up on Leonard but so is my daughter's cat and he has never been elected to anything, despite what he clearly thinks. Can Sarwar start to win back those Glasgow seats? A Tory in most of them should vote Labour for the Constituency and Tory on the list.
I was looking at a recent Scottish opinion poll (God, the fun we have in lockdown) and I noticed support for Rejoining the EU in Scotland is 47%. High, but massively down on the Scottish Remain vote in 2016. And who can blame the Scots for being more eurosceptic, after the shite we've seen from Brussels, and EU capitals, in recent months
I wonder if there is an opening here for SLAB. The SNP are committed to Rejoin. Perhaps SLAB, offering UK EEA or EFTA membership (but not Rejoin) might entice a few waverers who don't necessarily want Indy but DO want the Single Market and Freedom of Movement
To me this is the obvious way for Labour to evolve, UK-wide. EEA or EFTA. Clear blue water distancing themselves from the Tories. They can sell it as pro-business (and business will like it) and immigration is not going to be a major issue for a looooooooong time, because Covid
Labour should simply give up on the Red Wall, and go for soft Remainery Tories and Lib Dems in non-WWC England (and soft Nats in Scotland). Patriotic but pragmatic. We will get rid of the red tape.
If Labour tries to reopen the Brexit debate for 2024 they'll lose even worse than in 2019. I'd expect Boris to win a 120+ seat majority. Rejoin (and that's what it will be turned into by the Tory party) will be a real minority interest by then and Labour would be insane to let Boris get the leave band back together.
No, I think the best thing for SLAB to do is simply sidestep the EU debate and pitch on being the lefty unionist voice, not working with the Tories and not working with the SNP and promising not to make Douglas Ross FM if there is a Unionist majority.
Disagree. There are going to be major Brexit downsides, and unless Covid persists horribly (quite possible) they will become apparent as the tsunami of plague finally recedes. There will also be major upsides to Brexit, but they are some distance away. The pain will, in contrast, be immediate.
At that point rejoining the Single Market and/or CU might suddenly seem very appealing, to many. And could entice a lot of Tory/Lib Dem voters and others in southern England, Wales, Scotland. No, we're not back in the EU, but you get to work and live anywhere in Europe once again! and business can live free of bureaucracy.
A centrist Labour party offering this could win power, I reckon. In 2024. The longer they wait the less appealing this position will be, as the UK fundamentally diverges from Brussels, so there is no way back. But to do it Labour has to abandon the Red Wall and the traditional WWC. They have to accept their party has changed.
This is the only way Labour can hope to win a majority in 2024. They should seize it
I am about to watch 'The Red Shoes' - I don't know if I'll particularly enjoy the subject matter, but it is apparently one of the best British films ever made, at No. 9 no less:
Having visited them all I probably go for St Vedast-alias-Foster due to the modest Epstein in the Courtyard and All Hallows on the Wall because the ceiling is like a perfect drawing room."
Like Topping I'd go for Hawksmoor's Christ Church, Spitalfields. Possibly my favourite church in the world, not just London. But is it in the City, technically? I think not
So I'd go for either St Brides, Fleet St (Roman foundations in the cellar!), St Stephen Walbrook - Wrenaissance perfection - or St Bartholomew the Great - medieval and picturesque
It's been doing the rounds on various Slack channels all day.
Wow. That is damning. Who TF would want to work there?
It's still the single most desirable bit of CV experience for anyone in banking/investment. It's the equivalent of having a Harvard or Oxford degree so people put up with the shit for two years.
Their analysts might be working 105 hours per week, but they won't be working well.
I have regularly worked 100 plus hour weeks, fortunately I've had excellent employers and bosses who have rewarded both financially and insisted I take a break/holiday afterwards.
As one chap put it to me, if you're consistently working 80 plus hours you're either not planning/delegating properly and/or you're under resourced.
I did a "1 in 2" for 3 months, 130 hours per week, in General Medicine in 1988. After that an 80 hour week seemed pretty cushy...
I work about 1-2 hours a day. Have never had a proper job (apart from one morning - literally, one, and I was sacked by lunch). The most I work is about 10 hours a day for a week or two, then back to 1-2 hours a day.
BUT, in a very real sense, I am always working. It may look like I am staring vaguely out of the window eating a fine unpasteurised Brie, but I am actually thinking. Gestating. Imagining the next flint sex toy.
Like a cow chewing the cud. Making milk
My late wife RIP...was doing 1 in 2s when I met her, a nightmare for her and for me. It was a form of punishment via sleep deprivation
Appalling ignorance on my part - what does 1 in 2 mean?
A 1 in 2 is an archaic medical rota. On top of the usual working week, you are on call 1 in 2 nights, with usual work the next day, so 32 hours in 48.
Mostly I worked 1 in 3, and one of my House Jobs was a 1 in 4, and considered soft.
The knock on consequences of the collapse of Greensill for the Scottish government are genuinely frightening. Guarantees from the Scottish government sitting on hundreds of millions of bonds by an insolvent group which never made money but lived on grants, the vast majority of which money barely touched Scotland, let alone created employment here.
Sounds like there's quite a story there.....
Its just a matter of days until Liberty go down. And when they do and the guarantees are called upon the shit will hit the fan, big time. Normally SNP industrial policy only costs £30m a pop. This is the big one.
I hope that those guarantees were entered into for entirely altruistic reasons...
The first sentence of the German health ministry's message to reassure people about AstraZeneca says that the EMA will "publish a warning about it" but recommend to continue its use. They argue that stopping and starting vaccinations shows people that they should trust it.
