Johnson joking about the possible pig cull on yesterday's Marr was a mistake
Remember that the pig chopping industry is lying for politically motivated reasons. There is no problem and besides which it is an absolute non-issue.
Until we get a simultaneous shortage of piggy woo on the shelves and there has been a messy and graphic cull on farms. Which is increasingly likely. Then it will be an issue. And the Muppet Show won't be able to try and blame the industry.
Why? If pigs can't go to an abattoir because the abattoir doesn't have enough staff whose fault is it.
Granted the people really responsible probably retired 5 to 10 years ago but it's the responsibility of a company to ensure they have the staff required to do the job required.
Curiously does anyone know where the actual issues are? Are they nationwide or only in certain parts of the country?
This FT article spells it out - the old stereotype about Eastern European workers living 3 to a room, doing shift work, then going home rich after a couple of years was not only true, it’s what our economy evolved to rely upon.
“ It’s hard to see how you can manage such a long and variable job if you have to take care of yourself ahead of time or have extra-work responsibilities. Even if you can, there are less demanding jobs with stable shifts that pay similar wages. However, certain groups of migrant workers who came without dependents and lived in communal quarters were able to manage food factory jobs. Nick Allen, chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, says that’s why jobs have developed this way. “To be honest, labor patterns have developed around a non-British workforce. Their main reason is to stay for three years and make a lot of money to go home.”
The location of his workshops also changed from small slaughterhouses spread across the country to large slaughterhouse groups in rural areas (because it’s easier to get animals there). “The whole structure of the industry has changed over the decades,” Allen says. “It ended up with a certain pattern and probably needs to change.”
Allen says salaries for new hires have already risen. “There are super entry jobs advertised for £22,000 now, and two years ago they would have been £18,000.” He’s talking to his members about changing work patterns, but warns that it won’t be easy. Eamon O’Hearn, the state officer of the GMB union, says employers in this sector have “some sympathy” because they are low-margin, large businesses that are constantly under pressure from powerful supermarkets. Meat in the UK is the cheapest in Western Europe. “
A high wage economy, says Boris. So nurses are given a 3% pay rise for working through Covid with inadequate PPE and then 1% is taken back in national insurance, and the rest in higher petrol prices and electricity costs, leaving most of them poorer that before. You could say the same for lots of people, not to mention the Ponzi scheme of student loans which will burden most high achieving school leavers as soon as they graduate. We need lower taxes, so that people retain a decent proportion of what they earn.
And nurses, like everybody else need to increase their productivity so they can be paid higher wages.
In practical terms, what does that mean? Is a single staff nurse looking after a ward of 30 patients more productive? Or one who has enough time with each patient that they don't catch a hospital acquired infection, that their vital signs are monitored and acted on, and the patient leaves the hospital alive and expeditiously?
It means using fewer inputs to get the same output. So a staff nurse looking after 30 patients would be more productive than one looking after 29, provided she gives them the same quality of care. Of course it's difficult to measure in the service sector. And still more difficult to improve. But it is the key to higher pay.
Productivity increases in the service sector, which is by far the biggest bit of the economy, are inherently limited by the nature of those services. People value the time and personal input of much of these, whether healthcare, dining out or getting a beauty treatment.
Stagnant productivity is a feature of a post industrial economy. Demand may have pushed up HGV wages, but it hasn't made them more productive. Some individuals have benefited, but as an economy there has been no gain.
Eventually what we might see in the HGV sector is automated driving, which will be a spectacular increase in labour productivity.
We already have it - it's called railways. Thirty lorries in one train.
(runs for cover)
But the problem with automated lorries is the same as it is for trains: the last mile. It's fine saying you can drive along the motorways, or even to the depots, but somewhat pointless if you need drivers for the rest of it.
I've been bearish on automated driving for years. There hasn't been much progress to make me change my mind. If anything, the lack of progress cements it: it's an incredibly tricky problem, as Tesla, Waymo and others are finding out to their cost.
