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Foreign affairs and laying Michael Gove – politicalbetting.com

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  • Taz said:

    https://twitter.com/BBCNewsPR/status/1429390286476693511

    Katie Hind is a laughably poor journalist

    The same nonsense happened when the BBC appointed Robbie Gibb, brother of a govt minister, to a high profile role. Overtly partisan people see bias where it just does not exist. I am sure Jess Brammar will be right for the role and do a great job.
    I've no idea who any of these people are but would just caution there is no blue tick on K Hind's account.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,537
    Floater said:

    https://twitter.com/Global_Mil_Info/status/1429407915362902018

    The Pentagon has activated the Civil Reserve Air Fleet. Aircraft from each of the U.S. commercial airlines have been requested to assist airlift operations after Afghans & Americans are transported out of Kabul.

    That’s what the British have been doing all along - using mil planes for the flights out of Kabul to UAE, then chartering commercial flights onwards to the UK.

    The US have been going from Kabul to Qatar, then continuing in military planes to Germany and ultimately back to the States.

    Activating the CRAF frees up more C17s for the Kabul leg of the journey.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,337
    DougSeal said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    Pagan2 said:

    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"
    Exactly so, Roger. All the dissembling that goes on around this. It's as if being a Tory is something shameful. Why would anyone feel that? Beats me.

    "I'm not a member. I've voted for different parties over the years. It was about Brexit. You're forgetting the choice. It was that or Corbyn."

    Bla bla bla. None of this is relevant. It's interesting but it's off the point. If you voted Tory in the last general election YOU ARE A TORY and this state persists until rectified by a sincereaf and firm intention to vote otherwise in the next one.
    But to be a PB Tory is a sinuous and quicksilver thing, hard to pin down.

    Afaics the people who voted for Cameron and now despise him are the same people who voted for May and now despise her, and also the the same people who voted for BJ but are still defending his every ineptitude and moral failing.

    The one consistency seems to be that they bear no responsibility for any of the consequences of voting for these fine folk.
    Yes, "PB Tories", a grouping unto itself, and it's not so simple as if you're a Tory (per my official definition) and you're on PB then you are one. That is not the case. It's a necessary condition but it isn't sufficient. You can be a Tory on PB yet not a PB Tory. It took me a while to suss all this out but now I have. I know who is a PB Tory and who isn't. But it's pure instinct, I can't define or explain it. Won't give any examples either way so as not to personalize. Too much of that from fruity Le ... from one particular poster yesterday.
    There’s a tendency on here to group those you don’t like into the grouping you don’t like. Such as Malc’s insistence that I’m a Unionist. Or Heathener’s suggestion that I’m a Tory. When I’m neither. I don’t think anyway.
    We are all PB Unionist Tories now, Comrade!
  • Carnyx said:

    malcolmg said:

    Mr. Dickson, I do not trust the Government or the Opposition with that sort of nonsense over here.

    Fair point. If you are referring to the Westminster government. I would trust the Scottish one.
    I would not trust the current crooks running Scottish government any more than I trust Tories. Both lying cheating stealing no marks.
    Sadly my response would be that of course they are - they are politicians.

    I have genuine admiration for the fact that you are able to separate the cause of independence from many of those who are advocating it but who are not to be admired. Sadly I think that right now Sturgeon is probably the best chance Scotland has of getting that independence but - a la Churchill after WW2 - I hope that once that is achieved the Scots have the good sense to dump Sturgeon and her cabal for some politicians who are not quite so mired in the cesspool.
    But that is part of the point - to be able to dump those ruling Scotland should we so wish. We can't dump Mr Johnson and his crew.
    Yes you can. To dump Boris, vote Labour. Voting SNP might hasten independence but in the mean time, it makes it easier for the Conservatives to win elections. That's the paradox.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,059
    Floater said:

    https://twitter.com/JJansaSDS/status/1429372301917794315

    The #EU will NOT open any European migration corridors for Afghanistan. We will not allow the strategic mistake of 2015 to be repeated. We have to help only individuals who helped us during #NATO op. and those countries guarding the EU's external border to fully protect it.

    I don’t like borders. Although I voted Remain, and would vote to rejoin, it always irked me that the main difference between the two sides was where to put ours. That the Mediterranean, once literally regarded as the centre of the world (the clue’s in the name) is now treated as a barrier never to be breached is a source of great sadness to me. The Mediterranean world Braudel wrote of is no more.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,641
    DougSeal said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    Pagan2 said:

    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"
    Exactly so, Roger. All the dissembling that goes on around this. It's as if being a Tory is something shameful. Why would anyone feel that? Beats me.

    "I'm not a member. I've voted for different parties over the years. It was about Brexit. You're forgetting the choice. It was that or Corbyn."

    Bla bla bla. None of this is relevant. It's interesting but it's off the point. If you voted Tory in the last general election YOU ARE A TORY and this state persists until rectified by a sincereaf and firm intention to vote otherwise in the next one.
    But to be a PB Tory is a sinuous and quicksilver thing, hard to pin down.

    Afaics the people who voted for Cameron and now despise him are the same people who voted for May and now despise her, and also the the same people who voted for BJ but are still defending his every ineptitude and moral failing.

    The one consistency seems to be that they bear no responsibility for any of the consequences of voting for these fine folk.
    Yes, "PB Tories", a grouping unto itself, and it's not so simple as if you're a Tory (per my official definition) and you're on PB then you are one. That is not the case. It's a necessary condition but it isn't sufficient. You can be a Tory on PB yet not a PB Tory. It took me a while to suss all this out but now I have. I know who is a PB Tory and who isn't. But it's pure instinct, I can't define or explain it. Won't give any examples either way so as not to personalize. Too much of that from fruity Le ... from one particular poster yesterday.
    There’s a tendency on here to group those you don’t like into the grouping you don’t like. Such as Malc’s insistence that I’m a Unionist. Or Heathener’s suggestion that I’m a Tory. When I’m neither. I don’t think anyway.
    A stalker just has to stalk, you cannot post without putting me in any and all topics. Your man crush is misplaced.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,059

    DougSeal said:


    Prof Francois Balloux
    @BallouxFrancois
    ·
    16h
    Some mentioned this tweet may have been unfair. I personally don't feel it was. Several 'media covid experts' claim credentials in public health and infectious disease epidemiology that they seem to have made up during the pandemic. I feel it's fair to call out those charlatans.

    I’d love to be a fly on the wall at the UCL Christmas Party when him and Christina Pagel run into each other.
    LOL....won't the party be on zoom though? or at least socially distanced?
    That depends on whether Balloux or Pagel are organising it.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,692
    I see imbecilic political slogan is trending. Wait till Tony hears about 45 minutes from destruction and where that led us.

  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 20,359
    Sandpit said:

    Floater said:

    https://twitter.com/Global_Mil_Info/status/1429407915362902018

    The Pentagon has activated the Civil Reserve Air Fleet. Aircraft from each of the U.S. commercial airlines have been requested to assist airlift operations after Afghans & Americans are transported out of Kabul.

    That’s what the British have been doing all along - using mil planes for the flights out of Kabul to UAE, then chartering commercial flights onwards to the UK.

    The US have been going from Kabul to Qatar, then continuing in military planes to Germany and ultimately back to the States.

    Activating the CRAF frees up more C17s for the Kabul leg of the journey.
    Isnt this logistics 101? Quite baffling why this was not done from the start.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,692
    edited August 2021
    Tres said:

    tlg86 said:

    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:

    DavidL said:

    Brexit is no longer a major issue

    Food manufacturers and restaurants are scrambling to recruit prisoners to help ease the “desperate” shortage of workers caused by Covid-19 and Brexit.
    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/shops-farms-and-restaurants-turn-to-prisons-to-fill-staff-shortages-j2qgd38td
    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.
    And the reason why we need central command and control is that your plan delivers two things.
    (1) We lose whole chunks of industry that are essential
    (2) We have a sustained and embedded unemployment issue
    1) No we don't. If the jobs are essential then they can command whatever price is required to fill them. If they can't, they weren't essential in the first place.

    2) No we don't. How do we get a sustained unemployment issue as a result of full employment? The jobs that are the most productive pay whatever is required to fill the vacancies, those that are least productive die off, we have full employment and higher productivity.
    Its endless rhetoric disconnected from reality and increasingly from sanity as well.

    (1) How do anglian food producers pay enough to get factory shift workers to be able to want and afford to move to (shudder) Wisbech? Its laughable to suggest they can, so without labour they shut and don't get replaced. We need food, so we will import more instead, which means we have a farming sector unable to sell its produce as the processors have gone so that goes as well.

    (2) Sustained unemployment in the places where unemployment is a structural issue. We already have effective full employment in parts of the country. The jobs aren't where the unemployed are.
    What arrogance and condescension.

