Michael Gove is a rare resource in modern politics. He thinks about things and he is willing to act on his thoughts to change things in ways that he think are better. This used to be, well maybe not quite the norm, but pretty common. People went into politics because they didn't like the way things were done and wanted to change it. It's what motivated them to put up with all the crap.
Now almost all of our politicians seem to be in politics for ego reasons. They view their role as managerial and tactical: what is going to look good, what makes my opponents make bad, what's going to advance my career? It makes our politicians superficial, intellectually lazy, vacuous and pretty unprincipled.
Of course Gove has an ego too, an enormous one, and not all of the changes he wants to make will meet general approval, but he gets things done and gives the government a purpose. Since his role in Brexit wound down he has been somewhat under utilised. I suggested when that happened where Boris put Gove next would give a good clue about his priorities. So far these remain well disguised if they exist at all.
Is the FO really the place for Gove? I would think not. Its not a major role these days given so much international stuff is done at PM level. The FO could certainly do with a serious shake up but its hardly a priority. And then there is the flying thing. I would really like to see him at the Home Office, but then I'd rather see almost anyone than Patel at the Home Office.
Gove at the Home Office would be interesting. He has shown in the past he is willing to act counter to the wishes of the hang em and flog em brigade and his last stint as Justice Secretary was widely praised for reversing some of the idiocies of his predecessor Grayling and also his general attitude to prison reform.
Absolutely agree with both of these comments. I've had occasion to work with Gove on several occasions in different contexts. He's serious, listens to argument, and isn't afraid to come up with new ideas. His ego is appropriately restrained - not non-existent, but sensible: he's all about getting on with the job.
My main reservation is that he perhaps has a certain iconoclastic instinct - he can't see a vested interest without trying to dismantle it, and there are cases (maybe education was one) where that isn't necessarily an undiluted positive. Similarly I don't see him as Foreign Secretary, where tip-toeing around established relationships is important. But in the Home Office (or the Justice Ministry with a mission to sort out prisons) he would be great.
Michael Gove is a rare resource in modern politics. He thinks about things and he is willing to act on his thoughts to change things in ways that he think are better. This used to be, well maybe not quite the norm, but pretty common. People went into politics because they didn't like the way things were done and wanted to change it. It's what motivated them to put up with all the crap.
Now almost all of our politicians seem to be in politics for ego reasons. They view their role as managerial and tactical: what is going to look good, what makes my opponents make bad, what's going to advance my career? It makes our politicians superficial, intellectually lazy, vacuous and pretty unprincipled.
Of course Gove has an ego too, an enormous one, and not all of the changes he wants to make will meet general approval, but he gets things done and gives the government a purpose. Since his role in Brexit wound down he has been somewhat under utilised. I suggested when that happened where Boris put Gove next would give a good clue about his priorities. So far these remain well disguised if they exist at all.
Is the FO really the place for Gove? I would think not. Its not a major role these days given so much international stuff is done at PM level. The FO could certainly do with a serious shake up but its hardly a priority. And then there is the flying thing. I would really like to see him at the Home Office, but then I'd rather see almost anyone than Patel at the Home Office.
Gove at the Home Office would be interesting. He has shown in the past he is willing to act counter to the wishes of the hang em and flog em brigade and his last stint as Justice Secretary was widely praised for reversing some of the idiocies of his predecessor Grayling and also his general attitude to prison reform.
Indeed. We need a politician who is brave enough to take on the hopelessly self defeating and lethal drug policies that come from the Misuse of Drugs Act. I really cannot think of any other front line politician in any party who would have the balls to do that. Maybe Ed Davey.
I must admit it is a surprise that there is not stronger political momentum to legalise cannabis in the UK. Seems such an obvious thing to do and wouldn’t even be too controversial at this point.
I was choosing lampshades yesterday and arranging flowers in vases and plumping cushions and knitting and other housewifely tasks. The sorts of things that I'm sure you imagine me doing all the time. In the evening there was a visit from a steam train - all beautifully polished up - with the lucky travellers inside drinking their Prosecco while us yokels stared and waved. All very Railway Children-esque and there was certainly enough steam around to make the reappearance of long lost fathers seem almost possible.
I trust all was sweetness and light on here, yes?
Meanwhile Kabul airport has turned into a mixture of Hillsborough and Sophie's Choice. Horrible.
Still, the sun is out today - which makes a nice change as yesterday the rain was atrocious. The Tahiti lime tree still needs planting as did not fancy doing it while trying to avoid drowning.
There is a prison nearby, mostly full of sex offenders and paedophiles. They have a prison shop and sell plants which they grow. I did mention to Daughter the idea mooted by others of having prisoners work in her pub but the look she gave me .....
Anyway, if you want a good documentary about another British fuck-up as they leave a country they should never have invaded (ooh, a bit of controversy!) The Road to Partition - only 2 episodes - is on BBC iPlayer and is very good.
Just catching up having been away. A couple of comments if I may:
1. Lovely to see so many Tories campaigning so vigorously for significant rises in working people's wages to counter the alleged labour shortage. Something at last that the lefties on here can agree with the Tories about. Strange old world, isn't it? 2. I'd have thought the more radical Tory solution would be to lock more people up. I read on here that prisoners are much sought after. If you imprison a lot more people, then release them early, wouldn't that be a more cost effective solution to labour shortages?
I don't see any tories apart from DavidL saying pay rises for minimum wage folk is a good thing. I am not a tory neither I believe is another richard
If not a Tory what would you describe yourself and 'another richard' as being?
Wouldn't a Tory be a member or otherwise strong supporter of the Conservative party ?
Something which Hyufd and a few other PBers - Casino, Mortimer, MM, Max - might be classed as.
But which neither I nor to my knowledge Pagan2 are.
Can we clear this up once and for all. Being 'A Tory' is not an ethnicity it is simply a voting intention. I can understand why you're in denial-particularly at the moment - but to suggest neither you nor 'Another Richard' would vote for anyone else (except perhaps UKIP) is plainly ridiculous.
So time to man up and say 'I'm a Tory and I'm proud"
I've voted many times for the LibDems, once for the Greens and many times for various Independents.
So the only thing that is 'plainly ridiculous' are your assumptions.
Michael Gove is a rare resource in modern politics. He thinks about things and he is willing to act on his thoughts to change things in ways that he think are better. This used to be, well maybe not quite the norm, but pretty common. People went into politics because they didn't like the way things were done and wanted to change it. It's what motivated them to put up with all the crap.
Now almost all of our politicians seem to be in politics for ego reasons. They view their role as managerial and tactical: what is going to look good, what makes my opponents make bad, what's going to advance my career? It makes our politicians superficial, intellectually lazy, vacuous and pretty unprincipled.
Of course Gove has an ego too, an enormous one, and not all of the changes he wants to make will meet general approval, but he gets things done and gives the government a purpose. Since his role in Brexit wound down he has been somewhat under utilised. I suggested when that happened where Boris put Gove next would give a good clue about his priorities. So far these remain well disguised if they exist at all.
Is the FO really the place for Gove? I would think not. Its not a major role these days given so much international stuff is done at PM level. The FO could certainly do with a serious shake up but its hardly a priority. And then there is the flying thing. I would really like to see him at the Home Office, but then I'd rather see almost anyone than Patel at the Home Office.
Gove at the Home Office would be interesting. He has shown in the past he is willing to act counter to the wishes of the hang em and flog em brigade and his last stint as Justice Secretary was widely praised for reversing some of the idiocies of his predecessor Grayling and also his general attitude to prison reform.
Indeed. We need a politician who is brave enough to take on the hopelessly self defeating and lethal drug policies that come from the Misuse of Drugs Act. I really cannot think of any other front line politician in any party who would have the balls to do that. Maybe Ed Davey.
I must admit it is a surprise that there is not stronger political momentum to legalise cannabis in the UK. Seems such an obvious thing to do and wouldn’t even be too controversial at this point.
Whilst that is an obvious no brainer it is not cannabis that is killing more than 3 Scots a day.
Michael Gove is a rare resource in modern politics. He thinks about things and he is willing to act on his thoughts to change things in ways that he think are better. This used to be, well maybe not quite the norm, but pretty common. People went into politics because they didn't like the way things were done and wanted to change it. It's what motivated them to put up with all the crap.
Now almost all of our politicians seem to be in politics for ego reasons. They view their role as managerial and tactical: what is going to look good, what makes my opponents make bad, what's going to advance my career? It makes our politicians superficial, intellectually lazy, vacuous and pretty unprincipled.
Of course Gove has an ego too, an enormous one, and not all of the changes he wants to make will meet general approval, but he gets things done and gives the government a purpose. Since his role in Brexit wound down he has been somewhat under utilised. I suggested when that happened where Boris put Gove next would give a good clue about his priorities. So far these remain well disguised if they exist at all.
Is the FO really the place for Gove? I would think not. Its not a major role these days given so much international stuff is done at PM level. The FO could certainly do with a serious shake up but its hardly a priority. And then there is the flying thing. I would really like to see him at the Home Office, but then I'd rather see almost anyone than Patel at the Home Office.
Gove at the Home Office would be interesting. He has shown in the past he is willing to act counter to the wishes of the hang em and flog em brigade and his last stint as Justice Secretary was widely praised for reversing some of the idiocies of his predecessor Grayling and also his general attitude to prison reform.
Indeed. We need a politician who is brave enough to take on the hopelessly self defeating and lethal drug policies that come from the Misuse of Drugs Act. I really cannot think of any other front line politician in any party who would have the balls to do that. Maybe Ed Davey.
I must admit it is a surprise that there is not stronger political momentum to legalise cannabis in the UK. Seems such an obvious thing to do and wouldn’t even be too controversial at this point.
Legalise it and tax the hell out of it.
The legal product needs to be cheaper after tax than the bootlegged version, or else a large part of the benefit of legalisation disappears.
I was choosing lampshades yesterday and arranging flowers in vases and plumping cushions and knitting and other housewifely tasks. The sorts of things that I'm sure you imagine me doing all the time. In the evening there was a visit from a steam train - all beautifully polished up - with the lucky travellers inside drinking their Prosecco while us yokels stared and waved. All very Railway Children-esque and there was certainly enough steam around to make the reappearance of long lost fathers seem almost possible.
I trust all was sweetness and light on here, yes?
Meanwhile Kabul airport has turned into a mixture of Hillsborough and Sophie's Choice. Horrible.
Still, the sun is out today - which makes a nice change as yesterday the rain was atrocious. The Tahiti lime tree still needs planting as did not fancy doing it while trying to avoid drowning.
There is a prison nearby, mostly full of sex offenders and paedophiles. They have a prison shop and sell plants which they grow. I did mention to Daughter the idea mooted by others of having prisoners work in her pub but the look she gave me .....
Anyway, if you want a good documentary about another British fuck-up as they leave a country they should never have invaded (ooh, a bit of controversy!) The Road to Partition - only 2 episodes - is on BBC iPlayer and is very good.
I spoke to my son in Vancouver last night and he says there is little love for Trudeau and he expects he may be returned, but with little power
As I said last night my son has serious mental health issues, and he broke down during the conversation recounting in graphic detail the sights he witnessed at ground zero in Christchurch, NZ in 2011 when 189 people lost their lives in the main collapsed building, many of whom were young students from across the world.
The description was so horrific that I did not even mention it to my wife or my daughter
He has PTSD and it is sobering to think just how many will suffer this life changing condition and are currently in Kabul and Afghanistan
We should all try to be a 'wee' bit more compassionate
That’s dreadful Big G. Very sorry to hear this.
Thank you.
He is utterly traumatised and has not worked for two years
Indeed he has recently undergone 16 electroconvulsive sessions and is unlikely to be able to work in the foreseeable future
At 55 his future is very uncertain, and a huge worry to his mother and I and of course his wife
I'm so sorry to hear about your son's dreadful trauma. I've known a couple of people with similar issues who eventually coped up to a point in different ways - one colleague resigned from his office job and switched to a manual career after witnessing the Westminster Bridge murders. The issues did seem to fade over the years, very gradually, as other experiences overlaid them, and I do hope that your son will find more peace of mind.
There was an interesting interview with some refugees on French TV on Friday night. They spoke (under a hail of CS gas and baton rounds) to an Iraqi Kurd who came to Germany several years ago. He was trying to get to the UK because his asylum application in Germany had been refused and he was under threat of being 'Dublined' back to Romania where his first entry to the EU had been documented. He (and others) were going to the UK now because he had been told, by the traffickers, that he could no longer be Dublined out of the UK.
Also, 800 arrivals across the channel yesterday. GG Patel.
Off topic
Well, well, well. A Brexit benefit to cheer us wokeists. I"d have voted Leave if only I'd realised.
Although the irony is, I can no longer retire to the South of France unhindered, but allcomer economic migrants can enter the UK unchallenged so long as they arrive by Avon inflatable.
Gove is bright, curious and a fantastic thinker but he doesn't know when to stop.
He's the real-life human incarnation of the Scorpion and the Frog.
A deeply troubled man.
That’s why we love him fronting BetterTogether2.
I will say this about "Govey": despite having a deeply strange persona that suggests it would be an act of catastrophic folly to leave him alone with a small animal he has somehow managed to have a relatively successful career in politics.
It may be that the small animal thing is how he's survived. Consider this- the only cabinet members from the coalition who are still frontline players are Gove, Hunt (if we count Select Committee chairs) and Davey (if we count the Lib Dems).
Michael Gove is a rare resource in modern politics. He thinks about things and he is willing to act on his thoughts to change things in ways that he think are better. This used to be, well maybe not quite the norm, but pretty common. People went into politics because they didn't like the way things were done and wanted to change it. It's what motivated them to put up with all the crap.
Now almost all of our politicians seem to be in politics for ego reasons. They view their role as managerial and tactical: what is going to look good, what makes my opponents make bad, what's going to advance my career? It makes our politicians superficial, intellectually lazy, vacuous and pretty unprincipled.
Of course Gove has an ego too, an enormous one, and not all of the changes he wants to make will meet general approval, but he gets things done and gives the government a purpose. Since his role in Brexit wound down he has been somewhat under utilised. I suggested when that happened where Boris put Gove next would give a good clue about his priorities. So far these remain well disguised if they exist at all.
Is the FO really the place for Gove? I would think not. Its not a major role these days given so much international stuff is done at PM level. The FO could certainly do with a serious shake up but its hardly a priority. And then there is the flying thing. I would really like to see him at the Home Office, but then I'd rather see almost anyone than Patel at the Home Office.
Gove at the Home Office would be interesting. He has shown in the past he is willing to act counter to the wishes of the hang em and flog em brigade and his last stint as Justice Secretary was widely praised for reversing some of the idiocies of his predecessor Grayling and also his general attitude to prison reform.
Indeed. We need a politician who is brave enough to take on the hopelessly self defeating and lethal drug policies that come from the Misuse of Drugs Act. I really cannot think of any other front line politician in any party who would have the balls to do that. Maybe Ed Davey.
I must admit it is a surprise that there is not stronger political momentum to legalise cannabis in the UK. Seems such an obvious thing to do and wouldn’t even be too controversial at this point.
Whilst that is an obvious no brainer it is not cannabis that is killing more than 3 Scots a day.
I think including the words "no-brainer" and cannabis in the same sentence is telling.
Just catching up having been away. A couple of comments if I may:
1. Lovely to see so many Tories campaigning so vigorously for significant rises in working people's wages to counter the alleged labour shortage. Something at last that the lefties on here can agree with the Tories about. Strange old world, isn't it? 2. I'd have thought the more radical Tory solution would be to lock more people up. I read on here that prisoners are much sought after. If you imprison a lot more people, then release them early, wouldn't that be a more cost effective solution to labour shortages?
I don't see any tories apart from DavidL saying pay rises for minimum wage folk is a good thing. I am not a tory neither I believe is another richard
If not a Tory what would you describe yourself and 'another richard' as being?
Wouldn't a Tory be a member or otherwise strong supporter of the Conservative party ?
Something which Hyufd and a few other PBers - Casino, Mortimer, MM, Max - might be classed as.
But which neither I nor to my knowledge Pagan2 are.
Can we clear this up once and for all. Being 'A Tory' is not an ethnicity it is simply a voting intention. I can understand why you're in denial-particularly at the moment - but to suggest neither you nor 'Another Richard' would vote for anyone else (except perhaps UKIP) is plainly ridiculous.
So time to man up and say 'I'm a Tory and I'm proud"
@another_richard is one of my favourite Johnson apologists/defenders.
Given I've not been short of criticism for this government generally and Boris in particular I don't know whether I should take that as a compliment or not.
There was an interesting interview with some refugees on French TV on Friday night. They spoke (under a hail of CS gas and baton rounds) to an Iraqi Kurd who came to Germany several years ago. He was trying to get to the UK because his asylum application in Germany had been refused and he was under threat of being 'Dublined' back to Romania where his first entry to the EU had been documented. He (and others) were going to the UK now because he had been told, by the traffickers, that he could no longer be Dublined out of the UK.
Also, 800 arrivals across the channel yesterday. GG Patel.
Michael Gove is a rare resource in modern politics. He thinks about things and he is willing to act on his thoughts to change things in ways that he think are better. This used to be, well maybe not quite the norm, but pretty common. People went into politics because they didn't like the way things were done and wanted to change it. It's what motivated them to put up with all the crap.
Now almost all of our politicians seem to be in politics for ego reasons. They view their role as managerial and tactical: what is going to look good, what makes my opponents make bad, what's going to advance my career? It makes our politicians superficial, intellectually lazy, vacuous and pretty unprincipled.
