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.
Bollox, we had plenty of turkeys last year
You had more than one, malcolm ?
Well I always have a few Christmas dinners as I do like Turkey and all the trimmings, so had a few practices for the real thing.
I expected much more disruption than we've had so far.
So you voted for disruption?, without warning the people at the time?
Yes I voted for disruption, change always takes disruption.
I said at the time I expected disruption. I was a Remainer on this site until a few weeks before the Referendum where I became convinced that Brexit was the right thing to do despite the expected disruption.
Claiming that Brexit is the wrong thing to do because it has some disruption is like claiming getting fit is the wrong thing to do because exercise is tough.
The UK is the fat lazy slob that has been asked to get fit to run a marathon in 5 years but was so lazy it didn't bother training for 4 years and now with less than a year to go has realised, "fuck I've got this marathon to run in a few months". That goes for the state and private sector, especially so for the haulage sector who knew this was coming for 4 years (as some PBers have been gleefully pointing out).
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.
Indeed. Aren't 3 or 4 councils already basically broke and under some kind of review/administration process?
Pretty much, but the funding position of Councils has been hopeless since 2010. The root of the problem is the 2010-2015 coalition government.
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.
Hoyle's intervention is a rare mis-step. He is, in effect, asking "How dare they let this monster rub shoulders with important people like us?" The US embassy might have similar grounds for concern but they haven't gone public as far as I know.
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"
We had a shitty economic structure based on cheap labour from overseas. Great for short term profits but resulted in lower capital investment and downward pressure on wages.
We are going through an adjustment period. We will (hopefully) end up with an economy that works better for the average person. That’s why I voted for Brexit
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
what this place needs are more quote Tweets with very little comment.
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.
There is a difference between pigs being slaughtered at an abattoir and turned into delicious meat for us to buy and pigs being shot on the farm and incinerated or rendered.
In one the farmers and abattoirs get paid, food suppliers have meat to sell and consumers get bacon produced in accordance with U.K. animal welfare standards.
In the other farmers don't get paid and we have to import pig meat, often produced to lower standards.
Other than that they are equivalent.
Of course in the medium term wages should rise to make working at an abattoir more attractive. But that does not really address the problem which is facing farmers right now - of having to kill their pigs because they do not have space to house them if they cannot send them into the food chain.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/oct/03/stephanie-grisham-donald-trump-melania-book-abc-interview … Now she has written a book, I’ll Take Your Questions Now. The irony of the title has been widely noted. In nine months as press secretary, Grisham did not take questions at a single White House briefing. Nonetheless, the book has generated a slew of headlines, nearly all unflattering about her former bosses.
Stories range from the salacious, Trump calling a press aide forward on Air Force One in order to “look at her ass”, to the ludicrous, as when Trump and Boris Johnson used a G20 working breakfast to discuss the strength of kangaroos...
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?
Johnson says the Met is looking at what happened.
I look on the bright side. There will be ample opportunities in future to write more articles about police scandals.
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.
OGH banned discussion of Rayner the day of her comments
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
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?
Labour behaved like for 13 years. It may be a lot longer than 13 years before they’re allowed another go.
aah, the old arguement. Everyone does it (which isn't true by the way), so why don't we do it. This is the first government that featherbeds their rich supporters with impunity. Ignores inquiry decisions and is now attempting to neuter the only legal recourse. I have said before that I am not a Labour supporter btw, but I remember when ministers were found out and were made to resign. I even remember Laws doing the same. I even remember May sacking at least 2 ministers for their behaviour, but this government? They make me sick. Sadly many of the Johnson Fanbois stir similar rumblings. I think I will be taking a holiday from this site for a while.
Yep, Boris Johnson is slowly but surely denuding people of their faculties. By the time he goes he will have done great damage. Our political standards will be significantly lower than when he came in.
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.
Isn't that one of the downsides of incumbency? A Government is measured on its performance and failure is more debatable than success. I think by previous standards Johnson gets more of a free-ride than his predecessors with both the media and the public.
I suspect your problem is also with interpretation. Most posters offended by Starmer seem to be able to turn any thread to a Starmer is crap thread.
I expected much more disruption than we've had so far.
So you voted for disruption?, without warning the people at the time?
Yes I voted for disruption, change always takes disruption.
I said at the time I expected disruption. I was a Remainer on this site until a few weeks before the Referendum where I became convinced that Brexit was the right thing to do despite the expected disruption.
Claiming that Brexit is the wrong thing to do because it has some disruption is like claiming getting fit is the wrong thing to do because exercise is tough.
The UK is the fat lazy slob that has been asked to get fit to run a marathon in 5 years but was so lazy it didn't bother training for 4 years and now with less than a year to go has realised, "fuck I've got this marathon to run in a few months". That goes for the state and private sector, especially so for the haulage sector who knew this was coming for 4 years (as some PBers have been gleefully pointing out).
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.
Hoyle's intervention is a rare mis-step. He is, in effect, asking "How dare they let this monster rub shoulders with important people like us?" The US embassy might have similar grounds for concern but they haven't gone public as far as I know.
Though Hoyle did at least get the truth behind the Met's initial evasive and, as it turned out, untruthful statement about Couzens work.
There is more in the papers today about his very public links with prostitutes and owing money and what other police officers knew. That story he concocted to the police when caught did not just come from his imagination. And if journalists can find out - or be fed - this stuff then it shows that proper due diligence and vetting should have found it out too.
It just gets worse and worse. But the Met is adopting its usual stance of mulish obstinacy and toughing it out until the press moves on to some other story.
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.
OGH banned discussion of Rayner the day of her comments
Not really. If I recall correctly, OGH took exception to some of the extremely misogynistic comments that came out of the woodwork in reference to Rayner. She has attracted much comment, unbanned, since then. Perhaps OGH could confirm?
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!
Tragically, the interview probably isn't a car crash. Boris Johnson is so absolutely dishonest that he doesn't care whether something is truthful or not. Unfortunately, people believe him or don't care about the truth either.
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?
Labour behaved like for 13 years. It may be a lot longer than 13 years before they’re allowed another go.
aah, the old arguement. Everyone does it (which isn't true by the way), so why don't we do it. This is the first government that featherbeds their rich supporters with impunity. Ignores inquiry decisions and is now attempting to neuter the only legal recourse. I have said before that I am not a Labour supporter btw, but I remember when ministers were found out and were made to resign. I even remember Laws doing the same. I even remember May sacking at least 2 ministers for their behaviour, but this government? They make me sick. Sadly many of the Johnson Fanbois stir similar rumblings. I think I will be taking a holiday from this site for a while.
Yep, Boris Johnson is slowly but surely denuding people of their faculties. By the time he goes he will have done great damage. Our political standards will be significantly lower than when he came in.
Reminiscent of someone or other, can’t quite put my finger on who..
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.
OGH banned discussion of Rayner the day of her comments
Missed that. Why? Stuff only usually gets banned if it is getting libellous.
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
Even so, throwing out half a week's worth of supply is bad economics. What would Mrs T have said?
Also - if things don't get better then it will happen again.
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!
Tragically, the interview probably isn't a car crash. Boris Johnson is so absolutely dishonest that he doesn't care whether something is truthful or not. Unfortunately, people believe him or don't care about the truth either.
We're in a bad place.
Indeed, if it is all going to hell in a hand cart restoke a dying culture war, that should do the trick.
I am expecting some top war on woke, and war on immigrant labour rhetoric this week.
I expected much more disruption than we've had so far.
So you voted for disruption?, without warning the people at the time?
Yes I voted for disruption, change always takes disruption.
I said at the time I expected disruption. I was a Remainer on this site until a few weeks before the Referendum where I became convinced that Brexit was the right thing to do despite the expected disruption.
Claiming that Brexit is the wrong thing to do because it has some disruption is like claiming getting fit is the wrong thing to do because exercise is tough.
The UK is the fat lazy slob that has been asked to get fit to run a marathon in 5 years but was so lazy it didn't bother training for 4 years and now with less than a year to go has realised, "fuck I've got this marathon to run in a few months". That goes for the state and private sector, especially so for the haulage sector who knew this was coming for 4 years (as some PBers have been gleefully pointing out).
Quite an alarming colour contrast between his head and his shanks. (Not that I could do any better.)