Automation works on some urban railways *because* you take out some of the unpredictability and risk that would otherwise have to be taken into account by a human driver. That's why it's feasible on the jubilee line extension, DLR or Crossrail (central section) as you separate the platform-train interface, and automate everything else.
You can't do that everywhere across the whole country.
And again property being used as an investment instead of somewhere to live.
I'm really beginning to think that we need a tremendous property crash in this country and who cares if it leads to negative equity? If you're not planning on moving and are keeping up with your repayments then negative equity is just a figure.
Times change.
Let’s say you are offered a great career opportunity the other side of the country. Can’t move because of negative equity? That’s bad luck for you.
Indeed that's a shame. However those looking to move while having negative equity will benefit from reduced house prices too so swings and roundabouts.
But can't live where you already are because of insane house prices meaning you're essentially in negative equity without moving? That's even worse and a bigger evil.
How about destroying the banking system?
Believe me house prices are too high. But a crash is not the answer.
That's the problem though, people react with abject horror at any proposed solution.
As I've said before my preferred solution would be some years of high inflation combined with keeping house prices flattish, but then people react horrified at the suggestion of inflation - despite the fact we've had inflation in costs for years which is what has caused this crisis.
So how do you end the crisis of extremely high house prices without a crash and without inflation?
What you need is flattish house prices for a period of years so that affordability multiples decline. We’ve already had asset price inflation - that’s the problem.
But you suggested a crash.
Which is a spectacularly shit idea
For that to work you need visible inflation and visible wage inflation alongside something that stops people maximising their borrowing.
At the moment we have none of those things occurring at levels that would resolve the issue.
Remember that to fix this issue via wage inflation, wages in a lot of areas will need to double or even triple.
Exactly this.
I'm advocating more construction and more inflation as a preferred solution, but how many of those horrified by the notion of a potential and very-justified* crash are OK with years of high inflation that are the only viable alternative fix?
* If you agree that the prices as they stand are overvalued and or problematic then a crash is overdue.
Inflation would feed through to asset price inflation. You can’t just say “assuming it doesn’t”.
It’s really very simple: you need real house prices to grow at less than real wages for an extended period. Best would be decent real wage growth and flat nominal house prices.
Consumer price Inflation is about eroding the real value of debt, not impacting the house price/wage multiple. Also May be necessary but probably counterproductive in solving the housing issue
The best way to achieve that would be to increase house construction in the areas where it is unaffordable.
Difficult in London but easier in southern England generally.
So here's a suggestion - any business which wants to import workers has to fund an equivalent number of houses.
Your first 2 paragraphs are right. Your third would lead to misallocation of capital on a grand scale
Johnson joking about the possible pig cull on yesterday's Marr was a mistake
Why?
If farmers and abattoirs won't pay a decent wage to their staff then cull them all if need be.
For all that you post some brilliant stuff you also post absurd stuff. Politically what you suggest will be a disaster. On our screens and in our newspapers will be "down on the farm" style piles of pig corpses that have been shot and are now rotting. On the other hand we won't have processed pigs through abattoirs and factories which means a big shortage of pork products in the run up to Christmas when demand is at its highest.
What you suggest would be bad for the government. We are likely to end up there anyway due to gross incompetence, but they won't actively be trying for it.
You've got more experience with Supermarkets than I do so I'll defer to your expertise on this: are you telling me that Supermarkets are so grossly incompetent at what they do that not only can they not pay a fair going rate to ensure that pork products are capable of going through the abattoirs of the UK . . . but they're so utterly incompetent at their jobs that they can't pay a fair going rate to buy pork products on the global markets and either ship or fly them in to stock the shelves?
Is that how little regard you have for the Supermarkets? If it is, I will defer to your low opinion of them.
Johnson joking about the possible pig cull on yesterday's Marr was a mistake
Remember that the pig chopping industry is lying for politically motivated reasons. There is no problem and besides which it is an absolute non-issue.
Until we get a simultaneous shortage of piggy woo on the shelves and there has been a messy and graphic cull on farms. Which is increasingly likely. Then it will be an issue. And the Muppet Show won't be able to try and blame the industry.
Why? If pigs can't go to an abattoir because the abattoir doesn't have enough staff whose fault is it.
