Transition? Pull the other one. The Brexit Revolution has only just begun.
‘Emergency Brexit powers for lorry queues to be made permanent’ - Exclusive: ministers to make traffic provisions indefinite in expectation of further cross-Channel disruption
… Naomi Smith, the chief executive of the internationalist campaign group Best for Britain, said: “This is an admission that far from ‘teething problems’, the government expects supply problems from their rushed Brexit deal to continue indefinitely. Shelves are empty and our supply chains are already at breaking point. The government should be seeking improvements to their deal with Europe rather than preparing to make Kent a permanent lorry park.”
… Operation Brock has proved unpopular with residents as a way of managing lorry traffic…
So the Gina Miller muppet show thinks that a contingency measure for use when necessary is the same as "preparing to make Kent a permanent lorry park"?
How embarrassing for them.
Internationalist?
Sorry - that's just funny.
The problem with your guffawing at their spokesperson is that they are closer to reality than you are. If the UK and EU implement the UK's exit deal then we are highly likely to see long queues of trucks because that's what you get at (for example) EU / Switzerland crossings where traffic is much lower. Hence the need for the very unpopular truck carparks which have been built at places like Ashford.
As a fixed border crossing makes queues inevitable, "when necessary" is "most days" unless we build enough big lorry parks to stack them in.
I saw what you did there. BFB are wibbling about Kent being a "permanent lorry park", and I pointed out they are telling fairy stories.
That is a little different from "queues".
Do you have evidence that seriously long queues are occurring "most days" at Dover, now that trade is roughly back to previous levels - which would be BFB being 'close to reality'? Where are these queues?
No customs controls inwards, yet, mind. So Brsexit is not fully implemented.
Absolutely agree on that one. We will see.
My expectation is that some haulage will pivot away, and some will transfer to containerised ports and handover-haulage. The Irish Press has also been claiming that 75k trucks a year are now going direct from Irish Ports not via Dover.
Not sure of the impact of the windfarm the French are building on the sea-route the Belgians want to use from Zeebrugge.
Mons. Macron will wave his arms and shout, of course.
Using this poll is a new low imho in the Anti Boris agenda. This firm may have done polls for the Mail before but so what.....
Even I had to concede (see post of a few days ago) after your last whinge about Boris bashing that the next few threads were somewhat consistent on their attacks, but even so I do think you are being a bit precious. The Boris attacks are no where near as bad as Maggie got and I think those attacks were a badge of honour for her. There is of course quite a difference between the two. Maggie was attacked for being divisive, she wasn't attacked for lying or being incompetent, or having no attention to detail.
What's going on under the surface of the Labour Party at the moment? Has Starmer won, or is the battle for the party's soul still ongoing?
It did look for a time as if Starmer had got rid of most of the Trots - but from reading that, it does appear that their Conference is going to be ‘interesting’ from the perspective of the leader.
A British embassy worker has been arrested in Germany on spying charges.
The British national, named as David S, was arrested in Potsdam after he allegedly worked "for a foreign secret service", the German public prosecutor said in a statement.
The statement continued: "Until his arrest, David S. worked as a local employee at the British Embassy in Berlin.
Double the orders, screwing the restaurants and the riders and still losing money hand over fist. What a crazy business.
Well the original investors got it to the IPO, so they don’t care much any more.
I still don’t see how a company with ~£150m of revenue can have ~£250m of expenses and be in any way sustainable.
These delivery and taxi companies are all losing a fortune, trying to build sufficient market share that can’t be taken away by the next new startup of VC money undercutting them.
The taxi / ride share "out" i can sort of see....if we get self driving cars, they win. Big if obviously.
Food delivery services, you can't cut out the restaurants and self driving cars don't work for them, as a) they won't control those services and b) people want the food deliveried to their door, not have to cone out their flat, down in the lift, out into the street to pick a burger out the back of a self driving vehicle. And there is a fairly low ceiling on what you can charge for a delivery.
Even if you get a monopoly on this business you can't charge £20 a delivery as nobody will pay it. I personally never use these services as i already think they are really expensive.
On topic, I think the polling numbers in the header are nothing more than impressionistic, gut feelings. Yes, Sunak is popular, but he's really an unknown quantity - certainly not known enough to give sound answers on the questions in the poll. I suspect his popularity is wide rather than deep. As an avid politics watcher, I've really no idea as to how well he would fare as leader and potential PM, and those Tories investing the future of the party in him are, I think, being premature.
Something that has bugged me for sometime is the fact that Boris supposedly wrote two articles one pro one anti Brexit to decide where he stood. Logically that means he didn't have a firm definite view at that stage. Now I don't know about the rest of you, but as someone who tends to have strong views there are occasions when I am not sure on something and when I'm not sure I may form a view, but I may also be swayed, so the last thing I do is go out campaigning for my current position. Instead I listen to the arguments and play devils advocate.
I suspect May was in this position re her Remain position.
It does not come over as honest, but more opportunistic that Boris then took the position he did (Ditto I think for Gove).
Double the orders, screwing the restaurants and the riders and still losing money hand over fist. What a crazy business.
Well the original investors got it to the IPO, so they don’t care much any more.
I still don’t see how a company with ~£150m of revenue can have ~£250m of expenses and be in any way sustainable.
These delivery and taxi companies are all losing a fortune, trying to build sufficient market share that can’t be taken away by the next new startup of VC money undercutting them.
The taxi / ride share "out" i can sort of see....if we get self driving cars, they win. Big if obviously.
Food delivery services, you can't cut out the restaurants and self driving cars don't work for them, as a) they won't control those services and b) people want the food deliveried to their door, not have to cone out their flat, down in the lift, out into the street to pick a burger out the back of a self driving vehicle. And there is a fairly low ceiling on what you can charge for a delivery.
Uber et al were only going to be profitable is we had self driving cars by now - but they’ve shut down that part of their business as they’ve realised it’s pretty much impossible not a 90/10 problem but a 99.99/0.01 problem. All they have left is a loss-making taxi company.
Something that has bugged me for sometime is the fact that Boris supposedly wrote two articles one pro one anti Brexit to decide where he stood. Logically that means he didn't have a firm definite view at that stage. Now I don't know about the rest of you, but as someone who tends to have strong views there are occasions when I am not sure on something and when I'm not sure I may form a view, but I may also be swayed, so the last thing I do is go out campaigning for my current position. Instead I listen to the arguments and play devils advocate.
I suspect May was in this position re her Remain position.
It does not come over as honest, but more opportunistic that Boris then took the position he did (Ditto I think for Gove).
Is not another interpretation that he was waiting for the result (or some crucial vote within the Party) and then publish the corresponding article? Leading from the back, so to speak.
I can't remember the context of the dual articles, so this may be quite implausible on the logic of the situation.
What's going on under the surface of the Labour Party at the moment? Has Starmer won, or is the battle for the party's soul still ongoing?
It did look for a time as if Starmer had got rid of most of the Trots - but from reading that, it does appear that their Conference is going to be ‘interesting’ from the perspective of the leader.
Labour Party Conferences are always interesting from the perspective of the leader. Of course there will be ructions, and the far left will make a lot of noise. But many of the 'entryists' have already left the party. Starmer won't have any serious trouble, let alone a challenge. Not this year.
Double the orders, screwing the restaurants and the riders and still losing money hand over fist. What a crazy business.
That's what people were saying about Amazon for years, and now its a licence to print money.
Amazon was getting closer to profitability each year though, Deliveroo and Uber Eats (and Uber) are taking bloody ages in actually turning a profit. Amazon made its first profit after 9 years, Uber is already 12 years old.
The right wing press is pretty grim reading for Number 10 today. Fury over grade inflation turned full force on the hapless Williamson. Cameron lobbying stories finally surfacing. Nasty polls for Johnson. As in Chesham and Amersham, those most critical of this shambles of a government are those who voted for it in 2019.
In the end "the economy, stupid" is probably where Conservatives may well decide that Johnson isn´t a Conservative. If that happens then his grip on power will be gone immediately. The problem for GBNI is that the endless soap opera of Tory party leadership challenges is the epitome of Westminster bubble politics: in the end frustration at government failures may vent with "a plague of all your houses" and then no Tory leader looks credible.
Therefore those who think that Sunak is the 7th cavalry riding to the rescue may well find that this figure who has risen without trace is a straw man at a barn fire. An urbane Wykhamist who married his money is not exactly a firey tribune of the people.
Wait until the polls get really bad in the late winter. Starmer (and Davey) have gravitas and that may well be what counts as the country faces ever increasing problems from the slow puncture Brexit and the government´s sloppy fiscal incontinence while the economy wallows in post Covid incompetence and inefficiency and the spectre of exploding government debt turns into a crisis.
Calls to "Get a grip" will move to "Get Lost". Johnson may then be the fall guy, but looking at the cabinet I, for one, see no beginning to their talents. Choosing a Jim Hacker like figure such as Sunak will not alter that.
The pendulum will be really swinging by then.
Great post. But, this (supposedly) being a betting blog, your talk of swinging pendulums, exploding government debt, crisis, inefficiency, incompetence, sloppiness, lack of gravitas, slow puncture Brexit and “the economy stupid” turned my thoughts to bookies. As carcasses always bring to mind vultures.
Mid-point PP prices:
Con seats 329.5 Lab seats 206.5 SNP seats 47.5 LD seats 40.5
Where’s the value Cicero?
Are these odds actually available? I see them on Oddschecker, but they don't seem to actually be there on PP. As MaxPB says, massive value against the LDs otherwise.
They don’t exist, I saw them on oddschecker ages ago but they’re not on the PP site. I think they’ve been left up from the 2019 GE.
Weren't these the ones that vanished when it was pointed out on PB, and someone had been "nibbling at it"?
Oh yes, I forgot someone said they’d been betting on them. Strange, they can’t be the prices for the next GE, the prices relate to the mistaken expectations of the last one
Double the orders, screwing the restaurants and the riders and still losing money hand over fist. What a crazy business.
Well the original investors got it to the IPO, so they don’t care much any more.
I still don’t see how a company with ~£150m of revenue can have ~£250m of expenses and be in any way sustainable.
These delivery and taxi companies are all losing a fortune, trying to build sufficient market share that can’t be taken away by the next new startup of VC money undercutting them.
The taxi / ride share "out" i can sort of see....if we get self driving cars, they win. Big if obviously.
Food delivery services, you can't cut out the restaurants and self driving cars don't work for them, as a) they won't control those services and b) people want the food deliveried to their door, not have to cone out their flat, down in the lift, out into the street to pick a burger out the back of a self driving vehicle. And there is a fairly low ceiling on what you can charge for a delivery.
Uber et al were only going to be profitable is we had self driving cars by now - but they’ve shut down that part of their business as they’ve realised it’s pretty much impossible not a 90/10 problem but a 99.99/0.01 problem. All they have left is a loss-making taxi company.
The other problem with Uber is drivers realise after a bit that it actually doesn't pay that well, so they have huge churn in drivers and I believe a significant proportion do it as a bit of a side hustle as a way to make some money when they are short (rather than borrow it), even though they know that there is a cost down the line. But you can only churn that pool for so long.
Double the orders, screwing the restaurants and the riders and still losing money hand over fist. What a crazy business.
Well the original investors got it to the IPO, so they don’t care much any more.
I still don’t see how a company with ~£150m of revenue can have ~£250m of expenses and be in any way sustainable.
These delivery and taxi companies are all losing a fortune, trying to build sufficient market share that can’t be taken away by the next new startup of VC money undercutting them.
The taxi / ride share "out" i can sort of see....if we get self driving cars, they win. Big if obviously.
Food delivery services, you can't cut out the restaurants and self driving cars don't work for them, as a) they won't control those services and b) people want the food deliveried to their door, not have to cone out their flat, down in the lift, out into the street to pick a burger out the back of a self driving vehicle. And there is a fairly low ceiling on what you can charge for a delivery.
Even if you get a monopoly on this business you can't charge £20 a delivery as nobody will pay it. I personally never use these services as i already think they are really expensive.
It's a massive IF, as New Scientist reinforced last week:
Davey doesn't have gravitas - at least not gravitas that we can easily observe. The LibDems are a voiceless party, kept out of the spotlight watching the multiple Tory and Labour factions fight it out plus the Sturgeon vs Salmond circus as a distraction.
I voted for Davey as leader partly because he is authentic and sincere and partly because he wasn't batshit crazy like Layla Moran.
ALL the national parties suffer from a lack of talent. Whilst Sunak is polling well its because he isn't the Clown and has a sensational PR machine to ramp him. If we put him on the spot and say "whats your plan" he will have to triangulate - what Tories want, what red wall Tory voters need, what post Covid & post-Brexit we can afford. He will disappoint all groups.
That is the politicians curse at the moment. There is no consensus (even amongst Brexiteers), there is no money, there is little talent.
Sunak has a tough choice to make. Waiting for Boris to self immolate and inherit the leadership is probably his best option, but if that takes too long the Chancellor could easily be as unpopular as the PM, given the tough spending choices to come.
I guess it depends on how much of a difference he believes he might make were he in charge sooner. Or how much he believes his own publicity.
It is not obvious to me that Mr Sunak, as PM, could escape the consequences of covid economic policy, given how careful he and his team were to publicise his role as CoE enunciating that very policy during the pandemic (for instance, furlough and EOTHO).
Also, displacing Mr Johnson (even without overtly stabbing him in the back metaphorically speaking) would upset a lot of people in the Tory Party and the country as a whole.
Of course. But for now his political future is essentially at the mercy of Johnson's decisions. As I said, his choices depend on how much more effective than Boris he believes he might be as PM.
Booked our Greece/Italy trip. We'll be going for 6 weeks, working remotely for three weeks in Kefalonia . From what we can see we're both just getting the Randox day two tests for £48 each. Is there anything else we need to do? There's no advice on arrivals in Greece, it just seems to be turn up with your vaccine status and they'll let you in and Italy seems to be turn up from Europe and don't bother with a test. Are we going to get stuck or sent back?
Lucky soul. Our family (in various constellations) has had three Greek holidays this year (2 Crete, 1 Rhodes) and they have all been fantastic.
You definitely need to fill in their PLF documentation online, by latest midnight on the day before you arrive in Greece.
Otherwise it’s easy peasy if you’re double vaccinated with correct EU vaccine certificate, or equivalent, or if you’re under 12 no test required. Most difficult travellers are probably unvaccinated 12-15 year olds, but they only need a quick test.
Italy was more problematic, so we cancelled our villa in Tuscany.
The Greeks are pretty relaxed so pleasant atmosphere.
I learned a fascinating thing about Amazon the other day....3rd party sellers are now a massive chunk of the platform and there is a huge land grab going on with a small number of "aggregation" companies rapidly buying up the 3rd party sellers / brands you see on there.
They all want to own the top listed sellers and independent brands in each category. They think it could quickly become similar to the way unilever or P&G basically own all the big brands across a massive number of product categories, but this will be sellers / brands on Amazon owned by these start up aggreation companies, who are getting massive VC funding.
As soon as they buy a brand / seller, they stick them through their standardisation process, have centralized teams up do the listing, the financials etc etc etc.
Double the orders, screwing the restaurants and the riders and still losing money hand over fist. What a crazy business.
That's what people were saying about Amazon for years, and now its a licence to print money.
Amazon was getting closer to profitability each year though, Deliveroo and Uber Eats (and Uber) are taking bloody ages in actually turning a profit. Amazon made its first profit after 9 years, Uber is already 12 years old.
Uber may be 12 years old, Uber Eats is 7 years old though.
Their revenue more than doubled in 2020, which is pretty decent. I certainly wouldn't rule out the potential for a profit in another couple of years, like Amazon did.
Also its getting closer to profitability each year too. If it was fundamentally losing money per delivery then doubling revenue ought to have increased losses, but the losses fell again last year as they have consistently in recent years. So revenues are increasing annually and their losses are falling annually, this is a pretty similar situation to Amazon seven years in.