I think both of us would have the smeddum not to wear a dress shirt while busting our blood pressure. Nevertheless yet another bit of shithousery to be discussed, so mission accomplished for BJ.
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...
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...
Is it possible to have an imaginary imaginary shortage? You know, like they are having in London and the Home Counties.
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
Even so, throwing out half a week's worth of supply is bad economics. What would Mrs T have said?
Also - if things don't get better then it will happen again.
@DavidL has repeatedly made the point that the Single Market has been bad for Britain because it has resulted in too many imports. He usually posts the figures.
If so, why is it a good thing to have more imports (of pig meat, say) because we can't slaughter our own and have to throw them away? I don't get it. If his analysis is correct we should be making it easier for domestic sectors not harder. But the uber-keen Brexiteers like @Philip_Thompson seem not to be worried by increasing imports.
It's too early to decide the manifesto but as a very remainy person I wouldn't expect a new referendum yet even if it's polling like 60/40.
Start with rejoining the Single Market without a referendum, that'll mitigate a lot of the damage and it's what a lot of Brexit voters thought they were getting in the first place. That's less bad electorally because it centres more on jobs and less on identity.
A referendum on rejoining will be easier to win once all the alternatives have been tried in practice.
Labour may also be able to get away with something vaguer like the traditional "renegotiate". There's a danger that the voters will be sick of the whole the whole thing and won't want the box opened, but I guess the Tories will have opened it already because of NI.
Reminding the Red Wallers how thick they are might might not be the way to do go. I suggested at the time of the Referendum an updated version of the old Dunlop ad for the Remain campaign and with enough humour it could still work for Labour.
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.
OGH banned discussion of Rayner the day of her comments
Not really. If I recall correctly, OGH took exception to some of the extremely misogynistic comments that came out of the woodwork in reference to Rayner. She has attracted much comment, unbanned, since then. Perhaps OGH could confirm?
I don’t think he discusses such things, but from what I recall, that’s about right. Curious that those complaining didn’t mention that bit…
First cousin marriage certainly does count as consanguinity in the real world of genetic defects - AIUI it roughly doubles the incidence over unrelated couples.
And this also relies on the assumption that there is no adultery. As we all know British aristos never commit adultery. Oh no, perish the thought. Doesn't matter if it is exogamous - but if it is within the family ...
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
Even so, throwing out half a week's worth of supply is bad economics. What would Mrs T have said?
Also - if things don't get better then it will happen again.
Not at all, Mr Mark. We as a people are not getting hysterical enough. Over the centuries my ancestors joined others and risked their lives to win us certain freedoms and safeguards against over-powerful kings, princes of the church and the wealthy and powerful in general.
All those gains are being undermined and destroyed by Johnson and his gang of cronies, in a deliberate attempt to put themselves beyond any kind of control, and above the law.
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
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
Even so, throwing out half a week's worth of supply is bad economics. What would Mrs T have said?
Also - if things don't get better then it will happen again.
@DavidL has repeatedly made the point that the Single Market has been bad for Britain because it has resulted in too many imports. He usually posts the figures.
If so, why is it a good thing to have more imports (of pig meat, say) because we can't slaughter our own and have to throw them away? I don't get it. If his analysis is correct we should be making it easier for domestic sectors not harder. But the uber-keen Brexiteers like @Philip_Thompson seem not to be worried by increasing imports.
???
Also, vide lack of import controls. Apparently no problem.
I don't understand either. It used to be headlines in the newspapers abnout the EEC dumping food for the benefit of the CAP. But that had some economic logic.
Now we're doing it too. Without any comparably logical reason, just a multiple clusterbourach.
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.
I do not accept that argument
HMG visa quota scheme is designed to target areas of need in the economy in a controlled manner so we do not depress wages
As others have said wages need to rise, and if the issue persists then the visa quota scheme applies but here is the most important aspect of it that a wage of £25,600 must be paid as a minimum
This week this argument will be the defining one of the conference, and the public will get the messages that UK employers have to pay higher wages and this is the brexit dividend
Let's see how popular that message is
The visa system is bollox, who is going to go through all the rigmarole , checks and hassles when they can get better wages easily in a country where they can just turn up and start working. It is a fig leaf.
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.
Indeed. Aren't 3 or 4 councils already basically broke and under some kind of review/administration process?
Pretty much, but the funding position of Councils has been hopeless since 2010. The root of the problem is the 2010-2015 coalition government.
The root of the problem is their funding model, though I agree caps to the grant and council tax without reducing statutory functions played a part.
Shortages are going to be a grumbling wound for some time to come. I imagine we’ll just get used to them after a while once the epidemic phase ends and we move to endemicity.
The recent petrol crisis was definitely triggered by panic buying, no doubt about that. The underlying causes for it weren’t though - there is a tightness of supply across multiple goods at the moment, partly caused by global stresses and supercharged by UK-specific factors, notably Brexit but also underlying lack of spare capacity in the system.
I’m not sure how voters will respond when in 3 months, 6 months, 2 years’ time there remain chronic supply chain problems that just don’t seem to go away. A sort of long-covid of the supply chain. Maybe, like so many other things in recent years that would in the past have meant trouble, it just gets priced in. Unless inflation really starts to bite.
Basically we operated as a just-in-time society. We cut things like strategic reserves of gas / storage capabilities to the bone to save a few pennies.
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
Even so, throwing out half a week's worth of supply is bad economics. What would Mrs T have said?
Also - if things don't get better then it will happen again.
Not at all, Mr Mark. We as a people are not getting hysterical enough. Over the centuries my ancestors joined others and risked their lives to win us certain freedoms and safeguards against over-powerful kings, princes of the church and the wealthy and powerful in general.
All those gains are being undermined and destroyed by Johnson and his gang of cronies, in a deliberate attempt to put themselves beyond any kind of control, and above the law.
Not to dispute your comments, but are they replying to mine?
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.
There is a difference between pigs being slaughtered at an abattoir and turned into delicious meat for us to buy and pigs being shot on the farm and incinerated or rendered.
In one the farmers and abattoirs get paid, food suppliers have meat to sell and consumers get bacon produced in accordance with U.K. animal welfare standards.
In the other farmers don't get paid and we have to import pig meat, often produced to lower standards.
Other than that they are equivalent.
Of course in the medium term wages should rise to make working at an abattoir more attractive. But that does not really address the problem which is facing farmers right now - of having to kill their pigs because they do not have space to house them if they cannot send them into the food chain.
It’s the cost of continuing to feed them rather than the storage
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
Even so, throwing out half a week's worth of supply is bad economics. What would Mrs T have said?
Also - if things don't get better then it will happen again.
@DavidL has repeatedly made the point that the Single Market has been bad for Britain because it has resulted in too many imports. He usually posts the figures.
If so, why is it a good thing to have more imports (of pig meat, say) because we can't slaughter our own and have to throw them away? I don't get it. If his analysis is correct we should be making it easier for domestic sectors not harder. But the uber-keen Brexiteers like @Philip_Thompson seem not to be worried by increasing imports.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/oct/03/stephanie-grisham-donald-trump-melania-book-abc-interview … Now she has written a book, I’ll Take Your Questions Now. The irony of the title has been widely noted. In nine months as press secretary, Grisham did not take questions at a single White House briefing. Nonetheless, the book has generated a slew of headlines, nearly all unflattering about her former bosses.
Stories range from the salacious, Trump calling a press aide forward on Air Force One in order to “look at her ass”, to the ludicrous, as when Trump and Boris Johnson used a G20 working breakfast to discuss the strength of kangaroos...
Surely the discussion about kangaroos was laying the groundwork - in code - for AUKUS?
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
Even so, throwing out half a week's worth of supply is bad economics. What would Mrs T have said?
Also - if things don't get better then it will happen again.
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.
OGH banned discussion of Rayner the day of her comments
When was this? I recall plenty of commentary about it.
After Justin’s unpleasant remarks about the fact that she had a child when unmarried. Justin has form on that topic, but OGH chose to ban all discussion
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
Even so, throwing out half a week's worth of supply is bad economics. What would Mrs T have said?
Also - if things don't get better then it will happen again.
@DavidL has repeatedly made the point that the Single Market has been bad for Britain because it has resulted in too many imports. He usually posts the figures.