    Why can't people move to Wisbech? Or people living in Wisbech fill those vacancies? Why can people from Warsaw move to Wisbech but people from Widnes can't?

    If there's sustained unemployment maybe the unemployed should fill one of the jobs that are on offer? If the jobs aren't where they are, they can move to where the jobs are. Or employers can move to where the people are.

    If there's an abundance of labour available at Widnes but not Wisbech then why doesn't a processor set up in Widnes? Or wherever else needs jobs?
    Question - have you ever been to Wisbech...?

    My "arrogance and condescension" is just reality. People aren't moving to east anglia - a place they don't want to live - to do jobs they don't want to do at a cost they can't afford. Media house price in Wizzy is £177k vs £130k in Widnes.

    So your Wizzy food factory needs to cover the 36% higher house price and the higher cost of living before you even start trying to make the job and the prospects look attractive.
    So your answer seems to be to import cheap foreign labour to live in squalid conditions in Wisbech so that Wizzy Food Co can maintain its profit margins?

    I mean personally I am all in favour of migration and people being able to move where they want for whatever reason but your argument is actually utterly illogical. So long as the factory is in Wisbech (which funnily enough I drove past last night coming back from a wedding) then the food manufacturers must pay enough for the workers to be able to afford to live there whether those workers are from Widnes or Wroclaw. The days of expecting people to work for less than a living wage should be behind us.
    I agree with you - wages need to be higher. BTW a lot of the operators in anglia are not sat on mega operating margins. As we now have less workers from Wroclaw then workers must come from Widnes etc. The problem is that they cannot pay enough wages to do so.

    Besides which, there is a bigger problem. Lets assume that there is affordable housing. Lets assume that there is a large scale increase in food prices (think 30%+) to create sufficient margins to allow wages to rise significantly. So the £ gap to promote internal migration isn't there.

    But its still Wisbech. An awful lot of people don't want to live in the sticks. Especially when its as dull as the farming flatlands of eastern England.
    Not a view I have much sympathy with. I didn't want to spend most of my working life in the sorts of dives I have had to operate - and I am not just talking about Aberdeen (that is a joke by the way, I really like Aberdeen). I would have loved to have been at home every Christmas rather than stuck in some arse end of the world. But you go where the work is. Something far too many people seem to have forgotten these days.
    Alas the modern tory party has moved on from 'on your bike' to denigrating those of us who take part in economic migration.
    Tbf a lot of that is a colour chart thing, with a dash of ur-Englishness.

  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,259

    Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, has told the Telegraph that he is ruling out vaxports for pubs.

    Probably because he knows the public wouldn't accept the idea.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,059
    malcolmg said:

    DougSeal said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    Pagan2 said:

    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"
    Exactly so, Roger. All the dissembling that goes on around this. It's as if being a Tory is something shameful. Why would anyone feel that? Beats me.

    "I'm not a member. I've voted for different parties over the years. It was about Brexit. You're forgetting the choice. It was that or Corbyn."

    Bla bla bla. None of this is relevant. It's interesting but it's off the point. If you voted Tory in the last general election YOU ARE A TORY and this state persists until rectified by a sincereaf and firm intention to vote otherwise in the next one.
    But to be a PB Tory is a sinuous and quicksilver thing, hard to pin down.

    Afaics the people who voted for Cameron and now despise him are the same people who voted for May and now despise her, and also the the same people who voted for BJ but are still defending his every ineptitude and moral failing.

    The one consistency seems to be that they bear no responsibility for any of the consequences of voting for these fine folk.
    Yes, "PB Tories", a grouping unto itself, and it's not so simple as if you're a Tory (per my official definition) and you're on PB then you are one. That is not the case. It's a necessary condition but it isn't sufficient. You can be a Tory on PB yet not a PB Tory. It took me a while to suss all this out but now I have. I know who is a PB Tory and who isn't. But it's pure instinct, I can't define or explain it. Won't give any examples either way so as not to personalize. Too much of that from fruity Le ... from one particular poster yesterday.
    There’s a tendency on here to group those you don’t like into the grouping you don’t like. Such as Malc’s insistence that I’m a Unionist. Or Heathener’s suggestion that I’m a Tory. When I’m neither. I don’t think anyway.
    A stalker just has to stalk, you cannot post without putting me in any and all topics. Your man crush is misplaced.
    Oh Malc. You are a tease.
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818

    It's fabulous to see so many on here, of all political persuasions and none, arguing that higher wages are needed to attract workers to low-paid, often unattractive jobs, from fruit pickers to hospitality staff to care workers, where there are labour shortages.

    Wage rises will, of course lead to:
    a) reduced profits, or
    b) increased prices, or
    c) both.

    I suspect the history of capitalism, and current corporate greed, tells us that it won't be a) or c).
    So we're left with b).

    It is simply market forces. There is no intrinsic 'worth' to many jobs out there, right? I don't see how anybody gets to designate who should or should not be well paid in the private sector.
    Well the public school old boy clique do have that role and have decided that instead of the 10x average earnings the board members of big companies used to receive, 100x and ever increasing is more appropriate.
    Of course the biggest increases in wealth in recent times have been made by the heads of companies who profited fabulously from lockdown. Amazon etc. The rules on retail could hardly have been more advantageous to Bezos if he'd written them himself. Meanwhile small businesses have been destroyed by the thousand.

    Its incredible how quiet the left is about all this. Much easier to target middle class brits in the home counties. Low hanging fruit, I guess.

  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,059

    DougSeal said:


    Prof Francois Balloux
    @BallouxFrancois
    ·
    16h
    Some mentioned this tweet may have been unfair. I personally don't feel it was. Several 'media covid experts' claim credentials in public health and infectious disease epidemiology that they seem to have made up during the pandemic. I feel it's fair to call out those charlatans.

    I’d love to be a fly on the wall at the UCL Christmas Party when him and Christina Pagel run into each other.
    Are there actually any epidemiologists on iSAGE?
    Tollulah (sp?) Oni is I think.
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818
    Andy_JS said:

    Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, has told the Telegraph that he is ruling out vaxports for pubs.

    Probably because he knows the public wouldn't accept the idea.
    If domestic vaxx passports come in, then sure as eggs is eggs we will get them for pubs eventually.

    Its just too tempting when the pressure is on in the winter to 'do something'. Cases rising. NHS leaders screeching. Michie all over Sky and the Beeb. Its just too easy.

  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,259

    Andy_JS said:

    FPT:

    "Polling Canada
    @CanadianPolling
    Federal Polling:

    Con: 33% (-1)
    Lib: 31% (-2)
    NDP: 18% (+2)
    BQ: 6% (-2)
    People's Party: 6% (+4)
    Green: 5% (-2)"

    https://twitter.com/CanadianPolling/status/1429196195294027784

    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?

    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's the brainchild of former Conservative MP for Beauce, Maxime Bernier.

    He received 49% in the 2017 Conservative leadership challenge, so he probably would have been prime minister of Canada at some stage if he'd done slightly better on that occasion.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Conservative_Party_of_Canada_leadership_election
  • TheWhiteRabbitTheWhiteRabbit Posts: 12,387
    edited August 2021
    Apologies for getting on my soapbox for a moment, but as a reluctant remainer in 2016 I do feel that - despite this forum and many others having been discussing Brexit for 5 years solid - there is a very important view (or rather two linked views) that gets overlooked.

    First, it is pretty obvious that EU migration helped the UK paper over some of the cracks of its labour market. There were, pretty obviously, EU migrants who (helped by a lower cost of living) were able to accept wages that UK workers would not accept. But this was not just an economic point (otherwise you could just suggest it was a benefit of the EU) but rather a social one, with whole UK policing teams set up to deal with routine exploitation.

    Similarly, as discussed on here, road haulage was also being propped up by EU labour, tax avoidance, and, again, whole police taskforces set up to deal with various forms of exploitation.

    Secondly, just as Brexit has shone a light on that, it has shown up various non-sensical assumptions about how EU migrants lived and worked in the UK before 2016. Every time the Guardian finds some social worker at risk of being deported because they applied on the day before the deadline, you realise that there are many more flew under the radar. People who had been in the UK for thirty years on the back of their Spanish passport, with no rationalisation of their status within the UK system. People who came with their Portuguese-passport-holding parents at the age of 4 and have no ties there - but no UK passport here either.

    We know that the Government badly underestimated the number of people entitled to apply for settled status (even though the ONS continues to argue about how wrong it actually was). if the census is even half accurate I think it will get another shock. And I think it will be proven wrong over and over again because until 2016 this stuff mattered - it mattered to people's pensions, benefits, and their use of public resources - but not enough to swing the needle.