I learned a fascinating thing about Amazon the other day....3rd party sellers are now a massive chunk of the platform and there is a huge land grab going on with a small number of "aggregation" companies rapidly buying up the 3rd party sellers / brands you see on there.
They all want to own the top listed sellers and independent brands in each category. They think it could quickly become similar to the way unilever or P&G basically own all the big brands across a massive number of product categories, but this will be sellers / brands on Amazon owned by these start up aggreation companies, who are getting massive VC funding.
As soon as they buy a brand / seller, they stick them through their standardisation process, have centralized teams up do the listing, the financials etc etc etc.
I learned a fascinating thing about Amazon the other day....3rd party sellers are now a massive chunk of the platform and there is a huge land grab going on with a small number of "aggregation" companies rapidly buying up the 3rd party sellers / brands you see on there.
They all want to own the top listed sellers and independent brands in each category. They think it could quickly become similar to the way unilever or P&G basically own all the big brands across a massive number of product categories, but this will be sellers / brands on Amazon owned by these start up aggreation companies, who are getting massive VC funding.
As soon as they buy a brand / seller, they stick them through their standardisation process, have centralized teams up do the listing, the financials etc etc etc.
Where are the aggregation companies based?
Mostly US. But there ones in Europe as well I believe.
Something that has bugged me for sometime is the fact that Boris supposedly wrote two articles one pro one anti Brexit to decide where he stood. Logically that means he didn't have a firm definite view at that stage. Now I don't know about the rest of you, but as someone who tends to have strong views there are occasions when I am not sure on something and when I'm not sure I may form a view, but I may also be swayed, so the last thing I do is go out campaigning for my current position. Instead I listen to the arguments and play devils advocate.
I suspect May was in this position re her Remain position.
It does not come over as honest, but more opportunistic that Boris then took the position he did (Ditto I think for Gove).
Is not another interpretation that he was waiting for the result (or some crucial vote within the Party) and then publish the corresponding article? Leading from the back, so to speak.
I can't remember the context of the dual articles, so this may be quite implausible on the logic of the situation.
I can't remember all the details either, but as he was a leader of the leave campaign this must have been before that obviously.
When one writes a pro and con list for yourself it is because you don't know what to do, or you think you do but want to convince yourself. It is implausible that you are so muddled that you have no idea beforehand and after doing it you are so convinced by the argument that you want to lead the campaign.
This argument is either bollocks or your mind is just made up of a spaghetti of thoughts (which with Boris is always possible).
Something that has bugged me for sometime is the fact that Boris supposedly wrote two articles one pro one anti Brexit to decide where he stood. Logically that means he didn't have a firm definite view at that stage. Now I don't know about the rest of you, but as someone who tends to have strong views there are occasions when I am not sure on something and when I'm not sure I may form a view, but I may also be swayed, so the last thing I do is go out campaigning for my current position. Instead I listen to the arguments and play devils advocate.
I suspect May was in this position re her Remain position.
It does not come over as honest, but more opportunistic that Boris then took the position he did (Ditto I think for Gove).
Unfair to Gove (not words often seen on pb) who was a long-standing Leaver because he blamed the EU (possibly wrongly, it turns out) for the demise of his family's fish-processing business.
Double the orders, screwing the restaurants and the riders and still losing money hand over fist. What a crazy business.
Well the original investors got it to the IPO, so they don’t care much any more.
I still don’t see how a company with ~£150m of revenue can have ~£250m of expenses and be in any way sustainable.
These delivery and taxi companies are all losing a fortune, trying to build sufficient market share that can’t be taken away by the next new startup of VC money undercutting them.
The taxi / ride share "out" i can sort of see....if we get self driving cars, they win. Big if obviously.
Food delivery services, you can't cut out the restaurants and self driving cars don't work for them, as a) they won't control those services and b) people want the food deliveried to their door, not have to cone out their flat, down in the lift, out into the street to pick a burger out the back of a self driving vehicle. And there is a fairly low ceiling on what you can charge for a delivery.
Uber et al were only going to be profitable is we had self driving cars by now - but they’ve shut down that part of their business as they’ve realised it’s pretty much impossible not a 90/10 problem but a 99.99/0.01 problem. All they have left is a loss-making taxi company.
They didn't shutter it - they sold it. Self driving will happen.... eventually. In the meantime the business has morphed into advanced driver assistance and driver monitoring.
Double the orders, screwing the restaurants and the riders and still losing money hand over fist. What a crazy business.
That's what people were saying about Amazon for years, and now its a licence to print money.
Amazon was getting closer to profitability each year though, Deliveroo and Uber Eats (and Uber) are taking bloody ages in actually turning a profit. Amazon made its first profit after 9 years, Uber is already 12 years old.
Uber may be 12 years old, Uber Eats is 7 years old though.
Their revenue more than doubled in 2020, which is pretty decent. I certainly wouldn't rule out the potential for a profit in another couple of years, like Amazon did.
Also its getting closer to profitability each year too. If it was fundamentally losing money per delivery then doubling revenue ought to have increased losses, but the losses fell again last year as they have consistently in recent years. So revenues are increasing annually and their losses are falling annually, this is a pretty similar situation to Amazon seven years in.
You might be right, but I have to say I've be more confident in their improving numbers if they used GAAP accounts. Otherwise I can't help but suspect they are just fudging it for the public.
All I know for sure: In a decade the current Uber share price is going to look stupid one way or another.
Something that has bugged me for sometime is the fact that Boris supposedly wrote two articles one pro one anti Brexit to decide where he stood. Logically that means he didn't have a firm definite view at that stage. Now I don't know about the rest of you, but as someone who tends to have strong views there are occasions when I am not sure on something and when I'm not sure I may form a view, but I may also be swayed, so the last thing I do is go out campaigning for my current position. Instead I listen to the arguments and play devils advocate.
I suspect May was in this position re her Remain position.
It does not come over as honest, but more opportunistic that Boris then took the position he did (Ditto I think for Gove).
Unfair to Gove (not words often seen on pb) who was a long-standing Leaver because he blamed the EU (possibly wrongly, it turns out) for the demise of his family's fish-processing business.
Hence I used the word 'think' as I wasn't sure. I do remember that Cameron was disappointed and surprised that Gove came out for leave and tried to convince him otherwise.
Something that has bugged me for sometime is the fact that Boris supposedly wrote two articles one pro one anti Brexit to decide where he stood. Logically that means he didn't have a firm definite view at that stage. Now I don't know about the rest of you, but as someone who tends to have strong views there are occasions when I am not sure on something and when I'm not sure I may form a view, but I may also be swayed, so the last thing I do is go out campaigning for my current position. Instead I listen to the arguments and play devils advocate.
I suspect May was in this position re her Remain position.
It does not come over as honest, but more opportunistic that Boris then took the position he did (Ditto I think for Gove).
Unfair to Gove (not words often seen on pb) who was a long-standing Leaver because he blamed the EU (possibly wrongly, it turns out) for the demise of his family's fish-processing business.
Double the orders, screwing the restaurants and the riders and still losing money hand over fist. What a crazy business.
That's what people were saying about Amazon for years, and now its a licence to print money.
Amazon was getting closer to profitability each year though, Deliveroo and Uber Eats (and Uber) are taking bloody ages in actually turning a profit. Amazon made its first profit after 9 years, Uber is already 12 years old.
Uber may be 12 years old, Uber Eats is 7 years old though.
Their revenue more than doubled in 2020, which is pretty decent. I certainly wouldn't rule out the potential for a profit in another couple of years, like Amazon did.
Also its getting closer to profitability each year too. If it was fundamentally losing money per delivery then doubling revenue ought to have increased losses, but the losses fell again last year as they have consistently in recent years. So revenues are increasing annually and their losses are falling annually, this is a pretty similar situation to Amazon seven years in.
12c loss on every $1 of revenue really isn't close to profitability.
Something that has bugged me for sometime is the fact that Boris supposedly wrote two articles one pro one anti Brexit to decide where he stood. Logically that means he didn't have a firm definite view at that stage. Now I don't know about the rest of you, but as someone who tends to have strong views there are occasions when I am not sure on something and when I'm not sure I may form a view, but I may also be swayed, so the last thing I do is go out campaigning for my current position. Instead I listen to the arguments and play devils advocate.
I suspect May was in this position re her Remain position.
It does not come over as honest, but more opportunistic that Boris then took the position he did (Ditto I think for Gove).
Is not another interpretation that he was waiting for the result (or some crucial vote within the Party) and then publish the corresponding article? Leading from the back, so to speak.
I can't remember the context of the dual articles, so this may be quite implausible on the logic of the situation.
I can't remember all the details either, but as he was a leader of the leave campaign this must have been before that obviously.
When one writes a pro and con list for yourself it is because you don't know what to do, or you think you do but want to convince yourself. It is implausible that you are so muddled that you have no idea beforehand and after doing it you are so convinced by the argument that you want to lead the campaign.
This argument is either bollocks or your mind is just made up of a spaghetti of thoughts (which with Boris is always possible).
The other reason to do that is to anticipate your opponent's logic, but on what you say, he had not come to a settled view by then.
Something that has bugged me for sometime is the fact that Boris supposedly wrote two articles one pro one anti Brexit to decide where he stood. Logically that means he didn't have a firm definite view at that stage. Now I don't know about the rest of you, but as someone who tends to have strong views there are occasions when I am not sure on something and when I'm not sure I may form a view, but I may also be swayed, so the last thing I do is go out campaigning for my current position. Instead I listen to the arguments and play devils advocate.
I suspect May was in this position re her Remain position.
It does not come over as honest, but more opportunistic that Boris then took the position he did (Ditto I think for Gove).
Is not another interpretation that he was waiting for the result (or some crucial vote within the Party) and then publish the corresponding article? Leading from the back, so to speak.
I can't remember the context of the dual articles, so this may be quite implausible on the logic of the situation.
I can't remember all the details either, but as he was a leader of the leave campaign this must have been before that obviously.
When one writes a pro and con list for yourself it is because you don't know what to do, or you think you do but want to convince yourself. It is implausible that you are so muddled that you have no idea beforehand and after doing it you are so convinced by the argument that you want to lead the campaign.
This argument is either bollocks or your mind is just made up of a spaghetti of thoughts (which with Boris is always possible).
Sorry but that's not reasonable.
Many people I know write pro and con lists and once they've settled on a position go hell to leather for it. I don't think the fact that he thought through both sides of the argument first is a reason for criticism - and I wouldn't if he'd landed on the other side either.
As it happens I was in a similar position. I started off on the Remain side and I was torn in the referendum. I literally ended up writing a pro and con list myself too for the three options I foresaw (hard leave, EEA and Remain - this is before EEA was ruled out by Boris and Gove during the campaign) and doing so helped switch me from Remain to Leave.
Does the fact I considered both sides of the debate somehow devalue my opinion in your eyes? Does it devalue my vote?
People who rush headlong without considering both sides because they've predetermined their decision and can't be swayed no matter the argument are not worthy of more respect.
Double the orders, screwing the restaurants and the riders and still losing money hand over fist. What a crazy business.
Well the original investors got it to the IPO, so they don’t care much any more.
I still don’t see how a company with ~£150m of revenue can have ~£250m of expenses and be in any way sustainable.
These delivery and taxi companies are all losing a fortune, trying to build sufficient market share that can’t be taken away by the next new startup of VC money undercutting them.
The taxi / ride share "out" i can sort of see....if we get self driving cars, they win. Big if obviously.
Food delivery services, you can't cut out the restaurants and self driving cars don't work for them, as a) they won't control those services and b) people want the food deliveried to their door, not have to cone out their flat, down in the lift, out into the street to pick a burger out the back of a self driving vehicle. And there is a fairly low ceiling on what you can charge for a delivery.
Uber et al were only going to be profitable is we had self driving cars by now - but they’ve shut down that part of their business as they’ve realised it’s pretty much impossible not a 90/10 problem but a 99.99/0.01 problem. All they have left is a loss-making taxi company.
The other problem with Uber is drivers realise after a bit that it actually doesn't pay that well, so they have huge churn in drivers and I believe a significant proportion do it as a bit of a side hustle as a way to make some money when they are short (rather than borrow it), even though they know that there is a cost down the line. But you can only churn that pool for so long.
Anecdotally, I get the impression that there is a fair overlap between drivers for Uber, local minicabs and food delivery. Perhaps increased pressure to treat drivers as employees will reduce this.
Transition? Pull the other one. The Brexit Revolution has only just begun.
‘Emergency Brexit powers for lorry queues to be made permanent’ - Exclusive: ministers to make traffic provisions indefinite in expectation of further cross-Channel disruption
… Naomi Smith, the chief executive of the internationalist campaign group Best for Britain, said: “This is an admission that far from ‘teething problems’, the government expects supply problems from their rushed Brexit deal to continue indefinitely. Shelves are empty and our supply chains are already at breaking point. The government should be seeking improvements to their deal with Europe rather than preparing to make Kent a permanent lorry park.”
… Operation Brock has proved unpopular with residents as a way of managing lorry traffic…
So the Gina Miller muppet show thinks that a contingency measure for use when necessary is the same as "preparing to make Kent a permanent lorry park"?
How embarrassing for them.
Internationalist?
Sorry - that's just funny.
The problem with your guffawing at their spokesperson is that they are closer to reality than you are. If the UK and EU implement the UK's exit deal then we are highly likely to see long queues of trucks because that's what you get at (for example) EU / Switzerland crossings where traffic is much lower. Hence the need for the very unpopular truck carparks which have been built at places like Ashford.
As a fixed border crossing makes queues inevitable, "when necessary" is "most days" unless we build enough big lorry parks to stack them in.
I saw what you did there . BFB are wibbling about Kent being a "permanent lorry park", and I pointed out they are telling fairy stories.
That is a little different from "queues".
Do you have evidence that seriously long queues are occurring "most days" at Dover, now that trade is roughly back to previous levels - which would be BFB being 'close to reality'? Where are these queues?
I don't understand this argument. According to the UK government they need to make Brock permanent. They need permanent truck holding facilities at Ashford and Dover. What do you know that they don't?
Crossing a border takes time when you do checks. Smaller numbers of vehicles crossing EU to Switzerland can take a few hours. Once the exit protocols are fully implemented why do you expect the UK EU border to be unique?
Double the orders, screwing the restaurants and the riders and still losing money hand over fist. What a crazy business.
Well the original investors got it to the IPO, so they don’t care much any more.
I still don’t see how a company with ~£150m of revenue can have ~£250m of expenses and be in any way sustainable.
These delivery and taxi companies are all losing a fortune, trying to build sufficient market share that can’t be taken away by the next new startup of VC money undercutting them.
The taxi / ride share "out" i can sort of see....if we get self driving cars, they win. Big if obviously.
Food delivery services, you can't cut out the restaurants and self driving cars don't work for them, as a) they won't control those services and b) people want the food deliveried to their door, not have to cone out their flat, down in the lift, out into the street to pick a burger out the back of a self driving vehicle. And there is a fairly low ceiling on what you can charge for a delivery.
Uber et al were only going to be profitable is we had self driving cars by now - but they’ve shut down that part of their business as they’ve realised it’s pretty much impossible not a 90/10 problem but a 99.99/0.01 problem. All they have left is a loss-making taxi company.
The other problem with Uber is drivers realise after a bit that it actually doesn't pay that well, so they have huge churn in drivers and I believe a significant proportion do it as a bit of a side hustle as a way to make some money when they are short (rather than borrow it), even though they know that there is a cost down the line. But you can only churn that pool for so long.
Oh indeed. If your car is a decade-old Prius, and you want to work peak hours (Saturday night shifts, office commuting hours, 5am airport drop offs), you an just about make Uber work as a minimum-wage job.
Most people fail to account for the cost of depreciation on their car as they rack up miles on it.
