Can we just accept that the next 100 threads would have been about something negative about the Govt and move on to something a bit more main stream.
There have been no threads on the ghastly Rayner and that she and Starmer can't stand each other or that the Labour Party is completely split and with noone you would be comfortable with being a minister. Or that the Party is skint and has trouble paying its bills...
The last Labour thread I recall was about how great Reeves was.. if she is the beacon of light, God help us.
The Conservative Party conference starts today so expect more threads reacting to whatever news is made there.
The country needs to wake up to the ever-growing dictatorship that this gang of crooks, cheats and incompetents are developing for us.
You are sounding hysterical. Not much than 6 years ago, your own gang of crooks, cheats and incompetents was in Coalition Government with this same Conservative Party. That your lot made it a condition to block off any discussion of our EU membership - despite having been pledged to a referendum on the very subject - in the end gave us Brexit.
And "dictatorship"? Has anybody - and I mean ANYBODY - said we won't have an opportunity within 3 years or so to throw the Government out in a general election if they lose the support of the country? Hyperbolic toss. We are not America.
If you are so worried, get going on an alternative set of proposals that a disillusioned country might actually row behind.
Have you heard of the term "elective dictatorship"? For 5 years they can do anything, including lie, cheat, con, defraud, then achieve 40% of the vote in a FPTP system, which then gives them another 5 years.
Democracy eh?
Labour behaved like for 13 years. It may be a lot longer than 13 years before they’re allowed another go.
Can we just accept that the next 100 threads would have been about something negative about the Govt and move on to something a bit more main stream.
There have been no threads on the ghastly Rayner and that she and Starmer can't stand each other or that the Labour Party is completely split and with noone you would be comfortable with being a minister. Or that the Party is skint and has trouble paying its bills...
The last Labour thread I recall was about how great Reeves was.. if she is the beacon of light, God help us.
The Conservative Party conference starts today so expect more threads reacting to whatever news is made there.
The country needs to wake up to the ever-growing dictatorship that this gang of crooks, cheats and incompetents are developing for us.
You are sounding hysterical. Not much than 6 years ago, your own gang of crooks, cheats and incompetents was in Coalition Government with this same Conservative Party. That your lot made it a condition to block off any discussion of our EU membership - despite having been pledged to a referendum on the very subject - in the end gave us Brexit.
And "dictatorship"? Has anybody - and I mean ANYBODY - said we won't have an opportunity within 3 years or so to throw the Government out in a general election if they lose the support of the country? Hyperbolic toss. We are not America.
If you are so worried, get going on an alternative set of proposals that a disillusioned country might actually row behind.
Have you heard of the term "elective dictatorship"? For 5 years they can do anything, including lie, cheat, con, defraud, then achieve 40% of the vote in a FPTP system, which then gives them another 5 years.
Democracy eh?
ClippP did not use the term elective dictatorship.
And judging by PR systems, which I back, if they got 40% of the vote theyd probably be in power anyway. The problem you identify is of so much power whilst in government and still retaining popularity even if crap, not FPTP vs PR or another voting system. Most arguments around voting systems are proxies.
Which in turn is down to nobody presenting a popular, viable offering that people believe will actually be delivered without tanking the economy, again... A trick the opposition parties have proved unable to perform.
On Brexit silliness: I think I have worked out that I can't bring ham, cheese and chorizo back from my holiday because I am flying home from Gib, not Spain, and it's not in the EU. Which is slightly annoying, and mystifying as it's a British territory. Having said that, I am not sure I could have done before Brexit as I don't think it was in the Customs Union. What is the point of it being a tax free territory if you can't go shopping there?
Stick it in your suitcase. No one will notice.
That is a possibility. I don't think Spanish cheese is particularly smelly and neither are iberico or chorizo, especially if vacuum packed. Although I am on cabin baggage only. But me going shopping on the way back from holiday is always only a theoretical possibility. I find I am travelling on the luggage limit, don't want to spend any more money and have in any case already eaten my fill of the products in question while on holiday.
Also, if the reports in the ST are true it appears that the amount of vetting done on Couzens was pretty much nil and that MPs are now worried because he was given access to the Commons and might have put them at risk. I love how they seem to be more worried about a hypothetical risk to them than the actual risk he was to women.
Anyway, Ms Patel - there is a glowing article about her in the magazine - won't do anything so that's that. Will the anger and frustration that many women feel simply dissipate or will it affect voting intentions and, if so, how? No idea.
Of course it should concern them anyway, but personalizing it might be very useful. They should have addressed the polluted river but it took the great stink affecting them as MPs to provoke some action.
What we are getting at the moment is incessant media coverage of every small and not so small issue that arises blaming these bumps in the road on Brexit. The fact that other countries are also suffering dislocations and disruptions as a result of the chaos called by Covid is ignored: it must be the fault of Brexit.
In many, probably most, cases this is just nonsense. So, for example, we have the problem of high gas prices. This is an international phenomenon which the UK is more than usually vulnerable to because successive governments failed to create enough storage. Do I claim that this was a misplaced reliance on the SM? Of course not, it was pure incompetence.
In other cases Brexit plays a small part. So we are by far from being alone in finding we do not have enough HGV drivers as deliveries and economic activity pick up again but the assumption that we could just import all the cheap labour we needed is no longer valid and so there is an extra piquancy to our problems as a result of the fact we are weaning ourselves off cheap labour.
In respect of food there is almost nothing to this at all because we have chosen not to impose the conditions on our imports that the EU is imposing on our exports, at least not yet. But every day we see stories about some supermarket somewhere being short of this or that.
The reality, as I have expressed before is that trying to measure the pluses and minuses of Brexit (and I accept there are both) at this stage is like trying to measure the ripples caused by a stone thrown into a raging tempest. The world economy and ours have gone through something truly incredible as a result of the pandemic. The consequences are dozens, probably hundreds, of times more significant than Brexit effects. We are deluding ourselves and failing to address the very real problems if we pretend otherwise.
So how will we be able to judge Brexit? I think it will take 10-20 years to determine whether cutting our own path has made a difference. If we do wean ourselves off imported labour and work hard as a nation to boost our productivity as a result it will have been a success. If we significantly reduce our horrendous trade deficit either by import substitution or exports to new markets it will have been a success. If we fail to do these things and continue with the disastrous policies of excess consumption, excess borrowing and poor training it will have failed. We will know in 20 years but a lot depends upon the quality of governments elected in the meantime.
Excellent and agree 100%
Blaming the media is a bit OTT. It is not as if ordinary folk will not have noticed petrol shortages or gaps on the supermarket shelves even without reading the papers.
It shows a lone figure in a deep hole he has dug himself into with his bulldog. A spade leans against the wall. His dog wears a cover with "1966" on it. His shirt says something silly like "Saxe Coburg". Faces peer down from above. He adopts a defiant stance and, brandishing his fist, saying "Very well, alone."
Can we just accept that the next 100 threads would have been about something negative about the Govt and move on to something a bit more main stream.
There have been no threads on the ghastly Rayner and that she and Starmer can't stand each other or that the Labour Party is completely split and with noone you would be comfortable with being a minister. Or that the Party is skint and has trouble paying its bills...
The last Labour thread I recall was about how great Reeves was.. if she is the beacon of light, God help us.
The Conservative Party conference starts today so expect more threads reacting to whatever news is made there.
The country needs to wake up to the ever-growing dictatorship that this gang of crooks, cheats and incompetents are developing for us.
You are sounding hysterical. Not much than 6 years ago, your own gang of crooks, cheats and incompetents was in Coalition Government with this same Conservative Party. That your lot made it a condition to block off any discussion of our EU membership - despite having been pledged to a referendum on the very subject - in the end gave us Brexit.
And "dictatorship"? Has anybody - and I mean ANYBODY - said we won't have an opportunity within 3 years or so to throw the Government out in a general election if they lose the support of the country? Hyperbolic toss. We are not America.
If you are so worried, get going on an alternative set of proposals that a disillusioned country might actually row behind.
Have you heard of the term "elective dictatorship"? For 5 years they can do anything, including lie, cheat, con, defraud, then achieve 40% of the vote in a FPTP system, which then gives them another 5 years.
Democracy eh?
Democracy. The worst form of government - except for all the others.
What we are getting at the moment is incessant media coverage of every small and not so small issue that arises blaming these bumps in the road on Brexit. The fact that other countries are also suffering dislocations and disruptions as a result of the chaos called by Covid is ignored: it must be the fault of Brexit.
In many, probably most, cases this is just nonsense. So, for example, we have the problem of high gas prices. This is an international phenomenon which the UK is more than usually vulnerable to because successive governments failed to create enough storage. Do I claim that this was a misplaced reliance on the SM? Of course not, it was pure incompetence.
In other cases Brexit plays a small part. So we are by far from being alone in finding we do not have enough HGV drivers as deliveries and economic activity pick up again but the assumption that we could just import all the cheap labour we needed is no longer valid and so there is an extra piquancy to our problems as a result of the fact we are weaning ourselves off cheap labour.
In respect of food there is almost nothing to this at all because we have chosen not to impose the conditions on our imports that the EU is imposing on our exports, at least not yet. But every day we see stories about some supermarket somewhere being short of this or that.
The reality, as I have expressed before is that trying to measure the pluses and minuses of Brexit (and I accept there are both) at this stage is like trying to measure the ripples caused by a stone thrown into a raging tempest. The world economy and ours have gone through something truly incredible as a result of the pandemic. The consequences are dozens, probably hundreds, of times more significant than Brexit effects. We are deluding ourselves and failing to address the very real problems if we pretend otherwise.
So how will we be able to judge Brexit? I think it will take 10-20 years to determine whether cutting our own path has made a difference. If we do wean ourselves off imported labour and work hard as a nation to boost our productivity as a result it will have been a success. If we significantly reduce our horrendous trade deficit either by import substitution or exports to new markets it will have been a success. If we fail to do these things and continue with the disastrous policies of excess consumption, excess borrowing and poor training it will have failed. We will know in 20 years but a lot depends upon the quality of governments elected in the meantime.
Excellent and agree 100%
Blaming the media is a bit OTT. It is not as if ordinary folk will not have noticed petrol shortages or gaps on the supermarket shelves even without reading the papers.
What we are getting at the moment is incessant media coverage of every small and not so small issue that arises blaming these bumps in the road on Brexit. The fact that other countries are also suffering dislocations and disruptions as a result of the chaos called by Covid is ignored: it must be the fault of Brexit.
In many, probably most, cases this is just nonsense. So, for example, we have the problem of high gas prices. This is an international phenomenon which the UK is more than usually vulnerable to because successive governments failed to create enough storage. Do I claim that this was a misplaced reliance on the SM? Of course not, it was pure incompetence.
In other cases Brexit plays a small part. So we are by far from being alone in finding we do not have enough HGV drivers as deliveries and economic activity pick up again but the assumption that we could just import all the cheap labour we needed is no longer valid and so there is an extra piquancy to our problems as a result of the fact we are weaning ourselves off cheap labour.
In respect of food there is almost nothing to this at all because we have chosen not to impose the conditions on our imports that the EU is imposing on our exports, at least not yet. But every day we see stories about some supermarket somewhere being short of this or that.
The reality, as I have expressed before is that trying to measure the pluses and minuses of Brexit (and I accept there are both) at this stage is like trying to measure the ripples caused by a stone thrown into a raging tempest. The world economy and ours have gone through something truly incredible as a result of the pandemic. The consequences are dozens, probably hundreds, of times more significant than Brexit effects. We are deluding ourselves and failing to address the very real problems if we pretend otherwise.
So how will we be able to judge Brexit? I think it will take 10-20 years to determine whether cutting our own path has made a difference. If we do wean ourselves off imported labour and work hard as a nation to boost our productivity as a result it will have been a success. If we significantly reduce our horrendous trade deficit either by import substitution or exports to new markets it will have been a success. If we fail to do these things and continue with the disastrous policies of excess consumption, excess borrowing and poor training it will have failed. We will know in 20 years but a lot depends upon the quality of governments elected in the meantime.
Excellent and agree 100%
Blaming the media is a bit OTT. It is not as if ordinary folk will not have noticed petrol shortages or gaps on the supermarket shelves even without reading the papers.
But there would have been no petrol shortages had it not been for the media, so back to square one for you.
You don’t need to be an economics expert to understand that sending so many key workers home isn’t working out very well for us, with the consequences magnified by the coincidence of the pandemic.
On top of which pet owners who travel have certainly had a rude awakening as to the consequences of Brexit, as I know from another forum, and there have been extra costs and hassle for overseas second home owners, people who make extended visits to family, and people who take their cars abroad, on top of which the promise that high roaming charges wouldn’t return is proving bogus. Anyone who made it abroad this year knows there aren’t shortages in Europe.
The collapse in trade, focussed in sectors like food, will have affected businesses, livelihoods and jobs, and the wider problems for Northern Ireland are well known. And the fishermen certainly aren’t happy.
Then you add in the consequences of the step change decline in our currency, with a consequential burst of inflation, which every traveller will have noticed. The story in the news about the Americans snapping up Morrison’s while the £ is cheap is yet another consequence. And the shops and restaurants with reduced opening hours due to lack of staff.