Granted the people really responsible probably retired 5 to 10 years ago but it's the responsibility of a company to ensure they have the staff required to do the job required.
Curiously does anyone know where the actual issues are? Are they nationwide or only in certain parts of the country?
This FT article spells it out - the old stereotype about Eastern European workers living 3 to a room, doing shift work, then going home rich after a couple of years was not only true, it’s what our economy evolved to rely upon.
“ It’s hard to see how you can manage such a long and variable job if you have to take care of yourself ahead of time or have extra-work responsibilities. Even if you can, there are less demanding jobs with stable shifts that pay similar wages. However, certain groups of migrant workers who came without dependents and lived in communal quarters were able to manage food factory jobs. Nick Allen, chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, says that’s why jobs have developed this way. “To be honest, labor patterns have developed around a non-British workforce. Their main reason is to stay for three years and make a lot of money to go home.”
The location of his workshops also changed from small slaughterhouses spread across the country to large slaughterhouse groups in rural areas (because it’s easier to get animals there). “The whole structure of the industry has changed over the decades,” Allen says. “It ended up with a certain pattern and probably needs to change.”
Allen says salaries for new hires have already risen. “There are super entry jobs advertised for £22,000 now, and two years ago they would have been £18,000.” He’s talking to his members about changing work patterns, but warns that it won’t be easy. Eamon O’Hearn, the state officer of the GMB union, says employers in this sector have “some sympathy” because they are low-margin, large businesses that are constantly under pressure from powerful supermarkets. Meat in the UK is the cheapest in Western Europe. “
General rule of thumb: the most dogmatic cling to an ideology in all circumstances because they don't have the intelligence to deal with the greyness of the real world
Johnson joking about the possible pig cull on yesterday's Marr was a mistake
Why?
If farmers and abattoirs won't pay a decent wage to their staff then cull them all if need be.
For all that you post some brilliant stuff you also post absurd stuff. Politically what you suggest will be a disaster. On our screens and in our newspapers will be "down on the farm" style piles of pig corpses that have been shot and are now rotting. On the other hand we won't have processed pigs through abattoirs and factories which means a big shortage of pork products in the run up to Christmas when demand is at its highest.
What you suggest would be bad for the government. We are likely to end up there anyway due to gross incompetence, but they won't actively be trying for it.
You've got more experience with Supermarkets than I do so I'll defer to your expertise on this: are you telling me that Supermarkets are so grossly incompetent at what they do that not only can they not pay a fair going rate to ensure that pork products are capable of going through the abattoirs of the UK . . . but they're so utterly incompetent at their jobs that they can't pay a fair going rate to buy pork products on the global markets and either ship or fly them in to stock the shelves?
Is that how little regard you have for the Supermarkets? If it is, I will defer to your low opinion of them.
1. Adjustments are not always for the better.
2. Whether they are for the better, the worse, or no real change either way, they take time.
I'm back in (oh lanky lanky) Lancashire and already the contrasts between sanity in Scotland and lunacy down here is stark. Whilst I successfully refuelled the car for the trip home later it was stark the issues down here. Asda was open on one island only with a huge queue (late Sunday afternoon). A shell station had premium only. A Texaco station was open but had thought charging motorway prices was appropriate. 4th one I went past was open and quiet so went there.
And this is good compared to dahn sarf? Crazy.
After Brexit, the army will be called in so that people in the south of England can still get fuel?
Nah, never going to happen, mate! Just more Project Fear.
As this is still going on AND there is a role for both army drivers it is absolutely clear that there is a shortage of ADR drivers at least in southern England. "Just pay more" didn't produce trained drivers - I know, its a shock.
"Just pay more" hasn't been done yet it seems.
You've already confirmed that you thought offering £70k-80k for drivers (which is the going rate for drivers in the USA) would see vacancies filled virtually instantly.
A high wage economy, says Boris. So nurses are given a 3% pay rise for working through Covid with inadequate PPE and then 1% is taken back in national insurance, and the rest in higher petrol prices and electricity costs, leaving most of them poorer that before. You could say the same for lots of people, not to mention the Ponzi scheme of student loans which will burden most high achieving school leavers as soon as they graduate. We need lower taxes, so that people retain a decent proportion of what they earn.