If so, why is it a good thing to have more imports (of pig meat, say) because we can't slaughter our own and have to throw them away? I don't get it. If his analysis is correct we should be making it easier for domestic sectors not harder. But the uber-keen Brexiteers like @Philip_Thompson seem not to be worried by increasing imports.
???
If its not economical to produce pigs in the UK then the land, labour and capital should be used on something it is economical to produce.
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...
Is it possible to have an imaginary imaginary shortage? You know, like they are having in London and the Home Counties.
This has been building up slowly since Brexit imo. I didn't twig at the time but on at least two occasions earlier this year when I have been out somewhere early Sat/Sun morning the filling station nearest to me wasn't open because a tanker was re-supplying. I don't recall ever seeing that before and as it was a minor inconvenience I didn't think any more of it.
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?
Labour behaved like for 13 years. It may be a lot longer than 13 years before they’re allowed another go.
aah, the old arguement. Everyone does it (which isn't true by the way), so why don't we do it. This is the first government that featherbeds their rich supporters with impunity. Ignores inquiry decisions and is now attempting to neuter the only legal recourse. I have said before that I am not a Labour supporter btw, but I remember when ministers were found out and were made to resign. I even remember Laws doing the same. I even remember May sacking at least 2 ministers for their behaviour, but this government? They make me sick. Sadly many of the Johnson Fanbois stir similar rumblings. I think I will be taking a holiday from this site for a while.
Yep, Boris Johnson is slowly but surely denuding people of their faculties. By the time he goes he will have done great damage. Our political standards will be significantly lower than when he came in.
I agree totally, Johnson is a shocking P.M., and a pretty horrible human being to boot,and the Tory party, as you say are rewarding their backers/donors with impunity. I think the problem for the labour party is, the media have done such a hatchet job, on them, that a large percentage of the electorate blame them for everything, I think if you spoke to some of these, they would say Labour were in power 2 years ago, it is going to take a while for these people to realise the truth, if ever. The problem is the rest us have to sit by and watch, the disintegration of this country.
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.
OGH banned discussion of Rayner the day of her comments
Missed that. Why? Stuff only usually gets banned if it is getting libellous.
Justin had jumped on his hobbyhorse and risked derailing the thread
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.
I do not accept that argument
HMG visa quota scheme is designed to target areas of need in the economy in a controlled manner so we do not depress wages
As others have said wages need to rise, and if the issue persists then the visa quota scheme applies but here is the most important aspect of it that a wage of £25,600 must be paid as a minimum
This week this argument will be the defining one of the conference, and the public will get the messages that UK employers have to pay higher wages and this is the brexit dividend
Let's see how popular that message is
The visa system is bollox, who is going to go through all the rigmarole , checks and hassles when they can get better wages easily in a country where they can just turn up and start working. It is a fig leaf.
Yep but that’s the point - Boris wants the logistics industry to fix its own mess. And the treasury feel they deserve the pain due to the tricks the industry have used to keep costs low.
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
Even so, throwing out half a week's worth of supply is bad economics. What would Mrs T have said?
Also - if things don't get better then it will happen again.
@DavidL has repeatedly made the point that the Single Market has been bad for Britain because it has resulted in too many imports. He usually posts the figures.
If so, why is it a good thing to have more imports (of pig meat, say) because we can't slaughter our own and have to throw them away? I don't get it. If his analysis is correct we should be making it easier for domestic sectors not harder. But the uber-keen Brexiteers like @Philip_Thompson seem not to be worried by increasing imports.
???
If its not economical to produce pigs in the UK then the land, labour and capital should be used on something it is economical to produce.
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"
We had a shitty economic structure based on cheap labour from overseas. Great for short term profits but resulted in lower capital investment and downward pressure on wages.
We are going through an adjustment period. We will (hopefully) end up with an economy that works better for the average person. That’s why I voted for Brexit
A very old fashioned approach. That sort of protectionism would destroy the service sector and makes no sense at all in the 21st century
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
Even so, throwing out half a week's worth of supply is bad economics. What would Mrs T have said?
Also - if things don't get better then it will happen again.
@DavidL has repeatedly made the point that the Single Market has been bad for Britain because it has resulted in too many imports. He usually posts the figures.
If so, why is it a good thing to have more imports (of pig meat, say) because we can't slaughter our own and have to throw them away? I don't get it. If his analysis is correct we should be making it easier for domestic sectors not harder. But the uber-keen Brexiteers like @Philip_Thompson seem not to be worried by increasing imports.
???
Because we should be doing higher value added better paid work and exporting that.
First cousin marriage certainly does count as consanguinity in the real world of genetic defects - AIUI it roughly doubles the incidence over unrelated couples.
And this also relies on the assumption that there is no adultery. As we all know British aristos never commit adultery. Oh no, perish the thought. Doesn't matter if it is exogamous - but if it is within the family ...
Incest is the sort of secret you should keep in the family
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
Even so, throwing out half a week's worth of supply is bad economics. What would Mrs T have said?
Also - if things don't get better then it will happen again.
@DavidL has repeatedly made the point that the Single Market has been bad for Britain because it has resulted in too many imports. He usually posts the figures.
If so, why is it a good thing to have more imports (of pig meat, say) because we can't slaughter our own and have to throw them away? I don't get it. If his analysis is correct we should be making it easier for domestic sectors not harder. But the uber-keen Brexiteers like @Philip_Thompson seem not to be worried by increasing imports.
???
Also, vide lack of import controls. Apparently no problem.
I don't understand either. It used to be headlines in the newspapers abnout the EEC dumping food for the benefit of the CAP. But that had some economic logic.
Now we're doing it too. Without any comparably logical reason, just a multiple clusterbourach.
Think of it as an unprovable article of faith, the transformation of cheap imports into a general good for the people of the UK. If you remain sceptical you won’t be burnt at the stake. Yet.
First cousin marriage certainly does count as consanguinity in the real world of genetic defects - AIUI it roughly doubles the incidence over unrelated couples.
And this also relies on the assumption that there is no adultery. As we all know British aristos never commit adultery. Oh no, perish the thought. Doesn't matter if it is exogamous - but if it is within the family ...
Incest is the sort of secret you should keep in the family
Surely it has to be kept in the family, or it’s not incest?
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"
We had a shitty economic structure based on cheap labour from overseas. Great for short term profits but resulted in lower capital investment and downward pressure on wages.
We are going through an adjustment period. We will (hopefully) end up with an economy that works better for the average person. That’s why I voted for Brexit
A very old fashioned approach. That sort of protectionism would destroy the service sector and makes no sense at all in the 21st century
It’s not protectionism.
It’s cutting off access to an effectively unlimited supply of cheap labour and thereby changing incentives for management for the better
On Marr's paper review they discussed the possibility of Burnham ousting Starmer in the next 12 months if things do not improve
And then made the point that Burnham affirms he will work with Gove/Boris while Starmer says Boris is a trivial man
Interesting
On the day the PM tells Marr it's fine to incinerate hundreds of thousands of pigs, a man called "Burnham" says he'll work with him?
He certainly did
Burnham is more interested in securing development for his constituents in Manchester, than he is in playing petty party politics. He can either engage with the government, or have the needs of his constituents be ignored by them.
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.
Indeed. Aren't 3 or 4 councils already basically broke and under some kind of review/administration process?
Pretty much, but the funding position of Councils has been hopeless since 2010. The root of the problem is the 2010-2015 coalition government.
The root of the problem is their funding model, though I agree caps to the grant and council tax without reducing statutory functions played a part.
...not just reducing statutory functions; but increasing them without properly funding them. So Councils become responsible, and accountable for, things that they have no realistic way of being able to do. As such, a process was begun that is likely to lead to the eventual breakdown of local government; but it is only now that this materialises, a few years on.
First cousin marriage certainly does count as consanguinity in the real world of genetic defects - AIUI it roughly doubles the incidence over unrelated couples.
And this also relies on the assumption that there is no adultery. As we all know British aristos never commit adultery. Oh no, perish the thought. Doesn't matter if it is exogamous - but if it is within the family ...
Incest is the sort of secret you should keep in the family
Surely it has to be kept in the family, or it’s not incest?