With stories in the news about threats to our Christmas toys and turkeys, we may still be at the beginning of a gathering storm.
The pound has gone up over the last 5 years…
Technically true, but 5 years ago was post-referendum. If you roll it back to just before the referendum, the pound has been constantly lower since.
Sure but that’s already priced it so it was just one item from @IanB2’s monastic litany of doom that can be crossed off
Hmm. I wouldn't be doomy about it, but it seems to me the pound is cheaper since the referendum results were announced. Of course lots of things influence the price and it's impossible to rerun the last 5+ years to know what would have happened differently, but the most reasonable position is that Brexit has cheapened the pound somewhat.
This is part of the reason i say Brexit is going better than I expected. The economic consequences are mildly negative, not seriously negative. There will be (some) turkeys this Christmas, there will be fuel in all the pumps at some point this month, and the market will eventually balance out the distribution bottlenecks. But that's the market doing its job, bending under the strain of Brexit but not breaking.
It's the political consequences of Brexit that have been terrible. The normalisation of extreme attitudes, and the grim bitterness that infect politics were entirely avoidable. Several people on here can be seen denying reality because it offends their ideology. It would be better if that stopped. And yes, both sides.
Eh, do you buy fuel, pay utility bills, buy shopping etc, all of those and more are going through the roof and we are only at the beginning , wait till the real stuff kicks in next year. It has been an unmitigated clusterfcuk. Who would want the hassle of dealing with UK companies rather than easy to deal with ones in the EU that have no restrictions, hassles, border checks , reams of paperwork etc.
What we are getting at the moment is incessant media coverage of every small and not so small issue that arises blaming these bumps in the road on Brexit. The fact that other countries are also suffering dislocations and disruptions as a result of the chaos called by Covid is ignored: it must be the fault of Brexit.
In many, probably most, cases this is just nonsense. So, for example, we have the problem of high gas prices. This is an international phenomenon which the UK is more than usually vulnerable to because successive governments failed to create enough storage. Do I claim that this was a misplaced reliance on the SM? Of course not, it was pure incompetence.
In other cases Brexit plays a small part. So we are by far from being alone in finding we do not have enough HGV drivers as deliveries and economic activity pick up again but the assumption that we could just import all the cheap labour we needed is no longer valid and so there is an extra piquancy to our problems as a result of the fact we are weaning ourselves off cheap labour.
In respect of food there is almost nothing to this at all because we have chosen not to impose the conditions on our imports that the EU is imposing on our exports, at least not yet. But every day we see stories about some supermarket somewhere being short of this or that.
The reality, as I have expressed before is that trying to measure the pluses and minuses of Brexit (and I accept there are both) at this stage is like trying to measure the ripples caused by a stone thrown into a raging tempest. The world economy and ours have gone through something truly incredible as a result of the pandemic. The consequences are dozens, probably hundreds, of times more significant than Brexit effects. We are deluding ourselves and failing to address the very real problems if we pretend otherwise.
So how will we be able to judge Brexit? I think it will take 10-20 years to determine whether cutting our own path has made a difference. If we do wean ourselves off imported labour and work hard as a nation to boost our productivity as a result it will have been a success. If we significantly reduce our horrendous trade deficit either by import substitution or exports to new markets it will have been a success. If we fail to do these things and continue with the disastrous policies of excess consumption, excess borrowing and poor training it will have failed. We will know in 20 years but a lot depends upon the quality of governments elected in the meantime.
Excellent and agree 100%
Blaming the media is a bit OTT. It is not as if ordinary folk will not have noticed petrol shortages or gaps on the supermarket shelves even without reading the papers.
But there would have been no petrol shortages had it not been for the media, so back to square one for you.
Exactly right. The media stoked this, partly to fuel the 24 hour news cycle.
Astonishing comments by Bozo re pigs . Jaw dropping .
Why?
Abattoirs should pay a decent salary to their staff, not try and get away with paying £9.12 per hour for a night shift. Farmers should pay a decent fee to abattoirs that can then fund their staff with a decent salary.
If they can't or won't then cull the animals and eat imports if need be.
What we are getting at the moment is incessant media coverage of every small and not so small issue that arises blaming these bumps in the road on Brexit. The fact that other countries are also suffering dislocations and disruptions as a result of the chaos called by Covid is ignored: it must be the fault of Brexit.
In many, probably most, cases this is just nonsense. So, for example, we have the problem of high gas prices. This is an international phenomenon which the UK is more than usually vulnerable to because successive governments failed to create enough storage. Do I claim that this was a misplaced reliance on the SM? Of course not, it was pure incompetence.
In other cases Brexit plays a small part. So we are by far from being alone in finding we do not have enough HGV drivers as deliveries and economic activity pick up again but the assumption that we could just import all the cheap labour we needed is no longer valid and so there is an extra piquancy to our problems as a result of the fact we are weaning ourselves off cheap labour.
In respect of food there is almost nothing to this at all because we have chosen not to impose the conditions on our imports that the EU is imposing on our exports, at least not yet. But every day we see stories about some supermarket somewhere being short of this or that.
The reality, as I have expressed before is that trying to measure the pluses and minuses of Brexit (and I accept there are both) at this stage is like trying to measure the ripples caused by a stone thrown into a raging tempest. The world economy and ours have gone through something truly incredible as a result of the pandemic. The consequences are dozens, probably hundreds, of times more significant than Brexit effects. We are deluding ourselves and failing to address the very real problems if we pretend otherwise.
So how will we be able to judge Brexit? I think it will take 10-20 years to determine whether cutting our own path has made a difference. If we do wean ourselves off imported labour and work hard as a nation to boost our productivity as a result it will have been a success. If we significantly reduce our horrendous trade deficit either by import substitution or exports to new markets it will have been a success. If we fail to do these things and continue with the disastrous policies of excess consumption, excess borrowing and poor training it will have failed. We will know in 20 years but a lot depends upon the quality of governments elected in the meantime.
Excellent and agree 100%
Blaming the media is a bit OTT. It is not as if ordinary folk will not have noticed petrol shortages or gaps on the supermarket shelves even without reading the papers.
But there would have been no petrol shortages had it not been for the media, so back to square one for you.
Blaming the media does not explain regional differences. Unless you think BBC South Today or BBC Radio Sussex is the main driving force.
On Brexit silliness: I think I have worked out that I can't bring ham, cheese and chorizo back from my holiday because I am flying home from Gib, not Spain, and it's not in the EU. Which is slightly annoying, and mystifying as it's a British territory. Having said that, I am not sure I could have done before Brexit as I don't think it was in the Customs Union. What is the point of it being a tax free territory if you can't go shopping there?
Stick it in your suitcase. No one will notice.
Are you sure? Won't ham, cheese and chorizo be potentially a bit pungent, even if in a suitcase?
Can we just accept that the next 100 threads would have been about something negative about the Govt and move on to something a bit more main stream.
There have been no threads on the ghastly Rayner and that she and Starmer can't stand each other or that the Labour Party is completely split and with noone you would be comfortable with being a minister. Or that the Party is skint and has trouble paying its bills...
The last Labour thread I recall was about how great Reeves was.. if she is the beacon of light, God help us.
To be fair, the implicit assumption of a thread about how well Reeves is doing, is that Starmer is doing... less well.
Where is Boris? Look at the Downing Street press office release photos (reproduced in several papers including the Daily Mail of him setting off by train to Manchester. But the train is an LNER one, and LNER doesn't go anywhere near Manchester. So where did he end up? I think that we ought to know
Rather interest thread from David Herdson, which could have been a thread back in the day, around internal democracy and if it is a good thing on the whole. Not sure I totally agree with his conclusions - I can see the harm internal factions create, but it's not as though the Tories in thelast 2 decades have had entirely beneficial party relations or national success from it - but it's an interesting thought. As someone who spent 25 years in the Tory Party, it does astonish me how much effort Labour goes to to *organise* division and argument within itself.
The internal elections, the slates, the motions, the factions-with-memberships; they simply don't exist in the Conservatives.
Obviously, there are and always have been divisions within the Tories but the organisational culture is so different. There isn't the 'debating society' aspect to motions; indeed, it's precious rare in my experience that a Tory meeting passes *any* kind of 'political' motion.
The Tories do have policy discussion meetings - the CPF most obviously - but they only attract a few members, and have no great significance either within the Association or the Party at large. Perhaps the ideas and suggestions do filter up effectively but really, who knows?
But even in those meetings, while people disagree, they do so as individuals. Because there are no organised factions like Momentum or Progress or whatever, there's no lasting significance to who ends up getting what into the minutes.
Similarly, on a national scale, because conference doesn't hold votes, there's no great importance to one delegate attending over another, so there's no need for divisive local contests to choose them as there's no factional advantage to it.
Now, you can argue that all this internal democracy, engagement, debate and voting is a sign of a healthy organisation - and to an extent that's true. All the same, it does look to me, as an outsider, that the costs very much outweigh the benefits.
Even where the Tories do have internal elections - branch and Association officers, most notably - these are routinely uncontested, being filled by a mixture of consensus and cajoling. As a rule, a contested election is a sign of an unhealthy organisation than the reverse.
The issue with all of the anti-Brexiy crowd going in so hard at the moment is that it lowers expectations and when, on Christmas Day, we're all eating our turkeys that magically got delivered that we were all assured would be unavailable everyone will wonder what the fuss was about.
In a year from now when the new rush of HGV drivers have made it through the system all of the visible issues with Brexit go away and the working poor will have had 8-12% wage increases due to the labour shortage.
Astonishing comments by Bozo re pigs . Jaw dropping .
Why?
Abattoirs should pay a decent salary to their staff, not try and get away with paying £9.12 per hour for a night shift. Farmers should pay a decent fee to abattoirs that can then fund their staff with a decent salary.
If they can't or won't then cull the animals and eat imports if need be.
Not that part he was making equivalence between destroying pigs which won’t end up in supermarket shelves to the normal process of them going to the abbatoir and then supermarket. The interview is a car crash!
Where is Boris? Look at the Downing Street press office release photos (reproduced in several papers including the Daily Mail of him setting off by train to Manchester. But the train is an LNER one, and LNER doesn't go anywhere near Manchester. So where did he end up? I think that we ought to know
Really
He went to a Leeds hospital on his way to Manchester
This was another Rayner story that made her look ridiculous
So the average Briton is a fat lazy slob who voted leave but thinks it's going badly.
It's not how I imagined embodying the nation but I'll take it.
Not quite. Britain is apparently a fat lazy slob that needs the shock of Brexit to get it to change its sluggardy ways.
I wouldn't mind so much if there was more of an overlap between those who are calling for this shock therapy and those who are expected to undergo it.
As opposed to the retired and those wealthy enough to go wherever they please, whatever.
Ironically that (the "fat, lazy slob" part) was the reason for joining the Common Market in the first place. Britain was the poor man of Europe trapped in post-war decline and so on. It was also the rationale for setting sterling too high in the EMU – to impose market discipline and squeeze inflation out of the system.
Also, if the reports in the ST are true it appears that the amount of vetting done on Couzens was pretty much nil and that MPs are now worried because he was given access to the Commons and might have put them at risk. I love how they seem to be more worried about a hypothetical risk to them than the actual risk he was to women.
Anyway, Ms Patel - there is a glowing article about her in the magazine - won't do anything so that's that. Will the anger and frustration that many women feel simply dissipate or will it affect voting intentions and, if so, how? No idea.
Of course it should concern them anyway, but personalizing it might be very useful. They should have addressed the polluted river but it took the great stink affecting them as MPs to provoke some action.
Other than talking and wringing their hands I see very little evidence of any action at all being taken.
Unless "waving at buses" counts as action.
What I find grimly amusing is all these former Home Secretaries and other senior bods being quoted as saying that the police ought to have good recruitment and vetting procedures. Er... yes, of course. But when they were in charge why didn't they make sure that this was done?
I don't expect Home Secretaries to personally write the vetting procedures but they or one of their senior civil servants should be responsible for ensuring that police forces do have them and that they are fit for purpose. At the very least they should be making it clear to the police chiefs that who you hire is the single most important thing you can do to improve the culture of your organisation. You can have all the strategies you want to beat crime but culture defeats strategy every time.
What we are getting at the moment is incessant media coverage of every small and not so small issue that arises blaming these bumps in the road on Brexit. The fact that other countries are also suffering dislocations and disruptions as a result of the chaos called by Covid is ignored: it must be the fault of Brexit.
In many, probably most, cases this is just nonsense. So, for example, we have the problem of high gas prices. This is an international phenomenon which the UK is more than usually vulnerable to because successive governments failed to create enough storage. Do I claim that this was a misplaced reliance on the SM? Of course not, it was pure incompetence.
In other cases Brexit plays a small part. So we are by far from being alone in finding we do not have enough HGV drivers as deliveries and economic activity pick up again but the assumption that we could just import all the cheap labour we needed is no longer valid and so there is an extra piquancy to our problems as a result of the fact we are weaning ourselves off cheap labour.
In respect of food there is almost nothing to this at all because we have chosen not to impose the conditions on our imports that the EU is imposing on our exports, at least not yet. But every day we see stories about some supermarket somewhere being short of this or that.
