My father who was born in the 1920s to an upper middle class family used to say (which always seemed disgustingly snobby to me) that the British working class like to be led by the "officer class", i.e. those that some might regard as "toffs", and that in the army they didn't like it if an officer had "risen from the ranks". Looking at what seems for me an inexplicable appeal of Johnson in what are essentially working class seats, I am beginning to wonder if he was correct?!
Brexit has lead to higher wages for working people, reduced immigration, greater investment in the north, and a rethink in Westminster on taking the sociocultural concerns of those outside the big cities seriously.
As far as they're concerned voting for Brexit has worked perfectly.
There's something in that, but it overthinks it. Many people aren't very interested in politics and indeed actively dislike it. They quite like the fact that Johnson is breezy and sweary and at casual inspection seems to be doing OK - Brexit has happened, the pandemic has declined, the economy hasn't collapsed. I don't think they necessarily think about it much beyond that. Starmer being earnest or Cummings writing long blogs seem irrelevant noise to many people.
I never let any vehicle powered by a 3.0 M54 BMW engine out a junction because I have strongly held issues with the inlet manifold design.
As a much younger man I would often weep at the thought of the criminally incompetent cylinder head design and concomitantly miserable airflow numbers of the Rover V8.
Regardless of any other merit, the Sunak interview got GB News into the papers, which was probably its main aim.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 8h This is the most uncomfortable I’ve seen Rishi Sunak in quite a while.
Sunak fans ould pause and watch the clip Dan Hodges has there. Looking well under pressure over £10K bill for new boilers for every family.
As Sunak says, what £10k bill? He rightly pointed out that (a) "costs" always get balanced against "opportunity" and whatever the cost is now won't be the cost by the time they are rolling it out.
Isn't the problem with retrofitting heat pumps that the radiators need to be replaced by bigger ones too, because of the lower operating temperature of the system?
So, opportunity - British design and manufacturing of all these new pumps and radiators, British installation of them. Which will generate a bucket load of money for the economy.
Neil is a dinosaur, asking the tired "how much will it cost" question not interested in "how much will it save" and "how much will doing nothing cost".
The majority of voters, especially the working classes and the Red Wall, care very much about the cost.
It’s also fair to ask why the British consumer is being asked to contribute so much, when the same isn’t true of much larger countries such as the US and China.
Having spent 15 years in a red wall WC town I am aware of this. "We can't afford it" has been drilled into them by opportunistic Tories to destroy Labour as the party who wastes money. Job done, the red wall is blue. Now then, we need to hose the blue wall with money. But "we can't afford it" and "how much will it cost".
I've had punters arguing on Facebook against spending money regenerating their own high street. The more the regen progresses and the more it gets lauded by experts as the model for other towns the more they shriek about the costs.
We either invest in stuff or we stay broken and crap. There is no £10k per household bill and the people asking the question know this. As for "why us and not China" we don't live in China. Our kids don't go to school in China. People have benefited massively from various clean air measures yet so many of our kids still go to schools where they breathe polluted air. Time to do more for their sake and let China do their own thing.
I do sometimes wonder whether a form of self-hatred or Stockholm syndrome has taken over with elements of the English working class. It's like they don't think they deserve any better. Even Brexit - touted as the second peasants' revolt by folk on here, seems to be more about hurting other people (foreigners, Londoners, the 'metropolitan elite') than anything else.
I suspect a lot of them want "higher wages" and by removing a pool of cheap accessible labour from the market they may very well get them.
And people think they're thick....
Yes, indeed they ARE getting them. Wages for the C2s and Ds have risen in a way not seen in the last 20 years.
It's so simple, and has happened time and time again in British history. When there are fewer people to do the skilled labour and/or the grunt work, the wages commanded for that work increase and the lot of those workers improves.
There has been a lot of magical thinking in my lifetime that immigration makes us richer and to say otherwise is somehow taboo. It increases our GDP, sure, because there are more of us. And if you're trying to employ someone you can do it more cheaply. I remember a geography GCSE question in which I was invited to discuss the benefits to the UK of immigration - the drawbacks weren't to be mentioned. But in reality it doesn't do a lot for most individual Britons.
Wages are higher in certain sectors because of a shortage of labour. Thats only partially due to "forriners go home" Brexit effects - the logistics industry is suffering because of IR35 just as much.
The harsh light of day for the British worker is that there are a stack of jobs they just don't want to do. We had to open the door to EU staff in the first place because locals don't want to clean offices or serve coffee or look after the elderly or work in a factory.
Now that some EU workers have left there is a shortage which is driving wages higher - but isn't filling the shortages because people still don't want those jobs.
So that would mean infections 5-6 days prior. So like 1/2nd June.
Around the time the security staff and event crew started arriving, yes...
A couple of hundred security staff or tens of thousands of holiday makers?
This increase is pre-G7. Much larger surge than previous holiday weeks. Probably due to Delta passing much more easily between individuals; far less contact being required. Data suggests it’s 2.4 times easier to catch than last year’s edition. Also, single dose only 33% efficacy.
I was about to say that graph looks suspiciously truncated to get a nice dramatic uptick at the end but actually it looks like Cornwall is about to go over their 7-day average November peak soon.
I never let any vehicle powered by a 3.0 M54 BMW engine out a junction because I have strongly held issues with the inlet manifold design.
As a much younger man I would often weep at the thought of the criminally incompetent cylinder head design and concomitantly miserable airflow numbers of the Rover V8.
People expected the Dom Affair to end badly, but this really is spectacular. The strange thing is that Hancock is one of the less incompetent members of the cabinet, including Johnson himself.
The Star (!) probably sums it up best:
You could tell the story of Dominic Cummings and Covid entirely with the Daily Star headlines. It has been superb.
Yesterday at the end of the thread on B & S and after PMQ's I posted this and I just wanted to repeat it as it does provide an insight into my attitude to Boris and covid. It is maybe a way of saying I am not at all a fan of Boris but I am a conservative loyalist and at present I do not see how he is replaced.
I thought Boris looked shattered at PMQ's and his defence v Starmer was huff and puff when really there is actually a good evidence based case, as shown on here that the borders were not left open, as Delta had nor been identified as such, at the dates Starmer referred to
Indeed, he is providing more credence to those who say he is just a PR PM and does not do detail or understand it
Even I could have made a better case v Starmer today than he got anywhere near to
I did not vote for brexit, nor for Boris as leader, but I accept brexit was a democratic vote and now have been convinced leaving was the correct thing to do and not to look back
As I have said on many occasions, I want Rishi as leader and as soon as possible.
Indeed I would not be averse to Jeremy Hunt or Liz Truss
However, I do not know how Boris is removed or when and as a loyal conservative I will continue to support the party but expect Boris to release us (English anyway) on the 19th July and for him to accept that we cannot beat covid, (it will be with us for decades) and affirm vaccination is our passport to freedom, though personally I would not permit foreign travel before 2022
Furthermore, I fully support the compulsory vaccination of all care home workers as we cannot put at risk those who depend on this sector as happened across the UK at the beginning of this most dreadful disease
Of course, should Boris lose C&A and not take B&S from labour, the political narrative would change
Laughable revisionist history. "The borders were not left open". Seriously?
Borders were "left open" if by that you mean that there has always throughout this crisis been some flights coming in. The volume, however, has been greatly reduced.
For all this period foreign nationals have been allowed to travel in, with conditions, while UK citizens have mostly been barred from leaving the country (with some occupational/specific situation exemptions). Putting it another way, the UK government has disadvantaged its own citizens verses citizens of other countries - a factor to examine in any public enquiry I would think.
"Closing the borders" is a simplistic term used by those looking for a scapegoat (who often have no desire to leave the county themselves but are relishing clipping the wings of those that do). Not even Aus and NZ closed borders entirely. The virus with all its variants will find a way in anyway.
We are (finally) doing what Aus and NZ have successfully done. Previously we allowed flights to come in from pox-ridden countries and not even do basic checks or take details of passengers. Don't quote the locator form at me, ineffective and not even partially implemented. Pox was walked freely across the UK border from India or elsewhere to infect us here. That is what Big_G claims is the border not being left open.
Now? You can fly in from poxland. Stand in a long queue of passengers at the border to spread the pox to people arriving from "safer" countries. And then be taken off to a quarantine hotel. Its as good as we're going to manage and could have been done far far sooner. The pox was in India, we knew it, Shagger wouldn't shut them down because trade mission. Which is how the Indian variant - now Delta - got here.
Delta was always going to get here.
"Now? You can fly in from poxland." - yes but you realise that the only people allowed to fly in have already tested negative for Covid before departure point?
We all know that gold standard or not, PCR is not remotely definitive. Sadly. I am not saying any of these decisions are easy. My argument is always that logic has to be applied. If x then x. We shut down entry from Pakistan and Bangladesh but left open India whose case rate per million was 2 - 4x higher than those countries. Arguments over "ah but they only defined Delta weeks later" are irrelevant. Indians were dying en masse from Covid regardless of whether we had managed to pin down the exact strain by then.
The action of closing our borders had to be a result of Sage identifying Delta as a variant of concern
Please quote the evidence and timeline to HMG when they did that and when the border closed
It is easy to blame Boris and HMG but neither Boris or HMG could take this step without scientists and sages backing
And of course the enquiry in years to come will provide the conclusion on this part of the covid story
"The action of closing our borders had to be a result of Sage identifying Delta as a variant of concern" - so we shut the borders to Pakistan and Bangladesh because Sage identified Delta in them?
Its. Laughable. Mate. You will defend literally anything.
Not really
I want independent factual evidence and the argument is when the more deadly Delta variant was identified by Sage and when Sage actually asked for the borders to be closed
Thanks. I managed to miss this last night as well. Rishi is extremely articulate and very comfortable dealing with the debate. Some of his answers are verging on the glib and there is no doubt at all that the pressure on public spending is going to be immense for at least a decade but he gives the impression of having a clear over view which gives some confidence.
A good interview all round although the set was once again pretty dismal.
GBnews sets are dreadful and they need to address them and their technical glitches
But, the chat is quite good.
There was a very fair discussion on White Privilege this morning with Katherine Birbalsingh, and it was very measured. Making points @rcs1000 and @MaxPB have made in a reasonable way.
There's nothing extremist about it. It's just that plenty of those on the radical Left don't want their shibboleths challenged, so they're trying to shut it down at source.
Actually I have been quite impressed with some of the discussion and I did listen to that one this morning and agree with your conclusion
Just get the sets light and airy and pleasing to the eye
Yesterday at the end of the thread on B & S and after PMQ's I posted this and I just wanted to repeat it as it does provide an insight into my attitude to Boris and covid. It is maybe a way of saying I am not at all a fan of Boris but I am a conservative loyalist and at present I do not see how he is replaced.
I thought Boris looked shattered at PMQ's and his defence v Starmer was huff and puff when really there is actually a good evidence based case, as shown on here that the borders were not left open, as Delta had nor been identified as such, at the dates Starmer referred to
Indeed, he is providing more credence to those who say he is just a PR PM and does not do detail or understand it
Even I could have made a better case v Starmer today than he got anywhere near to
I did not vote for brexit, nor for Boris as leader, but I accept brexit was a democratic vote and now have been convinced leaving was the correct thing to do and not to look back
As I have said on many occasions, I want Rishi as leader and as soon as possible.
Indeed I would not be averse to Jeremy Hunt or Liz Truss
However, I do not know how Boris is removed or when and as a loyal conservative I will continue to support the party but expect Boris to release us (English anyway) on the 19th July and for him to accept that we cannot beat covid, (it will be with us for decades) and affirm vaccination is our passport to freedom, though personally I would not permit foreign travel before 2022
Furthermore, I fully support the compulsory vaccination of all care home workers as we cannot put at risk those who depend on this sector as happened across the UK at the beginning of this most dreadful disease
Of course, should Boris lose C&A and not take B&S from labour, the political narrative would change
Laughable revisionist history. "The borders were not left open". Seriously?
Borders were "left open" if by that you mean that there has always throughout this crisis been some flights coming in. The volume, however, has been greatly reduced.
For all this period foreign nationals have been allowed to travel in, with conditions, while UK citizens have mostly been barred from leaving the country (with some occupational/specific situation exemptions). Putting it another way, the UK government has disadvantaged its own citizens verses citizens of other countries - a factor to examine in any public enquiry I would think.
"Closing the borders" is a simplistic term used by those looking for a scapegoat (who often have no desire to leave the county themselves but are relishing clipping the wings of those that do). Not even Aus and NZ closed borders entirely. The virus with all its variants will find a way in anyway.
We are (finally) doing what Aus and NZ have successfully done. Previously we allowed flights to come in from pox-ridden countries and not even do basic checks or take details of passengers. Don't quote the locator form at me, ineffective and not even partially implemented. Pox was walked freely across the UK border from India or elsewhere to infect us here. That is what Big_G claims is the border not being left open.
Now? You can fly in from poxland. Stand in a long queue of passengers at the border to spread the pox to people arriving from "safer" countries. And then be taken off to a quarantine hotel. Its as good as we're going to manage and could have been done far far sooner. The pox was in India, we knew it, Shagger wouldn't shut them down because trade mission. Which is how the Indian variant - now Delta - got here.
Delta was always going to get here.
"Now? You can fly in from poxland." - yes but you realise that the only people allowed to fly in have already tested negative for Covid before departure point?
We all know that gold standard or not, PCR is not remotely definitive. Sadly. I am not saying any of these decisions are easy. My argument is always that logic has to be applied. If x then x. We shut down entry from Pakistan and Bangladesh but left open India whose case rate per million was 2 - 4x higher than those countries. Arguments over "ah but they only defined Delta weeks later" are irrelevant. Indians were dying en masse from Covid regardless of whether we had managed to pin down the exact strain by then.
The action of closing our borders had to be a result of Sage identifying Delta as a variant of concern
Please quote the evidence and timeline to HMG when they did that and when the border closed
It is easy to blame Boris and HMG but neither Boris or HMG could take this step without scientists and sages backing
And of course the enquiry in years to come will provide the conclusion on this part of the covid story
No, the policy was all wrong. By the time we have identified a variant as a variant of concern it would be too late. As people were saying at the time, you need to close the borders to places with high rates of infection, because those are the places where there will be the greatest number of mutations, and the consequent greater chance of creation of new variants that would be, concerning, once you've had a few months to watch and study them. But best for that observation not to happen within the UK.
Yesterday at the end of the thread on B & S and after PMQ's I posted this and I just wanted to repeat it as it does provide an insight into my attitude to Boris and covid. It is maybe a way of saying I am not at all a fan of Boris but I am a conservative loyalist and at present I do not see how he is replaced.
I thought Boris looked shattered at PMQ's and his defence v Starmer was huff and puff when really there is actually a good evidence based case, as shown on here that the borders were not left open, as Delta had nor been identified as such, at the dates Starmer referred to
Indeed, he is providing more credence to those who say he is just a PR PM and does not do detail or understand it
Even I could have made a better case v Starmer today than he got anywhere near to
I did not vote for brexit, nor for Boris as leader, but I accept brexit was a democratic vote and now have been convinced leaving was the correct thing to do and not to look back
As I have said on many occasions, I want Rishi as leader and as soon as possible.
Indeed I would not be averse to Jeremy Hunt or Liz Truss
However, I do not know how Boris is removed or when and as a loyal conservative I will continue to support the party but expect Boris to release us (English anyway) on the 19th July and for him to accept that we cannot beat covid, (it will be with us for decades) and affirm vaccination is our passport to freedom, though personally I would not permit foreign travel before 2022
Furthermore, I fully support the compulsory vaccination of all care home workers as we cannot put at risk those who depend on this sector as happened across the UK at the beginning of this most dreadful disease
Of course, should Boris lose C&A and not take B&S from labour, the political narrative would change
Laughable revisionist history. "The borders were not left open". Seriously?
Borders were "left open" if by that you mean that there has always throughout this crisis been some flights coming in. The volume, however, has been greatly reduced.
For all this period foreign nationals have been allowed to travel in, with conditions, while UK citizens have mostly been barred from leaving the country (with some occupational/specific situation exemptions). Putting it another way, the UK government has disadvantaged its own citizens verses citizens of other countries - a factor to examine in any public enquiry I would think.
"Closing the borders" is a simplistic term used by those looking for a scapegoat (who often have no desire to leave the county themselves but are relishing clipping the wings of those that do). Not even Aus and NZ closed borders entirely. The virus with all its variants will find a way in anyway.
We are (finally) doing what Aus and NZ have successfully done. Previously we allowed flights to come in from pox-ridden countries and not even do basic checks or take details of passengers. Don't quote the locator form at me, ineffective and not even partially implemented. Pox was walked freely across the UK border from India or elsewhere to infect us here. That is what Big_G claims is the border not being left open.
Now? You can fly in from poxland. Stand in a long queue of passengers at the border to spread the pox to people arriving from "safer" countries. And then be taken off to a quarantine hotel. Its as good as we're going to manage and could have been done far far sooner. The pox was in India, we knew it, Shagger wouldn't shut them down because trade mission. Which is how the Indian variant - now Delta - got here.
Delta was always going to get here.
"Now? You can fly in from poxland." - yes but you realise that the only people allowed to fly in have already tested negative for Covid before departure point?
We all know that gold standard or not, PCR is not remotely definitive. Sadly. I am not saying any of these decisions are easy. My argument is always that logic has to be applied. If x then x. We shut down entry from Pakistan and Bangladesh but left open India whose case rate per million was 2 - 4x higher than those countries. Arguments over "ah but they only defined Delta weeks later" are irrelevant. Indians were dying en masse from Covid regardless of whether we had managed to pin down the exact strain by then.
The action of closing our borders had to be a result of Sage identifying Delta as a variant of concern
Please quote the evidence and timeline to HMG when they did that and when the border closed
It is easy to blame Boris and HMG but neither Boris or HMG could take this step without scientists and sages backing
And of course the enquiry in years to come will provide the conclusion on this part of the covid story
What utter crap.
You can and should restrict travel when risk increases.
And risk clearly increased with the increase in infection in India.
If you have to wait for a new variant to be detected and proclaimed a variant of concern then by definition you have to let in enter the country weeks before you take any action.
Well I would suggest you input your wisdom to sage
Thanks. I managed to miss this last night as well. Rishi is extremely articulate and very comfortable dealing with the debate. Some of his answers are verging on the glib and there is no doubt at all that the pressure on public spending is going to be immense for at least a decade but he gives the impression of having a clear over view which gives some confidence.
A good interview all round although the set was once again pretty dismal.
GBnews sets are dreadful and they need to address them and their technical glitches
It’s definitely been thrown together in short order. The set is clearly not finished properly, and the crew haven’t had sufficient time to get used to their equipment.
Every producer should know you never have a live feed of public comments going straight to presenters, otherwise Hugh Janus and Mike Hunt will be messaging in all the time.
Still no YouTube live feed either, only the crap jittery Simplestream one on their own website.
Curious thing is that GBN are making these sort of mistakes that you would traditionally expect those on the left to make. Naivety about the viewing public, trying to do too much with clearly insufficient money and assuming that devotion to the cause is more important than technical competence.
Its got to be a spoof. If my journalism school 25 years ago could manage basics like sufficient set lighting and functional microphones then surely GBN can now.
I’ve spent a fair bit of the last 15 months setting up WFH environments for executives, who need to look the part on conference calls. It’s really not difficult to get the basics of sound and light working.
Of course, now they’re actually live at GBN, changing things around becomes a real pain in the arse, as they only have a few hours in the middle of the night to do any work.
I am not sure keeping the borders open to India because the PM wanted a trade deal necessarily made any difference to our case rate now, but the PM's apparent reason for doing so is outrageous.
Regardless of any other merit, the Sunak interview got GB News into the papers, which was probably its main aim.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 8h This is the most uncomfortable I’ve seen Rishi Sunak in quite a while.
Sunak fans ould pause and watch the clip Dan Hodges has there. Looking well under pressure over £10K bill for new boilers for every family.
As Sunak says, what £10k bill? He rightly pointed out that (a) "costs" always get balanced against "opportunity" and whatever the cost is now won't be the cost by the time they are rolling it out.
Isn't the problem with retrofitting heat pumps that the radiators need to be replaced by bigger ones too, because of the lower operating temperature of the system?
So, opportunity - British design and manufacturing of all these new pumps and radiators, British installation of them. Which will generate a bucket load of money for the economy.
Neil is a dinosaur, asking the tired "how much will it cost" question not interested in "how much will it save" and "how much will doing nothing cost".
The majority of voters, especially the working classes and the Red Wall, care very much about the cost.
It’s also fair to ask why the British consumer is being asked to contribute so much, when the same isn’t true of much larger countries such as the US and China.
Having spent 15 years in a red wall WC town I am aware of this. "We can't afford it" has been drilled into them by opportunistic Tories to destroy Labour as the party who wastes money. Job done, the red wall is blue. Now then, we need to hose the blue wall with money. But "we can't afford it" and "how much will it cost".
I've had punters arguing on Facebook against spending money regenerating their own high street. The more the regen progresses and the more it gets lauded by experts as the model for other towns the more they shriek about the costs.
We either invest in stuff or we stay broken and crap. There is no £10k per household bill and the people asking the question know this. As for "why us and not China" we don't live in China. Our kids don't go to school in China. People have benefited massively from various clean air measures yet so many of our kids still go to schools where they breathe polluted air. Time to do more for their sake and let China do their own thing.
I do sometimes wonder whether a form of self-hatred or Stockholm syndrome has taken over with elements of the English working class. It's like they don't think they deserve any better. Even Brexit - touted as the second peasants' revolt by folk on here, seems to be more about hurting other people (foreigners, Londoners, the 'metropolitan elite') than anything else.
I suspect a lot of them want "higher wages" and by removing a pool of cheap accessible labour from the market they may very well get them.
And people think they're thick....
Yes, indeed they ARE getting them. Wages for the C2s and Ds have risen in a way not seen in the last 20 years.
It's so simple, and has happened time and time again in British history. When there are fewer people to do the skilled labour and/or the grunt work, the wages commanded for that work increase and the lot of those workers improves.
There has been a lot of magical thinking in my lifetime that immigration makes us richer and to say otherwise is somehow taboo. It increases our GDP, sure, because there are more of us. And if you're trying to employ someone you can do it more cheaply. I remember a geography GCSE question in which I was invited to discuss the benefits to the UK of immigration - the drawbacks weren't to be mentioned. But in reality it doesn't do a lot for most individual Britons.
Wages are higher in certain sectors because of a shortage of labour. Thats only partially due to "forriners go home" Brexit effects - the logistics industry is suffering because of IR35 just as much.
The harsh light of day for the British worker is that there are a stack of jobs they just don't want to do. We had to open the door to EU staff in the first place because locals don't want to clean offices or serve coffee or look after the elderly or work in a factory.