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
The important figure probably is that the backlog of being added to at a rate of 12 000, such implies a capacity shortfall of about 7%. Once the initial culls are over, which will be grim, the equilibrium will be found by pig farmers cutting production, as already happened with turkeys. It will be cut by more than 7% however. Farmers can't risk raising pigs they can't sell.
No-one of this will help improve conditions for abattoir workers.
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?
Labour behaved like for 13 years. It may be a lot longer than 13 years before they’re allowed another go.
aah, the old arguement. Everyone does it (which isn't true by the way), so why don't we do it. This is the first government that featherbeds their rich supporters with impunity. Ignores inquiry decisions and is now attempting to neuter the only legal recourse. I have said before that I am not a Labour supporter btw, but I remember when ministers were found out and were made to resign. I even remember Laws doing the same. I even remember May sacking at least 2 ministers for their behaviour, but this government? They make me sick. Sadly many of the Johnson Fanbois stir similar rumblings. I think I will be taking a holiday from this site for a while.
Yep, Boris Johnson is slowly but surely denuding people of their faculties. By the time he goes he will have done great damage. Our political standards will be significantly lower than when he came in.
I agree totally, Johnson is a shocking P.M., and a pretty horrible human being to boot,and the Tory party, as you say are rewarding their backers/donors with impunity. I think the problem for the labour party is, the media have done such a hatchet job, on them, that a large percentage of the electorate blame them for everything, I think if you spoke to some of these, they would say Labour were in power 2 years ago, it is going to take a while for these people to realise the truth, if ever. The problem is the rest us have to sit by and watch, the disintegration of this country.
The 20 or so percent polled blaming the fuel crisis on the last Labour Government was quite remarkable. I've seen the working out, so the fanbois don't need to explain why this assertion is correct.
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.
Indeed. Aren't 3 or 4 councils already basically broke and under some kind of review/administration process?
Pretty much, but the funding position of Councils has been hopeless since 2010. The root of the problem is the 2010-2015 coalition government.
The root of the problem is their funding model, though I agree caps to the grant and council tax without reducing statutory functions played a part.
...not just reducing statutory functions; but increasing them without properly funding them. So Councils become responsible, and accountable for, things that they have no realistic way of being able to do. As such, a process was begun that is likely to lead to the eventual breakdown of local government; but it is only now that this materialises, a few years on.
That was also true under New Labour, which is one reason why council tax spiralled under them in the first place.
The issue under the coalition was introducing the cap, which on top of reductions in grants and increased functions has to put it mildly not ended well.
First cousin marriage certainly does count as consanguinity in the real world of genetic defects - AIUI it roughly doubles the incidence over unrelated couples.
And this also relies on the assumption that there is no adultery. As we all know British aristos never commit adultery. Oh no, perish the thought. Doesn't matter if it is exogamous - but if it is within the family ...
Incest is the sort of secret you should keep in the family
Surely it has to be kept in the family, or it’s not incest?
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
Even so, throwing out half a week's worth of supply is bad economics. What would Mrs T have said?
Also - if things don't get better then it will happen again.
@DavidL has repeatedly made the point that the Single Market has been bad for Britain because it has resulted in too many imports. He usually posts the figures.
If so, why is it a good thing to have more imports (of pig meat, say) because we can't slaughter our own and have to throw them away? I don't get it. If his analysis is correct we should be making it easier for domestic sectors not harder. But the uber-keen Brexiteers like @Philip_Thompson seem not to be worried by increasing imports.
???
If its not economical to produce pigs in the UK then the land, labour and capital should be used on something it is economical to produce.
...Er, like houses?
Actually yes.
Especially in areas where housing is unaffordable.
Improving economic and social mobility through more affordable housing would be far better for this country than having more pigs.
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!
The Tories’ remarkable ideological flexibility is allowing for an interesting experiment here. (Ideological flexibility on economic matters at least).
I have seen erstwhile free marketeers go on quite a journey in the last few years. We are going to have a go at a bit of Autarky and of will be interesting to watch. There will be winners and losers.
We know that when you expand international trade and cross border migration you tend to see overall greater economic growth, low inflation, technical innovation and consumer choice. But at the same time you create a left behind class - in the 18th C it was the old skilled artisans - and you tend to see increasing inequality as well as suppression of wages.
A move towards Autarky with inhibited migration and greater trade barriers as we’re now seeing should all things being equal give us some of the opposite: slower growth, higher inflation, reduced consumer choice but better conditions for workers and protection for some domestic producers. That will only work of course if the UK imposes proper barriers to imports (at the moment the barriers are rather asymmetrical).
We’ve seen from Russia (e.g. Belarusian “Camembert”) that import substitution can be a boon to some producers. Likewise despite repeated exchange crises countries like Argentina still function, just about. The Soviet bloc obviously took things a lot further in the 20th century and ultimately paid the price, but it’s interesting to see the journey our erstwhile right of centre party is taking, largely opportunistically, towards something perhaps more akin to Latin American trade policy.
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
Even so, throwing out half a week's worth of supply is bad economics. What would Mrs T have said?
Also - if things don't get better then it will happen again.
@DavidL has repeatedly made the point that the Single Market has been bad for Britain because it has resulted in too many imports. He usually posts the figures.
If so, why is it a good thing to have more imports (of pig meat, say) because we can't slaughter our own and have to throw them away? I don't get it. If his analysis is correct we should be making it easier for domestic sectors not harder. But the uber-keen Brexiteers like @Philip_Thompson seem not to be worried by increasing imports.
???
If its not economical to produce pigs in the UK then the land, labour and capital should be used on something it is economical to produce.
A use well always be found for the land. However stopping pig production doesn't mean a substitution by higher value production. That's illogical. The higher value production would be happening anyway in that case. Stopping production just means we will collectively be a bit poorer and the pig farmer a lot poorer.
On Marr's paper review they discussed the possibility of Burnham ousting Starmer in the next 12 months if things do not improve
And then made the point that Burnham affirms he will work with Gove/Boris while Starmer says Boris is a trivial man
Interesting
On the day the PM tells Marr it's fine to incinerate hundreds of thousands of pigs, a man called "Burnham" says he'll work with him?
He certainly did
Burnham is more interested in securing development for his constituents in Manchester, than he is in playing petty party politics. He can either engage with the government, or have the needs of his constituents be ignored by them.
Burnham is more interested in securing developments for Burnham.
I might come over all BJO, and suggest if he does stab Starmer in the back, Johnson style, it would almost be worth viewing the spanking Johnson will give him in GE2024. Although the downside to that is Johnson will remain free to do his worst.
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
Even so, throwing out half a week's worth of supply is bad economics. What would Mrs T have said?
Also - if things don't get better then it will happen again.
@DavidL has repeatedly made the point that the Single Market has been bad for Britain because it has resulted in too many imports. He usually posts the figures.
If so, why is it a good thing to have more imports (of pig meat, say) because we can't slaughter our own and have to throw them away? I don't get it. If his analysis is correct we should be making it easier for domestic sectors not harder. But the uber-keen Brexiteers like @Philip_Thompson seem not to be worried by increasing imports.
???
If its not economical to produce pigs in the UK then the land, labour and capital should be used on something it is economical to produce.
A use well always be found for the land. However stopping pig production doesn't mean a substitution by higher value production. That's illogical. The higher value production would be happening anyway in that case. Stopping production just means we will collectively be a bit poorer and the pig farmer a lot poorer.
If the climate change activists have their way pig production for meat consumptions will be banned
On Marr's paper review they discussed the possibility of Burnham ousting Starmer in the next 12 months if things do not improve
And then made the point that Burnham affirms he will work with Gove/Boris while Starmer says Boris is a trivial man
Interesting
On the day the PM tells Marr it's fine to incinerate hundreds of thousands of pigs, a man called "Burnham" says he'll work with him?
He certainly did
Burnham is more interested in securing development for his constituents in Manchester, than he is in playing petty party politics. He can either engage with the government, or have the needs of his constituents be ignored by them.
Burnham is more interested in securing developments for Burnham.
I might come over all BJO, and suggest if he does stab Starmer in the back, Johnson style, it would almost be worth viewing the spanking Johnson will give him in GE2024. Although the downside to that is Johnson will remain free to do his worst.
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
Even so, throwing out half a week's worth of supply is bad economics. What would Mrs T have said?