Double the orders, screwing the restaurants and the riders and still losing money hand over fist. What a crazy business.
That's what people were saying about Amazon for years, and now its a licence to print money.
Amazon was getting closer to profitability each year though, Deliveroo and Uber Eats (and Uber) are taking bloody ages in actually turning a profit. Amazon made its first profit after 9 years, Uber is already 12 years old.
Uber may be 12 years old, Uber Eats is 7 years old though.
Their revenue more than doubled in 2020, which is pretty decent. I certainly wouldn't rule out the potential for a profit in another couple of years, like Amazon did.
Also its getting closer to profitability each year too. If it was fundamentally losing money per delivery then doubling revenue ought to have increased losses, but the losses fell again last year as they have consistently in recent years. So revenues are increasing annually and their losses are falling annually, this is a pretty similar situation to Amazon seven years in.
You might be right, but I have to say I've be more confident in their improving numbers if they used GAAP accounts. Otherwise I can't help but suspect they are just fudging it for the public.
All I know for sure: In a decade the current Uber share price is going to look stupid one way or another.
On that I completely 100% agree.
Their valuation could be effectively zero or much higher in a decades time. That possibility means that their current value is correctly much more than their current losses imply - just like a value longshot bet in politics.
I learned a fascinating thing about Amazon the other day....3rd party sellers are now a massive chunk of the platform and there is a huge land grab going on with a small number of "aggregation" companies rapidly buying up the 3rd party sellers / brands you see on there.
They all want to own the top listed sellers and independent brands in each category. They think it could quickly become similar to the way unilever or P&G basically own all the big brands across a massive number of product categories, but this will be sellers / brands on Amazon owned by these start up aggreation companies, who are getting massive VC funding.
As soon as they buy a brand / seller, they stick them through their standardisation process, have centralized teams up do the listing, the financials etc etc etc.
Where are the aggregation companies based?
That's ... interesting, given how easily Amazon prominence can be lost.
There is a profession of "Amazon listings optimisation", just like SEO.
Part of it is being a good guesser as to why Amazon cut you off at the knees. Just like Google punishments.
Double the orders, screwing the restaurants and the riders and still losing money hand over fist. What a crazy business.
That's what people were saying about Amazon for years, and now its a licence to print money.
Amazon was getting closer to profitability each year though, Deliveroo and Uber Eats (and Uber) are taking bloody ages in actually turning a profit. Amazon made its first profit after 9 years, Uber is already 12 years old.
Uber may be 12 years old, Uber Eats is 7 years old though.
Their revenue more than doubled in 2020, which is pretty decent. I certainly wouldn't rule out the potential for a profit in another couple of years, like Amazon did.
Also its getting closer to profitability each year too. If it was fundamentally losing money per delivery then doubling revenue ought to have increased losses, but the losses fell again last year as they have consistently in recent years. So revenues are increasing annually and their losses are falling annually, this is a pretty similar situation to Amazon seven years in.
12c loss on every $1 of revenue really isn't close to profitability.
Also there is nothing to squeeze out of the restaurants (the charges are already eye wateringly high) nor the riders (whose pay isn't very good and they will eventually be forced to treat them like employees and pay benefits).
Again comparison to Amazon, they have always paid pretty well. You have to work incredibly hard, but it isn't predicated on clever schemes of you not actually being officially an employee and so avoiding all the standard employee costs.
What's going on under the surface of the Labour Party at the moment? Has Starmer won, or is the battle for the party's soul still ongoing?
It did look for a time as if Starmer had got rid of most of the Trots - but from reading that, it does appear that their Conference is going to be ‘interesting’ from the perspective of the leader.
Labour Party Conferences are always interesting from the perspective of the leader. Of course there will be ructions, and the far left will make a lot of noise. But many of the 'entryists' have already left the party. Starmer won't have any serious trouble, let alone a challenge. Not this year.
Conference may actually help him. Trots are leaving all the time. Conference has yet another final stand, where the Faithful try to get Him readmitted to the PLP by the wheeze of having the members decide who has the whip removed. As such a stupid idea will be laughed out, hopefully more Trots will declare conference to be full of Tories and go to rejoin Socialist "Unity"
Double the orders, screwing the restaurants and the riders and still losing money hand over fist. What a crazy business.
Well the original investors got it to the IPO, so they don’t care much any more.
I still don’t see how a company with ~£150m of revenue can have ~£250m of expenses and be in any way sustainable.
These delivery and taxi companies are all losing a fortune, trying to build sufficient market share that can’t be taken away by the next new startup of VC money undercutting them.
The taxi / ride share "out" i can sort of see....if we get self driving cars, they win. Big if obviously.
Food delivery services, you can't cut out the restaurants and self driving cars don't work for them, as a) they won't control those services and b) people want the food deliveried to their door, not have to cone out their flat, down in the lift, out into the street to pick a burger out the back of a self driving vehicle. And there is a fairly low ceiling on what you can charge for a delivery.
Uber et al were only going to be profitable is we had self driving cars by now - but they’ve shut down that part of their business as they’ve realised it’s pretty much impossible not a 90/10 problem but a 99.99/0.01 problem. All they have left is a loss-making taxi company.
They didn't shutter it - they sold it. Self driving will happen.... eventually. In the meantime the business has morphed into advanced driver assistance and driver monitoring.
We don't even have properly self-driving trains and planes yet, despite these being much simpler problems to solve than self-driving cars. The day when a self-driving car can rock up at the pub and deliver you back home without human intervention lies a long, long way in the future. Having said that, I can certainly conceive of systems that allow fully autonomous travel in controlled environments, such as motorways, in the not-too-distant future.
Something that has bugged me for sometime is the fact that Boris supposedly wrote two articles one pro one anti Brexit to decide where he stood. Logically that means he didn't have a firm definite view at that stage. Now I don't know about the rest of you, but as someone who tends to have strong views there are occasions when I am not sure on something and when I'm not sure I may form a view, but I may also be swayed, so the last thing I do is go out campaigning for my current position. Instead I listen to the arguments and play devils advocate.
I suspect May was in this position re her Remain position.
It does not come over as honest, but more opportunistic that Boris then took the position he did (Ditto I think for Gove).
Is not another interpretation that he was waiting for the result (or some crucial vote within the Party) and then publish the corresponding article? Leading from the back, so to speak.
I can't remember the context of the dual articles, so this may be quite implausible on the logic of the situation.
I can't remember all the details either, but as he was a leader of the leave campaign this must have been before that obviously.
When one writes a pro and con list for yourself it is because you don't know what to do, or you think you do but want to convince yourself. It is implausible that you are so muddled that you have no idea beforehand and after doing it you are so convinced by the argument that you want to lead the campaign.
This argument is either bollocks or your mind is just made up of a spaghetti of thoughts (which with Boris is always possible).
It's plausible enough if you want to be PM and the object of the exercise is to work out which gives you the best chance of being PM. Leading - or being highly visible - in a winning campaign increases chances of being PM. THe calculation may have come down to the fact that running a good, even if losing, campaign for leave gave the best chance - raised profile, popular with the Tory grass roots who are needed in the electoral process. Running a good winning campaign for remain might have put him in a good position after Cameron, but Cameron would have stayed for a while. Running a losing campaign for remain would have given him no chance - it was obvious after Cameron that the leader had to be a leaver or at least a low profile remainer who would promise to deliver (May). Anyone heavily involved in saying leave would be a disaster could not be the leave PM.
‘Prince Andrew faces no good choice in Epstein accuser case’
… Andrew’s team is likely to wage a protracted battle over the U.S. court’s jurisdiction while arguing that their client is entitled to immunity as a member of the royal family.
This strikes me as being profoundly unwise. There are shades of Tories breaking Covid rules (Johnson, Jenrick, Cummings, Gove, Hancock, Seely etc): one rule for the plebs but another rule for the entitled.
Why should teenage girls be protected in law from sexual abuse, sexual assault, rape and sex trafficking, but then when it transpires that the repulsive middle-aged man who allegedly forced her to have sex was a member of a royal family, then… oh well… that’s alright then.
A lot of people will forgive, or at least look away, when ministers break Covid rules. These are after all busy people doing important jobs. But what that pathetic man is accused of doing is utterly unforgivable. There is zero excuse.
Luckily the US courts will not swallow such guff. One hates to think how the English courts would have (mis)handled this case.
I think a problem for the Scottish courts (and quite possibly for the English courts too) is that the age of consent here is 16 and she was 17 when this allegedly happened. That means, in the absence of other coercion, this was not an offence here. IANAE on this but my understanding is that other than under special cases like the EAW for someone to be extradited the offence in the requesting country would normally have to be an offence here too.
This, of course, is a civil suit so what she will need to prove is that this occurred in the US, specifically in NY. The case has been raised to prevent it being time barred for ever on the expiry of a time limited exemption for claimants who were children at the time of the alleged conduct. I suspect that the jurisdiction dispute will be lengthy.
Not sure how default verdicts would work in this case, were PA not to travel to the USA.
I tend to think of US Civil cases as anywhere between valid claims and legalised muggings, and no way of telling which is which, as I think 90%+ are settled out of court.
If Prince Andrew chooses not to travel to the United States, and he is not extradited, the press articles indicate that he will take a huge financial punishment. Better than sitting in an American prison, but might mummy refuse to pay his bill?
Something that has bugged me for sometime is the fact that Boris supposedly wrote two articles one pro one anti Brexit to decide where he stood. Logically that means he didn't have a firm definite view at that stage. Now I don't know about the rest of you, but as someone who tends to have strong views there are occasions when I am not sure on something and when I'm not sure I may form a view, but I may also be swayed, so the last thing I do is go out campaigning for my current position. Instead I listen to the arguments and play devils advocate.
I suspect May was in this position re her Remain position.
It does not come over as honest, but more opportunistic that Boris then took the position he did (Ditto I think for Gove).
Is not another interpretation that he was waiting for the result (or some crucial vote within the Party) and then publish the corresponding article? Leading from the back, so to speak.
I can't remember the context of the dual articles, so this may be quite implausible on the logic of the situation.
I can't remember all the details either, but as he was a leader of the leave campaign this must have been before that obviously.
When one writes a pro and con list for yourself it is because you don't know what to do, or you think you do but want to convince yourself. It is implausible that you are so muddled that you have no idea beforehand and after doing it you are so convinced by the argument that you want to lead the campaign.
This argument is either bollocks or your mind is just made up of a spaghetti of thoughts (which with Boris is always possible).
I don't think Liar has much interest in Brexit either way. It presented a political opportunity which he needed to weigh up, hence the two articles. Nor to the majority of voters care - even the ones who tut at it won't change their vote because of it.
Something that has bugged me for sometime is the fact that Boris supposedly wrote two articles one pro one anti Brexit to decide where he stood. Logically that means he didn't have a firm definite view at that stage. Now I don't know about the rest of you, but as someone who tends to have strong views there are occasions when I am not sure on something and when I'm not sure I may form a view, but I may also be swayed, so the last thing I do is go out campaigning for my current position. Instead I listen to the arguments and play devils advocate.
I suspect May was in this position re her Remain position.
It does not come over as honest, but more opportunistic that Boris then took the position he did (Ditto I think for Gove).
Is not another interpretation that he was waiting for the result (or some crucial vote within the Party) and then publish the corresponding article? Leading from the back, so to speak.
I can't remember the context of the dual articles, so this may be quite implausible on the logic of the situation.
I can't remember all the details either, but as he was a leader of the leave campaign this must have been before that obviously.
When one writes a pro and con list for yourself it is because you don't know what to do, or you think you do but want to convince yourself. It is implausible that you are so muddled that you have no idea beforehand and after doing it you are so convinced by the argument that you want to lead the campaign.
This argument is either bollocks or your mind is just made up of a spaghetti of thoughts (which with Boris is always possible).
Underlying both 'articles'..... I don't think either were ever published ...... would have been the sub-=text ..... which provides the most advantage to Boris etc Johnson?
Perfectly legitimate to do a pro and con list for oneself, of course. I'm not a journalist, so I don't think I could write equally convincing two articles, one convincing me that black was white and the other that white was black.
Double the orders, screwing the restaurants and the riders and still losing money hand over fist. What a crazy business.
That's what people were saying about Amazon for years, and now its a licence to print money.
Amazon was getting closer to profitability each year though, Deliveroo and Uber Eats (and Uber) are taking bloody ages in actually turning a profit. Amazon made its first profit after 9 years, Uber is already 12 years old.
Uber may be 12 years old, Uber Eats is 7 years old though.
Their revenue more than doubled in 2020, which is pretty decent. I certainly wouldn't rule out the potential for a profit in another couple of years, like Amazon did.
Also its getting closer to profitability each year too. If it was fundamentally losing money per delivery then doubling revenue ought to have increased losses, but the losses fell again last year as they have consistently in recent years. So revenues are increasing annually and their losses are falling annually, this is a pretty similar situation to Amazon seven years in.
12c loss on every $1 of revenue really isn't close to profitability.
I didn't say it was close, I said it was getting closer. Which is what Amazon was at this stage too.
Loss to revenue ratio has been rapidly shrinking for Deliveroo/Uber Eats etc in recent years.
Double the orders, screwing the restaurants and the riders and still losing money hand over fist. What a crazy business.
That's what people were saying about Amazon for years, and now its a licence to print money.
Amazon was getting closer to profitability each year though, Deliveroo and Uber Eats (and Uber) are taking bloody ages in actually turning a profit. Amazon made its first profit after 9 years, Uber is already 12 years old.
Amazon is also, like many of our high tech overlords, operating several more-or-less independent businesses, for instance the bookshop, the platform for other sellers, the cloud computing business and so on. Conglomerates had fallen out of favour in the 80s and 90s when asset-stripping corporate raiders would break them up, yet now they have returned in a new guise.
‘Prince Andrew faces no good choice in Epstein accuser case’
… Andrew’s team is likely to wage a protracted battle over the U.S. court’s jurisdiction while arguing that their client is entitled to immunity as a member of the royal family.
This strikes me as being profoundly unwise. There are shades of Tories breaking Covid rules (Johnson, Jenrick, Cummings, Gove, Hancock, Seely etc): one rule for the plebs but another rule for the entitled.
Why should teenage girls be protected in law from sexual abuse, sexual assault, rape and sex trafficking, but then when it transpires that the repulsive middle-aged man who allegedly forced her to have sex was a member of a royal family, then… oh well… that’s alright then.
A lot of people will forgive, or at least look away, when ministers break Covid rules. These are after all busy people doing important jobs. But what that pathetic man is accused of doing is utterly unforgivable. There is zero excuse.
Luckily the US courts will not swallow such guff. One hates to think how the English courts would have (mis)handled this case.
I think a problem for the Scottish courts (and quite possibly for the English courts too) is that the age of consent here is 16 and she was 17 when this allegedly happened. That means, in the absence of other coercion, this was not an offence here. IANAE on this but my understanding is that other than under special cases like the EAW for someone to be extradited the offence in the requesting country would normally have to be an offence here too.
This, of course, is a civil suit so what she will need to prove is that this occurred in the US, specifically in NY. The case has been raised to prevent it being time barred for ever on the expiry of a time limited exemption for claimants who were children at the time of the alleged conduct. I suspect that the jurisdiction dispute will be lengthy.
Not sure how default verdicts would work in this case, were PA not to travel to the USA.
I tend to think of US Civil cases as anywhere between valid claims and legalised muggings, and no way of telling which is which, as I think 90%+ are settled out of court.
If Prince Andrew chooses not to travel to the United States, and he is not extradited, the press articles indicate that he will take a huge financial punishment. Better than sitting in an American prison, but might mummy refuse to pay his bill?
He's not poor himself. £50m or so I think is the commonly reported number.
Though I am not sure how a Civil default verdict would be enforced. I am not aware of reciprocal arrangements.