Of course Gove has an ego too, an enormous one, and not all of the changes he wants to make will meet general approval, but he gets things done and gives the government a purpose. Since his role in Brexit wound down he has been somewhat under utilised. I suggested when that happened where Boris put Gove next would give a good clue about his priorities. So far these remain well disguised if they exist at all.
Is the FO really the place for Gove? I would think not. Its not a major role these days given so much international stuff is done at PM level. The FO could certainly do with a serious shake up but its hardly a priority. And then there is the flying thing. I would really like to see him at the Home Office, but then I'd rather see almost anyone than Patel at the Home Office.
Gove at the Home Office would be interesting. He has shown in the past he is willing to act counter to the wishes of the hang em and flog em brigade and his last stint as Justice Secretary was widely praised for reversing some of the idiocies of his predecessor Grayling and also his general attitude to prison reform.
Absolutely agree with both of these comments. I've had occasion to work with Gove on several occasions in different contexts. He's serious, listens to argument, and isn't afraid to come up with new ideas. His ego is appropriately restrained - not non-existent, but sensible: he's all about getting on with the job.
My main reservation is that he perhaps has a certain iconoclastic instinct - he can't see a vested interest without trying to dismantle it, and there are cases (maybe education was one) where that isn't necessarily an undiluted positive. Similarly I don't see him as Foreign Secretary, where tip-toeing around established relationships is important. But in the Home Office (or the Justice Ministry with a mission to sort out prisons) he would be great.
Michael Gove is a rare resource in modern politics. He thinks about things and he is willing to act on his thoughts to change things in ways that he think are better. This used to be, well maybe not quite the norm, but pretty common. People went into politics because they didn't like the way things were done and wanted to change it. It's what motivated them to put up with all the crap.
Now almost all of our politicians seem to be in politics for ego reasons. They view their role as managerial and tactical: what is going to look good, what makes my opponents make bad, what's going to advance my career? It makes our politicians superficial, intellectually lazy, vacuous and pretty unprincipled.
Of course Gove has an ego too, an enormous one, and not all of the changes he wants to make will meet general approval, but he gets things done and gives the government a purpose. Since his role in Brexit wound down he has been somewhat under utilised. I suggested when that happened where Boris put Gove next would give a good clue about his priorities. So far these remain well disguised if they exist at all.
Is the FO really the place for Gove? I would think not. Its not a major role these days given so much international stuff is done at PM level. The FO could certainly do with a serious shake up but its hardly a priority. And then there is the flying thing. I would really like to see him at the Home Office, but then I'd rather see almost anyone than Patel at the Home Office.
Gove at the Home Office would be interesting. He has shown in the past he is willing to act counter to the wishes of the hang em and flog em brigade and his last stint as Justice Secretary was widely praised for reversing some of the idiocies of his predecessor Grayling and also his general attitude to prison reform.
Indeed. We need a politician who is brave enough to take on the hopelessly self defeating and lethal drug policies that come from the Misuse of Drugs Act. I really cannot think of any other front line politician in any party who would have the balls to do that. Maybe Ed Davey.
I must admit it is a surprise that there is not stronger political momentum to legalise cannabis in the UK. Seems such an obvious thing to do and wouldn’t even be too controversial at this point.
Legalise it and tax the hell out of it.
The legal product needs to be cheaper after tax than the bootlegged version, or else a large part of the benefit of legalisation disappears.
I was choosing lampshades yesterday and arranging flowers in vases and plumping cushions and knitting and other housewifely tasks. The sorts of things that I'm sure you imagine me doing all the time. In the evening there was a visit from a steam train - all beautifully polished up - with the lucky travellers inside drinking their Prosecco while us yokels stared and waved. All very Railway Children-esque and there was certainly enough steam around to make the reappearance of long lost fathers seem almost possible.
I trust all was sweetness and light on here, yes?
Meanwhile Kabul airport has turned into a mixture of Hillsborough and Sophie's Choice. Horrible.
Still, the sun is out today - which makes a nice change as yesterday the rain was atrocious. The Tahiti lime tree still needs planting as did not fancy doing it while trying to avoid drowning.
There is a prison nearby, mostly full of sex offenders and paedophiles. They have a prison shop and sell plants which they grow. I did mention to Daughter the idea mooted by others of having prisoners work in her pub but the look she gave me .....
Anyway, if you want a good documentary about another British fuck-up as they leave a country they should never have invaded (ooh, a bit of controversy!) The Road to Partition - only 2 episodes - is on BBC iPlayer and is very good.
Michael Gove is a rare resource in modern politics. He thinks about things and he is willing to act on his thoughts to change things in ways that he think are better. This used to be, well maybe not quite the norm, but pretty common. People went into politics because they didn't like the way things were done and wanted to change it. It's what motivated them to put up with all the crap.
Now almost all of our politicians seem to be in politics for ego reasons. They view their role as managerial and tactical: what is going to look good, what makes my opponents make bad, what's going to advance my career? It makes our politicians superficial, intellectually lazy, vacuous and pretty unprincipled.
Of course Gove has an ego too, an enormous one, and not all of the changes he wants to make will meet general approval, but he gets things done and gives the government a purpose. Since his role in Brexit wound down he has been somewhat under utilised. I suggested when that happened where Boris put Gove next would give a good clue about his priorities. So far these remain well disguised if they exist at all.
Is the FO really the place for Gove? I would think not. Its not a major role these days given so much international stuff is done at PM level. The FO could certainly do with a serious shake up but its hardly a priority. And then there is the flying thing. I would really like to see him at the Home Office, but then I'd rather see almost anyone than Patel at the Home Office.
Gove at the Home Office would be interesting. He has shown in the past he is willing to act counter to the wishes of the hang em and flog em brigade and his last stint as Justice Secretary was widely praised for reversing some of the idiocies of his predecessor Grayling and also his general attitude to prison reform.
Indeed. We need a politician who is brave enough to take on the hopelessly self defeating and lethal drug policies that come from the Misuse of Drugs Act. I really cannot think of any other front line politician in any party who would have the balls to do that. Maybe Ed Davey.
I must admit it is a surprise that there is not stronger political momentum to legalise cannabis in the UK. Seems such an obvious thing to do and wouldn’t even be too controversial at this point.
Whilst that is an obvious no brainer it is not cannabis that is killing more than 3 Scots a day.
I remember many years ago my old grandad talking about herion addicts. He couldn’t understand why they were treated like criminals, said in his day everyone looked at them as poor bastards who had fallen into a miserable life that no one would choose for themselves.
Excellent news: I finished Polybius off last night and will shortly start writing up an exciting blog on the subject.
If Gove is the one pushing ID cards I hope his career falls off a cliff.
I’ve carried a state ID card for nearly two decades, now primarily online. Makes everyday life super easy. It now seems stone age to me that Scots still have to produce electricity bills etc to prove identity.
Quite. Especially when we will need to prove ID to vote. Maybe Leon could knap us some ID cards in Rum bloodstone.
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
Wasn't on yesterday when it was "done to death" but the simple reality is that your "its over / its done / its simple" is not what the industry are experiencing. If there was a simple solution it would have been done already.
This is a long term structural issue. We have too many jobs that Brits don't want to / can't afford to do in places where the people who need a job don't live. We had EU migration to fill these roles because there was literally no labour available.
When you are running an anglian food factory and you cannot get people to do night shifts at any salary, it not an issue of "low pay". Stop quoting rhetoric to solve a practical problem.
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
How long ago was it when Scott was pasting predictions of mass unemployment ?
[ remember with affection the days when Labour were a potent electoral force. The days when Neil Kinnock was a big threat to the Government. Sigh. No longer. Now they are a squalid set of squabbling ferrets in a sack. Starmer would once have been a real Contender for PM.
No longer. The structural damage has gone too far. They've swapped a bunch of Wolfie Smith wannabes for the traditional supporters. The Red wall is history. Even the LDs have morphed into a one issue party, in danger of being taken over by the Greens.
And this when the Tories have BoJo, a man who no one would trust to wipe his own arse.
Can't the 'None of the above' voters set up their own party?
There was an interesting interview with some refugees on French TV on Friday night. They spoke (under a hail of CS gas and baton rounds) to an Iraqi Kurd who came to Germany several years ago. He was trying to get to the UK because his asylum application in Germany had been refused and he was under threat of being 'Dublined' back to Romania where his first entry to the EU had been documented. He (and others) were going to the UK now because he had been told, by the traffickers, that he could no longer be Dublined out of the UK.
Also, 800 arrivals across the channel yesterday. GG Patel.
Do you have a link to the fillummed version?
That sounds like an argument for a version of the "Australia" policy - with a large majority of refugees being taken from the region, rather than following the Merkel policy of allowing those in strong enough and/or rich enough to successfully navigate the people traffickers and not die on the way.
Michael Gove is a rare resource in modern politics. He thinks about things and he is willing to act on his thoughts to change things in ways that he think are better. This used to be, well maybe not quite the norm, but pretty common. People went into politics because they didn't like the way things were done and wanted to change it. It's what motivated them to put up with all the crap.
Now almost all of our politicians seem to be in politics for ego reasons. They view their role as managerial and tactical: what is going to look good, what makes my opponents make bad, what's going to advance my career? It makes our politicians superficial, intellectually lazy, vacuous and pretty unprincipled.
Of course Gove has an ego too, an enormous one, and not all of the changes he wants to make will meet general approval, but he gets things done and gives the government a purpose. Since his role in Brexit wound down he has been somewhat under utilised. I suggested when that happened where Boris put Gove next would give a good clue about his priorities. So far these remain well disguised if they exist at all.
Is the FO really the place for Gove? I would think not. Its not a major role these days given so much international stuff is done at PM level. The FO could certainly do with a serious shake up but its hardly a priority. And then there is the flying thing. I would really like to see him at the Home Office, but then I'd rather see almost anyone than Patel at the Home Office.
Gove at the Home Office would be interesting. He has shown in the past he is willing to act counter to the wishes of the hang em and flog em brigade and his last stint as Justice Secretary was widely praised for reversing some of the idiocies of his predecessor Grayling and also his general attitude to prison reform.
Indeed. We need a politician who is brave enough to take on the hopelessly self defeating and lethal drug policies that come from the Misuse of Drugs Act. I really cannot think of any other front line politician in any party who would have the balls to do that. Maybe Ed Davey.
I must admit it is a surprise that there is not stronger political momentum to legalise cannabis in the UK. Seems such an obvious thing to do and wouldn’t even be too controversial at this point.
Well it should be
Cannabis use fuelling rise in psychosis among young adults, says top Priory expert A leading addictions expert based at the Priory’s Hospital in south London has issued a strong warning about the use of cannabis by young adults, and its link with paranoid psychosis.
His comments came as figures show cannabis has caused more than 125,000 NHS hospital admissions in the last five years.
And around 15,000 of those cases involved teenagers – some of whom were rushed to A&E departments suffering serious psychosis.
Does Canada have an equivalent of Baxter’s seat calculator? As it is FPTP the raw poll findings mean little to those inexperienced in Canadian demographics.
The People's Party sounds interestingly repellent - Faragist?
Must be awkward for the Conservatives, I imagine, but like all populists will take some votes from everyone. What do people who know Canada better make of them?
Michael Gove is a rare resource in modern politics. He thinks about things and he is willing to act on his thoughts to change things in ways that he think are better. This used to be, well maybe not quite the norm, but pretty common. People went into politics because they didn't like the way things were done and wanted to change it. It's what motivated them to put up with all the crap.
Now almost all of our politicians seem to be in politics for ego reasons. They view their role as managerial and tactical: what is going to look good, what makes my opponents make bad, what's going to advance my career? It makes our politicians superficial, intellectually lazy, vacuous and pretty unprincipled.
Of course Gove has an ego too, an enormous one, and not all of the changes he wants to make will meet general approval, but he gets things done and gives the government a purpose. Since his role in Brexit wound down he has been somewhat under utilised. I suggested when that happened where Boris put Gove next would give a good clue about his priorities. So far these remain well disguised if they exist at all.
Is the FO really the place for Gove? I would think not. Its not a major role these days given so much international stuff is done at PM level. The FO could certainly do with a serious shake up but its hardly a priority. And then there is the flying thing. I would really like to see him at the Home Office, but then I'd rather see almost anyone than Patel at the Home Office.
Gove at the Home Office would be interesting. He has shown in the past he is willing to act counter to the wishes of the hang em and flog em brigade and his last stint as Justice Secretary was widely praised for reversing some of the idiocies of his predecessor Grayling and also his general attitude to prison reform.
Indeed. We need a politician who is brave enough to take on the hopelessly self defeating and lethal drug policies that come from the Misuse of Drugs Act. I really cannot think of any other front line politician in any party who would have the balls to do that. Maybe Ed Davey.
I must admit it is a surprise that there is not stronger political momentum to legalise cannabis in the UK. Seems such an obvious thing to do and wouldn’t even be too controversial at this point.
Whilst that is an obvious no brainer it is not cannabis that is killing more than 3 Scots a day.
I think including the words "no-brainer" and cannabis in the same sentence is telling.
Personally I agree and would never touch the stuff but that is a different question of whether it should be illegal. At the moment it is a dangerous gateway drug to more serious things sold by evil people who don't even complete their tax returns properly. We have more and more powerful versions introduced in a completely unregulated way with people having little idea what they are buying. It is the worst of all worlds.
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
How long ago was it when Scott was pasting predictions of mass unemployment ?
I think that was before it was pointed out that our exports and imports to the EU were now above last year's (admittedly distorted) figures so a few months, at least.
Michael Gove is a rare resource in modern politics. He thinks about things and he is willing to act on his thoughts to change things in ways that he think are better. This used to be, well maybe not quite the norm, but pretty common. People went into politics because they didn't like the way things were done and wanted to change it. It's what motivated them to put up with all the crap.
Now almost all of our politicians seem to be in politics for ego reasons. They view their role as managerial and tactical: what is going to look good, what makes my opponents make bad, what's going to advance my career? It makes our politicians superficial, intellectually lazy, vacuous and pretty unprincipled.
Of course Gove has an ego too, an enormous one, and not all of the changes he wants to make will meet general approval, but he gets things done and gives the government a purpose. Since his role in Brexit wound down he has been somewhat under utilised. I suggested when that happened where Boris put Gove next would give a good clue about his priorities. So far these remain well disguised if they exist at all.
Is the FO really the place for Gove? I would think not. Its not a major role these days given so much international stuff is done at PM level. The FO could certainly do with a serious shake up but its hardly a priority. And then there is the flying thing. I would really like to see him at the Home Office, but then I'd rather see almost anyone than Patel at the Home Office.
Gove at the Home Office would be interesting. He has shown in the past he is willing to act counter to the wishes of the hang em and flog em brigade and his last stint as Justice Secretary was widely praised for reversing some of the idiocies of his predecessor Grayling and also his general attitude to prison reform.
Indeed. We need a politician who is brave enough to take on the hopelessly self defeating and lethal drug policies that come from the Misuse of Drugs Act. I really cannot think of any other front line politician in any party who would have the balls to do that. Maybe Ed Davey.
I must admit it is a surprise that there is not stronger political momentum to legalise cannabis in the UK. Seems such an obvious thing to do and wouldn’t even be too controversial at this point.
Well it should be
Cannabis use fuelling rise in psychosis among young adults, says top Priory expert A leading addictions expert based at the Priory’s Hospital in south London has issued a strong warning about the use of cannabis by young adults, and its link with paranoid psychosis.
His comments came as figures show cannabis has caused more than 125,000 NHS hospital admissions in the last five years.
And around 15,000 of those cases involved teenagers – some of whom were rushed to A&E departments suffering serious psychosis.
Modern cannabis is really scary stuff. Paranoid psychosis is not a desirable state of mind to be in.
This is just adds more strength to the argument to legalise and properly regulate. So that the ratio of CBD to THC can revert to safer levels. As it is, it’s like we’ve banned beer so the kids are out there drinking moonshine.
If Raab goes, perhaps Johnson will take on the brief and double up as both PM and foreign secretary. Who can doubt his dedication to hard work and service to others?
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
How long ago was it when Scott was pasting predictions of mass unemployment ?
I was guilty of that too, but then I hadn't anticipated or accounted for all the Eastern Europeans jumping ship, and soon-to-be-retirees calling it a day.
It is to your and Johnson's credit that you had budgeted for this potential inconvenience and trained the required domestic HGV drivers and NHS staff in time.
I spoke to my son in Vancouver last night and he says there is little love for Trudeau and he expects he may be returned, but with little power
As I said last night my son has serious mental health issues, and he broke down during the conversation recounting in graphic detail the sights he witnessed at ground zero in Christchurch, NZ in 2011 when 189 people lost their lives in the main collapsed building, many of whom were young students from across the world.
The description was so horrific that I did not even mention it to my wife or my daughter
He has PTSD and it is sobering to think just how many will suffer this life changing condition and are currently in Kabul and Afghanistan
We should all try to be a 'wee' bit more compassionate
That’s dreadful Big G. Very sorry to hear this.
Thank you.
He is utterly traumatised and has not worked for two years
Indeed he has recently undergone 16 electroconvulsive sessions and is unlikely to be able to work in the foreseeable future
At 55 his future is very uncertain, and a huge worry to his mother and I and of course his wife
I'm so sorry to hear about your son's dreadful trauma. I've known a couple of people with similar issues who eventually coped up to a point in different ways - one colleague resigned from his office job and switched to a manual career after witnessing the Westminster Bridge murders. The issues did seem to fade over the years, very gradually, as other experiences overlaid them, and I do hope that your son will find more peace of mind.
