Starmer must be kicking himself. If he'd spent less time trying to put the past behind him by purging himself of everything Corbyn and instead turned his fire on Johnson he'd be soaring at the moment.
Maybe he still can but an image for what Labour look like now is difficult to make out. A rebrand is desperately needed. Whether it can happen under Starmer I don't know.
It would be easier with a change but who is there? Perhaps If David Milliband could be persuaded it would give them a look....Angela Raynor is just swapping deckchairs. There are 52% Remainers wandering around like zombies looking for a home.That's got to be the starting point.
Why bother with labour when the lib dems are the remain party
And with all due respect "Remain" is dead. It died on the alter of Covid and vaccine procurement. vote."
I'm afraid you're really out of touch Robert, which tends to happen when you don't live in a country. Not a criticism as I've been in the same situation myself many times.
It's true that 3 months ago there was considerable anti-EU feeling because of the vaccination procurement but that has changed now. We have all seen the EU catching up and, in some ways, overtaking the UK especially on their freedoms.
The current Remain polling is around 55% so that's nonsense to say that it has dropped to 30% or gone away. It's very much alive right now. A real sense that among the many problems hitting Boris Johnson, problems with Brexit are among them. The honeymoon is well and truly over.
Citation required.
There is a difference between “should we have Remained” with support ~50% and “should we rejoin” where the support is in the 30% range. The “Rejoin” camp are a minority and no evidence that’s changing.
Unless you have a Tardis the 50% number is irrelevant.
This is an absolutely crucial point.
Maybe 50% of people think leaving was an error.
But of these, perhaps only 60% would vote to rejoin in a referendum.
And of these, it is of overriding importance to maybe a third of these.
Quite a few Don't Knows too.
But I don't expect it to be in the manifesto of any major English party at the next GE, though EEA may well be LD policy.
Joining the EEA was of course, would be very similar to the policy which had a 2-1 majority in the 1975 referendum. Which, as I recall, was a generally truthful campaign. And enthusiastically supported by, among others, the Daily Mail.
My wife reports fresh food shortages when she returns from shopping trips. Nothing major, admittedly; niggles.
I suspect that if and when people can go on holiday to Europe again there will be similar niggles and inconveniences; the return of roaming charges is an example. Maybe longer passport queues.
I expect the biggest issue is likely to be the labour shortages. Road haulage being the big one at the moment, but it is a big slice of the NHS staffing issues too.
Yes the shortage isn't due to getting fresh across the border as we have simply taken back control by implementing very few checks on anything coming in - you can get randomly busted for stuff the customs officers want to eat, but otherwise it sails through for now.
The shortage is a crippling lack of drivers thanks to the combination of IR35 and Forrin go home
Alof of the foreigners going home are also IR35 related as previously there were able to pocket the money almost tax free - a lot of those drivers really don't want to be on HMRC books.
It should be added that the industry has asked for HGV driving to be added to the Labour shortage list and the Home Office has explicitly said No and given that everyone needs to be registered by next Wednesday bringing drivers back from Europe isn't a solution any more.
Is this a shortage of people wanting to be HGV drivers, or a shortage of trained ones? If the latter, there is an obvious solution for employers.
A shortage of trained drivers. Covid has largely stopped new driver training, which combined with an exodus of forrin drivers leaving and others unable / unwilling to drive under IR35 makes for a massive shortage.
"Just pay more" isn't the issue, a lot of people don't want to drive a truck which is why migrant labour was increasingly needed.
It's now a Mexican standoff. A hugely expensive overhaul of both wages and conditions are needed to attract people in so that the shortage doesn't get worse next year (this year is already fucked). But nobody can afford to pay as logistics is already crippled with high costs post BREXIT in an industry where the haulage bit was already the thin margins bit. The supermarkets are trying to recover from the extraordinary costs of Covid and have to cut costs for their new investors (Asda and soon Morrisons) and the manufacturing sector is similarly befuddled
Coats going up. Ability to swallow costs going down. Ultimately food price inflation is going to take off like a rocket.
Then we find a new price equilibrium. So what?