Apparently because the charges are so high to the restaurants with these delivery services what is increasingly happening is one physical restaurant will set up many different "virtual" restaurants on the all apps e.g. a chinese restaurant, will also the have a virtual Thai, Korean, Japanese, a burger place etc. Anything to ensure they get orders constantly and all from one physical location as increasingly hard to make it work otherwise with the cost charged by the delivery companies and rampant competition and these dark kitchens etc.
Double the orders, screwing the restaurants and the riders and still losing money hand over fist. What a crazy business.
Well the original investors got it to the IPO, so they don’t care much any more.
I still don’t see how a company with ~£150m of revenue can have ~£250m of expenses and be in any way sustainable.
These delivery and taxi companies are all losing a fortune, trying to build sufficient market share that can’t be taken away by the next new startup of VC money undercutting them.
The taxi / ride share "out" i can sort of see....if we get self driving cars, they win. Big if obviously.
Food delivery services, you can't cut out the restaurants and self driving cars don't work for them, as a) they won't control those services and b) people want the food deliveried to their door, not have to cone out their flat, down in the lift, out into the street to pick a burger out the back of a self driving vehicle. And there is a fairly low ceiling on what you can charge for a delivery.
Even if you get a monopoly on this business you can't charge £20 a delivery as nobody will pay it. I personally never use these services as i already think they are really expensive.
And you can't get an Amazon-like monopoly anyway. Whatever you think of them as a business, Amazon did bring something new to customers; the ability to browse every book there is. Outside big (university) cities, that possibly didn't exist before. And books fit nicely in the post.
For takeaway food... It's nice to have home delivery, but it's coming from the same neighborhood places that were there anyway. It can't really come from further away, or the food will go cold. So outside lockdown, there's an implacable competitor of "go and get it yourself", which limits the possibility for enormous profit.
Booked our Greece/Italy trip. We'll be going for 6 weeks, working remotely for three weeks in Kefalonia . From what we can see we're both just getting the Randox day two tests for £48 each. Is there anything else we need to do? There's no advice on arrivals in Greece, it just seems to be turn up with your vaccine status and they'll let you in and Italy seems to be turn up from Europe and don't bother with a test. Are we going to get stuck or sent back?
Boy did you miss a thread yesterday!
I just booked the Randox Day 2 test yesterday as I'm going to Greece later this week.
You need to show proof of 2x vax to Greece but your carrier might want an LFT so check, plus within three days before you return you need to take an onsite (ie while you're abroad) test and proof of the Day 2 test booking to be able to board the plane back.
No idea about Italy but suspect it is the test within three days of return and proof of Day 2 test booking.
You also need to complete the Greek passenger locator form before you leave UK and take evidence.
Max, we are looking at Kefalonia too. Either there or Croatia. The latter is green so that is safer option.
Yep good point PLFs out and back.
Also worth pointing out that post-Brexit everyone should check their passport validity. I did and found that mine and a daughter's were unexpectedly out of date. It's not as straightforward as it may seem. There is a online tool: https://check-passport-for-travel-to-europe.homeoffice.gov.uk/
Whats the deal with masks in Europe (specifically Italy, France and Greece)? And vax passes? I don't fancy going anywhere that requires either at the moment.
Went to Portugal and Menorca recently. In both, masks on public transport and expected in shops (but not really enforced) - otherwise optional and not much evidence of mask-wearing when out and about. Overall you see more masks in the UK so I don't see how this can be a reason to not travel abroad.
To be honest I don't even mind seeing anyone else wearing them (though down here in Dorset I'd say now only 20% of people in shops wearing them, and maybe 35% on trains) - its just the legal compunction. Oh and presumably on the plane too?
Double the orders, screwing the restaurants and the riders and still losing money hand over fist. What a crazy business.
That's what people were saying about Amazon for years, and now its a licence to print money.
Amazon was getting closer to profitability each year though, Deliveroo and Uber Eats (and Uber) are taking bloody ages in actually turning a profit. Amazon made its first profit after 9 years, Uber is already 12 years old.
Uber may be 12 years old, Uber Eats is 7 years old though.
Their revenue more than doubled in 2020, which is pretty decent. I certainly wouldn't rule out the potential for a profit in another couple of years, like Amazon did.
Also its getting closer to profitability each year too. If it was fundamentally losing money per delivery then doubling revenue ought to have increased losses, but the losses fell again last year as they have consistently in recent years. So revenues are increasing annually and their losses are falling annually, this is a pretty similar situation to Amazon seven years in.
12c loss on every $1 of revenue really isn't close to profitability.
Also there is nothing to squeeze out of the restaurants (the charges are already eye wateringly high) nor the riders (whose pay isn't very good and they will eventually be forced to treat them like employees and pay benefits).
Again comparison to Amazon, they have always paid pretty well. You have to work incredibly hard, but it isn't predicated on clever schemes of you not actually being officially an employee and so avoiding all the standard employee costs.
The way they treat their drivers is atrocious and I certainly wouldn't want to work for the company.
But that doesn't mean they can't be profitable and there may be more to squeeze from consumers oddly enough. Part of the issue has been having the same prices for delivery as for collection and freeish delivery, which means the customer is really not paying for delivery - that is not sustainable long term.
But food delivery can be profitable. Look at the share price for Domino's since the turn of the century, its share price has gone up a thousand percent in the last fifteen years and they're very profitable. Of course they do more than just deliveries - but one trick they've got is to offer "free delivery" on a £19.99 pizza, or to have collection offers that mean you can collect any pizza for £9.99; they're not charging for delivery, but they are really.
Uber, Deliveroo etc to turn a profit will go down this route. The price for delivery will simply be inflated beyond the price in the restaurant - and people's inate laziness will mean they pay the price. Yes you could get the food cheaper by getting in the car and collecting it - but you could also get the food cheaper by putting the oven on. People are prepared to pay more for delivery.
Something that has bugged me for sometime is the fact that Boris supposedly wrote two articles one pro one anti Brexit to decide where he stood. Logically that means he didn't have a firm definite view at that stage. Now I don't know about the rest of you, but as someone who tends to have strong views there are occasions when I am not sure on something and when I'm not sure I may form a view, but I may also be swayed, so the last thing I do is go out campaigning for my current position. Instead I listen to the arguments and play devils advocate.
I suspect May was in this position re her Remain position.
It does not come over as honest, but more opportunistic that Boris then took the position he did (Ditto I think for Gove).
Is not another interpretation that he was waiting for the result (or some crucial vote within the Party) and then publish the corresponding article? Leading from the back, so to speak.
I can't remember the context of the dual articles, so this may be quite implausible on the logic of the situation.
I can't remember all the details either, but as he was a leader of the leave campaign this must have been before that obviously.
When one writes a pro and con list for yourself it is because you don't know what to do, or you think you do but want to convince yourself. It is implausible that you are so muddled that you have no idea beforehand and after doing it you are so convinced by the argument that you want to lead the campaign.
This argument is either bollocks or your mind is just made up of a spaghetti of thoughts (which with Boris is always possible).
Sorry but that's not reasonable.
Many people I know write pro and con lists and once they've settled on a position go hell to leather for it. I don't think the fact that he thought through both sides of the argument first is a reason for criticism - and I wouldn't if he'd landed on the other side either.
As it happens I was in a similar position. I started off on the Remain side and I was torn in the referendum. I literally ended up writing a pro and con list myself too for the three options I foresaw (hard leave, EEA and Remain - this is before EEA was ruled out by Boris and Gove during the campaign) and doing so helped switch me from Remain to Leave.
Does the fact I considered both sides of the debate somehow devalue my opinion in your eyes? Does it devalue my vote?
People who rush headlong without considering both sides because they've predetermined their decision and can't be swayed no matter the argument are not worthy of more respect.
There is a big difference between you and Boris. What you did was completely rational. You considered both sides and went out to vote accordingly.
There is a big difference between that and becoming a leader of the campaign. I know of nobody who is undecided about a political issue who on making a decision which way to jump then goes hell for leather on campaigning for it. Nobody does. They do it reluctantly as the best option in their opinion.
If you are talking about a decision where on making that decision there is a fork in the road at that point then of course you go hell for leather for it eg changing jobs, buying a house etc. You maybe in doubt but once decided you work hard to make it work, BUT that wasn't that type of decision. The decision was whether to argue for it, not whether to do it. That is very different.
A normal person would do the pros and cons and vote accordingly.
‘Prince Andrew faces no good choice in Epstein accuser case’
… Andrew’s team is likely to wage a protracted battle over the U.S. court’s jurisdiction while arguing that their client is entitled to immunity as a member of the royal family.
This strikes me as being profoundly unwise. There are shades of Tories breaking Covid rules (Johnson, Jenrick, Cummings, Gove, Hancock, Seely etc): one rule for the plebs but another rule for the entitled.
Why should teenage girls be protected in law from sexual abuse, sexual assault, rape and sex trafficking, but then when it transpires that the repulsive middle-aged man who allegedly forced her to have sex was a member of a royal family, then… oh well… that’s alright then.
A lot of people will forgive, or at least look away, when ministers break Covid rules. These are after all busy people doing important jobs. But what that pathetic man is accused of doing is utterly unforgivable. There is zero excuse.
Luckily the US courts will not swallow such guff. One hates to think how the English courts would have (mis)handled this case.
I think a problem for the Scottish courts (and quite possibly for the English courts too) is that the age of consent here is 16 and she was 17 when this allegedly happened. That means, in the absence of other coercion, this was not an offence here. IANAE on this but my understanding is that other than under special cases like the EAW for someone to be extradited the offence in the requesting country would normally have to be an offence here too.
This, of course, is a civil suit so what she will need to prove is that this occurred in the US, specifically in NY. The case has been raised to prevent it being time barred for ever on the expiry of a time limited exemption for claimants who were children at the time of the alleged conduct. I suspect that the jurisdiction dispute will be lengthy.
Not sure how default verdicts would work in this case, were PA not to travel to the USA.
I tend to think of US Civil cases as anywhere between valid claims and legalised muggings, and no way of telling which is which, as I think 90%+ are settled out of court.
If Prince Andrew chooses not to travel to the United States, and he is not extradited, the press articles indicate that he will take a huge financial punishment. Better than sitting in an American prison, but might mummy refuse to pay his bill?
He's not poor himself. £50m or so I think is the commonly reported number.
Though I am not sure how a Civil default verdict would be enforced.
That is a scenario where the UK ambassador to the United States would be called in for a wee chat. During this chat the Good Friday Agreement will gently be slipped in, and Johnson’s desperation for a trade deal, and where Trident is going to be based, and… the list of useful American thumbscrews is endless. Then, as if by magic, the civil default payment will be made.
Prince Andrew’s name is dirt now, but it is going to get significantly worse, especially among the decision-makers who matter. They just hate being coerced.
Double the orders, screwing the restaurants and the riders and still losing money hand over fist. What a crazy business.
Well the original investors got it to the IPO, so they don’t care much any more.
I still don’t see how a company with ~£150m of revenue can have ~£250m of expenses and be in any way sustainable.
These delivery and taxi companies are all losing a fortune, trying to build sufficient market share that can’t be taken away by the next new startup of VC money undercutting them.
The taxi / ride share "out" i can sort of see....if we get self driving cars, they win. Big if obviously.
Food delivery services, you can't cut out the restaurants and self driving cars don't work for them, as a) they won't control those services and b) people want the food deliveried to their door, not have to cone out their flat, down in the lift, out into the street to pick a burger out the back of a self driving vehicle. And there is a fairly low ceiling on what you can charge for a delivery.
Uber et al were only going to be profitable is we had self driving cars by now - but they’ve shut down that part of their business as they’ve realised it’s pretty much impossible not a 90/10 problem but a 99.99/0.01 problem. All they have left is a loss-making taxi company.
The other problem with Uber is drivers realise after a bit that it actually doesn't pay that well, so they have huge churn in drivers and I believe a significant proportion do it as a bit of a side hustle as a way to make some money when they are short (rather than borrow it), even though they know that there is a cost down the line. But you can only churn that pool for so long.
Anecdotally, I get the impression that there is a fair overlap between drivers for Uber, local minicabs and food delivery. Perhaps increased pressure to treat drivers as employees will reduce this.
And they all depend on people taking an unsustainable job. Without input into the conveyer, you run out of drivers....
Why am I reminded of the whining from a brewery senior manager - apparently they couldn't find enough marks potential landlords to run pubs
Surely the key figure is that 43% of Tory voters want Boris to stay as PM and only 39% want Sunak? As long as the Tories continue to lead the polls there will therefore be no change.
It is irrelevant if voters as a whole now want Sunak to be PM from a Tory perspective if most of those who prefer Sunak are Labour and LD voters anyway. Unless Labour and LD voters say they would vote Tory if Sunak became PM and Tory leader why would the Tories change leader?
What's going on under the surface of the Labour Party at the moment? Has Starmer won, or is the battle for the party's soul still ongoing?
It did look for a time as if Starmer had got rid of most of the Trots - but from reading that, it does appear that their Conference is going to be ‘interesting’ from the perspective of the leader.
Labour Party Conferences are always interesting from the perspective of the leader. Of course there will be ructions, and the far left will make a lot of noise. But many of the 'entryists' have already left the party. Starmer won't have any serious trouble, let alone a challenge. Not this year.
Conference may actually help him. Trots are leaving all the time. Conference has yet another final stand, where the Faithful try to get Him readmitted to the PLP by the wheeze of having the members decide who has the whip removed. As such a stupid idea will be laughed out, hopefully more Trots will declare conference to be full of Tories and go to rejoin Socialist "Unity"
Though, since Corbyn hasn't spoken up on this, fought back etc.. doesn't that make him a Tory Traitor as well?
Apparently because the charges are so high to the restaurants with these delivery services what is increasingly happening is one physical restaurant will set up many different "virtual" restaurants on the all apps e.g. a chinese restaurant, will also the have a virtual Thai, Korean, Japanese, a burger place etc. Anything to ensure they get orders constantly and all from one physical location as increasingly hard to make it work otherwise with the cost charged by the delivery companies and rampant competition and these dark kitchens etc.
What they’re doing in my neck of the woods, is the apps themselves are setting up warehouses in industrial areas, and leasing space to the restaurant brands to install kitchens and staff them with chefs, making orders from multiple restaurants for the app company.
This has the effect of making the delivery routing more efficient (can order from two or three restaurant brands with only one delivery run), ties the restaurants into the app brand, and frees up capacity in the actual restaurants which find lots of home deliveries to be an inconvenience. It’s also much cheaper to rent space in an industrial area, than in prime retail or mall areas.
Double the orders, screwing the restaurants and the riders and still losing money hand over fist. What a crazy business.
Well the original investors got it to the IPO, so they don’t care much any more.
I still don’t see how a company with ~£150m of revenue can have ~£250m of expenses and be in any way sustainable.
These delivery and taxi companies are all losing a fortune, trying to build sufficient market share that can’t be taken away by the next new startup of VC money undercutting them.
The taxi / ride share "out" i can sort of see....if we get self driving cars, they win. Big if obviously.
Food delivery services, you can't cut out the restaurants and self driving cars don't work for them, as a) they won't control those services and b) people want the food deliveried to their door, not have to cone out their flat, down in the lift, out into the street to pick a burger out the back of a self driving vehicle. And there is a fairly low ceiling on what you can charge for a delivery.
Uber et al were only going to be profitable is we had self driving cars by now - but they’ve shut down that part of their business as they’ve realised it’s pretty much impossible not a 90/10 problem but a 99.99/0.01 problem. All they have left is a loss-making taxi company.
The other problem with Uber is drivers realise after a bit that it actually doesn't pay that well, so they have huge churn in drivers and I believe a significant proportion do it as a bit of a side hustle as a way to make some money when they are short (rather than borrow it), even though they know that there is a cost down the line. But you can only churn that pool for so long.