    It really erks me that nobody wants to talk about these problems that existed on 22 June 2016. They're not even partisan. They would still have been problems if we'd voted Remain.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,537

    Sandpit said:

    Floater said:

    https://twitter.com/Global_Mil_Info/status/1429407915362902018

    The Pentagon has activated the Civil Reserve Air Fleet. Aircraft from each of the U.S. commercial airlines have been requested to assist airlift operations after Afghans & Americans are transported out of Kabul.

    That’s what the British have been doing all along - using mil planes for the flights out of Kabul to UAE, then chartering commercial flights onwards to the UK.

    The US have been going from Kabul to Qatar, then continuing in military planes to Germany and ultimately back to the States.

    Activating the CRAF frees up more C17s for the Kabul leg of the journey.
    Isnt this logistics 101? Quite baffling why this was not done from the start.
    You’d have thought so, but US mil are so big and full of rules, that they don’t think outside the box in situations like this.

    A flight from Dubai to Brize Norton is not going to be unsafe, so why should a flight from Qatar to an American field - apart from civvy pilots haven’t got the right clearances or permissions to land at an American base, that sort of thing.

    Anyway, they’ve sorted it now, so presumably there’s a line of civvy 777s heading for Qatar in the next few hours.
  • maaarshmaaarsh Posts: 3,391

    RobD said:

    It's fabulous to see so many on here, of all political persuasions and none, arguing that higher wages are needed to attract workers to low-paid, often unattractive jobs, from fruit pickers to hospitality staff to care workers, where there are labour shortages.

    Wage rises will, of course lead to:
    a) reduced profits, or
    b) increased prices, or
    c) both.

    I suspect the history of capitalism, and current corporate greed, tells us that it won't be a) or c).
    So we're left with b).

    Why not increased prices and increased profits?
    Besides what on earth is wrong with higher wages and higher profits?

    So long as they're economically justified, they should be a good thing?
    If they resulted from being in the EU we'd all agree they're a good thing, but as they're coming from Brexit several people can't even entertain that they might be.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,739
    DougSeal said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    Pagan2 said:

    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"
    Exactly so, Roger. All the dissembling that goes on around this. It's as if being a Tory is something shameful. Why would anyone feel that? Beats me.

    "I'm not a member. I've voted for different parties over the years. It was about Brexit. You're forgetting the choice. It was that or Corbyn."

    Bla bla bla. None of this is relevant. It's interesting but it's off the point. If you voted Tory in the last general election YOU ARE A TORY and this state persists until rectified by a sincereaf and firm intention to vote otherwise in the next one.
    But to be a PB Tory is a sinuous and quicksilver thing, hard to pin down.

    Afaics the people who voted for Cameron and now despise him are the same people who voted for May and now despise her, and also the the same people who voted for BJ but are still defending his every ineptitude and moral failing.

    The one consistency seems to be that they bear no responsibility for any of the consequences of voting for these fine folk.
    Yes, "PB Tories", a grouping unto itself, and it's not so simple as if you're a Tory (per my official definition) and you're on PB then you are one. That is not the case. It's a necessary condition but it isn't sufficient. You can be a Tory on PB yet not a PB Tory. It took me a while to suss all this out but now I have. I know who is a PB Tory and who isn't. But it's pure instinct, I can't define or explain it. Won't give any examples either way so as not to personalize. Too much of that from fruity Le ... from one particular poster yesterday.
    There’s a tendency on here to group those you don’t like into the grouping you don’t like. Such as Malc’s insistence that I’m a Unionist. Or Heathener’s suggestion that I’m a Tory. When I’m neither. I don’t think anyway.
    Yes, but I'm honestly not doing that with this. PB Tory is a distinct and genuinely interesting grouping. I'd have a drink with most of them. Just the one.
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,533

    Taz said:

    https://twitter.com/BBCNewsPR/status/1429390286476693511

    Katie Hind is a laughably poor journalist

    The same nonsense happened when the BBC appointed Robbie Gibb, brother of a govt minister, to a high profile role. Overtly partisan people see bias where it just does not exist. I am sure Jess Brammar will be right for the role and do a great job.
    Why is the "Showbiz Editor" writing this piece on BBC News gathering?
    It’s a Saturday night and everyone else is out on the lash.
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 20,359

    It's fabulous to see so many on here, of all political persuasions and none, arguing that higher wages are needed to attract workers to low-paid, often unattractive jobs, from fruit pickers to hospitality staff to care workers, where there are labour shortages.

    Wage rises will, of course lead to:
    a) reduced profits, or
    b) increased prices, or
    c) both.

    I suspect the history of capitalism, and current corporate greed, tells us that it won't be a) or c).
    So we're left with b).

    It is simply market forces. There is no intrinsic 'worth' to many jobs out there, right? I don't see how anybody gets to designate who should or should not be well paid in the private sector.
    Well the public school old boy clique do have that role and have decided that instead of the 10x average earnings the board members of big companies used to receive, 100x and ever increasing is more appropriate.
    Of course the biggest increases in wealth in recent times have been made by the heads of companies who profited fabulously from lockdown. Amazon etc. The rules on retail could hardly have been more advantageous to Bezos if he'd written them himself. Meanwhile small businesses have been destroyed by the thousand.

    Its incredible how quiet the left is about all this. Much easier to target middle class brits in the home counties. Low hanging fruit, I guess.

    The UK govt introduced a new digital services tax last year to target online marketplaces - and managed to exempt Amazon but make small businesses pay! Incredible incompetence, should be a scandal, but meh, thats what we voted for, bungling incompetence.
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818

    I see imbecilic political slogan is trending. Wait till Tony hears about 45 minutes from destruction and where that led us.

    Whatever your view on Blair I think we can all agree that the last two days has shown that for the mainstream media he was, is and will always remain, the absolute BOY.

    They loved him then, they love him now and they always will.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,845

    Sandpit said:

    Floater said:

    https://twitter.com/Global_Mil_Info/status/1429407915362902018

    The Pentagon has activated the Civil Reserve Air Fleet. Aircraft from each of the U.S. commercial airlines have been requested to assist airlift operations after Afghans & Americans are transported out of Kabul.

    That’s what the British have been doing all along - using mil planes for the flights out of Kabul to UAE, then chartering commercial flights onwards to the UK.

    The US have been going from Kabul to Qatar, then continuing in military planes to Germany and ultimately back to the States.

    Activating the CRAF frees up more C17s for the Kabul leg of the journey.
    Isnt this logistics 101? Quite baffling why this was not done from the start.
    The RAF have 6 x C-17 in the forward fleet so maybe 4 for ops if they are very lucky so they simply didn't have enough jets to keep flying them all the way to the UK. The USAF have 200+ so, until now, they have had the luxury of not needing the CRAF jets.

    The process of deplaning and switching people to different aircraft will be an organistational and security pain in the dick at Al Dhafra and Al Udeid so best avoided until it's absolutely necessary.
  • Frankly I couldn't give a toss what a BBC journalist has written on Twitter. If the job they actually do is good then I don't give a toss.

    It's why I have no time for this "Laura K is actually a Tory" stuff. Doesn't seem to impact what the BBC actually do.

    The BBC is functioning as intended, receiving complaints from both sides as per usual
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,886
    kinabalu said:

    DougSeal said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    Pagan2 said:

    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"
    Exactly so, Roger. All the dissembling that goes on around this. It's as if being a Tory is something shameful. Why would anyone feel that? Beats me.

    "I'm not a member. I've voted for different parties over the years. It was about Brexit. You're forgetting the choice. It was that or Corbyn."

    Bla bla bla. None of this is relevant. It's interesting but it's off the point. If you voted Tory in the last general election YOU ARE A TORY and this state persists until rectified by a sincereaf and firm intention to vote otherwise in the next one.
    But to be a PB Tory is a sinuous and quicksilver thing, hard to pin down.

    Afaics the people who voted for Cameron and now despise him are the same people who voted for May and now despise her, and also the the same people who voted for BJ but are still defending his every ineptitude and moral failing.

    The one consistency seems to be that they bear no responsibility for any of the consequences of voting for these fine folk.
    Yes, "PB Tories", a grouping unto itself, and it's not so simple as if you're a Tory (per my official definition) and you're on PB then you are one. That is not the case. It's a necessary condition but it isn't sufficient. You can be a Tory on PB yet not a PB Tory. It took me a while to suss all this out but now I have. I know who is a PB Tory and who isn't. But it's pure instinct, I can't define or explain it. Won't give any examples either way so as not to personalize. Too much of that from fruity Le ... from one particular poster yesterday.
    There’s a tendency on here to group those you don’t like into the grouping you don’t like. Such as Malc’s insistence that I’m a Unionist. Or Heathener’s suggestion that I’m a Tory. When I’m neither. I don’t think anyway.
    Yes, but I'm honestly not doing that with this. PB Tory is a distinct and genuinely interesting grouping. I'd have a drink with most of them. Just the one.
    As long as you bought that first, so would we!
  • https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1429411918675169280

    I bet the Daily Mail will be livid about this cancel culture!
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540
    THE SNP leadership's "grudge and grievance" tactics play into anti-Englishness in Scotland and undermine the independence cause, a former deputy leader of the party has said.