In the log run? Sure. Its just going to be very bumpy whilst we get there. Food being thrown away whilst supermarkets have shortages isn't a good outcome. That your government refuse to accept there is an issue doesn't help.
There isn't an issue.
ASDA not wanting to pay more is not the same thing as not being able to pay more.
If the government just opens the gates again and let's anyone in for minimum wage then yes the problem will go away. But considering YOUR PARTY is against homes for people coming in how is that a solution?
The issue will go away when a new equilibrium is reached under the law. If that causes disruption then businesses need to stop whinging that they want people to work for free negligible wages and start paying a market wage instead.
And we all need to be ready to pay the higher prices that will lead to.
Fine.
I don't want my products to be cheap solely because the people working on the chain to get them aren't earning a living wage.
We could have cheaper products by ensuring more stuff is made in sweatshops, is that what you want?
Eh? Brexit promised us cheaper food mate. Clearly that was more bollocks
Stay in the EU so we can exploit foreign workers
Quite catchy
There was some exploitation, as there still will be, but most of it was eastern Europeans doing jobs Brits didn't want.
Mostly skill and Labour shortages, after all any EU labour was paid the minimum wage, at least, so not exploited.
We shall shortly see how keen Britons are to work in logistics, hospitality, in health and social care and agriculture. They cannot work in them all simultaneously.
Two pointers to what will happen.
1) The building industry is finally investing in the lower level automation that, for example, the French use. If you look at a French domestic building site, it doesn't take much before they put up a small crane to move stuff around. UK sites just use a chain of Polish blokes. Mini diggers are finally taking over alot of manual digging... etc etc.
Interesting that you cite French building sites as better productivity. It's almost as if free movement of Labour within the EU doesn't account for the lamentable stagnation of productivity here. If free movement of Labour wasn't a drag on French productivity, why was it so here?
Unionisation? Just a guess but I seem to recall the French labour market is rather more restricted.
We are about the least efficient most backward in the world at construction. Even the smallest 1 house site in France will have a crane and other tools to minimise construction time. In Britain we just throw cheap labourers at it to move things round.
Do you have some research data on that?
Even self-builders I know very often buy their own minidigger and fire cranes when needed, and sell it at the end.
Though I'd agree about the UK having higher use of wet trades; that is quite heavily dependent on people here liking older houses.
France's house newbuild rate is between 200% and 300% of ours per pop. That can't be all good for low emissions, since so much is tied up in the initial construction and the lifecycle will be much shorter. Though there's a balance of course.
At what time are we supposed to break out the singing of "four legs good, two legs bad" or whatever the patriotic song of the day is?
Whatever time it is, one should be suitably attired. It's ok lads, you don't have to wear them on your feet.
Very silly. Somewhat similar to people wearing skirts that were invented by an Anglo-German royal family in the belief they were traditional Scottish highland dress.
I see Brillo is 'taking a break' from Gammon Boomer News. I wonder if it's health related. The revolting fucker looks like he's being force fed so his liver can be made into pâté.
At what time are we supposed to break out the singing of "four legs good, two legs bad" or whatever the patriotic song of the day is?
Whatever time it is, one should be suitably attired. It's ok lads, you don't have to wear them on your feet.
What fresh hell is this?! Those machine gun ports are the wrong size, and position, for a Spit armed with cannon. Looks like there's 8 Brownings (two Hurricane-sized banks of four) per wing plus the cannon in that illustration. Amateurs. And guns that close to the wing tip? Appalling.
Interesting - I can only see the 2 cannon. Unless you mean those red patches on the leading edges, which look more like the yellow you see on the outer wings in some painting schemes. But with the colour wrong.
God I love this site.
Yep, two cannon, one per wing.
The machine gun ports were covered in red canvas patches to stop crap getting down the barrels, which were punctured when the guns were fired (on cannon they used condoms I think). The width of those red patches in the illustration looks more like a Hurricane pattern, where there were four guns right next to one another in the centre of the wing, with a wide red canvas patch covering all four barrels.