Also - if things don't get better then it will happen again.
@DavidL has repeatedly made the point that the Single Market has been bad for Britain because it has resulted in too many imports. He usually posts the figures.
If so, why is it a good thing to have more imports (of pig meat, say) because we can't slaughter our own and have to throw them away? I don't get it. If his analysis is correct we should be making it easier for domestic sectors not harder. But the uber-keen Brexiteers like @Philip_Thompson seem not to be worried by increasing imports.
???
If its not economical to produce pigs in the UK then the land, labour and capital should be used on something it is economical to produce.
A use well always be found for the land. However stopping pig production doesn't mean a substitution by higher value production. That's illogical. The higher value production would be happening anyway in that case. Stopping production just means we will collectively be a bit poorer and the pig farmer a lot poorer.
Never underestimate the power of inertia. Just because its possible to make more of a profit by becoming more productive doesn't mean people will actually do so until they're in a position where they need to do so.
New Zealand eliminated all tariffs and subsidies to agriculture and look where they are now.
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
Even so, throwing out half a week's worth of supply is bad economics. What would Mrs T have said?
Also - if things don't get better then it will happen again.
@DavidL has repeatedly made the point that the Single Market has been bad for Britain because it has resulted in too many imports. He usually posts the figures.
If so, why is it a good thing to have more imports (of pig meat, say) because we can't slaughter our own and have to throw them away? I don't get it. If his analysis is correct we should be making it easier for domestic sectors not harder. But the uber-keen Brexiteers like @Philip_Thompson seem not to be worried by increasing imports.
???
I'm not clear where this "more imports" thing comes from. Why would we?
I think the only real factors I can see here are a) Underinvestment in abbatoir capacity to meet increased production, and overexpansion by producers. Both of which are not things that are really a Govt responsibility.
Overall, I'd say this is producers looking for media-friendly excuses that blame somebody else.
Solutions? Perhaps implement the full new border regime for EU imports, as EuCo have with us. We have the domestic capacity, let's use it.
And pivot somewhat back to more local smaller abbatoirs.
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
Even so, throwing out half a week's worth of supply is bad economics. What would Mrs T have said?
Also - if things don't get better then it will happen again.
@DavidL has repeatedly made the point that the Single Market has been bad for Britain because it has resulted in too many imports. He usually posts the figures.
If so, why is it a good thing to have more imports (of pig meat, say) because we can't slaughter our own and have to throw them away? I don't get it. If his analysis is correct we should be making it easier for domestic sectors not harder. But the uber-keen Brexiteers like @Philip_Thompson seem not to be worried by increasing imports.
???
If its not economical to produce pigs in the UK then the land, labour and capital should be used on something it is economical to produce.
A use well always be found for the land. However stopping pig production doesn't mean a substitution by higher value production. That's illogical. The higher value production would be happening anyway in that case. Stopping production just means we will collectively be a bit poorer and the pig farmer a lot poorer.
If the climate change activists have their way pig production for meat consumptions will be banned
If God didn’t want us to eat pigs, why did He make them out of bacon?
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
Even so, throwing out half a week's worth of supply is bad economics. What would Mrs T have said?
Also - if things don't get better then it will happen again.
@DavidL has repeatedly made the point that the Single Market has been bad for Britain because it has resulted in too many imports. He usually posts the figures.
If so, why is it a good thing to have more imports (of pig meat, say) because we can't slaughter our own and have to throw them away? I don't get it. If his analysis is correct we should be making it easier for domestic sectors not harder. But the uber-keen Brexiteers like @Philip_Thompson seem not to be worried by increasing imports.
???
If its not economical to produce pigs in the UK then the land, labour and capital should be used on something it is economical to produce.
A use well always be found for the land. However stopping pig production doesn't mean a substitution by higher value production. That's illogical. The higher value production would be happening anyway in that case. Stopping production just means we will collectively be a bit poorer and the pig farmer a lot poorer.
Course the pigs get the worst end of the deal as ever.
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
Even so, throwing out half a week's worth of supply is bad economics. What would Mrs T have said?
Also - if things don't get better then it will happen again.
@DavidL has repeatedly made the point that the Single Market has been bad for Britain because it has resulted in too many imports. He usually posts the figures.
If so, why is it a good thing to have more imports (of pig meat, say) because we can't slaughter our own and have to throw them away? I don't get it. If his analysis is correct we should be making it easier for domestic sectors not harder. But the uber-keen Brexiteers like @Philip_Thompson seem not to be worried by increasing imports.
???
If its not economical to produce pigs in the UK then the land, labour and capital should be used on something it is economical to produce.
...Er, like houses?
Actually yes.
Especially in areas where housing is unaffordable.
Improving economic and social mobility through more affordable housing would be far better for this country than having more pigs.
I suppose a big bonus for the Directors of Persimmon Homes could also provide some bumper bonuses for Conservative Party campaign funds, should they choose to invest their windfalls wisely. So all is good.
It looks like we are going to need that chlorinated chicken after all.
On Marr's paper review they discussed the possibility of Burnham ousting Starmer in the next 12 months if things do not improve
And then made the point that Burnham affirms he will work with Gove/Boris while Starmer says Boris is a trivial man
Interesting
On the day the PM tells Marr it's fine to incinerate hundreds of thousands of pigs, a man called "Burnham" says he'll work with him?
He certainly did
Burnham is more interested in securing development for his constituents in Manchester, than he is in playing petty party politics. He can either engage with the government, or have the needs of his constituents be ignored by them.
Burnham is more interested in securing developments for Burnham.
I might come over all BJO, and suggest if he does stab Starmer in the back, Johnson style, it would almost be worth viewing the spanking Johnson will give him in GE2024. Although the downside to that is Johnson will remain free to do his worst.
Or best !!!!!
The problem is, his best might very well be worse.
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
Even so, throwing out half a week's worth of supply is bad economics. What would Mrs T have said?
Also - if things don't get better then it will happen again.
@DavidL has repeatedly made the point that the Single Market has been bad for Britain because it has resulted in too many imports. He usually posts the figures.
If so, why is it a good thing to have more imports (of pig meat, say) because we can't slaughter our own and have to throw them away? I don't get it. If his analysis is correct we should be making it easier for domestic sectors not harder. But the uber-keen Brexiteers like @Philip_Thompson seem not to be worried by increasing imports.
???
If its not economical to produce pigs in the UK then the land, labour and capital should be used on something it is economical to produce.
A use well always be found for the land. However stopping pig production doesn't mean a substitution by higher value production. That's illogical. The higher value production would be happening anyway in that case. Stopping production just means we will collectively be a bit poorer and the pig farmer a lot poorer.
An excuse always used for supporting exploitation.
And you're wrong, housing will be far more valuable than pigs both for the country and especially for the farmer.
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
Even so, throwing out half a week's worth of supply is bad economics. What would Mrs T have said?
Also - if things don't get better then it will happen again.
@DavidL has repeatedly made the point that the Single Market has been bad for Britain because it has resulted in too many imports. He usually posts the figures.
If so, why is it a good thing to have more imports (of pig meat, say) because we can't slaughter our own and have to throw them away? I don't get it. If his analysis is correct we should be making it easier for domestic sectors not harder. But the uber-keen Brexiteers like @Philip_Thompson seem not to be worried by increasing imports.
???
If its not economical to produce pigs in the UK then the land, labour and capital should be used on something it is economical to produce.
A use well always be found for the land. However stopping pig production doesn't mean a substitution by higher value production. That's illogical. The higher value production would be happening anyway in that case. Stopping production just means we will collectively be a bit poorer and the pig farmer a lot poorer.
If the climate change activists have their way pig production for meat consumptions will be banned
If God didn’t want us to eat pigs, why did He make them out of bacon?
It has so many nitrates and nitrites in it that it's basically poison. Group 1 carcinogen. You might as well smerk tabs.
The Tories’ remarkable ideological flexibility is allowing for an interesting experiment here. (Ideological flexibility on economic matters at least).
I have seen erstwhile free marketeers go on quite a journey in the last few years. We are going to have a go at a bit of Autarky and of will be interesting to watch. There will be winners and losers.