    In his forthcoming autobiography, Jim Sillars criticised Nicola Sturgeon for thinking "she can advance towards independence best by being at constant loggerheads with Westminster".


    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/19529738.snps-grudge-grievance-tactics-fuel-anti-englishness-says-jim-sillars/
  • CiceroCicero Posts: 2,162
    Andy_JS said:

    Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, has told the Telegraph that he is ruling out vaxports for pubs.

    Probably because he knows the public wouldn't accept the idea.
    In France you need your passe sanitaire to enter any resto or bar. The initial hostility has given way to a wary acceptance and I think that GBNi will go through the same process. If the choice is limited access or closure, then the vaxpass will come in even despite the nutty anti vaxxers. The majority of adults are now vaxed and they will take it badly if the nutters continue to spoil life for them.

  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,537
    Cicero said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, has told the Telegraph that he is ruling out vaxports for pubs.

    Probably because he knows the public wouldn't accept the idea.
    In France you need your passe sanitaire to enter any resto or bar. The initial hostility has given way to a wary acceptance and I think that GBNi will go through the same process. If the choice is limited access or closure, then the vaxpass will come in even despite the nutty anti vaxxers. The majority of adults are now vaxed and they will take it badly if the nutters continue to spoil life for them.

    The question is why should everyone have to jump through additional hoops, becuase of a few refuseniks?
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,886
    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    Pagan2 said:

    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"
    Exactly so, Roger. All the dissembling that goes on around this. It's as if being a Tory is something shameful. Why would anyone feel that? Beats me.

    "I'm not a member. I've voted for different parties over the years. It was about Brexit. You're forgetting the choice. It was that or Corbyn."

    Bla bla bla. None of this is relevant. It's interesting but it's off the point. If you voted Tory in the last general election YOU ARE A TORY and this state persists until rectified by a sincereaf and firm intention to vote otherwise in the next one.
    But to be a PB Tory is a sinuous and quicksilver thing, hard to pin down.

    Afaics the people who voted for Cameron and now despise him are the same people who voted for May and now despise her, and also the the same people who voted for BJ but are still defending his every ineptitude and moral failing.

    The one consistency seems to be that they bear no responsibility for any of the consequences of voting for these fine folk.
    Yes, "PB Tories", a grouping unto itself, and it's not so simple as if you're a Tory (per my official definition) and you're on PB then you are one. That is not the case. It's a necessary condition but it isn't sufficient. You can be a Tory on PB yet not a PB Tory. It took me a while to suss all this out but now I have. I know who is a PB Tory and who isn't. But it's pure instinct, I can't define or explain it. Won't give any examples either way so as not to personalize. Too much of that from fruity Le ... from one particular poster yesterday.
    White Van/Red Wall Tory is now vastly underrepresented on here.
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 20,359

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    Pagan2 said:

    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"
    Exactly so, Roger. All the dissembling that goes on around this. It's as if being a Tory is something shameful. Why would anyone feel that? Beats me.

    "I'm not a member. I've voted for different parties over the years. It was about Brexit. You're forgetting the choice. It was that or Corbyn."

    Bla bla bla. None of this is relevant. It's interesting but it's off the point. If you voted Tory in the last general election YOU ARE A TORY and this state persists until rectified by a sincereaf and firm intention to vote otherwise in the next one.
    But to be a PB Tory is a sinuous and quicksilver thing, hard to pin down.

    Afaics the people who voted for Cameron and now despise him are the same people who voted for May and now despise her, and also the the same people who voted for BJ but are still defending his every ineptitude and moral failing.

    The one consistency seems to be that they bear no responsibility for any of the consequences of voting for these fine folk.
    Yes, "PB Tories", a grouping unto itself, and it's not so simple as if you're a Tory (per my official definition) and you're on PB then you are one. That is not the case. It's a necessary condition but it isn't sufficient. You can be a Tory on PB yet not a PB Tory. It took me a while to suss all this out but now I have. I know who is a PB Tory and who isn't. But it's pure instinct, I can't define or explain it. Won't give any examples either way so as not to personalize. Too much of that from fruity Le ... from one particular poster yesterday.
    White Van/Red Wall Tory is now vastly underrepresented on here.
    We will need self driving vans to allow them to match the post counts of the middle managers, academics and retired.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540
    edited August 2021
    Covid: New Zealand pandemic strategy in doubt amid Delta spread

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-58297895
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,692

    I see imbecilic political slogan is trending. Wait till Tony hears about 45 minutes from destruction and where that led us.

    Whatever your view on Blair I think we can all agree that the last two days has shown that for the mainstream media he was, is and will always remain, the absolute BOY.

    They loved him then, they love him now and they always will.
    Not the first time that I would be in strong disagreement with the mainstream media.
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818
    Cicero said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, has told the Telegraph that he is ruling out vaxports for pubs.

    Probably because he knows the public wouldn't accept the idea.
    In France you need your passe sanitaire to enter any resto or bar. The initial hostility has given way to a wary acceptance and I think that GBNi will go through the same process. If the choice is limited access or closure, then the vaxpass will come in even despite the nutty anti vaxxers. The majority of adults are now vaxed and they will take it badly if the nutters continue to spoil life for them.

    We know now that fully vaccinated people can contract covid and also pass their infections on to other fully vaccinated people.

    So the point of a domestic vaccine passport is, what, precisely?
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,533

    https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1429411918675169280

    I bet the Daily Mail will be livid about this cancel culture!

    His tweets did nothing to help and really just play into the Mails hands. I also doubt the attacks were misogynist as he claims, just politics
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    I just tried to watch GB News. Oh dear. Oh dearie dearie me. Oh dearie dearie dearie dearie dearie dearie me.
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    Pagan2 said:

    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"
    Exactly so, Roger. All the dissembling that goes on around this. It's as if being a Tory is something shameful. Why would anyone feel that? Beats me.

    "I'm not a member. I've voted for different parties over the years. It was about Brexit. You're forgetting the choice. It was that or Corbyn."

    Bla bla bla. None of this is relevant. It's interesting but it's off the point. If you voted Tory in the last general election YOU ARE A TORY and this state persists until rectified by a sincereaf and firm intention to vote otherwise in the next one.
    But to be a PB Tory is a sinuous and quicksilver thing, hard to pin down.

    Afaics the people who voted for Cameron and now despise him are the same people who voted for May and now despise her, and also the the same people who voted for BJ but are still defending his every ineptitude and moral failing.

    The one consistency seems to be that they bear no responsibility for any of the consequences of voting for these fine folk.
    Yes, "PB Tories", a grouping unto itself, and it's not so simple as if you're a Tory (per my official definition) and you're on PB then you are one. That is not the case. It's a necessary condition but it isn't sufficient. You can be a Tory on PB yet not a PB Tory. It took me a while to suss all this out but now I have. I know who is a PB Tory and who isn't. But it's pure instinct, I can't define or explain it. Won't give any examples either way so as not to personalize. Too much of that from fruity Le ... from one particular poster yesterday.
    White Van/Red Wall Tory is now vastly underrepresented on here.
    In opinion polling too? I do wonder.
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,533

    Frankly I couldn't give a toss what a BBC journalist has written on Twitter. If the job they actually do is good then I don't give a toss.

    It's why I have no time for this "Laura K is actually a Tory" stuff. Doesn't seem to impact what the BBC actually do.

    The BBC is functioning as intended, receiving complaints from both sides as per usual

    That’s twice I’ve agreed with you in one day.

    Should I have a lie down ?
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    Pagan2 said:

    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"
    Exactly so, Roger. All the dissembling that goes on around this. It's as if being a Tory is something shameful. Why would anyone feel that? Beats me.

    "I'm not a member. I've voted for different parties over the years. It was about Brexit. You're forgetting the choice. It was that or Corbyn."

    Bla bla bla. None of this is relevant. It's interesting but it's off the point. If you voted Tory in the last general election YOU ARE A TORY and this state persists until rectified by a sincereaf and firm intention to vote otherwise in the next one.
    But to be a PB Tory is a sinuous and quicksilver thing, hard to pin down.

    Afaics the people who voted for Cameron and now despise him are the same people who voted for May and now despise her, and also the the same people who voted for BJ but are still defending his every ineptitude and moral failing.