Now that some EU workers have left there is a shortage which is driving wages higher - but isn't filling the shortages because people still don't want those jobs.
Living on the backs of cheap EU labour is over, and in the end the pay will have to increase to attract the workers
Yesterday at the end of the thread on B & S and after PMQ's I posted this and I just wanted to repeat it as it does provide an insight into my attitude to Boris and covid. It is maybe a way of saying I am not at all a fan of Boris but I am a conservative loyalist and at present I do not see how he is replaced.
I thought Boris looked shattered at PMQ's and his defence v Starmer was huff and puff when really there is actually a good evidence based case, as shown on here that the borders were not left open, as Delta had nor been identified as such, at the dates Starmer referred to
Indeed, he is providing more credence to those who say he is just a PR PM and does not do detail or understand it
Even I could have made a better case v Starmer today than he got anywhere near to
I did not vote for brexit, nor for Boris as leader, but I accept brexit was a democratic vote and now have been convinced leaving was the correct thing to do and not to look back
As I have said on many occasions, I want Rishi as leader and as soon as possible.
Indeed I would not be averse to Jeremy Hunt or Liz Truss
However, I do not know how Boris is removed or when and as a loyal conservative I will continue to support the party but expect Boris to release us (English anyway) on the 19th July and for him to accept that we cannot beat covid, (it will be with us for decades) and affirm vaccination is our passport to freedom, though personally I would not permit foreign travel before 2022
Furthermore, I fully support the compulsory vaccination of all care home workers as we cannot put at risk those who depend on this sector as happened across the UK at the beginning of this most dreadful disease
Of course, should Boris lose C&A and not take B&S from labour, the political narrative would change
Laughable revisionist history. "The borders were not left open". Seriously?
Borders were "left open" if by that you mean that there has always throughout this crisis been some flights coming in. The volume, however, has been greatly reduced.
For all this period foreign nationals have been allowed to travel in, with conditions, while UK citizens have mostly been barred from leaving the country (with some occupational/specific situation exemptions). Putting it another way, the UK government has disadvantaged its own citizens verses citizens of other countries - a factor to examine in any public enquiry I would think.
"Closing the borders" is a simplistic term used by those looking for a scapegoat (who often have no desire to leave the county themselves but are relishing clipping the wings of those that do). Not even Aus and NZ closed borders entirely. The virus with all its variants will find a way in anyway.
We are (finally) doing what Aus and NZ have successfully done. Previously we allowed flights to come in from pox-ridden countries and not even do basic checks or take details of passengers. Don't quote the locator form at me, ineffective and not even partially implemented. Pox was walked freely across the UK border from India or elsewhere to infect us here. That is what Big_G claims is the border not being left open.
Now? You can fly in from poxland. Stand in a long queue of passengers at the border to spread the pox to people arriving from "safer" countries. And then be taken off to a quarantine hotel. Its as good as we're going to manage and could have been done far far sooner. The pox was in India, we knew it, Shagger wouldn't shut them down because trade mission. Which is how the Indian variant - now Delta - got here.
Delta was always going to get here.
"Now? You can fly in from poxland." - yes but you realise that the only people allowed to fly in have already tested negative for Covid before departure point?
We all know that gold standard or not, PCR is not remotely definitive. Sadly. I am not saying any of these decisions are easy. My argument is always that logic has to be applied. If x then x. We shut down entry from Pakistan and Bangladesh but left open India whose case rate per million was 2 - 4x higher than those countries. Arguments over "ah but they only defined Delta weeks later" are irrelevant. Indians were dying en masse from Covid regardless of whether we had managed to pin down the exact strain by then.
The action of closing our borders had to be a result of Sage identifying Delta as a variant of concern
Please quote the evidence and timeline to HMG when they did that and when the border closed
It is easy to blame Boris and HMG but neither Boris or HMG could take this step without scientists and sages backing
And of course the enquiry in years to come will provide the conclusion on this part of the covid story
What utter crap.
You can and should restrict travel when risk increases.
And risk clearly increased with the increase in infection in India.
If you have to wait for a new variant to be detected and proclaimed a variant of concern then by definition you have to let in enter the country weeks before you take any action.
Well I would suggest you input your wisdom to sage
Or how about the government looks at some data and shows some leadership rather than continually hiding behind the incompetents at sage.
If India was kept off the red list because we had not identified the India variant, why were other countries put on the red list despite not having variants of their own?
We know BoZo wanted a trade deal, and we know that's why he fucked this one up.
Yesterday at the end of the thread on B & S and after PMQ's I posted this and I just wanted to repeat it as it does provide an insight into my attitude to Boris and covid. It is maybe a way of saying I am not at all a fan of Boris but I am a conservative loyalist and at present I do not see how he is replaced.
I thought Boris looked shattered at PMQ's and his defence v Starmer was huff and puff when really there is actually a good evidence based case, as shown on here that the borders were not left open, as Delta had nor been identified as such, at the dates Starmer referred to
Indeed, he is providing more credence to those who say he is just a PR PM and does not do detail or understand it
Even I could have made a better case v Starmer today than he got anywhere near to
I did not vote for brexit, nor for Boris as leader, but I accept brexit was a democratic vote and now have been convinced leaving was the correct thing to do and not to look back
As I have said on many occasions, I want Rishi as leader and as soon as possible.
Indeed I would not be averse to Jeremy Hunt or Liz Truss
However, I do not know how Boris is removed or when and as a loyal conservative I will continue to support the party but expect Boris to release us (English anyway) on the 19th July and for him to accept that we cannot beat covid, (it will be with us for decades) and affirm vaccination is our passport to freedom, though personally I would not permit foreign travel before 2022
Furthermore, I fully support the compulsory vaccination of all care home workers as we cannot put at risk those who depend on this sector as happened across the UK at the beginning of this most dreadful disease
Of course, should Boris lose C&A and not take B&S from labour, the political narrative would change
Laughable revisionist history. "The borders were not left open". Seriously?
Borders were "left open" if by that you mean that there has always throughout this crisis been some flights coming in. The volume, however, has been greatly reduced.
For all this period foreign nationals have been allowed to travel in, with conditions, while UK citizens have mostly been barred from leaving the country (with some occupational/specific situation exemptions). Putting it another way, the UK government has disadvantaged its own citizens verses citizens of other countries - a factor to examine in any public enquiry I would think.
"Closing the borders" is a simplistic term used by those looking for a scapegoat (who often have no desire to leave the county themselves but are relishing clipping the wings of those that do). Not even Aus and NZ closed borders entirely. The virus with all its variants will find a way in anyway.
We are (finally) doing what Aus and NZ have successfully done. Previously we allowed flights to come in from pox-ridden countries and not even do basic checks or take details of passengers. Don't quote the locator form at me, ineffective and not even partially implemented. Pox was walked freely across the UK border from India or elsewhere to infect us here. That is what Big_G claims is the border not being left open.
Now? You can fly in from poxland. Stand in a long queue of passengers at the border to spread the pox to people arriving from "safer" countries. And then be taken off to a quarantine hotel. Its as good as we're going to manage and could have been done far far sooner. The pox was in India, we knew it, Shagger wouldn't shut them down because trade mission. Which is how the Indian variant - now Delta - got here.
Delta was always going to get here.
"Now? You can fly in from poxland." - yes but you realise that the only people allowed to fly in have already tested negative for Covid before departure point?
We all know that gold standard or not, PCR is not remotely definitive. Sadly. I am not saying any of these decisions are easy. My argument is always that logic has to be applied. If x then x. We shut down entry from Pakistan and Bangladesh but left open India whose case rate per million was 2 - 4x higher than those countries. Arguments over "ah but they only defined Delta weeks later" are irrelevant. Indians were dying en masse from Covid regardless of whether we had managed to pin down the exact strain by then.
The action of closing our borders had to be a result of Sage identifying Delta as a variant of concern
Please quote the evidence and timeline to HMG when they did that and when the border closed
It is easy to blame Boris and HMG but neither Boris or HMG could take this step without scientists and sages backing
And of course the enquiry in years to come will provide the conclusion on this part of the covid story
What utter crap.
You can and should restrict travel when risk increases.
And risk clearly increased with the increase in infection in India.
If you have to wait for a new variant to be detected and proclaimed a variant of concern then by definition you have to let in enter the country weeks before you take any action.
At the time that Bangladesh and Pakistan were put on the red list the rate of infection in India was lower than almost any nation in the EU, half the rate of Pakistan and less than a third of the rate of Bangladesh.
I do think and said at the time the border should have been closed with all nations including the EU and if that was done then the Indian variant could have been prevented. However there was no evidence based reason at the end of March to single out India.
Thanks. I managed to miss this last night as well. Rishi is extremely articulate and very comfortable dealing with the debate. Some of his answers are verging on the glib and there is no doubt at all that the pressure on public spending is going to be immense for at least a decade but he gives the impression of having a clear over view which gives some confidence.
A good interview all round although the set was once again pretty dismal.
GBnews sets are dreadful and they need to address them and their technical glitches
It was good to see AN and Michael Portillo together again.
Regardless of any other merit, the Sunak interview got GB News into the papers, which was probably its main aim.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 8h This is the most uncomfortable I’ve seen Rishi Sunak in quite a while.
Sunak fans ould pause and watch the clip Dan Hodges has there. Looking well under pressure over £10K bill for new boilers for every family.
As Sunak says, what £10k bill? He rightly pointed out that (a) "costs" always get balanced against "opportunity" and whatever the cost is now won't be the cost by the time they are rolling it out.
Isn't the problem with retrofitting heat pumps that the radiators need to be replaced by bigger ones too, because of the lower operating temperature of the system?
So, opportunity - British design and manufacturing of all these new pumps and radiators, British installation of them. Which will generate a bucket load of money for the economy.
Neil is a dinosaur, asking the tired "how much will it cost" question not interested in "how much will it save" and "how much will doing nothing cost".
The majority of voters, especially the working classes and the Red Wall, care very much about the cost.
It’s also fair to ask why the British consumer is being asked to contribute so much, when the same isn’t true of much larger countries such as the US and China.
Having spent 15 years in a red wall WC town I am aware of this. "We can't afford it" has been drilled into them by opportunistic Tories to destroy Labour as the party who wastes money. Job done, the red wall is blue. Now then, we need to hose the blue wall with money. But "we can't afford it" and "how much will it cost".
I've had punters arguing on Facebook against spending money regenerating their own high street. The more the regen progresses and the more it gets lauded by experts as the model for other towns the more they shriek about the costs.
We either invest in stuff or we stay broken and crap. There is no £10k per household bill and the people asking the question know this. As for "why us and not China" we don't live in China. Our kids don't go to school in China. People have benefited massively from various clean air measures yet so many of our kids still go to schools where they breathe polluted air. Time to do more for their sake and let China do their own thing.
I do sometimes wonder whether a form of self-hatred or Stockholm syndrome has taken over with elements of the English working class. It's like they don't think they deserve any better. Even Brexit - touted as the second peasants' revolt by folk on here, seems to be more about hurting other people (foreigners, Londoners, the 'metropolitan elite') than anything else.
I suspect a lot of them want "higher wages" and by removing a pool of cheap accessible labour from the market they may very well get them.
And people think they're thick....
Yes, indeed they ARE getting them. Wages for the C2s and Ds have risen in a way not seen in the last 20 years.
It's so simple, and has happened time and time again in British history. When there are fewer people to do the skilled labour and/or the grunt work, the wages commanded for that work increase and the lot of those workers improves.
There has been a lot of magical thinking in my lifetime that immigration makes us richer and to say otherwise is somehow taboo. It increases our GDP, sure, because there are more of us. And if you're trying to employ someone you can do it more cheaply. I remember a geography GCSE question in which I was invited to discuss the benefits to the UK of immigration - the drawbacks weren't to be mentioned. But in reality it doesn't do a lot for most individual Britons.
Wages are higher in certain sectors because of a shortage of labour. Thats only partially due to "forriners go home" Brexit effects - the logistics industry is suffering because of IR35 just as much.
The harsh light of day for the British worker is that there are a stack of jobs they just don't want to do. We had to open the door to EU staff in the first place because locals don't want to clean offices or serve coffee or look after the elderly or work in a factory.
Now that some EU workers have left there is a shortage which is driving wages higher - but isn't filling the shortages because people still don't want those jobs.
Living on the backs of cheap EU labour is over, and in the end the pay will have to increase to attract the workers
I think the government will have to come up with immigration schemes for care workers. They have a delivery obligation. Wages will find their own levels elsewhere in the economy. ie GDP will contract in relative terms, to match. Some wages will go up and some will go down, but likely better terms for the low paid at the expense of fewer higher paid jobs. Which may be a desirable thing...
Alistair's occasional like for like comparison across the pandemic, for entertainment purposes only
North West 7-day average for 8th June (latest figure from dashboard before people complain about it being a week out of date) Cases: 2019.6 Hospital Admission: 48.3 In Hopsital: 246.1 Ventilated: 44.6 28 Day Death: 1.7
Comparable Cases point from Autumn 2020 24th of September Cases: 2041.4 Hospital Admission: 79.9 In Hopsital: 493 Ventilated: 59.4 28 Day Death: 12.3
If India was kept off the red list because we had not identified the India variant, why were other countries put on the red list despite not having variants of their own?
We know BoZo wanted a trade deal, and we know that's why he fucked this one up.
Because the rates of infection were massively higher in those nations, plus the South African variant was there too.
This information is known and the data is out there. But you keep believing whatever conspiracy theory bollocks you want to if you want to. I know full well data and you don't go hand in hand and no doubt you'll ignore all the data that doesn't suit your agenda.
There was no evidence-based reason to close India at the end of March uniquely, unlike the nations that were. Which is why all nations should have been closed, because by the time you know that there's a problem its too late. But that wasn't done.
Yesterday at the end of the thread on B & S and after PMQ's I posted this and I just wanted to repeat it as it does provide an insight into my attitude to Boris and covid. It is maybe a way of saying I am not at all a fan of Boris but I am a conservative loyalist and at present I do not see how he is replaced.
I thought Boris looked shattered at PMQ's and his defence v Starmer was huff and puff when really there is actually a good evidence based case, as shown on here that the borders were not left open, as Delta had nor been identified as such, at the dates Starmer referred to
Indeed, he is providing more credence to those who say he is just a PR PM and does not do detail or understand it
Even I could have made a better case v Starmer today than he got anywhere near to
I did not vote for brexit, nor for Boris as leader, but I accept brexit was a democratic vote and now have been convinced leaving was the correct thing to do and not to look back
As I have said on many occasions, I want Rishi as leader and as soon as possible.
Indeed I would not be averse to Jeremy Hunt or Liz Truss
However, I do not know how Boris is removed or when and as a loyal conservative I will continue to support the party but expect Boris to release us (English anyway) on the 19th July and for him to accept that we cannot beat covid, (it will be with us for decades) and affirm vaccination is our passport to freedom, though personally I would not permit foreign travel before 2022
Furthermore, I fully support the compulsory vaccination of all care home workers as we cannot put at risk those who depend on this sector as happened across the UK at the beginning of this most dreadful disease
Of course, should Boris lose C&A and not take B&S from labour, the political narrative would change
Laughable revisionist history. "The borders were not left open". Seriously?
Borders were "left open" if by that you mean that there has always throughout this crisis been some flights coming in. The volume, however, has been greatly reduced.
For all this period foreign nationals have been allowed to travel in, with conditions, while UK citizens have mostly been barred from leaving the country (with some occupational/specific situation exemptions). Putting it another way, the UK government has disadvantaged its own citizens verses citizens of other countries - a factor to examine in any public enquiry I would think.
"Closing the borders" is a simplistic term used by those looking for a scapegoat (who often have no desire to leave the county themselves but are relishing clipping the wings of those that do). Not even Aus and NZ closed borders entirely. The virus with all its variants will find a way in anyway.
We are (finally) doing what Aus and NZ have successfully done. Previously we allowed flights to come in from pox-ridden countries and not even do basic checks or take details of passengers. Don't quote the locator form at me, ineffective and not even partially implemented. Pox was walked freely across the UK border from India or elsewhere to infect us here. That is what Big_G claims is the border not being left open.
Now? You can fly in from poxland. Stand in a long queue of passengers at the border to spread the pox to people arriving from "safer" countries. And then be taken off to a quarantine hotel. Its as good as we're going to manage and could have been done far far sooner. The pox was in India, we knew it, Shagger wouldn't shut them down because trade mission. Which is how the Indian variant - now Delta - got here.
Delta was always going to get here.
"Now? You can fly in from poxland." - yes but you realise that the only people allowed to fly in have already tested negative for Covid before departure point?
We all know that gold standard or not, PCR is not remotely definitive. Sadly. I am not saying any of these decisions are easy. My argument is always that logic has to be applied. If x then x. We shut down entry from Pakistan and Bangladesh but left open India whose case rate per million was 2 - 4x higher than those countries. Arguments over "ah but they only defined Delta weeks later" are irrelevant. Indians were dying en masse from Covid regardless of whether we had managed to pin down the exact strain by then.
The action of closing our borders had to be a result of Sage identifying Delta as a variant of concern
Please quote the evidence and timeline to HMG when they did that and when the border closed
It is easy to blame Boris and HMG but neither Boris or HMG could take this step without scientists and sages backing
And of course the enquiry in years to come will provide the conclusion on this part of the covid story
What utter crap.
You can and should restrict travel when risk increases.
And risk clearly increased with the increase in infection in India.
If you have to wait for a new variant to be detected and proclaimed a variant of concern then by definition you have to let in enter the country weeks before you take any action.
Well I would suggest you input your wisdom to sage
Or how about the government looks at some data and shows some leadership rather than continually hiding behind the incompetents at sage.
Also there was the whole thing in Autumn where SAGE was saying we should increase restrictions and Boris ignored them.
People expected the Dom Affair to end badly, but this really is spectacular. The strange thing is that Hancock is one of the less incompetent members of the cabinet, including Johnson himself.
The Star (!) probably sums it up best:
You could tell the story of Dominic Cummings and Covid entirely with the Daily Star headlines. It has been superb.
The Star has been surprisingly good this past year for headlines. I particularly enjoyed " 'I'm Pregnant!', publicity-shy woman tells 8 billion people."
Yesterday at the end of the thread on B & S and after PMQ's I posted this and I just wanted to repeat it as it does provide an insight into my attitude to Boris and covid. It is maybe a way of saying I am not at all a fan of Boris but I am a conservative loyalist and at present I do not see how he is replaced.
I thought Boris looked shattered at PMQ's and his defence v Starmer was huff and puff when really there is actually a good evidence based case, as shown on here that the borders were not left open, as Delta had nor been identified as such, at the dates Starmer referred to
Indeed, he is providing more credence to those who say he is just a PR PM and does not do detail or understand it
Even I could have made a better case v Starmer today than he got anywhere near to
I did not vote for brexit, nor for Boris as leader, but I accept brexit was a democratic vote and now have been convinced leaving was the correct thing to do and not to look back
As I have said on many occasions, I want Rishi as leader and as soon as possible.
Indeed I would not be averse to Jeremy Hunt or Liz Truss
However, I do not know how Boris is removed or when and as a loyal conservative I will continue to support the party but expect Boris to release us (English anyway) on the 19th July and for him to accept that we cannot beat covid, (it will be with us for decades) and affirm vaccination is our passport to freedom, though personally I would not permit foreign travel before 2022
Furthermore, I fully support the compulsory vaccination of all care home workers as we cannot put at risk those who depend on this sector as happened across the UK at the beginning of this most dreadful disease
Of course, should Boris lose C&A and not take B&S from labour, the political narrative would change
Laughable revisionist history. "The borders were not left open". Seriously?
Borders were "left open" if by that you mean that there has always throughout this crisis been some flights coming in. The volume, however, has been greatly reduced.
For all this period foreign nationals have been allowed to travel in, with conditions, while UK citizens have mostly been barred from leaving the country (with some occupational/specific situation exemptions). Putting it another way, the UK government has disadvantaged its own citizens verses citizens of other countries - a factor to examine in any public enquiry I would think.
"Closing the borders" is a simplistic term used by those looking for a scapegoat (who often have no desire to leave the county themselves but are relishing clipping the wings of those that do). Not even Aus and NZ closed borders entirely. The virus with all its variants will find a way in anyway.
We are (finally) doing what Aus and NZ have successfully done. Previously we allowed flights to come in from pox-ridden countries and not even do basic checks or take details of passengers. Don't quote the locator form at me, ineffective and not even partially implemented. Pox was walked freely across the UK border from India or elsewhere to infect us here. That is what Big_G claims is the border not being left open.
Now? You can fly in from poxland. Stand in a long queue of passengers at the border to spread the pox to people arriving from "safer" countries. And then be taken off to a quarantine hotel. Its as good as we're going to manage and could have been done far far sooner. The pox was in India, we knew it, Shagger wouldn't shut them down because trade mission. Which is how the Indian variant - now Delta - got here.
Delta was always going to get here.
"Now? You can fly in from poxland." - yes but you realise that the only people allowed to fly in have already tested negative for Covid before departure point?
We all know that gold standard or not, PCR is not remotely definitive. Sadly. I am not saying any of these decisions are easy. My argument is always that logic has to be applied. If x then x. We shut down entry from Pakistan and Bangladesh but left open India whose case rate per million was 2 - 4x higher than those countries. Arguments over "ah but they only defined Delta weeks later" are irrelevant. Indians were dying en masse from Covid regardless of whether we had managed to pin down the exact strain by then.
The action of closing our borders had to be a result of Sage identifying Delta as a variant of concern
Please quote the evidence and timeline to HMG when they did that and when the border closed
It is easy to blame Boris and HMG but neither Boris or HMG could take this step without scientists and sages backing
And of course the enquiry in years to come will provide the conclusion on this part of the covid story
What utter crap.
You can and should restrict travel when risk increases.
And risk clearly increased with the increase in infection in India.
If you have to wait for a new variant to be detected and proclaimed a variant of concern then by definition you have to let in enter the country weeks before you take any action.
Well I would suggest you input your wisdom to sage
Or how about the government looks at some data and shows some leadership rather than continually hiding behind the incompetents at sage.
Well now that is a different story
All four administrations have consistently said they will be guided by the science and are terrified to step out of that comfort zone, no more so than Sturgeon and Drakeford in Wales
Actually Boris is far more likely to loosen the regulations than either Sturgeon or Drakeford who recently has been threatening us in Wales to be living with restrictions into 2022
Regardless of any other merit, the Sunak interview got GB News into the papers, which was probably its main aim.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 8h This is the most uncomfortable I’ve seen Rishi Sunak in quite a while.
Sunak fans should pause and watch the clip Dan Hodges has there. Looking well under pressure over £10K bill for new boilers for every family.