Anecdotally, I get the impression that there is a fair overlap between drivers for Uber, local minicabs and food delivery. Perhaps increased pressure to treat drivers as employees will reduce this.
Round here - while there are a number of local taxi firms the one everyone uses has a very good app so no-one really uses anything else.
Double the orders, screwing the restaurants and the riders and still losing money hand over fist. What a crazy business.
Well the original investors got it to the IPO, so they don’t care much any more.
I still don’t see how a company with ~£150m of revenue can have ~£250m of expenses and be in any way sustainable.
These delivery and taxi companies are all losing a fortune, trying to build sufficient market share that can’t be taken away by the next new startup of VC money undercutting them.
The taxi / ride share "out" i can sort of see....if we get self driving cars, they win. Big if obviously.
Food delivery services, you can't cut out the restaurants and self driving cars don't work for them, as a) they won't control those services and b) people want the food deliveried to their door, not have to cone out their flat, down in the lift, out into the street to pick a burger out the back of a self driving vehicle. And there is a fairly low ceiling on what you can charge for a delivery.
Even if you get a monopoly on this business you can't charge £20 a delivery as nobody will pay it. I personally never use these services as i already think they are really expensive.
And you can't get an Amazon-like monopoly anyway. Whatever you think of them as a business, Amazon did bring something new to customers; the ability to browse every book there is. Outside big (university) cities, that possibly didn't exist before. And books fit nicely in the post.
For takeaway food... It's nice to have home delivery, but it's coming from the same neighborhood places that were there anyway. It can't really come from further away, or the food will go cold. So outside lockdown, there's an implacable competitor of "go and get it yourself", which limits the possibility for enormous profit.
Indeed. I use Deliveroo six times a week, sometimes more. It costs about £5 more than collecting food myself. If I did collect it myself, the cab fare home would be £5, so the whole deal is cost-neutral. But there is a limit to how much more people will pay for convenience. Tbh the bit I've never really understood is how the drivers make enough money to justify getting out of bed but clearly they must do.
‘Prince Andrew faces no good choice in Epstein accuser case’
… Andrew’s team is likely to wage a protracted battle over the U.S. court’s jurisdiction while arguing that their client is entitled to immunity as a member of the royal family.
This strikes me as being profoundly unwise. There are shades of Tories breaking Covid rules (Johnson, Jenrick, Cummings, Gove, Hancock, Seely etc): one rule for the plebs but another rule for the entitled.
Why should teenage girls be protected in law from sexual abuse, sexual assault, rape and sex trafficking, but then when it transpires that the repulsive middle-aged man who allegedly forced her to have sex was a member of a royal family, then… oh well… that’s alright then.
A lot of people will forgive, or at least look away, when ministers break Covid rules. These are after all busy people doing important jobs. But what that pathetic man is accused of doing is utterly unforgivable. There is zero excuse.
Luckily the US courts will not swallow such guff. One hates to think how the English courts would have (mis)handled this case.
I think a problem for the Scottish courts (and quite possibly for the English courts too) is that the age of consent here is 16 and she was 17 when this allegedly happened. That means, in the absence of other coercion, this was not an offence here. IANAE on this but my understanding is that other than under special cases like the EAW for someone to be extradited the offence in the requesting country would normally have to be an offence here too.
This, of course, is a civil suit so what she will need to prove is that this occurred in the US, specifically in NY. The case has been raised to prevent it being time barred for ever on the expiry of a time limited exemption for claimants who were children at the time of the alleged conduct. I suspect that the jurisdiction dispute will be lengthy.
Not sure how default verdicts would work in this case, were PA not to travel to the USA.
I tend to think of US Civil cases as anywhere between valid claims and legalised muggings, and no way of telling which is which, as I think 90%+ are settled out of court.
If Prince Andrew chooses not to travel to the United States, and he is not extradited, the press articles indicate that he will take a huge financial punishment. Better than sitting in an American prison, but might mummy refuse to pay his bill?
He's not poor himself. £50m or so I think is the commonly reported number.
Though I am not sure how a Civil default verdict would be enforced.
That is a scenario where the UK ambassador to the United States would be called in for a wee chat. During this chat the Good Friday Agreement will gently be slipped in, and Johnson’s desperation for a trade deal, and where Trident is going to be based, and… the list of useful American thumbscrews is endless. Then, as if by magic, the civil default payment will be made.
Is there any evidence of "Johnson's desperation for a [US] trade deal"? It seems to be something that certain people cling to unthinkingly.
Completely off-topic (though half-on for a few threads back).
First proper day back in office (as in actually in office working, not just for a catch-up) since March 2019. Also first day cycling in since we moved in 2016. 15.1 miles in 1 hour 5 minutes, very pleased with that. I thought I'd manage a steady 10mph at least so was working on up to 90 minutes, actually 13.9 average. On my wife's Halfords hybrid too as the drive train on my bike needs some serious TLC. The journey used to take 45-50 minutes at least by car.
Unfortunately, the showers that I used sometimes when I used to cycle from our old house (4 miles each way) have a big 'out of use' label and a locked door, so I need to do some searching. Private office though, so no one else needs to smell me in the meantime, at least.
We've finally been allowed to use more than one toilet cubicle at work now... Quite what the covid reasons for only using one cubicle of four was, I have no idea. We still have nonsense things like the main campus coffee shot having please clean me notices on them for when you leave. I mean the bigger risk is surely sitting opposite each other talking, not the coffee table. Why has the evidence about fomites not translated into better guidance?
‘Prince Andrew faces no good choice in Epstein accuser case’
… Andrew’s team is likely to wage a protracted battle over the U.S. court’s jurisdiction while arguing that their client is entitled to immunity as a member of the royal family.
This strikes me as being profoundly unwise. There are shades of Tories breaking Covid rules (Johnson, Jenrick, Cummings, Gove, Hancock, Seely etc): one rule for the plebs but another rule for the entitled.
Why should teenage girls be protected in law from sexual abuse, sexual assault, rape and sex trafficking, but then when it transpires that the repulsive middle-aged man who allegedly forced her to have sex was a member of a royal family, then… oh well… that’s alright then.
A lot of people will forgive, or at least look away, when ministers break Covid rules. These are after all busy people doing important jobs. But what that pathetic man is accused of doing is utterly unforgivable. There is zero excuse.
Luckily the US courts will not swallow such guff. One hates to think how the English courts would have (mis)handled this case.
I think a problem for the Scottish courts (and quite possibly for the English courts too) is that the age of consent here is 16 and she was 17 when this allegedly happened. That means, in the absence of other coercion, this was not an offence here. IANAE on this but my understanding is that other than under special cases like the EAW for someone to be extradited the offence in the requesting country would normally have to be an offence here too.
This, of course, is a civil suit so what she will need to prove is that this occurred in the US, specifically in NY. The case has been raised to prevent it being time barred for ever on the expiry of a time limited exemption for claimants who were children at the time of the alleged conduct. I suspect that the jurisdiction dispute will be lengthy.
Not sure how default verdicts would work in this case, were PA not to travel to the USA.
I tend to think of US Civil cases as anywhere between valid claims and legalised muggings, and no way of telling which is which, as I think 90%+ are settled out of court.
If Prince Andrew chooses not to travel to the United States, and he is not extradited, the press articles indicate that he will take a huge financial punishment. Better than sitting in an American prison, but might mummy refuse to pay his bill?
He's not poor himself. £50m or so I think is the commonly reported number.
Though I am not sure how a Civil default verdict would be enforced.
That is a scenario where the UK ambassador to the United States would be called in for a wee chat. During this chat the Good Friday Agreement will gently be slipped in, and Johnson’s desperation for a trade deal, and where Trident is going to be based, and… the list of useful American thumbscrews is endless. Then, as if by magic, the civil default payment will be made.
Prince Andrew’s name is dirt now, but it is going to get significantly worse, especially among the decision-makers who matter. They just hate being coerced.
Is the US establishment really going to throw all that on the bonfire just to assist this lady? I suspect many of them would prefer it if her credibility remained shrouded in some doubt.
Something that has bugged me for sometime is the fact that Boris supposedly wrote two articles one pro one anti Brexit to decide where he stood. Logically that means he didn't have a firm definite view at that stage. Now I don't know about the rest of you, but as someone who tends to have strong views there are occasions when I am not sure on something and when I'm not sure I may form a view, but I may also be swayed, so the last thing I do is go out campaigning for my current position. Instead I listen to the arguments and play devils advocate.
I suspect May was in this position re her Remain position.
It does not come over as honest, but more opportunistic that Boris then took the position he did (Ditto I think for Gove).
Is not another interpretation that he was waiting for the result (or some crucial vote within the Party) and then publish the corresponding article? Leading from the back, so to speak.
I can't remember the context of the dual articles, so this may be quite implausible on the logic of the situation.
I can't remember all the details either, but as he was a leader of the leave campaign this must have been before that obviously.
When one writes a pro and con list for yourself it is because you don't know what to do, or you think you do but want to convince yourself. It is implausible that you are so muddled that you have no idea beforehand and after doing it you are so convinced by the argument that you want to lead the campaign.
This argument is either bollocks or your mind is just made up of a spaghetti of thoughts (which with Boris is always possible).
Sorry but that's not reasonable.
Many people I know write pro and con lists and once they've settled on a position go hell to leather for it. I don't think the fact that he thought through both sides of the argument first is a reason for criticism - and I wouldn't if he'd landed on the other side either.
As it happens I was in a similar position. I started off on the Remain side and I was torn in the referendum. I literally ended up writing a pro and con list myself too for the three options I foresaw (hard leave, EEA and Remain - this is before EEA was ruled out by Boris and Gove during the campaign) and doing so helped switch me from Remain to Leave.
Does the fact I considered both sides of the debate somehow devalue my opinion in your eyes? Does it devalue my vote?
People who rush headlong without considering both sides because they've predetermined their decision and can't be swayed no matter the argument are not worthy of more respect.
There is a big difference between you and Boris. What you did was completely rational. You considered both sides and went out to vote accordingly.
There is a big difference between that and becoming a leader of the campaign. I know of nobody who is undecided about a political issue who on making a decision which way to jump then goes hell for leather on campaigning for it. Nobody does. They do it reluctantly as the best option in their opinion.
If you are talking about a decision where on making that decision there is a fork in the road at that point then of course you go hell for leather for it eg changing jobs, buying a house etc. You maybe in doubt but once decided you work hard to make it work, BUT that wasn't that type of decision. The decision was whether to argue for it, not whether to do it. That is very different.
A normal person would do the pros and cons and vote accordingly.
I don't agree, he's a leading politician so leading in politics is literally his day job.
The same is the case for many people's jobs. I don't know what sector you work in but personally in my day job I've had to weigh up pros and cons as to whether to do a project or not - and then once deciding to proceed with the project you then go hell for leather to make sure the project is a success.
If people only led projects they hadn't weighed up the pros and cons for first, then that would not be an improvement to almost any walk of life.
Double the orders, screwing the restaurants and the riders and still losing money hand over fist. What a crazy business.
Well the original investors got it to the IPO, so they don’t care much any more.
I still don’t see how a company with ~£150m of revenue can have ~£250m of expenses and be in any way sustainable.
These delivery and taxi companies are all losing a fortune, trying to build sufficient market share that can’t be taken away by the next new startup of VC money undercutting them.
The taxi / ride share "out" i can sort of see....if we get self driving cars, they win. Big if obviously.
Food delivery services, you can't cut out the restaurants and self driving cars don't work for them, as a) they won't control those services and b) people want the food deliveried to their door, not have to cone out their flat, down in the lift, out into the street to pick a burger out the back of a self driving vehicle. And there is a fairly low ceiling on what you can charge for a delivery.
Even if you get a monopoly on this business you can't charge £20 a delivery as nobody will pay it. I personally never use these services as i already think they are really expensive.
And you can't get an Amazon-like monopoly anyway. Whatever you think of them as a business, Amazon did bring something new to customers; the ability to browse every book there is. Outside big (university) cities, that possibly didn't exist before. And books fit nicely in the post.
For takeaway food... It's nice to have home delivery, but it's coming from the same neighborhood places that were there anyway. It can't really come from further away, or the food will go cold. So outside lockdown, there's an implacable competitor of "go and get it yourself", which limits the possibility for enormous profit.
Indeed. I use Deliveroo six times a week, sometimes more. It costs about £5 more than collecting food myself. If I did collect it myself, the cab fare home would be £5, so the whole deal is cost-neutral. But there is a limit to how much more people will pay for convenience. Tbh the bit I've never really understood is how the drivers make enough money to justify getting out of bed but clearly they must do.
What they are doing of course is demonstrating to the DHSS that they are working, albeit at low pay. Otherwise they would be continually called in and subjected to harangues about finding a job, reskilling and so on.
‘Prince Andrew faces no good choice in Epstein accuser case’
… Andrew’s team is likely to wage a protracted battle over the U.S. court’s jurisdiction while arguing that their client is entitled to immunity as a member of the royal family.
This strikes me as being profoundly unwise. There are shades of Tories breaking Covid rules (Johnson, Jenrick, Cummings, Gove, Hancock, Seely etc): one rule for the plebs but another rule for the entitled.
Why should teenage girls be protected in law from sexual abuse, sexual assault, rape and sex trafficking, but then when it transpires that the repulsive middle-aged man who allegedly forced her to have sex was a member of a royal family, then… oh well… that’s alright then.
A lot of people will forgive, or at least look away, when ministers break Covid rules. These are after all busy people doing important jobs. But what that pathetic man is accused of doing is utterly unforgivable. There is zero excuse.
Luckily the US courts will not swallow such guff. One hates to think how the English courts would have (mis)handled this case.
I think a problem for the Scottish courts (and quite possibly for the English courts too) is that the age of consent here is 16 and she was 17 when this allegedly happened. That means, in the absence of other coercion, this was not an offence here. IANAE on this but my understanding is that other than under special cases like the EAW for someone to be extradited the offence in the requesting country would normally have to be an offence here too.
This, of course, is a civil suit so what she will need to prove is that this occurred in the US, specifically in NY. The case has been raised to prevent it being time barred for ever on the expiry of a time limited exemption for claimants who were children at the time of the alleged conduct. I suspect that the jurisdiction dispute will be lengthy.
Not sure how default verdicts would work in this case, were PA not to travel to the USA.
I tend to think of US Civil cases as anywhere between valid claims and legalised muggings, and no way of telling which is which, as I think 90%+ are settled out of court.
If Prince Andrew chooses not to travel to the United States, and he is not extradited, the press articles indicate that he will take a huge financial punishment. Better than sitting in an American prison, but might mummy refuse to pay his bill?
He's not poor himself. £50m or so I think is the commonly reported number.
Though I am not sure how a Civil default verdict would be enforced.
That is a scenario where the UK ambassador to the United States would be called in for a wee chat. During this chat the Good Friday Agreement will gently be slipped in, and Johnson’s desperation for a trade deal, and where Trident is going to be based, and… the list of useful American thumbscrews is endless. Then, as if by magic, the civil default payment will be made.
Is there any evidence of "Johnson's desperation for a [US] trade deal"? It seems to be something that certain people cling to unthinkingly.
The only people talking about it, are those who are vociferously opposed and/or see it as a stick with which to beat the PM over EU or Ireland relations.
Double the orders, screwing the restaurants and the riders and still losing money hand over fist. What a crazy business.
Well the original investors got it to the IPO, so they don’t care much any more.
I still don’t see how a company with ~£150m of revenue can have ~£250m of expenses and be in any way sustainable.
These delivery and taxi companies are all losing a fortune, trying to build sufficient market share that can’t be taken away by the next new startup of VC money undercutting them.
The taxi / ride share "out" i can sort of see....if we get self driving cars, they win. Big if obviously.
Food delivery services, you can't cut out the restaurants and self driving cars don't work for them, as a) they won't control those services and b) people want the food deliveried to their door, not have to cone out their flat, down in the lift, out into the street to pick a burger out the back of a self driving vehicle. And there is a fairly low ceiling on what you can charge for a delivery.