    The one consistency seems to be that they bear no responsibility for any of the consequences of voting for these fine folk.
    Yes, "PB Tories", a grouping unto itself, and it's not so simple as if you're a Tory (per my official definition) and you're on PB then you are one. That is not the case. It's a necessary condition but it isn't sufficient. You can be a Tory on PB yet not a PB Tory. It took me a while to suss all this out but now I have. I know who is a PB Tory and who isn't. But it's pure instinct, I can't define or explain it. Won't give any examples either way so as not to personalize. Too much of that from fruity Le ... from one particular poster yesterday.
    White Van/Red Wall Tory is now vastly underrepresented on here.
    We will need self driving vans to allow them to match the post counts of the middle managers, academics and retired.
    My theory is that most folk on here are unemployed and unemployable.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    Pagan2 said:

    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"
    Exactly so, Roger. All the dissembling that goes on around this. It's as if being a Tory is something shameful. Why would anyone feel that? Beats me.

    "I'm not a member. I've voted for different parties over the years. It was about Brexit. You're forgetting the choice. It was that or Corbyn."

    Bla bla bla. None of this is relevant. It's interesting but it's off the point. If you voted Tory in the last general election YOU ARE A TORY and this state persists until rectified by a sincereaf and firm intention to vote otherwise in the next one.
    But to be a PB Tory is a sinuous and quicksilver thing, hard to pin down.

    Afaics the people who voted for Cameron and now despise him are the same people who voted for May and now despise her, and also the the same people who voted for BJ but are still defending his every ineptitude and moral failing.

    The one consistency seems to be that they bear no responsibility for any of the consequences of voting for these fine folk.
    Yes, "PB Tories", a grouping unto itself, and it's not so simple as if you're a Tory (per my official definition) and you're on PB then you are one. That is not the case. It's a necessary condition but it isn't sufficient. You can be a Tory on PB yet not a PB Tory. It took me a while to suss all this out but now I have. I know who is a PB Tory and who isn't. But it's pure instinct, I can't define or explain it. Won't give any examples either way so as not to personalize. Too much of that from fruity Le ... from one particular poster yesterday.
    White Van/Red Wall Tory is now vastly underrepresented on here.
    I want a SLabber. They’re funny.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,059

    Covid: New Zealand pandemic strategy in doubt amid Delta spread

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-58297895

    NZ has a slim chance, I think, of getting the genie back in the bottle. Australia though, and in particular NSW, had their last zero covid day in June.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,650
    Cicero said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, has told the Telegraph that he is ruling out vaxports for pubs.

    Probably because he knows the public wouldn't accept the idea.
    In France you need your passe sanitaire to enter any resto or bar. The initial hostility has given way to a wary acceptance and I think that GBNi will go through the same process. If the choice is limited access or closure, then the vaxpass will come in even despite the nutty anti vaxxers. The majority of adults are now vaxed and they will take it badly if the nutters continue to spoil life for them.
    You're aware that everything is open?
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,916
    Mr. Tyndall, indeed. I once had a remarkably civilised disagreement with a stranger on Twitter who subscribed to your view.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,641

    THE SNP leadership's "grudge and grievance" tactics play into anti-Englishness in Scotland and undermine the independence cause, a former deputy leader of the party has said.

    In his forthcoming autobiography, Jim Sillars criticised Nicola Sturgeon for thinking "she can advance towards independence best by being at constant loggerheads with Westminster".


    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/19529738.snps-grudge-grievance-tactics-fuel-anti-englishness-says-jim-sillars/

    SNP's Gordon Brown, keeps being brought out of his crypt when unionists are on the ropes.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,059

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    Pagan2 said:

    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"
    Exactly so, Roger. All the dissembling that goes on around this. It's as if being a Tory is something shameful. Why would anyone feel that? Beats me.

    "I'm not a member. I've voted for different parties over the years. It was about Brexit. You're forgetting the choice. It was that or Corbyn."

    Bla bla bla. None of this is relevant. It's interesting but it's off the point. If you voted Tory in the last general election YOU ARE A TORY and this state persists until rectified by a sincereaf and firm intention to vote otherwise in the next one.
    But to be a PB Tory is a sinuous and quicksilver thing, hard to pin down.

    Afaics the people who voted for Cameron and now despise him are the same people who voted for May and now despise her, and also the the same people who voted for BJ but are still defending his every ineptitude and moral failing.

    The one consistency seems to be that they bear no responsibility for any of the consequences of voting for these fine folk.
    Yes, "PB Tories", a grouping unto itself, and it's not so simple as if you're a Tory (per my official definition) and you're on PB then you are one. That is not the case. It's a necessary condition but it isn't sufficient. You can be a Tory on PB yet not a PB Tory. It took me a while to suss all this out but now I have. I know who is a PB Tory and who isn't. But it's pure instinct, I can't define or explain it. Won't give any examples either way so as not to personalize. Too much of that from fruity Le ... from one particular poster yesterday.
    White Van/Red Wall Tory is now vastly underrepresented on here.
    We will need self driving vans to allow them to match the post counts of the middle managers, academics and retired.
    And lawyers.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,650
    https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/rescue-dogs-shot-dead-by-nsw-council-due-to-covid-19-restrictions-20210821-p58ksh.html

    Several impounded dogs due to be rescued by a shelter have instead been shot dead by a rural council in NSW under its interpretation of COVID-19 restrictions, alarming animal activists and prompting a government probe.

    Bourke Shire Council, in the state’s north-west, killed the dogs to prevent volunteers at a Cobar-based animal shelter from travelling to pick up the animals last week, according to council’s watchdog, the Office of Local Government.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 38,957
    Cicero said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, has told the Telegraph that he is ruling out vaxports for pubs.

    Probably because he knows the public wouldn't accept the idea.
    In France you need your passe sanitaire to enter any resto or bar. The initial hostility has given way to a wary acceptance and I think that GBNi will go through the same process. If the choice is limited access or closure, then the vaxpass will come in even despite the nutty anti vaxxers. The majority of adults are now vaxed and they will take it badly if the nutters continue to spoil life for them.

    Isn't it to some degree because of, rather than despite the antivaxxers?
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,059
    edited August 2021

    https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/rescue-dogs-shot-dead-by-nsw-council-due-to-covid-19-restrictions-20210821-p58ksh.html

    Several impounded dogs due to be rescued by a shelter have instead been shot dead by a rural council in NSW under its interpretation of COVID-19 restrictions, alarming animal activists and prompting a government probe.

    Bourke Shire Council, in the state’s north-west, killed the dogs to prevent volunteers at a Cobar-based animal shelter from travelling to pick up the animals last week, according to council’s watchdog, the Office of Local Government.

    They’ve lost it completely
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,533
    edited August 2021

    I just tried to watch GB News. Oh dear. Oh dearie dearie me. Oh dearie dearie dearie dearie dearie dearie me.

    I have just switched in. Today’s hot topic. ‘Employ a Prisoner’. Dear me, and the picture quality is like a third rate YouTube upload. Back to Columbo for me.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 38,957

    Carnyx said:

    malcolmg said:

    Mr. Dickson, I do not trust the Government or the Opposition with that sort of nonsense over here.

    Fair point. If you are referring to the Westminster government. I would trust the Scottish one.
    I would not trust the current crooks running Scottish government any more than I trust Tories. Both lying cheating stealing no marks.
    Sadly my response would be that of course they are - they are politicians.

    I have genuine admiration for the fact that you are able to separate the cause of independence from many of those who are advocating it but who are not to be admired. Sadly I think that right now Sturgeon is probably the best chance Scotland has of getting that independence but - a la Churchill after WW2 - I hope that once that is achieved the Scots have the good sense to dump Sturgeon and her cabal for some politicians who are not quite so mired in the cesspool.
    But that is part of the point - to be able to dump those ruling Scotland should we so wish. We can't dump Mr Johnson and his crew.
    Yes you can. To dump Boris, vote Labour. Voting SNP might hasten independence but in the mean time, it makes it easier for the Conservatives to win elections. That's the paradox.
    An interesting argument, not least because the anti-Tory vote is already split 3 ways and that would make it worse, given how low Slab are in the polls compared to the Tories.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,692
    malcolmg said:

    THE SNP leadership's "grudge and grievance" tactics play into anti-Englishness in Scotland and undermine the independence cause, a former deputy leader of the party has said.

    In his forthcoming autobiography, Jim Sillars criticised Nicola Sturgeon for thinking "she can advance towards independence best by being at constant loggerheads with Westminster".