As Sunak says, what £10k bill? He rightly pointed out that (a) "costs" always get balanced against "opportunity" and whatever the cost is now won't be the cost by the time they are rolling it out.
Isn't the problem with retrofitting heat pumps that the radiators need to be replaced by bigger ones too, because of the lower operating temperature of the system?
So, opportunity - British design and manufacturing of all these new pumps and radiators, British installation of them. Which will generate a bucket load of money for the economy.
Neil is a dinosaur, asking the tired "how much will it cost" question not interested in "how much will it save" and "how much will doing nothing cost".
The majority of voters, especially the working classes and the Red Wall, care very much about the cost.
It’s also fair to ask why the British consumer is being asked to contribute so much, when the same isn’t true of much larger countries such as the US and China.
Having spent 15 years in a red wall WC town I am aware of this. "We can't afford it" has been drilled into them by opportunistic Tories to destroy Labour as the party who wastes money. Job done, the red wall is blue. Now then, we need to hose the blue wall with money. But "we can't afford it" and "how much will it cost".
I've had punters arguing on Facebook against spending money regenerating their own high street. The more the regen progresses and the more it gets lauded by experts as the model for other towns the more they shriek about the costs.
We either invest in stuff or we stay broken and crap. There is no £10k per household bill and the people asking the question know this. As for "why us and not China" we don't live in China. Our kids don't go to school in China. People have benefited massively from various clean air measures yet so many of our kids still go to schools where they breathe polluted air. Time to do more for their sake and let China do their own thing.
I do sometimes wonder whether a form of self-hatred or Stockholm syndrome has taken over with elements of the English working class. It's like they don't think they deserve any better. Even Brexit - touted as the second peasants' revolt by folk on here, seems to be more about hurting other people (foreigners, Londoners, the 'metropolitan elite') than anything else. The ridiculous thing about the "we can't afford it" mantra is that if you look at who pays most of the tax in this country, it really isn't them paying for it. And they still don't want the money.
My father who was born in the 1920s to an upper middle class family used to say (which always seemed disgustingly snobby to me) that the British working class like to be led by the "officer class", i.e. those that some might regard as "toffs", and that in the army they didn't like it if an officer had "risen from the ranks". Looking at what seems for me an inexplicable appeal of Johnson in what are essentially working class seats, I am beginning to wonder if he was correct?!
He is much more correct than many think. The class system has many attractions that are underestimated, and now that Labour has done its long term job of equalisation compared say to the 1890s it can be seen more clearly.
It seems to me a hugely ignored issue, but the popularity of the monarchy, Boris, the continuing appeal of the Tory party to a broad spectrum are all bits of evidence.
One example of it is that most people are aspirational - something that leftie grievance culture struggles with - but have very different types of aspiration.
An example of the discussion vacuum. Many top people in the apparently liberal egalitarian BBC send their children to private schools. Many come from them. The silence on the subject is deafening. The chances are that most of the public couldn't care less, just as they won't care if Boris sends his kids to Eton. What people don't like is hypocrisy.
Yesterday at the end of the thread on B & S and after PMQ's I posted this and I just wanted to repeat it as it does provide an insight into my attitude to Boris and covid. It is maybe a way of saying I am not at all a fan of Boris but I am a conservative loyalist and at present I do not see how he is replaced.
I thought Boris looked shattered at PMQ's and his defence v Starmer was huff and puff when really there is actually a good evidence based case, as shown on here that the borders were not left open, as Delta had nor been identified as such, at the dates Starmer referred to
Indeed, he is providing more credence to those who say he is just a PR PM and does not do detail or understand it
Even I could have made a better case v Starmer today than he got anywhere near to
I did not vote for brexit, nor for Boris as leader, but I accept brexit was a democratic vote and now have been convinced leaving was the correct thing to do and not to look back
As I have said on many occasions, I want Rishi as leader and as soon as possible.
Indeed I would not be averse to Jeremy Hunt or Liz Truss
However, I do not know how Boris is removed or when and as a loyal conservative I will continue to support the party but expect Boris to release us (English anyway) on the 19th July and for him to accept that we cannot beat covid, (it will be with us for decades) and affirm vaccination is our passport to freedom, though personally I would not permit foreign travel before 2022
Furthermore, I fully support the compulsory vaccination of all care home workers as we cannot put at risk those who depend on this sector as happened across the UK at the beginning of this most dreadful disease
Of course, should Boris lose C&A and not take B&S from labour, the political narrative would change
Laughable revisionist history. "The borders were not left open". Seriously?
Borders were "left open" if by that you mean that there has always throughout this crisis been some flights coming in. The volume, however, has been greatly reduced.
For all this period foreign nationals have been allowed to travel in, with conditions, while UK citizens have mostly been barred from leaving the country (with some occupational/specific situation exemptions). Putting it another way, the UK government has disadvantaged its own citizens verses citizens of other countries - a factor to examine in any public enquiry I would think.
"Closing the borders" is a simplistic term used by those looking for a scapegoat (who often have no desire to leave the county themselves but are relishing clipping the wings of those that do). Not even Aus and NZ closed borders entirely. The virus with all its variants will find a way in anyway.
We are (finally) doing what Aus and NZ have successfully done. Previously we allowed flights to come in from pox-ridden countries and not even do basic checks or take details of passengers. Don't quote the locator form at me, ineffective and not even partially implemented. Pox was walked freely across the UK border from India or elsewhere to infect us here. That is what Big_G claims is the border not being left open.
Now? You can fly in from poxland. Stand in a long queue of passengers at the border to spread the pox to people arriving from "safer" countries. And then be taken off to a quarantine hotel. Its as good as we're going to manage and could have been done far far sooner. The pox was in India, we knew it, Shagger wouldn't shut them down because trade mission. Which is how the Indian variant - now Delta - got here.
Delta was always going to get here.
"Now? You can fly in from poxland." - yes but you realise that the only people allowed to fly in have already tested negative for Covid before departure point?
We all know that gold standard or not, PCR is not remotely definitive. Sadly. I am not saying any of these decisions are easy. My argument is always that logic has to be applied. If x then x. We shut down entry from Pakistan and Bangladesh but left open India whose case rate per million was 2 - 4x higher than those countries. Arguments over "ah but they only defined Delta weeks later" are irrelevant. Indians were dying en masse from Covid regardless of whether we had managed to pin down the exact strain by then.
The action of closing our borders had to be a result of Sage identifying Delta as a variant of concern
Please quote the evidence and timeline to HMG when they did that and when the border closed
It is easy to blame Boris and HMG but neither Boris or HMG could take this step without scientists and sages backing
And of course the enquiry in years to come will provide the conclusion on this part of the covid story
What utter crap.
You can and should restrict travel when risk increases.
And risk clearly increased with the increase in infection in India.
If you have to wait for a new variant to be detected and proclaimed a variant of concern then by definition you have to let in enter the country weeks before you take any action.
At the time that Bangladesh and Pakistan were put on the red list the rate of infection in India was lower than almost any nation in the EU, half the rate of Pakistan and less than a third of the rate of Bangladesh.
I do think and said at the time the border should have been closed with all nations including the EU and if that was done then the Indian variant could have been prevented. However there was no evidence based reason at the end of March to single out India.
In March there wasn't.
But from the second week in April it was clear that there a seriously deteriorating situation in India.
If we all saw it on PB why didn't the government ?
Any thought on the Australia trade deal? Will British farmers be protected from cheap Aussie imports or are Midwestern farmers thinking.. . "ah yes well have some of that as well please"?
I am not at all sure Cummings will have any effect outside the political bubble, not least as he is one of the most discredited people in the country and in a recent poll Hancock poll twice Cummings on trust
His diatribe of hate is sad and of course releasing 'Whats app' messages might be par for the course for him, but they only reveal his utter hatred for Hancock and that Boris uses industrial language. Indeed that us unlikely to do any harm to Boris as thousands, even millions, would have considerable sympathy for a PM facing the worst crisis since WW2 swearing or uttering an oath or two
He strikes me as someone being torn apart by hate and hate in itself does far more damage to the one who hates than the hated.
He seems to want all the attention but at some point his desire will end with him being a very unhappy and unfulfilled person
Yesterday at the end of the thread on B & S and after PMQ's I posted this and I just wanted to repeat it as it does provide an insight into my attitude to Boris and covid. It is maybe a way of saying I am not at all a fan of Boris but I am a conservative loyalist and at present I do not see how he is replaced.
I thought Boris looked shattered at PMQ's and his defence v Starmer was huff and puff when really there is actually a good evidence based case, as shown on here that the borders were not left open, as Delta had nor been identified as such, at the dates Starmer referred to
Indeed, he is providing more credence to those who say he is just a PR PM and does not do detail or understand it
Even I could have made a better case v Starmer today than he got anywhere near to
I did not vote for brexit, nor for Boris as leader, but I accept brexit was a democratic vote and now have been convinced leaving was the correct thing to do and not to look back
As I have said on many occasions, I want Rishi as leader and as soon as possible.
Indeed I would not be averse to Jeremy Hunt or Liz Truss
However, I do not know how Boris is removed or when and as a loyal conservative I will continue to support the party but expect Boris to release us (English anyway) on the 19th July and for him to accept that we cannot beat covid, (it will be with us for decades) and affirm vaccination is our passport to freedom, though personally I would not permit foreign travel before 2022
Furthermore, I fully support the compulsory vaccination of all care home workers as we cannot put at risk those who depend on this sector as happened across the UK at the beginning of this most dreadful disease
Of course, should Boris lose C&A and not take B&S from labour, the political narrative would change
Laughable revisionist history. "The borders were not left open". Seriously?
Borders were "left open" if by that you mean that there has always throughout this crisis been some flights coming in. The volume, however, has been greatly reduced.
For all this period foreign nationals have been allowed to travel in, with conditions, while UK citizens have mostly been barred from leaving the country (with some occupational/specific situation exemptions). Putting it another way, the UK government has disadvantaged its own citizens verses citizens of other countries - a factor to examine in any public enquiry I would think.
"Closing the borders" is a simplistic term used by those looking for a scapegoat (who often have no desire to leave the county themselves but are relishing clipping the wings of those that do). Not even Aus and NZ closed borders entirely. The virus with all its variants will find a way in anyway.
We are (finally) doing what Aus and NZ have successfully done. Previously we allowed flights to come in from pox-ridden countries and not even do basic checks or take details of passengers. Don't quote the locator form at me, ineffective and not even partially implemented. Pox was walked freely across the UK border from India or elsewhere to infect us here. That is what Big_G claims is the border not being left open.
Now? You can fly in from poxland. Stand in a long queue of passengers at the border to spread the pox to people arriving from "safer" countries. And then be taken off to a quarantine hotel. Its as good as we're going to manage and could have been done far far sooner. The pox was in India, we knew it, Shagger wouldn't shut them down because trade mission. Which is how the Indian variant - now Delta - got here.
Delta was always going to get here.
"Now? You can fly in from poxland." - yes but you realise that the only people allowed to fly in have already tested negative for Covid before departure point?
We all know that gold standard or not, PCR is not remotely definitive. Sadly. I am not saying any of these decisions are easy. My argument is always that logic has to be applied. If x then x. We shut down entry from Pakistan and Bangladesh but left open India whose case rate per million was 2 - 4x higher than those countries. Arguments over "ah but they only defined Delta weeks later" are irrelevant. Indians were dying en masse from Covid regardless of whether we had managed to pin down the exact strain by then.
The action of closing our borders had to be a result of Sage identifying Delta as a variant of concern
Please quote the evidence and timeline to HMG when they did that and when the border closed
It is easy to blame Boris and HMG but neither Boris or HMG could take this step without scientists and sages backing
And of course the enquiry in years to come will provide the conclusion on this part of the covid story
What utter crap.
You can and should restrict travel when risk increases.
And risk clearly increased with the increase in infection in India.
If you have to wait for a new variant to be detected and proclaimed a variant of concern then by definition you have to let in enter the country weeks before you take any action.
At the time that Bangladesh and Pakistan were put on the red list the rate of infection in India was lower than almost any nation in the EU, half the rate of Pakistan and less than a third of the rate of Bangladesh.
I do think and said at the time the border should have been closed with all nations including the EU and if that was done then the Indian variant could have been prevented. However there was no evidence based reason at the end of March to single out India.
Why were there so many contemporaneous calls singling out India as a key risk if there was "no evidence based reason"?
Quite strange considering India had not been singled out as a key area of concern until this spring.
Regardless of any other merit, the Sunak interview got GB News into the papers, which was probably its main aim.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 8h This is the most uncomfortable I’ve seen Rishi Sunak in quite a while.
Sunak fans ould pause and watch the clip Dan Hodges has there. Looking well under pressure over £10K bill for new boilers for every family.
As Sunak says, what £10k bill? He rightly pointed out that (a) "costs" always get balanced against "opportunity" and whatever the cost is now won't be the cost by the time they are rolling it out.
Isn't the problem with retrofitting heat pumps that the radiators need to be replaced by bigger ones too, because of the lower operating temperature of the system?
So, opportunity - British design and manufacturing of all these new pumps and radiators, British installation of them. Which will generate a bucket load of money for the economy.
Neil is a dinosaur, asking the tired "how much will it cost" question not interested in "how much will it save" and "how much will doing nothing cost".
The majority of voters, especially the working classes and the Red Wall, care very much about the cost.
It’s also fair to ask why the British consumer is being asked to contribute so much, when the same isn’t true of much larger countries such as the US and China.
Having spent 15 years in a red wall WC town I am aware of this. "We can't afford it" has been drilled into them by opportunistic Tories to destroy Labour as the party who wastes money. Job done, the red wall is blue. Now then, we need to hose the blue wall with money. But "we can't afford it" and "how much will it cost".
I've had punters arguing on Facebook against spending money regenerating their own high street. The more the regen progresses and the more it gets lauded by experts as the model for other towns the more they shriek about the costs.
We either invest in stuff or we stay broken and crap. There is no £10k per household bill and the people asking the question know this. As for "why us and not China" we don't live in China. Our kids don't go to school in China. People have benefited massively from various clean air measures yet so many of our kids still go to schools where they breathe polluted air. Time to do more for their sake and let China do their own thing.
I do sometimes wonder whether a form of self-hatred or Stockholm syndrome has taken over with elements of the English working class. It's like they don't think they deserve any better. Even Brexit - touted as the second peasants' revolt by folk on here, seems to be more about hurting other people (foreigners, Londoners, the 'metropolitan elite') than anything else.
I suspect a lot of them want "higher wages" and by removing a pool of cheap accessible labour from the market they may very well get them.
And people think they're thick....
Yes, indeed they ARE getting them. Wages for the C2s and Ds have risen in a way not seen in the last 20 years.
It's so simple, and has happened time and time again in British history. When there are fewer people to do the skilled labour and/or the grunt work, the wages commanded for that work increase and the lot of those workers improves.
There has been a lot of magical thinking in my lifetime that immigration makes us richer and to say otherwise is somehow taboo. It increases our GDP, sure, because there are more of us. And if you're trying to employ someone you can do it more cheaply. I remember a geography GCSE question in which I was invited to discuss the benefits to the UK of immigration - the drawbacks weren't to be mentioned. But in reality it doesn't do a lot for most individual Britons.
Wages are higher in certain sectors because of a shortage of labour. Thats only partially due to "forriners go home" Brexit effects - the logistics industry is suffering because of IR35 just as much.
The harsh light of day for the British worker is that there are a stack of jobs they just don't want to do. We had to open the door to EU staff in the first place because locals don't want to clean offices or serve coffee or look after the elderly or work in a factory.
Now that some EU workers have left there is a shortage which is driving wages higher - but isn't filling the shortages because people still don't want those jobs.
Living on the backs of cheap EU labour is over, and in the end the pay will have to increase to attract the workers
I think the government will have to come up with immigration schemes for care workers. They have a delivery obligation. Wages will find their own levels elsewhere in the economy. ie GDP will contract in relative terms, to match. Some wages will go up and some will go down, but likely better terms for the low paid at the expense of fewer higher paid jobs. Which may be a desirable thing...
Or how about they just pay care workers more than minimum wage?
Care workers looking after the vulnerable for 12 hours a day, wiping people's bums and dealing with dementia, incontinence, and generally tough work . . . how is it that is a minimum wage job earning less than what eg a waiter earns? Since a waiter will get minimum wage plus tips.
Even pre-pandemic, pre-Brexit ~83% of care staff in the UK were British and half the non-British staff were not EU either so the notion we're reliant upon immigration to fill these roles has never been true. Pay a decent wage for these jobs and they'll get filled.
Regardless of any other merit, the Sunak interview got GB News into the papers, which was probably its main aim.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 8h This is the most uncomfortable I’ve seen Rishi Sunak in quite a while.
Sunak fans ould pause and watch the clip Dan Hodges has there. Looking well under pressure over £10K bill for new boilers for every family.
As Sunak says, what £10k bill? He rightly pointed out that (a) "costs" always get balanced against "opportunity" and whatever the cost is now won't be the cost by the time they are rolling it out.
Isn't the problem with retrofitting heat pumps that the radiators need to be replaced by bigger ones too, because of the lower operating temperature of the system?
So, opportunity - British design and manufacturing of all these new pumps and radiators, British installation of them. Which will generate a bucket load of money for the economy.
Neil is a dinosaur, asking the tired "how much will it cost" question not interested in "how much will it save" and "how much will doing nothing cost".
The majority of voters, especially the working classes and the Red Wall, care very much about the cost.
It’s also fair to ask why the British consumer is being asked to contribute so much, when the same isn’t true of much larger countries such as the US and China.
Having spent 15 years in a red wall WC town I am aware of this. "We can't afford it" has been drilled into them by opportunistic Tories to destroy Labour as the party who wastes money. Job done, the red wall is blue. Now then, we need to hose the blue wall with money. But "we can't afford it" and "how much will it cost".
I've had punters arguing on Facebook against spending money regenerating their own high street. The more the regen progresses and the more it gets lauded by experts as the model for other towns the more they shriek about the costs.
We either invest in stuff or we stay broken and crap. There is no £10k per household bill and the people asking the question know this. As for "why us and not China" we don't live in China. Our kids don't go to school in China. People have benefited massively from various clean air measures yet so many of our kids still go to schools where they breathe polluted air. Time to do more for their sake and let China do their own thing.
I do sometimes wonder whether a form of self-hatred or Stockholm syndrome has taken over with elements of the English working class. It's like they don't think they deserve any better. Even Brexit - touted as the second peasants' revolt by folk on here, seems to be more about hurting other people (foreigners, Londoners, the 'metropolitan elite') than anything else.
I suspect a lot of them want "higher wages" and by removing a pool of cheap accessible labour from the market they may very well get them.
And people think they're thick....
Yes, indeed they ARE getting them. Wages for the C2s and Ds have risen in a way not seen in the last 20 years.
It's so simple, and has happened time and time again in British history. When there are fewer people to do the skilled labour and/or the grunt work, the wages commanded for that work increase and the lot of those workers improves.
There has been a lot of magical thinking in my lifetime that immigration makes us richer and to say otherwise is somehow taboo. It increases our GDP, sure, because there are more of us. And if you're trying to employ someone you can do it more cheaply. I remember a geography GCSE question in which I was invited to discuss the benefits to the UK of immigration - the drawbacks weren't to be mentioned. But in reality it doesn't do a lot for most individual Britons.
Wages are higher in certain sectors because of a shortage of labour. Thats only partially due to "forriners go home" Brexit effects - the logistics industry is suffering because of IR35 just as much.
The harsh light of day for the British worker is that there are a stack of jobs they just don't want to do. We had to open the door to EU staff in the first place because locals don't want to clean offices or serve coffee or look after the elderly or work in a factory.
Now that some EU workers have left there is a shortage which is driving wages higher - but isn't filling the shortages because people still don't want those jobs.
Living on the backs of cheap EU labour is over, and in the end the pay will have to increase to attract the workers
I think the government will have to come up with immigration schemes for care workers. They have a delivery obligation. Wages will find their own levels elsewhere in the economy. ie GDP will contract in relative terms, to match. Some wages will go up and some will go down, but likely better terms for the low paid at the expense of fewer higher paid jobs. Which may be a desirable thing...
I actually agree with you and of course we can attract jobs from wherever we want to
Any thought on the Australia trade deal? Will British farmers be protected from cheap Aussie imports or are Midwestern farmers thinking.. . "ah yes well have some of that as well please"?
The whole thing is a very minor footnote in our global trade, one way or the other. Looking at the actual product flows involved I don't see any evidence the UK market will be flooded and undermined by vast amounts of Australian agri imports, nor do I think the deal will benefit the UK on exports in any meaningful way. As you allude to, its most powerful impact is probably as a precedent for others.
Any thought on the Australia trade deal? Will British farmers be protected from cheap Aussie imports or are Midwestern farmers thinking.. . "ah yes well have some of that as well please"?
The whole thing is a very minor footnote in our global trade, one way or the other. Looking at the actual product flows involved I don't see any evidence the UK market will be flooded and undermined by vast amounts of Australian agri imports, nor do I think the deal will benefit the UK on exports in any meaningful way. As you allude to, its most powerful impact is probably as a precedent for others.
Regardless of any other merit, the Sunak interview got GB News into the papers, which was probably its main aim.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 8h This is the most uncomfortable I’ve seen Rishi Sunak in quite a while.
Sunak fans ould pause and watch the clip Dan Hodges has there. Looking well under pressure over £10K bill for new boilers for every family.
As Sunak says, what £10k bill? He rightly pointed out that (a) "costs" always get balanced against "opportunity" and whatever the cost is now won't be the cost by the time they are rolling it out.
Isn't the problem with retrofitting heat pumps that the radiators need to be replaced by bigger ones too, because of the lower operating temperature of the system?
So, opportunity - British design and manufacturing of all these new pumps and radiators, British installation of them. Which will generate a bucket load of money for the economy.
Neil is a dinosaur, asking the tired "how much will it cost" question not interested in "how much will it save" and "how much will doing nothing cost".
The majority of voters, especially the working classes and the Red Wall, care very much about the cost.
It’s also fair to ask why the British consumer is being asked to contribute so much, when the same isn’t true of much larger countries such as the US and China.
Having spent 15 years in a red wall WC town I am aware of this. "We can't afford it" has been drilled into them by opportunistic Tories to destroy Labour as the party who wastes money. Job done, the red wall is blue. Now then, we need to hose the blue wall with money. But "we can't afford it" and "how much will it cost".
I've had punters arguing on Facebook against spending money regenerating their own high street. The more the regen progresses and the more it gets lauded by experts as the model for other towns the more they shriek about the costs.