On Spits with 8 Brownings the guns were spread out along the wing, one nearest the fuselage, two together in the middle of the wing one out towards the tip, giving three, narrower, red patches. Cannon armed Spits also had two machine guns per wing, giving two small red patches.
Or something like that. There's loads of marks and probably loads more variation. No doubt someone will know better than me!
So basically you are saying that companies were using immigration from Europe to suppress wages?
There absolutely was competition from Europe, but that was more EU registered trucks filling up with cheap French diesel, doing a load of jobs here then going back again. Trucking like so many other industries only really opened the doors to migrant labour when there was a shortage of locals.
Some of that shortage will be driven by wages but also by conditions. The wages piece really becomes a problem now thanks to the IR35 changes where freelance drivers are suddenly treated as employees - the big spike in costs can't / won't be met anywhere in the supply chain so people have quit.
There is no shortage of locals, there's a shortage of locals willing to work on the terms and conditions that some employers want to pay. The solution to that is to let the market find a new equilibrium of terms and conditions.
If elements of the supply chain can't compete with higher costs then they'll go out of business and cease to require transport. So the problem goes away. Or they actually can absorb the costs, so they do, so the problem goes away.
Either way your "disruption" is actually the chaos of the market working as it is supposed to do. Not a problem.
Placing artificial barriers on the market's proper functioning - by, for example, limiting the supply of available labour - ultimately harms the consumer. That's basically OK if it means there are fewer coffee shops, restaurants and hotels to choose from, even if its reduces the numbers who can afford to enjoy them, but it's not fine if it prevents food getting into shops or makes it more expensive to buy. That's why, in the end, the government will quietly ensure that it doesn't happen, so interfering with the market even more.
It won't happen. People will pay what they need to pay for food, so the shops will pay what they need to pay to stock it. The rest is fluff.
Just because businesses would prefer to pay less doesn't mean they won't pay more if they realise there is no alternative.
My local Tesco's now has a Costa Coffee machine. Indeed they seem to be everywhere nowadays. Not as much need for actual coffee shops or baristas making coffees for minimum wage if a machine can do it instead.
Obviously people will pay what they need to in order not to starve. But they were told food was going to be cheaper and in more plentiful supply. And that's why the government will be forced to act. Making life more expensive when it can easily be prevented is never popular.
So why are all the farmers complaining about Australian competition?
Because Liar has opened the market to be flooded by cheap Australian imports which our high cost farming industry can't compete with. Its almost as if the Blue Labour Cult of which you are a flag-waving member (a) don't care about farming and (b) are clueless about it. The Conservative Party of old used to be an advocate for its natural base, whatever happened to it?
Some cheap food is coming but it’s going to be expensive?
Comments
I think she has a thing for unruly hairdos.
At one time Cole was many times worse than Boris.
Social care is another example where it really is "Oh Boy" when you start looking into it.
The writing at the Sun is often brilliant, even if the content is excerable.
Sun journalist complains to the Editor about money headline writers get paid - gets sent to cover story about library closure in an Essex town.
Article headlined "Book Lack in Ongar"
Even self-builders I know very often buy their own minidigger and fire cranes when needed, and sell it at the end.
Though I'd agree about the UK having higher use of wet trades; that is quite heavily dependent on people here liking older houses.
France's house newbuild rate is between 200% and 300% of ours per pop. That can't be all good for low emissions, since so much is tied up in the initial construction and the lifecycle will be much shorter. Though there's a balance of course.
Yep, two cannon, one per wing.
The machine gun ports were covered in red canvas patches to stop crap getting down the barrels, which were punctured when the guns were fired (on cannon they used condoms I think). The width of those red patches in the illustration looks more like a Hurricane pattern, where there were four guns right next to one another in the centre of the wing, with a wide red canvas patch covering all four barrels.
On Spits with 8 Brownings the guns were spread out along the wing, one nearest the fuselage, two together in the middle of the wing one out towards the tip, giving three, narrower, red patches. Cannon armed Spits also had two machine guns per wing, giving two small red patches.
Or something like that. There's loads of marks and probably loads more variation. No doubt someone will know better than me!