The reality, as I have expressed before is that trying to measure the pluses and minuses of Brexit (and I accept there are both) at this stage is like trying to measure the ripples caused by a stone thrown into a raging tempest. The world economy and ours have gone through something truly incredible as a result of the pandemic. The consequences are dozens, probably hundreds, of times more significant than Brexit effects. We are deluding ourselves and failing to address the very real problems if we pretend otherwise.
So how will we be able to judge Brexit? I think it will take 10-20 years to determine whether cutting our own path has made a difference. If we do wean ourselves off imported labour and work hard as a nation to boost our productivity as a result it will have been a success. If we significantly reduce our horrendous trade deficit either by import substitution or exports to new markets it will have been a success. If we fail to do these things and continue with the disastrous policies of excess consumption, excess borrowing and poor training it will have failed. We will know in 20 years but a lot depends upon the quality of governments elected in the meantime.
Excellent and agree 100%
Blaming the media is a bit OTT. It is not as if ordinary folk will not have noticed petrol shortages or gaps on the supermarket shelves even without reading the papers.
But there would have been no petrol shortages had it not been for the media, so back to square one for you.
Blaming the media does not explain regional differences. Unless you think BBC South Today or BBC Radio Sussex is the main driving force.
So there's no major media presence in the Southeast or London?
No FBPE Remainers desperate for there to be a story there either?
Also, if the reports in the ST are true it appears that the amount of vetting done on Couzens was pretty much nil and that MPs are now worried because he was given access to the Commons and might have put them at risk. I love how they seem to be more worried about a hypothetical risk to them than the actual risk he was to women.
Anyway, Ms Patel - there is a glowing article about her in the magazine - won't do anything so that's that. Will the anger and frustration that many women feel simply dissipate or will it affect voting intentions and, if so, how? No idea.
Of course it should concern them anyway, but personalizing it might be very useful. They should have addressed the polluted river but it took the great stink affecting them as MPs to provoke some action.
Other than talking and wringing their hands I see very little evidence of any action at all being taken.
Unless "waving at buses" counts as action.
What I find grimly amusing is all these former Home Secretaries and other senior bods being quoted as saying that the police ought to have good recruitment and vetting procedures. Er... yes, of course. But when they were in charge why didn't they make sure that this was done?
I don't expect Home Secretaries to personally write the vetting procedures but they or one of their senior civil servants should be responsible for ensuring that police forces do have them and that they are fit for purpose. At the very least they should be making it clear to the police chiefs that who you hire is the single most important thing you can do to improve the culture of your organisation. You can have all the strategies you want to beat crime but culture defeats strategy every time.
It's why I said 'might' be useful, not that it definitely was.
As for the rest, it's depressingly standard stuff about learning lessons, then when it happens again turns out there's still more lessons to be learned, and the old ones weren't really done. We're like those clothing companies who keep getting surprised about stuff being made in sweatshops, totally surprised.
On Brexit silliness: I think I have worked out that I can't bring ham, cheese and chorizo back from my holiday because I am flying home from Gib, not Spain, and it's not in the EU. Which is slightly annoying, and mystifying as it's a British territory. Having said that, I am not sure I could have done before Brexit as I don't think it was in the Customs Union. What is the point of it being a tax free territory if you can't go shopping there?
Stick it in your suitcase. No one will notice.
That is a possibility. I don't think Spanish cheese is particularly smelly and neither are iberico or chorizo, especially if vacuum packed. Although I am on cabin baggage only. But me going shopping on the way back from holiday is always only a theoretical possibility. I find I am travelling on the luggage limit, don't want to spend any more money and have in any case already eaten my fill of the products in question while on holiday.
You can get a passable Manchego at Tesco these days anyway
What we are getting at the moment is incessant media coverage of every small and not so small issue that arises blaming these bumps in the road on Brexit. The fact that other countries are also suffering dislocations and disruptions as a result of the chaos called by Covid is ignored: it must be the fault of Brexit.
In many, probably most, cases this is just nonsense. So, for example, we have the problem of high gas prices. This is an international phenomenon which the UK is more than usually vulnerable to because successive governments failed to create enough storage. Do I claim that this was a misplaced reliance on the SM? Of course not, it was pure incompetence.
In other cases Brexit plays a small part. So we are by far from being alone in finding we do not have enough HGV drivers as deliveries and economic activity pick up again but the assumption that we could just import all the cheap labour we needed is no longer valid and so there is an extra piquancy to our problems as a result of the fact we are weaning ourselves off cheap labour.
In respect of food there is almost nothing to this at all because we have chosen not to impose the conditions on our imports that the EU is imposing on our exports, at least not yet. But every day we see stories about some supermarket somewhere being short of this or that.
The reality, as I have expressed before is that trying to measure the pluses and minuses of Brexit (and I accept there are both) at this stage is like trying to measure the ripples caused by a stone thrown into a raging tempest. The world economy and ours have gone through something truly incredible as a result of the pandemic. The consequences are dozens, probably hundreds, of times more significant than Brexit effects. We are deluding ourselves and failing to address the very real problems if we pretend otherwise.
So how will we be able to judge Brexit? I think it will take 10-20 years to determine whether cutting our own path has made a difference. If we do wean ourselves off imported labour and work hard as a nation to boost our productivity as a result it will have been a success. If we significantly reduce our horrendous trade deficit either by import substitution or exports to new markets it will have been a success. If we fail to do these things and continue with the disastrous policies of excess consumption, excess borrowing and poor training it will have failed. We will know in 20 years but a lot depends upon the quality of governments elected in the meantime.
Excellent and agree 100%
Blaming the media is a bit OTT. It is not as if ordinary folk will not have noticed petrol shortages or gaps on the supermarket shelves even without reading the papers.
But there would have been no petrol shortages had it not been for the media, so back to square one for you.
Blaming the media does not explain regional differences. Unless you think BBC South Today or BBC Radio Sussex is the main driving force.
So there's no major media presence in the Southeast or London?
No FBPE Remainers desperate for there to be a story there either?
This whole FBPE-is-responsible-for-the-distribution-crisis you're pushing, it is unhinged.
What we are getting at the moment is incessant media coverage of every small and not so small issue that arises blaming these bumps in the road on Brexit. The fact that other countries are also suffering dislocations and disruptions as a result of the chaos called by Covid is ignored: it must be the fault of Brexit.
In many, probably most, cases this is just nonsense. So, for example, we have the problem of high gas prices. This is an international phenomenon which the UK is more than usually vulnerable to because successive governments failed to create enough storage. Do I claim that this was a misplaced reliance on the SM? Of course not, it was pure incompetence.
In other cases Brexit plays a small part. So we are by far from being alone in finding we do not have enough HGV drivers as deliveries and economic activity pick up again but the assumption that we could just import all the cheap labour we needed is no longer valid and so there is an extra piquancy to our problems as a result of the fact we are weaning ourselves off cheap labour.
In respect of food there is almost nothing to this at all because we have chosen not to impose the conditions on our imports that the EU is imposing on our exports, at least not yet. But every day we see stories about some supermarket somewhere being short of this or that.
The reality, as I have expressed before is that trying to measure the pluses and minuses of Brexit (and I accept there are both) at this stage is like trying to measure the ripples caused by a stone thrown into a raging tempest. The world economy and ours have gone through something truly incredible as a result of the pandemic. The consequences are dozens, probably hundreds, of times more significant than Brexit effects. We are deluding ourselves and failing to address the very real problems if we pretend otherwise.
So how will we be able to judge Brexit? I think it will take 10-20 years to determine whether cutting our own path has made a difference. If we do wean ourselves off imported labour and work hard as a nation to boost our productivity as a result it will have been a success. If we significantly reduce our horrendous trade deficit either by import substitution or exports to new markets it will have been a success. If we fail to do these things and continue with the disastrous policies of excess consumption, excess borrowing and poor training it will have failed. We will know in 20 years but a lot depends upon the quality of governments elected in the meantime.
Excellent and agree 100%
Blaming the media is a bit OTT. It is not as if ordinary folk will not have noticed petrol shortages or gaps on the supermarket shelves even without reading the papers.
But there would have been no petrol shortages had it not been for the media, so back to square one for you.
Exactly right. The media stoked this, partly to fuel the 24 hour news cycle.
What we are getting at the moment is incessant media coverage of every small and not so small issue that arises blaming these bumps in the road on Brexit. The fact that other countries are also suffering dislocations and disruptions as a result of the chaos called by Covid is ignored: it must be the fault of Brexit.
In many, probably most, cases this is just nonsense. So, for example, we have the problem of high gas prices. This is an international phenomenon which the UK is more than usually vulnerable to because successive governments failed to create enough storage. Do I claim that this was a misplaced reliance on the SM? Of course not, it was pure incompetence.
In other cases Brexit plays a small part. So we are by far from being alone in finding we do not have enough HGV drivers as deliveries and economic activity pick up again but the assumption that we could just import all the cheap labour we needed is no longer valid and so there is an extra piquancy to our problems as a result of the fact we are weaning ourselves off cheap labour.
In respect of food there is almost nothing to this at all because we have chosen not to impose the conditions on our imports that the EU is imposing on our exports, at least not yet. But every day we see stories about some supermarket somewhere being short of this or that.
The reality, as I have expressed before is that trying to measure the pluses and minuses of Brexit (and I accept there are both) at this stage is like trying to measure the ripples caused by a stone thrown into a raging tempest. The world economy and ours have gone through something truly incredible as a result of the pandemic. The consequences are dozens, probably hundreds, of times more significant than Brexit effects. We are deluding ourselves and failing to address the very real problems if we pretend otherwise.
So how will we be able to judge Brexit? I think it will take 10-20 years to determine whether cutting our own path has made a difference. If we do wean ourselves off imported labour and work hard as a nation to boost our productivity as a result it will have been a success. If we significantly reduce our horrendous trade deficit either by import substitution or exports to new markets it will have been a success. If we fail to do these things and continue with the disastrous policies of excess consumption, excess borrowing and poor training it will have failed. We will know in 20 years but a lot depends upon the quality of governments elected in the meantime.
Excellent and agree 100%
Blaming the media is a bit OTT. It is not as if ordinary folk will not have noticed petrol shortages or gaps on the supermarket shelves even without reading the papers.
But there would have been no petrol shortages had it not been for the media, so back to square one for you.
Exactly right. The media stoked this, partly to fuel the 24 hour news cycle.
How can you make an imaginary shortage. Cars hold finite amounts , if no shortages then it should have been over and done long before this. Even numpties cannot keep filling up.
Also, if the reports in the ST are true it appears that the amount of vetting done on Couzens was pretty much nil and that MPs are now worried because he was given access to the Commons and might have put them at risk. I love how they seem to be more worried about a hypothetical risk to them than the actual risk he was to women.
Anyway, Ms Patel - there is a glowing article about her in the magazine - won't do anything so that's that. Will the anger and frustration that many women feel simply dissipate or will it affect voting intentions and, if so, how? No idea.
How can one possibly get a police firearms licence, and assigned to the VIP and diplomatic protection teams, without having undergone Developed Vetting?
If I were Mrs Patel, I’d getting a full list of the armed police in front of the Spooks this week.
Astonishing comments by Bozo re pigs . Jaw dropping .
Marr approached it from the wrong angle. He should have approached it from a food shortage POV.
What did he say?
Marr said something about it being the most healthy animals slaughtered ever. Boris said people need to understand that animals get slaughtered to make meat (or something like that).
Where is Boris? Look at the Downing Street press office release photos (reproduced in several papers including the Daily Mail of him setting off by train to Manchester. But the train is an LNER one, and LNER doesn't go anywhere near Manchester. So where did he end up? I think that we ought to know
Hopefully he will have discovered the disaster that is the Trans Pennine express (whatever it's currently called) and agree that the cross Pennine lines need to be fixed as part of the levelling up / Northern Powerhouse schemes.
Astonishing comments by Bozo re pigs . Jaw dropping .
Why?
Abattoirs should pay a decent salary to their staff, not try and get away with paying £9.12 per hour for a night shift. Farmers should pay a decent fee to abattoirs that can then fund their staff with a decent salary.
If they can't or won't then cull the animals and eat imports if need be.
Not that part he was making equivalence between destroying pigs which won’t end up in supermarket shelves to the normal process of them going to the abbatoir and then supermarket. The interview is a car crash!
Philip is to busy swooning at the thought of Bozo to actually process the words, his undying crush is everything.
…So how will we be able to judge Brexit? I think it will take 10-20 years to determine whether cutting our own path has made a difference. If we do wean ourselves off imported labour and work hard as a nation to boost our productivity as a result it will have been a success. If we significantly reduce our horrendous trade deficit either by import substitution or exports to new markets it will have been a success. If we fail to do these things and continue with the disastrous policies of excess consumption, excess borrowing and poor training it will have failed. We will know in 20 years but a lot depends upon the quality of governments elected in the meantime.
How many voters are going to wait a couple of decades to make that judgment ?