Thanks Nick but strangely his PTSD overcame him in 2019, though his trauma in Christchurch was in 2011
We hope he will gradually recover but it is a long process
Unfortunately as he described the events in tears last night, and he has not been so open about it before, we have to realise you cannot unsee that which you have witnessed
Indeed our neighbour was one of the first firemen to respond to the Grenfell Tower disaster and he is also invalided out of the fire service with PTSD and hasn't worked in over 2 years
At 39 and with a young family it is very upsetting to see his trauma
If Raab goes, perhaps Johnson will take on the brief and double up as both PM and foreign secretary. Who can doubt his dedication to hard work and service to others?
Michael Gove is a rare resource in modern politics. He thinks about things and he is willing to act on his thoughts to change things in ways that he think are better. This used to be, well maybe not quite the norm, but pretty common. People went into politics because they didn't like the way things were done and wanted to change it. It's what motivated them to put up with all the crap.
Now almost all of our politicians seem to be in politics for ego reasons. They view their role as managerial and tactical: what is going to look good, what makes my opponents make bad, what's going to advance my career? It makes our politicians superficial, intellectually lazy, vacuous and pretty unprincipled.
Of course Gove has an ego too, an enormous one, and not all of the changes he wants to make will meet general approval, but he gets things done and gives the government a purpose. Since his role in Brexit wound down he has been somewhat under utilised. I suggested when that happened where Boris put Gove next would give a good clue about his priorities. So far these remain well disguised if they exist at all.
Is the FO really the place for Gove? I would think not. Its not a major role these days given so much international stuff is done at PM level. The FO could certainly do with a serious shake up but its hardly a priority. And then there is the flying thing. I would really like to see him at the Home Office, but then I'd rather see almost anyone than Patel at the Home Office.
Gove at the Home Office would be interesting. He has shown in the past he is willing to act counter to the wishes of the hang em and flog em brigade and his last stint as Justice Secretary was widely praised for reversing some of the idiocies of his predecessor Grayling and also his general attitude to prison reform.
Indeed. We need a politician who is brave enough to take on the hopelessly self defeating and lethal drug policies that come from the Misuse of Drugs Act. I really cannot think of any other front line politician in any party who would have the balls to do that. Maybe Ed Davey.
I must admit it is a surprise that there is not stronger political momentum to legalise cannabis in the UK. Seems such an obvious thing to do and wouldn’t even be too controversial at this point.
Well it should be
Cannabis use fuelling rise in psychosis among young adults, says top Priory expert A leading addictions expert based at the Priory’s Hospital in south London has issued a strong warning about the use of cannabis by young adults, and its link with paranoid psychosis.
His comments came as figures show cannabis has caused more than 125,000 NHS hospital admissions in the last five years.
And around 15,000 of those cases involved teenagers – some of whom were rushed to A&E departments suffering serious psychosis.
Michael Gove is a rare resource in modern politics. He thinks about things and he is willing to act on his thoughts to change things in ways that he think are better. This used to be, well maybe not quite the norm, but pretty common. People went into politics because they didn't like the way things were done and wanted to change it. It's what motivated them to put up with all the crap.
Now almost all of our politicians seem to be in politics for ego reasons. They view their role as managerial and tactical: what is going to look good, what makes my opponents make bad, what's going to advance my career? It makes our politicians superficial, intellectually lazy, vacuous and pretty unprincipled.
Of course Gove has an ego too, an enormous one, and not all of the changes he wants to make will meet general approval, but he gets things done and gives the government a purpose. Since his role in Brexit wound down he has been somewhat under utilised. I suggested when that happened where Boris put Gove next would give a good clue about his priorities. So far these remain well disguised if they exist at all.
Is the FO really the place for Gove? I would think not. Its not a major role these days given so much international stuff is done at PM level. The FO could certainly do with a serious shake up but its hardly a priority. And then there is the flying thing. I would really like to see him at the Home Office, but then I'd rather see almost anyone than Patel at the Home Office.
Gove at the Home Office would be interesting. He has shown in the past he is willing to act counter to the wishes of the hang em and flog em brigade and his last stint as Justice Secretary was widely praised for reversing some of the idiocies of his predecessor Grayling and also his general attitude to prison reform.
Indeed. We need a politician who is brave enough to take on the hopelessly self defeating and lethal drug policies that come from the Misuse of Drugs Act. I really cannot think of any other front line politician in any party who would have the balls to do that. Maybe Ed Davey.
I must admit it is a surprise that there is not stronger political momentum to legalise cannabis in the UK. Seems such an obvious thing to do and wouldn’t even be too controversial at this point.
Well it should be
Cannabis use fuelling rise in psychosis among young adults, says top Priory expert A leading addictions expert based at the Priory’s Hospital in south London has issued a strong warning about the use of cannabis by young adults, and its link with paranoid psychosis.
His comments came as figures show cannabis has caused more than 125,000 NHS hospital admissions in the last five years.
And around 15,000 of those cases involved teenagers – some of whom were rushed to A&E departments suffering serious psychosis.
Modern cannabis is really scary stuff. Paranoid psychosis is not a desirable state of mind to be in.
This is just adds more strength to the argument to legalise and properly regulate. So that the ratio of CBD to THC can revert to safer levels. As it is, it’s like we’ve banned beer so the kids are out there drinking moonshine.
You get drunk if we ban beer? That doesn't seem entirely fair..
Michael Gove is a rare resource in modern politics. He thinks about things and he is willing to act on his thoughts to change things in ways that he think are better. This used to be, well maybe not quite the norm, but pretty common. People went into politics because they didn't like the way things were done and wanted to change it. It's what motivated them to put up with all the crap.
Now almost all of our politicians seem to be in politics for ego reasons. They view their role as managerial and tactical: what is going to look good, what makes my opponents make bad, what's going to advance my career? It makes our politicians superficial, intellectually lazy, vacuous and pretty unprincipled.
Of course Gove has an ego too, an enormous one, and not all of the changes he wants to make will meet general approval, but he gets things done and gives the government a purpose. Since his role in Brexit wound down he has been somewhat under utilised. I suggested when that happened where Boris put Gove next would give a good clue about his priorities. So far these remain well disguised if they exist at all.
Is the FO really the place for Gove? I would think not. Its not a major role these days given so much international stuff is done at PM level. The FO could certainly do with a serious shake up but its hardly a priority. And then there is the flying thing. I would really like to see him at the Home Office, but then I'd rather see almost anyone than Patel at the Home Office.
Gove at the Home Office would be interesting. He has shown in the past he is willing to act counter to the wishes of the hang em and flog em brigade and his last stint as Justice Secretary was widely praised for reversing some of the idiocies of his predecessor Grayling and also his general attitude to prison reform.
Indeed. We need a politician who is brave enough to take on the hopelessly self defeating and lethal drug policies that come from the Misuse of Drugs Act. I really cannot think of any other front line politician in any party who would have the balls to do that. Maybe Ed Davey.
I must admit it is a surprise that there is not stronger political momentum to legalise cannabis in the UK. Seems such an obvious thing to do and wouldn’t even be too controversial at this point.
Well it should be
Cannabis use fuelling rise in psychosis among young adults, says top Priory expert A leading addictions expert based at the Priory’s Hospital in south London has issued a strong warning about the use of cannabis by young adults, and its link with paranoid psychosis.
His comments came as figures show cannabis has caused more than 125,000 NHS hospital admissions in the last five years.
And around 15,000 of those cases involved teenagers – some of whom were rushed to A&E departments suffering serious psychosis.
Modern cannabis is really scary stuff. Paranoid psychosis is not a desirable state of mind to be in.
It is quite a few years ago now and the science may have moved on but I recall consulting with a specialist in this who pointed out that the level of diagnosis of psychosis was pretty static despite an explosion in the consumption of cannabis which suggested that the link was weak or non existent. What he did agree with is that there was some evidence that if you have a pre-existing tendency to psychosis then cannabis can accelerate its onset and it might just increase the severity in some cases.
Personally I will stick to damaging my few remaining brain cells with alcohol.
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
Wasn't on yesterday when it was "done to death" but the simple reality is that your "its over / its done / its simple" is not what the industry are experiencing. If there was a simple solution it would have been done already.
This is a long term structural issue. We have too many jobs that Brits don't want to / can't afford to do in places where the people who need a job don't live. We had EU migration to fill these roles because there was literally no labour available.
When you are running an anglian food factory and you cannot get people to do night shifts at any salary, it not an issue of "low pay". Stop quoting rhetoric to solve a practical problem.
Perhaps the country is better off without jobs people cannot afford to do and require an endless stream of migrant workers to be exploited.
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
Wasn't on yesterday when it was "done to death" but the simple reality is that your "its over / its done / its simple" is not what the industry are experiencing. If there was a simple solution it would have been done already.
This is a long term structural issue. We have too many jobs that Brits don't want to / can't afford to do in places where the people who need a job don't live. We had EU migration to fill these roles because there was literally no labour available.
When you are running an anglian food factory and you cannot get people to do night shifts at any salary, it not an issue of "low pay". Stop quoting rhetoric to solve a practical problem.
Perhaps the country is better off without jobs people cannot afford to do and require an endless stream of migrant workers to be exploited.
The problem is that the UK becomes even more vulnerable to trade problems if its native food production is choked off. Also by free trade in food.
Thanks Nick but strangely his PTSD overcame him in 2019, though his trauma in Christchurch was in 2011
That's how it happens. My own encounter with PTSD had its root cause in a 1996 training incident when I absolutely should have been killed and only an amazing chain of coincidences saved me. I was stood down from flying for one day and shrugged it off. For years after I functioned well, even in situations of extreme stress. Yet, 10 years later I was living in my parents' garden shed convinced I was a ghost and would only talk to the dog.
The only advice I can give is: listen to the doctors and other professionals. They certainly don't get everything right all the time but it's the best shot at recovery.
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
Wasn't on yesterday when it was "done to death" but the simple reality is that your "its over / its done / its simple" is not what the industry are experiencing. If there was a simple solution it would have been done already.
This is a long term structural issue. We have too many jobs that Brits don't want to / can't afford to do in places where the people who need a job don't live. We had EU migration to fill these roles because there was literally no labour available.
When you are running an anglian food factory and you cannot get people to do night shifts at any salary, it not an issue of "low pay". Stop quoting rhetoric to solve a practical problem.
Perhaps the country is better off without jobs people cannot afford to do and require an endless stream of migrant workers to be exploited.
In the food industry the problem is that people don't live where the food is grown / harvested. Its fresh so setting up the factories where the labour is just reduces shelf life.
I am very happy with a general increase in wages as there are a lot of jobs that are critical and pay little. The problem is that the economy is already high cost for so many people in the "squeezed middle" so a big increase in food prices won't help.
Jobs "people cannot afford to do". If you have kids, or rely on public transport a huge number of jobs are ones you cannot afford to do. Having plentiful and cheap public transport would help, as would more affordable longer hours childcare. But as you don't want to pay for that, here is the problem...
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
Wasn't on yesterday when it was "done to death" but the simple reality is that your "its over / its done / its simple" is not what the industry are experiencing. If there was a simple solution it would have been done already.
This is a long term structural issue. We have too many jobs that Brits don't want to / can't afford to do in places where the people who need a job don't live. We had EU migration to fill these roles because there was literally no labour available.
When you are running an anglian food factory and you cannot get people to do night shifts at any salary, it not an issue of "low pay". Stop quoting rhetoric to solve a practical problem.
We have far too many jobs that are done by very cheap labour because it is not worth investing in machinery that could significantly improve productivity. Your Anglian food factory is almost certainly a good example of this. The result is a low wage, low productivity economy where too many people rely upon the State to top up inadequate incomes with in work benefits making them net recipients from the system.
We need to change the balance on this. Not over night but certainly over time. An 8% increase in wages this year driven by the lower paid would certainly be a step in the right direction. The test will be whether the NMW continues to absorb more and more of our workforce or whether those with basic skills, such as being able to drive, can do better. If we can we will create a more cohesive, fairer society. I would have expected you to be in favour of this.
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
Wasn't on yesterday when it was "done to death" but the simple reality is that your "its over / its done / its simple" is not what the industry are experiencing. If there was a simple solution it would have been done already.
This is a long term structural issue. We have too many jobs that Brits don't want to / can't afford to do in places where the people who need a job don't live. We had EU migration to fill these roles because there was literally no labour available.
When you are running an anglian food factory and you cannot get people to do night shifts at any salary, it not an issue of "low pay". Stop quoting rhetoric to solve a practical problem.
Perhaps the country is better off without jobs people cannot afford to do and require an endless stream of migrant workers to be exploited.
oh, so let's close the restaurants, pubs, fresh fruit farms and small retail, warehouses, the country would be so much better off? Our local temp agencies are full of adverts with minimum wage labels.
Can I just say - delighted to see that JohnO is still with us.
He was in great form on Monday as we held one of our regular PB Tory lunches.
I was absolutely delighted to see him again.
And I saw him on Thursday, when we had dinner together, and he was also on fantastic form.
Many thanks to Mark for those most generous words and indeed it was a pleasure and treat to lunch (Monday) and dine (Thursday) with TSE and Casino. I'm back in pretty reasonable shape (though ate and drunk far too much yesterday afternoon!).
Thanks Nick but strangely his PTSD overcame him in 2019, though his trauma in Christchurch was in 2011
That's how it happens. My own encounter with PTSD had its root cause in a 1996 training incident when I absolutely should have been killed and only an amazing chain of coincidences saved me. I was stood down from flying for one day and shrugged it off. For years after I functioned well, even in situations of extreme stress. Yet, 10 years later I was living in my parents' garden shed convinced I was a ghost and would only talk to the dog.
The only advice I can give is: listen to the doctors and other professionals. They certainly don't get everything right all the time but it's the best shot at recovery.
Thank you and yes we have to trust his medical team but of course it impacts the family and his wife has her own group and councillors to help her to deal with her own issues
I don’t understand why these Smarkets markets keep getting pushed. The liquidity is usually so small as to make the price information meaningless.
I think it's mostly just that they are offering a far wider range of markets than Betfair/Bookies, and given PB.com has multiple articles every day that attracts interest.
Also perhaps a hope that publicising them boosts liquidity, which would create many new opportunities for those of us with a more betting-related interest.
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
Wasn't on yesterday when it was "done to death" but the simple reality is that your "its over / its done / its simple" is not what the industry are experiencing. If there was a simple solution it would have been done already.
This is a long term structural issue. We have too many jobs that Brits don't want to / can't afford to do in places where the people who need a job don't live. We had EU migration to fill these roles because there was literally no labour available.
When you are running an anglian food factory and you cannot get people to do night shifts at any salary, it not an issue of "low pay". Stop quoting rhetoric to solve a practical problem.
The geopolitical machinations which resulted in the eastern european countries joining the EU at the time they did just happened to exactly, magically, align with our sudden increased need for labour?
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
How long ago was it when Scott was pasting predictions of mass unemployment ?
I was guilty of that too, but then I hadn't anticipated or accounted for all the Eastern Europeans jumping ship, and soon-to-be-retirees calling it a day.
It is to your and Johnson's credit that you had budgeted for this potential inconvenience and trained the required domestic HGV drivers and NHS staff in time.
All the Eastern Europeans have jumped ship ?
Then who are those Eastern Europeans wandering around town centres and supermarkets ?
And who are the 2.342m from the EU who were working in the UK last quarter according to the ONS ?
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
Wasn't on yesterday when it was "done to death" but the simple reality is that your "its over / its done / its simple" is not what the industry are experiencing. If there was a simple solution it would have been done already.
This is a long term structural issue. We have too many jobs that Brits don't want to / can't afford to do in places where the people who need a job don't live. We had EU migration to fill these roles because there was literally no labour available.
When you are running an anglian food factory and you cannot get people to do night shifts at any salary, it not an issue of "low pay". Stop quoting rhetoric to solve a practical problem.
We have far too many jobs that are done by very cheap labour because it is not worth investing in machinery that could significantly improve productivity. Your Anglian food factory is almost certainly a good example of this. The result is a low wage, low productivity economy where too many people rely upon the State to top up inadequate incomes with in work benefits making them net recipients from the system.
We need to change the balance on this. Not over night but certainly over time. An 8% increase in wages this year driven by the lower paid would certainly be a step in the right direction. The test will be whether the NMW continues to absorb more and more of our workforce or whether those with basic skills, such as being able to drive, can do better. If we can we will create a more cohesive, fairer society. I would have expected you to be in favour of this.
The way you say it, we have basically reverted to the mid-C19 Speenhamland System of using poor law to subsidise the farmers and big landowners in their payment of starvation wages to their workers, at the expense of the taxpayers more generally. Or am I missing something?
"Withdrawal (from Afghanistan) will have every jihadist group cheering," says Tony Blair. How is it possible to get something so totally wrong? It was the invasion that tanked the jihadists up. Jihadism isn't triumphalist; it's apocalypticist - doesn't Blair know anything? The establishment of the Quislingo-Petainist government in Kabul was obviously never going to last. Defeat was inevitable. But Blair has form in not having a clue about "oriental" stuff: despite thinking he was the bee's knees for getting the job in Jerusalem, he failed to solve the "Middle East question" for the "Quartet" when he was there - surprise, surprise. Maybe he should go west to Notting Hill again and return to music management?
Michael Gove is a rare resource in modern politics. He thinks about things and he is willing to act on his thoughts to change things in ways that he think are better. This used to be, well maybe not quite the norm, but pretty common. People went into politics because they didn't like the way things were done and wanted to change it. It's what motivated them to put up with all the crap.
Now almost all of our politicians seem to be in politics for ego reasons. They view their role as managerial and tactical: what is going to look good, what makes my opponents make bad, what's going to advance my career? It makes our politicians superficial, intellectually lazy, vacuous and pretty unprincipled.