And nurses, like everybody else need to increase their productivity so they can be paid higher wages.
In practical terms, what does that mean? Is a single staff nurse looking after a ward of 30 patients more productive? Or one who has enough time with each patient that they don't catch a hospital acquired infection, that their vital signs are monitored and acted on, and the patient leaves the hospital alive and expeditiously?
It means using fewer inputs to get the same output. So a staff nurse looking after 30 patients would be more productive than one looking after 29, provided she gives them the same quality of care. Of course it's difficult to measure in the service sector. And still more difficult to improve. But it is the key to higher pay.
Reducing staffing levels and automating some care is the key to getting higher output in the NHS for the same money because most of the cost of the NHS is accounted for by salaries.
However, that will be resisted every step of the way with lots of strikes - and oodles of public sympathy - because NHS workers are fetishized and lionised.
We'd rather keep our religious beliefs about it intact than save more lives.
That's actually not fair.
I've been loosely involved in some studies (stats support, mainly) looking at greater efficiencies through tech and/or different working patterns.
There's been very little resistance, at least internally in the NHS - including at ward level - to this, as long as they trust that better care is a driver as well as cutting costs (and that the care won't be sacrified for costs). This is probably because the end game hasn't tended to be staff redundancies, but rather getting more done/tackling waiting lists. Obviously if you get on top of backlogs then down the line you can cut recruitment a bit. However we get nowhere near filling our staff needs with domestic graduates, so that again is not really controversial - there will be a job for every UK graduating nurse or doctor who wants to work in the NHS.
It's a bit different to the new machine at the sausage factory which puts half the people out of a job.
On topic (ish) Keir Starmer is an uninspiring product but that won't matter if the economy stagflates - Labour could simply win by default anyway.
Remember 1974.
I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose, oppositions don't win.
Your boy can win despite stagflation. And if winning is all that matters. starting ulture wars and scapegoating minorities are meat and drink to Johnson's current audience. Even if the economy is on its knees, my long held view that incumbency takes the hit has been proven wrong by the fuel crisis.
It is not the crisis, but who gets the blame for the crisis. Previous governments, Remainers, woke lefties, foreigners, foreign governments are all fair game, and Johnson is winning at that game.
A high wage economy, says Boris. So nurses are given a 3% pay rise for working through Covid with inadequate PPE and then 1% is taken back in national insurance, and the rest in higher petrol prices and electricity costs, leaving most of them poorer that before. You could say the same for lots of people, not to mention the Ponzi scheme of student loans which will burden most high achieving school leavers as soon as they graduate. We need lower taxes, so that people retain a decent proportion of what they earn.
And nurses, like everybody else need to increase their productivity so they can be paid higher wages.
In practical terms, what does that mean? Is a single staff nurse looking after a ward of 30 patients more productive? Or one who has enough time with each patient that they don't catch a hospital acquired infection, that their vital signs are monitored and acted on, and the patient leaves the hospital alive and expeditiously?
It means using fewer inputs to get the same output. So a staff nurse looking after 30 patients would be more productive than one looking after 29, provided she gives them the same quality of care. Of course it's difficult to measure in the service sector. And still more difficult to improve. But it is the key to higher pay.
Reducing staffing levels and automating some care is the key to getting higher output in the NHS for the same money because most of the cost of the NHS is accounted for by salaries.
However, that will be resisted every step of the way with lots of strikes - and oodles of public sympathy - because NHS workers are fetishized and lionised.
We'd rather keep our religious beliefs about it intact than save more lives.
But also, more efficiency in service industries tends to mean losing the personal touch.
So in education, you have pupil work which is designed to be robomarked. There's some really neat stuff out there, and if you design multiple choice questions right you can give incredibly useful feedback.
In healthcare, you can do online triage or video call consultations. Great. More efficient.
But then a proprtion of the customers complain because they're not seeing a real human teacher/doctor/bank clerk.