We know that when you expand international trade and cross border migration you tend to see overall greater economic growth, low inflation, technical innovation and consumer choice. But at the same time you create a left behind class - in the 18th C it was the old skilled artisans - and you tend to see increasing inequality as well as suppression of wages.
A move towards Autarky with inhibited migration and greater trade barriers as we’re now seeing should all things being equal give us some of the opposite: slower growth, higher inflation, reduced consumer choice but better conditions for workers and protection for some domestic producers. That will only work of course if the UK imposes proper barriers to imports (at the moment the barriers are rather asymmetrical).
We’ve seen from Russia (e.g. Belarusian “Camembert”) that import substitution can be a boon to some producers. Likewise despite repeated exchange crises countries like Argentina still function, just about. The Soviet bloc obviously took things a lot further in the 20th century and ultimately paid the price, but it’s interesting to see the journey our erstwhile right of centre party is taking, largely opportunistically, towards something perhaps more akin to Latin American trade policy.
This makes sense. The Johnson playbook is identical with Peronism and the three pillars of social justice (levelling up), economic nationalism and national sovereignty. Johnson is addressing the same issues in the same way as Peron in the 1940's. The UK isn't Argentina but some curiosity about how one of the richest countries in the world went to multiple sovereign defaults may be useful if the UK wants to avoid a similar fate.
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
Even so, throwing out half a week's worth of supply is bad economics. What would Mrs T have said?
Also - if things don't get better then it will happen again.
@DavidL has repeatedly made the point that the Single Market has been bad for Britain because it has resulted in too many imports. He usually posts the figures.
If so, why is it a good thing to have more imports (of pig meat, say) because we can't slaughter our own and have to throw them away? I don't get it. If his analysis is correct we should be making it easier for domestic sectors not harder. But the uber-keen Brexiteers like @Philip_Thompson seem not to be worried by increasing imports.
???
For one thing we're two different people so can have different thoughts or priorities.
For another we should import that which we're unproductive with and export those that we're productive with.
We're a small island with a lot of people and not much land. Agriculture makes up 0.59% of UK GDP and takes up over 70% of UK land. Maybe, just maybe, reserving 70% of our land for 0.59% of our GDP isn't the most productive use of our limited space?
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.
Indeed. Aren't 3 or 4 councils already basically broke and under some kind of review/administration process?
Pretty much, but the funding position of Councils has been hopeless since 2010. The root of the problem is the 2010-2015 coalition government.
The root of the problem is their funding model, though I agree caps to the grant and council tax without reducing statutory functions played a part.
Nope, one big problem is that planning wages really haven’t changed in 20 odd years (remember austerity has kept local government pay increases low or at zero for years).
Meanwhile commercial pay rates have increased significantly to the point that in large parts of the south you won’t find any senior planning officers because once you’ve got your 2 years of experience it’s time to go and earn proper money.
First cousin marriage certainly does count as consanguinity in the real world of genetic defects - AIUI it roughly doubles the incidence over unrelated couples.
And this also relies on the assumption that there is no adultery. As we all know British aristos never commit adultery. Oh no, perish the thought. Doesn't matter if it is exogamous - but if it is within the family ...
Incest is the sort of secret you should keep in the family
Wasn't thinking of incest; rather, that the non-trivial incidence of adultery means that "official" first cousins and non-first cousins may be nothing of the sort, thanks to mixed paternity within sibling groups.
I'm no J. B. S. Haldane or W. D. Hamilton but intuitively that would lead to some even closer relationships, and some more distant, than it says on the box or rather birth certificate. And therefore pushing some births above the trigger level for genetic defects.
Of course, one can add incest as well, but I have no idea of the incidence.
(The popularity of DNA sequencing for family history has led to a lot of, erm, unexpected family history coming out of the woodwork. Personally, I think anyone sending their DNA to a commercial operation is insane, and not just for that reason.)
On Marr's paper review they discussed the possibility of Burnham ousting Starmer in the next 12 months if things do not improve
And then made the point that Burnham affirms he will work with Gove/Boris while Starmer says Boris is a trivial man
Interesting
On the day the PM tells Marr it's fine to incinerate hundreds of thousands of pigs, a man called "Burnham" says he'll work with him?
He certainly did
Burnham is more interested in securing development for his constituents in Manchester, than he is in playing petty party politics. He can either engage with the government, or have the needs of his constituents be ignored by them.
Burnham is more interested in securing developments for Burnham.
I might come over all BJO, and suggest if he does stab Starmer in the back, Johnson style, it would almost be worth viewing the spanking Johnson will give him in GE2024. Although the downside to that is Johnson will remain free to do his worst.
Or best !!!!!
The problem is, his best might very well be worse.
At least we'll all have a giggle at his rapier-like wit.
I have just caught up with some of the Marr interview. Talk about a train wreck. I do hope the BBC are busy hunting down Johnson's HIGNFY performance to replace the Marr interview footage, by at least the lunchtime bulletin.
On Marr's paper review they discussed the possibility of Burnham ousting Starmer in the next 12 months if things do not improve
And then made the point that Burnham affirms he will work with Gove/Boris while Starmer says Boris is a trivial man
Interesting
On the day the PM tells Marr it's fine to incinerate hundreds of thousands of pigs, a man called "Burnham" says he'll work with him?
He certainly did
Burnham is more interested in securing development for his constituents in Manchester, than he is in playing petty party politics. He can either engage with the government, or have the needs of his constituents be ignored by them.
Burnham is more interested in securing developments for Burnham.
I might come over all BJO, and suggest if he does stab Starmer in the back, Johnson style, it would almost be worth viewing the spanking Johnson will give him in GE2024. Although the downside to that is Johnson will remain free to do his worst.
Burnham has learnt how to win since 2015.
Anyone who doesnt want him to replace the current useless nonentity does not care about winning and are only interested in factional shite.
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
Even so, throwing out half a week's worth of supply is bad economics. What would Mrs T have said?
Also - if things don't get better then it will happen again.
@DavidL has repeatedly made the point that the Single Market has been bad for Britain because it has resulted in too many imports. He usually posts the figures.
If so, why is it a good thing to have more imports (of pig meat, say) because we can't slaughter our own and have to throw them away? I don't get it. If his analysis is correct we should be making it easier for domestic sectors not harder. But the uber-keen Brexiteers like @Philip_Thompson seem not to be worried by increasing imports.
???
If its not economical to produce pigs in the UK then the land, labour and capital should be used on something it is economical to produce.
A use well always be found for the land. However stopping pig production doesn't mean a substitution by higher value production. That's illogical. The higher value production would be happening anyway in that case. Stopping production just means we will collectively be a bit poorer and the pig farmer a lot poorer.
An excuse always used for supporting exploitation.
And you're wrong, housing will be far more valuable than pigs both for the country and especially for the farmer.
So why isn't housing replacing pig production now, how does it make people wealthier, particularly those involved in pig production, why do we need shortages of abattoir workers?
On Marr's paper review they discussed the possibility of Burnham ousting Starmer in the next 12 months if things do not improve
And then made the point that Burnham affirms he will work with Gove/Boris while Starmer says Boris is a trivial man
Interesting
On the day the PM tells Marr it's fine to incinerate hundreds of thousands of pigs, a man called "Burnham" says he'll work with him?
He certainly did
Burnham is more interested in securing development for his constituents in Manchester, than he is in playing petty party politics. He can either engage with the government, or have the needs of his constituents be ignored by them.
Burnham is more interested in securing developments for Burnham.
I might come over all BJO, and suggest if he does stab Starmer in the back, Johnson style, it would almost be worth viewing the spanking Johnson will give him in GE2024. Although the downside to that is Johnson will remain free to do his worst.
Or best !!!!!
The problem is, his best might very well be worse.
At least we'll all have a giggle at his rapier-like wit.
I have just caught up with some of the Marr interview. Talk about a train wreck. I do hope the BBC are busy hunting down Johnson's HIGNFY performance to replace the Marr interview footage, by at least the lunchtime bulletin.
I watched it and it was no different to any other Johnson interview. He is not a man for delivering a brief. He also knows this. On the other hand I was struck by just how rude Marr was to our nations elected leader. I am not calling for cringing respect, but why not let the man finish? Just pathetic.
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
Even so, throwing out half a week's worth of supply is bad economics. What would Mrs T have said?
Also - if things don't get better then it will happen again.