Of course Gove has an ego too, an enormous one, and not all of the changes he wants to make will meet general approval, but he gets things done and gives the government a purpose. Since his role in Brexit wound down he has been somewhat under utilised. I suggested when that happened where Boris put Gove next would give a good clue about his priorities. So far these remain well disguised if they exist at all.
Is the FO really the place for Gove? I would think not. Its not a major role these days given so much international stuff is done at PM level. The FO could certainly do with a serious shake up but its hardly a priority. And then there is the flying thing. I would really like to see him at the Home Office, but then I'd rather see almost anyone than Patel at the Home Office.
Gove at the Home Office would be interesting. He has shown in the past he is willing to act counter to the wishes of the hang em and flog em brigade and his last stint as Justice Secretary was widely praised for reversing some of the idiocies of his predecessor Grayling and also his general attitude to prison reform.
Indeed. We need a politician who is brave enough to take on the hopelessly self defeating and lethal drug policies that come from the Misuse of Drugs Act. I really cannot think of any other front line politician in any party who would have the balls to do that. Maybe Ed Davey.
I must admit it is a surprise that there is not stronger political momentum to legalise cannabis in the UK. Seems such an obvious thing to do and wouldn’t even be too controversial at this point.
Well it should be
Cannabis use fuelling rise in psychosis among young adults, says top Priory expert A leading addictions expert based at the Priory’s Hospital in south London has issued a strong warning about the use of cannabis by young adults, and its link with paranoid psychosis.
His comments came as figures show cannabis has caused more than 125,000 NHS hospital admissions in the last five years.
And around 15,000 of those cases involved teenagers – some of whom were rushed to A&E departments suffering serious psychosis.
Modern cannabis is really scary stuff. Paranoid psychosis is not a desirable state of mind to be in.
Which is precisely why it should be legalised and regulated.
When the only alcohol is available is bootlegged hooch then that's different from knowing when you go to the shops you can select light beer that is 3% ABV, or wine that's 12% ABV, or vodka that's 37.5% ABV.
In one you're fuelling criminals and don't know what you're getting. In the other its a legal, standardised product that comes with awareness and education etc
I was choosing lampshades yesterday and arranging flowers in vases and plumping cushions and knitting and other housewifely tasks. The sorts of things that I'm sure you imagine me doing all the time. In the evening there was a visit from a steam train - all beautifully polished up - with the lucky travellers inside drinking their Prosecco while us yokels stared and waved. All very Railway Children-esque and there was certainly enough steam around to make the reappearance of long lost fathers seem almost possible.
I trust all was sweetness and light on here, yes?
Meanwhile Kabul airport has turned into a mixture of Hillsborough and Sophie's Choice. Horrible.
Still, the sun is out today - which makes a nice change as yesterday the rain was atrocious. The Tahiti lime tree still needs planting as did not fancy doing it while trying to avoid drowning.
There is a prison nearby, mostly full of sex offenders and paedophiles. They have a prison shop and sell plants which they grow. I did mention to Daughter the idea mooted by others of having prisoners work in her pub but the look she gave me .....
Anyway, if you want a good documentary about another British fuck-up as they leave a country they should never have invaded (ooh, a bit of controversy!) The Road to Partition - only 2 episodes - is on BBC iPlayer and is very good.
Sounds pretty good on the home front!
I've often been struck by the consistent pattern of the failure of partition as we dismantled the Empire. It led directly to permanent strife in all of India, Israel, Cyprus and Ireland. A similar process without much British involvement happened in Yugoslavia, and arguably Ukraine is another example. That's not to say that unitary solutions always work well, but trying to settle rival groups into adjoining nations seems to be a recipe for catastrophe, fuelling the rise of aggressive nationalism and open warfare.
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
Wasn't on yesterday when it was "done to death" but the simple reality is that your "its over / its done / its simple" is not what the industry are experiencing. If there was a simple solution it would have been done already.
This is a long term structural issue. We have too many jobs that Brits don't want to / can't afford to do in places where the people who need a job don't live. We had EU migration to fill these roles because there was literally no labour available.
When you are running an anglian food factory and you cannot get people to do night shifts at any salary, it not an issue of "low pay". Stop quoting rhetoric to solve a practical problem.
Michael Gove is a rare resource in modern politics. He thinks about things and he is willing to act on his thoughts to change things in ways that he think are better. This used to be, well maybe not quite the norm, but pretty common. People went into politics because they didn't like the way things were done and wanted to change it. It's what motivated them to put up with all the crap.
Now almost all of our politicians seem to be in politics for ego reasons. They view their role as managerial and tactical: what is going to look good, what makes my opponents make bad, what's going to advance my career? It makes our politicians superficial, intellectually lazy, vacuous and pretty unprincipled.
Of course Gove has an ego too, an enormous one, and not all of the changes he wants to make will meet general approval, but he gets things done and gives the government a purpose. Since his role in Brexit wound down he has been somewhat under utilised. I suggested when that happened where Boris put Gove next would give a good clue about his priorities. So far these remain well disguised if they exist at all.
Is the FO really the place for Gove? I would think not. Its not a major role these days given so much international stuff is done at PM level. The FO could certainly do with a serious shake up but its hardly a priority. And then there is the flying thing. I would really like to see him at the Home Office, but then I'd rather see almost anyone than Patel at the Home Office.
Gove at the Home Office would be interesting. He has shown in the past he is willing to act counter to the wishes of the hang em and flog em brigade and his last stint as Justice Secretary was widely praised for reversing some of the idiocies of his predecessor Grayling and also his general attitude to prison reform.
Indeed. We need a politician who is brave enough to take on the hopelessly self defeating and lethal drug policies that come from the Misuse of Drugs Act. I really cannot think of any other front line politician in any party who would have the balls to do that. Maybe Ed Davey.
I must admit it is a surprise that there is not stronger political momentum to legalise cannabis in the UK. Seems such an obvious thing to do and wouldn’t even be too controversial at this point.
Well it should be
Cannabis use fuelling rise in psychosis among young adults, says top Priory expert A leading addictions expert based at the Priory’s Hospital in south London has issued a strong warning about the use of cannabis by young adults, and its link with paranoid psychosis.
His comments came as figures show cannabis has caused more than 125,000 NHS hospital admissions in the last five years.
And around 15,000 of those cases involved teenagers – some of whom were rushed to A&E departments suffering serious psychosis.
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
Wasn't on yesterday when it was "done to death" but the simple reality is that your "its over / its done / its simple" is not what the industry are experiencing. If there was a simple solution it would have been done already.
This is a long term structural issue. We have too many jobs that Brits don't want to / can't afford to do in places where the people who need a job don't live. We had EU migration to fill these roles because there was literally no labour available.
When you are running an anglian food factory and you cannot get people to do night shifts at any salary, it not an issue of "low pay". Stop quoting rhetoric to solve a practical problem.
Perhaps the country is better off without jobs people cannot afford to do and require an endless stream of migrant workers to be exploited.
oh, so let's close the restaurants, pubs, fresh fruit farms and small retail, warehouses, the country would be so much better off? Our local temp agencies are full of adverts with minimum wage labels.
No need to close any businesses and if agencies are advertising minimum wage jobs then there's no labour shortages.
If there were a major labour shortage then agencies would be full of adverts for more than minimum wage.
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
Wasn't on yesterday when it was "done to death" but the simple reality is that your "its over / its done / its simple" is not what the industry are experiencing. If there was a simple solution it would have been done already.
This is a long term structural issue. We have too many jobs that Brits don't want to / can't afford to do in places where the people who need a job don't live. We had EU migration to fill these roles because there was literally no labour available.
When you are running an anglian food factory and you cannot get people to do night shifts at any salary, it not an issue of "low pay". Stop quoting rhetoric to solve a practical problem.
Perhaps the country is better off without jobs people cannot afford to do and require an endless stream of migrant workers to be exploited.
In the food industry the problem is that people don't live where the food is grown / harvested. Its fresh so setting up the factories where the labour is just reduces shelf life.
I am very happy with a general increase in wages as there are a lot of jobs that are critical and pay little. The problem is that the economy is already high cost for so many people in the "squeezed middle" so a big increase in food prices won't help.
Jobs "people cannot afford to do". If you have kids, or rely on public transport a huge number of jobs are ones you cannot afford to do. Having plentiful and cheap public transport would help, as would more affordable longer hours childcare. But as you don't want to pay for that, here is the problem...
You need to get your thoughts straight. Only a few weeks ago you were bemoaning an influx of cheap food from Australia with our trade deal with them - now you're bemoaning that people won't be able to afford food due to pay rises.
Which is it? Are we due an influx of cheap food, or expensive food, or just whichever suits your spin on a particular day?
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
Wasn't on yesterday when it was "done to death" but the simple reality is that your "its over / its done / its simple" is not what the industry are experiencing. If there was a simple solution it would have been done already.
This is a long term structural issue. We have too many jobs that Brits don't want to / can't afford to do in places where the people who need a job don't live. We had EU migration to fill these roles because there was literally no labour available.
When you are running an anglian food factory and you cannot get people to do night shifts at any salary, it not an issue of "low pay". Stop quoting rhetoric to solve a practical problem.
Perhaps the country is better off without jobs people cannot afford to do and require an endless stream of migrant workers to be exploited.
oh, so let's close the restaurants, pubs, fresh fruit farms and small retail, warehouses, the country would be so much better off? Our local temp agencies are full of adverts with minimum wage labels.
No need to close any businesses and if agencies are advertising minimum wage jobs then there's no labour shortages.
If there were a major labour shortage then agencies would be full of adverts for more than minimum wage.
Minimum wage is a minimum not a maximum.
I can just imagine the reply from the interview panel. "Your advert said minimum wage but I want an extra £1 per hour please", it would be "...NEXT..."
I think you don't realise that the reason a lot of local employers in West Wales only offer minimum wage is because the local cost of living has pared prices down to the bone so they can only afford to pay the minimum.
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
How long ago was it when Scott was pasting predictions of mass unemployment ?
I was guilty of that too, but then I hadn't anticipated or accounted for all the Eastern Europeans jumping ship, and soon-to-be-retirees calling it a day.
It is to your and Johnson's credit that you had budgeted for this potential inconvenience and trained the required domestic HGV drivers and NHS staff in time.
All the Eastern Europeans have jumped ship ?
Then who are those Eastern Europeans wandering around town centres and supermarkets ?
And who are the 2.342m from the EU who were working in the UK last quarter according to the ONS ?
I stand corrected over the burgeoning EU immigration figures. But if your citation is correct (who trusts the ONS these days anyway?) as a Boris/Priti defender haven't you just blown the Government's post Brexit immigration lie apart?
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
Wasn't on yesterday when it was "done to death" but the simple reality is that your "its over / its done / its simple" is not what the industry are experiencing. If there was a simple solution it would have been done already.
This is a long term structural issue. We have too many jobs that Brits don't want to / can't afford to do in places where the people who need a job don't live. We had EU migration to fill these roles because there was literally no labour available.
When you are running an anglian food factory and you cannot get people to do night shifts at any salary, it not an issue of "low pay". Stop quoting rhetoric to solve a practical problem.
Perhaps the country is better off without jobs people cannot afford to do and require an endless stream of migrant workers to be exploited.
oh, so let's close the restaurants, pubs, fresh fruit farms and small retail, warehouses, the country would be so much better off? Our local temp agencies are full of adverts with minimum wage labels.
No need to close any businesses and if agencies are advertising minimum wage jobs then there's no labour shortages.
If there were a major labour shortage then agencies would be full of adverts for more than minimum wage.
Minimum wage is a minimum not a maximum.
I can just imagine the reply from the interview panel. "Your advert said minimum wage but I want an extra £1 per hour please", it would be "...NEXT..."
If the answer is "...NEXT..." then there's clearly no labour shortage.
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
Wasn't on yesterday when it was "done to death" but the simple reality is that your "its over / its done / its simple" is not what the industry are experiencing. If there was a simple solution it would have been done already.
This is a long term structural issue. We have too many jobs that Brits don't want to / can't afford to do in places where the people who need a job don't live. We had EU migration to fill these roles because there was literally no labour available.
When you are running an anglian food factory and you cannot get people to do night shifts at any salary, it not an issue of "low pay". Stop quoting rhetoric to solve a practical problem.
Perhaps the country is better off without jobs people cannot afford to do and require an endless stream of migrant workers to be exploited.
In the food industry the problem is that people don't live where the food is grown / harvested. Its fresh so setting up the factories where the labour is just reduces shelf life.
I am very happy with a general increase in wages as there are a lot of jobs that are critical and pay little. The problem is that the economy is already high cost for so many people in the "squeezed middle" so a big increase in food prices won't help.
Jobs "people cannot afford to do". If you have kids, or rely on public transport a huge number of jobs are ones you cannot afford to do. Having plentiful and cheap public transport would help, as would more affordable longer hours childcare. But as you don't want to pay for that, here is the problem...
You need to get your thoughts straight. Only a few weeks ago you were bemoaning an influx of cheap food from Australia with our trade deal with them - now you're bemoaning that people won't be able to afford food due to pay rises.
Which is it? Are we due an influx of cheap food, or expensive food, or just whichever suits your spin on a particular day?
There's food and food. Only some is worth importing - and we can't live off nothing but NZ lamb. And ther UK should be aiming to be much more selfsufficient in food anyway, for wider strategic reasons.
Michael Gove is a rare resource in modern politics. He thinks about things and he is willing to act on his thoughts to change things in ways that he think are better. This used to be, well maybe not quite the norm, but pretty common. People went into politics because they didn't like the way things were done and wanted to change it. It's what motivated them to put up with all the crap.
Now almost all of our politicians seem to be in politics for ego reasons. They view their role as managerial and tactical: what is going to look good, what makes my opponents make bad, what's going to advance my career? It makes our politicians superficial, intellectually lazy, vacuous and pretty unprincipled.
Of course Gove has an ego too, an enormous one, and not all of the changes he wants to make will meet general approval, but he gets things done and gives the government a purpose. Since his role in Brexit wound down he has been somewhat under utilised. I suggested when that happened where Boris put Gove next would give a good clue about his priorities. So far these remain well disguised if they exist at all.
Is the FO really the place for Gove? I would think not. Its not a major role these days given so much international stuff is done at PM level. The FO could certainly do with a serious shake up but its hardly a priority. And then there is the flying thing. I would really like to see him at the Home Office, but then I'd rather see almost anyone than Patel at the Home Office.
Gove at the Home Office would be interesting. He has shown in the past he is willing to act counter to the wishes of the hang em and flog em brigade and his last stint as Justice Secretary was widely praised for reversing some of the idiocies of his predecessor Grayling and also his general attitude to prison reform.
Indeed. We need a politician who is brave enough to take on the hopelessly self defeating and lethal drug policies that come from the Misuse of Drugs Act. I really cannot think of any other front line politician in any party who would have the balls to do that. Maybe Ed Davey.
I must admit it is a surprise that there is not stronger political momentum to legalise cannabis in the UK. Seems such an obvious thing to do and wouldn’t even be too controversial at this point.
Well it should be
Cannabis use fuelling rise in psychosis among young adults, says top Priory expert A leading addictions expert based at the Priory’s Hospital in south London has issued a strong warning about the use of cannabis by young adults, and its link with paranoid psychosis.
His comments came as figures show cannabis has caused more than 125,000 NHS hospital admissions in the last five years.
And around 15,000 of those cases involved teenagers – some of whom were rushed to A&E departments suffering serious psychosis.
Modern cannabis is really scary stuff. Paranoid psychosis is not a desirable state of mind to be in.
Part of my reasoning for wanting it legalised. Proper education, treatment and mitigation is hindered by its outlaw status.
An advantage of legalisation would be that the lower strength more traditional cannabis could be sold rather than skunk which seems to me almost a different drug it is so strong.
I was choosing lampshades yesterday and arranging flowers in vases and plumping cushions and knitting and other housewifely tasks. The sorts of things that I'm sure you imagine me doing all the time. In the evening there was a visit from a steam train - all beautifully polished up - with the lucky travellers inside drinking their Prosecco while us yokels stared and waved. All very Railway Children-esque and there was certainly enough steam around to make the reappearance of long lost fathers seem almost possible.
I trust all was sweetness and light on here, yes?
Meanwhile Kabul airport has turned into a mixture of Hillsborough and Sophie's Choice. Horrible.
Still, the sun is out today - which makes a nice change as yesterday the rain was atrocious. The Tahiti lime tree still needs planting as did not fancy doing it while trying to avoid drowning.
There is a prison nearby, mostly full of sex offenders and paedophiles. They have a prison shop and sell plants which they grow. I did mention to Daughter the idea mooted by others of having prisoners work in her pub but the look she gave me .....
Anyway, if you want a good documentary about another British fuck-up as they leave a country they should never have invaded (ooh, a bit of controversy!) The Road to Partition - only 2 episodes - is on BBC iPlayer and is very good.
Sounds pretty good on the home front!
I've often been struck by the consistent pattern of the failure of partition as we dismantled the Empire. It led directly to permanent strife in all of India, Israel, Cyprus and Ireland. A similar process without much British involvement happened in Yugoslavia, and arguably Ukraine is another example. That's not to say that unitary solutions always work well, but trying to settle rival groups into adjoining nations seems to be a recipe for catastrophe, fuelling the rise of aggressive nationalism and open warfare.
Bringing adjoining groups into single entities also fuels the rise of open warfare. When you artificially lump a group of disparate ethnicities into a single nation that too can fuel conflict - the Biafran war for example. The borders of Nigeria, and indeed much of AfrIca generally, make no sense, not reflecting earlier ethnic, cultural, religious, or political boundaries, which has fuelled instability on that continent since independence.
Also, wasn’t the partition of Cyprus the result of the Turkish invasion?