Where is Boris? Look at the Downing Street press office release photos (reproduced in several papers including the Daily Mail of him setting off by train to Manchester. But the train is an LNER one, and LNER doesn't go anywhere near Manchester. So where did he end up? I think that we ought to know
Hopefully he will have discovered the disaster that is the Trans Pennine express (whatever it's currently called) and agree that the cross Pennine lines need to be fixed as part of the levelling up / Northern Powerhouse schemes.
Have they not improved since the new rolling stock was brought into service ?
Astonishing comments by Bozo re pigs . Jaw dropping .
Marr approached it from the wrong angle. He should have approached it from a food shortage POV.
What did he say?
Marr complained 120,000 pigs are going to be slaughtered because of a shortage of labour in abattoirs
Boris said (paraphrase) (a) the food industry kills a lot of pigs and (b) the most important thing to do is fix the labour shortages through addressing pay & automation
What we are getting at the moment is incessant media coverage of every small and not so small issue that arises blaming these bumps in the road on Brexit. The fact that other countries are also suffering dislocations and disruptions as a result of the chaos called by Covid is ignored: it must be the fault of Brexit.
In many, probably most, cases this is just nonsense. So, for example, we have the problem of high gas prices. This is an international phenomenon which the UK is more than usually vulnerable to because successive governments failed to create enough storage. Do I claim that this was a misplaced reliance on the SM? Of course not, it was pure incompetence.
In other cases Brexit plays a small part. So we are by far from being alone in finding we do not have enough HGV drivers as deliveries and economic activity pick up again but the assumption that we could just import all the cheap labour we needed is no longer valid and so there is an extra piquancy to our problems as a result of the fact we are weaning ourselves off cheap labour.
In respect of food there is almost nothing to this at all because we have chosen not to impose the conditions on our imports that the EU is imposing on our exports, at least not yet. But every day we see stories about some supermarket somewhere being short of this or that.
The reality, as I have expressed before is that trying to measure the pluses and minuses of Brexit (and I accept there are both) at this stage is like trying to measure the ripples caused by a stone thrown into a raging tempest. The world economy and ours have gone through something truly incredible as a result of the pandemic. The consequences are dozens, probably hundreds, of times more significant than Brexit effects. We are deluding ourselves and failing to address the very real problems if we pretend otherwise.
So how will we be able to judge Brexit? I think it will take 10-20 years to determine whether cutting our own path has made a difference. If we do wean ourselves off imported labour and work hard as a nation to boost our productivity as a result it will have been a success. If we significantly reduce our horrendous trade deficit either by import substitution or exports to new markets it will have been a success. If we fail to do these things and continue with the disastrous policies of excess consumption, excess borrowing and poor training it will have failed. We will know in 20 years but a lot depends upon the quality of governments elected in the meantime.
Excellent and agree 100%
Blaming the media is a bit OTT. It is not as if ordinary folk will not have noticed petrol shortages or gaps on the supermarket shelves even without reading the papers.
But there would have been no petrol shortages had it not been for the media, so back to square one for you.
Blaming the media does not explain regional differences. Unless you think BBC South Today or BBC Radio Sussex is the main driving force.
So there's no major media presence in the Southeast or London?
No FBPE Remainers desperate for there to be a story there either?
This whole FBPE-is-responsible-for-the-distribution-crisis you're pushing, it is unhinged.
There is no distribution crisis.
There's a panic crisis in London and the South East. Why do you think there's a panic crisis in London and the SE if not media/FBPE?
Astonishing comments by Bozo re pigs . Jaw dropping .
Marr approached it from the wrong angle. He should have approached it from a food shortage POV.
What did he say?
Marr said something about it being the most healthy animals slaughtered ever. Boris said people need to understand that animals get slaughtered to make meat (or something like that).
Also, if the reports in the ST are true it appears that the amount of vetting done on Couzens was pretty much nil and that MPs are now worried because he was given access to the Commons and might have put them at risk. I love how they seem to be more worried about a hypothetical risk to them than the actual risk he was to women.
Anyway, Ms Patel - there is a glowing article about her in the magazine - won't do anything so that's that. Will the anger and frustration that many women feel simply dissipate or will it affect voting intentions and, if so, how? No idea.
How can one possibly get a police firearms licence, and assigned to the VIP and diplomatic protection teams, without having undergone Developed Vetting?
If I were Mrs Patel, I’d getting a full list of the armed police in front of the Spooks this week.
I suspect it's another area where a lot of people think too much effort for little more money.
Everytime I've been asked to do DV work I run a mile away from it, not because I have anything to hide but it's never worth the stress (especially as any IT work is usually incredibly old skills, simple and boring).
Can we just accept that the next 100 threads would have been about something negative about the Govt and move on to something a bit more main stream.
Climb off Johnson's cock for five minutes and write one.
Trust you to speak from the gutter.
I was only pointing out as I have previously, that the site is out of kilter to the way the nation is expressing its voting intention.
Its rabidly anti Govt imho. Indeed we are stopped from talking about the appalling Rayner, whilst slagging off of Boris continues daily and unabated. The balance of the site needs addressing.imho
Astonishing comments by Bozo re pigs . Jaw dropping .
Marr approached it from the wrong angle. He should have approached it from a food shortage POV.
What did he say?
Marr said something about it being the most healthy animals slaughtered ever. Boris said people need to understand that animals get slaughtered to make meat (or something like that).
"A great hecatomb of pigs" We've had the "let my people go" stage and we're at the "burnt offering" stage of Brexit then. Eagerly waiting for Boris to get swallowed by a whale.
Where is Boris? Look at the Downing Street press office release photos (reproduced in several papers including the Daily Mail of him setting off by train to Manchester. But the train is an LNER one, and LNER doesn't go anywhere near Manchester. So where did he end up? I think that we ought to know
Hopefully he will have discovered the disaster that is the Trans Pennine express (whatever it's currently called) and agree that the cross Pennine lines need to be fixed as part of the levelling up / Northern Powerhouse schemes.
Have they not improved since the new rolling stock was brought into service ?
Northern Rail are dire too.
Rolling stock is fine - but you end up with long delays.
If I'm heading to Leeds I can be sure within 5 minutes what time the train will arrive, if I'm going through to Manchester that 5 minutes is usually closer to 45 minutes.
What we are getting at the moment is incessant media coverage of every small and not so small issue that arises blaming these bumps in the road on Brexit. The fact that other countries are also suffering dislocations and disruptions as a result of the chaos called by Covid is ignored: it must be the fault of Brexit.
In many, probably most, cases this is just nonsense. So, for example, we have the problem of high gas prices. This is an international phenomenon which the UK is more than usually vulnerable to because successive governments failed to create enough storage. Do I claim that this was a misplaced reliance on the SM? Of course not, it was pure incompetence.
In other cases Brexit plays a small part. So we are by far from being alone in finding we do not have enough HGV drivers as deliveries and economic activity pick up again but the assumption that we could just import all the cheap labour we needed is no longer valid and so there is an extra piquancy to our problems as a result of the fact we are weaning ourselves off cheap labour.
In respect of food there is almost nothing to this at all because we have chosen not to impose the conditions on our imports that the EU is imposing on our exports, at least not yet. But every day we see stories about some supermarket somewhere being short of this or that.
The reality, as I have expressed before is that trying to measure the pluses and minuses of Brexit (and I accept there are both) at this stage is like trying to measure the ripples caused by a stone thrown into a raging tempest. The world economy and ours have gone through something truly incredible as a result of the pandemic. The consequences are dozens, probably hundreds, of times more significant than Brexit effects. We are deluding ourselves and failing to address the very real problems if we pretend otherwise.
So how will we be able to judge Brexit? I think it will take 10-20 years to determine whether cutting our own path has made a difference. If we do wean ourselves off imported labour and work hard as a nation to boost our productivity as a result it will have been a success. If we significantly reduce our horrendous trade deficit either by import substitution or exports to new markets it will have been a success. If we fail to do these things and continue with the disastrous policies of excess consumption, excess borrowing and poor training it will have failed. We will know in 20 years but a lot depends upon the quality of governments elected in the meantime.
Excellent and agree 100%
Blaming the media is a bit OTT. It is not as if ordinary folk will not have noticed petrol shortages or gaps on the supermarket shelves even without reading the papers.
But there would have been no petrol shortages had it not been for the media, so back to square one for you.
Exactly right. The media stoked this, partly to fuel the 24 hour news cycle.
How can you make an imaginary shortage. Cars hold finite amounts , if no shortages then it should have been over and done long before this. Even numpties cannot keep filling up.
Morning Comrades.
Drove down to London from Gloucestershire late last nite. Had to fill up on the way and glad I did it before Oxford because from that point on all the petrol stations seemed to be out of the stuff.
Do I blame Brexit? Well, I understand that it's added to the problem. Instead of being 80,000 drivers short it's now 100,000. But what's the point in discussing it now? It's done. We voted for it. Not me personally of course but it's a democracy and we have to live with what the majority voted for. So we just have to lump it.
No way are we going back. That's not feasible. Even a fully paid up Europhile like me won't buy that. More to the point, nor will the EU.
And let's stop blaming Brexit for the things that definitely are not its fault - like fuel prices, and the weather.
What we are getting at the moment is incessant media coverage of every small and not so small issue that arises blaming these bumps in the road on Brexit. The fact that other countries are also suffering dislocations and disruptions as a result of the chaos called by Covid is ignored: it must be the fault of Brexit.
In many, probably most, cases this is just nonsense. So, for example, we have the problem of high gas prices. This is an international phenomenon which the UK is more than usually vulnerable to because successive governments failed to create enough storage. Do I claim that this was a misplaced reliance on the SM? Of course not, it was pure incompetence.
In other cases Brexit plays a small part. So we are by far from being alone in finding we do not have enough HGV drivers as deliveries and economic activity pick up again but the assumption that we could just import all the cheap labour we needed is no longer valid and so there is an extra piquancy to our problems as a result of the fact we are weaning ourselves off cheap labour.
In respect of food there is almost nothing to this at all because we have chosen not to impose the conditions on our imports that the EU is imposing on our exports, at least not yet. But every day we see stories about some supermarket somewhere being short of this or that.
The reality, as I have expressed before is that trying to measure the pluses and minuses of Brexit (and I accept there are both) at this stage is like trying to measure the ripples caused by a stone thrown into a raging tempest. The world economy and ours have gone through something truly incredible as a result of the pandemic. The consequences are dozens, probably hundreds, of times more significant than Brexit effects. We are deluding ourselves and failing to address the very real problems if we pretend otherwise.
So how will we be able to judge Brexit? I think it will take 10-20 years to determine whether cutting our own path has made a difference. If we do wean ourselves off imported labour and work hard as a nation to boost our productivity as a result it will have been a success. If we significantly reduce our horrendous trade deficit either by import substitution or exports to new markets it will have been a success. If we fail to do these things and continue with the disastrous policies of excess consumption, excess borrowing and poor training it will have failed. We will know in 20 years but a lot depends upon the quality of governments elected in the meantime.
Excellent and agree 100%
Blaming the media is a bit OTT. It is not as if ordinary folk will not have noticed petrol shortages or gaps on the supermarket shelves even without reading the papers.
But there would have been no petrol shortages had it not been for the media, so back to square one for you.
Exactly right. The media stoked this, partly to fuel the 24 hour news cycle.
How can you make an imaginary shortage. Cars hold finite amounts , if no shortages then it should have been over and done long before this. Even numpties cannot keep filling up.
No, but they can keep topping up.
Jerry can sales increased by 1700% last weekend. Not only car hold fuel.
The media reporting made it a self fulfilling prophecy. Initial panic caused panic buying. More coverage. More panic buying.
It’s been over since Wednesday by me.
This seems to be focused on London and the south east.
Astonishing comments by Bozo re pigs . Jaw dropping .
Why?
Abattoirs should pay a decent salary to their staff, not try and get away with paying £9.12 per hour for a night shift. Farmers should pay a decent fee to abattoirs that can then fund their staff with a decent salary.
If they can't or won't then cull the animals and eat imports if need be.
Not that part he was making equivalence between destroying pigs which won’t end up in supermarket shelves to the normal process of them going to the abbatoir and then supermarket. The interview is a car crash!
How's it a car crash, its entirely correct they are equivalent. Pigs are bred for their meat and then they're killed - welcome to the real world nico.
Astonishing comments by Bozo re pigs . Jaw dropping .
Marr approached it from the wrong angle. He should have approached it from a food shortage POV.
What did he say?
Marr said something about it being the most healthy animals slaughtered ever. Boris said people need to understand that animals get slaughtered to make meat (or something like that).
Why is that jaw dropping ? It’s correct.
And presumably you are more likely to have a jaw-dropping incident during butchering than in slaughtering anyway?
(Manfully resisting temptation to make Cameron joke)
Where is Boris? Look at the Downing Street press office release photos (reproduced in several papers including the Daily Mail of him setting off by train to Manchester. But the train is an LNER one, and LNER doesn't go anywhere near Manchester. So where did he end up? I think that we ought to know
Hopefully he will have discovered the disaster that is the Trans Pennine express (whatever it's currently called) and agree that the cross Pennine lines need to be fixed as part of the levelling up / Northern Powerhouse schemes.
Isn't the Standedge tunnel something of a bottleneck? Or are there other routes?
Astonishing comments by Bozo re pigs . Jaw dropping .