"still outweighs" - like there is an ongoing live debate and hmm, we shall see. Then the word "risks". So there ARE risks. And why even mention "blood clots". Those are the two words that scream out. This jab gives you BLOOD CLOTS
Fuckin eejits. Just say "We have decided it is a safe and effective vaccine". Tuck all the other stuff away, which really is trivial in comparison, on some obscure website
Though our own press conference did cover the same ground, with 5 cases of of CVST and DIC in 11 million vaccines. It may well prove to be a very rare side effect, and is certainly needing further surveillance. Whether there are any other risk factors in the cases remains to be seen. Best carry on for now but be vigilant.
5 cases of CVST (Cerebral venous sinus thrombosis - I had to google it) and DIC (Disseminated intravascular coagulation - ditto) after 11 Million vaccines.
How many occurences of CVST and DIC would we expect in 11 million people who weren't being vaccinated?
The knock on consequences of the collapse of Greensill for the Scottish government are genuinely frightening. Guarantees from the Scottish government sitting on hundreds of millions of bonds by an insolvent group which never made money but lived on grants, the vast majority of which money barely touched Scotland, let alone created employment here.
I'm afraid I don't understand that. Please could you explain what it means?
Right. Liberty, a group put together by Mr Gupta, bought up a whole series of steel assets in the UK and elsewhere. Nearly all of these were loss making but they were in areas that politicians were desperate to generate employment so grants and soft loans were a plenty. In Scotland the Scottish government guaranteed the income on loans supposedly for the development of a new green power station which was supposed to help the expansion of an aluminum recycling plant.
The problem is that that the deal that was done was just horrendous. Gupta issued bonds backed by Scottish guarantees and then sold them on the bond market. The money was not used for the power plant or indeed anything else in Scotland. Liberty were funded by Greensill who were another "soft loan" specialist. They are now in administration which means the debts of Liberty may well be called up. If they are then Liberty go bust. If they go bust the guarantees are called upon and nearly £600m of loans have to be made good by the Scottish government. This money would destroy their capital account meaning several fewer hospitals and schools.
Scotland got nothing out of this. Being generous about 100 jobs in the aluminum plant were protected. If the employees had been given £5m each it might have done more for the local economy. Incompetence doesn't come close to describing this.
The first sentence of the German health ministry's message to reassure people about AstraZeneca says that the EMA will "publish a warning about it" but recommend to continue its use. They argue that stopping and starting vaccinations shows people that they should trust it.
"still outweighs" - like there is an ongoing live debate and hmm, we shall see. Then the word "risks". So there ARE risks. And why even mention "blood clots". Those are the two words that scream out. This jab gives you BLOOD CLOTS
Fuckin eejits. Just say "We have decided it is a safe and effective vaccine". Tuck all the other stuff away, which really is trivial in comparison, on some obscure website
Though our own press conference did cover the same ground, with 5 cases of of CVST and DIC in 11 million vaccines. It may well prove to be a very rare side effect, and is certainly needing further surveillance. Whether there are any other risk factors in the cases remains to be seen. Best carry on for now but be vigilant.
Sure, just don't put it in your one big official tweet, that has now been retweeted several thousand times. Madness. Can they not see how it looks? Are they just dim? This is basic PR
By all means inform the public of some very rare, possible, unproven, but scary-sounding risks in a dense Pdf in your hard-to-find website. Not on bloody Twitter.
I do wonder if there is still a faint agenda to smear AZ, in favour of the others, who, of course, make a profit
Their tweet is highly congruent with Whitty in the press conference:
"Professor Chris Whitty said "all of medicine is about the potential risks of a treatment" and says the key question is "are the benefits big enough to justify that".
With the vaccine, there is an "incredibly small potential risk" against "the really very substantial protections these vaccines give".
In order to reassure, you have to stick to the truth.
Don't, ever, get a job in PR. You'd be terrible
Public Health communications is not PR. PR can be a one-off. Public health communications is about enduring trust. Telling the brutal truth is a part of that process, particularly when public anxiety is at its highest. This is, in part, why Trump's downplaying of the pandemic at the outset was so damaging.
I'm with Foxy on this one. You have to give the bad news straight, but then provide the reassurance in the form of what you are doing about it, and what Joe Public can do themselves to help mitigate their personal risk and the risks to their loved ones.
Utter bollocks, PR is PR. When you are reassuring the world about the safety and efficacy of a vaccine, you don't say, in the same tweet, the RISKS of this vaccine are STILL outweighed by the benefits (reaction: RISKS? WHAT RISKS? THERE ARE RISKS???), nor, in the same breath, do you say: but we do know you can get BLOOD CLOTS.
This is why doctors and scientists should never do PR. And, generally, they don't. Wheel them in to make a prepared reassuring statement, then get them back to their stupid labs.
Doubly so in Scotland because everyone knows which party will win the election before it is held.
The likelihood of the SNP losing is zero, so their Parliamentarians also have zero incentive to remove Sturgeon. It might now take the continued (and guaranteed) support of the sock puppets to keep her in office again, but Sturgeon will be back as First Minister. All these inquiries are an irrelevance.
I disagree and expect this will see her out of office in 2021
I would also suggest the Greens may want to keep their distance from Sturgeon
They couldn't even bring themselves to vote against Swinney, they ain't going to bring down the Nats and vote to put Douglas Ross into bat. The notion is laughable.
Here's a possibility (don't laugh).
SNP/Green lose pro-Indy majority.
The 3 Unionist Parties vote down minority SNP Govt.
Everyone votes down minority SCon Govt.
SLab/LibDem/Green minority Govt enters office with Anas as 1st Minister.
Tories abstain and SNP descend into civil war.
Slight problem: Tories abstaining would see SLab minority government voted down too.
Labour will not back a Tory minority government but the Tories might back a minority Labour (+Lib Dem) government. What is needed for a Unionist government, minority or otherwise, is for Labour to overtake the Tories. Its possible but difficult.
So Tories should vote tactically for Labour. In the way we've supported Ian Murray, as we've been doing here in Edinburgh South for a while.