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
How long ago was it when Scott was pasting predictions of mass unemployment ?
In my teenage years, high unemployment was considered a bad thing. Times change.
Michael Gove is a rare resource in modern politics. He thinks about things and he is willing to act on his thoughts to change things in ways that he think are better. This used to be, well maybe not quite the norm, but pretty common. People went into politics because they didn't like the way things were done and wanted to change it. It's what motivated them to put up with all the crap.
Now almost all of our politicians seem to be in politics for ego reasons. They view their role as managerial and tactical: what is going to look good, what makes my opponents make bad, what's going to advance my career? It makes our politicians superficial, intellectually lazy, vacuous and pretty unprincipled.
Of course Gove has an ego too, an enormous one, and not all of the changes he wants to make will meet general approval, but he gets things done and gives the government a purpose. Since his role in Brexit wound down he has been somewhat under utilised. I suggested when that happened where Boris put Gove next would give a good clue about his priorities. So far these remain well disguised if they exist at all.
Is the FO really the place for Gove? I would think not. Its not a major role these days given so much international stuff is done at PM level. The FO could certainly do with a serious shake up but its hardly a priority. And then there is the flying thing. I would really like to see him at the Home Office, but then I'd rather see almost anyone than Patel at the Home Office.
Gove at the Home Office would be interesting. He has shown in the past he is willing to act counter to the wishes of the hang em and flog em brigade and his last stint as Justice Secretary was widely praised for reversing some of the idiocies of his predecessor Grayling and also his general attitude to prison reform.
Indeed. We need a politician who is brave enough to take on the hopelessly self defeating and lethal drug policies that come from the Misuse of Drugs Act. I really cannot think of any other front line politician in any party who would have the balls to do that. Maybe Ed Davey.
I must admit it is a surprise that there is not stronger political momentum to legalise cannabis in the UK. Seems such an obvious thing to do and wouldn’t even be too controversial at this point.
Well it should be
Cannabis use fuelling rise in psychosis among young adults, says top Priory expert A leading addictions expert based at the Priory’s Hospital in south London has issued a strong warning about the use of cannabis by young adults, and its link with paranoid psychosis.
His comments came as figures show cannabis has caused more than 125,000 NHS hospital admissions in the last five years.
And around 15,000 of those cases involved teenagers – some of whom were rushed to A&E departments suffering serious psychosis.
Modern cannabis is really scary stuff. Paranoid psychosis is not a desirable state of mind to be in.
Part of my reasoning for wanting it legalised. Proper education, treatment and mitigation is hindered by its outlaw status.
An advantage of legalisation would be that the lower strength more traditional cannabis could be sold rather than skunk which seems to me almost a different drug it is so strong.
Exactly.
The argument we shouldn't have legalised, transparent, regulated cannabis like we do with alcohol is like saying that we shouldn't sell beer because overproofed spirits are so strong.
Michael Gove is a rare resource in modern politics. He thinks about things and he is willing to act on his thoughts to change things in ways that he think are better. This used to be, well maybe not quite the norm, but pretty common. People went into politics because they didn't like the way things were done and wanted to change it. It's what motivated them to put up with all the crap.
Now almost all of our politicians seem to be in politics for ego reasons. They view their role as managerial and tactical: what is going to look good, what makes my opponents make bad, what's going to advance my career? It makes our politicians superficial, intellectually lazy, vacuous and pretty unprincipled.
Of course Gove has an ego too, an enormous one, and not all of the changes he wants to make will meet general approval, but he gets things done and gives the government a purpose. Since his role in Brexit wound down he has been somewhat under utilised. I suggested when that happened where Boris put Gove next would give a good clue about his priorities. So far these remain well disguised if they exist at all.
Is the FO really the place for Gove? I would think not. Its not a major role these days given so much international stuff is done at PM level. The FO could certainly do with a serious shake up but its hardly a priority. And then there is the flying thing. I would really like to see him at the Home Office, but then I'd rather see almost anyone than Patel at the Home Office.
Gove at the Home Office would be interesting. He has shown in the past he is willing to act counter to the wishes of the hang em and flog em brigade and his last stint as Justice Secretary was widely praised for reversing some of the idiocies of his predecessor Grayling and also his general attitude to prison reform.
Indeed. We need a politician who is brave enough to take on the hopelessly self defeating and lethal drug policies that come from the Misuse of Drugs Act. I really cannot think of any other front line politician in any party who would have the balls to do that. Maybe Ed Davey.
I must admit it is a surprise that there is not stronger political momentum to legalise cannabis in the UK. Seems such an obvious thing to do and wouldn’t even be too controversial at this point.
Well it should be
Cannabis use fuelling rise in psychosis among young adults, says top Priory expert A leading addictions expert based at the Priory’s Hospital in south London has issued a strong warning about the use of cannabis by young adults, and its link with paranoid psychosis.
His comments came as figures show cannabis has caused more than 125,000 NHS hospital admissions in the last five years.
And around 15,000 of those cases involved teenagers – some of whom were rushed to A&E departments suffering serious psychosis.
Modern cannabis is really scary stuff. Paranoid psychosis is not a desirable state of mind to be in.
Part of my reasoning for wanting it legalised. Proper education, treatment and mitigation is hindered by its outlaw status.
An advantage of legalisation would be that the lower strength more traditional cannabis could be sold rather than skunk which seems to me almost a different drug it is so strong.
Do you think regular cannabis being legal would reduce demand for the stronger stuff?
I was choosing lampshades yesterday and arranging flowers in vases and plumping cushions and knitting and other housewifely tasks. The sorts of things that I'm sure you imagine me doing all the time. In the evening there was a visit from a steam train - all beautifully polished up - with the lucky travellers inside drinking their Prosecco while us yokels stared and waved. All very Railway Children-esque and there was certainly enough steam around to make the reappearance of long lost fathers seem almost possible.
I trust all was sweetness and light on here, yes?
Meanwhile Kabul airport has turned into a mixture of Hillsborough and Sophie's Choice. Horrible.
Still, the sun is out today - which makes a nice change as yesterday the rain was atrocious. The Tahiti lime tree still needs planting as did not fancy doing it while trying to avoid drowning.
There is a prison nearby, mostly full of sex offenders and paedophiles. They have a prison shop and sell plants which they grow. I did mention to Daughter the idea mooted by others of having prisoners work in her pub but the look she gave me .....
Anyway, if you want a good documentary about another British fuck-up as they leave a country they should never have invaded (ooh, a bit of controversy!) The Road to Partition - only 2 episodes - is on BBC iPlayer and is very good.
Sounds pretty good on the home front!
I've often been struck by the consistent pattern of the failure of partition as we dismantled the Empire. It led directly to permanent strife in all of India, Israel, Cyprus and Ireland. A similar process without much British involvement happened in Yugoslavia, and arguably Ukraine is another example. That's not to say that unitary solutions always work well, but trying to settle rival groups into adjoining nations seems to be a recipe for catastrophe, fuelling the rise of aggressive nationalism and open warfare.
Cyprus was a case of trying to force two ethnic groups into one state. That did not work out.
When the imperial power leaves, partition happens on the ground.
Michael Gove is a rare resource in modern politics. He thinks about things and he is willing to act on his thoughts to change things in ways that he think are better. This used to be, well maybe not quite the norm, but pretty common. People went into politics because they didn't like the way things were done and wanted to change it. It's what motivated them to put up with all the crap.
Now almost all of our politicians seem to be in politics for ego reasons. They view their role as managerial and tactical: what is going to look good, what makes my opponents make bad, what's going to advance my career? It makes our politicians superficial, intellectually lazy, vacuous and pretty unprincipled.
Of course Gove has an ego too, an enormous one, and not all of the changes he wants to make will meet general approval, but he gets things done and gives the government a purpose. Since his role in Brexit wound down he has been somewhat under utilised. I suggested when that happened where Boris put Gove next would give a good clue about his priorities. So far these remain well disguised if they exist at all.
Is the FO really the place for Gove? I would think not. Its not a major role these days given so much international stuff is done at PM level. The FO could certainly do with a serious shake up but its hardly a priority. And then there is the flying thing. I would really like to see him at the Home Office, but then I'd rather see almost anyone than Patel at the Home Office.
Gove at the Home Office would be interesting. He has shown in the past he is willing to act counter to the wishes of the hang em and flog em brigade and his last stint as Justice Secretary was widely praised for reversing some of the idiocies of his predecessor Grayling and also his general attitude to prison reform.
Indeed. We need a politician who is brave enough to take on the hopelessly self defeating and lethal drug policies that come from the Misuse of Drugs Act. I really cannot think of any other front line politician in any party who would have the balls to do that. Maybe Ed Davey.
I must admit it is a surprise that there is not stronger political momentum to legalise cannabis in the UK. Seems such an obvious thing to do and wouldn’t even be too controversial at this point.
Well it should be
Cannabis use fuelling rise in psychosis among young adults, says top Priory expert A leading addictions expert based at the Priory’s Hospital in south London has issued a strong warning about the use of cannabis by young adults, and its link with paranoid psychosis.
His comments came as figures show cannabis has caused more than 125,000 NHS hospital admissions in the last five years.
And around 15,000 of those cases involved teenagers – some of whom were rushed to A&E departments suffering serious psychosis.
Modern cannabis is really scary stuff. Paranoid psychosis is not a desirable state of mind to be in.
Part of my reasoning for wanting it legalised. Proper education, treatment and mitigation is hindered by its outlaw status.
An advantage of legalisation would be that the lower strength more traditional cannabis could be sold rather than skunk which seems to me almost a different drug it is so strong.
Do you think regular cannabis being legal would reduce demand for the stronger stuff?
Yes. How many alcohol drinkers regularly consume overproofed spirits?
Plus like with alcohol if its legal and taxed, then you tax it based on strength. So the low-strength stuff would face lower duties.
Michael Gove is a rare resource in modern politics. He thinks about things and he is willing to act on his thoughts to change things in ways that he think are better. This used to be, well maybe not quite the norm, but pretty common. People went into politics because they didn't like the way things were done and wanted to change it. It's what motivated them to put up with all the crap.
Now almost all of our politicians seem to be in politics for ego reasons. They view their role as managerial and tactical: what is going to look good, what makes my opponents make bad, what's going to advance my career? It makes our politicians superficial, intellectually lazy, vacuous and pretty unprincipled.
Of course Gove has an ego too, an enormous one, and not all of the changes he wants to make will meet general approval, but he gets things done and gives the government a purpose. Since his role in Brexit wound down he has been somewhat under utilised. I suggested when that happened where Boris put Gove next would give a good clue about his priorities. So far these remain well disguised if they exist at all.
Is the FO really the place for Gove? I would think not. Its not a major role these days given so much international stuff is done at PM level. The FO could certainly do with a serious shake up but its hardly a priority. And then there is the flying thing. I would really like to see him at the Home Office, but then I'd rather see almost anyone than Patel at the Home Office.
Gove at the Home Office would be interesting. He has shown in the past he is willing to act counter to the wishes of the hang em and flog em brigade and his last stint as Justice Secretary was widely praised for reversing some of the idiocies of his predecessor Grayling and also his general attitude to prison reform.
Indeed. We need a politician who is brave enough to take on the hopelessly self defeating and lethal drug policies that come from the Misuse of Drugs Act. I really cannot think of any other front line politician in any party who would have the balls to do that. Maybe Ed Davey.
I must admit it is a surprise that there is not stronger political momentum to legalise cannabis in the UK. Seems such an obvious thing to do and wouldn’t even be too controversial at this point.
Well it should be
Cannabis use fuelling rise in psychosis among young adults, says top Priory expert A leading addictions expert based at the Priory’s Hospital in south London has issued a strong warning about the use of cannabis by young adults, and its link with paranoid psychosis.
His comments came as figures show cannabis has caused more than 125,000 NHS hospital admissions in the last five years.
And around 15,000 of those cases involved teenagers – some of whom were rushed to A&E departments suffering serious psychosis.
Modern cannabis is really scary stuff. Paranoid psychosis is not a desirable state of mind to be in.
Part of my reasoning for wanting it legalised. Proper education, treatment and mitigation is hindered by its outlaw status.
An advantage of legalisation would be that the lower strength more traditional cannabis could be sold rather than skunk which seems to me almost a different drug it is so strong.
Do you think regular cannabis being legal would reduce demand for the stronger stuff?
Yes. How many alcohol drinkers regularly consume overproofed spirits?
Plus like with alcohol if its legal and taxed, then you tax it based on strength. So the low-strength stuff would face lower duties.
But one could argue that alcohol is legal so why would anyone get into cannabis?
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
Wasn't on yesterday when it was "done to death" but the simple reality is that your "its over / its done / its simple" is not what the industry are experiencing. If there was a simple solution it would have been done already.
This is a long term structural issue. We have too many jobs that Brits don't want to / can't afford to do in places where the people who need a job don't live. We had EU migration to fill these roles because there was literally no labour available.
When you are running an anglian food factory and you cannot get people to do night shifts at any salary, it not an issue of "low pay". Stop quoting rhetoric to solve a practical problem.
How did we cope before 2004? (Genuine question)
Dunno, but how does that change the reality of now? Where the jobs are in hospitality in towns and cities then yes, replace EU workers with UK. Where the jobs are in things like food production, the available British workforce is not largely where the jobs are.
If as the Brexiteers insist we don't need / want EU labour we need to start encouraging people not going from college into University to move into the sticks to start taking factory and farming jobs.
Michael Gove is a rare resource in modern politics. He thinks about things and he is willing to act on his thoughts to change things in ways that he think are better. This used to be, well maybe not quite the norm, but pretty common. People went into politics because they didn't like the way things were done and wanted to change it. It's what motivated them to put up with all the crap.
Now almost all of our politicians seem to be in politics for ego reasons. They view their role as managerial and tactical: what is going to look good, what makes my opponents make bad, what's going to advance my career? It makes our politicians superficial, intellectually lazy, vacuous and pretty unprincipled.
Of course Gove has an ego too, an enormous one, and not all of the changes he wants to make will meet general approval, but he gets things done and gives the government a purpose. Since his role in Brexit wound down he has been somewhat under utilised. I suggested when that happened where Boris put Gove next would give a good clue about his priorities. So far these remain well disguised if they exist at all.
Is the FO really the place for Gove? I would think not. Its not a major role these days given so much international stuff is done at PM level. The FO could certainly do with a serious shake up but its hardly a priority. And then there is the flying thing. I would really like to see him at the Home Office, but then I'd rather see almost anyone than Patel at the Home Office.
Gove at the Home Office would be interesting. He has shown in the past he is willing to act counter to the wishes of the hang em and flog em brigade and his last stint as Justice Secretary was widely praised for reversing some of the idiocies of his predecessor Grayling and also his general attitude to prison reform.
Indeed. We need a politician who is brave enough to take on the hopelessly self defeating and lethal drug policies that come from the Misuse of Drugs Act. I really cannot think of any other front line politician in any party who would have the balls to do that. Maybe Ed Davey.
I must admit it is a surprise that there is not stronger political momentum to legalise cannabis in the UK. Seems such an obvious thing to do and wouldn’t even be too controversial at this point.
Well it should be
Cannabis use fuelling rise in psychosis among young adults, says top Priory expert A leading addictions expert based at the Priory’s Hospital in south London has issued a strong warning about the use of cannabis by young adults, and its link with paranoid psychosis.
His comments came as figures show cannabis has caused more than 125,000 NHS hospital admissions in the last five years.
And around 15,000 of those cases involved teenagers – some of whom were rushed to A&E departments suffering serious psychosis.
Modern cannabis is really scary stuff. Paranoid psychosis is not a desirable state of mind to be in.
Part of my reasoning for wanting it legalised. Proper education, treatment and mitigation is hindered by its outlaw status.
An advantage of legalisation would be that the lower strength more traditional cannabis could be sold rather than skunk which seems to me almost a different drug it is so strong.
Do you think regular cannabis being legal would reduce demand for the stronger stuff?
Yes. How many alcohol drinkers regularly consume overproofed spirits?
Plus like with alcohol if its legal and taxed, then you tax it based on strength. So the low-strength stuff would face lower duties.
But one could argue that alcohol is legal so why would anyone get into cannabis?
Because prohibition has completely and utterly failed and cannabis (and even cocaine are both) all but legal too.
I don't consume the stuff myself, but I'd have absolutely no difficulty getting it if I wanted to do so. But if I did so I would be paying criminals, not the Exchequer.
In Canada where its been completely legalised you now see an array of strengths clearly labelled, just as alcohol is clearly labelled.
Transparency and education works better than prohibition.
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
Wasn't on yesterday when it was "done to death" but the simple reality is that your "its over / its done / its simple" is not what the industry are experiencing. If there was a simple solution it would have been done already.
This is a long term structural issue. We have too many jobs that Brits don't want to / can't afford to do in places where the people who need a job don't live. We had EU migration to fill these roles because there was literally no labour available.
When you are running an anglian food factory and you cannot get people to do night shifts at any salary, it not an issue of "low pay". Stop quoting rhetoric to solve a practical problem.
How did we cope before 2004? (Genuine question)
Dunno, but how does that change the reality of now? Where the jobs are in hospitality in towns and cities then yes, replace EU workers with UK. Where the jobs are in things like food production, the available British workforce is not largely where the jobs are.
If as the Brexiteers insist we don't need / want EU labour we need to start encouraging people not going from college into University to move into the sticks to start taking factory and farming jobs.
The way to encourage people to do that, is to raise pay rates.
Businesses can either increase pay until it reaches an equilibrium whereby they find people who want to go into the sticks and take the jobs . . . or they can prefer to go out of business rather than offering attractive wages. Its a free market.