Marr approached it from the wrong angle. He should have approached it from a food shortage POV.
What did he say?
Marr said something about it being the most healthy animals slaughtered ever. Boris said people need to understand that animals get slaughtered to make meat (or something like that).
Why is that jaw dropping ? It’s correct.
Because he was making out that what some pig farmers might have to do re destroying their animals and them being incinerated rather than end up on supermarket shelves was normal .
What we are getting at the moment is incessant media coverage of every small and not so small issue that arises blaming these bumps in the road on Brexit. The fact that other countries are also suffering dislocations and disruptions as a result of the chaos called by Covid is ignored: it must be the fault of Brexit.
In many, probably most, cases this is just nonsense. So, for example, we have the problem of high gas prices. This is an international phenomenon which the UK is more than usually vulnerable to because successive governments failed to create enough storage. Do I claim that this was a misplaced reliance on the SM? Of course not, it was pure incompetence.
In other cases Brexit plays a small part. So we are by far from being alone in finding we do not have enough HGV drivers as deliveries and economic activity pick up again but the assumption that we could just import all the cheap labour we needed is no longer valid and so there is an extra piquancy to our problems as a result of the fact we are weaning ourselves off cheap labour.
In respect of food there is almost nothing to this at all because we have chosen not to impose the conditions on our imports that the EU is imposing on our exports, at least not yet. But every day we see stories about some supermarket somewhere being short of this or that.
The reality, as I have expressed before is that trying to measure the pluses and minuses of Brexit (and I accept there are both) at this stage is like trying to measure the ripples caused by a stone thrown into a raging tempest. The world economy and ours have gone through something truly incredible as a result of the pandemic. The consequences are dozens, probably hundreds, of times more significant than Brexit effects. We are deluding ourselves and failing to address the very real problems if we pretend otherwise.
So how will we be able to judge Brexit? I think it will take 10-20 years to determine whether cutting our own path has made a difference. If we do wean ourselves off imported labour and work hard as a nation to boost our productivity as a result it will have been a success. If we significantly reduce our horrendous trade deficit either by import substitution or exports to new markets it will have been a success. If we fail to do these things and continue with the disastrous policies of excess consumption, excess borrowing and poor training it will have failed. We will know in 20 years but a lot depends upon the quality of governments elected in the meantime.
Excellent and agree 100%
Blaming the media is a bit OTT. It is not as if ordinary folk will not have noticed petrol shortages or gaps on the supermarket shelves even without reading the papers.
But there would have been no petrol shortages had it not been for the media, so back to square one for you.
Blaming the media does not explain regional differences. Unless you think BBC South Today or BBC Radio Sussex is the main driving force.
Incidentally I find this talk about three Labour defectors pretty implausible. When was the last time more than one MP simultaneously defected directly to an established party, rather than to found a new one?
Involving the big two? Never.
Three Lab to Con switchers total and none since 1977. Four Lab to Con switchers total, the first in 1995.
It's not merely implausible its comically unlikely. And even the report is seriously weak.
Fun to speculate though, and our minds will be blown if it happened.
Maybe the Labour proposal to tax private schools has tipped Diane Abbott over the edge?
What we are getting at the moment is incessant media coverage of every small and not so small issue that arises blaming these bumps in the road on Brexit. The fact that other countries are also suffering dislocations and disruptions as a result of the chaos called by Covid is ignored: it must be the fault of Brexit.
In many, probably most, cases this is just nonsense. So, for example, we have the problem of high gas prices. This is an international phenomenon which the UK is more than usually vulnerable to because successive governments failed to create enough storage. Do I claim that this was a misplaced reliance on the SM? Of course not, it was pure incompetence.
In other cases Brexit plays a small part. So we are by far from being alone in finding we do not have enough HGV drivers as deliveries and economic activity pick up again but the assumption that we could just import all the cheap labour we needed is no longer valid and so there is an extra piquancy to our problems as a result of the fact we are weaning ourselves off cheap labour.
In respect of food there is almost nothing to this at all because we have chosen not to impose the conditions on our imports that the EU is imposing on our exports, at least not yet. But every day we see stories about some supermarket somewhere being short of this or that.
The reality, as I have expressed before is that trying to measure the pluses and minuses of Brexit (and I accept there are both) at this stage is like trying to measure the ripples caused by a stone thrown into a raging tempest. The world economy and ours have gone through something truly incredible as a result of the pandemic. The consequences are dozens, probably hundreds, of times more significant than Brexit effects. We are deluding ourselves and failing to address the very real problems if we pretend otherwise.
So how will we be able to judge Brexit? I think it will take 10-20 years to determine whether cutting our own path has made a difference. If we do wean ourselves off imported labour and work hard as a nation to boost our productivity as a result it will have been a success. If we significantly reduce our horrendous trade deficit either by import substitution or exports to new markets it will have been a success. If we fail to do these things and continue with the disastrous policies of excess consumption, excess borrowing and poor training it will have failed. We will know in 20 years but a lot depends upon the quality of governments elected in the meantime.
Excellent and agree 100%
Blaming the media is a bit OTT. It is not as if ordinary folk will not have noticed petrol shortages or gaps on the supermarket shelves even without reading the papers.
But there would have been no petrol shortages had it not been for the media, so back to square one for you.
Blaming the media does not explain regional differences. Unless you think BBC South Today or BBC Radio Sussex is the main driving force.
So there's no major media presence in the Southeast or London?
No FBPE Remainers desperate for there to be a story there either?
This whole FBPE-is-responsible-for-the-distribution-crisis you're pushing, it is unhinged.
There is no distribution crisis.
There's a panic crisis in London and the South East. Why do you think there's a panic crisis in London and the SE if not media/FBPE?
Other people already set out plausible reasons to you in recent days. It's pointless for me to repeat them because I won't match their eloquence. It's just... it's not Twitter doing this. It really, really isn't.
Also, if the reports in the ST are true it appears that the amount of vetting done on Couzens was pretty much nil and that MPs are now worried because he was given access to the Commons and might have put them at risk. I love how they seem to be more worried about a hypothetical risk to them than the actual risk he was to women.
Anyway, Ms Patel - there is a glowing article about her in the magazine - won't do anything so that's that. Will the anger and frustration that many women feel simply dissipate or will it affect voting intentions and, if so, how? No idea.
Of course it should concern them anyway, but personalizing it might be very useful. They should have addressed the polluted river but it took the great stink affecting them as MPs to provoke some action.
Other than talking and wringing their hands I see very little evidence of any action at all being taken.
Unless "waving at buses" counts as action.
What I find grimly amusing is all these former Home Secretaries and other senior bods being quoted as saying that the police ought to have good recruitment and vetting procedures. Er... yes, of course. But when they were in charge why didn't they make sure that this was done?
I don't expect Home Secretaries to personally write the vetting procedures but they or one of their senior civil servants should be responsible for ensuring that police forces do have them and that they are fit for purpose. At the very least they should be making it clear to the police chiefs that who you hire is the single most important thing you can do to improve the culture of your organisation. You can have all the strategies you want to beat crime but culture defeats strategy every time.
Nothing will change. Q: Should there be an independent inquiry into what happened in the Sarah Everard case?
Astonishing comments by Bozo re pigs . Jaw dropping .
Why?
Abattoirs should pay a decent salary to their staff, not try and get away with paying £9.12 per hour for a night shift. Farmers should pay a decent fee to abattoirs that can then fund their staff with a decent salary.
If they can't or won't then cull the animals and eat imports if need be.
Not that part he was making equivalence between destroying pigs which won’t end up in supermarket shelves to the normal process of them going to the abbatoir and then supermarket. The interview is a car crash!
How's it a car crash, its entirely correct they are equivalent. Pigs are bred for their meat and then they're killed - welcome to the real world nico.
Are you being serious ? We all understand pigs get killed to end up on supermarket shelves , it is not normal for them to be bred and then killed and incinerated . He was trying to downplay the abbatoir problems with a false equivalence. If you don’t understand that then really there’s nothing else to say !
Astonishing comments by Bozo re pigs . Jaw dropping .
Marr approached it from the wrong angle. He should have approached it from a food shortage POV.
What did he say?
Marr complained 120,000 pigs are going to be slaughtered because of a shortage of labour in abattoirs
Boris said (paraphrase) (a) the food industry kills a lot of pigs and (b) the most important thing to do is fix the labour shortages through addressing pay & automation
Culled at cost to farmers. Those 120,000 pigs can't be brought to market because there aren't the butchers to process them.
Which is why artificial shortages are a bonkers way of attempting to raise wages. Shortages mean that activity that is wanted, maybe is vital, and which previously was done, will no longer be done.
It doesn't even work in raising wages in real terms.
Now the police enforce an entirely new code, which often seems to be mainly concerned with politics. The streets stink of marijuana. Vandalism, burglary, car theft and general disorder proceed unhampered.
Yet when the Covid panic arrived, the police turned from patrolling Twitter and enforcing politically correct speech codes, and instead suddenly appeared in legions to lecture people for sunbathing, hiking or having picnics. Couzens, let it never be forgotten, pretended to use Covid powers to get Sarah Everard into his car.
Getting the police involved with policing COVID was wrong anyway, this was just one last kick in the teeth.
What we are getting at the moment is incessant media coverage of every small and not so small issue that arises blaming these bumps in the road on Brexit. The fact that other countries are also suffering dislocations and disruptions as a result of the chaos called by Covid is ignored: it must be the fault of Brexit.
In many, probably most, cases this is just nonsense. So, for example, we have the problem of high gas prices. This is an international phenomenon which the UK is more than usually vulnerable to because successive governments failed to create enough storage. Do I claim that this was a misplaced reliance on the SM? Of course not, it was pure incompetence.
In other cases Brexit plays a small part. So we are by far from being alone in finding we do not have enough HGV drivers as deliveries and economic activity pick up again but the assumption that we could just import all the cheap labour we needed is no longer valid and so there is an extra piquancy to our problems as a result of the fact we are weaning ourselves off cheap labour.
In respect of food there is almost nothing to this at all because we have chosen not to impose the conditions on our imports that the EU is imposing on our exports, at least not yet. But every day we see stories about some supermarket somewhere being short of this or that.
The reality, as I have expressed before is that trying to measure the pluses and minuses of Brexit (and I accept there are both) at this stage is like trying to measure the ripples caused by a stone thrown into a raging tempest. The world economy and ours have gone through something truly incredible as a result of the pandemic. The consequences are dozens, probably hundreds, of times more significant than Brexit effects. We are deluding ourselves and failing to address the very real problems if we pretend otherwise.
So how will we be able to judge Brexit? I think it will take 10-20 years to determine whether cutting our own path has made a difference. If we do wean ourselves off imported labour and work hard as a nation to boost our productivity as a result it will have been a success. If we significantly reduce our horrendous trade deficit either by import substitution or exports to new markets it will have been a success. If we fail to do these things and continue with the disastrous policies of excess consumption, excess borrowing and poor training it will have failed. We will know in 20 years but a lot depends upon the quality of governments elected in the meantime.
Excellent and agree 100%
Blaming the media is a bit OTT. It is not as if ordinary folk will not have noticed petrol shortages or gaps on the supermarket shelves even without reading the papers.
But there would have been no petrol shortages had it not been for the media, so back to square one for you.
Blaming the media does not explain regional differences. Unless you think BBC South Today or BBC Radio Sussex is the main driving force.
So there's no major media presence in the Southeast or London?
No FBPE Remainers desperate for there to be a story there either?
This whole FBPE-is-responsible-for-the-distribution-crisis you're pushing, it is unhinged.
There is no distribution crisis.
There's a panic crisis in London and the South East. Why do you think there's a panic crisis in London and the SE if not media/FBPE?
Other people already set out plausible reasons to you in recent days. It's pointless for me to repeat them because I won't match their eloquence. It's just... it's not Twitter doing this. It really, really isn't.
Of course it wasn’t just Twitter.
Radio 5 Live, the station of choice for a lot of road warriors, played its part too. They’ll say they didn’t, that they spent three days saying there were no shortages and not to panic buy - but all people heard was “shortages, panic buy”. As someone commented here the other day, Derren Brown would have been proud of that one!
On Brexit silliness: I think I have worked out that I can't bring ham, cheese and chorizo back from my holiday because I am flying home from Gib, not Spain, and it's not in the EU. Which is slightly annoying, and mystifying as it's a British territory. Having said that, I am not sure I could have done before Brexit as I don't think it was in the Customs Union. What is the point of it being a tax free territory if you can't go shopping there?
Stick it in your suitcase. No one will notice.
Are you sure? Won't ham, cheese and chorizo be potentially a bit pungent, even if in a suitcase?
I doubt they will really care anyway
I think problems have been mainly taking things into Spain from Gibraltar, rather than the other way round.
Of course you could shop in Gibraltar. No idea how food prices compare, though people living in Spain have been caught out returning to Spain.
What we are getting at the moment is incessant media coverage of every small and not so small issue that arises blaming these bumps in the road on Brexit. The fact that other countries are also suffering dislocations and disruptions as a result of the chaos called by Covid is ignored: it must be the fault of Brexit.