    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/19529738.snps-grudge-grievance-tactics-fuel-anti-englishness-says-jim-sillars/

    SNP's Gordon Brown, keeps being brought out of his crypt when unionists are on the ropes.
    At least Broonie was an mp and pm relatively recently; Jim hasn't been an mp since 1992, and never been anything in Holyrood. Fuxake, even Michael Forsyth has less tenuous connections to Scottish democratic relevance!
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,739

    I see imbecilic political slogan is trending. Wait till Tony hears about 45 minutes from destruction and where that led us.

    He's still wanting to shake that kaleidoscope.
  • TresTres Posts: 2,149
    edited August 2021

    Tres said:

    tlg86 said:

    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:

    DavidL said:

    Brexit is no longer a major issue

    Food manufacturers and restaurants are scrambling to recruit prisoners to help ease the “desperate” shortage of workers caused by Covid-19 and Brexit.
    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/shops-farms-and-restaurants-turn-to-prisons-to-fill-staff-shortages-j2qgd38td
    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.
    And the reason why we need central command and control is that your plan delivers two things.
    (1) We lose whole chunks of industry that are essential
    (2) We have a sustained and embedded unemployment issue
    1) No we don't. If the jobs are essential then they can command whatever price is required to fill them. If they can't, they weren't essential in the first place.

    2) No we don't. How do we get a sustained unemployment issue as a result of full employment? The jobs that are the most productive pay whatever is required to fill the vacancies, those that are least productive die off, we have full employment and higher productivity.
    Its endless rhetoric disconnected from reality and increasingly from sanity as well.

    (1) How do anglian food producers pay enough to get factory shift workers to be able to want and afford to move to (shudder) Wisbech? Its laughable to suggest they can, so without labour they shut and don't get replaced. We need food, so we will import more instead, which means we have a farming sector unable to sell its produce as the processors have gone so that goes as well.

    (2) Sustained unemployment in the places where unemployment is a structural issue. We already have effective full employment in parts of the country. The jobs aren't where the unemployed are.
    What arrogance and condescension.

    Why can't people move to Wisbech? Or people living in Wisbech fill those vacancies? Why can people from Warsaw move to Wisbech but people from Widnes can't?

    If there's sustained unemployment maybe the unemployed should fill one of the jobs that are on offer? If the jobs aren't where they are, they can move to where the jobs are. Or employers can move to where the people are.

    If there's an abundance of labour available at Widnes but not Wisbech then why doesn't a processor set up in Widnes? Or wherever else needs jobs?
    Question - have you ever been to Wisbech...?

    My "arrogance and condescension" is just reality. People aren't moving to east anglia - a place they don't want to live - to do jobs they don't want to do at a cost they can't afford. Media house price in Wizzy is £177k vs £130k in Widnes.

    So your Wizzy food factory needs to cover the 36% higher house price and the higher cost of living before you even start trying to make the job and the prospects look attractive.
    So your answer seems to be to import cheap foreign labour to live in squalid conditions in Wisbech so that Wizzy Food Co can maintain its profit margins?

    I mean personally I am all in favour of migration and people being able to move where they want for whatever reason but your argument is actually utterly illogical. So long as the factory is in Wisbech (which funnily enough I drove past last night coming back from a wedding) then the food manufacturers must pay enough for the workers to be able to afford to live there whether those workers are from Widnes or Wroclaw. The days of expecting people to work for less than a living wage should be behind us.
    I agree with you - wages need to be higher. BTW a lot of the operators in anglia are not sat on mega operating margins. As we now have less workers from Wroclaw then workers must come from Widnes etc. The problem is that they cannot pay enough wages to do so.

    Besides which, there is a bigger problem. Lets assume that there is affordable housing. Lets assume that there is a large scale increase in food prices (think 30%+) to create sufficient margins to allow wages to rise significantly. So the £ gap to promote internal migration isn't there.

    But its still Wisbech. An awful lot of people don't want to live in the sticks. Especially when its as dull as the farming flatlands of eastern England.
    Not a view I have much sympathy with. I didn't want to spend most of my working life in the sorts of dives I have had to operate - and I am not just talking about Aberdeen (that is a joke by the way, I really like Aberdeen). I would have loved to have been at home every Christmas rather than stuck in some arse end of the world. But you go where the work is. Something far too many people seem to have forgotten these days.
    Alas the modern tory party has moved on from 'on your bike' to denigrating those of us who take part in economic migration.
    [Citation Needed]
    That's Brexit. Your basic Tory parochialism. A pox on those ghastly people with the temerity to move more than fifty miles from where they were born.
  • PhilPhil Posts: 1,908

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    Pagan2 said:

    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"
    Exactly so, Roger. All the dissembling that goes on around this. It's as if being a Tory is something shameful. Why would anyone feel that? Beats me.

    "I'm not a member. I've voted for different parties over the years. It was about Brexit. You're forgetting the choice. It was that or Corbyn."

    Bla bla bla. None of this is relevant. It's interesting but it's off the point. If you voted Tory in the last general election YOU ARE A TORY and this state persists until rectified by a sincereaf and firm intention to vote otherwise in the next one.
    But to be a PB Tory is a sinuous and quicksilver thing, hard to pin down.

    Afaics the people who voted for Cameron and now despise him are the same people who voted for May and now despise her, and also the the same people who voted for BJ but are still defending his every ineptitude and moral failing.

    The one consistency seems to be that they bear no responsibility for any of the consequences of voting for these fine folk.
    Yes, "PB Tories", a grouping unto itself, and it's not so simple as if you're a Tory (per my official definition) and you're on PB then you are one. That is not the case. It's a necessary condition but it isn't sufficient. You can be a Tory on PB yet not a PB Tory. It took me a while to suss all this out but now I have. I know who is a PB Tory and who isn't. But it's pure instinct, I can't define or explain it. Won't give any examples either way so as not to personalize. Too much of that from fruity Le ... from one particular poster yesterday.
    White Van/Red Wall Tory is now vastly underrepresented on here.
    In opinion polling too? I do wonder.
    Quite possibly. It’s was always YouGov’s USP wasn’t it? That they had a deeper bench of people drawn from this subset of the population to poll, who weren’t being reached by companies who were relying on phone polls.
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818
    Imbecile-watch latest/

    Former British commander in Afghanistan Richard Kemp says on US TV that Biden should not be impeached.

    He should, instead, be court martialled.

    Biden's failure notwithstanding, is this going to backfire on Britain at some point? are the Americans, even the Trumpists, going to say you know what, we've heard just about enough from you limeys for the time being...
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,003
    The Sunday Rawnsley:

    When it came to the calls that mattered over Afghanistan, Mr Johnson’s capacity to influence Mr Biden was less than that of the president’s dog. The withdrawal of what remained of the Nato presence in Afghanistan was dictated by abrupt and unilateral decisions made in Washington. Ministers privately admit that not only did they fail to see a resurgent Taliban coming, they have been reduced to second-guessing what the United States will do next.

    There has been much deserved mockery of the prime minister for going off on holiday even as the Taliban advanced on the gates of Kabul. The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, is taking heavier flak for being by his sun-lounger. It was definitely a dereliction of duty to be on the beach at such a grave moment, but behind that lies a much more brutal truth, one that many Britons, and the Conservative party in particular, find difficult to digest. It would have made little essential difference to the big picture if the two men had been chained to their desks. Britain’s powerlessness was the subtext to the hand-wringing speech that the prime minister gave to the emergency session of the Commons.

    If we are entering an era of American disengagement, the questions are acute for a Britain that chose to estrange itself from the liberal democracies in its neighbourhood at the same time as the US was becoming a less dependable partner. This will be a rough place for a country in the north-east Atlantic with lots of vital interests around the globe, but not the means to safeguard them by itself and no one it can count on as an all-weather friend.

    Cuts to defence spending have left Britain with its smallest armed forces since before the First World War. Our nation’s previous reputation as a superpower of “soft power” has been weakened by Brexit and the fading of its influence in Washington and further sapped by savage cuts to the aid budget. Britain hasn’t the clout to act by itself, but has diminished its ability to persuade others to act with it.

  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    malcolmg said:

    THE SNP leadership's "grudge and grievance" tactics play into anti-Englishness in Scotland and undermine the independence cause, a former deputy leader of the party has said.

    In his forthcoming autobiography, Jim Sillars criticised Nicola Sturgeon for thinking "she can advance towards independence best by being at constant loggerheads with Westminster".


    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/19529738.snps-grudge-grievance-tactics-fuel-anti-englishness-says-jim-sillars/

    SNP's Gordon Brown, keeps being brought out of his crypt when unionists are on the ropes.
    On the ropes?