Just catching up having been away. A couple of comments if I may:
1. Lovely to see so many Tories campaigning so vigorously for significant rises in working people's wages to counter the alleged labour shortage. Something at last that the lefties on here can agree with the Tories about. Strange old world, isn't it? 2. I'd have thought the more radical Tory solution would be to lock more people up. I read on here that prisoners are much sought after. If you imprison a lot more people, then release them early, wouldn't that be a more cost effective solution to labour shortages?
I don't see any tories apart from DavidL saying pay rises for minimum wage folk is a good thing. I am not a tory neither I believe is another richard
If not a Tory what would you describe yourself and 'another richard' as being?
Wouldn't a Tory be a member or otherwise strong supporter of the Conservative party ?
Something which Hyufd and a few other PBers - Casino, Mortimer, MM, Max - might be classed as.
But which neither I nor to my knowledge Pagan2 are.
Can we clear this up once and for all. Being 'A Tory' is not an ethnicity it is simply a voting intention. I can understand why you're in denial-particularly at the moment - but to suggest neither you nor 'Another Richard' would vote for anyone else (except perhaps UKIP) is plainly ridiculous.
So time to man up and say 'I'm a Tory and I'm proud"
Proud to be a greedy , grasping , lying two bit chiseller who would sell out their granny , not for me.
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
Wasn't on yesterday when it was "done to death" but the simple reality is that your "its over / its done / its simple" is not what the industry are experiencing. If there was a simple solution it would have been done already.
This is a long term structural issue. We have too many jobs that Brits don't want to / can't afford to do in places where the people who need a job don't live. We had EU migration to fill these roles because there was literally no labour available.
When you are running an anglian food factory and you cannot get people to do night shifts at any salary, it not an issue of "low pay". Stop quoting rhetoric to solve a practical problem.
The geopolitical machinations which resulted in the eastern european countries joining the EU at the time they did just happened to exactly, magically, align with our sudden increased need for labour?
It's quite a symbol of how far political realignment has already gone that it's the left lining up to denounce the end of migration flows which only ever served to screw the working class for the benefit of the middle classes and investors.
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
How long ago was it when Scott was pasting predictions of mass unemployment ?
I was guilty of that too, but then I hadn't anticipated or accounted for all the Eastern Europeans jumping ship, and soon-to-be-retirees calling it a day.
It is to your and Johnson's credit that you had budgeted for this potential inconvenience and trained the required domestic HGV drivers and NHS staff in time.
All the Eastern Europeans have jumped ship ?
Then who are those Eastern Europeans wandering around town centres and supermarkets ?
And who are the 2.342m from the EU who were working in the UK last quarter according to the ONS ?
I stand corrected over the burgeoning EU immigration figures. But if your citation is correct (who trusts the ONS these days anyway?) as a Boris/Priti defender haven't you just blown the Government's post Brexit immigration lie apart?
I've never defended this government's competence on immigration.
As to the employment numbers we're in a state of flux at present and a better picture should emerge in the coming months.
The ONS does report a fall in Eastern Europeans in employment but a rise of Western Europeans - what they were all doing I cannot imagine given the reports of how the urban economies were struggling throughout the pandemic.
I was choosing lampshades yesterday and arranging flowers in vases and plumping cushions and knitting and other housewifely tasks. The sorts of things that I'm sure you imagine me doing all the time. In the evening there was a visit from a steam train - all beautifully polished up - with the lucky travellers inside drinking their Prosecco while us yokels stared and waved. All very Railway Children-esque and there was certainly enough steam around to make the reappearance of long lost fathers seem almost possible.
I trust all was sweetness and light on here, yes?
Meanwhile Kabul airport has turned into a mixture of Hillsborough and Sophie's Choice. Horrible.
Still, the sun is out today - which makes a nice change as yesterday the rain was atrocious. The Tahiti lime tree still needs planting as did not fancy doing it while trying to avoid drowning.
There is a prison nearby, mostly full of sex offenders and paedophiles. They have a prison shop and sell plants which they grow. I did mention to Daughter the idea mooted by others of having prisoners work in her pub but the look she gave me .....
Anyway, if you want a good documentary about another British fuck-up as they leave a country they should never have invaded (ooh, a bit of controversy!) The Road to Partition - only 2 episodes - is on BBC iPlayer and is very good.
Sounds pretty good on the home front!
I've often been struck by the consistent pattern of the failure of partition as we dismantled the Empire. It led directly to permanent strife in all of India, Israel, Cyprus and Ireland. A similar process without much British involvement happened in Yugoslavia, and arguably Ukraine is another example. That's not to say that unitary solutions always work well, but trying to settle rival groups into adjoining nations seems to be a recipe for catastrophe, fuelling the rise of aggressive nationalism and open warfare.
What was interesting to me was that Lloyd George's attempts at resolution were all predicated on the assumptions that lay behind Home Rule and ignored the rise of Sinn Fein after WW1. He was answering questions posed in 1912 not in 1921. That and the nervousness which James Craig on the Unionist side had about Britain betraying the Unionists. No love lost there.
In the end the British did what they often do - got enough of a solution to make it look as if they'd solved the problem, walked away, caused lots of problems elsewhere and left the real issues for subsequent generations to grapple with.
In Ireland partition was probably inevitable given the plantation of Scots and others in Ulster from the 17th C onwards. The solution to one problem then leading to a yet bigger one two centuries later, the solution to that leading to another bloody one 40 years later and so on and on. Quite what the current temporary solution will lead to who knows. But kicking difficult issues into the long grass is not just the preserve of British governments.
Just catching up having been away. A couple of comments if I may:
1. Lovely to see so many Tories campaigning so vigorously for significant rises in working people's wages to counter the alleged labour shortage. Something at last that the lefties on here can agree with the Tories about. Strange old world, isn't it? 2. I'd have thought the more radical Tory solution would be to lock more people up. I read on here that prisoners are much sought after. If you imprison a lot more people, then release them early, wouldn't that be a more cost effective solution to labour shortages?
I don't see any tories apart from DavidL saying pay rises for minimum wage folk is a good thing. I am not a tory neither I believe is another richard
If not a Tory what would you describe yourself and 'another richard' as being?
Wouldn't a Tory be a member or otherwise strong supporter of the Conservative party ?
Something which Hyufd and a few other PBers - Casino, Mortimer, MM, Max - might be classed as.
But which neither I nor to my knowledge Pagan2 are.
Can we clear this up once and for all. Being 'A Tory' is not an ethnicity it is simply a voting intention. I can understand why you're in denial-particularly at the moment - but to suggest neither you nor 'Another Richard' would vote for anyone else (except perhaps UKIP) is plainly ridiculous.
So time to man up and say 'I'm a Tory and I'm proud"
Proud to be a greedy , grasping , lying two bit chiseller who would sell out their granny , not for me.
Michael Gove is a rare resource in modern politics. He thinks about things and he is willing to act on his thoughts to change things in ways that he think are better. This used to be, well maybe not quite the norm, but pretty common. People went into politics because they didn't like the way things were done and wanted to change it. It's what motivated them to put up with all the crap.
Now almost all of our politicians seem to be in politics for ego reasons. They view their role as managerial and tactical: what is going to look good, what makes my opponents make bad, what's going to advance my career? It makes our politicians superficial, intellectually lazy, vacuous and pretty unprincipled.
Of course Gove has an ego too, an enormous one, and not all of the changes he wants to make will meet general approval, but he gets things done and gives the government a purpose. Since his role in Brexit wound down he has been somewhat under utilised. I suggested when that happened where Boris put Gove next would give a good clue about his priorities. So far these remain well disguised if they exist at all.
Is the FO really the place for Gove? I would think not. Its not a major role these days given so much international stuff is done at PM level. The FO could certainly do with a serious shake up but its hardly a priority. And then there is the flying thing. I would really like to see him at the Home Office, but then I'd rather see almost anyone than Patel at the Home Office.
David, you have lost the lot, the only place for that odious unprincipled little creep is the bin. He perfectly reflects what is the rotten core of the current Tories though.
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
Wasn't on yesterday when it was "done to death" but the simple reality is that your "its over / its done / its simple" is not what the industry are experiencing. If there was a simple solution it would have been done already.
This is a long term structural issue. We have too many jobs that Brits don't want to / can't afford to do in places where the people who need a job don't live. We had EU migration to fill these roles because there was literally no labour available.
When you are running an anglian food factory and you cannot get people to do night shifts at any salary, it not an issue of "low pay". Stop quoting rhetoric to solve a practical problem.
We have far too many jobs that are done by very cheap labour because it is not worth investing in machinery that could significantly improve productivity. Your Anglian food factory is almost certainly a good example of this. The result is a low wage, low productivity economy where too many people rely upon the State to top up inadequate incomes with in work benefits making them net recipients from the system.
We need to change the balance on this. Not over night but certainly over time. An 8% increase in wages this year driven by the lower paid would certainly be a step in the right direction. The test will be whether the NMW continues to absorb more and more of our workforce or whether those with basic skills, such as being able to drive, can do better. If we can we will create a more cohesive, fairer society. I would have expected you to be in favour of this.
The way you say it, we have basically reverted to the mid-C19 Speenhamland System of using poor law to subsidise the farmers and big landowners in their payment of starvation wages to their workers, at the expense of the taxpayers more generally. Or am I missing something?
No, that is what I am saying. We have an ever increasing proportion of our workforce on the NMW. The differentials which used to exist because someone had a minor skill or qualification are dissolved because the NMW has been increasing more rapidly than wages as a whole. But the NMW is not a "living wage" so those on it who have families or other dependents still need a lot of state subsidy.
That State subsidy is a good thing because it would be immoral not to but it also ensures a ready supply of labour for jobs on the minimum wage. The plus side for the better off is that many services are relatively cheap but the downside is that fewer and fewer are net contributors to the system. Because the incremental steps that previously existed out of that situation have often disappeared there is also little to no incentive to improve oneself by getting training or further education because it does not lead to more money.
The EU and freedom of movement greatly aggravated these tendencies because it made our supply of labour extremely elastic. The NMW was also attractive to many from eastern Europe in particular. So we built an economy which was dependent upon cheap labour which was readily replaceable and not worth investing in and which could afford to do the job because they were subsidised by the State (ie the rest of us). This created a bigger and bigger gap between the haves and the have nots. I want to reverse that trend and address the economic weakness that low productivity creates.
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
Wasn't on yesterday when it was "done to death" but the simple reality is that your "its over / its done / its simple" is not what the industry are experiencing. If there was a simple solution it would have been done already.
This is a long term structural issue. We have too many jobs that Brits don't want to / can't afford to do in places where the people who need a job don't live. We had EU migration to fill these roles because there was literally no labour available.
When you are running an anglian food factory and you cannot get people to do night shifts at any salary, it not an issue of "low pay". Stop quoting rhetoric to solve a practical problem.
How did we cope before 2004? (Genuine question)
Dunno, but how does that change the reality of now? Where the jobs are in hospitality in towns and cities then yes, replace EU workers with UK. Where the jobs are in things like food production, the available British workforce is not largely where the jobs are.
If as the Brexiteers insist we don't need / want EU labour we need to start encouraging people not going from college into University to move into the sticks to start taking factory and farming jobs.
Isn't part of the problem the change in the nature of farming, especially in the fruit and veg sector? Much more a matter of growing all the year round, or at least a longer season. In the old days you had a much shorter harvest and could recruit students, local housewives, etc. and bus them in. The commitment wasn't so long that it clashed with family/university/etc.
Michael Gove is a rare resource in modern politics. He thinks about things and he is willing to act on his thoughts to change things in ways that he think are better. This used to be, well maybe not quite the norm, but pretty common. People went into politics because they didn't like the way things were done and wanted to change it. It's what motivated them to put up with all the crap.
Now almost all of our politicians seem to be in politics for ego reasons. They view their role as managerial and tactical: what is going to look good, what makes my opponents make bad, what's going to advance my career? It makes our politicians superficial, intellectually lazy, vacuous and pretty unprincipled.
Of course Gove has an ego too, an enormous one, and not all of the changes he wants to make will meet general approval, but he gets things done and gives the government a purpose. Since his role in Brexit wound down he has been somewhat under utilised. I suggested when that happened where Boris put Gove next would give a good clue about his priorities. So far these remain well disguised if they exist at all.
Is the FO really the place for Gove? I would think not. Its not a major role these days given so much international stuff is done at PM level. The FO could certainly do with a serious shake up but its hardly a priority. And then there is the flying thing. I would really like to see him at the Home Office, but then I'd rather see almost anyone than Patel at the Home Office.
Gove at the Home Office would be interesting. He has shown in the past he is willing to act counter to the wishes of the hang em and flog em brigade and his last stint as Justice Secretary was widely praised for reversing some of the idiocies of his predecessor Grayling and also his general attitude to prison reform.
Indeed. We need a politician who is brave enough to take on the hopelessly self defeating and lethal drug policies that come from the Misuse of Drugs Act. I really cannot think of any other front line politician in any party who would have the balls to do that. Maybe Ed Davey.
I must admit it is a surprise that there is not stronger political momentum to legalise cannabis in the UK. Seems such an obvious thing to do and wouldn’t even be too controversial at this point.
Well it should be
Cannabis use fuelling rise in psychosis among young adults, says top Priory expert A leading addictions expert based at the Priory’s Hospital in south London has issued a strong warning about the use of cannabis by young adults, and its link with paranoid psychosis.
His comments came as figures show cannabis has caused more than 125,000 NHS hospital admissions in the last five years.
And around 15,000 of those cases involved teenagers – some of whom were rushed to A&E departments suffering serious psychosis.
Modern cannabis is really scary stuff. Paranoid psychosis is not a desirable state of mind to be in.
In my teens and twenties I had a fairly libertarian approach to drugs, and partook myself at times before medical school really got going. Drug use was very rare there, and severely disciplined, though alcohol a strong part of the culture.
I have seen too many lives ruined by it since, some of them my old schoolfriend, and yes I have seen others succumb to alcohol and tobacco. One of my oldest friends died 5 years ago from lung cancer within 4 weeks of diagnosis.
Paranoid psychosis is a problem. I had a friend spend 3 months in a mute catatonic state as a result of cannabis psychosis, and I don't think he has been right since. A year afterwards his lovely wife delivered him an ultimatum, it's either me and the kids, or the cannabis. He chose cannabis.
The pernicious thing with cannabis though is the extinction of ambition and purpose. Too many friends just became apathetic and drifted on it, never doing anything with their lives or relationships. What a waste, and a big cause of school failure particularly amongst boys
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
Wasn't on yesterday when it was "done to death" but the simple reality is that your "its over / its done / its simple" is not what the industry are experiencing. If there was a simple solution it would have been done already.
This is a long term structural issue. We have too many jobs that Brits don't want to / can't afford to do in places where the people who need a job don't live. We had EU migration to fill these roles because there was literally no labour available.
When you are running an anglian food factory and you cannot get people to do night shifts at any salary, it not an issue of "low pay". Stop quoting rhetoric to solve a practical problem.
How did we cope before 2004? (Genuine question)
Dunno, but how does that change the reality of now? Where the jobs are in hospitality in towns and cities then yes, replace EU workers with UK. Where the jobs are in things like food production, the available British workforce is not largely where the jobs are.
If as the Brexiteers insist we don't need / want EU labour we need to start encouraging people not going from college into University to move into the sticks to start taking factory and farming jobs.
The way to encourage people to do that, is to raise pay rates.
Businesses can either increase pay until it reaches an equilibrium whereby they find people who want to go into the sticks and take the jobs . . . or they can prefer to go out of business rather than offering attractive wages. Its a free market.
As with @DavidL this is rhetoric. How much £ will you need to offer to get people to relocate from towns into the countryside where houses generally cost more and the cost of living is higher? When these manufacturers aren't rolling in huge profit margins?
Michael Gove is a rare resource in modern politics. He thinks about things and he is willing to act on his thoughts to change things in ways that he think are better. This used to be, well maybe not quite the norm, but pretty common. People went into politics because they didn't like the way things were done and wanted to change it. It's what motivated them to put up with all the crap.
Now almost all of our politicians seem to be in politics for ego reasons. They view their role as managerial and tactical: what is going to look good, what makes my opponents make bad, what's going to advance my career? It makes our politicians superficial, intellectually lazy, vacuous and pretty unprincipled.
Of course Gove has an ego too, an enormous one, and not all of the changes he wants to make will meet general approval, but he gets things done and gives the government a purpose. Since his role in Brexit wound down he has been somewhat under utilised. I suggested when that happened where Boris put Gove next would give a good clue about his priorities. So far these remain well disguised if they exist at all.
Is the FO really the place for Gove? I would think not. Its not a major role these days given so much international stuff is done at PM level. The FO could certainly do with a serious shake up but its hardly a priority. And then there is the flying thing. I would really like to see him at the Home Office, but then I'd rather see almost anyone than Patel at the Home Office.
David, you have lost the lot, the only place for that odious unprincipled little creep is the bin. He perfectly reflects what is the rotten core of the current Tories though.
If I have lost the lot Malcolm, is that because you are taking the "p"? 😉
The system of dispersing asylum seekers across the country is uneven, with some areas accommodating far more than others - and 32% of local authorities not taking any at all, according to a House of Commons library report.
Areas with lower than average household income have tended to accept more asylum seekers - the North East of England has the highest number per 1,000 resident population - 17 times greater than the South-East.
Wee Jimmy comes across as a good politician, but that isn't a compliment. Poor old Alex, he fell foul of her ambition. Not that I have much sympathy for him.
In the end, you have to trust politicians but not hero-worship them. They are mostly in it for their own good, or they have a fanatical desire to make the world a better place by doing down others, Neither are healthy.