Even if you get a monopoly on this business you can't charge £20 a delivery as nobody will pay it. I personally never use these services as i already think they are really expensive.
And you can't get an Amazon-like monopoly anyway. Whatever you think of them as a business, Amazon did bring something new to customers; the ability to browse every book there is. Outside big (university) cities, that possibly didn't exist before. And books fit nicely in the post.
For takeaway food... It's nice to have home delivery, but it's coming from the same neighborhood places that were there anyway. It can't really come from further away, or the food will go cold. So outside lockdown, there's an implacable competitor of "go and get it yourself", which limits the possibility for enormous profit.
But it does provide something new to consumers. The ability to browse every style of restaurant, every menu and pick something that you want - you're not limited to just your usual restaurant or whatever menus you got threw the door.
Plus the competitor of "go get it yourself" is not that strong a competitor. If it was, that's what people would be doing. People are prepared to pay for delivery.
Something that has bugged me for sometime is the fact that Boris supposedly wrote two articles one pro one anti Brexit to decide where he stood. Logically that means he didn't have a firm definite view at that stage. Now I don't know about the rest of you, but as someone who tends to have strong views there are occasions when I am not sure on something and when I'm not sure I may form a view, but I may also be swayed, so the last thing I do is go out campaigning for my current position. Instead I listen to the arguments and play devils advocate.
I suspect May was in this position re her Remain position.
It does not come over as honest, but more opportunistic that Boris then took the position he did (Ditto I think for Gove).
Is not another interpretation that he was waiting for the result (or some crucial vote within the Party) and then publish the corresponding article? Leading from the back, so to speak.
I can't remember the context of the dual articles, so this may be quite implausible on the logic of the situation.
I can't remember all the details either, but as he was a leader of the leave campaign this must have been before that obviously.
When one writes a pro and con list for yourself it is because you don't know what to do, or you think you do but want to convince yourself. It is implausible that you are so muddled that you have no idea beforehand and after doing it you are so convinced by the argument that you want to lead the campaign.
This argument is either bollocks or your mind is just made up of a spaghetti of thoughts (which with Boris is always possible).
Sorry but that's not reasonable.
Many people I know write pro and con lists and once they've settled on a position go hell to leather for it. I don't think the fact that he thought through both sides of the argument first is a reason for criticism - and I wouldn't if he'd landed on the other side either.
As it happens I was in a similar position. I started off on the Remain side and I was torn in the referendum. I literally ended up writing a pro and con list myself too for the three options I foresaw (hard leave, EEA and Remain - this is before EEA was ruled out by Boris and Gove during the campaign) and doing so helped switch me from Remain to Leave.
Does the fact I considered both sides of the debate somehow devalue my opinion in your eyes? Does it devalue my vote?
People who rush headlong without considering both sides because they've predetermined their decision and can't be swayed no matter the argument are not worthy of more respect.
There is a big difference between you and Boris. What you did was completely rational. You considered both sides and went out to vote accordingly.
There is a big difference between that and becoming a leader of the campaign. I know of nobody who is undecided about a political issue who on making a decision which way to jump then goes hell for leather on campaigning for it. Nobody does. They do it reluctantly as the best option in their opinion.
If you are talking about a decision where on making that decision there is a fork in the road at that point then of course you go hell for leather for it eg changing jobs, buying a house etc. You maybe in doubt but once decided you work hard to make it work, BUT that wasn't that type of decision. The decision was whether to argue for it, not whether to do it. That is very different.
A normal person would do the pros and cons and vote accordingly.
Boris's indecision was not about Brexit per se. It was about how to best position himself as successor to David Cameron in Number 10. That is why Boris had to take a leading role in either the Leave or Remain campaigns. It was suggested at the time that Boris expected to lead Leave to a gallant defeat, hence his rather shellshocked appearance after they'd won.
‘Prince Andrew faces no good choice in Epstein accuser case’
… Andrew’s team is likely to wage a protracted battle over the U.S. court’s jurisdiction while arguing that their client is entitled to immunity as a member of the royal family.
This strikes me as being profoundly unwise. There are shades of Tories breaking Covid rules (Johnson, Jenrick, Cummings, Gove, Hancock, Seely etc): one rule for the plebs but another rule for the entitled.
Why should teenage girls be protected in law from sexual abuse, sexual assault, rape and sex trafficking, but then when it transpires that the repulsive middle-aged man who allegedly forced her to have sex was a member of a royal family, then… oh well… that’s alright then.
A lot of people will forgive, or at least look away, when ministers break Covid rules. These are after all busy people doing important jobs. But what that pathetic man is accused of doing is utterly unforgivable. There is zero excuse.
Luckily the US courts will not swallow such guff. One hates to think how the English courts would have (mis)handled this case.
I think a problem for the Scottish courts (and quite possibly for the English courts too) is that the age of consent here is 16 and she was 17 when this allegedly happened. That means, in the absence of other coercion, this was not an offence here. IANAE on this but my understanding is that other than under special cases like the EAW for someone to be extradited the offence in the requesting country would normally have to be an offence here too.
This, of course, is a civil suit so what she will need to prove is that this occurred in the US, specifically in NY. The case has been raised to prevent it being time barred for ever on the expiry of a time limited exemption for claimants who were children at the time of the alleged conduct. I suspect that the jurisdiction dispute will be lengthy.
Not sure how default verdicts would work in this case, were PA not to travel to the USA.
I tend to think of US Civil cases as anywhere between valid claims and legalised muggings, and no way of telling which is which, as I think 90%+ are settled out of court.
If Prince Andrew chooses not to travel to the United States, and he is not extradited, the press articles indicate that he will take a huge financial punishment. Better than sitting in an American prison, but might mummy refuse to pay his bill?
He's not poor himself. £50m or so I think is the commonly reported number.
Though I am not sure how a Civil default verdict would be enforced.
That is a scenario where the UK ambassador to the United States would be called in for a wee chat. During this chat the Good Friday Agreement will gently be slipped in, and Johnson’s desperation for a trade deal, and where Trident is going to be based, and… the list of useful American thumbscrews is endless. Then, as if by magic, the civil default payment will be made.
Prince Andrew’s name is dirt now, but it is going to get significantly worse, especially among the decision-makers who matter. They just hate being coerced.
Is the US establishment really going to throw all that on the bonfire just to assist this lady? I suspect many of them would prefer it if her credibility remained shrouded in some doubt.
Especially that half of the US Establishment that was seen in Epstein's company.
‘Prince Andrew faces no good choice in Epstein accuser case’
… Andrew’s team is likely to wage a protracted battle over the U.S. court’s jurisdiction while arguing that their client is entitled to immunity as a member of the royal family.
This strikes me as being profoundly unwise. There are shades of Tories breaking Covid rules (Johnson, Jenrick, Cummings, Gove, Hancock, Seely etc): one rule for the plebs but another rule for the entitled.
Why should teenage girls be protected in law from sexual abuse, sexual assault, rape and sex trafficking, but then when it transpires that the repulsive middle-aged man who allegedly forced her to have sex was a member of a royal family, then… oh well… that’s alright then.
A lot of people will forgive, or at least look away, when ministers break Covid rules. These are after all busy people doing important jobs. But what that pathetic man is accused of doing is utterly unforgivable. There is zero excuse.
Luckily the US courts will not swallow such guff. One hates to think how the English courts would have (mis)handled this case.
I think a problem for the Scottish courts (and quite possibly for the English courts too) is that the age of consent here is 16 and she was 17 when this allegedly happened. That means, in the absence of other coercion, this was not an offence here. IANAE on this but my understanding is that other than under special cases like the EAW for someone to be extradited the offence in the requesting country would normally have to be an offence here too.
This, of course, is a civil suit so what she will need to prove is that this occurred in the US, specifically in NY. The case has been raised to prevent it being time barred for ever on the expiry of a time limited exemption for claimants who were children at the time of the alleged conduct. I suspect that the jurisdiction dispute will be lengthy.
Not sure how default verdicts would work in this case, were PA not to travel to the USA.
I tend to think of US Civil cases as anywhere between valid claims and legalised muggings, and no way of telling which is which, as I think 90%+ are settled out of court.
If Prince Andrew chooses not to travel to the United States, and he is not extradited, the press articles indicate that he will take a huge financial punishment. Better than sitting in an American prison, but might mummy refuse to pay his bill?
He's not poor himself. £50m or so I think is the commonly reported number.
Though I am not sure how a Civil default verdict would be enforced.
That is a scenario where the UK ambassador to the United States would be called in for a wee chat. During this chat the Good Friday Agreement will gently be slipped in, and Johnson’s desperation for a trade deal, and where Trident is going to be based, and… the list of useful American thumbscrews is endless. Then, as if by magic, the civil default payment will be made.
Is there any evidence of "Johnson's desperation for a [US] trade deal"? It seems to be something that certain people cling to unthinkingly.
At the time, of course, it was bandied about as one of the great Brexit benefits. But now that Boris's NI antics have left it dead in the water, and everyone realizes it would have been a bit crap for the UK anyway, Boris seems happy to forget all about it.
Double the orders, screwing the restaurants and the riders and still losing money hand over fist. What a crazy business.
Well the original investors got it to the IPO, so they don’t care much any more.
I still don’t see how a company with ~£150m of revenue can have ~£250m of expenses and be in any way sustainable.
These delivery and taxi companies are all losing a fortune, trying to build sufficient market share that can’t be taken away by the next new startup of VC money undercutting them.
The taxi / ride share "out" i can sort of see....if we get self driving cars, they win. Big if obviously.
Food delivery services, you can't cut out the restaurants and self driving cars don't work for them, as a) they won't control those services and b) people want the food deliveried to their door, not have to cone out their flat, down in the lift, out into the street to pick a burger out the back of a self driving vehicle. And there is a fairly low ceiling on what you can charge for a delivery.
Even if you get a monopoly on this business you can't charge £20 a delivery as nobody will pay it. I personally never use these services as i already think they are really expensive.
And you can't get an Amazon-like monopoly anyway. Whatever you think of them as a business, Amazon did bring something new to customers; the ability to browse every book there is. Outside big (university) cities, that possibly didn't exist before. And books fit nicely in the post.
For takeaway food... It's nice to have home delivery, but it's coming from the same neighborhood places that were there anyway. It can't really come from further away, or the food will go cold. So outside lockdown, there's an implacable competitor of "go and get it yourself", which limits the possibility for enormous profit.
But it does provide something new to consumers. The ability to browse every style of restaurant, every menu and pick something that you want - you're not limited to just your usual restaurant or whatever menus you got threw the door.
Plus the competitor of "go get it yourself" is not that strong a competitor. If it was, that's what people would be doing. People are prepared to pay for delivery.
These are takeways not restaurants. Big difference
‘Prince Andrew faces no good choice in Epstein accuser case’
… Andrew’s team is likely to wage a protracted battle over the U.S. court’s jurisdiction while arguing that their client is entitled to immunity as a member of the royal family.
This strikes me as being profoundly unwise. There are shades of Tories breaking Covid rules (Johnson, Jenrick, Cummings, Gove, Hancock, Seely etc): one rule for the plebs but another rule for the entitled.
Why should teenage girls be protected in law from sexual abuse, sexual assault, rape and sex trafficking, but then when it transpires that the repulsive middle-aged man who allegedly forced her to have sex was a member of a royal family, then… oh well… that’s alright then.
A lot of people will forgive, or at least look away, when ministers break Covid rules. These are after all busy people doing important jobs. But what that pathetic man is accused of doing is utterly unforgivable. There is zero excuse.
Luckily the US courts will not swallow such guff. One hates to think how the English courts would have (mis)handled this case.
I think a problem for the Scottish courts (and quite possibly for the English courts too) is that the age of consent here is 16 and she was 17 when this allegedly happened. That means, in the absence of other coercion, this was not an offence here. IANAE on this but my understanding is that other than under special cases like the EAW for someone to be extradited the offence in the requesting country would normally have to be an offence here too.
This, of course, is a civil suit so what she will need to prove is that this occurred in the US, specifically in NY. The case has been raised to prevent it being time barred for ever on the expiry of a time limited exemption for claimants who were children at the time of the alleged conduct. I suspect that the jurisdiction dispute will be lengthy.
Not sure how default verdicts would work in this case, were PA not to travel to the USA.
I tend to think of US Civil cases as anywhere between valid claims and legalised muggings, and no way of telling which is which, as I think 90%+ are settled out of court.
If Prince Andrew chooses not to travel to the United States, and he is not extradited, the press articles indicate that he will take a huge financial punishment. Better than sitting in an American prison, but might mummy refuse to pay his bill?
He's not poor himself. £50m or so I think is the commonly reported number.
Though I am not sure how a Civil default verdict would be enforced.
That is a scenario where the UK ambassador to the United States would be called in for a wee chat. During this chat the Good Friday Agreement will gently be slipped in, and Johnson’s desperation for a trade deal, and where Trident is going to be based, and… the list of useful American thumbscrews is endless. Then, as if by magic, the civil default payment will be made.
Is there any evidence of "Johnson's desperation for a [US] trade deal"? It seems to be something that certain people cling to unthinkingly.
The only people talking about it, are those who are vociferously opposed and/or see it as a stick with which to beat the PM over EU or Ireland relations.
I don't think anything would have to be mentioned specifically. A general concern over the 'sad' deterioration in US-UK relations might well be enough. On the other hand, if I were Mrs Sacoolas I'd now be making very sure I had another string or two to pull.
Double the orders, screwing the restaurants and the riders and still losing money hand over fist. What a crazy business.
Well the original investors got it to the IPO, so they don’t care much any more.
I still don’t see how a company with ~£150m of revenue can have ~£250m of expenses and be in any way sustainable.
These delivery and taxi companies are all losing a fortune, trying to build sufficient market share that can’t be taken away by the next new startup of VC money undercutting them.
The taxi / ride share "out" i can sort of see....if we get self driving cars, they win. Big if obviously.
Food delivery services, you can't cut out the restaurants and self driving cars don't work for them, as a) they won't control those services and b) people want the food deliveried to their door, not have to cone out their flat, down in the lift, out into the street to pick a burger out the back of a self driving vehicle. And there is a fairly low ceiling on what you can charge for a delivery.
Even if you get a monopoly on this business you can't charge £20 a delivery as nobody will pay it. I personally never use these services as i already think they are really expensive.
And you can't get an Amazon-like monopoly anyway. Whatever you think of them as a business, Amazon did bring something new to customers; the ability to browse every book there is. Outside big (university) cities, that possibly didn't exist before. And books fit nicely in the post.
For takeaway food... It's nice to have home delivery, but it's coming from the same neighborhood places that were there anyway. It can't really come from further away, or the food will go cold. So outside lockdown, there's an implacable competitor of "go and get it yourself", which limits the possibility for enormous profit.
But it does provide something new to consumers. The ability to browse every style of restaurant, every menu and pick something that you want - you're not limited to just your usual restaurant or whatever menus you got threw the door.
Plus the competitor of "go get it yourself" is not that strong a competitor. If it was, that's what people would be doing. People are prepared to pay for delivery.
These are takeways not restaurants. Big difference
Both are available on the platforms nowadays.
People are prepared to pay for delivery either way. Getting to the sweet spot may take time, but if people are prepared to pay more for delivery then there is a profit to be made.
Completely off topic: I'm stuck in a telephone queue trying to book tickets for Bill Bailey at Bournemouth International Conference centre.
Why am I calling? Because BIC is yet another venue where you cannot book wheelchair space ticketes online. Yet another seemingly minor irritiation but god they add up.
Double the orders, screwing the restaurants and the riders and still losing money hand over fist. What a crazy business.
Well the original investors got it to the IPO, so they don’t care much any more.
I still don’t see how a company with ~£150m of revenue can have ~£250m of expenses and be in any way sustainable.