    YES hasn't had a polling lead since April. Scotland's deficit is 23%, by far the highest in the western world (if we consider it as a country, which I suppose you do) making indy economically impossible. And Sturgeon has pushed back the date for the next Sindyref from "the first half of this parliament", to "around 2023", to "probably within the next 5 years, but let's talk about gender and green issues anyway"

    If that's "on the ropes" then Lord knows what Unionism "doing pretty well" might look like. Nigel Farage as First Minister abolishing Holyrood and making replacing Saint Andrew with Mrs Thatcher?
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 38,957

    THE SNP leadership's "grudge and grievance" tactics play into anti-Englishness in Scotland and undermine the independence cause, a former deputy leader of the party has said.

    In his forthcoming autobiography, Jim Sillars criticised Nicola Sturgeon for thinking "she can advance towards independence best by being at constant loggerheads with Westminster".


    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/19529738.snps-grudge-grievance-tactics-fuel-anti-englishness-says-jim-sillars/

    He hasn't been deputy leader or MP since 1992!
  • PhilPhil Posts: 1,908
    edited August 2021

    Imbecile-watch latest/

    Former British commander in Afghanistan Richard Kemp says on US TV that Biden should not be impeached.

    He should, instead, be court martialled.

    Biden's failure notwithstanding, is this going to backfire on Britain at some point? are the Americans, even the Trumpists, going to say you know what, we've heard just about enough from you limeys for the time being...

    Dammit, I’m in agreement with Contrarian. Must be something in the water.

    But yup, completely pointless grandstanding. The US may have stuffed us by making promises about their actions in Afghanistan that they had no intention of keeping, but what’s to be gained by going on about it now? Not a lot - we need to chalk it up as another note that the “Special Relationship” is more one sided than we like to admit in public & get on with doing the best we can in the current situation.

    Taking sides in internal US culture war issues (and this is definitely going to be elevated into being part of the culture war) is not going to help.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,739
    Taz said:

    https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1429411918675169280

    I bet the Daily Mail will be livid about this cancel culture!

    His tweets did nothing to help and really just play into the Mails hands. I also doubt the attacks were misogynist as he claims, just politics
    I caught some of "Talking Pints" with Farage the other evening. Sure enough he was sipping one during the show, and so was his guest, a beefy chap called Rusty Firkin who used to be a soldier. Two of them had a natter about this and that.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,059

    Imbecile-watch latest/

    Former British commander in Afghanistan Richard Kemp says on US TV that Biden should not be impeached.

    He should, instead, be court martialled.

    Biden's failure notwithstanding, is this going to backfire on Britain at some point? are the Americans, even the Trumpists, going to say you know what, we've heard just about enough from you limeys for the time being...

    You think they’re listening?
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818
    DougSeal said:

    Imbecile-watch latest/

    Former British commander in Afghanistan Richard Kemp says on US TV that Biden should not be impeached.

    He should, instead, be court martialled.

    Biden's failure notwithstanding, is this going to backfire on Britain at some point? are the Americans, even the Trumpists, going to say you know what, we've heard just about enough from you limeys for the time being...

    You think they’re listening?
    America? I have no idea. The Biden government? I'm not sure they are listening to anyone!
  • Mr. Tyndall, indeed. I once had a remarkably civilised disagreement with a stranger on Twitter who subscribed to your view.

    A civilised disagreement on twitter is, in itself, an historic event.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Taz said:

    https://twitter.com/BBCNewsPR/status/1429390286476693511

    Katie Hind is a laughably poor journalist

    The same nonsense happened when the BBC appointed Robbie Gibb, brother of a govt minister, to a high profile role. Overtly partisan people see bias where it just does not exist. I am sure Jess Brammar will be right for the role and do a great job.
    Why is the "Showbiz Editor" writing this piece on BBC News gathering?
    Wrong set of Gibb brothers.

    Imbecile-watch latest/

    Former British commander in Afghanistan Richard Kemp says on US TV that Biden should not be impeached.

    He should, instead, be court martialled.

    Biden's failure notwithstanding, is this going to backfire on Britain at some point? are the Americans, even the Trumpists, going to say you know what, we've heard just about enough from you limeys for the time being...

    Sort of good point, but they haven't taken us remotely seriously since Blair outlived his usefulness anyway.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,003

    I see imbecilic political slogan is trending. Wait till Tony hears about 45 minutes from destruction and where that led us.

    The closer our politicians have been to the Afghanistan escapade - whether as instigators, supporters, or past participants - the more virulent the language they are using to criticise the current day withdrawal.

    They might want you to think that this is merely because the withdrawal has undone all their purported good work.

    But the truth is that it is having the futility and pointlessness of everything that has gone before so brutally exposed, that they are finding especially difficult to bear.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    I've just noticed what I posted, drunk and sentimental, late last night. lol.

    I shall repost for added schmaltz:




    I find Scott and HYUFD "useful", indeed, I find them beyond useful. I find their opinions valuable, cherishable, precious, and more


    Because they give me an insight into a Remainer centrist ex Tory brain, and a true Tory unionist brain.

    Likewise NPXMP shows me what an old eurocommie Labour loyalist ex-MP thinks, Roger tells me what a rich old europhile lefty in France thinks, Stuart Dickson tells me what a fierce expat blood n soil Scot Nat in Sweden thinks (plus he gives persuasive insights into Swedish life), TSE tells me what a sort-of ex Tory failed Muslim geeky Liverpool football fan thinks, kle tells me what a man who rarely tells us what he really thinks thinks, Pagan2 tells us what an aspiring working class native Cornish speaking linguistic-ceolacanth thinks, kinabalu tells us about his birthday, Robert Smithson tells us what a car park entrepreneur Tory Brexiteer based in Santa Monica thinks, Carnyx tells us what an urbane Scot Nat classicist with a yearning for an Athenian villa thinks, Cyclefree tells us what a newly Cumbrian lawyer with firm views of Islam, restaurants, feminism and Europe thinks, Dura Ace tells us what a greenie anti vaxxing suicidal ex-army affluent motorhead with a remarkable vocabulary thinks...

    On and on. I could mention 50 more. So. Preserve. Don't ban anyone. This site is an amazing resource of human wisdom, bigotry, insight, foolishness, knowledge, wittiness, comedy, charm, madness, friendliness and entertaining inanity. Also good for bets.

    Hats off to the Smithsons pere et fils. This site should have a Grade 1listing on the internet. I am entirely serious. Malcolm G would be the unsightly medieval "garderobe" toilet that must also be kept, for authenticity
  • NEW THREAD

  • Cicero said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, has told the Telegraph that he is ruling out vaxports for pubs.

    Probably because he knows the public wouldn't accept the idea.
    In France you need your passe sanitaire to enter any resto or bar. The initial hostility has given way to a wary acceptance and I think that GBNi will go through the same process. If the choice is limited access or closure, then the vaxpass will come in even despite the nutty anti vaxxers. The majority of adults are now vaxed and they will take it badly if the nutters continue to spoil life for them.

    The anti-vaxxers are self-solving their problem by steadily getting infected.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,739

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    Pagan2 said:

    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"
    Exactly so, Roger. All the dissembling that goes on around this. It's as if being a Tory is something shameful. Why would anyone feel that? Beats me.

    "I'm not a member. I've voted for different parties over the years. It was about Brexit. You're forgetting the choice. It was that or Corbyn."

    Bla bla bla. None of this is relevant. It's interesting but it's off the point. If you voted Tory in the last general election YOU ARE A TORY and this state persists until rectified by a sincereaf and firm intention to vote otherwise in the next one.
    But to be a PB Tory is a sinuous and quicksilver thing, hard to pin down.

    Afaics the people who voted for Cameron and now despise him are the same people who voted for May and now despise her, and also the the same people who voted for BJ but are still defending his every ineptitude and moral failing.

    The one consistency seems to be that they bear no responsibility for any of the consequences of voting for these fine folk.
    Yes, "PB Tories", a grouping unto itself, and it's not so simple as if you're a Tory (per my official definition) and you're on PB then you are one. That is not the case. It's a necessary condition but it isn't sufficient. You can be a Tory on PB yet not a PB Tory. It took me a while to suss all this out but now I have. I know who is a PB Tory and who isn't. But it's pure instinct, I can't define or explain it. Won't give any examples either way so as not to personalize. Too much of that from fruity Le ... from one particular poster yesterday.
    White Van/Red Wall Tory is now vastly underrepresented on here.
    I can't say it overly bothers me but, yes, we have a gaping hole where that particular (and very important) demographic should be. I suppose they have better things to do - eg driving white vans and whistling at girls and chuckling at "Boris"s latest antics.
  • justin124justin124 Posts: 11,527
    Carnyx said:

    THE SNP leadership's "grudge and grievance" tactics play into anti-Englishness in Scotland and undermine the independence cause, a former deputy leader of the party has said.