It depends where they are. For the Scottish toon council I am in Angus South. Voting anyone other than Tory would be nuts. For Westminster I am in Dundee West. I may well vote Labour then.
The best hope for Unionism is that Labour starts to win back some of the acres and acres of ground lost to the SNP in the central belt, especially the west. Sarwar is a massive step up on Leonard but so is my daughter's cat and he has never been elected to anything, despite what he clearly thinks. Can Sarwar start to win back those Glasgow seats? A Tory in most of them should vote Labour for the Constituency and Tory on the list.
I was looking at a recent Scottish opinion poll (God, the fun we have in lockdown) and I noticed support for Rejoining the EU in Scotland is 47%. High, but massively down on the Scottish Remain vote in 2016. And who can blame the Scots for being more eurosceptic, after the shite we've seen from Brussels, and EU capitals, in recent months
I wonder if there is an opening here for SLAB. The SNP are committed to Rejoin. Perhaps SLAB, offering UK EEA or EFTA membership (but not Rejoin) might entice a few waverers who don't necessarily want Indy but DO want the Single Market and Freedom of Movement
To me this is the obvious way for Labour to evolve, UK-wide. EEA or EFTA. Clear blue water distancing themselves from the Tories. They can sell it as pro-business (and business will like it) and immigration is not going to be a major issue for a looooooooong time, because Covid
Labour should simply give up on the Red Wall, and go for soft Remainery Tories and Lib Dems in non-WWC England (and soft Nats in Scotland). Patriotic but pragmatic. We will get rid of the red tape.
If Labour tries to reopen the Brexit debate for 2024 they'll lose even worse than in 2019. I'd expect Boris to win a 120+ seat majority. Rejoin (and that's what it will be turned into by the Tory party) will be a real minority interest by then and Labour would be insane to let Boris get the leave band back together.
No, I think the best thing for SLAB to do is simply sidestep the EU debate and pitch on being the lefty unionist voice, not working with the Tories and not working with the SNP and promising not to make Douglas Ross FM if there is a Unionist majority.
How many left-wing Unionists under the age of 50 are there? And what happens if there is this fabled Unionist majority and Labour and the Tories won't vote to yield leadership to each other? Do they form a coalition led by a Lib Dem? It's a total bloody mess.
The knock on consequences of the collapse of Greensill for the Scottish government are genuinely frightening. Guarantees from the Scottish government sitting on hundreds of millions of bonds by an insolvent group which never made money but lived on grants, the vast majority of which money barely touched Scotland, let alone created employment here.
I'm afraid I don't understand that. Please could you explain what it means?
Right. Liberty, a group put together by Mr Gupta, bought up a whole series of steel assets in the UK and elsewhere. Nearly all of these were loss making but they were in areas that politicians were desperate to generate employment so grants and soft loans were a plenty. In Scotland the Scottish government guaranteed the income on loans supposedly for the development of a new green power station which was supposed to help the expansion of an aluminum recycling plant.
The problem is that that the deal that was done was just horrendous. Gupta issued bonds backed by Scottish guarantees and then sold them on the bond market. The money was not used for the power plant or indeed anything else in Scotland. Liberty were funded by Greensill who were another "soft loan" specialist. They are now in administration which means the debts of Liberty may well be called up. If they are then Liberty go bust. If they go bust the guarantees are called upon and nearly £600m of loans have to be made good by the Scottish government. This money would destroy their capital account meaning several fewer hospitals and schools.
Scotland got nothing out of this. Being generous about 100 jobs in the aluminum plant were protected. If the employees had been given £5m each it might have done more for the local economy. Incompetence doesn't come close to describing this.
Thanks for that. I don't expect to hear it on the news if that comes to pass.
The knock on consequences of the collapse of Greensill for the Scottish government are genuinely frightening. Guarantees from the Scottish government sitting on hundreds of millions of bonds by an insolvent group which never made money but lived on grants, the vast majority of which money barely touched Scotland, let alone created employment here.
I'm afraid I don't understand that. Please could you explain what it means?
Right. Liberty, a group put together by Mr Gupta, bought up a whole series of steel assets in the UK and elsewhere. Nearly all of these were loss making but they were in areas that politicians were desperate to generate employment so grants and soft loans were a plenty. In Scotland the Scottish government guaranteed the income on loans supposedly for the development of a new green power station which was supposed to help the expansion of an aluminum recycling plant.
The problem is that that the deal that was done was just horrendous. Gupta issued bonds backed by Scottish guarantees and then sold them on the bond market. The money was not used for the power plant or indeed anything else in Scotland. Liberty were funded by Greensill who were another "soft loan" specialist. They are now in administration which means the debts of Liberty may well be called up. If they are then Liberty go bust. If they go bust the guarantees are called upon and nearly £600m of loans have to be made good by the Scottish government. This money would destroy their capital account meaning several fewer hospitals and schools.
Scotland got nothing out of this. Being generous about 100 jobs in the aluminum plant were protected. If the employees had been given £5m each it might have done more for the local economy. Incompetence doesn't come close to describing this.
Having visited them all I probably go for St Vedast-alias-Foster due to the modest Epstein in the Courtyard and All Hallows on the Wall because the ceiling is like a perfect drawing room."
Like Topping I'd go for Hawksmoor's Christ Church, Spitalfields. Possibly my favourite church in the world, not just London. But is it in the City, technically? I think not
So I'd go for either St Brides, Fleet St (Roman foundations in the cellar!), St Stephen Walbrook - Wrenaissance perfection - or St Bartholomew the Great - medieval and picturesque
It's been doing the rounds on various Slack channels all day.
Wow. That is damning. Who TF would want to work there?
It's still the single most desirable bit of CV experience for anyone in banking/investment. It's the equivalent of having a Harvard or Oxford degree so people put up with the shit for two years.
Their analysts might be working 105 hours per week, but they won't be working well.