In many, probably most, cases this is just nonsense. So, for example, we have the problem of high gas prices. This is an international phenomenon which the UK is more than usually vulnerable to because successive governments failed to create enough storage. Do I claim that this was a misplaced reliance on the SM? Of course not, it was pure incompetence.
In other cases Brexit plays a small part. So we are by far from being alone in finding we do not have enough HGV drivers as deliveries and economic activity pick up again but the assumption that we could just import all the cheap labour we needed is no longer valid and so there is an extra piquancy to our problems as a result of the fact we are weaning ourselves off cheap labour.
In respect of food there is almost nothing to this at all because we have chosen not to impose the conditions on our imports that the EU is imposing on our exports, at least not yet. But every day we see stories about some supermarket somewhere being short of this or that.
The reality, as I have expressed before is that trying to measure the pluses and minuses of Brexit (and I accept there are both) at this stage is like trying to measure the ripples caused by a stone thrown into a raging tempest. The world economy and ours have gone through something truly incredible as a result of the pandemic. The consequences are dozens, probably hundreds, of times more significant than Brexit effects. We are deluding ourselves and failing to address the very real problems if we pretend otherwise.
So how will we be able to judge Brexit? I think it will take 10-20 years to determine whether cutting our own path has made a difference. If we do wean ourselves off imported labour and work hard as a nation to boost our productivity as a result it will have been a success. If we significantly reduce our horrendous trade deficit either by import substitution or exports to new markets it will have been a success. If we fail to do these things and continue with the disastrous policies of excess consumption, excess borrowing and poor training it will have failed. We will know in 20 years but a lot depends upon the quality of governments elected in the meantime.
Excellent and agree 100%
Blaming the media is a bit OTT. It is not as if ordinary folk will not have noticed petrol shortages or gaps on the supermarket shelves even without reading the papers.
But there would have been no petrol shortages had it not been for the media, so back to square one for you.
Exactly right. The media stoked this, partly to fuel the 24 hour news cycle.
How can you make an imaginary shortage. Cars hold finite amounts , if no shortages then it should have been over and done long before this. Even numpties cannot keep filling up.
No, but they can keep topping up.
Jerry can sales increased by 1700% last weekend. Not only car hold fuel.
The media reporting made it a self fulfilling prophecy. Initial panic caused panic buying. More coverage. More panic buying.
It’s been over since Wednesday by me.
This seems to be focused on London and the south east.
Problems were still ongoing in Aberdeenshire on Friday (I haven't been near a station this weekend). It's been a while since I looked at a map, but I vaguely remember we're not in the South East, can you confirm?
On Brexit silliness: I think I have worked out that I can't bring ham, cheese and chorizo back from my holiday because I am flying home from Gib, not Spain, and it's not in the EU. Which is slightly annoying, and mystifying as it's a British territory. Having said that, I am not sure I could have done before Brexit as I don't think it was in the Customs Union. What is the point of it being a tax free territory if you can't go shopping there?
Stick it in your suitcase. No one will notice.
That is a possibility. I don't think Spanish cheese is particularly smelly and neither are iberico or chorizo, especially if vacuum packed. Although I am on cabin baggage only. But me going shopping on the way back from holiday is always only a theoretical possibility. I find I am travelling on the luggage limit, don't want to spend any more money and have in any case already eaten my fill of the products in question while on holiday.
You can get a passable Manchego at Tesco these days anyway
it's not Twitter doing this. It really, really isn't.
Twitter reported a problem that didn't exist, and in doing so created a crisis that doesn't exist, for which the Government has mobilised the Army, unnecessarily, obviously...
What we are getting at the moment is incessant media coverage of every small and not so small issue that arises blaming these bumps in the road on Brexit. The fact that other countries are also suffering dislocations and disruptions as a result of the chaos called by Covid is ignored: it must be the fault of Brexit.
In many, probably most, cases this is just nonsense. So, for example, we have the problem of high gas prices. This is an international phenomenon which the UK is more than usually vulnerable to because successive governments failed to create enough storage. Do I claim that this was a misplaced reliance on the SM? Of course not, it was pure incompetence.
In other cases Brexit plays a small part. So we are by far from being alone in finding we do not have enough HGV drivers as deliveries and economic activity pick up again but the assumption that we could just import all the cheap labour we needed is no longer valid and so there is an extra piquancy to our problems as a result of the fact we are weaning ourselves off cheap labour.
In respect of food there is almost nothing to this at all because we have chosen not to impose the conditions on our imports that the EU is imposing on our exports, at least not yet. But every day we see stories about some supermarket somewhere being short of this or that.
The reality, as I have expressed before is that trying to measure the pluses and minuses of Brexit (and I accept there are both) at this stage is like trying to measure the ripples caused by a stone thrown into a raging tempest. The world economy and ours have gone through something truly incredible as a result of the pandemic. The consequences are dozens, probably hundreds, of times more significant than Brexit effects. We are deluding ourselves and failing to address the very real problems if we pretend otherwise.
So how will we be able to judge Brexit? I think it will take 10-20 years to determine whether cutting our own path has made a difference. If we do wean ourselves off imported labour and work hard as a nation to boost our productivity as a result it will have been a success. If we significantly reduce our horrendous trade deficit either by import substitution or exports to new markets it will have been a success. If we fail to do these things and continue with the disastrous policies of excess consumption, excess borrowing and poor training it will have failed. We will know in 20 years but a lot depends upon the quality of governments elected in the meantime.
Excellent and agree 100%
Blaming the media is a bit OTT. It is not as if ordinary folk will not have noticed petrol shortages or gaps on the supermarket shelves even without reading the papers.
But there would have been no petrol shortages had it not been for the media, so back to square one for you.
Blaming the media does not explain regional differences. Unless you think BBC South Today or BBC Radio Sussex is the main driving force.
So there's no major media presence in the Southeast or London?
No FBPE Remainers desperate for there to be a story there either?
This whole FBPE-is-responsible-for-the-distribution-crisis you're pushing, it is unhinged.
There is no distribution crisis.
There's a panic crisis in London and the South East. Why do you think there's a panic crisis in London and the SE if not media/FBPE?
Other people already set out plausible reasons to you in recent days. It's pointless for me to repeat them because I won't match their eloquence. It's just... it's not Twitter doing this. It really, really isn't.
On this, Philip is firmly rooted in ‘there are no problems, and even if there are, they’re good for us’.
The issue with all of the anti-Brexiy crowd going in so hard at the moment is that it lowers expectations and when, on Christmas Day, we're all eating our turkeys that magically got delivered that we were all assured would be unavailable everyone will wonder what the fuss was about.
In a year from now when the new rush of HGV drivers have made it through the system all of the visible issues with Brexit go away and the working poor will have had 8-12% wage increases due to the labour shortage.
As an anti-Brexit person, I sort of agree with that. 'Project Fear' over Christmas could certainly backfire if Christmas is just normal, as it may well be. Similarly over general food and other supply shortages - who knows? Although I think Brexit was a jolly bad idea, we're stuck with it and need to let events unfold one way or another. Which is why I thought Starmer's "Make Brexit Work" was a pretty sensible soundbite.
Having had Christmas cancelled last year, no turkeys at Christmas this year would be a non story. It would just be met with indifference.
Astonishing comments by Bozo re pigs . Jaw dropping .
Marr approached it from the wrong angle. He should have approached it from a food shortage POV.
What did he say?
Marr complained 120,000 pigs are going to be slaughtered because of a shortage of labour in abattoirs
Boris said (paraphrase) (a) the food industry kills a lot of pigs and (b) the most important thing to do is fix the labour shortages through addressing pay & automation
Culled at cost to farmers. Those 120,000 pigs can't be brought to market because there aren't the butchers to process them.
Which is why artificial shortages are a bonkers way of attempting to raise wages. Shortages mean that activity that is wanted, maybe is vital, and which previously was done, will no longer be done.
It doesn't even work in raising wages in real terms.
If it is wanted then the abattoirs should pay higher wages. Supermarkets will need to pay more and ultimately consumers.
People shouldn’t be forced to work in dangerous, depressing jobs for low wages
On Brexit silliness: I think I have worked out that I can't bring ham, cheese and chorizo back from my holiday because I am flying home from Gib, not Spain, and it's not in the EU. Which is slightly annoying, and mystifying as it's a British territory. Having said that, I am not sure I could have done before Brexit as I don't think it was in the Customs Union. What is the point of it being a tax free territory if you can't go shopping there?
Stick it in your suitcase. No one will notice.
That is a possibility. I don't think Spanish cheese is particularly smelly and neither are iberico or chorizo, especially if vacuum packed. Although I am on cabin baggage only. But me going shopping on the way back from holiday is always only a theoretical possibility. I find I am travelling on the luggage limit, don't want to spend any more money and have in any case already eaten my fill of the products in question while on holiday.
You can get a passable Manchego at Tesco these days anyway
Indeed, and Waitrose sells some very good speciality chorizo. I was thinking probably of some pata negra at slightly less ridiculous prices than ypu might pay over here. I shall just have to eat my fill while in Spain
Where is Boris? Look at the Downing Street press office release photos (reproduced in several papers including the Daily Mail of him setting off by train to Manchester. But the train is an LNER one, and LNER doesn't go anywhere near Manchester. So where did he end up? I think that we ought to know
Hopefully he will have discovered the disaster that is the Trans Pennine express (whatever it's currently called) and agree that the cross Pennine lines need to be fixed as part of the levelling up / Northern Powerhouse schemes.
Isn't the Standedge tunnel something of a bottleneck? Or are there other routes?
If Bozo had any sense he'd have caught the Class 68 hauled service from Leeds to Manchester. Sat in First Class, right behind the loco, listening to it hammering through the tunnels.
Astonishing comments by Bozo re pigs . Jaw dropping .
Marr approached it from the wrong angle. He should have approached it from a food shortage POV.
What did he say?
Marr said something about it being the most healthy animals slaughtered ever. Boris said people need to understand that animals get slaughtered to make meat (or something like that).
Why is that jaw dropping ? It’s correct.
However Marr was saying the opposite , ie they were just being slaughtered. So in context extremely incorrect and just what you would expect from the thick clown.
Astonishing comments by Bozo re pigs . Jaw dropping .
Marr approached it from the wrong angle. He should have approached it from a food shortage POV.
What did he say?
Marr complained 120,000 pigs are going to be slaughtered because of a shortage of labour in abattoirs
Boris said (paraphrase) (a) the food industry kills a lot of pigs and (b) the most important thing to do is fix the labour shortages through addressing pay & automation
Culled at cost to farmers. Those 120,000 pigs can't be brought to market because there aren't the butchers to process them.
Which is why artificial shortages are a bonkers way of attempting to raise wages. Shortages mean that activity that is wanted, maybe is vital, and which previously was done, will no longer be done.
It doesn't even work in raising wages in real terms.
If it is wanted then the abattoirs should pay higher wages. Supermarkets will need to pay more and ultimately consumers.
People shouldn’t be forced to work in dangerous, depressing jobs for low wages
Fine words from extremely rich people butter no parsnips. What is the alternative "let them eat cake"
Astonishing comments by Bozo re pigs . Jaw dropping .
Why?
Abattoirs should pay a decent salary to their staff, not try and get away with paying £9.12 per hour for a night shift. Farmers should pay a decent fee to abattoirs that can then fund their staff with a decent salary.
If they can't or won't then cull the animals and eat imports if need be.
Not that part he was making equivalence between destroying pigs which won’t end up in supermarket shelves to the normal process of them going to the abbatoir and then supermarket. The interview is a car crash!
How's it a car crash, its entirely correct they are equivalent. Pigs are bred for their meat and then they're killed - welcome to the real world nico.
Are you being serious ? We all understand pigs get killed to end up on supermarket shelves , it is not normal for them to be bred and then killed and incinerated . He was trying to downplay the abbatoir problems with a false equivalence. If you don’t understand that then really there’s nothing else to say !
If the abattoirs are facing issues they should pay a decent wage to their staff. If pigs bred for meat get killed that's the circle of life.
What's your problem nico? Do you think £9.12 per hour for a night shift working in an abattoir is an appealing prospect? Farmers and abattoirs should pay a decent salary, if they refuse to do so then that's the end of it and kill the pigs if need be.
On Brexit silliness: I think I have worked out that I can't bring ham, cheese and chorizo back from my holiday because I am flying home from Gib, not Spain, and it's not in the EU. Which is slightly annoying, and mystifying as it's a British territory. Having said that, I am not sure I could have done before Brexit as I don't think it was in the Customs Union. What is the point of it being a tax free territory if you can't go shopping there?
Stick it in your suitcase. No one will notice.
Are you sure? Won't ham, cheese and chorizo be potentially a bit pungent, even if in a suitcase?
I doubt they will really care anyway
I think problems have been mainly taking things into Spain from Gibraltar, rather than the other way round.
Of course you could shop in Gibraltar. No idea how food prices compare, though people living in Spain have been caught out returning to Spain.