These delivery and taxi companies are all losing a fortune, trying to build sufficient market share that can’t be taken away by the next new startup of VC money undercutting them.
The taxi / ride share "out" i can sort of see....if we get self driving cars, they win. Big if obviously.
Food delivery services, you can't cut out the restaurants and self driving cars don't work for them, as a) they won't control those services and b) people want the food deliveried to their door, not have to cone out their flat, down in the lift, out into the street to pick a burger out the back of a self driving vehicle. And there is a fairly low ceiling on what you can charge for a delivery.
Even if you get a monopoly on this business you can't charge £20 a delivery as nobody will pay it. I personally never use these services as i already think they are really expensive.
And you can't get an Amazon-like monopoly anyway. Whatever you think of them as a business, Amazon did bring something new to customers; the ability to browse every book there is. Outside big (university) cities, that possibly didn't exist before. And books fit nicely in the post.
For takeaway food... It's nice to have home delivery, but it's coming from the same neighborhood places that were there anyway. It can't really come from further away, or the food will go cold. So outside lockdown, there's an implacable competitor of "go and get it yourself", which limits the possibility for enormous profit.
Indeed. I use Deliveroo six times a week, sometimes more. It costs about £5 more than collecting food myself. If I did collect it myself, the cab fare home would be £5, so the whole deal is cost-neutral. But there is a limit to how much more people will pay for convenience. Tbh the bit I've never really understood is how the drivers make enough money to justify getting out of bed but clearly they must do.
What they are doing of course is demonstrating to the DHSS that they are working, albeit at low pay. Otherwise they would be continually called in and subjected to harangues about finding a job, reskilling and so on.
I can sympathise. When I was made redundant, I chose not to sign on because it seemed like a lot of hassle for no great benefit. I can remember earlier times when JobCentres did not need bouncers to protect the staff from aggrieved customers at their wits' end.
‘Prince Andrew faces no good choice in Epstein accuser case’
… Andrew’s team is likely to wage a protracted battle over the U.S. court’s jurisdiction while arguing that their client is entitled to immunity as a member of the royal family.
This strikes me as being profoundly unwise. There are shades of Tories breaking Covid rules (Johnson, Jenrick, Cummings, Gove, Hancock, Seely etc): one rule for the plebs but another rule for the entitled.
Why should teenage girls be protected in law from sexual abuse, sexual assault, rape and sex trafficking, but then when it transpires that the repulsive middle-aged man who allegedly forced her to have sex was a member of a royal family, then… oh well… that’s alright then.
A lot of people will forgive, or at least look away, when ministers break Covid rules. These are after all busy people doing important jobs. But what that pathetic man is accused of doing is utterly unforgivable. There is zero excuse.
Luckily the US courts will not swallow such guff. One hates to think how the English courts would have (mis)handled this case.
I think a problem for the Scottish courts (and quite possibly for the English courts too) is that the age of consent here is 16 and she was 17 when this allegedly happened. That means, in the absence of other coercion, this was not an offence here. IANAE on this but my understanding is that other than under special cases like the EAW for someone to be extradited the offence in the requesting country would normally have to be an offence here too.
This, of course, is a civil suit so what she will need to prove is that this occurred in the US, specifically in NY. The case has been raised to prevent it being time barred for ever on the expiry of a time limited exemption for claimants who were children at the time of the alleged conduct. I suspect that the jurisdiction dispute will be lengthy.
Not sure how default verdicts would work in this case, were PA not to travel to the USA.
I tend to think of US Civil cases as anywhere between valid claims and legalised muggings, and no way of telling which is which, as I think 90%+ are settled out of court.
If Prince Andrew chooses not to travel to the United States, and he is not extradited, the press articles indicate that he will take a huge financial punishment. Better than sitting in an American prison, but might mummy refuse to pay his bill?
He's not poor himself. £50m or so I think is the commonly reported number.
Though I am not sure how a Civil default verdict would be enforced.
That is a scenario where the UK ambassador to the United States would be called in for a wee chat. During this chat the Good Friday Agreement will gently be slipped in, and Johnson’s desperation for a trade deal, and where Trident is going to be based, and… the list of useful American thumbscrews is endless. Then, as if by magic, the civil default payment will be made.
Is there any evidence of "Johnson's desperation for a [US] trade deal"? It seems to be something that certain people cling to unthinkingly.
The only people talking about it, are those who are vociferously opposed and/or see it as a stick with which to beat the PM over EU or Ireland relations.
I don't think anything would have to be mentioned specifically. A general concern over the 'sad' deterioration in US-UK relations might well be enough. On the other hand, if I were Mrs Sacoolas I'd now be making very sure I had another string or two to pull.
Sacoolas is protected by the US intelligence services and the US diplomatic corps - neither of whom want to see the precedent of "giving up" one of their own.
To expect Executive Branch to go to war with a substantial chunk of the rest of the Federal Government is an... interesting hope.
Is there any evidence of "Johnson's desperation for a [US] trade deal"? It seems to be something that certain people cling to unthinkingly.
At the time, of course, it was bandied about as one of the great Brexit benefits. But now that Boris's NI antics have left it dead in the water, and everyone realizes it would have been a bit crap for the UK anyway, Boris seems happy to forget all about it.
I think that's right, though I'm sure Liz Truss would love it. The problems are (a) Biden would need a new fast-track agreement from Congress for it (otherwise it would get niggled to death in clause-by-clause debate), and that won't happen until after the mid-terms, if then (b) the pressure from NGOs over the relatively minor Australian deal has made it clear that the political cost of a US deal would be enormous. I don't think Boris sees any urgent need to pay it.
‘Prince Andrew faces no good choice in Epstein accuser case’
… Andrew’s team is likely to wage a protracted battle over the U.S. court’s jurisdiction while arguing that their client is entitled to immunity as a member of the royal family.
This strikes me as being profoundly unwise. There are shades of Tories breaking Covid rules (Johnson, Jenrick, Cummings, Gove, Hancock, Seely etc): one rule for the plebs but another rule for the entitled.
Why should teenage girls be protected in law from sexual abuse, sexual assault, rape and sex trafficking, but then when it transpires that the repulsive middle-aged man who allegedly forced her to have sex was a member of a royal family, then… oh well… that’s alright then.
A lot of people will forgive, or at least look away, when ministers break Covid rules. These are after all busy people doing important jobs. But what that pathetic man is accused of doing is utterly unforgivable. There is zero excuse.
Luckily the US courts will not swallow such guff. One hates to think how the English courts would have (mis)handled this case.
I think a problem for the Scottish courts (and quite possibly for the English courts too) is that the age of consent here is 16 and she was 17 when this allegedly happened. That means, in the absence of other coercion, this was not an offence here. IANAE on this but my understanding is that other than under special cases like the EAW for someone to be extradited the offence in the requesting country would normally have to be an offence here too.
This, of course, is a civil suit so what she will need to prove is that this occurred in the US, specifically in NY. The case has been raised to prevent it being time barred for ever on the expiry of a time limited exemption for claimants who were children at the time of the alleged conduct. I suspect that the jurisdiction dispute will be lengthy.
Not sure how default verdicts would work in this case, were PA not to travel to the USA.
I tend to think of US Civil cases as anywhere between valid claims and legalised muggings, and no way of telling which is which, as I think 90%+ are settled out of court.
If Prince Andrew chooses not to travel to the United States, and he is not extradited, the press articles indicate that he will take a huge financial punishment. Better than sitting in an American prison, but might mummy refuse to pay his bill?
He's not poor himself. £50m or so I think is the commonly reported number.
Though I am not sure how a Civil default verdict would be enforced.
That is a scenario where the UK ambassador to the United States would be called in for a wee chat. During this chat the Good Friday Agreement will gently be slipped in, and Johnson’s desperation for a trade deal, and where Trident is going to be based, and… the list of useful American thumbscrews is endless. Then, as if by magic, the civil default payment will be made.
Is there any evidence of "Johnson's desperation for a [US] trade deal"? It seems to be something that certain people cling to unthinkingly.
The only people talking about it, are those who are vociferously opposed and/or see it as a stick with which to beat the PM over EU or Ireland relations.
I don't think anything would have to be mentioned specifically. A general concern over the 'sad' deterioration in US-UK relations might well be enough. On the other hand, if I were Mrs Sacoolas I'd now be making very sure I had another string or two to pull.
Sacoolas is protected by the US intelligence services and the US diplomatic corps - neither of whom want to see the precedent of "giving up" one of their own.
To expect Executive Branch to go to war with a substantial chunk of the rest of the Federal Government is an... interesting hope.
Double the orders, screwing the restaurants and the riders and still losing money hand over fist. What a crazy business.
Well the original investors got it to the IPO, so they don’t care much any more.
I still don’t see how a company with ~£150m of revenue can have ~£250m of expenses and be in any way sustainable.
These delivery and taxi companies are all losing a fortune, trying to build sufficient market share that can’t be taken away by the next new startup of VC money undercutting them.
The taxi / ride share "out" i can sort of see....if we get self driving cars, they win. Big if obviously.
Food delivery services, you can't cut out the restaurants and self driving cars don't work for them, as a) they won't control those services and b) people want the food deliveried to their door, not have to cone out their flat, down in the lift, out into the street to pick a burger out the back of a self driving vehicle. And there is a fairly low ceiling on what you can charge for a delivery.
Even if you get a monopoly on this business you can't charge £20 a delivery as nobody will pay it. I personally never use these services as i already think they are really expensive.
And you can't get an Amazon-like monopoly anyway. Whatever you think of them as a business, Amazon did bring something new to customers; the ability to browse every book there is. Outside big (university) cities, that possibly didn't exist before. And books fit nicely in the post.
For takeaway food... It's nice to have home delivery, but it's coming from the same neighborhood places that were there anyway. It can't really come from further away, or the food will go cold. So outside lockdown, there's an implacable competitor of "go and get it yourself", which limits the possibility for enormous profit.
But it does provide something new to consumers. The ability to browse every style of restaurant, every menu and pick something that you want - you're not limited to just your usual restaurant or whatever menus you got threw the door.
Plus the competitor of "go get it yourself" is not that strong a competitor. If it was, that's what people would be doing. People are prepared to pay for delivery.
These are takeways not restaurants. Big difference
Both are available on the platforms nowadays.
People are prepared to pay for delivery either way. Getting to the sweet spot may take time, but if people are prepared to pay more for delivery then there is a profit to be made.
For a laugh I just tried UberEats using my (North Dorset) postcode... It offered me Burger King in Newport Gwent but with the provis that it is "Too far to Deliver" 😂
Is there any evidence of "Johnson's desperation for a [US] trade deal"? It seems to be something that certain people cling to unthinkingly.
At the time, of course, it was bandied about as one of the great Brexit benefits. But now that Boris's NI antics have left it dead in the water, and everyone realizes it would have been a bit crap for the UK anyway, Boris seems happy to forget all about it.
I think that's right, though I'm sure Liz Truss would love it. The problems are (a) Biden would need a new fast-track agreement from Congress for it (otherwise it would get niggled to death in clause-by-clause debate), and that won't happen until after the mid-terms, if then (b) the pressure from NGOs over the relatively minor Australian deal has made it clear that the political cost of a US deal would be enormous. I don't think Boris sees any urgent need to pay it.
Double the orders, screwing the restaurants and the riders and still losing money hand over fist. What a crazy business.
That's what people were saying about Amazon for years, and now its a licence to print money.
Amazon was getting closer to profitability each year though, Deliveroo and Uber Eats (and Uber) are taking bloody ages in actually turning a profit. Amazon made its first profit after 9 years, Uber is already 12 years old.
Amazon is also, like many of our high tech overlords, operating several more-or-less independent businesses, for instance the bookshop, the platform for other sellers, the cloud computing business and so on. Conglomerates had fallen out of favour in the 80s and 90s when asset-stripping corporate raiders would break them up, yet now they have returned in a new guise.
Amazon makes its profits on its Cloud and advertising services. Its actual commerce business has low to mid single digit margins.
Double the orders, screwing the restaurants and the riders and still losing money hand over fist. What a crazy business.
Well the original investors got it to the IPO, so they don’t care much any more.
I still don’t see how a company with ~£150m of revenue can have ~£250m of expenses and be in any way sustainable.
These delivery and taxi companies are all losing a fortune, trying to build sufficient market share that can’t be taken away by the next new startup of VC money undercutting them.
The taxi / ride share "out" i can sort of see....if we get self driving cars, they win. Big if obviously.
Food delivery services, you can't cut out the restaurants and self driving cars don't work for them, as a) they won't control those services and b) people want the food deliveried to their door, not have to cone out their flat, down in the lift, out into the street to pick a burger out the back of a self driving vehicle. And there is a fairly low ceiling on what you can charge for a delivery.
Uber et al were only going to be profitable is we had self driving cars by now - but they’ve shut down that part of their business as they’ve realised it’s pretty much impossible not a 90/10 problem but a 99.99/0.01 problem. All they have left is a loss-making taxi company.
The other problem with Uber is drivers realise after a bit that it actually doesn't pay that well, so they have huge churn in drivers and I believe a significant proportion do it as a bit of a side hustle as a way to make some money when they are short (rather than borrow it), even though they know that there is a cost down the line. But you can only churn that pool for so long.
Anecdotally, I get the impression that there is a fair overlap between drivers for Uber, local minicabs and food delivery. Perhaps increased pressure to treat drivers as employees will reduce this.
Round here - while there are a number of local taxi firms the one everyone uses has a very good app so no-one really uses anything else.
I use Blueline in Newcastle as it has a good app. Usually.
A British embassy worker has been arrested in Germany on spying charges.
The British national, named as David S, was arrested in Potsdam after he allegedly worked "for a foreign secret service", the German public prosecutor said in a statement.
The statement continued: "Until his arrest, David S. worked as a local employee at the British Embassy in Berlin.
the pressure from NGOs over the relatively minor Australian deal has made it clear that the political cost of a US deal would be enormous. I don't think Boris sees any urgent need to pay it.
Completely off-topic (though half-on for a few threads back).
First proper day back in office (as in actually in office working, not just for a catch-up) since March 2019. Also first day cycling in since we moved in 2016. 15.1 miles in 1 hour 5 minutes, very pleased with that. I thought I'd manage a steady 10mph at least so was working on up to 90 minutes, actually 13.9 average. On my wife's Halfords hybrid too as the drive train on my bike needs some serious TLC. The journey used to take 45-50 minutes at least by car.
Unfortunately, the showers that I used sometimes when I used to cycle from our old house (4 miles each way) have a big 'out of use' label and a locked door, so I need to do some searching. Private office though, so no one else needs to smell me in the meantime, at least.
We've finally been allowed to use more than one toilet cubicle at work now... Quite what the covid reasons for only using one cubicle of four was, I have no idea. We still have nonsense things like the main campus coffee shot having please clean me notices on them for when you leave. I mean the bigger risk is surely sitting opposite each other talking, not the coffee table. Why has the evidence about fomites not translated into better guidance?
Our printers/copiers have instructions to wipe down before and after use. Wipes not there, of course, but to be obtained from student services (which doubles as a kind of facilities/reception) and is a reasonably busy multi-occupancy office. I decided to pass.
‘Prince Andrew faces no good choice in Epstein accuser case’
… Andrew’s team is likely to wage a protracted battle over the U.S. court’s jurisdiction while arguing that their client is entitled to immunity as a member of the royal family.
This strikes me as being profoundly unwise. There are shades of Tories breaking Covid rules (Johnson, Jenrick, Cummings, Gove, Hancock, Seely etc): one rule for the plebs but another rule for the entitled.
Why should teenage girls be protected in law from sexual abuse, sexual assault, rape and sex trafficking, but then when it transpires that the repulsive middle-aged man who allegedly forced her to have sex was a member of a royal family, then… oh well… that’s alright then.