I have regularly worked 100 plus hour weeks, fortunately I've had excellent employers and bosses who have rewarded both financially and insisted I take a break/holiday afterwards.
As one chap put it to me, if you're consistently working 80 plus hours you're either not planning/delegating properly and/or you're under resourced.
I did a "1 in 2" for 3 months, 130 hours per week, in General Medicine in 1988. After that an 80 hour week seemed pretty cushy...
I work about 1-2 hours a day. Have never had a proper job (apart from one morning - literally, one, and I was sacked by lunch). The most I work is about 10 hours a day for a week or two, then back to 1-2 hours a day.
BUT, in a very real sense, I am always working. It may look like I am staring vaguely out of the window eating a fine unpasteurised Brie, but I am actually thinking. Gestating. Imagining the next flint sex toy.
Like a cow chewing the cud. Making milk
My late wife RIP...was doing 1 in 2s when I met her, a nightmare for her and for me. It was a form of punishment via sleep deprivation
Appalling ignorance on my part - what does 1 in 2 mean?
A 1 in 2 is an archaic medical rota. On top of the usual working week, you are on call 1 in 2 nights, with usual work the next day, so 32 hours in 48.
Mostly I worked 1 in 3, and one of my House Jobs was a 1 in 4, and considered soft.
Cheers. Sounds appealing from my comfortable university career. I have been moaning* today about not getting* lunch and a long day (8.15 to 6) that doesn’t really seem to cut it now...
Central Scotland looks close. They might only need to increase their vote by +0.7pp there. Glasgow, they might need +2.5pp for an extra seat. Highlands & Islands, +4pp. Lothian, +6pp (?). Mid Scotland & Fife, +6pp (?). North East Scotland, +0.7pp. South Scotland, +0.7pp. West Scotland, +5.9pp.
What odds did you bet at?
They're not currently polling that much better than before the last election, but I'd have thought it would be an obvious shift for some Independence minded voters.
Bear in mind Andy Wightman in H&I - he is not an official Green but might taken a seat from the same broad pool of voters.
AFAIK, The SGP are standing in 10 constituencies this time compared with 3 in 2016. That will give them more mail shots and visibility, and could mean a few more Edinburgh Central type upsets for the SNP.
Doubly so in Scotland because everyone knows which party will win the election before it is held.
The likelihood of the SNP losing is zero, so their Parliamentarians also have zero incentive to remove Sturgeon. It might now take the continued (and guaranteed) support of the sock puppets to keep her in office again, but Sturgeon will be back as First Minister. All these inquiries are an irrelevance.
I disagree and expect this will see her out of office in 2021
I would also suggest the Greens may want to keep their distance from Sturgeon
They couldn't even bring themselves to vote against Swinney, they ain't going to bring down the Nats and vote to put Douglas Ross into bat. The notion is laughable.
Here's a possibility (don't laugh).
SNP/Green lose pro-Indy majority.
The 3 Unionist Parties vote down minority SNP Govt.
Everyone votes down minority SCon Govt.
SLab/LibDem/Green minority Govt enters office with Anas as 1st Minister.
Tories abstain and SNP descend into civil war.
Slight problem: Tories abstaining would see SLab minority government voted down too.
Labour will not back a Tory minority government but the Tories might back a minority Labour (+Lib Dem) government. What is needed for a Unionist government, minority or otherwise, is for Labour to overtake the Tories. Its possible but difficult.
So Tories should vote tactically for Labour. In the way we've supported Ian Murray, as we've been doing here in Edinburgh South for a while.
It depends where they are. For the Scottish toon council I am in Angus South. Voting anyone other than Tory would be nuts. For Westminster I am in Dundee West. I may well vote Labour then.
The best hope for Unionism is that Labour starts to win back some of the acres and acres of ground lost to the SNP in the central belt, especially the west. Sarwar is a massive step up on Leonard but so is my daughter's cat and he has never been elected to anything, despite what he clearly thinks. Can Sarwar start to win back those Glasgow seats? A Tory in most of them should vote Labour for the Constituency and Tory on the list.
I was looking at a recent Scottish opinion poll (God, the fun we have in lockdown) and I noticed support for Rejoining the EU in Scotland is 47%. High, but massively down on the Scottish Remain vote in 2016. And who can blame the Scots for being more eurosceptic, after the shite we've seen from Brussels, and EU capitals, in recent months
I wonder if there is an opening here for SLAB. The SNP are committed to Rejoin. Perhaps SLAB, offering UK EEA or EFTA membership (but not Rejoin) might entice a few waverers who don't necessarily want Indy but DO want the Single Market and Freedom of Movement
To me this is the obvious way for Labour to evolve, UK-wide. EEA or EFTA. Clear blue water distancing themselves from the Tories. They can sell it as pro-business (and business will like it) and immigration is not going to be a major issue for a looooooooong time, because Covid
Labour should simply give up on the Red Wall, and go for soft Remainery Tories and Lib Dems in non-WWC England (and soft Nats in Scotland). Patriotic but pragmatic. We will get rid of the red tape.
If Labour tries to reopen the Brexit debate for 2024 they'll lose even worse than in 2019. I'd expect Boris to win a 120+ seat majority. Rejoin (and that's what it will be turned into by the Tory party) will be a real minority interest by then and Labour would be insane to let Boris get the leave band back together.
No, I think the best thing for SLAB to do is simply sidestep the EU debate and pitch on being the lefty unionist voice, not working with the Tories and not working with the SNP and promising not to make Douglas Ross FM if there is a Unionist majority.
Disagree. There are going to be major Brexit downsides, and unless Covid persists horribly (quite possible) they will become apparent as the tsunami of plague finally recedes. There will also be major upsides to Brexit, but they are some distance away. The pain will, in contrast, be immediate.
At that point rejoining the Single Market and/or CU might suddenly seem very appealing, to many. And could entice a lot of Tory/Lib Dem voters and others in southern England, Wales, Scotland. No, we're not back in the EU, but you get to work and live anywhere in Europe once again! and business can live free of bureaucracy.