We either invest in stuff or we stay broken and crap. There is no £10k per household bill and the people asking the question know this. As for "why us and not China" we don't live in China. Our kids don't go to school in China. People have benefited massively from various clean air measures yet so many of our kids still go to schools where they breathe polluted air. Time to do more for their sake and let China do their own thing.
I do sometimes wonder whether a form of self-hatred or Stockholm syndrome has taken over with elements of the English working class. It's like they don't think they deserve any better. Even Brexit - touted as the second peasants' revolt by folk on here, seems to be more about hurting other people (foreigners, Londoners, the 'metropolitan elite') than anything else.
I suspect a lot of them want "higher wages" and by removing a pool of cheap accessible labour from the market they may very well get them.
And people think they're thick....
Yes, indeed they ARE getting them. Wages for the C2s and Ds have risen in a way not seen in the last 20 years.
It's so simple, and has happened time and time again in British history. When there are fewer people to do the skilled labour and/or the grunt work, the wages commanded for that work increase and the lot of those workers improves.
There has been a lot of magical thinking in my lifetime that immigration makes us richer and to say otherwise is somehow taboo. It increases our GDP, sure, because there are more of us. And if you're trying to employ someone you can do it more cheaply. I remember a geography GCSE question in which I was invited to discuss the benefits to the UK of immigration - the drawbacks weren't to be mentioned. But in reality it doesn't do a lot for most individual Britons.
Wages are higher in certain sectors because of a shortage of labour. Thats only partially due to "forriners go home" Brexit effects - the logistics industry is suffering because of IR35 just as much.
The harsh light of day for the British worker is that there are a stack of jobs they just don't want to do. We had to open the door to EU staff in the first place because locals don't want to clean offices or serve coffee or look after the elderly or work in a factory.
Now that some EU workers have left there is a shortage which is driving wages higher - but isn't filling the shortages because people still don't want those jobs.
I don't have experience of many of those - but to suggest that locals don't want to serve coffee seems a bit questionable. Almost every coffee I'm served is by a British person. Granted, Pret at Piccadilly station is noticeably cosmopolitan (or was - haven't been there since March 2020) but places like that are atypical. Almost all coffee shops I've been in are almost totally staffed by British people.
Regardless of any other merit, the Sunak interview got GB News into the papers, which was probably its main aim.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 8h This is the most uncomfortable I’ve seen Rishi Sunak in quite a while.
Sunak fans ould pause and watch the clip Dan Hodges has there. Looking well under pressure over £10K bill for new boilers for every family.
As Sunak says, what £10k bill? He rightly pointed out that (a) "costs" always get balanced against "opportunity" and whatever the cost is now won't be the cost by the time they are rolling it out.
Isn't the problem with retrofitting heat pumps that the radiators need to be replaced by bigger ones too, because of the lower operating temperature of the system?
So, opportunity - British design and manufacturing of all these new pumps and radiators, British installation of them. Which will generate a bucket load of money for the economy.
Neil is a dinosaur, asking the tired "how much will it cost" question not interested in "how much will it save" and "how much will doing nothing cost".
The majority of voters, especially the working classes and the Red Wall, care very much about the cost.
It’s also fair to ask why the British consumer is being asked to contribute so much, when the same isn’t true of much larger countries such as the US and China.
Having spent 15 years in a red wall WC town I am aware of this. "We can't afford it" has been drilled into them by opportunistic Tories to destroy Labour as the party who wastes money. Job done, the red wall is blue. Now then, we need to hose the blue wall with money. But "we can't afford it" and "how much will it cost".
I've had punters arguing on Facebook against spending money regenerating their own high street. The more the regen progresses and the more it gets lauded by experts as the model for other towns the more they shriek about the costs.
We either invest in stuff or we stay broken and crap. There is no £10k per household bill and the people asking the question know this. As for "why us and not China" we don't live in China. Our kids don't go to school in China. People have benefited massively from various clean air measures yet so many of our kids still go to schools where they breathe polluted air. Time to do more for their sake and let China do their own thing.
I do sometimes wonder whether a form of self-hatred or Stockholm syndrome has taken over with elements of the English working class. It's like they don't think they deserve any better. Even Brexit - touted as the second peasants' revolt by folk on here, seems to be more about hurting other people (foreigners, Londoners, the 'metropolitan elite') than anything else.
I suspect a lot of them want "higher wages" and by removing a pool of cheap accessible labour from the market they may very well get them.
And people think they're thick....
Yes, indeed they ARE getting them. Wages for the C2s and Ds have risen in a way not seen in the last 20 years.
It's so simple, and has happened time and time again in British history. When there are fewer people to do the skilled labour and/or the grunt work, the wages commanded for that work increase and the lot of those workers improves.
There has been a lot of magical thinking in my lifetime that immigration makes us richer and to say otherwise is somehow taboo. It increases our GDP, sure, because there are more of us. And if you're trying to employ someone you can do it more cheaply. I remember a geography GCSE question in which I was invited to discuss the benefits to the UK of immigration - the drawbacks weren't to be mentioned. But in reality it doesn't do a lot for most individual Britons.
Wages are higher in certain sectors because of a shortage of labour. Thats only partially due to "forriners go home" Brexit effects - the logistics industry is suffering because of IR35 just as much.
The harsh light of day for the British worker is that there are a stack of jobs they just don't want to do. We had to open the door to EU staff in the first place because locals don't want to clean offices or serve coffee or look after the elderly or work in a factory.
Now that some EU workers have left there is a shortage which is driving wages higher - but isn't filling the shortages because people still don't want those jobs.
Yesterday at the end of the thread on B & S and after PMQ's I posted this and I just wanted to repeat it as it does provide an insight into my attitude to Boris and covid. It is maybe a way of saying I am not at all a fan of Boris but I am a conservative loyalist and at present I do not see how he is replaced.
I thought Boris looked shattered at PMQ's and his defence v Starmer was huff and puff when really there is actually a good evidence based case, as shown on here that the borders were not left open, as Delta had nor been identified as such, at the dates Starmer referred to
Indeed, he is providing more credence to those who say he is just a PR PM and does not do detail or understand it
Even I could have made a better case v Starmer today than he got anywhere near to
I did not vote for brexit, nor for Boris as leader, but I accept brexit was a democratic vote and now have been convinced leaving was the correct thing to do and not to look back
As I have said on many occasions, I want Rishi as leader and as soon as possible.
Indeed I would not be averse to Jeremy Hunt or Liz Truss
However, I do not know how Boris is removed or when and as a loyal conservative I will continue to support the party but expect Boris to release us (English anyway) on the 19th July and for him to accept that we cannot beat covid, (it will be with us for decades) and affirm vaccination is our passport to freedom, though personally I would not permit foreign travel before 2022
Furthermore, I fully support the compulsory vaccination of all care home workers as we cannot put at risk those who depend on this sector as happened across the UK at the beginning of this most dreadful disease
Of course, should Boris lose C&A and not take B&S from labour, the political narrative would change
Laughable revisionist history. "The borders were not left open". Seriously?
Borders were "left open" if by that you mean that there has always throughout this crisis been some flights coming in. The volume, however, has been greatly reduced.
For all this period foreign nationals have been allowed to travel in, with conditions, while UK citizens have mostly been barred from leaving the country (with some occupational/specific situation exemptions). Putting it another way, the UK government has disadvantaged its own citizens verses citizens of other countries - a factor to examine in any public enquiry I would think.
"Closing the borders" is a simplistic term used by those looking for a scapegoat (who often have no desire to leave the county themselves but are relishing clipping the wings of those that do). Not even Aus and NZ closed borders entirely. The virus with all its variants will find a way in anyway.
We are (finally) doing what Aus and NZ have successfully done. Previously we allowed flights to come in from pox-ridden countries and not even do basic checks or take details of passengers. Don't quote the locator form at me, ineffective and not even partially implemented. Pox was walked freely across the UK border from India or elsewhere to infect us here. That is what Big_G claims is the border not being left open.
Now? You can fly in from poxland. Stand in a long queue of passengers at the border to spread the pox to people arriving from "safer" countries. And then be taken off to a quarantine hotel. Its as good as we're going to manage and could have been done far far sooner. The pox was in India, we knew it, Shagger wouldn't shut them down because trade mission. Which is how the Indian variant - now Delta - got here.
Delta was always going to get here.
"Now? You can fly in from poxland." - yes but you realise that the only people allowed to fly in have already tested negative for Covid before departure point?
We all know that gold standard or not, PCR is not remotely definitive. Sadly. I am not saying any of these decisions are easy. My argument is always that logic has to be applied. If x then x. We shut down entry from Pakistan and Bangladesh but left open India whose case rate per million was 2 - 4x higher than those countries. Arguments over "ah but they only defined Delta weeks later" are irrelevant. Indians were dying en masse from Covid regardless of whether we had managed to pin down the exact strain by then.
The action of closing our borders had to be a result of Sage identifying Delta as a variant of concern
Please quote the evidence and timeline to HMG when they did that and when the border closed
It is easy to blame Boris and HMG but neither Boris or HMG could take this step without scientists and sages backing
And of course the enquiry in years to come will provide the conclusion on this part of the covid story
What utter crap.
You can and should restrict travel when risk increases.
And risk clearly increased with the increase in infection in India.
If you have to wait for a new variant to be detected and proclaimed a variant of concern then by definition you have to let in enter the country weeks before you take any action.
At the time that Bangladesh and Pakistan were put on the red list the rate of infection in India was lower than almost any nation in the EU, half the rate of Pakistan and less than a third of the rate of Bangladesh.
I do think and said at the time the border should have been closed with all nations including the EU and if that was done then the Indian variant could have been prevented. However there was no evidence based reason at the end of March to single out India.
In March there wasn't.
But from the second week in April it was clear that there a seriously deteriorating situation in India.
If we all saw it on PB why didn't the government ?
Indeed and then India were then added to the red list, before the Delta variant was even identified.
The whole system was messed up relying upon backwards-looking data to pick which nations were quarantined rather than quarantining all nations, and then to make matters worse giving people day's notice to come back to the UK rather than saying "you're on the red list effective right now".
But the idea that it was because of a trade deal weeks earlier before it was clear? That's a fabrication rewriting history. It should have been all countries, but there was nothing special with India before the middle of April which is when they then got added.
Yesterday at the end of the thread on B & S and after PMQ's I posted this and I just wanted to repeat it as it does provide an insight into my attitude to Boris and covid. It is maybe a way of saying I am not at all a fan of Boris but I am a conservative loyalist and at present I do not see how he is replaced.
I thought Boris looked shattered at PMQ's and his defence v Starmer was huff and puff when really there is actually a good evidence based case, as shown on here that the borders were not left open, as Delta had nor been identified as such, at the dates Starmer referred to
Indeed, he is providing more credence to those who say he is just a PR PM and does not do detail or understand it
Even I could have made a better case v Starmer today than he got anywhere near to
I did not vote for brexit, nor for Boris as leader, but I accept brexit was a democratic vote and now have been convinced leaving was the correct thing to do and not to look back
As I have said on many occasions, I want Rishi as leader and as soon as possible.
Indeed I would not be averse to Jeremy Hunt or Liz Truss
However, I do not know how Boris is removed or when and as a loyal conservative I will continue to support the party but expect Boris to release us (English anyway) on the 19th July and for him to accept that we cannot beat covid, (it will be with us for decades) and affirm vaccination is our passport to freedom, though personally I would not permit foreign travel before 2022
Furthermore, I fully support the compulsory vaccination of all care home workers as we cannot put at risk those who depend on this sector as happened across the UK at the beginning of this most dreadful disease
Of course, should Boris lose C&A and not take B&S from labour, the political narrative would change
Laughable revisionist history. "The borders were not left open". Seriously?
Borders were "left open" if by that you mean that there has always throughout this crisis been some flights coming in. The volume, however, has been greatly reduced.
For all this period foreign nationals have been allowed to travel in, with conditions, while UK citizens have mostly been barred from leaving the country (with some occupational/specific situation exemptions). Putting it another way, the UK government has disadvantaged its own citizens verses citizens of other countries - a factor to examine in any public enquiry I would think.
"Closing the borders" is a simplistic term used by those looking for a scapegoat (who often have no desire to leave the county themselves but are relishing clipping the wings of those that do). Not even Aus and NZ closed borders entirely. The virus with all its variants will find a way in anyway.
We are (finally) doing what Aus and NZ have successfully done. Previously we allowed flights to come in from pox-ridden countries and not even do basic checks or take details of passengers. Don't quote the locator form at me, ineffective and not even partially implemented. Pox was walked freely across the UK border from India or elsewhere to infect us here. That is what Big_G claims is the border not being left open.
Now? You can fly in from poxland. Stand in a long queue of passengers at the border to spread the pox to people arriving from "safer" countries. And then be taken off to a quarantine hotel. Its as good as we're going to manage and could have been done far far sooner. The pox was in India, we knew it, Shagger wouldn't shut them down because trade mission. Which is how the Indian variant - now Delta - got here.
Delta was always going to get here.
"Now? You can fly in from poxland." - yes but you realise that the only people allowed to fly in have already tested negative for Covid before departure point?
We all know that gold standard or not, PCR is not remotely definitive. Sadly. I am not saying any of these decisions are easy. My argument is always that logic has to be applied. If x then x. We shut down entry from Pakistan and Bangladesh but left open India whose case rate per million was 2 - 4x higher than those countries. Arguments over "ah but they only defined Delta weeks later" are irrelevant. Indians were dying en masse from Covid regardless of whether we had managed to pin down the exact strain by then.
The action of closing our borders had to be a result of Sage identifying Delta as a variant of concern
Please quote the evidence and timeline to HMG when they did that and when the border closed
It is easy to blame Boris and HMG but neither Boris or HMG could take this step without scientists and sages backing
And of course the enquiry in years to come will provide the conclusion on this part of the covid story
What utter crap.
You can and should restrict travel when risk increases.
And risk clearly increased with the increase in infection in India.
If you have to wait for a new variant to be detected and proclaimed a variant of concern then by definition you have to let in enter the country weeks before you take any action.
At the time that Bangladesh and Pakistan were put on the red list the rate of infection in India was lower than almost any nation in the EU, half the rate of Pakistan and less than a third of the rate of Bangladesh.
I do think and said at the time the border should have been closed with all nations including the EU and if that was done then the Indian variant could have been prevented. However there was no evidence based reason at the end of March to single out India.
Why were there so many contemporaneous calls singling out India as a key risk if there was "no evidence based reason"?
Quite strange considering India had not been singled out as a key area of concern until this spring.
I don't recall any contemporaneous calls singling out India in March.
It was March's data that was used to single out Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Yesterday at the end of the thread on B & S and after PMQ's I posted this and I just wanted to repeat it as it does provide an insight into my attitude to Boris and covid. It is maybe a way of saying I am not at all a fan of Boris but I am a conservative loyalist and at present I do not see how he is replaced.
I thought Boris looked shattered at PMQ's and his defence v Starmer was huff and puff when really there is actually a good evidence based case, as shown on here that the borders were not left open, as Delta had nor been identified as such, at the dates Starmer referred to
Indeed, he is providing more credence to those who say he is just a PR PM and does not do detail or understand it
Even I could have made a better case v Starmer today than he got anywhere near to
I did not vote for brexit, nor for Boris as leader, but I accept brexit was a democratic vote and now have been convinced leaving was the correct thing to do and not to look back
As I have said on many occasions, I want Rishi as leader and as soon as possible.
Indeed I would not be averse to Jeremy Hunt or Liz Truss
However, I do not know how Boris is removed or when and as a loyal conservative I will continue to support the party but expect Boris to release us (English anyway) on the 19th July and for him to accept that we cannot beat covid, (it will be with us for decades) and affirm vaccination is our passport to freedom, though personally I would not permit foreign travel before 2022
Furthermore, I fully support the compulsory vaccination of all care home workers as we cannot put at risk those who depend on this sector as happened across the UK at the beginning of this most dreadful disease
Of course, should Boris lose C&A and not take B&S from labour, the political narrative would change
Laughable revisionist history. "The borders were not left open". Seriously?
Borders were "left open" if by that you mean that there has always throughout this crisis been some flights coming in. The volume, however, has been greatly reduced.
For all this period foreign nationals have been allowed to travel in, with conditions, while UK citizens have mostly been barred from leaving the country (with some occupational/specific situation exemptions). Putting it another way, the UK government has disadvantaged its own citizens verses citizens of other countries - a factor to examine in any public enquiry I would think.
"Closing the borders" is a simplistic term used by those looking for a scapegoat (who often have no desire to leave the county themselves but are relishing clipping the wings of those that do). Not even Aus and NZ closed borders entirely. The virus with all its variants will find a way in anyway.
We are (finally) doing what Aus and NZ have successfully done. Previously we allowed flights to come in from pox-ridden countries and not even do basic checks or take details of passengers. Don't quote the locator form at me, ineffective and not even partially implemented. Pox was walked freely across the UK border from India or elsewhere to infect us here. That is what Big_G claims is the border not being left open.
Now? You can fly in from poxland. Stand in a long queue of passengers at the border to spread the pox to people arriving from "safer" countries. And then be taken off to a quarantine hotel. Its as good as we're going to manage and could have been done far far sooner. The pox was in India, we knew it, Shagger wouldn't shut them down because trade mission. Which is how the Indian variant - now Delta - got here.
Delta was always going to get here.
"Now? You can fly in from poxland." - yes but you realise that the only people allowed to fly in have already tested negative for Covid before departure point?
We all know that gold standard or not, PCR is not remotely definitive. Sadly. I am not saying any of these decisions are easy. My argument is always that logic has to be applied. If x then x. We shut down entry from Pakistan and Bangladesh but left open India whose case rate per million was 2 - 4x higher than those countries. Arguments over "ah but they only defined Delta weeks later" are irrelevant. Indians were dying en masse from Covid regardless of whether we had managed to pin down the exact strain by then.
The action of closing our borders had to be a result of Sage identifying Delta as a variant of concern
Please quote the evidence and timeline to HMG when they did that and when the border closed
It is easy to blame Boris and HMG but neither Boris or HMG could take this step without scientists and sages backing
And of course the enquiry in years to come will provide the conclusion on this part of the covid story
What utter crap.
You can and should restrict travel when risk increases.
And risk clearly increased with the increase in infection in India.
If you have to wait for a new variant to be detected and proclaimed a variant of concern then by definition you have to let in enter the country weeks before you take any action.
At the time that Bangladesh and Pakistan were put on the red list the rate of infection in India was lower than almost any nation in the EU, half the rate of Pakistan and less than a third of the rate of Bangladesh.
I do think and said at the time the border should have been closed with all nations including the EU and if that was done then the Indian variant could have been prevented. However there was no evidence based reason at the end of March to single out India.
In March there wasn't.
But from the second week in April it was clear that there a seriously deteriorating situation in India.
If we all saw it on PB why didn't the government ?
We all know the government did see the risk but wanted to wait until the Johnson-Modi meeting. Why anyone pretends this is not the case, and that they can convince us otherwise I have no idea.
We all know the government did see the risk but wanted to wait until the Johnson-Modi meeting. Why anyone pretends this is not the case, and that they can convince us otherwise I have no idea.
Regardless of any other merit, the Sunak interview got GB News into the papers, which was probably its main aim.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 8h This is the most uncomfortable I’ve seen Rishi Sunak in quite a while.
Sunak fans ould pause and watch the clip Dan Hodges has there. Looking well under pressure over £10K bill for new boilers for every family.
As Sunak says, what £10k bill? He rightly pointed out that (a) "costs" always get balanced against "opportunity" and whatever the cost is now won't be the cost by the time they are rolling it out.
Isn't the problem with retrofitting heat pumps that the radiators need to be replaced by bigger ones too, because of the lower operating temperature of the system?
So, opportunity - British design and manufacturing of all these new pumps and radiators, British installation of them. Which will generate a bucket load of money for the economy.
Neil is a dinosaur, asking the tired "how much will it cost" question not interested in "how much will it save" and "how much will doing nothing cost".
The majority of voters, especially the working classes and the Red Wall, care very much about the cost.
It’s also fair to ask why the British consumer is being asked to contribute so much, when the same isn’t true of much larger countries such as the US and China.
Having spent 15 years in a red wall WC town I am aware of this. "We can't afford it" has been drilled into them by opportunistic Tories to destroy Labour as the party who wastes money. Job done, the red wall is blue. Now then, we need to hose the blue wall with money. But "we can't afford it" and "how much will it cost".
I've had punters arguing on Facebook against spending money regenerating their own high street. The more the regen progresses and the more it gets lauded by experts as the model for other towns the more they shriek about the costs.
We either invest in stuff or we stay broken and crap. There is no £10k per household bill and the people asking the question know this. As for "why us and not China" we don't live in China. Our kids don't go to school in China. People have benefited massively from various clean air measures yet so many of our kids still go to schools where they breathe polluted air. Time to do more for their sake and let China do their own thing.
I do sometimes wonder whether a form of self-hatred or Stockholm syndrome has taken over with elements of the English working class. It's like they don't think they deserve any better. Even Brexit - touted as the second peasants' revolt by folk on here, seems to be more about hurting other people (foreigners, Londoners, the 'metropolitan elite') than anything else.
I suspect a lot of them want "higher wages" and by removing a pool of cheap accessible labour from the market they may very well get them.
And people think they're thick....
Yes, indeed they ARE getting them. Wages for the C2s and Ds have risen in a way not seen in the last 20 years.
It's so simple, and has happened time and time again in British history. When there are fewer people to do the skilled labour and/or the grunt work, the wages commanded for that work increase and the lot of those workers improves.
There has been a lot of magical thinking in my lifetime that immigration makes us richer and to say otherwise is somehow taboo. It increases our GDP, sure, because there are more of us. And if you're trying to employ someone you can do it more cheaply. I remember a geography GCSE question in which I was invited to discuss the benefits to the UK of immigration - the drawbacks weren't to be mentioned. But in reality it doesn't do a lot for most individual Britons.
Wages are higher in certain sectors because of a shortage of labour. Thats only partially due to "forriners go home" Brexit effects - the logistics industry is suffering because of IR35 just as much.
The harsh light of day for the British worker is that there are a stack of jobs they just don't want to do. We had to open the door to EU staff in the first place because locals don't want to clean offices or serve coffee or look after the elderly or work in a factory.
Now that some EU workers have left there is a shortage which is driving wages higher - but isn't filling the shortages because people still don't want those jobs.
Living on the backs of cheap EU labour is over, and in the end the pay will have to increase to attract the workers
I think the government will have to come up with immigration schemes for care workers. They have a delivery obligation. Wages will find their own levels elsewhere in the economy. ie GDP will contract in relative terms, to match. Some wages will go up and some will go down, but likely better terms for the low paid at the expense of fewer higher paid jobs. Which may be a desirable thing...
Or how about they just pay care workers more than minimum wage?