The issue seems to be that Gib isn't in the EU and not one of the "treated as" countries so the problem is bringing things home from Gib, not crossing the Spain/Gib border. Yes I had planned a final day shopping in the central market (among other things)
Where is Boris? Look at the Downing Street press office release photos (reproduced in several papers including the Daily Mail of him setting off by train to Manchester. But the train is an LNER one, and LNER doesn't go anywhere near Manchester. So where did he end up? I think that we ought to know
Hopefully he will have discovered the disaster that is the Trans Pennine express (whatever it's currently called) and agree that the cross Pennine lines need to be fixed as part of the levelling up / Northern Powerhouse schemes.
Isn't the Standedge tunnel something of a bottleneck? Or are there other routes?
This is an interesting question. There are only a handful of 'good' routes through the Pennines, and which ones are 'best' for a new or upgraded route depends on where you want to serve.
And that's a significant issue. There are lots of medium-sized towns, and a handful of large cities, on both sides of the Pennines, all of which need improved transport links. Creating a single new route (high speed or not) will miss out most of these. Therefore the real answer is a new route (to increase capacity), plus massive upgrading to the existing network.
As such, I tentatively favour a new 'central' spine tunnel through the Pennines, on a rough Leeds to Manchester axis, with routes feeding into this on both sides of the Pennines. But that will hardly decrease times from (say) Sheffield. Hence the need to improve the existing network.
What they should be doing (and I believe are) is looking at a current and projected traffic analysis, to work out the nodal points for the network.
The issue with all of the anti-Brexiy crowd going in so hard at the moment is that it lowers expectations and when, on Christmas Day, we're all eating our turkeys that magically got delivered that we were all assured would be unavailable everyone will wonder what the fuss was about.
In a year from now when the new rush of HGV drivers have made it through the system all of the visible issues with Brexit go away and the working poor will have had 8-12% wage increases due to the labour shortage.
As an anti-Brexit person, I sort of agree with that. 'Project Fear' over Christmas could certainly backfire if Christmas is just normal, as it may well be. Similarly over general food and other supply shortages - who knows? Although I think Brexit was a jolly bad idea, we're stuck with it and need to let events unfold one way or another. Which is why I thought Starmer's "Make Brexit Work" was a pretty sensible soundbite.
Having had Christmas cancelled last year, no turkeys at Christmas this year would be a non story. It would just be met with indifference.
On Brexit silliness: I think I have worked out that I can't bring ham, cheese and chorizo back from my holiday because I am flying home from Gib, not Spain, and it's not in the EU. Which is slightly annoying, and mystifying as it's a British territory. Having said that, I am not sure I could have done before Brexit as I don't think it was in the Customs Union. What is the point of it being a tax free territory if you can't go shopping there?
Gibraltar is a bit of a dump I'm afraid - and much more expensive than some nearby glorious Spanish cities like Jerez and Cadiz were the quality of cuisine is way better. However, I don't think that is anything new and it provides thousands of jobs for Spanish citizens every day.
The issue with all of the anti-Brexiy crowd going in so hard at the moment is that it lowers expectations and when, on Christmas Day, we're all eating our turkeys that magically got delivered that we were all assured would be unavailable everyone will wonder what the fuss was about.
In a year from now when the new rush of HGV drivers have made it through the system all of the visible issues with Brexit go away and the working poor will have had 8-12% wage increases due to the labour shortage.
As an anti-Brexit person, I sort of agree with that. 'Project Fear' over Christmas could certainly backfire if Christmas is just normal, as it may well be. Similarly over general food and other supply shortages - who knows? Although I think Brexit was a jolly bad idea, we're stuck with it and need to let events unfold one way or another. Which is why I thought Starmer's "Make Brexit Work" was a pretty sensible soundbite.
Having had Christmas cancelled last year, no turkeys at Christmas this year would be a non story. It would just be met with indifference.
What we are getting at the moment is incessant media coverage of every small and not so small issue that arises blaming these bumps in the road on Brexit. The fact that other countries are also suffering dislocations and disruptions as a result of the chaos called by Covid is ignored: it must be the fault of Brexit.
In many, probably most, cases this is just nonsense. So, for example, we have the problem of high gas prices. This is an international phenomenon which the UK is more than usually vulnerable to because successive governments failed to create enough storage. Do I claim that this was a misplaced reliance on the SM? Of course not, it was pure incompetence.
In other cases Brexit plays a small part. So we are by far from being alone in finding we do not have enough HGV drivers as deliveries and economic activity pick up again but the assumption that we could just import all the cheap labour we needed is no longer valid and so there is an extra piquancy to our problems as a result of the fact we are weaning ourselves off cheap labour.
In respect of food there is almost nothing to this at all because we have chosen not to impose the conditions on our imports that the EU is imposing on our exports, at least not yet. But every day we see stories about some supermarket somewhere being short of this or that.
The reality, as I have expressed before is that trying to measure the pluses and minuses of Brexit (and I accept there are both) at this stage is like trying to measure the ripples caused by a stone thrown into a raging tempest. The world economy and ours have gone through something truly incredible as a result of the pandemic. The consequences are dozens, probably hundreds, of times more significant than Brexit effects. We are deluding ourselves and failing to address the very real problems if we pretend otherwise.
So how will we be able to judge Brexit? I think it will take 10-20 years to determine whether cutting our own path has made a difference. If we do wean ourselves off imported labour and work hard as a nation to boost our productivity as a result it will have been a success. If we significantly reduce our horrendous trade deficit either by import substitution or exports to new markets it will have been a success. If we fail to do these things and continue with the disastrous policies of excess consumption, excess borrowing and poor training it will have failed. We will know in 20 years but a lot depends upon the quality of governments elected in the meantime.
Excellent and agree 100%
Blaming the media is a bit OTT. It is not as if ordinary folk will not have noticed petrol shortages or gaps on the supermarket shelves even without reading the papers.
But there would have been no petrol shortages had it not been for the media, so back to square one for you.
Exactly right. The media stoked this, partly to fuel the 24 hour news cycle.
How can you make an imaginary shortage. Cars hold finite amounts , if no shortages then it should have been over and done long before this. Even numpties cannot keep filling up.
No, but they can keep topping up.
Jerry can sales increased by 1700% last weekend. Not only car hold fuel.
The media reporting made it a self fulfilling prophecy. Initial panic caused panic buying. More coverage. More panic buying.
It’s been over since Wednesday by me.
This seems to be focused on London and the south east.
Problems were still ongoing in Aberdeenshire on Friday (I haven't been near a station this weekend). It's been a while since I looked at a map, but I vaguely remember we're not in the South East, can you confirm?
I don't see any issues or queues in Ayrshire, all looks normal.
Astonishing comments by Bozo re pigs . Jaw dropping .
Marr approached it from the wrong angle. He should have approached it from a food shortage POV.
What did he say?
Marr complained 120,000 pigs are going to be slaughtered because of a shortage of labour in abattoirs
Boris said (paraphrase) (a) the food industry kills a lot of pigs and (b) the most important thing to do is fix the labour shortages through addressing pay & automation
Culled at cost to farmers. Those 120,000 pigs can't be brought to market because there aren't the butchers to process them.
Which is why artificial shortages are a bonkers way of attempting to raise wages. Shortages mean that activity that is wanted, maybe is vital, and which previously was done, will no longer be done.
It doesn't even work in raising wages in real terms.
If it is wanted then the abattoirs should pay higher wages. Supermarkets will need to pay more and ultimately consumers.
People shouldn’t be forced to work in dangerous, depressing jobs for low wages
What will happen of course is that farmers will stop raising pigs only to be shot and disposed of at their own cost and pigmeat will be imported instead. Without addressing the issue you mention.
That's the real world, outside the Brexit fantasy, I'm afraid.
Can we just accept that the next 100 threads would have been about something negative about the Govt and move on to something a bit more main stream.
Climb off Johnson's cock for five minutes and write one.
Trust you to speak from the gutter.
I was only pointing out as I have previously, that the site is out of kilter to the way the nation is expressing its voting intention.
Its rabidly anti Govt imho. Indeed we are stopped from talking about the appalling Rayner, whilst slagging off of Boris continues daily and unabated. The balance of the site needs addressing.imho
Nobody is stopping you talking about Rayner. Write a thread. I'm sure it will be published. Govts govern and therefore are open to much more scrutiny than oppositions. It is the nature of the beast that there will be more threads critical of the govt. I don't think anyone can claim Starmer is getting an easy ride here.
As has been pointed out before if you don't like it you don't have to stay.
Also, if the reports in the ST are true it appears that the amount of vetting done on Couzens was pretty much nil and that MPs are now worried because he was given access to the Commons and might have put them at risk. I love how they seem to be more worried about a hypothetical risk to them than the actual risk he was to women.
Anyway, Ms Patel - there is a glowing article about her in the magazine - won't do anything so that's that. Will the anger and frustration that many women feel simply dissipate or will it affect voting intentions and, if so, how? No idea.
How can one possibly get a police firearms licence, and assigned to the VIP and diplomatic protection teams, without having undergone Developed Vetting?
If I were Mrs Patel, I’d getting a full list of the armed police in front of the Spooks this week.
I suspect it's another area where a lot of people think too much effort for little more money.
Everytime I've been asked to do DV work I run a mile away from it, not because I have anything to hide but it's never worth the stress (especially as any IT work is usually incredibly old skills, simple and boring).
Of course. If you don’t want to do DV, that should be your choice. Government IT stuff is, as you say, mostly slow and boring.
But if you want a warrant card, a gun, and to serve on the most sensitive police units in the country, it needs to be compulsory.
Astonishing comments by Bozo re pigs . Jaw dropping .
Marr approached it from the wrong angle. He should have approached it from a food shortage POV.
What did he say?
Marr complained 120,000 pigs are going to be slaughtered because of a shortage of labour in abattoirs
Boris said (paraphrase) (a) the food industry kills a lot of pigs and (b) the most important thing to do is fix the labour shortages through addressing pay & automation
Culled at cost to farmers. Those 120,000 pigs can't be brought to market because there aren't the butchers to process them.
Which is why artificial shortages are a bonkers way of attempting to raise wages. Shortages mean that activity that is wanted, maybe is vital, and which previously was done, will no longer be done.
It doesn't even work in raising wages in real terms.
If it is wanted then the abattoirs should pay higher wages. Supermarkets will need to pay more and ultimately consumers.
People shouldn’t be forced to work in dangerous, depressing jobs for low wages
What will happen of course is that farmers will stop raising pigs only to be shot and disposed of at their own cost and pigmeat will be imported instead. Without addressing the issue you mention.
That's the real world, outside the Brexit fantasy, I'm afraid.
Just been looking at the contractor rates for Council planning officers in the south east. One ad is up for over £70 per hour, so £115k per year. This is for a job where a permanent role would normally be at around £40k; and a manager at little more, maybe £50k. At those pay levels, Council's are going to either go bust or be unable to carry out their statutory functions, or both (as planning fee income covers nowhere near those costs). Something else to keep an eye on.
Astonishing comments by Bozo re pigs . Jaw dropping .
Marr approached it from the wrong angle. He should have approached it from a food shortage POV.
What did he say?
Marr complained 120,000 pigs are going to be slaughtered because of a shortage of labour in abattoirs
Boris said (paraphrase) (a) the food industry kills a lot of pigs and (b) the most important thing to do is fix the labour shortages through addressing pay & automation
Culled at cost to farmers. Those 120,000 pigs can't be brought to market because there aren't the butchers to process them.
Which is why artificial shortages are a bonkers way of attempting to raise wages. Shortages mean that activity that is wanted, maybe is vital, and which previously was done, will no longer be done.
It doesn't even work in raising wages in real terms.
Cue Philip turning up to tell us it is a brexit benefit and really great for Global Britain. No bacon and no jobs , good old Tories.
What we are getting at the moment is incessant media coverage of every small and not so small issue that arises blaming these bumps in the road on Brexit. The fact that other countries are also suffering dislocations and disruptions as a result of the chaos called by Covid is ignored: it must be the fault of Brexit.
In many, probably most, cases this is just nonsense. So, for example, we have the problem of high gas prices. This is an international phenomenon which the UK is more than usually vulnerable to because successive governments failed to create enough storage. Do I claim that this was a misplaced reliance on the SM? Of course not, it was pure incompetence.
In other cases Brexit plays a small part. So we are by far from being alone in finding we do not have enough HGV drivers as deliveries and economic activity pick up again but the assumption that we could just import all the cheap labour we needed is no longer valid and so there is an extra piquancy to our problems as a result of the fact we are weaning ourselves off cheap labour.
In respect of food there is almost nothing to this at all because we have chosen not to impose the conditions on our imports that the EU is imposing on our exports, at least not yet. But every day we see stories about some supermarket somewhere being short of this or that.
The reality, as I have expressed before is that trying to measure the pluses and minuses of Brexit (and I accept there are both) at this stage is like trying to measure the ripples caused by a stone thrown into a raging tempest. The world economy and ours have gone through something truly incredible as a result of the pandemic. The consequences are dozens, probably hundreds, of times more significant than Brexit effects. We are deluding ourselves and failing to address the very real problems if we pretend otherwise.