@DavidL has repeatedly made the point that the Single Market has been bad for Britain because it has resulted in too many imports. He usually posts the figures.
If so, why is it a good thing to have more imports (of pig meat, say) because we can't slaughter our own and have to throw them away? I don't get it. If his analysis is correct we should be making it easier for domestic sectors not harder. But the uber-keen Brexiteers like @Philip_Thompson seem not to be worried by increasing imports.
???
If its not economical to produce pigs in the UK then the land, labour and capital should be used on something it is economical to produce.
A use well always be found for the land. However stopping pig production doesn't mean a substitution by higher value production. That's illogical. The higher value production would be happening anyway in that case. Stopping production just means we will collectively be a bit poorer and the pig farmer a lot poorer.
Never underestimate the power of inertia. Just because its possible to make more of a profit by becoming more productive doesn't mean people will actually do so until they're in a position where they need to do so.
New Zealand eliminated all tariffs and subsidies to agriculture and look where they are now.
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
Even so, throwing out half a week's worth of supply is bad economics. What would Mrs T have said?
Also - if things don't get better then it will happen again.
@DavidL has repeatedly made the point that the Single Market has been bad for Britain because it has resulted in too many imports. He usually posts the figures.
If so, why is it a good thing to have more imports (of pig meat, say) because we can't slaughter our own and have to throw them away? I don't get it. If his analysis is correct we should be making it easier for domestic sectors not harder. But the uber-keen Brexiteers like @Philip_Thompson seem not to be worried by increasing imports.
???
If its not economical to produce pigs in the UK then the land, labour and capital should be used on something it is economical to produce.
A use well always be found for the land. However stopping pig production doesn't mean a substitution by higher value production. That's illogical. The higher value production would be happening anyway in that case. Stopping production just means we will collectively be a bit poorer and the pig farmer a lot poorer.
Course the pigs get the worst end of the deal as ever.
As the Chinese saying goes, even a chicken has to work for its living.
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
Even so, throwing out half a week's worth of supply is bad economics. What would Mrs T have said?
Also - if things don't get better then it will happen again.
@DavidL has repeatedly made the point that the Single Market has been bad for Britain because it has resulted in too many imports. He usually posts the figures.
If so, why is it a good thing to have more imports (of pig meat, say) because we can't slaughter our own and have to throw them away? I don't get it. If his analysis is correct we should be making it easier for domestic sectors not harder. But the uber-keen Brexiteers like @Philip_Thompson seem not to be worried by increasing imports.
???
If its not economical to produce pigs in the UK then the land, labour and capital should be used on something it is economical to produce.
A use well always be found for the land. However stopping pig production doesn't mean a substitution by higher value production. That's illogical. The higher value production would be happening anyway in that case. Stopping production just means we will collectively be a bit poorer and the pig farmer a lot poorer.
An excuse always used for supporting exploitation.
And you're wrong, housing will be far more valuable than pigs both for the country and especially for the farmer.
So why isn't housing replacing pig production now, how does it make people wealthier, particularly those involved in pig production, why do we need shortages of abattoir workers?
Seems a red herring.
Because there isn't a free market in planning construction etc right now.
If the farmers are unproductive and decide to sell their land for something much, much more productive there might not be objections if they've got no alternative.
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
Even so, throwing out half a week's worth of supply is bad economics. What would Mrs T have said?
Also - if things don't get better then it will happen again.
@DavidL has repeatedly made the point that the Single Market has been bad for Britain because it has resulted in too many imports. He usually posts the figures.
If so, why is it a good thing to have more imports (of pig meat, say) because we can't slaughter our own and have to throw them away? I don't get it. If his analysis is correct we should be making it easier for domestic sectors not harder. But the uber-keen Brexiteers like @Philip_Thompson seem not to be worried by increasing imports.
???
I'm not clear where this "more imports" thing comes from. Why would we?
I think the only real factors I can see here are a) Underinvestment in abbatoir capacity to meet increased production, and overexpansion by producers. Both of which are not things that are really a Govt responsibility.
Overall, I'd say this is producers looking for media-friendly excuses that blame somebody else.
Solutions? Perhaps implement the full new border regime for EU imports, as EuCo have with us. We have the domestic capacity, let's use it.
And pivot somewhat back to more local smaller abbatoirs.
Correction: EU exports an imports are both down, but EU imports are far bigger than exports.
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
I hold Johnson to be of less worth than any one of those 120,000 pigs but that doesn't seem like an unreasonable answer.
Marr somewhat playing shlock! horror! games here.
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
The important figure probably is that the backlog of being added to at a rate of 12 000, such implies a capacity shortfall of about 7%. Once the initial culls are over, which will be grim, the equilibrium will be found by pig farmers cutting production, as already happened with turkeys. It will be cut by more than 7% however. Farmers can't risk raising pigs they can't sell.
No-one of this will help improve conditions for abattoir workers.
That's the point that the current "Brexit means pay rises" commentary seems to miss.
What we're seeing at the moment is the equivalent of Uber Surge pricing. Fun while it lasts for those getting it, but unlikely to last. When these spikes dissipate, the new equilibrium will be somewhere between the old one and the current spike. Prediction is difficult, but I reckon the new equilibrium will be not far off the old one. After all, transport post-Brexit is going to be less efficient than before. You can't make the trucks bigger, you can't really make drivers work longer hours and route and load planning has less flexibility.
And in the meantime, we have a tranche of jobs which don't really respond to automation. How are you going to make social care more efficient?
So as things stand, we're set to export manufacturing jobs and import the products, so we can drive each other around and get each other out of bed.
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.
There is a difference between pigs being slaughtered at an abattoir and turned into delicious meat for us to buy and pigs being shot on the farm and incinerated or rendered.
In one the farmers and abattoirs get paid, food suppliers have meat to sell and consumers get bacon produced in accordance with U.K. animal welfare standards.
In the other farmers don't get paid and we have to import pig meat, often produced to lower standards.
Other than that they are equivalent.
Of course in the medium term wages should rise to make working at an abattoir more attractive. But that does not really address the problem which is facing farmers right now - of having to kill their pigs because they do not have space to house them if they cannot send them into the food chain.
It’s the cost of continuing to feed them rather than the storage
Storage is also an issue because there isn't the space and that leads to an animal welfare issue, AIUI.
I think it is a terrible waste to slaughter animals who can be turned into perfectly good food - but then just burn them. Such a waste when there are people in this country who go hungry. It just seems quite wrong to me.
Comments
https://twitter.com/alan_mcguinness/status/1444569379312635906?s=21
We are going through an adjustment period. We will (hopefully) end up with an economy that works better for the average person. That’s why I voted for Brexit
In one the farmers and abattoirs get paid, food suppliers have meat to sell and consumers get bacon produced in accordance with U.K. animal welfare standards.
In the other farmers don't get paid and we have to import pig meat, often produced to lower standards.
Other than that they are equivalent.
Of course in the medium term wages should rise to make working at an abattoir more attractive. But that does not really address the problem which is facing farmers right now - of having to kill their pigs because they do not have space to house them if they cannot send them into the food chain.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/oct/03/stephanie-grisham-donald-trump-melania-book-abc-interview
… Now she has written a book, I’ll Take Your Questions Now. The irony of the title has been widely noted. In nine months as press secretary, Grisham did not take questions at a single White House briefing. Nonetheless, the book has generated a slew of headlines, nearly all unflattering about her former bosses.
Stories range from the salacious, Trump calling a press aide forward on Air Force One in order to “look at her ass”, to the ludicrous, as when Trump and Boris Johnson used a G20 working breakfast to discuss the strength of kangaroos...
An ill wind etc .....
Putting this in context. Telltale the actual number from the National Pig Association is 100k-120k, and tabloid Marr chose the upper limit for sensation, as often happens.
Putting this into context, 120,000 pigs is about 3-4 days of production in the UK. That is, about 1% of annual production.
Not really a "mass culling".
Foot and Mouth was a "mass culling". Or mink in Denmark.
Overall, another blood-curdling story from an industry lobby that does not quite match the reality.
Rather like the Food Trade Federations misleading "disaster" narrative.
There will be a change that will maximise value from the available inputs.
I suspect your problem is also with interpretation. Most posters offended by Starmer seem to be able to turn any thread to a Starmer is crap thread.