Nicola Sturgeon first got into politics to get rid of Trident. Independence for her was initially a means to that end. I think that shows a profound desire to make the world a better place for others. I don’t hero worship her. I don’t hero worship anyone. Heroes are for pre-pubescent children and TeamGB rampers.
Michael Gove is a rare resource in modern politics. He thinks about things and he is willing to act on his thoughts to change things in ways that he think are better. This used to be, well maybe not quite the norm, but pretty common. People went into politics because they didn't like the way things were done and wanted to change it. It's what motivated them to put up with all the crap.
Now almost all of our politicians seem to be in politics for ego reasons. They view their role as managerial and tactical: what is going to look good, what makes my opponents make bad, what's going to advance my career? It makes our politicians superficial, intellectually lazy, vacuous and pretty unprincipled.
Of course Gove has an ego too, an enormous one, and not all of the changes he wants to make will meet general approval, but he gets things done and gives the government a purpose. Since his role in Brexit wound down he has been somewhat under utilised. I suggested when that happened where Boris put Gove next would give a good clue about his priorities. So far these remain well disguised if they exist at all.
Is the FO really the place for Gove? I would think not. Its not a major role these days given so much international stuff is done at PM level. The FO could certainly do with a serious shake up but its hardly a priority. And then there is the flying thing. I would really like to see him at the Home Office, but then I'd rather see almost anyone than Patel at the Home Office.
Gove at the Home Office would be interesting. He has shown in the past he is willing to act counter to the wishes of the hang em and flog em brigade and his last stint as Justice Secretary was widely praised for reversing some of the idiocies of his predecessor Grayling and also his general attitude to prison reform.
Indeed. We need a politician who is brave enough to take on the hopelessly self defeating and lethal drug policies that come from the Misuse of Drugs Act. I really cannot think of any other front line politician in any party who would have the balls to do that. Maybe Ed Davey.
I must admit it is a surprise that there is not stronger political momentum to legalise cannabis in the UK. Seems such an obvious thing to do and wouldn’t even be too controversial at this point.
Well it should be
Cannabis use fuelling rise in psychosis among young adults, says top Priory expert A leading addictions expert based at the Priory’s Hospital in south London has issued a strong warning about the use of cannabis by young adults, and its link with paranoid psychosis.
His comments came as figures show cannabis has caused more than 125,000 NHS hospital admissions in the last five years.
And around 15,000 of those cases involved teenagers – some of whom were rushed to A&E departments suffering serious psychosis.
Modern cannabis is really scary stuff. Paranoid psychosis is not a desirable state of mind to be in.
Part of my reasoning for wanting it legalised. Proper education, treatment and mitigation is hindered by its outlaw status.
An advantage of legalisation would be that the lower strength more traditional cannabis could be sold rather than skunk which seems to me almost a different drug it is so strong.
Do you think regular cannabis being legal would reduce demand for the stronger stuff?
Yes. How many alcohol drinkers regularly consume overproofed spirits?
Plus like with alcohol if its legal and taxed, then you tax it based on strength. So the low-strength stuff would face lower duties.
But one could argue that alcohol is legal so why would anyone get into cannabis?
Because prohibition has completely and utterly failed and cannabis (and even cocaine are both) all but legal too.
I don't consume the stuff myself, but I'd have absolutely no difficulty getting it if I wanted to do so. But if I did so I would be paying criminals, not the Exchequer.
In Canada where its been completely legalised you now see an array of strengths clearly labelled, just as alcohol is clearly labelled.
Transparency and education works better than prohibition.
Good morning everyone. It's sometimes surprising to me that I agree with Mr T, but yet again I do. Certainly as far as cannabis is concerned. I'm not, though quite a sure about cocaine, although of course it was, allegedly at least, quite commonly available 150 or so years ago, and wasn't made illegal until 1916 (for the troops) and 1920 for the general public.
Back when I was learning the relevant law it was said that we had very few addicts to both opium and cocaine; doctors, could, and did, prescribe for 'registered addicts'.
However, a pharmacist friend of mine, who had worked in a very prestigious pharmacy in London's West End, frequented by the nobility and gentry (or their staff) once reported, in about 1965, to a self-satisfied conference on addiction that there were reported to be 30 cocaine addicts in the UK and he had personally dispensed for some 40 of them!
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
Wasn't on yesterday when it was "done to death" but the simple reality is that your "its over / its done / its simple" is not what the industry are experiencing. If there was a simple solution it would have been done already.
This is a long term structural issue. We have too many jobs that Brits don't want to / can't afford to do in places where the people who need a job don't live. We had EU migration to fill these roles because there was literally no labour available.
When you are running an anglian food factory and you cannot get people to do night shifts at any salary, it not an issue of "low pay". Stop quoting rhetoric to solve a practical problem.
We have far too many jobs that are done by very cheap labour because it is not worth investing in machinery that could significantly improve productivity. Your Anglian food factory is almost certainly a good example of this. The result is a low wage, low productivity economy where too many people rely upon the State to top up inadequate incomes with in work benefits making them net recipients from the system.
We need to change the balance on this. Not over night but certainly over time. An 8% increase in wages this year driven by the lower paid would certainly be a step in the right direction. The test will be whether the NMW continues to absorb more and more of our workforce or whether those with basic skills, such as being able to drive, can do better. If we can we will create a more cohesive, fairer society. I would have expected you to be in favour of this.
The way you say it, we have basically reverted to the mid-C19 Speenhamland System of using poor law to subsidise the farmers and big landowners in their payment of starvation wages to their workers, at the expense of the taxpayers more generally. Or am I missing something?
No, that is what I am saying. We have an ever increasing proportion of our workforce on the NMW. The differentials which used to exist because someone had a minor skill or qualification are dissolved because the NMW has been increasing more rapidly than wages as a whole. But the NMW is not a "living wage" so those on it who have families or other dependents still need a lot of state subsidy.
That State subsidy is a good thing because it would be immoral not to but it also ensures a ready supply of labour for jobs on the minimum wage. The plus side for the better off is that many services are relatively cheap but the downside is that fewer and fewer are net contributors to the system. Because the incremental steps that previously existed out of that situation have often disappeared there is also little to no incentive to improve oneself by getting training or further education because it does not lead to more money.
The EU and freedom of movement greatly aggravated these tendencies because it made our supply of labour extremely elastic. The NMW was also attractive to many from eastern Europe in particular. So we built an economy which was dependent upon cheap labour which was readily replaceable and not worth investing in and which could afford to do the job because they were subsidised by the State (ie the rest of us). This created a bigger and bigger gap between the haves and the have nots. I want to reverse that trend and address the economic weakness that low productivity creates.
Just my view.
This is the structural problem. We needed a NMW as by the mid 90s wages were so low at the bottom end that work didn't pay. We now have a much higher NMW which has compressed wage bands and cut the exploitative bottom end off, but still isn't enough to live on due to a big cost of living surge.
When you say you want to reverse that trend is that via (a) higher wages or (b) lower wages? Both create problems with our high cost of living.
Gove is bright, curious and a fantastic thinker but he doesn't know when to stop.
He's the real-life human incarnation of the Scorpion and the Frog.
A deeply troubled man.
That’s why we love him fronting BetterTogether2.
I will say this about "Govey": despite having a deeply strange persona that suggests it would be an act of catastrophic folly to leave him alone with a small animal he has somehow managed to have a relatively successful career in politics.
I was choosing lampshades yesterday and arranging flowers in vases and plumping cushions and knitting and other housewifely tasks. The sorts of things that I'm sure you imagine me doing all the time. In the evening there was a visit from a steam train - all beautifully polished up - with the lucky travellers inside drinking their Prosecco while us yokels stared and waved. All very Railway Children-esque and there was certainly enough steam around to make the reappearance of long lost fathers seem almost possible.
I trust all was sweetness and light on here, yes?
Meanwhile Kabul airport has turned into a mixture of Hillsborough and Sophie's Choice. Horrible.
Still, the sun is out today - which makes a nice change as yesterday the rain was atrocious. The Tahiti lime tree still needs planting as did not fancy doing it while trying to avoid drowning.
There is a prison nearby, mostly full of sex offenders and paedophiles. They have a prison shop and sell plants which they grow. I did mention to Daughter the idea mooted by others of having prisoners work in her pub but the look she gave me .....
Anyway, if you want a good documentary about another British fuck-up as they leave a country they should never have invaded (ooh, a bit of controversy!) The Road to Partition - only 2 episodes - is on BBC iPlayer and is very good.
Sounds pretty good on the home front!
I've often been struck by the consistent pattern of the failure of partition as we dismantled the Empire. It led directly to permanent strife in all of India, Israel, Cyprus and Ireland. A similar process without much British involvement happened in Yugoslavia, and arguably Ukraine is another example. That's not to say that unitary solutions always work well, but trying to settle rival groups into adjoining nations seems to be a recipe for catastrophe, fuelling the rise of aggressive nationalism and open warfare.
And the reason British taxpayers' money and servicemen and women's lives should go towards stopping Hindus and Muslims fighting each other, or Jews and Arabs, or Greeks and Turks, or Africans, or South Slavs, thousands of miles away is what? Is it the former colonialists' "responsibility", or a continuing white man's burden, or is there a difference? Partition in Ireland led to warfare? Sure, but warfare led to partition. Why do you expect colonialists to be able to come up with a plan that is a success? They can no more do it on their way out the door than they can when they imagine the Sun will continue to shine on their empire forever.
I was choosing lampshades yesterday and arranging flowers in vases and plumping cushions and knitting and other housewifely tasks. The sorts of things that I'm sure you imagine me doing all the time. In the evening there was a visit from a steam train - all beautifully polished up - with the lucky travellers inside drinking their Prosecco while us yokels stared and waved. All very Railway Children-esque and there was certainly enough steam around to make the reappearance of long lost fathers seem almost possible.
I trust all was sweetness and light on here, yes?
Meanwhile Kabul airport has turned into a mixture of Hillsborough and Sophie's Choice. Horrible.
Still, the sun is out today - which makes a nice change as yesterday the rain was atrocious. The Tahiti lime tree still needs planting as did not fancy doing it while trying to avoid drowning.
There is a prison nearby, mostly full of sex offenders and paedophiles. They have a prison shop and sell plants which they grow. I did mention to Daughter the idea mooted by others of having prisoners work in her pub but the look she gave me .....
Anyway, if you want a good documentary about another British fuck-up as they leave a country they should never have invaded (ooh, a bit of controversy!) The Road to Partition - only 2 episodes - is on BBC iPlayer and is very good.
Sounds pretty good on the home front!
I've often been struck by the consistent pattern of the failure of partition as we dismantled the Empire. It led directly to permanent strife in all of India, Israel, Cyprus and Ireland. A similar process without much British involvement happened in Yugoslavia, and arguably Ukraine is another example. That's not to say that unitary solutions always work well, but trying to settle rival groups into adjoining nations seems to be a recipe for catastrophe, fuelling the rise of aggressive nationalism and open warfare.
What was interesting to me was that Lloyd George's attempts at resolution were all predicated on the assumptions that lay behind Home Rule and ignored the rise of Sinn Fein after WW1. He was answering questions posed in 1912 not in 1921. That and the nervousness which James Craig on the Unionist side had about Britain betraying the Unionists. No love lost there.
In the end the British did what they often do - got enough of a solution to make it look as if they'd solved the problem, walked away, caused lots of problems elsewhere and left the real issues for subsequent generations to grapple with.
In Ireland partition was probably inevitable given the plantation of Scots and others in Ulster from the 17th C onwards. The solution to one problem then leading to a yet bigger one two centuries later, the solution to that leading to another bloody one 40 years later and so on and on. Quite what the current temporary solution will lead to who knows. But kicking difficult issues into the long grass is not just the preserve of British governments.
The Conservatives (and Unionists) in the years leading up to 1912-13 seem to have been largely responsible for divisions which resulted in Partition. Protestant Ulster's separatism wasn't AIUI, a serious problem until about 1900. Earlier Irish nationalists could be Protestants.
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
Wasn't on yesterday when it was "done to death" but the simple reality is that your "its over / its done / its simple" is not what the industry are experiencing. If there was a simple solution it would have been done already.
This is a long term structural issue. We have too many jobs that Brits don't want to / can't afford to do in places where the people who need a job don't live. We had EU migration to fill these roles because there was literally no labour available.
When you are running an anglian food factory and you cannot get people to do night shifts at any salary, it not an issue of "low pay". Stop quoting rhetoric to solve a practical problem.
We have far too many jobs that are done by very cheap labour because it is not worth investing in machinery that could significantly improve productivity. Your Anglian food factory is almost certainly a good example of this. The result is a low wage, low productivity economy where too many people rely upon the State to top up inadequate incomes with in work benefits making them net recipients from the system.
We need to change the balance on this. Not over night but certainly over time. An 8% increase in wages this year driven by the lower paid would certainly be a step in the right direction. The test will be whether the NMW continues to absorb more and more of our workforce or whether those with basic skills, such as being able to drive, can do better. If we can we will create a more cohesive, fairer society. I would have expected you to be in favour of this.
The way you say it, we have basically reverted to the mid-C19 Speenhamland System of using poor law to subsidise the farmers and big landowners in their payment of starvation wages to their workers, at the expense of the taxpayers more generally. Or am I missing something?
No, that is what I am saying. We have an ever increasing proportion of our workforce on the NMW. The differentials which used to exist because someone had a minor skill or qualification are dissolved because the NMW has been increasing more rapidly than wages as a whole. But the NMW is not a "living wage" so those on it who have families or other dependents still need a lot of state subsidy.
That State subsidy is a good thing because it would be immoral not to but it also ensures a ready supply of labour for jobs on the minimum wage. The plus side for the better off is that many services are relatively cheap but the downside is that fewer and fewer are net contributors to the system. Because the incremental steps that previously existed out of that situation have often disappeared there is also little to no incentive to improve oneself by getting training or further education because it does not lead to more money.
The EU and freedom of movement greatly aggravated these tendencies because it made our supply of labour extremely elastic. The NMW was also attractive to many from eastern Europe in particular. So we built an economy which was dependent upon cheap labour which was readily replaceable and not worth investing in and which could afford to do the job because they were subsidised by the State (ie the rest of us). This created a bigger and bigger gap between the haves and the have nots. I want to reverse that trend and address the economic weakness that low productivity creates.
Just my view.
This is the structural problem. We needed a NMW as by the mid 90s wages were so low at the bottom end that work didn't pay. We now have a much higher NMW which has compressed wage bands and cut the exploitative bottom end off, but still isn't enough to live on due to a big cost of living surge.
When you say you want to reverse that trend is that via (a) higher wages or (b) lower wages? Both create problems with our high cost of living.
Higher wages. But those higher wages need to be earned by higher productivity not more subsidy.
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
Wasn't on yesterday when it was "done to death" but the simple reality is that your "its over / its done / its simple" is not what the industry are experiencing. If there was a simple solution it would have been done already.
This is a long term structural issue. We have too many jobs that Brits don't want to / can't afford to do in places where the people who need a job don't live. We had EU migration to fill these roles because there was literally no labour available.
When you are running an anglian food factory and you cannot get people to do night shifts at any salary, it not an issue of "low pay". Stop quoting rhetoric to solve a practical problem.
How did we cope before 2004? (Genuine question)
Dunno, but how does that change the reality of now? Where the jobs are in hospitality in towns and cities then yes, replace EU workers with UK. Where the jobs are in things like food production, the available British workforce is not largely where the jobs are.
If as the Brexiteers insist we don't need / want EU labour we need to start encouraging people not going from college into University to move into the sticks to start taking factory and farming jobs.
The way to encourage people to do that, is to raise pay rates.
Businesses can either increase pay until it reaches an equilibrium whereby they find people who want to go into the sticks and take the jobs . . . or they can prefer to go out of business rather than offering attractive wages. Its a free market.
As with @DavidL this is rhetoric. How much £ will you need to offer to get people to relocate from towns into the countryside where houses generally cost more and the cost of living is higher? When these manufacturers aren't rolling in huge profit margins?
As I'm not a rural manufacturer, I won't offer a penny.
For those who are running those businesses they will either need to offer rates sufficiently high as to fill the vacancies, or do without the labourers and raise productivity, or shut down.
That's how a free market operates. We don't need central command and control.
I was choosing lampshades yesterday and arranging flowers in vases and plumping cushions and knitting and other housewifely tasks. The sorts of things that I'm sure you imagine me doing all the time. In the evening there was a visit from a steam train - all beautifully polished up - with the lucky travellers inside drinking their Prosecco while us yokels stared and waved. All very Railway Children-esque and there was certainly enough steam around to make the reappearance of long lost fathers seem almost possible.
I trust all was sweetness and light on here, yes?
Meanwhile Kabul airport has turned into a mixture of Hillsborough and Sophie's Choice. Horrible.
Still, the sun is out today - which makes a nice change as yesterday the rain was atrocious. The Tahiti lime tree still needs planting as did not fancy doing it while trying to avoid drowning.
There is a prison nearby, mostly full of sex offenders and paedophiles. They have a prison shop and sell plants which they grow. I did mention to Daughter the idea mooted by others of having prisoners work in her pub but the look she gave me .....
Anyway, if you want a good documentary about another British fuck-up as they leave a country they should never have invaded (ooh, a bit of controversy!) The Road to Partition - only 2 episodes - is on BBC iPlayer and is very good.
Sounds pretty good on the home front!
I've often been struck by the consistent pattern of the failure of partition as we dismantled the Empire. It led directly to permanent strife in all of India, Israel, Cyprus and Ireland. A similar process without much British involvement happened in Yugoslavia, and arguably Ukraine is another example. That's not to say that unitary solutions always work well, but trying to settle rival groups into adjoining nations seems to be a recipe for catastrophe, fuelling the rise of aggressive nationalism and open warfare.