A centrist Labour party offering this could win power, I reckon. In 2024. The longer they wait the less appealing this position will be, as the UK fundamentally diverges from Brussels, so there is no way back. But to do it Labour has to abandon the Red Wall and the traditional WWC. They have to accept their party has changed.
This is the only way Labour can hope to win a majority in 2024. They should seize it
The single market comes with free movement of people. That alone will allow Boris to get 45% of the vote again. Labour would be insane to do it and 2024 is a long time away, frankly no one really knows how Brexit will play out in that timeframe. To me the EU has won border pedantry over fish and agriculture, it's "win" over the City looks to be fading fast with listing rules changes and the Bank effectively saying it will simply ignore the lack of equivalence and continue to underwrite euro clearing.
The knock on consequences of the collapse of Greensill for the Scottish government are genuinely frightening. Guarantees from the Scottish government sitting on hundreds of millions of bonds by an insolvent group which never made money but lived on grants, the vast majority of which money barely touched Scotland, let alone created employment here.
I'm afraid I don't understand that. Please could you explain what it means?
Right. Liberty, a group put together by Mr Gupta, bought up a whole series of steel assets in the UK and elsewhere. Nearly all of these were loss making but they were in areas that politicians were desperate to generate employment so grants and soft loans were a plenty. In Scotland the Scottish government guaranteed the income on loans supposedly for the development of a new green power station which was supposed to help the expansion of an aluminum recycling plant.
The problem is that that the deal that was done was just horrendous. Gupta issued bonds backed by Scottish guarantees and then sold them on the bond market. The money was not used for the power plant or indeed anything else in Scotland. Liberty were funded by Greensill who were another "soft loan" specialist. They are now in administration which means the debts of Liberty may well be called up. If they are then Liberty go bust. If they go bust the guarantees are called upon and nearly £600m of loans have to be made good by the Scottish government. This money would destroy their capital account meaning several fewer hospitals and schools.
Scotland got nothing out of this. Being generous about 100 jobs in the aluminum plant were protected. If the employees had been given £5m each it might have done more for the local economy. Incompetence doesn't come close to describing this.
Never mind. I'm sure they'll find a way to blame it on Westminster.
Central Scotland looks close. They might only need to increase their vote by +0.7pp there. Glasgow, they might need +2.5pp for an extra seat. Highlands & Islands, +4pp. Lothian, +6pp (?). Mid Scotland & Fife, +6pp (?). North East Scotland, +0.7pp. South Scotland, +0.7pp. West Scotland, +5.9pp.
What odds did you bet at?
They're not currently polling that much better than before the last election, but I'd have thought it would be an obvious shift for some Independence minded voters.
The first sentence of the German health ministry's message to reassure people about AstraZeneca says that the EMA will "publish a warning about it" but recommend to continue its use. They argue that stopping and starting vaccinations shows people that they should trust it.
"still outweighs" - like there is an ongoing live debate and hmm, we shall see. Then the word "risks". So there ARE risks. And why even mention "blood clots". Those are the two words that scream out. This jab gives you BLOOD CLOTS
Fuckin eejits. Just say "We have decided it is a safe and effective vaccine". Tuck all the other stuff away, which really is trivial in comparison, on some obscure website
Though our own press conference did cover the same ground, with 5 cases of of CVST and DIC in 11 million vaccines. It may well prove to be a very rare side effect, and is certainly needing further surveillance. Whether there are any other risk factors in the cases remains to be seen. Best carry on for now but be vigilant.
5 cases of CVST (Cerebral venous sinus thrombosis - I had to google it) and DIC (Disseminated intravascular coagulation - ditto) after 11 Million vaccines.
How many occurences of CVST and DIC would we expect in 11 million people who weren't being vaccinated?
CVST has an incidence of 3-4 per million per year so 33-44 for 11 million people in a year, so around 1.5 per fortnight, the period that these happened in. The rate in Germany is higher, with 7 cases in fewer vaccinations.
The knock on consequences of the collapse of Greensill for the Scottish government are genuinely frightening. Guarantees from the Scottish government sitting on hundreds of millions of bonds by an insolvent group which never made money but lived on grants, the vast majority of which money barely touched Scotland, let alone created employment here.
I'm afraid I don't understand that. Please could you explain what it means?
Right. Liberty, a group put together by Mr Gupta, bought up a whole series of steel assets in the UK and elsewhere. Nearly all of these were loss making but they were in areas that politicians were desperate to generate employment so grants and soft loans were a plenty. In Scotland the Scottish government guaranteed the income on loans supposedly for the development of a new green power station which was supposed to help the expansion of an aluminum recycling plant.
The problem is that that the deal that was done was just horrendous. Gupta issued bonds backed by Scottish guarantees and then sold them on the bond market. The money was not used for the power plant or indeed anything else in Scotland. Liberty were funded by Greensill who were another "soft loan" specialist. They are now in administration which means the debts of Liberty may well be called up. If they are then Liberty go bust. If they go bust the guarantees are called upon and nearly £600m of loans have to be made good by the Scottish government. This money would destroy their capital account meaning several fewer hospitals and schools.
Scotland got nothing out of this. Being generous about 100 jobs in the aluminum plant were protected. If the employees had been given £5m each it might have done more for the local economy. Incompetence doesn't come close to describing this.
Sanjeev Gupta was in my year at Trinity. He ran a business out of his his room, until the college told him that was in breach of regulations. He then moved into an apartment in town so he could study and work.
He didn't spend much time with us undergraduates who preferred drinking to working.
His business - particularly Liberty Steel - looks like a bit of a basket case, that requires buoyant steel prices to turn even a meagre profit. I suspect it will fold.