Care workers looking after the vulnerable for 12 hours a day, wiping people's bums and dealing with dementia, incontinence, and generally tough work . . . how is it that is a minimum wage job earning less than what eg a waiter earns? Since a waiter will get minimum wage plus tips.
Even pre-pandemic, pre-Brexit ~83% of care staff in the UK were British and half the non-British staff were not EU either so the notion we're reliant upon immigration to fill these roles has never been true. Pay a decent wage for these jobs and they'll get filled.
Many care workers are not actually paid by their employers, but by the state. By this I mean that there are quite a few care companies, whether residential or home care, which rely on contracts or similar from Government (including Local) contracts. So until we, the state, are prepared to pay more in taxes to fund such contracts, wages for the staff cannot rise.
Regardless of any other merit, the Sunak interview got GB News into the papers, which was probably its main aim.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 8h This is the most uncomfortable I’ve seen Rishi Sunak in quite a while.
Sunak fans ould pause and watch the clip Dan Hodges has there. Looking well under pressure over £10K bill for new boilers for every family.
As Sunak says, what £10k bill? He rightly pointed out that (a) "costs" always get balanced against "opportunity" and whatever the cost is now won't be the cost by the time they are rolling it out.
Isn't the problem with retrofitting heat pumps that the radiators need to be replaced by bigger ones too, because of the lower operating temperature of the system?
So, opportunity - British design and manufacturing of all these new pumps and radiators, British installation of them. Which will generate a bucket load of money for the economy.
Neil is a dinosaur, asking the tired "how much will it cost" question not interested in "how much will it save" and "how much will doing nothing cost".
The majority of voters, especially the working classes and the Red Wall, care very much about the cost.
It’s also fair to ask why the British consumer is being asked to contribute so much, when the same isn’t true of much larger countries such as the US and China.
Having spent 15 years in a red wall WC town I am aware of this. "We can't afford it" has been drilled into them by opportunistic Tories to destroy Labour as the party who wastes money. Job done, the red wall is blue. Now then, we need to hose the blue wall with money. But "we can't afford it" and "how much will it cost".
I've had punters arguing on Facebook against spending money regenerating their own high street. The more the regen progresses and the more it gets lauded by experts as the model for other towns the more they shriek about the costs.
We either invest in stuff or we stay broken and crap. There is no £10k per household bill and the people asking the question know this. As for "why us and not China" we don't live in China. Our kids don't go to school in China. People have benefited massively from various clean air measures yet so many of our kids still go to schools where they breathe polluted air. Time to do more for their sake and let China do their own thing.
I do sometimes wonder whether a form of self-hatred or Stockholm syndrome has taken over with elements of the English working class. It's like they don't think they deserve any better. Even Brexit - touted as the second peasants' revolt by folk on here, seems to be more about hurting other people (foreigners, Londoners, the 'metropolitan elite') than anything else.
I suspect a lot of them want "higher wages" and by removing a pool of cheap accessible labour from the market they may very well get them.
And people think they're thick....
Yes, indeed they ARE getting them. Wages for the C2s and Ds have risen in a way not seen in the last 20 years.
It's so simple, and has happened time and time again in British history. When there are fewer people to do the skilled labour and/or the grunt work, the wages commanded for that work increase and the lot of those workers improves.
There has been a lot of magical thinking in my lifetime that immigration makes us richer and to say otherwise is somehow taboo. It increases our GDP, sure, because there are more of us. And if you're trying to employ someone you can do it more cheaply. I remember a geography GCSE question in which I was invited to discuss the benefits to the UK of immigration - the drawbacks weren't to be mentioned. But in reality it doesn't do a lot for most individual Britons.
Wages are higher in certain sectors because of a shortage of labour. Thats only partially due to "forriners go home" Brexit effects - the logistics industry is suffering because of IR35 just as much.
The harsh light of day for the British worker is that there are a stack of jobs they just don't want to do. We had to open the door to EU staff in the first place because locals don't want to clean offices or serve coffee or look after the elderly or work in a factory.
Now that some EU workers have left there is a shortage which is driving wages higher - but isn't filling the shortages because people still don't want those jobs.
Living on the backs of cheap EU labour is over, and in the end the pay will have to increase to attract the workers
I think the government will have to come up with immigration schemes for care workers. They have a delivery obligation. Wages will find their own levels elsewhere in the economy. ie GDP will contract in relative terms, to match. Some wages will go up and some will go down, but likely better terms for the low paid at the expense of fewer higher paid jobs. Which may be a desirable thing...
I actually agree with you and of course we can attract jobs from wherever we want to
And we set the terms. If the conditions are too onerous, or the money offered too little, they won't come.
But now we don't have to dilute sovereignty to get them here.
But now we don't have to dilute sovereignty to get them here.
Great Stuart Rose interview with @ITVJoel about Brexit. “It’s not the end of the world, nobody’s going to die, it’s just not as much fun and it’s not as easy. And what have we got for it? Sovereignty. WelI, I’m not quite sure yet what sovereignty means.” He was underused in 2016 https://twitter.com/steve_hawkes/status/1403737198432768006
Any thought on the Australia trade deal? Will British farmers be protected from cheap Aussie imports or are Midwestern farmers thinking.. . "ah yes well have some of that as well please"?
The whole thing is a very minor footnote in our global trade, one way or the other. Looking at the actual product flows involved I don't see any evidence the UK market will be flooded and undermined by vast amounts of Australian agri imports, nor do I think the deal will benefit the UK on exports in any meaningful way. As you allude to, its most powerful impact is probably as a precedent for others.
British farmers will of course complain in every circumstance. That is their role in life. I know lots and they are all great. They are still massively shielded by protectionism: no rates on agricultural land, an extensive subsidy system (now changing so they can switch from complaining about the EU to domestic complaining), lower price fuel than the rest of us, an inheritance tax system massively biased in their favour and no doubt some other things including highly articulate spokespeople with good contacts and permanent right of audience on the BBC. As always only believe the complainers once you have seen their audited accounts (which is never).
But now we don't have to dilute sovereignty to get them here.
Great Stuart Rose interview with @ITVJoel about Brexit. “It’s not the end of the world, nobody’s going to die, it’s just not as much fun and it’s not as easy. And what have we got for it? Sovereignty. WelI, I’m not quite sure yet what sovereignty means.” He was underused in 2016 https://twitter.com/steve_hawkes/status/1403737198432768006
Stuart Rose was awesome.
First day of the campaign, there he is, speaking to a massive room full of business leaders, saying the worst thing about leaving the EU is that wages will go up.
Regardless of any other merit, the Sunak interview got GB News into the papers, which was probably its main aim.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 8h This is the most uncomfortable I’ve seen Rishi Sunak in quite a while.
Sunak fans ould pause and watch the clip Dan Hodges has there. Looking well under pressure over £10K bill for new boilers for every family.
As Sunak says, what £10k bill? He rightly pointed out that (a) "costs" always get balanced against "opportunity" and whatever the cost is now won't be the cost by the time they are rolling it out.
Isn't the problem with retrofitting heat pumps that the radiators need to be replaced by bigger ones too, because of the lower operating temperature of the system?
So, opportunity - British design and manufacturing of all these new pumps and radiators, British installation of them. Which will generate a bucket load of money for the economy.
Neil is a dinosaur, asking the tired "how much will it cost" question not interested in "how much will it save" and "how much will doing nothing cost".
The majority of voters, especially the working classes and the Red Wall, care very much about the cost.
It’s also fair to ask why the British consumer is being asked to contribute so much, when the same isn’t true of much larger countries such as the US and China.
Having spent 15 years in a red wall WC town I am aware of this. "We can't afford it" has been drilled into them by opportunistic Tories to destroy Labour as the party who wastes money. Job done, the red wall is blue. Now then, we need to hose the blue wall with money. But "we can't afford it" and "how much will it cost".
I've had punters arguing on Facebook against spending money regenerating their own high street. The more the regen progresses and the more it gets lauded by experts as the model for other towns the more they shriek about the costs.
We either invest in stuff or we stay broken and crap. There is no £10k per household bill and the people asking the question know this. As for "why us and not China" we don't live in China. Our kids don't go to school in China. People have benefited massively from various clean air measures yet so many of our kids still go to schools where they breathe polluted air. Time to do more for their sake and let China do their own thing.
I do sometimes wonder whether a form of self-hatred or Stockholm syndrome has taken over with elements of the English working class. It's like they don't think they deserve any better. Even Brexit - touted as the second peasants' revolt by folk on here, seems to be more about hurting other people (foreigners, Londoners, the 'metropolitan elite') than anything else.
I suspect a lot of them want "higher wages" and by removing a pool of cheap accessible labour from the market they may very well get them.
And people think they're thick....
Yes, indeed they ARE getting them. Wages for the C2s and Ds have risen in a way not seen in the last 20 years.
It's so simple, and has happened time and time again in British history. When there are fewer people to do the skilled labour and/or the grunt work, the wages commanded for that work increase and the lot of those workers improves.
There has been a lot of magical thinking in my lifetime that immigration makes us richer and to say otherwise is somehow taboo. It increases our GDP, sure, because there are more of us. And if you're trying to employ someone you can do it more cheaply. I remember a geography GCSE question in which I was invited to discuss the benefits to the UK of immigration - the drawbacks weren't to be mentioned. But in reality it doesn't do a lot for most individual Britons.
Wages are higher in certain sectors because of a shortage of labour. Thats only partially due to "forriners go home" Brexit effects - the logistics industry is suffering because of IR35 just as much.
The harsh light of day for the British worker is that there are a stack of jobs they just don't want to do. We had to open the door to EU staff in the first place because locals don't want to clean offices or serve coffee or look after the elderly or work in a factory.
Now that some EU workers have left there is a shortage which is driving wages higher - but isn't filling the shortages because people still don't want those jobs.
Living on the backs of cheap EU labour is over, and in the end the pay will have to increase to attract the workers
I think the government will have to come up with immigration schemes for care workers. They have a delivery obligation. Wages will find their own levels elsewhere in the economy. ie GDP will contract in relative terms, to match. Some wages will go up and some will go down, but likely better terms for the low paid at the expense of fewer higher paid jobs. Which may be a desirable thing...
Or how about they just pay care workers more than minimum wage?
Care workers looking after the vulnerable for 12 hours a day, wiping people's bums and dealing with dementia, incontinence, and generally tough work . . . how is it that is a minimum wage job earning less than what eg a waiter earns? Since a waiter will get minimum wage plus tips.
Even pre-pandemic, pre-Brexit ~83% of care staff in the UK were British and half the non-British staff were not EU either so the notion we're reliant upon immigration to fill these roles has never been true. Pay a decent wage for these jobs and they'll get filled.
Many care workers are not actually paid by their employers, but by the state. By this I mean that there are quite a few care companies, whether residential or home care, which rely on contracts or similar from Government (including Local) contracts. So until we, the state, are prepared to pay more in taxes to fund such contracts, wages for the staff cannot rise.
Absolutely.
Though we don't expect others in the healthcare sector like nurses or doctors to work for minimum wage. There is some overlap between the duties of a nurse and the duties of care workers, but the latter are working for minimum wage while the former are getting roughly twice as much.
Putting care staff on £12 per hour for instance would give them a 20% pay rise, make the job even more attractive for people in other sectors working minimum wage - and still leave care workers earning a fraction of others in the healthcare sector.
But now we don't have to dilute sovereignty to get them here.
Great Stuart Rose interview with @ITVJoel about Brexit. “It’s not the end of the world, nobody’s going to die, it’s just not as much fun and it’s not as easy. And what have we got for it? Sovereignty. WelI, I’m not quite sure yet what sovereignty means.” He was underused in 2016 https://twitter.com/steve_hawkes/status/1403737198432768006
Perhaps it means pay rises for the low paid.
Something Stuart Rose said wouldn't be a good thing.
Yesterday at the end of the thread on B & S and after PMQ's I posted this and I just wanted to repeat it as it does provide an insight into my attitude to Boris and covid. It is maybe a way of saying I am not at all a fan of Boris but I am a conservative loyalist and at present I do not see how he is replaced.
I thought Boris looked shattered at PMQ's and his defence v Starmer was huff and puff when really there is actually a good evidence based case, as shown on here that the borders were not left open, as Delta had nor been identified as such, at the dates Starmer referred to
Indeed, he is providing more credence to those who say he is just a PR PM and does not do detail or understand it
Even I could have made a better case v Starmer today than he got anywhere near to
I did not vote for brexit, nor for Boris as leader, but I accept brexit was a democratic vote and now have been convinced leaving was the correct thing to do and not to look back
As I have said on many occasions, I want Rishi as leader and as soon as possible.
Indeed I would not be averse to Jeremy Hunt or Liz Truss
However, I do not know how Boris is removed or when and as a loyal conservative I will continue to support the party but expect Boris to release us (English anyway) on the 19th July and for him to accept that we cannot beat covid, (it will be with us for decades) and affirm vaccination is our passport to freedom, though personally I would not permit foreign travel before 2022
Furthermore, I fully support the compulsory vaccination of all care home workers as we cannot put at risk those who depend on this sector as happened across the UK at the beginning of this most dreadful disease
Of course, should Boris lose C&A and not take B&S from labour, the political narrative would change
Laughable revisionist history. "The borders were not left open". Seriously?
Borders were "left open" if by that you mean that there has always throughout this crisis been some flights coming in. The volume, however, has been greatly reduced.
For all this period foreign nationals have been allowed to travel in, with conditions, while UK citizens have mostly been barred from leaving the country (with some occupational/specific situation exemptions). Putting it another way, the UK government has disadvantaged its own citizens verses citizens of other countries - a factor to examine in any public enquiry I would think.
"Closing the borders" is a simplistic term used by those looking for a scapegoat (who often have no desire to leave the county themselves but are relishing clipping the wings of those that do). Not even Aus and NZ closed borders entirely. The virus with all its variants will find a way in anyway.
We are (finally) doing what Aus and NZ have successfully done. Previously we allowed flights to come in from pox-ridden countries and not even do basic checks or take details of passengers. Don't quote the locator form at me, ineffective and not even partially implemented. Pox was walked freely across the UK border from India or elsewhere to infect us here. That is what Big_G claims is the border not being left open.
Now? You can fly in from poxland. Stand in a long queue of passengers at the border to spread the pox to people arriving from "safer" countries. And then be taken off to a quarantine hotel. Its as good as we're going to manage and could have been done far far sooner. The pox was in India, we knew it, Shagger wouldn't shut them down because trade mission. Which is how the Indian variant - now Delta - got here.
Delta was always going to get here.
"Now? You can fly in from poxland." - yes but you realise that the only people allowed to fly in have already tested negative for Covid before departure point?
We all know that gold standard or not, PCR is not remotely definitive. Sadly. I am not saying any of these decisions are easy. My argument is always that logic has to be applied. If x then x. We shut down entry from Pakistan and Bangladesh but left open India whose case rate per million was 2 - 4x higher than those countries. Arguments over "ah but they only defined Delta weeks later" are irrelevant. Indians were dying en masse from Covid regardless of whether we had managed to pin down the exact strain by then.
The action of closing our borders had to be a result of Sage identifying Delta as a variant of concern
Please quote the evidence and timeline to HMG when they did that and when the border closed
It is easy to blame Boris and HMG but neither Boris or HMG could take this step without scientists and sages backing
And of course the enquiry in years to come will provide the conclusion on this part of the covid story
What utter crap.
You can and should restrict travel when risk increases.
And risk clearly increased with the increase in infection in India.
If you have to wait for a new variant to be detected and proclaimed a variant of concern then by definition you have to let in enter the country weeks before you take any action.
At the time that Bangladesh and Pakistan were put on the red list the rate of infection in India was lower than almost any nation in the EU, half the rate of Pakistan and less than a third of the rate of Bangladesh.
I do think and said at the time the border should have been closed with all nations including the EU and if that was done then the Indian variant could have been prevented. However there was no evidence based reason at the end of March to single out India.
In March there wasn't.
But from the second week in April it was clear that there a seriously deteriorating situation in India.
If we all saw it on PB why didn't the government ?
Indeed and then India were then added to the red list, before the Delta variant was even identified.
The whole system was messed up relying upon backwards-looking data to pick which nations were quarantined rather than quarantining all nations, and then to make matters worse giving people day's notice to come back to the UK rather than saying "you're on the red list effective right now".
But the idea that it was because of a trade deal weeks earlier before it was clear? That's a fabrication rewriting history. It should have been all countries, but there was nothing special with India before the middle of April which is when they then got added.
The delta variant was identified in the UK week beginning 8 March, you are conflating identifying the variant and it being confirmed as a variant under investigation (in the UK) which did happen after the red listing. Even then the WHO had it as variant of interest from 4 April well before the red listing.
If we'd had Keir Starmer in charge -> hotel quarantine for all arrivals in Feb -> much slower arrival of delta variant -> restrictions eased on time (probably).
If we'd had Keir Starmer in charge -> earlier lockdown in 2020 for wave 2 -> many, many lives saved (definitely).
Will Keir Starmer get any credit for this... nope.
But now we don't have to dilute sovereignty to get them here.
Great Stuart Rose interview with @ITVJoel about Brexit. “It’s not the end of the world, nobody’s going to die, it’s just not as much fun and it’s not as easy. And what have we got for it? Sovereignty. WelI, I’m not quite sure yet what sovereignty means.” He was underused in 2016 https://twitter.com/steve_hawkes/status/1403737198432768006
Ursula von der Leyen now has no constitutional role in my country.
Regardless of any other merit, the Sunak interview got GB News into the papers, which was probably its main aim.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 8h This is the most uncomfortable I’ve seen Rishi Sunak in quite a while.
Sunak fans ould pause and watch the clip Dan Hodges has there. Looking well under pressure over £10K bill for new boilers for every family.
As Sunak says, what £10k bill? He rightly pointed out that (a) "costs" always get balanced against "opportunity" and whatever the cost is now won't be the cost by the time they are rolling it out.
Isn't the problem with retrofitting heat pumps that the radiators need to be replaced by bigger ones too, because of the lower operating temperature of the system?
So, opportunity - British design and manufacturing of all these new pumps and radiators, British installation of them. Which will generate a bucket load of money for the economy.
Neil is a dinosaur, asking the tired "how much will it cost" question not interested in "how much will it save" and "how much will doing nothing cost".
The majority of voters, especially the working classes and the Red Wall, care very much about the cost.
It’s also fair to ask why the British consumer is being asked to contribute so much, when the same isn’t true of much larger countries such as the US and China.
Having spent 15 years in a red wall WC town I am aware of this. "We can't afford it" has been drilled into them by opportunistic Tories to destroy Labour as the party who wastes money. Job done, the red wall is blue. Now then, we need to hose the blue wall with money. But "we can't afford it" and "how much will it cost".
I've had punters arguing on Facebook against spending money regenerating their own high street. The more the regen progresses and the more it gets lauded by experts as the model for other towns the more they shriek about the costs.
We either invest in stuff or we stay broken and crap. There is no £10k per household bill and the people asking the question know this. As for "why us and not China" we don't live in China. Our kids don't go to school in China. People have benefited massively from various clean air measures yet so many of our kids still go to schools where they breathe polluted air. Time to do more for their sake and let China do their own thing.
I do sometimes wonder whether a form of self-hatred or Stockholm syndrome has taken over with elements of the English working class. It's like they don't think they deserve any better. Even Brexit - touted as the second peasants' revolt by folk on here, seems to be more about hurting other people (foreigners, Londoners, the 'metropolitan elite') than anything else.
I suspect a lot of them want "higher wages" and by removing a pool of cheap accessible labour from the market they may very well get them.
And people think they're thick....
Yes, indeed they ARE getting them. Wages for the C2s and Ds have risen in a way not seen in the last 20 years.
It's so simple, and has happened time and time again in British history. When there are fewer people to do the skilled labour and/or the grunt work, the wages commanded for that work increase and the lot of those workers improves.
There has been a lot of magical thinking in my lifetime that immigration makes us richer and to say otherwise is somehow taboo. It increases our GDP, sure, because there are more of us. And if you're trying to employ someone you can do it more cheaply. I remember a geography GCSE question in which I was invited to discuss the benefits to the UK of immigration - the drawbacks weren't to be mentioned. But in reality it doesn't do a lot for most individual Britons.
Wages are higher in certain sectors because of a shortage of labour. Thats only partially due to "forriners go home" Brexit effects - the logistics industry is suffering because of IR35 just as much.
The harsh light of day for the British worker is that there are a stack of jobs they just don't want to do. We had to open the door to EU staff in the first place because locals don't want to clean offices or serve coffee or look after the elderly or work in a factory.
Now that some EU workers have left there is a shortage which is driving wages higher - but isn't filling the shortages because people still don't want those jobs.
Living on the backs of cheap EU labour is over, and in the end the pay will have to increase to attract the workers
I think the government will have to come up with immigration schemes for care workers. They have a delivery obligation. Wages will find their own levels elsewhere in the economy. ie GDP will contract in relative terms, to match. Some wages will go up and some will go down, but likely better terms for the low paid at the expense of fewer higher paid jobs. Which may be a desirable thing...
Or how about they just pay care workers more than minimum wage?
Care workers looking after the vulnerable for 12 hours a day, wiping people's bums and dealing with dementia, incontinence, and generally tough work . . . how is it that is a minimum wage job earning less than what eg a waiter earns? Since a waiter will get minimum wage plus tips.
Even pre-pandemic, pre-Brexit ~83% of care staff in the UK were British and half the non-British staff were not EU either so the notion we're reliant upon immigration to fill these roles has never been true. Pay a decent wage for these jobs and they'll get filled.
Likewise cleaners, security guards, hotel workers, bar staff, waiters and so on tend to be British in most of the country.
There's a very London-centric view that low paid service sector workers are all immigrants.
Regardless of any other merit, the Sunak interview got GB News into the papers, which was probably its main aim.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 8h This is the most uncomfortable I’ve seen Rishi Sunak in quite a while.
Sunak fans ould pause and watch the clip Dan Hodges has there. Looking well under pressure over £10K bill for new boilers for every family.
As Sunak says, what £10k bill? He rightly pointed out that (a) "costs" always get balanced against "opportunity" and whatever the cost is now won't be the cost by the time they are rolling it out.
Isn't the problem with retrofitting heat pumps that the radiators need to be replaced by bigger ones too, because of the lower operating temperature of the system?
So, opportunity - British design and manufacturing of all these new pumps and radiators, British installation of them. Which will generate a bucket load of money for the economy.
Neil is a dinosaur, asking the tired "how much will it cost" question not interested in "how much will it save" and "how much will doing nothing cost".
The majority of voters, especially the working classes and the Red Wall, care very much about the cost.
It’s also fair to ask why the British consumer is being asked to contribute so much, when the same isn’t true of much larger countries such as the US and China.