So how will we be able to judge Brexit? I think it will take 10-20 years to determine whether cutting our own path has made a difference. If we do wean ourselves off imported labour and work hard as a nation to boost our productivity as a result it will have been a success. If we significantly reduce our horrendous trade deficit either by import substitution or exports to new markets it will have been a success. If we fail to do these things and continue with the disastrous policies of excess consumption, excess borrowing and poor training it will have failed. We will know in 20 years but a lot depends upon the quality of governments elected in the meantime.
Excellent and agree 100%
Blaming the media is a bit OTT. It is not as if ordinary folk will not have noticed petrol shortages or gaps on the supermarket shelves even without reading the papers.
But there would have been no petrol shortages had it not been for the media, so back to square one for you.
Blaming the media does not explain regional differences. Unless you think BBC South Today or BBC Radio Sussex is the main driving force.
So there's no major media presence in the Southeast or London?
No FBPE Remainers desperate for there to be a story there either?
This whole FBPE-is-responsible-for-the-distribution-crisis you're pushing, it is unhinged.
There is no distribution crisis.
There's a panic crisis in London and the South East. Why do you think there's a panic crisis in London and the SE if not media/FBPE?
Other people already set out plausible reasons to you in recent days. It's pointless for me to repeat them because I won't match their eloquence. It's just... it's not Twitter doing this. It really, really isn't.
Like talking to a brick wall anyway. He is in a blue rinse world of his own.
What we are getting at the moment is incessant media coverage of every small and not so small issue that arises blaming these bumps in the road on Brexit. The fact that other countries are also suffering dislocations and disruptions as a result of the chaos called by Covid is ignored: it must be the fault of Brexit.
In many, probably most, cases this is just nonsense. So, for example, we have the problem of high gas prices. This is an international phenomenon which the UK is more than usually vulnerable to because successive governments failed to create enough storage. Do I claim that this was a misplaced reliance on the SM? Of course not, it was pure incompetence.
In other cases Brexit plays a small part. So we are by far from being alone in finding we do not have enough HGV drivers as deliveries and economic activity pick up again but the assumption that we could just import all the cheap labour we needed is no longer valid and so there is an extra piquancy to our problems as a result of the fact we are weaning ourselves off cheap labour.
In respect of food there is almost nothing to this at all because we have chosen not to impose the conditions on our imports that the EU is imposing on our exports, at least not yet. But every day we see stories about some supermarket somewhere being short of this or that.
The reality, as I have expressed before is that trying to measure the pluses and minuses of Brexit (and I accept there are both) at this stage is like trying to measure the ripples caused by a stone thrown into a raging tempest. The world economy and ours have gone through something truly incredible as a result of the pandemic. The consequences are dozens, probably hundreds, of times more significant than Brexit effects. We are deluding ourselves and failing to address the very real problems if we pretend otherwise.
So how will we be able to judge Brexit? I think it will take 10-20 years to determine whether cutting our own path has made a difference. If we do wean ourselves off imported labour and work hard as a nation to boost our productivity as a result it will have been a success. If we significantly reduce our horrendous trade deficit either by import substitution or exports to new markets it will have been a success. If we fail to do these things and continue with the disastrous policies of excess consumption, excess borrowing and poor training it will have failed. We will know in 20 years but a lot depends upon the quality of governments elected in the meantime.
Excellent and agree 100%
Blaming the media is a bit OTT. It is not as if ordinary folk will not have noticed petrol shortages or gaps on the supermarket shelves even without reading the papers.
But there would have been no petrol shortages had it not been for the media, so back to square one for you.
Blaming the media does not explain regional differences. Unless you think BBC South Today or BBC Radio Sussex is the main driving force.
DavidL has it right.
What, for example, is the regional distribution of the readership of The Independent or the Guardian?
The last numbers I saw for the Independent had it being basically a London and parts of the SE paper.
Can we just accept that the next 100 threads would have been about something negative about the Govt and move on to something a bit more main stream.
Climb off Johnson's cock for five minutes and write one.
Trust you to speak from the gutter.
I was only pointing out as I have previously, that the site is out of kilter to the way the nation is expressing its voting intention.
Its rabidly anti Govt imho. Indeed we are stopped from talking about the appalling Rayner, whilst slagging off of Boris continues daily and unabated. The balance of the site needs addressing.imho
I agree with your last sentence. There are very few authentic left-wing voices on here, both in the comments and the headers. And one of the few left-wingers seems to have defected to BJ in recent weeks.
Incidentally, Rayner's "scum" comments seemed to me to get plenty of coverage in the comments on here.
Comments
The difference is that in FPTP the coalition is formed in large parties before the election and then the people get to cast an informed vote.
What's your offering?
Who is to blame for the fuel crisis
The public 22%
HMG 23%
The media 47%
I wouldn't mind so much if there was more of an overlap between those who are calling for this shock therapy and those who are expected to undergo it.
As opposed to the retired and those wealthy enough to go wherever they please, whatever.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/business-58743372
Abattoirs should pay a decent salary to their staff, not try and get away with paying £9.12 per hour for a night shift.
Farmers should pay a decent fee to abattoirs that can then fund their staff with a decent salary.
If they can't or won't then cull the animals and eat imports if need be.
Look at the Downing Street press office release photos (reproduced in several papers including the Daily Mail of him setting off by train to Manchester. But the train is an LNER one, and LNER doesn't go anywhere near Manchester. So where did he end up? I think that we ought to know
As someone who spent 25 years in the Tory Party, it does astonish me how much effort Labour goes to to *organise* division and argument within itself.
The internal elections, the slates, the motions, the factions-with-memberships; they simply don't exist in the Conservatives.
Obviously, there are and always have been divisions within the Tories but the organisational culture is so different. There isn't the 'debating society' aspect to motions; indeed, it's precious rare in my experience that a Tory meeting passes *any* kind of 'political' motion.
The Tories do have policy discussion meetings - the CPF most obviously - but they only attract a few members, and have no great significance either within the Association or the Party at large. Perhaps the ideas and suggestions do filter up effectively but really, who knows?
But even in those meetings, while people disagree, they do so as individuals. Because there are no organised factions like Momentum or Progress or whatever, there's no lasting significance to who ends up getting what into the minutes.
Similarly, on a national scale, because conference doesn't hold votes, there's no great importance to one delegate attending over another, so there's no need for divisive local contests to choose them as there's no factional advantage to it.
Now, you can argue that all this internal democracy, engagement, debate and voting is a sign of a healthy organisation - and to an extent that's true. All the same, it does look to me, as an outsider, that the costs very much outweigh the benefits.
Even where the Tories do have internal elections - branch and Association officers, most notably - these are routinely uncontested, being filled by a mixture of consensus and cajoling. As a rule, a contested election is a sign of an unhealthy organisation than the reverse.
https://twitter.com/DavidHerdson
He went to a Leeds hospital on his way to Manchester
This was another Rayner story that made her look ridiculous
Unless "waving at buses" counts as action.
What I find grimly amusing is all these former Home Secretaries and other senior bods being quoted as saying that the police ought to have good recruitment and vetting procedures. Er... yes, of course. But when they were in charge why didn't they make sure that this was done?
I don't expect Home Secretaries to personally write the vetting procedures but they or one of their senior civil servants should be responsible for ensuring that police forces do have them and that they are fit for purpose. At the very least they should be making it clear to the police chiefs that who you hire is the single most important thing you can do to improve the culture of your organisation. You can have all the strategies you want to beat crime but culture defeats strategy every time.
No FBPE Remainers desperate for there to be a story there either?
As for the rest, it's depressingly standard stuff about learning lessons, then when it happens again turns out there's still more lessons to be learned, and the old ones weren't really done. We're like those clothing companies who keep getting surprised about stuff being made in sweatshops, totally surprised.
Or what did he say?
If I were Mrs Patel, I’d getting a full list of the armed police in front of the Spooks this week.
https://www.leeds-live.co.uk/news/leeds-news/six-things-learned-boris-johnsons-21746100
Hopefully he will have discovered the disaster that is the Trans Pennine express (whatever it's currently called) and agree that the cross Pennine lines need to be fixed as part of the levelling up / Northern Powerhouse schemes.
Northern Rail are dire too.
Boris said (paraphrase) (a) the food industry kills a lot of pigs and (b) the most important thing to do is fix the labour shortages through addressing pay & automation
There's a panic crisis in London and the South East. Why do you think there's a panic crisis in London and the SE if not media/FBPE?
Everytime I've been asked to do DV work I run a mile away from it, not because I have anything to hide but it's never worth the stress (especially as any IT work is usually incredibly old skills, simple and boring).
I was only pointing out as I have previously, that the site is out of kilter to the way the nation is expressing its voting intention.
Its rabidly anti Govt imho. Indeed we are stopped from talking about the appalling Rayner, whilst slagging off of Boris continues daily and unabated. The balance of the site needs addressing.imho
We've had the "let my people go" stage and we're at the "burnt offering" stage of Brexit then. Eagerly waiting for Boris to get swallowed by a whale.
If I'm heading to Leeds I can be sure within 5 minutes what time the train will arrive, if I'm going through to Manchester that 5 minutes is usually closer to 45 minutes.
Drove down to London from Gloucestershire late last nite. Had to fill up on the way and glad I did it before Oxford because from that point on all the petrol stations seemed to be out of the stuff.
Do I blame Brexit? Well, I understand that it's added to the problem. Instead of being 80,000 drivers short it's now 100,000. But what's the point in discussing it now? It's done. We voted for it. Not me personally of course but it's a democracy and we have to live with what the majority voted for. So we just have to lump it.
No way are we going back. That's not feasible. Even a fully paid up Europhile like me won't buy that. More to the point, nor will the EU.
And let's stop blaming Brexit for the things that definitely are not its fault - like fuel prices, and the weather.
Play nicely folk.
Laters perhaps.
Jerry can sales increased by 1700% last weekend. Not only car hold fuel.
The media reporting made it a self fulfilling prophecy. Initial panic caused panic buying. More coverage. More panic buying.
It’s been over since Wednesday by me.
This seems to be focused on London and the south east.
(Manfully resisting temptation to make Cameron joke)
Q: Should there be an independent inquiry into what happened in the Sarah Everard case?
Johnson says the Met is looking at what happened.
Which is why artificial shortages are a bonkers way of attempting to raise wages. Shortages mean that activity that is wanted, maybe is vital, and which previously was done, will no longer be done.
It doesn't even work in raising wages in real terms.
Now the police enforce an entirely new code, which often seems to be mainly concerned with politics. The streets stink of marijuana. Vandalism, burglary, car theft and general disorder proceed unhampered.
Yet when the Covid panic arrived, the police turned from patrolling Twitter and enforcing politically correct speech codes, and instead suddenly appeared in legions to lecture people for sunbathing, hiking or having picnics. Couzens, let it never be forgotten, pretended to use Covid powers to get Sarah Everard into his car.
Getting the police involved with policing COVID was wrong anyway, this was just one last kick in the teeth.
Radio 5 Live, the station of choice for a lot of road warriors, played its part too. They’ll say they didn’t, that they spent three days saying there were no shortages and not to panic buy - but all people heard was “shortages, panic buy”. As someone commented here the other day, Derren Brown would have been proud of that one!
Of course you could shop in Gibraltar. No idea how food prices compare, though people living in Spain have been caught out returning to Spain.
It's been a while since I looked at a map, but I vaguely remember we're not in the South East, can you confirm?
People shouldn’t be forced to work in dangerous, depressing jobs for low wages
And then made the point that Burnham affirms he will work with Gove/Boris while Starmer says Boris is a trivial man
Interesting
What's your problem nico? Do you think £9.12 per hour for a night shift working in an abattoir is an appealing prospect? Farmers and abattoirs should pay a decent salary, if they refuse to do so then that's the end of it and kill the pigs if need be.
And that's a significant issue. There are lots of medium-sized towns, and a handful of large cities, on both sides of the Pennines, all of which need improved transport links. Creating a single new route (high speed or not) will miss out most of these. Therefore the real answer is a new route (to increase capacity), plus massive upgrading to the existing network.
As such, I tentatively favour a new 'central' spine tunnel through the Pennines, on a rough Leeds to Manchester axis, with routes feeding into this on both sides of the Pennines. But that will hardly decrease times from (say) Sheffield. Hence the need to improve the existing network.
What they should be doing (and I believe are) is looking at a current and projected traffic analysis, to work out the nodal points for the network.
A mayor has to work with the government; the job of the leader of the opposition is to … ?
Andrew Marr asked him if he could agree with the phrase: “Keir Starmer is doing a good job and I, under no circumstances, are going after his job.”
Burnham replied: “Yup, I’ll agree with that.”
That's the real world, outside the Brexit fantasy, I'm afraid.
As has been pointed out before if you don't like it you don't have to stay.
The champion of Brexit and the most popular Labour leader for decades......
.....Well you could have knocked me down with a feather.......
But if you want a warrant card, a gun, and to serve on the most sensitive police units in the country, it needs to be compulsory.
Wages go up in food production industry in UK.
Becomes cheaper to import food from rest of world in comparison to UK produced food.
Food imports rise, UK food production companies go bust ?
What, for example, is the regional distribution of the readership of The Independent or the Guardian?
The last numbers I saw for the Independent had it being basically a London and parts of the SE paper.
Incidentally, Rayner's "scum" comments seemed to me to get plenty of coverage in the comments on here.