The knock on consequences of the collapse of Greensill for the Scottish government are genuinely frightening. Guarantees from the Scottish government sitting on hundreds of millions of bonds by an insolvent group which never made money but lived on grants, the vast majority of which money barely touched Scotland, let alone created employment here.
I'm afraid I don't understand that. Please could you explain what it means?
Right. Liberty, a group put together by Mr Gupta, bought up a whole series of steel assets in the UK and elsewhere. Nearly all of these were loss making but they were in areas that politicians were desperate to generate employment so grants and soft loans were a plenty. In Scotland the Scottish government guaranteed the income on loans supposedly for the development of a new green power station which was supposed to help the expansion of an aluminum recycling plant.
The problem is that that the deal that was done was just horrendous. Gupta issued bonds backed by Scottish guarantees and then sold them on the bond market. The money was not used for the power plant or indeed anything else in Scotland. Liberty were funded by Greensill who were another "soft loan" specialist. They are now in administration which means the debts of Liberty may well be called up. If they are then Liberty go bust. If they go bust the guarantees are called upon and nearly £600m of loans have to be made good by the Scottish government. This money would destroy their capital account meaning several fewer hospitals and schools.
Scotland got nothing out of this. Being generous about 100 jobs in the aluminum plant were protected. If the employees had been given £5m each it might have done more for the local economy. Incompetence doesn't come close to describing this.
Thanks for that. I don't expect to hear it on the news if that comes to pass.
In fairness the business activities of Mr Gupta may not just be a Scottish government problem. His group apparently managed to contrive £400m of loan guarantees from the UK government as well. The UK government has apparently revoked those guarantees on the basis that this was 8x the maximum support legally available for a group. Yes, not a typo, 8. The withdrawal of those guarantees together with the collapse of their rather cosy lender means the end is very likely nigh.
As a man who has clearly put in his 10,000 hours – working with a wide range of partners and producing an indeterminate number of offspring as a result – you’d expect Boris Johnson to be an expert shag. Not the case according to friends of his private technology tutor, Jennifer Arcuri.
Her experience? Over in seconds and “like having sex with a boulder”.
Doubly so in Scotland because everyone knows which party will win the election before it is held.
The likelihood of the SNP losing is zero, so their Parliamentarians also have zero incentive to remove Sturgeon. It might now take the continued (and guaranteed) support of the sock puppets to keep her in office again, but Sturgeon will be back as First Minister. All these inquiries are an irrelevance.
I disagree and expect this will see her out of office in 2021
I would also suggest the Greens may want to keep their distance from Sturgeon
They couldn't even bring themselves to vote against Swinney, they ain't going to bring down the Nats and vote to put Douglas Ross into bat. The notion is laughable.
Here's a possibility (don't laugh).
SNP/Green lose pro-Indy majority.
The 3 Unionist Parties vote down minority SNP Govt.
Everyone votes down minority SCon Govt.
SLab/LibDem/Green minority Govt enters office with Anas as 1st Minister.
Tories abstain and SNP descend into civil war.
Slight problem: Tories abstaining would see SLab minority government voted down too.
Labour will not back a Tory minority government but the Tories might back a minority Labour (+Lib Dem) government. What is needed for a Unionist government, minority or otherwise, is for Labour to overtake the Tories. Its possible but difficult.
So Tories should vote tactically for Labour. In the way we've supported Ian Murray, as we've been doing here in Edinburgh South for a while.
It depends where they are. For the Scottish toon council I am in Angus South. Voting anyone other than Tory would be nuts. For Westminster I am in Dundee West. I may well vote Labour then.
The best hope for Unionism is that Labour starts to win back some of the acres and acres of ground lost to the SNP in the central belt, especially the west. Sarwar is a massive step up on Leonard but so is my daughter's cat and he has never been elected to anything, despite what he clearly thinks. Can Sarwar start to win back those Glasgow seats? A Tory in most of them should vote Labour for the Constituency and Tory on the list.
I was looking at a recent Scottish opinion poll (God, the fun we have in lockdown) and I noticed support for Rejoining the EU in Scotland is 47%. High, but massively down on the Scottish Remain vote in 2016. And who can blame the Scots for being more eurosceptic, after the shite we've seen from Brussels, and EU capitals, in recent months
I wonder if there is an opening here for SLAB. The SNP are committed to Rejoin. Perhaps SLAB, offering UK EEA or EFTA membership (but not Rejoin) might entice a few waverers who don't necessarily want Indy but DO want the Single Market and Freedom of Movement
To me this is the obvious way for Labour to evolve, UK-wide. EEA or EFTA. Clear blue water distancing themselves from the Tories. They can sell it as pro-business (and business will like it) and immigration is not going to be a major issue for a looooooooong time, because Covid
Labour should simply give up on the Red Wall, and go for soft Remainery Tories and Lib Dems in non-WWC England (and soft Nats in Scotland). Patriotic but pragmatic. We will get rid of the red tape.
If Labour tries to reopen the Brexit debate for 2024 they'll lose even worse than in 2019. I'd expect Boris to win a 120+ seat majority. Rejoin (and that's what it will be turned into by the Tory party) will be a real minority interest by then and Labour would be insane to let Boris get the leave band back together.
No, I think the best thing for SLAB to do is simply sidestep the EU debate and pitch on being the lefty unionist voice, not working with the Tories and not working with the SNP and promising not to make Douglas Ross FM if there is a Unionist majority.
Disagree. There are going to be major Brexit downsides, and unless Covid persists horribly (quite possible) they will become apparent as the tsunami of plague finally recedes. There will also be major upsides to Brexit, but they are some distance away. The pain will, in contrast, be immediate.
At that point rejoining the Single Market and/or CU might suddenly seem very appealing, to many. And could entice a lot of Tory/Lib Dem voters and others in southern England, Wales, Scotland. No, we're not back in the EU, but you get to work and live anywhere in Europe once again! and business can live free of bureaucracy.