Having spent 15 years in a red wall WC town I am aware of this. "We can't afford it" has been drilled into them by opportunistic Tories to destroy Labour as the party who wastes money. Job done, the red wall is blue. Now then, we need to hose the blue wall with money. But "we can't afford it" and "how much will it cost".
I've had punters arguing on Facebook against spending money regenerating their own high street. The more the regen progresses and the more it gets lauded by experts as the model for other towns the more they shriek about the costs.
We either invest in stuff or we stay broken and crap. There is no £10k per household bill and the people asking the question know this. As for "why us and not China" we don't live in China. Our kids don't go to school in China. People have benefited massively from various clean air measures yet so many of our kids still go to schools where they breathe polluted air. Time to do more for their sake and let China do their own thing.
I do sometimes wonder whether a form of self-hatred or Stockholm syndrome has taken over with elements of the English working class. It's like they don't think they deserve any better. Even Brexit - touted as the second peasants' revolt by folk on here, seems to be more about hurting other people (foreigners, Londoners, the 'metropolitan elite') than anything else.
I suspect a lot of them want "higher wages" and by removing a pool of cheap accessible labour from the market they may very well get them.
And people think they're thick....
Yes, indeed they ARE getting them. Wages for the C2s and Ds have risen in a way not seen in the last 20 years.
It's so simple, and has happened time and time again in British history. When there are fewer people to do the skilled labour and/or the grunt work, the wages commanded for that work increase and the lot of those workers improves.
There has been a lot of magical thinking in my lifetime that immigration makes us richer and to say otherwise is somehow taboo. It increases our GDP, sure, because there are more of us. And if you're trying to employ someone you can do it more cheaply. I remember a geography GCSE question in which I was invited to discuss the benefits to the UK of immigration - the drawbacks weren't to be mentioned. But in reality it doesn't do a lot for most individual Britons.
Wages are higher in certain sectors because of a shortage of labour. Thats only partially due to "forriners go home" Brexit effects - the logistics industry is suffering because of IR35 just as much.
The harsh light of day for the British worker is that there are a stack of jobs they just don't want to do. We had to open the door to EU staff in the first place because locals don't want to clean offices or serve coffee or look after the elderly or work in a factory.
Now that some EU workers have left there is a shortage which is driving wages higher - but isn't filling the shortages because people still don't want those jobs.
Living on the backs of cheap EU labour is over, and in the end the pay will have to increase to attract the workers
I think the government will have to come up with immigration schemes for care workers. They have a delivery obligation. Wages will find their own levels elsewhere in the economy. ie GDP will contract in relative terms, to match. Some wages will go up and some will go down, but likely better terms for the low paid at the expense of fewer higher paid jobs. Which may be a desirable thing...
Or how about they just pay care workers more than minimum wage?
Care workers looking after the vulnerable for 12 hours a day, wiping people's bums and dealing with dementia, incontinence, and generally tough work . . . how is it that is a minimum wage job earning less than what eg a waiter earns? Since a waiter will get minimum wage plus tips.
Even pre-pandemic, pre-Brexit ~83% of care staff in the UK were British and half the non-British staff were not EU either so the notion we're reliant upon immigration to fill these roles has never been true. Pay a decent wage for these jobs and they'll get filled.
Many care workers are not actually paid by their employers, but by the state. By this I mean that there are quite a few care companies, whether residential or home care, which rely on contracts or similar from Government (including Local) contracts. So until we, the state, are prepared to pay more in taxes to fund such contracts, wages for the staff cannot rise.
Absolutely.
Though we don't expect others in the healthcare sector like nurses or doctors to work for minimum wage. There is some overlap between the duties of a nurse and the duties of care workers, but the latter are working for minimum wage while the former are getting roughly twice as much.
Putting care staff on £12 per hour for instance would give them a 20% pay rise, make the job even more attractive for people in other sectors working minimum wage - and still leave care workers earning a fraction of others in the healthcare sector.
We have, or at least had, the insane situation where homeware workers, on minimum wage, were given clients half an hour or more from each other, but not paid travelling time. And given 'time allowed' with clients of 30 minutes.
But now we don't have to dilute sovereignty to get them here.
Great Stuart Rose interview with @ITVJoel about Brexit. “It’s not the end of the world, nobody’s going to die, it’s just not as much fun and it’s not as easy. And what have we got for it? Sovereignty. WelI, I’m not quite sure yet what sovereignty means.” He was underused in 2016 https://twitter.com/steve_hawkes/status/1403737198432768006
Oh I think his "wages might have to rise" was heard loud & clear......
Pop quiz - how many of the other countries above were on the Red list at the time?
India was clearly under-reporting. But I presume we had some confidence in them, as opposed to say Bangladesh and Pakistan (which were on the red list)
But now we don't have to dilute sovereignty to get them here.
Great Stuart Rose interview with @ITVJoel about Brexit. “It’s not the end of the world, nobody’s going to die, it’s just not as much fun and it’s not as easy. And what have we got for it? Sovereignty. WelI, I’m not quite sure yet what sovereignty means.” He was underused in 2016 https://twitter.com/steve_hawkes/status/1403737198432768006
Ursula von der Leyen now has no constitutional role in my country.
Which top trumps anything you will ever retweet.
Instead of which you've Boris Johnson.
I suppose having both in positions of authority is very 'unfortunate'!
Regardless of any other merit, the Sunak interview got GB News into the papers, which was probably its main aim.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 8h This is the most uncomfortable I’ve seen Rishi Sunak in quite a while.
Sunak fans should pause and watch the clip Dan Hodges has there. Looking well under pressure over £10K bill for new boilers for every family.
As Sunak says, what £10k bill? He rightly pointed out that (a) "costs" always get balanced against "opportunity" and whatever the cost is now won't be the cost by the time they are rolling it out.
Isn't the problem with retrofitting heat pumps that the radiators need to be replaced by bigger ones too, because of the lower operating temperature of the system?
So, opportunity - British design and manufacturing of all these new pumps and radiators, British installation of them. Which will generate a bucket load of money for the economy.
Neil is a dinosaur, asking the tired "how much will it cost" question not interested in "how much will it save" and "how much will doing nothing cost".
The majority of voters, especially the working classes and the Red Wall, care very much about the cost.
It’s also fair to ask why the British consumer is being asked to contribute so much, when the same isn’t true of much larger countries such as the US and China.
Having spent 15 years in a red wall WC town I am aware of this. "We can't afford it" has been drilled into them by opportunistic Tories to destroy Labour as the party who wastes money. Job done, the red wall is blue. Now then, we need to hose the blue wall with money. But "we can't afford it" and "how much will it cost".
I've had punters arguing on Facebook against spending money regenerating their own high street. The more the regen progresses and the more it gets lauded by experts as the model for other towns the more they shriek about the costs.
We either invest in stuff or we stay broken and crap. There is no £10k per household bill and the people asking the question know this. As for "why us and not China" we don't live in China. Our kids don't go to school in China. People have benefited massively from various clean air measures yet so many of our kids still go to schools where they breathe polluted air. Time to do more for their sake and let China do their own thing.
I do sometimes wonder whether a form of self-hatred or Stockholm syndrome has taken over with elements of the English working class. It's like they don't think they deserve any better. Even Brexit - touted as the second peasants' revolt by folk on here, seems to be more about hurting other people (foreigners, Londoners, the 'metropolitan elite') than anything else. The ridiculous thing about the "we can't afford it" mantra is that if you look at who pays most of the tax in this country, it really isn't them paying for it. And they still don't want the money.
My father who was born in the 1920s to an upper middle class family used to say (which always seemed disgustingly snobby to me) that the British working class like to be led by the "officer class", i.e. those that some might regard as "toffs", and that in the army they didn't like it if an officer had "risen from the ranks". Looking at what seems for me an inexplicable appeal of Johnson in what are essentially working class seats, I am beginning to wonder if he was correct?!
Thatcher won lots of working class seats too and was self made and grammar school educated from the lower middle class not a Toff like Johnson or Cameron.
Mind you Blair, who was also a public school and Oxford educated Toff, also won working class seats. It depends on the candidate not the class
Regardless of any other merit, the Sunak interview got GB News into the papers, which was probably its main aim.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 8h This is the most uncomfortable I’ve seen Rishi Sunak in quite a while.
Sunak fans ould pause and watch the clip Dan Hodges has there. Looking well under pressure over £10K bill for new boilers for every family.
As Sunak says, what £10k bill? He rightly pointed out that (a) "costs" always get balanced against "opportunity" and whatever the cost is now won't be the cost by the time they are rolling it out.
Isn't the problem with retrofitting heat pumps that the radiators need to be replaced by bigger ones too, because of the lower operating temperature of the system?
So, opportunity - British design and manufacturing of all these new pumps and radiators, British installation of them. Which will generate a bucket load of money for the economy.
Neil is a dinosaur, asking the tired "how much will it cost" question not interested in "how much will it save" and "how much will doing nothing cost".
The majority of voters, especially the working classes and the Red Wall, care very much about the cost.
It’s also fair to ask why the British consumer is being asked to contribute so much, when the same isn’t true of much larger countries such as the US and China.
Having spent 15 years in a red wall WC town I am aware of this. "We can't afford it" has been drilled into them by opportunistic Tories to destroy Labour as the party who wastes money. Job done, the red wall is blue. Now then, we need to hose the blue wall with money. But "we can't afford it" and "how much will it cost".
I've had punters arguing on Facebook against spending money regenerating their own high street. The more the regen progresses and the more it gets lauded by experts as the model for other towns the more they shriek about the costs.
We either invest in stuff or we stay broken and crap. There is no £10k per household bill and the people asking the question know this. As for "why us and not China" we don't live in China. Our kids don't go to school in China. People have benefited massively from various clean air measures yet so many of our kids still go to schools where they breathe polluted air. Time to do more for their sake and let China do their own thing.
I do sometimes wonder whether a form of self-hatred or Stockholm syndrome has taken over with elements of the English working class. It's like they don't think they deserve any better. Even Brexit - touted as the second peasants' revolt by folk on here, seems to be more about hurting other people (foreigners, Londoners, the 'metropolitan elite') than anything else.
I suspect a lot of them want "higher wages" and by removing a pool of cheap accessible labour from the market they may very well get them.
And people think they're thick....
Yes, indeed they ARE getting them. Wages for the C2s and Ds have risen in a way not seen in the last 20 years.
It's so simple, and has happened time and time again in British history. When there are fewer people to do the skilled labour and/or the grunt work, the wages commanded for that work increase and the lot of those workers improves.
There has been a lot of magical thinking in my lifetime that immigration makes us richer and to say otherwise is somehow taboo. It increases our GDP, sure, because there are more of us. And if you're trying to employ someone you can do it more cheaply. I remember a geography GCSE question in which I was invited to discuss the benefits to the UK of immigration - the drawbacks weren't to be mentioned. But in reality it doesn't do a lot for most individual Britons.
Wages are higher in certain sectors because of a shortage of labour. Thats only partially due to "forriners go home" Brexit effects - the logistics industry is suffering because of IR35 just as much.
The harsh light of day for the British worker is that there are a stack of jobs they just don't want to do. We had to open the door to EU staff in the first place because locals don't want to clean offices or serve coffee or look after the elderly or work in a factory.
Now that some EU workers have left there is a shortage which is driving wages higher - but isn't filling the shortages because people still don't want those jobs.
I don't have experience of many of those - but to suggest that locals don't want to serve coffee seems a bit questionable. Almost every coffee I'm served is by a British person. Granted, Pret at Piccadilly station is noticeably cosmopolitan (or was - haven't been there since March 2020) but places like that are atypical. Almost all coffee shops I've been in are almost totally staffed by British people.
The truth of the matter is that the differential between benefits and ultra low pay jobs is small -
1) Benefits - shit money, but your time is your own 2) Bottom end job - slightly better money. But if your job involves travel, clothing etc, that's eroded. Moving from benefits to work is complex - not worth it for a short term job. You could easily end up worse off if you have a series of short term jobs. Shitty jobs also often have shitty hours...
So if you get a bottom end job, you might or might not get more money. But there is a considerable risk of worse. Plus you then loose the time....
Looking at all of this, it is quite remarkable that anyone moves from long term unemployment to work. Of course the reason that a number do, is that they can get a less shitty job from the first, shitty one.
There is also the further point that the low end jobs are supported by horrible living conditions. My wife (who comes from a pretty poor country) was appalled when she saw a HMO ((House in Multiple Occupation) not long ago* - 2+ adults in every room. Including a bathroom that had been converted by ripping out the bath, and dividing up rooms with plasterboard....
Judging by the mound of bikes, they were working at dispatch/delivery riders, mainly, in that house. Smile when you next get a takeaway.....
*We are looking at buying house - this was in a nice leafy, poshish bit of London
Pop quiz - how many of the other countries above were on the Red list at the time?
India was clearly under-reporting. But I presume we had some confidence in them, as opposed to say Bangladesh and Pakistan (which were on the red list)
Travel bans are intended to reduce the risk from new coronavirus variants like the South Africa strain, the Department for Transport (DfT) said. They are based on advice from the Joint Biosecurity Centre.
Data has shown that most cases of the South Africa coronavirus variant found in the UK so far have been linked to international travel, with very few having come from Europe, said the DfT.
Regardless of any other merit, the Sunak interview got GB News into the papers, which was probably its main aim.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 8h This is the most uncomfortable I’ve seen Rishi Sunak in quite a while.
Sunak fans ould pause and watch the clip Dan Hodges has there. Looking well under pressure over £10K bill for new boilers for every family.
As Sunak says, what £10k bill? He rightly pointed out that (a) "costs" always get balanced against "opportunity" and whatever the cost is now won't be the cost by the time they are rolling it out.
Isn't the problem with retrofitting heat pumps that the radiators need to be replaced by bigger ones too, because of the lower operating temperature of the system?
So, opportunity - British design and manufacturing of all these new pumps and radiators, British installation of them. Which will generate a bucket load of money for the economy.
Neil is a dinosaur, asking the tired "how much will it cost" question not interested in "how much will it save" and "how much will doing nothing cost".
The majority of voters, especially the working classes and the Red Wall, care very much about the cost.
It’s also fair to ask why the British consumer is being asked to contribute so much, when the same isn’t true of much larger countries such as the US and China.
Having spent 15 years in a red wall WC town I am aware of this. "We can't afford it" has been drilled into them by opportunistic Tories to destroy Labour as the party who wastes money. Job done, the red wall is blue. Now then, we need to hose the blue wall with money. But "we can't afford it" and "how much will it cost".
I've had punters arguing on Facebook against spending money regenerating their own high street. The more the regen progresses and the more it gets lauded by experts as the model for other towns the more they shriek about the costs.
We either invest in stuff or we stay broken and crap. There is no £10k per household bill and the people asking the question know this. As for "why us and not China" we don't live in China. Our kids don't go to school in China. People have benefited massively from various clean air measures yet so many of our kids still go to schools where they breathe polluted air. Time to do more for their sake and let China do their own thing.
I do sometimes wonder whether a form of self-hatred or Stockholm syndrome has taken over with elements of the English working class. It's like they don't think they deserve any better. Even Brexit - touted as the second peasants' revolt by folk on here, seems to be more about hurting other people (foreigners, Londoners, the 'metropolitan elite') than anything else.
I suspect a lot of them want "higher wages" and by removing a pool of cheap accessible labour from the market they may very well get them.
And people think they're thick....
Yes, indeed they ARE getting them. Wages for the C2s and Ds have risen in a way not seen in the last 20 years.
It's so simple, and has happened time and time again in British history. When there are fewer people to do the skilled labour and/or the grunt work, the wages commanded for that work increase and the lot of those workers improves.
There has been a lot of magical thinking in my lifetime that immigration makes us richer and to say otherwise is somehow taboo. It increases our GDP, sure, because there are more of us. And if you're trying to employ someone you can do it more cheaply. I remember a geography GCSE question in which I was invited to discuss the benefits to the UK of immigration - the drawbacks weren't to be mentioned. But in reality it doesn't do a lot for most individual Britons.
Wages are higher in certain sectors because of a shortage of labour. Thats only partially due to "forriners go home" Brexit effects - the logistics industry is suffering because of IR35 just as much.
The harsh light of day for the British worker is that there are a stack of jobs they just don't want to do. We had to open the door to EU staff in the first place because locals don't want to clean offices or serve coffee or look after the elderly or work in a factory.
Now that some EU workers have left there is a shortage which is driving wages higher - but isn't filling the shortages because people still don't want those jobs.
Living on the backs of cheap EU labour is over, and in the end the pay will have to increase to attract the workers
I think the government will have to come up with immigration schemes for care workers. They have a delivery obligation. Wages will find their own levels elsewhere in the economy. ie GDP will contract in relative terms, to match. Some wages will go up and some will go down, but likely better terms for the low paid at the expense of fewer higher paid jobs. Which may be a desirable thing...
Or how about they just pay care workers more than minimum wage?
Care workers looking after the vulnerable for 12 hours a day, wiping people's bums and dealing with dementia, incontinence, and generally tough work . . . how is it that is a minimum wage job earning less than what eg a waiter earns? Since a waiter will get minimum wage plus tips.
Even pre-pandemic, pre-Brexit ~83% of care staff in the UK were British and half the non-British staff were not EU either so the notion we're reliant upon immigration to fill these roles has never been true. Pay a decent wage for these jobs and they'll get filled.
Many care workers are not actually paid by their employers, but by the state. By this I mean that there are quite a few care companies, whether residential or home care, which rely on contracts or similar from Government (including Local) contracts. So until we, the state, are prepared to pay more in taxes to fund such contracts, wages for the staff cannot rise.
Absolutely.
Though we don't expect others in the healthcare sector like nurses or doctors to work for minimum wage. There is some overlap between the duties of a nurse and the duties of care workers, but the latter are working for minimum wage while the former are getting roughly twice as much.
Putting care staff on £12 per hour for instance would give them a 20% pay rise, make the job even more attractive for people in other sectors working minimum wage - and still leave care workers earning a fraction of others in the healthcare sector.
I definitely agree that care workers need to be paid more, but what you suggest won't fill the demand gap on budgets that are likely to get more constrained. They are struggling to fill nursing positions, who are paid much more. A consequence of Brexit will be a lower tax take, which will also be needed to pay off Covid debts. I think UK governments will be a bit desperate to find the people to come and won't want to raise wages too much.
Regardless of any other merit, the Sunak interview got GB News into the papers, which was probably its main aim.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 8h This is the most uncomfortable I’ve seen Rishi Sunak in quite a while.
Sunak fans should pause and watch the clip Dan Hodges has there. Looking well under pressure over £10K bill for new boilers for every family.
As Sunak says, what £10k bill? He rightly pointed out that (a) "costs" always get balanced against "opportunity" and whatever the cost is now won't be the cost by the time they are rolling it out.
Isn't the problem with retrofitting heat pumps that the radiators need to be replaced by bigger ones too, because of the lower operating temperature of the system?
So, opportunity - British design and manufacturing of all these new pumps and radiators, British installation of them. Which will generate a bucket load of money for the economy.
Neil is a dinosaur, asking the tired "how much will it cost" question not interested in "how much will it save" and "how much will doing nothing cost".
The majority of voters, especially the working classes and the Red Wall, care very much about the cost.
It’s also fair to ask why the British consumer is being asked to contribute so much, when the same isn’t true of much larger countries such as the US and China.
Having spent 15 years in a red wall WC town I am aware of this. "We can't afford it" has been drilled into them by opportunistic Tories to destroy Labour as the party who wastes money. Job done, the red wall is blue. Now then, we need to hose the blue wall with money. But "we can't afford it" and "how much will it cost".
I've had punters arguing on Facebook against spending money regenerating their own high street. The more the regen progresses and the more it gets lauded by experts as the model for other towns the more they shriek about the costs.
We either invest in stuff or we stay broken and crap. There is no £10k per household bill and the people asking the question know this. As for "why us and not China" we don't live in China. Our kids don't go to school in China. People have benefited massively from various clean air measures yet so many of our kids still go to schools where they breathe polluted air. Time to do more for their sake and let China do their own thing.
I do sometimes wonder whether a form of self-hatred or Stockholm syndrome has taken over with elements of the English working class. It's like they don't think they deserve any better. Even Brexit - touted as the second peasants' revolt by folk on here, seems to be more about hurting other people (foreigners, Londoners, the 'metropolitan elite') than anything else. The ridiculous thing about the "we can't afford it" mantra is that if you look at who pays most of the tax in this country, it really isn't them paying for it. And they still don't want the money.
My father who was born in the 1920s to an upper middle class family used to say (which always seemed disgustingly snobby to me) that the British working class like to be led by the "officer class", i.e. those that some might regard as "toffs", and that in the army they didn't like it if an officer had "risen from the ranks". Looking at what seems for me an inexplicable appeal of Johnson in what are essentially working class seats, I am beginning to wonder if he was correct?!
Thatcher won lots of working class seats too and was self made and grammar school educated from the lower middle class not a Toff like Johnson or Cameron.
Mind you Blair, who was also a public school and Oxford educated Toff, also won working class seats. It depends on the candidate not the class
Blair didn't do so well when he was Anthony Lynton Blair; much better when he became Tony.
Pop quiz - how many of the other countries above were on the Red list at the time?
India was clearly under-reporting. But I presume we had some confidence in them, as opposed to say Bangladesh and Pakistan (which were on the red list)
Indeed their test positivity rate was much lower. The announcement for Pakistan being added to the red list was made on 2 April, which probably makes about 31 March being the latest data available to make the decision when that was announced.
On 31 March India had a test positivity rate of 6.0% and 44.94 cases per million. On 31 March France had a test positivity rate of 7.3% and 562.57 cases per million.
Of those two, which would you think should be on the red list?
It was frankly insane to me that France was never on our red list, or the rest of Europe. The whole world should have been at the time, but there was nothing special about India without the benefit of hindsight.
Regardless of any other merit, the Sunak interview got GB News into the papers, which was probably its main aim.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 8h This is the most uncomfortable I’ve seen Rishi Sunak in quite a while.
Sunak fans ould pause and watch the clip Dan Hodges has there. Looking well under pressure over £10K bill for new boilers for every family.
As Sunak says, what £10k bill? He rightly pointed out that (a) "costs" always get balanced against "opportunity" and whatever the cost is now won't be the cost by the time they are rolling it out.
Isn't the problem with retrofitting heat pumps that the radiators need to be replaced by bigger ones too, because of the lower operating temperature of the system?
So, opportunity - British design and manufacturing of all these new pumps and radiators, British installation of them. Which will generate a bucket load of money for the economy.
Neil is a dinosaur, asking the tired "how much will it cost" question not interested in "how much will it save" and "how much will doing nothing cost".
The majority of voters, especially the working classes and the Red Wall, care very much about the cost.