    In his forthcoming autobiography, Jim Sillars criticised Nicola Sturgeon for thinking "she can advance towards independence best by being at constant loggerheads with Westminster".


    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/19529738.snps-grudge-grievance-tactics-fuel-anti-englishness-says-jim-sillars/

    He hasn't been deputy leader or MP since 1992!
    When he became the Labour MP for Ayrshire South at the March 1970 by election, Sillars was known as 'the hammer of the Nats'!
  • Tres said:

    Tres said:

    tlg86 said:

    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:

    DavidL said:

    Brexit is no longer a major issue

    Food manufacturers and restaurants are scrambling to recruit prisoners to help ease the “desperate” shortage of workers caused by Covid-19 and Brexit.
    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/shops-farms-and-restaurants-turn-to-prisons-to-fill-staff-shortages-j2qgd38td
    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.
    And the reason why we need central command and control is that your plan delivers two things.
    (1) We lose whole chunks of industry that are essential
    (2) We have a sustained and embedded unemployment issue
    1) No we don't. If the jobs are essential then they can command whatever price is required to fill them. If they can't, they weren't essential in the first place.

    2) No we don't. How do we get a sustained unemployment issue as a result of full employment? The jobs that are the most productive pay whatever is required to fill the vacancies, those that are least productive die off, we have full employment and higher productivity.
    Its endless rhetoric disconnected from reality and increasingly from sanity as well.

    (1) How do anglian food producers pay enough to get factory shift workers to be able to want and afford to move to (shudder) Wisbech? Its laughable to suggest they can, so without labour they shut and don't get replaced. We need food, so we will import more instead, which means we have a farming sector unable to sell its produce as the processors have gone so that goes as well.

    (2) Sustained unemployment in the places where unemployment is a structural issue. We already have effective full employment in parts of the country. The jobs aren't where the unemployed are.
    What arrogance and condescension.

    Why can't people move to Wisbech? Or people living in Wisbech fill those vacancies? Why can people from Warsaw move to Wisbech but people from Widnes can't?

    If there's sustained unemployment maybe the unemployed should fill one of the jobs that are on offer? If the jobs aren't where they are, they can move to where the jobs are. Or employers can move to where the people are.

    If there's an abundance of labour available at Widnes but not Wisbech then why doesn't a processor set up in Widnes? Or wherever else needs jobs?
    Question - have you ever been to Wisbech...?

    My "arrogance and condescension" is just reality. People aren't moving to east anglia - a place they don't want to live - to do jobs they don't want to do at a cost they can't afford. Media house price in Wizzy is £177k vs £130k in Widnes.

    So your Wizzy food factory needs to cover the 36% higher house price and the higher cost of living before you even start trying to make the job and the prospects look attractive.
    So your answer seems to be to import cheap foreign labour to live in squalid conditions in Wisbech so that Wizzy Food Co can maintain its profit margins?

    I mean personally I am all in favour of migration and people being able to move where they want for whatever reason but your argument is actually utterly illogical. So long as the factory is in Wisbech (which funnily enough I drove past last night coming back from a wedding) then the food manufacturers must pay enough for the workers to be able to afford to live there whether those workers are from Widnes or Wroclaw. The days of expecting people to work for less than a living wage should be behind us.
    I agree with you - wages need to be higher. BTW a lot of the operators in anglia are not sat on mega operating margins. As we now have less workers from Wroclaw then workers must come from Widnes etc. The problem is that they cannot pay enough wages to do so.

    Besides which, there is a bigger problem. Lets assume that there is affordable housing. Lets assume that there is a large scale increase in food prices (think 30%+) to create sufficient margins to allow wages to rise significantly. So the £ gap to promote internal migration isn't there.

    But its still Wisbech. An awful lot of people don't want to live in the sticks. Especially when its as dull as the farming flatlands of eastern England.
    Not a view I have much sympathy with. I didn't want to spend most of my working life in the sorts of dives I have had to operate - and I am not just talking about Aberdeen (that is a joke by the way, I really like Aberdeen). I would have loved to have been at home every Christmas rather than stuck in some arse end of the world. But you go where the work is. Something far too many people seem to have forgotten these days.
    Alas the modern tory party has moved on from 'on your bike' to denigrating those of us who take part in economic migration.
    [Citation Needed]
    That's Brexit. Your basic Tory parochialism. A pox on those ghastly people with the temerity to move more than fifty miles from where they were born.
    Neither I nor as far as I know anyone else has called a single person "ghastly" for moving more than fifty miles from where they're born.

    Neither I nor as far as I know anyone else has denigrated anyone who takes part in economic migration.

    Personally I welcome immigration but I think it should be on a level playing field. I don't see why those travelling 2000 miles should be any harsher treated than those travelling 200. Do you think they should be?
  • Tres said:

    Tres said:

    tlg86 said:

    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:

    DavidL said:

    Brexit is no longer a major issue

    Food manufacturers and restaurants are scrambling to recruit prisoners to help ease the “desperate” shortage of workers caused by Covid-19 and Brexit.
    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/shops-farms-and-restaurants-turn-to-prisons-to-fill-staff-shortages-j2qgd38td
    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.
    And the reason why we need central command and control is that your plan delivers two things.
    (1) We lose whole chunks of industry that are essential
    (2) We have a sustained and embedded unemployment issue
    1) No we don't. If the jobs are essential then they can command whatever price is required to fill them. If they can't, they weren't essential in the first place.

    2) No we don't. How do we get a sustained unemployment issue as a result of full employment? The jobs that are the most productive pay whatever is required to fill the vacancies, those that are least productive die off, we have full employment and higher productivity.
    Its endless rhetoric disconnected from reality and increasingly from sanity as well.

    (1) How do anglian food producers pay enough to get factory shift workers to be able to want and afford to move to (shudder) Wisbech? Its laughable to suggest they can, so without labour they shut and don't get replaced. We need food, so we will import more instead, which means we have a farming sector unable to sell its produce as the processors have gone so that goes as well.

    (2) Sustained unemployment in the places where unemployment is a structural issue. We already have effective full employment in parts of the country. The jobs aren't where the unemployed are.
    What arrogance and condescension.

    Why can't people move to Wisbech? Or people living in Wisbech fill those vacancies? Why can people from Warsaw move to Wisbech but people from Widnes can't?

    If there's sustained unemployment maybe the unemployed should fill one of the jobs that are on offer? If the jobs aren't where they are, they can move to where the jobs are. Or employers can move to where the people are.

    If there's an abundance of labour available at Widnes but not Wisbech then why doesn't a processor set up in Widnes? Or wherever else needs jobs?
    Question - have you ever been to Wisbech...?

    My "arrogance and condescension" is just reality. People aren't moving to east anglia - a place they don't want to live - to do jobs they don't want to do at a cost they can't afford. Media house price in Wizzy is £177k vs £130k in Widnes.

    So your Wizzy food factory needs to cover the 36% higher house price and the higher cost of living before you even start trying to make the job and the prospects look attractive.
    So your answer seems to be to import cheap foreign labour to live in squalid conditions in Wisbech so that Wizzy Food Co can maintain its profit margins?

    I mean personally I am all in favour of migration and people being able to move where they want for whatever reason but your argument is actually utterly illogical. So long as the factory is in Wisbech (which funnily enough I drove past last night coming back from a wedding) then the food manufacturers must pay enough for the workers to be able to afford to live there whether those workers are from Widnes or Wroclaw. The days of expecting people to work for less than a living wage should be behind us.
    I agree with you - wages need to be higher. BTW a lot of the operators in anglia are not sat on mega operating margins. As we now have less workers from Wroclaw then workers must come from Widnes etc. The problem is that they cannot pay enough wages to do so.

    Besides which, there is a bigger problem. Lets assume that there is affordable housing. Lets assume that there is a large scale increase in food prices (think 30%+) to create sufficient margins to allow wages to rise significantly. So the £ gap to promote internal migration isn't there.

    But its still Wisbech. An awful lot of people don't want to live in the sticks. Especially when its as dull as the farming flatlands of eastern England.
    Not a view I have much sympathy with. I didn't want to spend most of my working life in the sorts of dives I have had to operate - and I am not just talking about Aberdeen (that is a joke by the way, I really like Aberdeen). I would have loved to have been at home every Christmas rather than stuck in some arse end of the world. But you go where the work is. Something far too many people seem to have forgotten these days.
    Alas the modern tory party has moved on from 'on your bike' to denigrating those of us who take part in economic migration.
    [Citation Needed]
    That's Brexit. Your basic Tory parochialism. A pox on those ghastly people with the temerity to move more than fifty miles from where they were born.
    Yet more straw man idiocy from an unreconciled Euro-moron.
This discussion has been closed.