A centrist Labour party offering this could win power, I reckon. In 2024. The longer they wait the less appealing this position will be, as the UK fundamentally diverges from Brussels, so there is no way back. But to do it Labour has to abandon the Red Wall and the traditional WWC. They have to accept their party has changed.
This is the only way Labour can hope to win a majority in 2024. They should seize it
The single market comes with free movement of people. That alone will allow Boris to get 45% of the vote again. Labour would be insane to do it and 2024 is a long time away, frankly no one really knows how Brexit will play out in that timeframe. To me the EU has won border pedantry over fish and agriculture, it's "win" over the City looks to be fading fast with listing rules changes and the Bank effectively saying it will simply ignore the lack of equivalence and continue to underwrite euro clearing.
Labour won't stand on EEA, though Lib Dems and Greens likely will.
Potentially that could work well for each parties target seats.
The knock on consequences of the collapse of Greensill for the Scottish government are genuinely frightening. Guarantees from the Scottish government sitting on hundreds of millions of bonds by an insolvent group which never made money but lived on grants, the vast majority of which money barely touched Scotland, let alone created employment here.
I'm afraid I don't understand that. Please could you explain what it means?
Right. Liberty, a group put together by Mr Gupta, bought up a whole series of steel assets in the UK and elsewhere. Nearly all of these were loss making but they were in areas that politicians were desperate to generate employment so grants and soft loans were a plenty. In Scotland the Scottish government guaranteed the income on loans supposedly for the development of a new green power station which was supposed to help the expansion of an aluminum recycling plant.
The problem is that that the deal that was done was just horrendous. Gupta issued bonds backed by Scottish guarantees and then sold them on the bond market. The money was not used for the power plant or indeed anything else in Scotland. Liberty were funded by Greensill who were another "soft loan" specialist. They are now in administration which means the debts of Liberty may well be called up. If they are then Liberty go bust. If they go bust the guarantees are called upon and nearly £600m of loans have to be made good by the Scottish government. This money would destroy their capital account meaning several fewer hospitals and schools.
Scotland got nothing out of this. Being generous about 100 jobs in the aluminum plant were protected. If the employees had been given £5m each it might have done more for the local economy. Incompetence doesn't come close to describing this.
Having visited them all I probably go for St Vedast-alias-Foster due to the modest Epstein in the Courtyard and All Hallows on the Wall because the ceiling is like a perfect drawing room."
Like Topping I'd go for Hawksmoor's Christ Church, Spitalfields. Possibly my favourite church in the world, not just London. But is it in the City, technically? I think not
So I'd go for either St Brides, Fleet St (Roman foundations in the cellar!), St Stephen Walbrook - Wrenaissance perfection - or St Bartholomew the Great - medieval and picturesque
It's been doing the rounds on various Slack channels all day.
Wow. That is damning. Who TF would want to work there?
It's still the single most desirable bit of CV experience for anyone in banking/investment. It's the equivalent of having a Harvard or Oxford degree so people put up with the shit for two years.
Their analysts might be working 105 hours per week, but they won't be working well.
I have regularly worked 100 plus hour weeks, fortunately I've had excellent employers and bosses who have rewarded both financially and insisted I take a break/holiday afterwards.
As one chap put it to me, if you're consistently working 80 plus hours you're either not planning/delegating properly and/or you're under resourced.
I did a "1 in 2" for 3 months, 130 hours per week, in General Medicine in 1988. After that an 80 hour week seemed pretty cushy...
I work about 1-2 hours a day. Have never had a proper job (apart from one morning - literally, one, and I was sacked by lunch). The most I work is about 10 hours a day for a week or two, then back to 1-2 hours a day.
BUT, in a very real sense, I am always working. It may look like I am staring vaguely out of the window eating a fine unpasteurised Brie, but I am actually thinking. Gestating. Imagining the next flint sex toy.
Like a cow chewing the cud. Making milk
To be fair, you seem to be mainly posting on here.
Comments
Actually I concede that Dorset is slightly different as when the Dorset unitary was set up, it lost Christchurch to the new combined Bournemouth and Poole unitary, but I think the principle is clear.
I think another slightly obscure favourite is St Mary Moorfields, the only RC church in the City.
So well hidden that you can walk right past it.
As one chap put it to me, if you're consistently working 80 plus hours you're either not planning/delegating properly and/or you're under resourced.
I think part of it depends on the type of work. The data analytics type work frazzles your mind. When it's more routine type work (not any less valuable), then it's perhaps less of a problem.
Though TBF on Twitter the other day someone was calling her Priscilla Dick in a Parl. Committee.
Yes, Salmond has an agenda - but he is also a compelling witness.
Sturgeon is the least convincing witness I can recall. With the possible exception of O J Simpson. Oh ,and a case I worked where I witness changed his story through 10 degrees - and our barrister said nothing, but just drew a small ship, sinking beneath the waves.
I would not want my freedom to be dependent upon Nicola Sturgeon's performance in the witness box.
I can see Westminster deciding that devolution structures need a 25 year service, and setting up a review of Govt and a high powered enquiry into events. That makes sense imo, given the Clusterfick. But would need some careful handling, and some very careful timing. And they have to wait for the whole process to work through first to the end.
But we need to tax their London wealth heavily enough so they can't afford the Midlands
I resent the 100+ week I did over Christmas because of Boris Johnson's Brexit deal because that ruined Christmas.
I did a few 100+ hour weeks in March and April as I rewrote the companies best practices in a WFH and pandemic environment, that took some effort, liaising with regulators and outside counsel as some of the things I was proposing went against 20 years of professional experience.
I found that oddly exhilarating as I felt like I was doing excellent for a higher and noble process as it allowed the firm to successfully operate in a pandemic world which allowed us to trade and avoid any job losses or financial disasters.