It’s also fair to ask why the British consumer is being asked to contribute so much, when the same isn’t true of much larger countries such as the US and China.
Having spent 15 years in a red wall WC town I am aware of this. "We can't afford it" has been drilled into them by opportunistic Tories to destroy Labour as the party who wastes money. Job done, the red wall is blue. Now then, we need to hose the blue wall with money. But "we can't afford it" and "how much will it cost".
I've had punters arguing on Facebook against spending money regenerating their own high street. The more the regen progresses and the more it gets lauded by experts as the model for other towns the more they shriek about the costs.
We either invest in stuff or we stay broken and crap. There is no £10k per household bill and the people asking the question know this. As for "why us and not China" we don't live in China. Our kids don't go to school in China. People have benefited massively from various clean air measures yet so many of our kids still go to schools where they breathe polluted air. Time to do more for their sake and let China do their own thing.
I do sometimes wonder whether a form of self-hatred or Stockholm syndrome has taken over with elements of the English working class. It's like they don't think they deserve any better. Even Brexit - touted as the second peasants' revolt by folk on here, seems to be more about hurting other people (foreigners, Londoners, the 'metropolitan elite') than anything else.
I suspect a lot of them want "higher wages" and by removing a pool of cheap accessible labour from the market they may very well get them.
And people think they're thick....
Yes, indeed they ARE getting them. Wages for the C2s and Ds have risen in a way not seen in the last 20 years.
It's so simple, and has happened time and time again in British history. When there are fewer people to do the skilled labour and/or the grunt work, the wages commanded for that work increase and the lot of those workers improves.
There has been a lot of magical thinking in my lifetime that immigration makes us richer and to say otherwise is somehow taboo. It increases our GDP, sure, because there are more of us. And if you're trying to employ someone you can do it more cheaply. I remember a geography GCSE question in which I was invited to discuss the benefits to the UK of immigration - the drawbacks weren't to be mentioned. But in reality it doesn't do a lot for most individual Britons.
Wages are higher in certain sectors because of a shortage of labour. Thats only partially due to "forriners go home" Brexit effects - the logistics industry is suffering because of IR35 just as much.
The harsh light of day for the British worker is that there are a stack of jobs they just don't want to do. We had to open the door to EU staff in the first place because locals don't want to clean offices or serve coffee or look after the elderly or work in a factory.
Now that some EU workers have left there is a shortage which is driving wages higher - but isn't filling the shortages because people still don't want those jobs.
I don't have experience of many of those - but to suggest that locals don't want to serve coffee seems a bit questionable. Almost every coffee I'm served is by a British person. Granted, Pret at Piccadilly station is noticeably cosmopolitan (or was - haven't been there since March 2020) but places like that are atypical. Almost all coffee shops I've been in are almost totally staffed by British people.
The truth of the matter is that the differential between benefits and ultra low pay jobs is small -
1) Benefits - shit money, but your time is your own 2) Bottom end job - slightly better money. But if your job involves travel, clothing etc, that's eroded. Moving from benefits to work is complex - not worth it for a short term job. You could easily end up worse off if you have a series of short term jobs. Shitty jobs also often have shitty hours...
So if you get a bottom end job, you might or might not get more money. But there is a considerable risk of worse. Plus you then loose the time....
Looking at all of this, it is quite remarkable that anyone moves from long term unemployment to work. Of course the reason that a number do, is that they can get a less shitty job from the first, shitty one.
There is also the further point that the low end jobs are supported by horrible living conditions. My wife (who comes from a pretty poor country) was appalled when she saw a HMO ((House in Multiple Occupation) not long ago* - 2+ adults in every room. Including a bathroom that had been converted by ripping out the bath, and dividing up rooms with plasterboard....
Judging by the mound of bikes, they were working at dispatch/delivery riders, mainly, in that house. Smile when you next get a takeaway.....
*We are looking at buying house - this was in a nice leafy, poshish bit of London
I'm not sure you have that much free time on benefits, since you have to demonstrate you have spent time looking for a job. Mind you, I have only signed on for about two months in my life and that was over twenty years ago, so I can't really comment. I have done a "shitty job" though and can confirm that it doesn't leave you much time or energy for doing anything else, although at least it keeps you busy.
Regardless of any other merit, the Sunak interview got GB News into the papers, which was probably its main aim.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 8h This is the most uncomfortable I’ve seen Rishi Sunak in quite a while.
Sunak fans should pause and watch the clip Dan Hodges has there. Looking well under pressure over £10K bill for new boilers for every family.
As Sunak says, what £10k bill? He rightly pointed out that (a) "costs" always get balanced against "opportunity" and whatever the cost is now won't be the cost by the time they are rolling it out.
Isn't the problem with retrofitting heat pumps that the radiators need to be replaced by bigger ones too, because of the lower operating temperature of the system?
So, opportunity - British design and manufacturing of all these new pumps and radiators, British installation of them. Which will generate a bucket load of money for the economy.
Neil is a dinosaur, asking the tired "how much will it cost" question not interested in "how much will it save" and "how much will doing nothing cost".
The majority of voters, especially the working classes and the Red Wall, care very much about the cost.
It’s also fair to ask why the British consumer is being asked to contribute so much, when the same isn’t true of much larger countries such as the US and China.
Having spent 15 years in a red wall WC town I am aware of this. "We can't afford it" has been drilled into them by opportunistic Tories to destroy Labour as the party who wastes money. Job done, the red wall is blue. Now then, we need to hose the blue wall with money. But "we can't afford it" and "how much will it cost".
I've had punters arguing on Facebook against spending money regenerating their own high street. The more the regen progresses and the more it gets lauded by experts as the model for other towns the more they shriek about the costs.
We either invest in stuff or we stay broken and crap. There is no £10k per household bill and the people asking the question know this. As for "why us and not China" we don't live in China. Our kids don't go to school in China. People have benefited massively from various clean air measures yet so many of our kids still go to schools where they breathe polluted air. Time to do more for their sake and let China do their own thing.
I do sometimes wonder whether a form of self-hatred or Stockholm syndrome has taken over with elements of the English working class. It's like they don't think they deserve any better. Even Brexit - touted as the second peasants' revolt by folk on here, seems to be more about hurting other people (foreigners, Londoners, the 'metropolitan elite') than anything else. The ridiculous thing about the "we can't afford it" mantra is that if you look at who pays most of the tax in this country, it really isn't them paying for it. And they still don't want the money.
My father who was born in the 1920s to an upper middle class family used to say (which always seemed disgustingly snobby to me) that the British working class like to be led by the "officer class", i.e. those that some might regard as "toffs", and that in the army they didn't like it if an officer had "risen from the ranks". Looking at what seems for me an inexplicable appeal of Johnson in what are essentially working class seats, I am beginning to wonder if he was correct?!
Thatcher won lots of working class seats too and was self made and grammar school educated from the lower middle class not a Toff like Johnson or Cameron.
Mind you Blair, who was also a public school and Oxford educated Toff, also won working class seats. It depends on the candidate not the class
Yes, but if you listen to Mrs T now she *sounds* very upper class. Therefore not disproving the officer class thing, though John Major was more of an anomaly.
If India was kept off the red list because we had not identified the India variant, why were other countries put on the red list despite not having variants of their own?
We know BoZo wanted a trade deal, and we know that's why he fucked this one up.
Because the rates of infection were massively higher in those nations, plus the South African variant was there too.
This information is known and the data is out there. But you keep believing whatever conspiracy theory bollocks you want to if you want to. I know full well data and you don't go hand in hand and no doubt you'll ignore all the data that doesn't suit your agenda.
There was no evidence-based reason to close India at the end of March uniquely, unlike the nations that were. Which is why all nations should have been closed, because by the time you know that there's a problem its too late. But that wasn't done.
Leaving aside the India issue, I disagree with this idea of closing the borders to everyone. The problem with that is longer term. Once they’re closed it becomes increasingly difficult to justify opening them again.
Especially if you have scientists running about panicking at the emergence of every new variant and it’s “potential” for evading the vaccines.
If we'd had Keir Starmer in charge -> hotel quarantine for all arrivals in Feb -> much slower arrival of delta variant -> restrictions eased on time (probably).
If we'd had Keir Starmer in charge -> earlier lockdown in 2020 for wave 2 -> many, many lives saved (definitely).
Will Keir Starmer get any credit for this... nope.
I think this is a big assumption. It depends on the real reasons why the Govt took the decisions it did. Sometimes it will have been as a result of paying too much attention to the advice of scientific advisers. Sometimes the complete opposite (or finding competing reasons to overall them). Whereas Starmer/the opposition will have been calling for things without or with an incomplete picture of that advice.
For example his policy of “circuit breakers” in the autumn. He claimed it was based on what SAGE advice was saying. But actually it was taking one bit of a SAGE suggestion and ignoring other bits.
Pop quiz - how many of the other countries above were on the Red list at the time?
India was clearly under-reporting. But I presume we had some confidence in them, as opposed to say Bangladesh and Pakistan (which were on the red list)
Indeed their test positivity rate was much lower. The announcement for Pakistan being added to the red list was made on 2 April, which probably makes about 31 March being the latest data available to make the decision when that was announced.
On 31 March India had a test positivity rate of 6.0% and 44.94 cases per million. On 31 March France had a test positivity rate of 7.3% and 562.57 cases per million.
Of those two, which would you think should be on the red list?
It was frankly insane to me that France was never on our red list, or the rest of Europe. The whole world should have been at the time, but there was nothing special about India without the benefit of hindsight.
There'll lots of natural flow between France and England though (Hauliers) - so an out and out bar is more difficult than with India where there's only flights between the countries. Also France never had bodies being washed down the Rhone.
Regardless of any other merit, the Sunak interview got GB News into the papers, which was probably its main aim.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 8h This is the most uncomfortable I’ve seen Rishi Sunak in quite a while.
Sunak fans should pause and watch the clip Dan Hodges has there. Looking well under pressure over £10K bill for new boilers for every family.
As Sunak says, what £10k bill? He rightly pointed out that (a) "costs" always get balanced against "opportunity" and whatever the cost is now won't be the cost by the time they are rolling it out.
Isn't the problem with retrofitting heat pumps that the radiators need to be replaced by bigger ones too, because of the lower operating temperature of the system?
So, opportunity - British design and manufacturing of all these new pumps and radiators, British installation of them. Which will generate a bucket load of money for the economy.
Neil is a dinosaur, asking the tired "how much will it cost" question not interested in "how much will it save" and "how much will doing nothing cost".
The majority of voters, especially the working classes and the Red Wall, care very much about the cost.
It’s also fair to ask why the British consumer is being asked to contribute so much, when the same isn’t true of much larger countries such as the US and China.
Having spent 15 years in a red wall WC town I am aware of this. "We can't afford it" has been drilled into them by opportunistic Tories to destroy Labour as the party who wastes money. Job done, the red wall is blue. Now then, we need to hose the blue wall with money. But "we can't afford it" and "how much will it cost".
I've had punters arguing on Facebook against spending money regenerating their own high street. The more the regen progresses and the more it gets lauded by experts as the model for other towns the more they shriek about the costs.
We either invest in stuff or we stay broken and crap. There is no £10k per household bill and the people asking the question know this. As for "why us and not China" we don't live in China. Our kids don't go to school in China. People have benefited massively from various clean air measures yet so many of our kids still go to schools where they breathe polluted air. Time to do more for their sake and let China do their own thing.
I do sometimes wonder whether a form of self-hatred or Stockholm syndrome has taken over with elements of the English working class. It's like they don't think they deserve any better. Even Brexit - touted as the second peasants' revolt by folk on here, seems to be more about hurting other people (foreigners, Londoners, the 'metropolitan elite') than anything else. The ridiculous thing about the "we can't afford it" mantra is that if you look at who pays most of the tax in this country, it really isn't them paying for it. And they still don't want the money.
My father who was born in the 1920s to an upper middle class family used to say (which always seemed disgustingly snobby to me) that the British working class like to be led by the "officer class", i.e. those that some might regard as "toffs", and that in the army they didn't like it if an officer had "risen from the ranks". Looking at what seems for me an inexplicable appeal of Johnson in what are essentially working class seats, I am beginning to wonder if he was correct?!
Yes, deference to their perceived social 'betters' is still a thing with (many of) the oiks. Far more comfortable with a 'born to rule' member of the upper classes than with somebody upwardly mobile from an ordinary background. The former seen as "authentic" and "just being themselves", the latter as arrogant and a bit suspect in "tying to be something they're not", ie "getting above their station".
It's the Hudson complex and it's alive and well in 2021.
Any thought on the Australia trade deal? Will British farmers be protected from cheap Aussie imports or are Midwestern farmers thinking.. . "ah yes well have some of that as well please"?
The whole thing is a very minor footnote in our global trade, one way or the other. Looking at the actual product flows involved I don't see any evidence the UK market will be flooded and undermined by vast amounts of Australian agri imports, nor do I think the deal will benefit the UK on exports in any meaningful way. As you allude to, its most powerful impact is probably as a precedent for others.
I think it is inconsistent to simultaneously complain the Australia FTA is meaningless and that it is a terrible threat.
My view FWIW is that an Australia FTA is a good thing to do. UK interests haven't been competently pursued by Liz Truss. This may be a minor deal, but you should do things properly. The big issues are in Europe, the UK doesn't have a coherent Europe policy, it has lost 20% of its Europe trade and 10% of its total trade in the few months since Brexit, and there are big problems in Northern Ireland. Let's focus on what matters.
Regardless of any other merit, the Sunak interview got GB News into the papers, which was probably its main aim.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 8h This is the most uncomfortable I’ve seen Rishi Sunak in quite a while.
Sunak fans ould pause and watch the clip Dan Hodges has there. Looking well under pressure over £10K bill for new boilers for every family.
As Sunak says, what £10k bill? He rightly pointed out that (a) "costs" always get balanced against "opportunity" and whatever the cost is now won't be the cost by the time they are rolling it out.
Isn't the problem with retrofitting heat pumps that the radiators need to be replaced by bigger ones too, because of the lower operating temperature of the system?
So, opportunity - British design and manufacturing of all these new pumps and radiators, British installation of them. Which will generate a bucket load of money for the economy.
Neil is a dinosaur, asking the tired "how much will it cost" question not interested in "how much will it save" and "how much will doing nothing cost".
The majority of voters, especially the working classes and the Red Wall, care very much about the cost.
It’s also fair to ask why the British consumer is being asked to contribute so much, when the same isn’t true of much larger countries such as the US and China.
Having spent 15 years in a red wall WC town I am aware of this. "We can't afford it" has been drilled into them by opportunistic Tories to destroy Labour as the party who wastes money. Job done, the red wall is blue. Now then, we need to hose the blue wall with money. But "we can't afford it" and "how much will it cost".
I've had punters arguing on Facebook against spending money regenerating their own high street. The more the regen progresses and the more it gets lauded by experts as the model for other towns the more they shriek about the costs.
We either invest in stuff or we stay broken and crap. There is no £10k per household bill and the people asking the question know this. As for "why us and not China" we don't live in China. Our kids don't go to school in China. People have benefited massively from various clean air measures yet so many of our kids still go to schools where they breathe polluted air. Time to do more for their sake and let China do their own thing.
I do sometimes wonder whether a form of self-hatred or Stockholm syndrome has taken over with elements of the English working class. It's like they don't think they deserve any better. Even Brexit - touted as the second peasants' revolt by folk on here, seems to be more about hurting other people (foreigners, Londoners, the 'metropolitan elite') than anything else.
I suspect a lot of them want "higher wages" and by removing a pool of cheap accessible labour from the market they may very well get them.
And people think they're thick....
Yes, indeed they ARE getting them. Wages for the C2s and Ds have risen in a way not seen in the last 20 years.
It's so simple, and has happened time and time again in British history. When there are fewer people to do the skilled labour and/or the grunt work, the wages commanded for that work increase and the lot of those workers improves.
There has been a lot of magical thinking in my lifetime that immigration makes us richer and to say otherwise is somehow taboo. It increases our GDP, sure, because there are more of us. And if you're trying to employ someone you can do it more cheaply. I remember a geography GCSE question in which I was invited to discuss the benefits to the UK of immigration - the drawbacks weren't to be mentioned. But in reality it doesn't do a lot for most individual Britons.
Wages are higher in certain sectors because of a shortage of labour. Thats only partially due to "forriners go home" Brexit effects - the logistics industry is suffering because of IR35 just as much.
The harsh light of day for the British worker is that there are a stack of jobs they just don't want to do. We had to open the door to EU staff in the first place because locals don't want to clean offices or serve coffee or look after the elderly or work in a factory.
Now that some EU workers have left there is a shortage which is driving wages higher - but isn't filling the shortages because people still don't want those jobs.
Living on the backs of cheap EU labour is over, and in the end the pay will have to increase to attract the workers
I think the government will have to come up with immigration schemes for care workers. They have a delivery obligation. Wages will find their own levels elsewhere in the economy. ie GDP will contract in relative terms, to match. Some wages will go up and some will go down, but likely better terms for the low paid at the expense of fewer higher paid jobs. Which may be a desirable thing...
Or how about they just pay care workers more than minimum wage?
Care workers looking after the vulnerable for 12 hours a day, wiping people's bums and dealing with dementia, incontinence, and generally tough work . . . how is it that is a minimum wage job earning less than what eg a waiter earns? Since a waiter will get minimum wage plus tips.
Even pre-pandemic, pre-Brexit ~83% of care staff in the UK were British and half the non-British staff were not EU either so the notion we're reliant upon immigration to fill these roles has never been true. Pay a decent wage for these jobs and they'll get filled.
Many care workers are not actually paid by their employers, but by the state. By this I mean that there are quite a few care companies, whether residential or home care, which rely on contracts or similar from Government (including Local) contracts. So until we, the state, are prepared to pay more in taxes to fund such contracts, wages for the staff cannot rise.
Absolutely.
Though we don't expect others in the healthcare sector like nurses or doctors to work for minimum wage. There is some overlap between the duties of a nurse and the duties of care workers, but the latter are working for minimum wage while the former are getting roughly twice as much.
Putting care staff on £12 per hour for instance would give them a 20% pay rise, make the job even more attractive for people in other sectors working minimum wage - and still leave care workers earning a fraction of others in the healthcare sector.
NHS Healthcare Assistants start on around 18k a year rising to 20k, which is probably the better comparison as nurses are required to have a nursing degree. That is £9 to £10.50 per hour (1950 hour year minus hols).
Generally agree with pushing up the wages by a chunk, but we need the politicians to get off their backsides and come up with a policy. I'm one for "implement Dilnot" and rejig inheritance and property taxes to pay for it.
Just under a million Romanians and a million Poles have chosen to obtain settled status, amongst others, which suggests that the alleged exodus is perhaps a little overdone.
Can I just say, since I was not online, how much I enjoyed @Cyclefree's thread header posted last night. An outstanding piece that highlighted a genuine problem and a major flaw in our system. Why is Dick still in office this morning? Have we no shame? None at all?
I would ask where our opposition is but, frankly, what's the point?
Thank you.
Starmer and Thomas-Symonds should be all over this. They are, given their previous professions, well placed to do so. And yet nothing. It's pathetic and embarrassing.
I presume we have covered the story that Warwick University has radically downgraded its third wave forecasts — “because the vaccines are more effective than we thought”.
That this downgrade arrives barely 48 hours after the government delayed the unlock will do nothing to ward off the conspiracy theorists.
Pop quiz - how many of the other countries above were on the Red list at the time?
India was clearly under-reporting. But I presume we had some confidence in them, as opposed to say Bangladesh and Pakistan (which were on the red list)
Indeed their test positivity rate was much lower. The announcement for Pakistan being added to the red list was made on 2 April, which probably makes about 31 March being the latest data available to make the decision when that was announced.
On 31 March India had a test positivity rate of 6.0% and 44.94 cases per million. On 31 March France had a test positivity rate of 7.3% and 562.57 cases per million.
Of those two, which would you think should be on the red list?
It was frankly insane to me that France was never on our red list, or the rest of Europe. The whole world should have been at the time, but there was nothing special about India without the benefit of hindsight.
There'll lots of natural flow between France and England though (Hauliers) - so an out and out bar is more difficult than with India where there's only flights between the countries. Also France never had bodies being washed down the Rhone.
If I were dictator the rule would have been red list for everyone entering the country except very limited exceptions which would include hauliers. Not everyone crossing the border is a haulier.
Did India have bodies washing down the river in March? I thought all that began in April when it rapidly took off. Its worth remembering of course that in March India was hosting the England cricket team with packed stadia and at the beginning of the series there were no concerns that anything was wrong, indeed India was being highlighted as somewhere that had coped with the pandemic well.
Very difficult however to take Russian figures at face value.
ISTR last year the excess deaths over the five year average were so far in excess of the excess deaths due to covid that it was thought by statisticians that the only plausible explanation which didn't involve covid was that there was another identical epidemic going on in Russia simultaneously.
But from the evidence we have there does seem to be a growth in Russia.
Do we think this growth is due to: a) the delta variant b) another variant c) vaccines not working d) a rather relaxed view to the presence of the existing virus, or e) something else?
It's not going to be plain sailing into 2024, in my view. The Irish Border is like a ticking time bomb, the housing market, inflation, furlough ending.
I think it is going to be bad - and the Tories have no answers to these big problems. I hope I'm wrong.
I presume we have covered the story that Warwick University has radically downgraded its third wave forecasts — “because the vaccines are more effective than we thought”.
That this downgrade arrives barely 48 hours after the government delayed the unlock will do nothing to ward off the conspiracy theorists.
I am not sure keeping the borders open to India because the PM wanted a trade deal necessarily made any difference to our case rate now, but the PM's apparent reason for doing so is outrageous.
What I don't get, as someone who has largely followed all the guidelines since this thing has started is how do 20000 people all justify "essential travel" to India ffs! That really does make me pretty angry.
Any thought on the Australia trade deal? Will British farmers be protected from cheap Aussie imports or are Midwestern farmers thinking.. . "ah yes well have some of that as well please"?
The whole thing is a very minor footnote in our global trade, one way or the other. Looking at the actual product flows involved I don't see any evidence the UK market will be flooded and undermined by vast amounts of Australian agri imports, nor do I think the deal will benefit the UK on exports in any meaningful way. As you allude to, its most powerful impact is probably as a precedent for others.
I think it is inconsistent to simultaneously complain the Australia FTA is meaningless and that it is a terrible threat.
My view FWIW is that an Australia FTA is a good thing to do. UK interests haven't been competently pursued by Liz Truss. This may be a minor deal, but you should do things properly. The big issues are in Europe, the UK doesn't have a coherent Europe policy, it has lost 20% of its Europe trade and 10% of its total trade in the few months since Brexit, and there are big problems in Northern Ireland. Let's focus on what matters.