A lot of people will forgive, or at least look away, when ministers break Covid rules. These are after all busy people doing important jobs. But what that pathetic man is accused of doing is utterly unforgivable. There is zero excuse.
Luckily the US courts will not swallow such guff. One hates to think how the English courts would have (mis)handled this case.
I think a problem for the Scottish courts (and quite possibly for the English courts too) is that the age of consent here is 16 and she was 17 when this allegedly happened. That means, in the absence of other coercion, this was not an offence here. IANAE on this but my understanding is that other than under special cases like the EAW for someone to be extradited the offence in the requesting country would normally have to be an offence here too.
This, of course, is a civil suit so what she will need to prove is that this occurred in the US, specifically in NY. The case has been raised to prevent it being time barred for ever on the expiry of a time limited exemption for claimants who were children at the time of the alleged conduct. I suspect that the jurisdiction dispute will be lengthy.
Not sure how default verdicts would work in this case, were PA not to travel to the USA.
I tend to think of US Civil cases as anywhere between valid claims and legalised muggings, and no way of telling which is which, as I think 90%+ are settled out of court.
If Prince Andrew chooses not to travel to the United States, and he is not extradited, the press articles indicate that he will take a huge financial punishment. Better than sitting in an American prison, but might mummy refuse to pay his bill?
He's not poor himself. £50m or so I think is the commonly reported number.
Though I am not sure how a Civil default verdict would be enforced.
That is a scenario where the UK ambassador to the United States would be called in for a wee chat. During this chat the Good Friday Agreement will gently be slipped in, and Johnson’s desperation for a trade deal, and where Trident is going to be based, and… the list of useful American thumbscrews is endless. Then, as if by magic, the civil default payment will be made.
Prince Andrew’s name is dirt now, but it is going to get significantly worse, especially among the decision-makers who matter. They just hate being coerced.
Is the US establishment really going to throw all that on the bonfire just to assist this lady? I suspect many of them would prefer it if her credibility remained shrouded in some doubt.
The US establishment and the English establishment share a common goal here: they want to put this shitshow to bed. If Andrew defaults on his financial penalty, the story still has legs and could run for decades. Royal scandals have a tendency to take on a life of their own.
(Radek Sikorski) Our parliament will today be voting to disenfranchise TVN, Poland's largest, American-owned independent TV station. If the bill passes, we will likely cross the point of no return toward a kleptocratic autocracy. The ruling party promised us Budapest and it is delivering. https://twitter.com/sikorskiradek/status/1425340398013231104
Indeed. I use Deliveroo six times a week, sometimes more. It costs about £5 more than collecting food myself. If I did collect it myself, the cab fare home would be £5, so the whole deal is cost-neutral. But there is a limit to how much more people will pay for convenience. Tbh the bit I've never really understood is how the drivers make enough money to justify getting out of bed but clearly they must do.
What they are doing of course is demonstrating to the DHSS that they are working, albeit at low pay. Otherwise they would be continually called in and subjected to harangues about finding a job, reskilling and so on.
Good real-world insight there of the kind that politicians tend to miss, as not many have been in Job Centres.
Personally I don't get the appeal of takeaways vs popping something in the microwave, unless there's half a dozen of you. If you're on your own or a couple, then getting some microwaveable food with the next shop or home delivery costs about £3 a head, and preparing it takes 5-10 minutes. Why would I want to hang about waiting for someone to turn up with a lukewarm parcel costing two or three times as much?
Completely off-topic (though half-on for a few threads back).
First proper day back in office (as in actually in office working, not just for a catch-up) since March 2019. Also first day cycling in since we moved in 2016. 15.1 miles in 1 hour 5 minutes, very pleased with that. I thought I'd manage a steady 10mph at least so was working on up to 90 minutes, actually 13.9 average. On my wife's Halfords hybrid too as the drive train on my bike needs some serious TLC. The journey used to take 45-50 minutes at least by car.
Unfortunately, the showers that I used sometimes when I used to cycle from our old house (4 miles each way) have a big 'out of use' label and a locked door, so I need to do some searching. Private office though, so no one else needs to smell me in the meantime, at least.
We've finally been allowed to use more than one toilet cubicle at work now... Quite what the covid reasons for only using one cubicle of four was, I have no idea. We still have nonsense things like the main campus coffee shot having please clean me notices on them for when you leave. I mean the bigger risk is surely sitting opposite each other talking, not the coffee table. Why has the evidence about fomites not translated into better guidance?
Our printers/copiers have instructions to wipe down before and after use. Wipes not there, of course, but to be obtained from student services (which doubles as a kind of facilities/reception) and is a reasonably busy multi-occupancy office. I decided to pass.
I've been on campus a lot over the pandemic, partly as I look after key analytical equipment, so i have been increasing frustrated by the lack of logic applied to covid precautions, at a supposedly science/engineering university. We've still go one way routes in buildings that for the most part are virtually empty (its summer, so no U/G students, just some academic staff and researchers). We can now sit and have coffee inside the cafe, but still have to wear masks in the (empty) corridors. Drives me nuts...
What would happen if you got so much fragmentation that none of the parties got over the 5% threshold? I guess that would just leave the directly elected seats, so it would become a de facto FPTP election.
Cut the TV off for the masses and see what happens! (Yes, I know 'no one watches live TV any more' but older people still do and the younger streamers who won't notice this don't vote Tory anyway)
No idea whether we're affected as we've not had live TV on! (I don't think we will be as we're a good distance away and our antenna is not pointing that way, I'm pretty sure)
Comments
My expectation is that some haulage will pivot away, and some will transfer to containerised ports and handover-haulage. The Irish Press has also been claiming that 75k trucks a year are now going direct from Irish Ports not via Dover.
Not sure of the impact of the windfarm the French are building on the sea-route the Belgians want to use from Zeebrugge.
Mons. Macron will wave his arms and shout, of course.
The British national, named as David S, was arrested in Potsdam after he allegedly worked "for a foreign secret service", the German public prosecutor said in a statement.
The statement continued: "Until his arrest, David S. worked as a local employee at the British Embassy in Berlin.
https://news.sky.com/story/british-man-arrested-in-germany-accused-of-spying-for-russia-12378716
Food delivery services, you can't cut out the restaurants and self driving cars don't work for them, as a) they won't control those services and b) people want the food deliveried to their door, not have to cone out their flat, down in the lift, out into the street to pick a burger out the back of a self driving vehicle. And there is a fairly low ceiling on what you can charge for a delivery.
Even if you get a monopoly on this business you can't charge £20 a delivery as nobody will pay it. I personally never use these services as i already think they are really expensive.
I suspect May was in this position re her Remain position.
It does not come over as honest, but more opportunistic that Boris then took the position he did (Ditto I think for Gove).
pretty much impossiblenot a 90/10 problem but a 99.99/0.01 problem. All they have left is a loss-making taxi company.I can't remember the context of the dual articles, so this may be quite implausible on the logic of the situation.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25133452-400-why-self-driving-cars-could-be-going-the-way-of-the-jetpack/
But for now his political future is essentially at the mercy of Johnson's decisions. As I said, his choices depend on how much more effective than Boris he believes he might be as PM.
You definitely need to fill in their PLF documentation online, by latest midnight on the day before you arrive in Greece.
Otherwise it’s easy peasy if you’re double vaccinated with correct EU vaccine certificate, or equivalent, or if you’re under 12 no test required. Most difficult travellers are probably unvaccinated 12-15 year olds, but they only need a quick test.
Italy was more problematic, so we cancelled our villa in Tuscany.
The Greeks are pretty relaxed so pleasant atmosphere.
Bon voyage!
They all want to own the top listed sellers and independent brands in each category. They think it could quickly become similar to the way unilever or P&G basically own all the big brands across a massive number of product categories, but this will be sellers / brands on Amazon owned by these start up aggreation companies, who are getting massive VC funding.
As soon as they buy a brand / seller, they stick them through their standardisation process, have centralized teams up do the listing, the financials etc etc etc.
Their revenue more than doubled in 2020, which is pretty decent. I certainly wouldn't rule out the potential for a profit in another couple of years, like Amazon did.
Also its getting closer to profitability each year too. If it was fundamentally losing money per delivery then doubling revenue ought to have increased losses, but the losses fell again last year as they have consistently in recent years. So revenues are increasing annually and their losses are falling annually, this is a pretty similar situation to Amazon seven years in.
When one writes a pro and con list for yourself it is because you don't know what to do, or you think you do but want to convince yourself. It is implausible that you are so muddled that you have no idea beforehand and after doing it you are so convinced by the argument that you want to lead the campaign.
This argument is either bollocks or your mind is just made up of a spaghetti of thoughts (which with Boris is always possible).
Self driving will happen.... eventually. In the meantime the business has morphed into advanced driver assistance and driver monitoring.
All I know for sure: In a decade the current Uber share price is going to look stupid one way or another.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/15/michael-gove-father-company-eu-policies-fish-processing-aberdeen
https://twitter.com/idvck/status/1425373901161435136?s=20
Many people I know write pro and con lists and once they've settled on a position go hell to leather for it. I don't think the fact that he thought through both sides of the argument first is a reason for criticism - and I wouldn't if he'd landed on the other side either.
As it happens I was in a similar position. I started off on the Remain side and I was torn in the referendum. I literally ended up writing a pro and con list myself too for the three options I foresaw (hard leave, EEA and Remain - this is before EEA was ruled out by Boris and Gove during the campaign) and doing so helped switch me from Remain to Leave.
Does the fact I considered both sides of the debate somehow devalue my opinion in your eyes? Does it devalue my vote?
People who rush headlong without considering both sides because they've predetermined their decision and can't be swayed no matter the argument are not worthy of more respect.
Crossing a border takes time when you do checks. Smaller numbers of vehicles crossing EU to Switzerland can take a few hours. Once the exit protocols are fully implemented why do you expect the UK EU border to be unique?
Most people fail to account for the cost of depreciation on their car as they rack up miles on it.
Their valuation could be effectively zero or much higher in a decades time. That possibility means that their current value is correctly much more than their current losses imply - just like a value longshot bet in politics.
There is a profession of "Amazon listings optimisation", just like SEO.
Part of it is being a good guesser as to why Amazon cut you off at the knees. Just like Google punishments.
Again comparison to Amazon, they have always paid pretty well. You have to work incredibly hard, but it isn't predicated on clever schemes of you not actually being officially an employee and so avoiding all the standard employee costs.
Perfectly legitimate to do a pro and con list for oneself, of course. I'm not a journalist, so I don't think I could write equally convincing two articles, one convincing me that black was white and the other that white was black.
Loss to revenue ratio has been rapidly shrinking for Deliveroo/Uber Eats etc in recent years.
Though I am not sure how a Civil default verdict would be enforced. I am not aware of reciprocal arrangements.
Whatever you think of them as a business, Amazon did bring something new to customers; the ability to browse every book there is. Outside big (university) cities, that possibly didn't exist before. And books fit nicely in the post.
For takeaway food... It's nice to have home delivery, but it's coming from the same neighborhood places that were there anyway. It can't really come from further away, or the food will go cold. So outside lockdown, there's an implacable competitor of "go and get it yourself", which limits the possibility for enormous profit.
Think I'll stick to England this year.
But that doesn't mean they can't be profitable and there may be more to squeeze from consumers oddly enough. Part of the issue has been having the same prices for delivery as for collection and freeish delivery, which means the customer is really not paying for delivery - that is not sustainable long term.
But food delivery can be profitable. Look at the share price for Domino's since the turn of the century, its share price has gone up a thousand percent in the last fifteen years and they're very profitable. Of course they do more than just deliveries - but one trick they've got is to offer "free delivery" on a £19.99 pizza, or to have collection offers that mean you can collect any pizza for £9.99; they're not charging for delivery, but they are really.
Uber, Deliveroo etc to turn a profit will go down this route. The price for delivery will simply be inflated beyond the price in the restaurant - and people's inate laziness will mean they pay the price. Yes you could get the food cheaper by getting in the car and collecting it - but you could also get the food cheaper by putting the oven on. People are prepared to pay more for delivery.
There is a big difference between that and becoming a leader of the campaign. I know of nobody who is undecided about a political issue who on making a decision which way to jump then goes hell for leather on campaigning for it. Nobody does. They do it reluctantly as the best option in their opinion.
If you are talking about a decision where on making that decision there is a fork in the road at that point then of course you go hell for leather for it eg changing jobs, buying a house etc. You maybe in doubt but once decided you work hard to make it work, BUT that wasn't that type of decision. The decision was whether to argue for it, not whether to do it. That is very different.
A normal person would do the pros and cons and vote accordingly.
Prince Andrew’s name is dirt now, but it is going to get significantly worse, especially among the decision-makers who matter. They just hate being coerced.
https://internetretailing.net/marketplaces/marketplaces/how-brand-aggregator-elevate-brands-is-expanding-quickly-through-buying-amazon-sellers-23067
Why am I reminded of the whining from a brewery senior manager - apparently they couldn't find enough marks potential landlords to run pubs
It is irrelevant if voters as a whole now want Sunak to be PM from a Tory perspective if most of those who prefer Sunak are Labour and LD voters anyway. Unless Labour and LD voters say they would vote Tory if Sunak became PM and Tory leader why would the Tories change leader?
This has the effect of making the delivery routing more efficient (can order from two or three restaurant brands with only one delivery run), ties the restaurants into the app brand, and frees up capacity in the actual restaurants which find lots of home deliveries to be an inconvenience. It’s also much cheaper to rent space in an industrial area, than in prime retail or mall areas.
The same is the case for many people's jobs. I don't know what sector you work in but personally in my day job I've had to weigh up pros and cons as to whether to do a project or not - and then once deciding to proceed with the project you then go hell for leather to make sure the project is a success.
If people only led projects they hadn't weighed up the pros and cons for first, then that would not be an improvement to almost any walk of life.
Plus the competitor of "go get it yourself" is not that strong a competitor. If it was, that's what people would be doing. People are prepared to pay for delivery.
On the other hand, if I were Mrs Sacoolas I'd now be making very sure I had another string or two to pull.
People are prepared to pay for delivery either way. Getting to the sweet spot may take time, but if people are prepared to pay more for delivery then there is a profit to be made.
Why am I calling? Because BIC is yet another venue where you cannot book wheelchair space ticketes online. Yet another seemingly minor irritiation but god they add up.
Rant over - thanks for listening! :-)
If it came out in the Mail on Sunday, it would be a lot more surprising.
To expect Executive Branch to go to war with a substantial chunk of the rest of the Federal Government is an... interesting hope.
Forsa:
CDU/CSU 23%
Greens 20%
SPD 19%
FDP 12%
AfD 10%
Left 7%
Others 9%
https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/
Phew!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9882825/Boris-replace-Gavin-Williamson-Education-Secretary-reshuffle.html
Our parliament will today be voting to disenfranchise TVN, Poland's largest, American-owned independent TV station. If the bill passes, we will likely cross the point of no return toward a kleptocratic autocracy. The ruling party promised us Budapest and it is delivering.
https://twitter.com/sikorskiradek/status/1425340398013231104
Personally I don't get the appeal of takeaways vs popping something in the microwave, unless there's half a dozen of you. If you're on your own or a couple, then getting some microwaveable food with the next shop or home delivery costs about £3 a head, and preparing it takes 5-10 minutes. Why would I want to hang about waiting for someone to turn up with a lukewarm parcel costing two or three times as much?
Had the CSU leader Soder won it then the Union would likely be polling rather better
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tees-58169501
Bilsdale transmitter fire: TV and radio for 1m off air indefinitely
Cut the TV off for the masses and see what happens! (Yes, I know 'no one watches live TV any more' but older people still do and the younger streamers who won't notice this don't vote Tory anyway)
No idea whether we're affected as we've not had live TV on! (I don't think we will be as we're a good distance away and our antenna is not pointing that way, I'm pretty sure)