I didn't feel tired or stressed.
https://twitter.com/ThreeFiveWho/status/1280094138277511169
The best hope for Unionism is that Labour starts to win back some of the acres and acres of ground lost to the SNP in the central belt, especially the west. Sarwar is a massive step up on Leonard but so is my daughter's cat and he has never been elected to anything, despite what he clearly thinks. Can Sarwar start to win back those Glasgow seats? A Tory in most of them should vote Labour for the Constituency and Tory on the list.
Even the City of London has only half as many churches as before the Fire.
Not sure how the proposals match up against that.
Stupidity in spades. Heath was such a tin-eared DICK
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BFI_Top_100_British_films
Top trolling of the EU
As a benchmark, I have never recommended to anyone that they inject themselves with cleaning products. I don't believe Biden has either.
If you are ever flying over south Devon, don't be surprised to see an arboretum in the shape of a running dog. My neighbour planted thousands of trees in memory of Takka, his favourite dog. A friend had a light aircraft and would take photos, so that my neighbour could tweak it a little.
We have some top neighbours!
BUT, in a very real sense, I am always working. It may look like I am staring vaguely out of the window eating a fine unpasteurised Brie, but I am actually thinking. Gestating. Imagining the next flint sex toy.
Like a cow chewing the cud. Making milk
@rcs1000
Amusing rather than interesting. We’ve been having a giggle at work
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-18/goldman-analysts-work-too-hard
https://assets.bwbx.io/documents/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/rim9z3X.NpYk/v0
"The First Minister came before this Committee and lied and lied and lied again. But she did it so badly, the only people claiming to believe her were the SNP stooges on the Committee. We, the majority of this Committee, were not taken in...."
Aren't Corning on the case of making vials ?
https://twitter.com/darreneuronews/status/1372662904764391424?s=21
I wonder if there is an opening here for SLAB. The SNP are committed to Rejoin. Perhaps SLAB, offering UK EEA or EFTA membership (but not Rejoin) might entice a few waverers who don't necessarily want Indy but DO want the Single Market and Freedom of Movement
To me this is the obvious way for Labour to evolve, UK-wide. EEA or EFTA. Clear blue water distancing themselves from the Tories. They can sell it as pro-business (and business will like it) and immigration is not going to be a major issue for a looooooooong time, because Covid
Labour should simply give up on the Red Wall, and go for soft Remainery Tories and Lib Dems in non-WWC England (and soft Nats in Scotland). Patriotic but pragmatic. We will get rid of the red tape.
@Leon is right, PR has a role in some bits of an economy, but not my cup of tea. I have a Presbyterian soul.
A US private investigator has told BBC News he was paid by the Sun newspaper to obtain personal information about the Duchess of Sussex in the early days of her relationship with Prince Harry.
But Daniel Hanks says he unlawfully accessed detailed information including Meghan's social security number.
The Sun's publisher said it requested legitimate research and instructed Mr Hanks he must act lawfully.
Meghan and Harry said it was a "moment of reflection" for the media industry.
BBC News has seen the so-called "comprehensive report on Meghan and her family" which the investigator, also known as Danno Hanks, passed to the Sun.
It included her phone number, addresses and social security number as well as information on her family members. His report also included information on her ex-husband and a former boyfriend.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56444635
No, I think the best thing for SLAB to do is simply sidestep the EU debate and pitch on being the lefty unionist voice, not working with the Tories and not working with the SNP and promising not to make Douglas Ross FM if there is a Unionist majority.
I often look at people working waaaaaaaaaay harder than me, yet earning a tenth what I do, and I feel an unnamed discomfort. Conscience calling, I think.
I just got lucky. Genetically. I can carve a fine sex toy out of travertine. It could have been the next baby along. Pure dumb stupid luck
I'm with Foxy on this one. You have to give the bad news straight, but then provide the reassurance in the form of what you are doing about it, and what Joe Public can do themselves to help mitigate their personal risk and the risks to their loved ones.
At that point rejoining the Single Market and/or CU might suddenly seem very appealing, to many. And could entice a lot of Tory/Lib Dem voters and others in southern England, Wales, Scotland. No, we're not back in the EU, but you get to work and live anywhere in Europe once again! and business can live free of bureaucracy.
A centrist Labour party offering this could win power, I reckon. In 2024. The longer they wait the less appealing this position will be, as the UK fundamentally diverges from Brussels, so there is no way back. But to do it Labour has to abandon the Red Wall and the traditional WWC. They have to accept their party has changed.
This is the only way Labour can hope to win a majority in 2024. They should seize it
Mostly I worked 1 in 3, and one of my House Jobs was a 1 in 4, and considered soft.
How many occurences of CVST and DIC would we expect in 11 million people who weren't being vaccinated?
The problem is that that the deal that was done was just horrendous. Gupta issued bonds backed by Scottish guarantees and then sold them on the bond market. The money was not used for the power plant or indeed anything else in Scotland. Liberty were funded by Greensill who were another "soft loan" specialist. They are now in administration which means the debts of Liberty may well be called up. If they are then Liberty go bust. If they go bust the guarantees are called upon and nearly £600m of loans have to be made good by the Scottish government. This money would destroy their capital account meaning several fewer hospitals and schools.
Scotland got nothing out of this. Being generous about 100 jobs in the aluminum plant were protected. If the employees had been given £5m each it might have done more for the local economy. Incompetence doesn't come close to describing this.
This is why doctors and scientists should never do PR. And, generally, they don't. Wheel them in to make a prepared reassuring statement, then get them back to their stupid labs.
It may be a genuine rare side effect.
He didn't spend much time with us undergraduates who preferred drinking to working.
His business - particularly Liberty Steel - looks like a bit of a basket case, that requires buoyant steel prices to turn even a meagre profit. I suspect it will fold.
Her experience? Over in seconds and “like having sex with a boulder”.
Potentially that could work well for each parties target seats.