There is more in the papers today about his very public links with prostitutes and owing money and what other police officers knew. That story he concocted to the police when caught did not just come from his imagination. And if journalists can find out - or be fed - this stuff then it shows that proper due diligence and vetting should have found it out too.
It just gets worse and worse. But the Met is adopting its usual stance of mulish obstinacy and toughing it out until the press moves on to some other story.
We're in a bad place.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10053959/Migrants-arrive-UK-crossing-Channel-flown-1-500-miles-Albania.html
Also - if things don't get better then it will happen again.
I am expecting some top war on woke, and war on immigrant labour rhetoric this week.
If so, why is it a good thing to have more imports (of pig meat, say) because we can't slaughter our own and have to throw them away? I don't get it. If his analysis is correct we should be making it easier for domestic sectors not harder. But the uber-keen Brexiteers like @Philip_Thompson seem not to be worried by increasing imports.
???
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8_zgPzIl4A
Curious that those complaining didn’t mention that bit…
And this also relies on the assumption that there is no adultery. As we all know British aristos never commit adultery. Oh no, perish the thought. Doesn't matter if it is exogamous - but if it is within the family ...
Marr might have said “I… you”, which in context is reasonably likely ?
And pedantry about grammar slips in verbal conversation (something which we all make) is a bit daft.
Mr. Carnyx, also, if repeated over a couple of generations then the genetic similarity, unsurprisingly, increases to a more sibling than cousin level.
All those gains are being undermined and destroyed by Johnson and his gang of cronies, in a deliberate attempt to put themselves beyond any kind of control, and above the law.
I don't understand either. It used to be headlines in the newspapers abnout the EEC dumping food for the benefit of the CAP. But that had some economic logic.
Now we're doing it too. Without any comparably logical reason, just a multiple clusterbourach.
Now we need to rebuild.
This has been building up slowly since Brexit imo. I didn't twig at the time but on at least two occasions earlier this year when I have been out somewhere early Sat/Sun morning the filling station nearest to me wasn't open because a tanker was re-supplying. I don't recall ever seeing that before and as it was a minor inconvenience I didn't think any more of it.
Brexit shouldn’t mean autarky
If you remain sceptical you won’t be burnt at the stake. Yet.
It’s cutting off access to an effectively unlimited supply of cheap labour and thereby changing incentives for management for the better
No-one of this will help improve conditions for abattoir workers.
The issue under the coalition was introducing the cap, which on top of reductions in grants and increased functions has to put it mildly not ended well.
Although at least it wasn’t a groan.
Especially in areas where housing is unaffordable.
Improving economic and social mobility through more affordable housing would be far better for this country than having more pigs.
I have seen erstwhile free marketeers go on quite a journey in the last few years. We are going to have a go at a bit of Autarky and of will be interesting to watch. There will be winners and losers.
We know that when you expand international trade and cross border migration you tend to see overall greater economic growth, low inflation, technical innovation and consumer choice. But at the same time you create a left behind class - in the 18th C it was the old skilled artisans - and you tend to see increasing inequality as well as suppression of wages.
A move towards Autarky with inhibited migration and greater trade barriers as we’re now seeing should all things being equal give us some of the opposite: slower growth, higher inflation, reduced consumer choice but better conditions for workers and protection for some domestic producers. That will only work of course if the UK imposes proper barriers to imports (at the moment the barriers are rather asymmetrical).
We’ve seen from Russia (e.g. Belarusian “Camembert”) that import substitution can be a boon to some producers. Likewise despite repeated exchange crises countries like Argentina still function, just about. The Soviet bloc obviously took things a lot further in the 20th century and ultimately paid the price, but it’s interesting to see the journey our erstwhile right of centre party is taking, largely opportunistically, towards something perhaps more akin to Latin American trade policy.
I might come over all BJO, and suggest if he does stab Starmer in the back, Johnson style, it would almost be worth viewing the spanking Johnson will give him in GE2024. Although the downside to that is Johnson will remain free to do his worst.
New Zealand eliminated all tariffs and subsidies to agriculture and look where they are now.
Pig meat production in the UK has been upped by producers, having been upped also in 2019-2020.
https://ahdb.org.uk/pork-market-outlook
The number of pigs being slaughtered is up by 4% Aug 2020-Aug 2021.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/cattle-sheep-and-pig-slaughter/latest-monthly-information-on-the-number-of-slaughters-in-the-united-kingdom-for-cattle-sheep-and-pigs
Annual figures:
I suspect they were perhaps trying to substitute China imports (if they exist - have not seen the numbers), because China has had a Swine Flu epidemic for several years, and lost / culled 300 million pigs.
https://fortune.com/2021/07/03/african-swine-fever-epidemic-china-pig-recovery/
EU pig meat exports to the UK are down on last year.
https://ahdb.org.uk/news/eu-pig-meat-exports-still-robust-in-may
UK to EU pig meat exports seem to be up (one month numbers though):
https://ahdb.org.uk/news/uk-pig-meat-exports-relatively-stable-in-march
I think the only real factors I can see here are a) Underinvestment in abbatoir capacity to meet increased production, and overexpansion by producers. Both of which are not things that are really a Govt responsibility.
Overall, I'd say this is producers looking for media-friendly excuses that blame somebody else.
Solutions? Perhaps implement the full new border regime for EU imports, as EuCo have with us. We have the domestic capacity, let's use it.
And pivot somewhat back to more local smaller abbatoirs.
It looks like we are going to need that chlorinated chicken after all.
And you're wrong, housing will be far more valuable than pigs both for the country and especially for the farmer.
For another we should import that which we're unproductive with and export those that we're productive with.
We're a small island with a lot of people and not much land. Agriculture makes up 0.59% of UK GDP and takes up over 70% of UK land. Maybe, just maybe, reserving 70% of our land for 0.59% of our GDP isn't the most productive use of our limited space?
Meanwhile commercial pay rates have increased significantly to the point that in large parts of the south you won’t find any senior planning officers because once you’ve got your 2 years of experience it’s time to go and earn proper money.
I'm no J. B. S. Haldane or W. D. Hamilton but intuitively that would lead to some even closer relationships, and some more distant, than it says on the box or rather birth certificate. And therefore pushing some births above the trigger level for genetic defects.
Of course, one can add incest as well, but I have no idea of the incidence.
(The popularity of DNA sequencing for family history has led to a lot of, erm, unexpected family history coming out of the woodwork. Personally, I think anyone sending their DNA to a commercial operation is insane, and not just for that reason.)
I have just caught up with some of the Marr interview. Talk about a train wreck. I do hope the BBC are busy hunting down Johnson's HIGNFY performance to replace the Marr interview footage, by at least the lunchtime bulletin.
Anyone who doesnt want him to replace the current useless nonentity does not care about winning and are only interested in factional shite.
Get him a seat quick
Seems a red herring.
https://twitter.com/BBCPhilipSim/status/718400480548941825?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^718400480548941825|twgr^|twcon^s1_&ref_url=https://d-24595573193024971675.ampproject.net/2109102127000/frame.html
On the other hand I was struck by just how rude Marr was to our nations elected leader. I am not calling for cringing respect, but why not let the man finish? Just pathetic.
If the farmers are unproductive and decide to sell their land for something much, much more productive there might not be objections if they've got no alternative.
Excellent interactive pig trade data explorer here:
https://ahdb.org.uk/pork/pig-meat-trade
What we're seeing at the moment is the equivalent of Uber Surge pricing. Fun while it lasts for those getting it, but unlikely to last.
When these spikes dissipate, the new equilibrium will be somewhere between the old one and the current spike. Prediction is difficult, but I reckon the new equilibrium will be not far off the old one. After all, transport post-Brexit is going to be less efficient than before. You can't make the trucks bigger, you can't really make drivers work longer hours and route and load planning has less flexibility.
And in the meantime, we have a tranche of jobs which don't really respond to automation. How are you going to make social care more efficient?
So as things stand, we're set to export manufacturing jobs and import the products, so we can drive each other around and get each other out of bed.
There are plenty of ways this could go wrong.
I think it is a terrible waste to slaughter animals who can be turned into perfectly good food - but then just burn them. Such a waste when there are people in this country who go hungry. It just seems quite wrong to me.