What was interesting to me was that Lloyd George's attempts at resolution were all predicated on the assumptions that lay behind Home Rule and ignored the rise of Sinn Fein after WW1. He was answering questions posed in 1912 not in 1921. That and the nervousness which James Craig on the Unionist side had about Britain betraying the Unionists. No love lost there.
In the end the British did what they often do - got enough of a solution to make it look as if they'd solved the problem, walked away, caused lots of problems elsewhere and left the real issues for subsequent generations to grapple with.
In Ireland partition was probably inevitable given the plantation of Scots and others in Ulster from the 17th C onwards. The solution to one problem then leading to a yet bigger one two centuries later, the solution to that leading to another bloody one 40 years later and so on and on. Quite what the current temporary solution will lead to who knows. But kicking difficult issues into the long grass is not just the preserve of British governments.
The Conservatives (and Unionists) in the years leading up to 1912-13 seem to have been largely responsible for divisions which resulted in Partition. Protestant Ulster's separatism wasn't AIUI, a serious problem until about 1900. Earlier Irish nationalists could be Protestants.
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
Wasn't on yesterday when it was "done to death" but the simple reality is that your "its over / its done / its simple" is not what the industry are experiencing. If there was a simple solution it would have been done already.
This is a long term structural issue. We have too many jobs that Brits don't want to / can't afford to do in places where the people who need a job don't live. We had EU migration to fill these roles because there was literally no labour available.
When you are running an anglian food factory and you cannot get people to do night shifts at any salary, it not an issue of "low pay". Stop quoting rhetoric to solve a practical problem.
How did we cope before 2004? (Genuine question)
Dunno, but how does that change the reality of now? Where the jobs are in hospitality in towns and cities then yes, replace EU workers with UK. Where the jobs are in things like food production, the available British workforce is not largely where the jobs are.
If as the Brexiteers insist we don't need / want EU labour we need to start encouraging people not going from college into University to move into the sticks to start taking factory and farming jobs.
The way to encourage people to do that, is to raise pay rates.
Businesses can either increase pay until it reaches an equilibrium whereby they find people who want to go into the sticks and take the jobs . . . or they can prefer to go out of business rather than offering attractive wages. Its a free market.
I'm loving your inflation is good narrative. First it was supply/ demand inflation will reduce the deficit, now wage-price spiral inflation saves the economy.
I think I can throw my 1980s A Level Economics textbook in the bin.
We did this to death yesterday Scott. A shortage of labour is a good thing. It drives up wages of the low paid, it encourages investment, training and the boosting of productivity. It gives prisoners, for example, a way out of recidivism. It is a better alternative than mickey mouse courses for many of our young.
We have 5-6m Europeans with residency rights here, most of working age. That really should be enough.
Wasn't on yesterday when it was "done to death" but the simple reality is that your "its over / its done / its simple" is not what the industry are experiencing. If there was a simple solution it would have been done already.
This is a long term structural issue. We have too many jobs that Brits don't want to / can't afford to do in places where the people who need a job don't live. We had EU migration to fill these roles because there was literally no labour available.
When you are running an anglian food factory and you cannot get people to do night shifts at any salary, it not an issue of "low pay". Stop quoting rhetoric to solve a practical problem.
How did we cope before 2004? (Genuine question)
Dunno, but how does that change the reality of now? Where the jobs are in hospitality in towns and cities then yes, replace EU workers with UK. Where the jobs are in things like food production, the available British workforce is not largely where the jobs are.
If as the Brexiteers insist we don't need / want EU labour we need to start encouraging people not going from college into University to move into the sticks to start taking factory and farming jobs.
The way to encourage people to do that, is to raise pay rates.
Businesses can either increase pay until it reaches an equilibrium whereby they find people who want to go into the sticks and take the jobs . . . or they can prefer to go out of business rather than offering attractive wages. Its a free market.
I'm loving your inflation is good narrative. First it was supply/ demand inflation will reduce the deficit, now wage-price spiral inflation saves the economy.
I think I can throw my 1980s A Level Economics textbook in the bin.
Of course you can throw your 1980s textbook into the bin, much has changed in the past 40 years.
How does your 1980s textbook deal with deflation? Or quantitative easing? Etc
I never said we should have wage-price spiral inflation. Having real pay rises doesn't mean a wage-price spiral, indeed kind of by definition it doesn't since if there is such a spiral then the pay rise isn't real.
I was choosing lampshades yesterday and arranging flowers in vases and plumping cushions and knitting and other housewifely tasks. The sorts of things that I'm sure you imagine me doing all the time. In the evening there was a visit from a steam train - all beautifully polished up - with the lucky travellers inside drinking their Prosecco while us yokels stared and waved. All very Railway Children-esque and there was certainly enough steam around to make the reappearance of long lost fathers seem almost possible.
I trust all was sweetness and light on here, yes?
Meanwhile Kabul airport has turned into a mixture of Hillsborough and Sophie's Choice. Horrible.
Still, the sun is out today - which makes a nice change as yesterday the rain was atrocious. The Tahiti lime tree still needs planting as did not fancy doing it while trying to avoid drowning.
There is a prison nearby, mostly full of sex offenders and paedophiles. They have a prison shop and sell plants which they grow. I did mention to Daughter the idea mooted by others of having prisoners work in her pub but the look she gave me .....
Anyway, if you want a good documentary about another British fuck-up as they leave a country they should never have invaded (ooh, a bit of controversy!) The Road to Partition - only 2 episodes - is on BBC iPlayer and is very good.
Sounds pretty good on the home front!
I've often been struck by the consistent pattern of the failure of partition as we dismantled the Empire. It led directly to permanent strife in all of India, Israel, Cyprus and Ireland. A similar process without much British involvement happened in Yugoslavia, and arguably Ukraine is another example. That's not to say that unitary solutions always work well, but trying to settle rival groups into adjoining nations seems to be a recipe for catastrophe, fuelling the rise of aggressive nationalism and open warfare.
What was interesting to me was that Lloyd George's attempts at resolution were all predicated on the assumptions that lay behind Home Rule and ignored the rise of Sinn Fein after WW1. He was answering questions posed in 1912 not in 1921. That and the nervousness which James Craig on the Unionist side had about Britain betraying the Unionists. No love lost there.
In the end the British did what they often do - got enough of a solution to make it look as if they'd solved the problem, walked away, caused lots of problems elsewhere and left the real issues for subsequent generations to grapple with.
In Ireland partition was probably inevitable given the plantation of Scots and others in Ulster from the 17th C onwards. The solution to one problem then leading to a yet bigger one two centuries later, the solution to that leading to another bloody one 40 years later and so on and on. Quite what the current temporary solution will lead to who knows. But kicking difficult issues into the long grass is not just the preserve of British governments.
Counties Fermanagh and Tyrone both had Catholic majorities at the 1911 Census (56% and 55%), and Nationalist majorities at the 1918 election (54% and 55%). Yet they were included in Northern Ireland!
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My main reservation is that he perhaps has a certain iconoclastic instinct - he can't see a vested interest without trying to dismantle it, and there are cases (maybe education was one) where that isn't necessarily an undiluted positive. Similarly I don't see him as Foreign Secretary, where tip-toeing around established relationships is important. But in the Home Office (or the Justice Ministry with a mission to sort out prisons) he would be great.
I trust all was sweetness and light on here, yes?
Meanwhile Kabul airport has turned into a mixture of Hillsborough and Sophie's Choice. Horrible.
Still, the sun is out today - which makes a nice change as yesterday the rain was atrocious. The Tahiti lime tree still needs planting as did not fancy doing it while trying to avoid drowning.
There is a prison nearby, mostly full of sex offenders and paedophiles. They have a prison shop and sell plants which they grow. I did mention to Daughter the idea mooted by others of having prisoners work in her pub but the look she gave me .....
Anyway, if you want a good documentary about another British fuck-up as they leave a country they should never have invaded (ooh, a bit of controversy!) The Road to Partition - only 2 episodes - is on BBC iPlayer and is very good.
So the only thing that is 'plainly ridiculous' are your assumptions.
Well, well, well. A Brexit benefit to cheer us wokeists. I"d have voted Leave if only I'd realised.
Although the irony is, I can no longer retire to the South of France unhindered, but allcomer economic migrants can enter the UK unchallenged so long as they arrive by Avon inflatable.
You can see why he got on with Cummings.
This is a long term structural issue. We have too many jobs that Brits don't want to / can't afford to do in places where the people who need a job don't live. We had EU migration to fill these roles because there was literally no labour available.
When you are running an anglian food factory and you cannot get people to do night shifts at any salary, it not an issue of "low pay". Stop quoting rhetoric to solve a practical problem.
Cannabis use fuelling rise in psychosis among young adults, says top Priory expert
A leading addictions expert based at the Priory’s Hospital in south London has issued a strong warning about the use of cannabis by young adults, and its link with paranoid psychosis.
His comments came as figures show cannabis has caused more than 125,000 NHS hospital admissions in the last five years.
And around 15,000 of those cases involved teenagers – some of whom were rushed to A&E departments suffering serious psychosis.
https://www.priorygroup.com/media-centre/cannabis-use-fuelling-rise-in-psychosis-among-young-adults-says-top-priory-expert
Modern cannabis is really scary stuff. Paranoid psychosis is not a desirable state of mind to be in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Party_of_Canada#:~:text=People's Party of Canada Parti populaire du Canada, Maxime Bernier 13 more rows
Must be awkward for the Conservatives, I imagine, but like all populists will take some votes from everyone. What do people who know Canada better make of them?
It is to your and Johnson's credit that you had budgeted for this potential inconvenience and trained the required domestic HGV drivers and NHS staff in time.
We hope he will gradually recover but it is a long process
Unfortunately as he described the events in tears last night, and he has not been so open about it before, we have to realise you cannot unsee that which you have witnessed
Indeed our neighbour was one of the first firemen to respond to the Grenfell Tower disaster and he is also invalided out of the fire service with PTSD and hasn't worked in over 2 years
At 39 and with a young family it is very upsetting to see his trauma
https://prohibition.themobmuseum.org/the-history/the-prohibition-underworld/bootleggers-and-bathtub-gin/
Personally I will stick to damaging my few remaining brain cells with alcohol.
The only advice I can give is: listen to the doctors and other professionals. They certainly don't get everything right all the time but it's the best shot at recovery.
I am very happy with a general increase in wages as there are a lot of jobs that are critical and pay little. The problem is that the economy is already high cost for so many people in the "squeezed middle" so a big increase in food prices won't help.
Jobs "people cannot afford to do". If you have kids, or rely on public transport a huge number of jobs are ones you cannot afford to do. Having plentiful and cheap public transport would help, as would more affordable longer hours childcare. But as you don't want to pay for that, here is the problem...
We need to change the balance on this. Not over night but certainly over time. An 8% increase in wages this year driven by the lower paid would certainly be a step in the right direction. The test will be whether the NMW continues to absorb more and more of our workforce or whether those with basic skills, such as being able to drive, can do better. If we can we will create a more cohesive, fairer society. I would have expected you to be in favour of this.
Also perhaps a hope that publicising them boosts liquidity, which would create many new opportunities for those of us with a more betting-related interest.
Then who are those Eastern Europeans wandering around town centres and supermarkets ?
And who are the 2.342m from the EU who were working in the UK last quarter according to the ONS ?
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/datasets/employmentbycountryofbirthandnationalityemp06
A number greater than it was in June 2016.
When the only alcohol is available is bootlegged hooch then that's different from knowing when you go to the shops you can select light beer that is 3% ABV, or wine that's 12% ABV, or vodka that's 37.5% ABV.
In one you're fuelling criminals and don't know what you're getting. In the other its a legal, standardised product that comes with awareness and education etc
I've often been struck by the consistent pattern of the failure of partition as we dismantled the Empire. It led directly to permanent strife in all of India, Israel, Cyprus and Ireland. A similar process without much British involvement happened in Yugoslavia, and arguably Ukraine is another example. That's not to say that unitary solutions always work well, but trying to settle rival groups into adjoining nations seems to be a recipe for catastrophe, fuelling the rise of aggressive nationalism and open warfare.
Proper education, treatment and mitigation is hindered by its outlaw status.
If there were a major labour shortage then agencies would be full of adverts for more than minimum wage.
Minimum wage is a minimum not a maximum.
Which is it? Are we due an influx of cheap food, or expensive food, or just whichever suits your spin on a particular day?
I think you don't realise that the reason a lot of local employers in West Wales only offer minimum wage is because the local cost of living has pared prices down to the bone so they can only afford to pay the minimum.
Also, wasn’t the partition of Cyprus the result of the Turkish invasion?
The argument we shouldn't have legalised, transparent, regulated cannabis like we do with alcohol is like saying that we shouldn't sell beer because overproofed spirits are so strong.
The Tories won 38 out of 46 seats in the East Midlands in 2019.
When the imperial power leaves, partition happens on the ground.
Plus like with alcohol if its legal and taxed, then you tax it based on strength. So the low-strength stuff would face lower duties.
If as the Brexiteers insist we don't need / want EU labour we need to start encouraging people not going from college into University to move into the sticks to start taking factory and farming jobs.
I don't consume the stuff myself, but I'd have absolutely no difficulty getting it if I wanted to do so. But if I did so I would be paying criminals, not the Exchequer.
In Canada where its been completely legalised you now see an array of strengths clearly labelled, just as alcohol is clearly labelled.
Transparency and education works better than prohibition.
Businesses can either increase pay until it reaches an equilibrium whereby they find people who want to go into the sticks and take the jobs . . . or they can prefer to go out of business rather than offering attractive wages. Its a free market.
As to the employment numbers we're in a state of flux at present and a better picture should emerge in the coming months.
The ONS does report a fall in Eastern Europeans in employment but a rise of Western Europeans - what they were all doing I cannot imagine given the reports of how the urban economies were struggling throughout the pandemic.
In the end the British did what they often do - got enough of a solution to make it look as if they'd solved the problem, walked away, caused lots of problems elsewhere and left the real issues for subsequent generations to grapple with.
In Ireland partition was probably inevitable given the plantation of Scots and others in Ulster from the 17th C onwards. The solution to one problem then leading to a yet bigger one two centuries later, the solution to that leading to another bloody one 40 years later and so on and on. Quite what the current temporary solution will lead to who knows. But kicking difficult issues into the long grass is not just the preserve of British governments.
That State subsidy is a good thing because it would be immoral not to but it also ensures a ready supply of labour for jobs on the minimum wage. The plus side for the better off is that many services are relatively cheap but the downside is that fewer and fewer are net contributors to the system. Because the incremental steps that previously existed out of that situation have often disappeared there is also little to no incentive to improve oneself by getting training or further education because it does not lead to more money.
The EU and freedom of movement greatly aggravated these tendencies because it made our supply of labour extremely elastic. The NMW was also attractive to many from eastern Europe in particular. So we built an economy which was dependent upon cheap labour which was readily replaceable and not worth investing in and which could afford to do the job because they were subsidised by the State (ie the rest of us). This created a bigger and bigger gap between the haves and the have nots. I want to reverse that trend and address the economic weakness that low productivity creates.
Just my view.
Yes, isn’t it a gorgeous day 🤗
Hugs and kisses,
Stooey
I have seen too many lives ruined by it since, some of them my old schoolfriend, and yes I have seen others succumb to alcohol and tobacco. One of my oldest friends died 5 years ago from lung cancer within 4 weeks of diagnosis.
Paranoid psychosis is a problem. I had a friend spend 3 months in a mute catatonic state as a result of cannabis psychosis, and I don't think he has been right since. A year afterwards his lovely wife delivered him an ultimatum, it's either me and the kids, or the cannabis. He chose cannabis.
The pernicious thing with cannabis though is the extinction of ambition and purpose. Too many friends just became apathetic and drifted on it, never doing anything with their lives or relationships. What a waste, and a big cause of school failure particularly amongst boys
https://twitter.com/johnestevens/status/1429374339296735233
Areas with lower than average household income have tended to accept more asylum seekers - the North East of England has the highest number per 1,000 resident population - 17 times greater than the South-East.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-58270841
There's a link to details of asylum seekers per local authority.
Couldn't help noticing that Tom Tugendhat's Tonbridge has none and neither does Nick Palmer's Waverley.
It's sometimes surprising to me that I agree with Mr T, but yet again I do. Certainly as far as cannabis is concerned.
I'm not, though quite a sure about cocaine, although of course it was, allegedly at least, quite commonly available 150 or so years ago, and wasn't made illegal until 1916 (for the troops) and 1920 for the general public.
Back when I was learning the relevant law it was said that we had very few addicts to both opium and cocaine; doctors, could, and did, prescribe for 'registered addicts'.
However, a pharmacist friend of mine, who had worked in a very prestigious pharmacy in London's West End, frequented by the nobility and gentry (or their staff) once reported, in about 1965, to a self-satisfied conference on addiction that there were reported to be 30 cocaine addicts in the UK and he had personally dispensed for some 40 of them!
When you say you want to reverse that trend is that via (a) higher wages or (b) lower wages? Both create problems with our high cost of living.
Earlier Irish nationalists could be Protestants.
For those who are running those businesses they will either need to offer rates sufficiently high as to fill the vacancies, or do without the labourers and raise productivity, or shut down.
That's how a free market operates. We don't need central command and control.
I think I can throw my 1980s A Level Economics textbook in the bin.
How does your 1980s textbook deal with deflation? Or quantitative easing? Etc
I never said we should have wage-price spiral inflation. Having real pay rises doesn't mean a wage-price spiral, indeed kind of by definition it doesn't since if there is such a spiral then the pay rise isn't real.