IMO those 20% and 10% numbers just can't be judged until both Brexit and COVID circumstances have stabilised.
Rather like the "plague island killing all those people" looks very different now to how it looked 12 months ago.
Very much agree on the necessary focus on NI, but I think we need a significant upgrade in negotiating capacity both in NI and in Trade (the latter especially in working with economic sectors). The emphasis on NI first needs to be on encouraging Brussels out of their rut.
I am not sure keeping the borders open to India because the PM wanted a trade deal necessarily made any difference to our case rate now, but the PM's apparent reason for doing so is outrageous.
What I don't get, as someone who has largely followed all the guidelines since this thing has started is how do 20000 people all justify "essential travel" to India ffs! That really does make me pretty angry.
On this issue I can agree with you 100%.
My kids couldn't go to school and get a proper education but 20,000 people could fly to India and back for "essential reasons"?
The lack of controls in the border needs to be the number one lesson learnt for the future.
I am not at all sure Cummings will have any effect outside the political bubble, not least as he is one of the most discredited people in the country and in a recent poll Hancock poll twice Cummings on trust
His diatribe of hate is sad and of course releasing 'Whats app' messages might be par for the course for him, but they only reveal his utter hatred for Hancock and that Boris uses industrial language. Indeed that us unlikely to do any harm to Boris as thousands, even millions, would have considerable sympathy for a PM facing the worst crisis since WW2 swearing or uttering an oath or two
He strikes me as someone being torn apart by hate and hate in itself does far more damage to the one who hates than the hated.
He seems to want all the attention but at some point his desire will end with him being a very unhappy and unfulfilled person
He and it is sad
When seeking revenge, first dig two graves.
I've got a lot more than one person to revenge myself against, I'd suggest digging four or five to be on the safe side.
Very difficult however to take Russian figures at face value.
ISTR last year the excess deaths over the five year average were so far in excess of the excess deaths due to covid that it was thought by statisticians that the only plausible explanation which didn't involve covid was that there was another identical epidemic going on in Russia simultaneously.
But from the evidence we have there does seem to be a growth in Russia.
Do we think this growth is due to: a) the delta variant b) another variant c) vaccines not working d) a rather relaxed view to the presence of the existing virus, or e) something else?
A huge number of anti-vaxxers, driven by social media. It’s totally endemic across the CIS countries. Polls have said that something like 10% want to be vaccinated.
Any thought on the Australia trade deal? Will British farmers be protected from cheap Aussie imports or are Midwestern farmers thinking.. . "ah yes well have some of that as well please"?
The whole thing is a very minor footnote in our global trade, one way or the other. Looking at the actual product flows involved I don't see any evidence the UK market will be flooded and undermined by vast amounts of Australian agri imports, nor do I think the deal will benefit the UK on exports in any meaningful way. As you allude to, its most powerful impact is probably as a precedent for others.
I think it is inconsistent to simultaneously complain the Australia FTA is meaningless and that it is a terrible threat.
My view FWIW is that an Australia FTA is a good thing to do. UK interests haven't been competently pursued by Liz Truss. This may be a minor deal, but you should do things properly. The big issues are in Europe, the UK doesn't have a coherent Europe policy, it has lost 20% of its Europe trade and 10% of its total trade in the few months since Brexit, and there are big problems in Northern Ireland. Let's focus on what matters.
IMO those 20% and 10% numbers just can't be judged until both Brexit and COVID circumstances have stabilised.
Rather like the "plague island killing all those people" looks very different now to how it looked 12 months ago.
The fact Covid and Brexit both occurred at the same time means it's impossible to look at any trade figures (outside of NI issues) and say which of them caused which issues.
Can I just say, since I was not online, how much I enjoyed @Cyclefree's thread header posted last night. An outstanding piece that highlighted a genuine problem and a major flaw in our system. Why is Dick still in office this morning? Have we no shame? None at all?
I would ask where our opposition is but, frankly, what's the point?
Thank you.
Starmer and Thomas-Symonds should be all over this. They are, given their previous professions, well placed to do so. And yet nothing. It's pathetic and embarrassing.
They seem untouchable, some institutions. Token words and superficial actions, and little done against individuals. It's remarkable more people are not angry about such things.
Any thought on the Australia trade deal? Will British farmers be protected from cheap Aussie imports or are Midwestern farmers thinking.. . "ah yes well have some of that as well please"?
The whole thing is a very minor footnote in our global trade, one way or the other. Looking at the actual product flows involved I don't see any evidence the UK market will be flooded and undermined by vast amounts of Australian agri imports, nor do I think the deal will benefit the UK on exports in any meaningful way. As you allude to, its most powerful impact is probably as a precedent for others.
I think it is inconsistent to simultaneously complain the Australia FTA is meaningless and that it is a terrible threat.
My view FWIW is that an Australia FTA is a good thing to do. UK interests haven't been competently pursued by Liz Truss. This may be a minor deal, but you should do things properly. The big issues are in Europe, the UK doesn't have a coherent Europe policy, it has lost 20% of its Europe trade and 10% of its total trade in the few months since Brexit, and there are big problems in Northern Ireland. Let's focus on what matters.
IMO those 20% and 10% numbers just can't be judged until both Brexit and COVID circumstances have stabilised.
Rather like the "plague island killing all those people" looks very different now to how it looked 12 months ago.
The fact Covid and Brexit both occurred at the same time means it's impossible to look at any trade figures (outside of NI issues) and say which of them caused which issues.
All that we can say for certain is that despite Covid and Brexit combined the supposed catastrophic failure and collapse if we left the single market never occurred.
Can I just say, since I was not online, how much I enjoyed @Cyclefree's thread header posted last night. An outstanding piece that highlighted a genuine problem and a major flaw in our system. Why is Dick still in office this morning? Have we no shame? None at all?
I would ask where our opposition is but, frankly, what's the point?
Thank you.
Starmer and Thomas-Symonds should be all over this. They are, given their previous professions, well placed to do so. And yet nothing. It's pathetic and embarrassing.
Very good piece, the sadly usual story of no accountability and failing upwards.
At the risk of sounding like Mr Eagles, we need a campaign to get Dick out now!
Can I just say, since I was not online, how much I enjoyed @Cyclefree's thread header posted last night. An outstanding piece that highlighted a genuine problem and a major flaw in our system. Why is Dick still in office this morning? Have we no shame? None at all?
I would ask where our opposition is but, frankly, what's the point?
Thank you.
Starmer and Thomas-Symonds should be all over this. They are, given their previous professions, well placed to do so. And yet nothing. It's pathetic and embarrassing.
I think that's a bit unfair. Here's Thomas-Symonds (I can't find the full speech):
Regardless of any other merit, the Sunak interview got GB News into the papers, which was probably its main aim.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 8h This is the most uncomfortable I’ve seen Rishi Sunak in quite a while.
Sunak fans ould pause and watch the clip Dan Hodges has there. Looking well under pressure over £10K bill for new boilers for every family.
As Sunak says, what £10k bill? He rightly pointed out that (a) "costs" always get balanced against "opportunity" and whatever the cost is now won't be the cost by the time they are rolling it out.
Isn't the problem with retrofitting heat pumps that the radiators need to be replaced by bigger ones too, because of the lower operating temperature of the system?
So, opportunity - British design and manufacturing of all these new pumps and radiators, British installation of them. Which will generate a bucket load of money for the economy.
Neil is a dinosaur, asking the tired "how much will it cost" question not interested in "how much will it save" and "how much will doing nothing cost".
The majority of voters, especially the working classes and the Red Wall, care very much about the cost.
It’s also fair to ask why the British consumer is being asked to contribute so much, when the same isn’t true of much larger countries such as the US and China.
Having spent 15 years in a red wall WC town I am aware of this. "We can't afford it" has been drilled into them by opportunistic Tories to destroy Labour as the party who wastes money. Job done, the red wall is blue. Now then, we need to hose the blue wall with money. But "we can't afford it" and "how much will it cost".
I've had punters arguing on Facebook against spending money regenerating their own high street. The more the regen progresses and the more it gets lauded by experts as the model for other towns the more they shriek about the costs.
We either invest in stuff or we stay broken and crap. There is no £10k per household bill and the people asking the question know this. As for "why us and not China" we don't live in China. Our kids don't go to school in China. People have benefited massively from various clean air measures yet so many of our kids still go to schools where they breathe polluted air. Time to do more for their sake and let China do their own thing.
I do sometimes wonder whether a form of self-hatred or Stockholm syndrome has taken over with elements of the English working class. It's like they don't think they deserve any better. Even Brexit - touted as the second peasants' revolt by folk on here, seems to be more about hurting other people (foreigners, Londoners, the 'metropolitan elite') than anything else.
I suspect a lot of them want "higher wages" and by removing a pool of cheap accessible labour from the market they may very well get them.
And people think they're thick....
Yes, indeed they ARE getting them. Wages for the C2s and Ds have risen in a way not seen in the last 20 years.
It's so simple, and has happened time and time again in British history. When there are fewer people to do the skilled labour and/or the grunt work, the wages commanded for that work increase and the lot of those workers improves.
There has been a lot of magical thinking in my lifetime that immigration makes us richer and to say otherwise is somehow taboo. It increases our GDP, sure, because there are more of us. And if you're trying to employ someone you can do it more cheaply. I remember a geography GCSE question in which I was invited to discuss the benefits to the UK of immigration - the drawbacks weren't to be mentioned. But in reality it doesn't do a lot for most individual Britons.
Wages are higher in certain sectors because of a shortage of labour. Thats only partially due to "forriners go home" Brexit effects - the logistics industry is suffering because of IR35 just as much.
The harsh light of day for the British worker is that there are a stack of jobs they just don't want to do. We had to open the door to EU staff in the first place because locals don't want to clean offices or serve coffee or look after the elderly or work in a factory.
Now that some EU workers have left there is a shortage which is driving wages higher - but isn't filling the shortages because people still don't want those jobs.
I don't have experience of many of those - but to suggest that locals don't want to serve coffee seems a bit questionable. Almost every coffee I'm served is by a British person. Granted, Pret at Piccadilly station is noticeably cosmopolitan (or was - haven't been there since March 2020) but places like that are atypical. Almost all coffee shops I've been in are almost totally staffed by British people.
The truth of the matter is that the differential between benefits and ultra low pay jobs is small -
1) Benefits - shit money, but your time is your own 2) Bottom end job - slightly better money. But if your job involves travel, clothing etc, that's eroded. Moving from benefits to work is complex - not worth it for a short term job. You could easily end up worse off if you have a series of short term jobs. Shitty jobs also often have shitty hours...
So if you get a bottom end job, you might or might not get more money. But there is a considerable risk of worse. Plus you then loose the time....
Looking at all of this, it is quite remarkable that anyone moves from long term unemployment to work. Of course the reason that a number do, is that they can get a less shitty job from the first, shitty one.
There is also the further point that the low end jobs are supported by horrible living conditions. My wife (who comes from a pretty poor country) was appalled when she saw a HMO ((House in Multiple Occupation) not long ago* - 2+ adults in every room. Including a bathroom that had been converted by ripping out the bath, and dividing up rooms with plasterboard....
Judging by the mound of bikes, they were working at dispatch/delivery riders, mainly, in that house. Smile when you next get a takeaway.....
*We are looking at buying house - this was in a nice leafy, poshish bit of London
That sounds like an illegal HMO; I hope you reported it to the Borough rental team?
Can I just say, since I was not online, how much I enjoyed @Cyclefree's thread header posted last night. An outstanding piece that highlighted a genuine problem and a major flaw in our system. Why is Dick still in office this morning? Have we no shame? None at all?
I would ask where our opposition is but, frankly, what's the point?
Thank you.
Starmer and Thomas-Symonds should be all over this. They are, given their previous professions, well placed to do so. And yet nothing. It's pathetic and embarrassing.
Most people don't know who Cressida Dick is; those who do think it's a London issue and also they aren't sure who is ultimately responsible (Patel, Khan, or nobody). Khan would be well placed to demand her resignation if he wished to. I don't think Starmer is.
I am not sure keeping the borders open to India because the PM wanted a trade deal necessarily made any difference to our case rate now, but the PM's apparent reason for doing so is outrageous.
What I don't get, as someone who has largely followed all the guidelines since this thing has started is how do 20000 people all justify "essential travel" to India ffs! That really does make me pretty angry.
Elderly sick relatives? Remember travel was probably booked well before this took off - and 20,000 is just over 1% of the Indian diaspora in the UK. Yes, some may have been on "a jolly" - but many could have had perfectly reasonable reasons for travel.
Can I just say, since I was not online, how much I enjoyed @Cyclefree's thread header posted last night. An outstanding piece that highlighted a genuine problem and a major flaw in our system. Why is Dick still in office this morning? Have we no shame? None at all?
I would ask where our opposition is but, frankly, what's the point?
I missed it last night, too. I agree completely. Sir Ian Blair getting airtime yesterday to defend her as "the outstanding officer of her generation", in between deeply unconvincing defences of his own record, incensed me.
It's "scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" syndrome. Very common in the police and one reason why corruption arises. Discussed in the report. One reason why the police need an outsider with balls of steel to prise open this culture and let in cleansing sunlight.
Comments
As a much younger man I would often weep at the thought of the criminally incompetent cylinder head design and concomitantly miserable airflow numbers of the Rover V8.
The harsh light of day for the British worker is that there are a stack of jobs they just don't want to do. We had to open the door to EU staff in the first place because locals don't want to clean offices or serve coffee or look after the elderly or work in a factory.
Now that some EU workers have left there is a shortage which is driving wages higher - but isn't filling the shortages because people still don't want those jobs.
I want independent factual evidence and the argument is when the more deadly Delta variant was identified by Sage and when Sage actually asked for the borders to be closed
Just get the sets light and airy and pleasing to the eye
Of course, now they’re actually live at GBN, changing things around becomes a real pain in the arse, as they only have a few hours in the middle of the night to do any work.
We know BoZo wanted a trade deal, and we know that's why he fucked this one up.
I do think and said at the time the border should have been closed with all nations including the EU and if that was done then the Indian variant could have been prevented. However there was no evidence based reason at the end of March to single out India.
North West 7-day average for 8th June (latest figure from dashboard before people complain about it being a week out of date)
Cases: 2019.6
Hospital Admission: 48.3
In Hopsital: 246.1
Ventilated: 44.6
28 Day Death: 1.7
Comparable Cases point from Autumn 2020 24th of September
Cases: 2041.4
Hospital Admission: 79.9
In Hopsital: 493
Ventilated: 59.4
28 Day Death: 12.3
This information is known and the data is out there. But you keep believing whatever conspiracy theory bollocks you want to if you want to. I know full well data and you don't go hand in hand and no doubt you'll ignore all the data that doesn't suit your agenda.
There was no evidence-based reason to close India at the end of March uniquely, unlike the nations that were. Which is why all nations should have been closed, because by the time you know that there's a problem its too late. But that wasn't done.
So clearly he does have autonomy and free will.
All four administrations have consistently said they will be guided by the science and are terrified to step out of that comfort zone, no more so than Sturgeon and Drakeford in Wales
Actually Boris is far more likely to loosen the regulations than either Sturgeon or Drakeford who recently has been threatening us in Wales to be living with restrictions into 2022
It seems to me a hugely ignored issue, but the popularity of the monarchy, Boris, the continuing appeal of the Tory party to a broad spectrum are all bits of evidence.
One example of it is that most people are aspirational - something that leftie grievance culture struggles with - but have very different types of aspiration.
An example of the discussion vacuum. Many top people in the apparently liberal egalitarian BBC send their children to private schools. Many come from them. The silence on the subject is deafening. The chances are that most of the public couldn't care less, just as they won't care if Boris sends his kids to Eton. What people don't like is hypocrisy.
But from the second week in April it was clear that there a seriously deteriorating situation in India.
If we all saw it on PB why didn't the government ?
Quite strange considering India had not been singled out as a key area of concern until this spring.
Care workers looking after the vulnerable for 12 hours a day, wiping people's bums and dealing with dementia, incontinence, and generally tough work . . . how is it that is a minimum wage job earning less than what eg a waiter earns? Since a waiter will get minimum wage plus tips.
Even pre-pandemic, pre-Brexit ~83% of care staff in the UK were British and half the non-British staff were not EU either so the notion we're reliant upon immigration to fill these roles has never been true. Pay a decent wage for these jobs and they'll get filled.
The whole system was messed up relying upon backwards-looking data to pick which nations were quarantined rather than quarantining all nations, and then to make matters worse giving people day's notice to come back to the UK rather than saying "you're on the red list effective right now".
But the idea that it was because of a trade deal weeks earlier before it was clear? That's a fabrication rewriting history. It should have been all countries, but there was nothing special with India before the middle of April which is when they then got added.
It was March's data that was used to single out Bangladesh and Pakistan.
But now we don't have to dilute sovereignty to get them here.
https://twitter.com/steve_hawkes/status/1403737198432768006
First day of the campaign, there he is, speaking to a massive room full of business leaders, saying the worst thing about leaving the EU is that wages will go up.
Though we don't expect others in the healthcare sector like nurses or doctors to work for minimum wage. There is some overlap between the duties of a nurse and the duties of care workers, but the latter are working for minimum wage while the former are getting roughly twice as much.
Putting care staff on £12 per hour for instance would give them a 20% pay rise, make the job even more attractive for people in other sectors working minimum wage - and still leave care workers earning a fraction of others in the healthcare sector.
Something Stuart Rose said wouldn't be a good thing.
Pop quiz - how many of the other countries above were on the Red list at the time?
If we'd had Keir Starmer in charge -> earlier lockdown in 2020 for wave 2 -> many, many lives saved (definitely).
Will Keir Starmer get any credit for this... nope.
Which top trumps anything you will ever retweet.
There's a very London-centric view that low paid service sector workers are all immigrants.
And given 'time allowed' with clients of 30 minutes.
Do you think Biden has no constitutional role in Texas?
I suppose having both in positions of authority is very 'unfortunate'!
Mind you Blair, who was also a public school and Oxford educated Toff, also won working class seats. It depends on the candidate not the class
1) Benefits - shit money, but your time is your own
2) Bottom end job - slightly better money. But if your job involves travel, clothing etc, that's eroded. Moving from benefits to work is complex - not worth it for a short term job. You could easily end up worse off if you have a series of short term jobs. Shitty jobs also often have shitty hours...
So if you get a bottom end job, you might or might not get more money. But there is a considerable risk of worse. Plus you then loose the time....
Looking at all of this, it is quite remarkable that anyone moves from long term unemployment to work. Of course the reason that a number do, is that they can get a less shitty job from the first, shitty one.
There is also the further point that the low end jobs are supported by horrible living conditions. My wife (who comes from a pretty poor country) was appalled when she saw a HMO ((House in Multiple Occupation) not long ago* - 2+ adults in every room. Including a bathroom that had been converted by ripping out the bath, and dividing up rooms with plasterboard....
Judging by the mound of bikes, they were working at dispatch/delivery riders, mainly, in that house. Smile when you next get a takeaway.....
*We are looking at buying house - this was in a nice leafy, poshish bit of London
Data has shown that most cases of the South Africa coronavirus variant found in the UK so far have been linked to international travel, with very few having come from Europe, said the DfT.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56614950
The "India" Delta variant hadn't been identified, let alone become a VOC which happened two weeks after India was added to the Red List.
On 31 March India had a test positivity rate of 6.0% and 44.94 cases per million.
On 31 March France had a test positivity rate of 7.3% and 562.57 cases per million.
Of those two, which would you think should be on the red list?
It was frankly insane to me that France was never on our red list, or the rest of Europe. The whole world should have been at the time, but there was nothing special about India without the benefit of hindsight.
He’d never been involved in politics before, and made the fatal mistake of thinking the audience for his speech was sitting in the room.
Especially if you have scientists running about panicking at the emergence of every new variant and it’s “potential” for evading the vaccines. I think this is a big assumption. It depends on the real reasons why the Govt took the decisions it did. Sometimes it will have been as a result of paying too much attention to the advice of scientific advisers. Sometimes the complete opposite (or finding competing reasons to overall them). Whereas Starmer/the opposition will have been calling for things without or with an incomplete picture of that advice.
For example his policy of “circuit breakers” in the autumn. He claimed it was based on what SAGE advice was saying. But actually it was taking one bit of a SAGE suggestion and ignoring other bits.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/russia/
It's the Hudson complex and it's alive and well in 2021.
https://twitter.com/JonJonesSnr/status/1405154904482717701
My view FWIW is that an Australia FTA is a good thing to do. UK interests haven't been competently pursued by Liz Truss. This may be a minor deal, but you should do things properly. The big issues are in Europe, the UK doesn't have a coherent Europe policy, it has lost 20% of its Europe trade and 10% of its total trade in the few months since Brexit, and there are big problems in Northern Ireland. Let's focus on what matters.
Generally agree with pushing up the wages by a chunk, but we need the politicians to get off their backsides and come up with a policy. I'm one for "implement Dilnot" and rejig inheritance and property taxes to pay for it.
Just under a million Romanians and a million Poles have chosen to obtain settled status, amongst others, which suggests that the alleged exodus is perhaps a little overdone.
Starmer and Thomas-Symonds should be all over this. They are, given their previous professions, well placed to do so. And yet nothing. It's pathetic and embarrassing.
That this downgrade arrives barely 48 hours after the government delayed the unlock will do nothing to ward off the conspiracy theorists.
Did India have bodies washing down the river in March? I thought all that began in April when it rapidly took off. Its worth remembering of course that in March India was hosting the England cricket team with packed stadia and at the beginning of the series there were no concerns that anything was wrong, indeed India was being highlighted as somewhere that had coped with the pandemic well.
ISTR last year the excess deaths over the five year average were so far in excess of the excess deaths due to covid that it was thought by statisticians that the only plausible explanation which didn't involve covid was that there was another identical epidemic going on in Russia simultaneously.
But from the evidence we have there does seem to be a growth in Russia.
Do we think this growth is due to:
a) the delta variant
b) another variant
c) vaccines not working
d) a rather relaxed view to the presence of the existing virus, or
e) something else?
I think it is going to be bad - and the Tories have no answers to these big problems. I hope I'm wrong.
Rather like the "plague island killing all those people" looks very different now to how it looked 12 months ago.
Very much agree on the necessary focus on NI, but I think we need a significant upgrade in negotiating capacity both in NI and in Trade (the latter especially in working with economic sectors). The emphasis on NI first needs to be on encouraging Brussels out of their rut.
My kids couldn't go to school and get a proper education but 20,000 people could fly to India and back for "essential reasons"?
The lack of controls in the border needs to be the number one lesson learnt for the future.
At the risk of sounding like Mr Eagles, we need a campaign to get Dick out now!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-57481719