And some of that is bogstandard Luddism, but there's a kernel of a genuine issue as well.
Which is why it's harder to get productivity gains in services.
Mr. Jessop, the pay for politicians should be higher, and the zealous scrutiny of the media on individuals but not policies both puts a lot of people and ensures we are not governed as well as we should be.
On the one hand Starmer does not arouse the fervour and passion amongst his supporters Corbyn did and indeed he has lost some 2019 Labour voters to the Greens. On the other hand he appeals more to centrists than Corbyn did and has attracted some 2019 LD voters to Labour and is more appealing to Tory Remain voters than Corbyn was, especially in marginal seats in London. He also makes it safer for Tory Remain voters in the Home Counties to vote LD and not be concerned about the Labour leader becoming PM, see the LD gain in Chesham and Amersham in the by election.
What he is not doing any better than Corbyn did was to appeal to large numbers of 2019 Tory voters who also voted Leave in the RedWall Labour needs to win over to be largest party let alone win a majority. See also the Tory gain in Hartlepool in the by election. I expect Burnham would be doing better with them
A high wage economy, says Boris. So nurses are given a 3% pay rise for working through Covid with inadequate PPE and then 1% is taken back in national insurance, and the rest in higher petrol prices and electricity costs, leaving most of them poorer that before. You could say the same for lots of people, not to mention the Ponzi scheme of student loans which will burden most high achieving school leavers as soon as they graduate. We need lower taxes, so that people retain a decent proportion of what they earn.
And nurses, like everybody else need to increase their productivity so they can be paid higher wages.
In practical terms, what does that mean? Is a single staff nurse looking after a ward of 30 patients more productive? Or one who has enough time with each patient that they don't catch a hospital acquired infection, that their vital signs are monitored and acted on, and the patient leaves the hospital alive and expeditiously?
It means using fewer inputs to get the same output. So a staff nurse looking after 30 patients would be more productive than one looking after 29, provided she gives them the same quality of care. Of course it's difficult to measure in the service sector. And still more difficult to improve. But it is the key to higher pay.
Productivity increases in the service sector, which is by far the biggest bit of the economy, are inherently limited by the nature of those services. People value the time and personal input of much of these, whether healthcare, dining out or getting a beauty treatment.
Stagnant productivity is a feature of a post industrial economy. Demand may have pushed up HGV wages, but it hasn't made them more productive. Some individuals have benefited, but as an economy there has been no gain.
Eventually what we might see in the HGV sector is automated driving, which will be a spectacular increase in labour productivity.
We already have it - it's called railways. Thirty lorries in one train.
(runs for cover)
But the problem with automated lorries is the same as it is for trains: the last mile. It's fine saying you can drive along the motorways, or even to the depots, but somewhat pointless if you need drivers for the rest of it.
I've been bearish on automated driving for years. There hasn't been much progress to make me change my mind. If anything, the lack of progress cements it: it's an incredibly tricky problem, as Tesla, Waymo and others are finding out to their cost.
Automation works on some urban railways *because* you take out some of the unpredictability and risk that would otherwise have to be taken into account by a human driver. That's why it's feasible on the jubilee line extension, DLR or Crossrail (central section) as you separate the platform-train interface, and automate everything else.
You can't do that everywhere across the whole country.
It's the same problem as self driving cars - unless everything is fully automated, human beings have a nasty habit of accidently creating serious issues..
Johnson joking about the possible pig cull on yesterday's Marr was a mistake
Remember that the pig chopping industry is lying for politically motivated reasons. There is no problem and besides which it is an absolute non-issue.
Until we get a simultaneous shortage of piggy woo on the shelves and there has been a messy and graphic cull on farms. Which is increasingly likely. Then it will be an issue. And the Muppet Show won't be able to try and blame the industry.
Why? If pigs can't go to an abattoir because the abattoir doesn't have enough staff whose fault is it.
Granted the people really responsible probably retired 5 to 10 years ago but it's the responsibility of a company to ensure they have the staff required to do the job required.
Curiously does anyone know where the actual issues are? Are they nationwide or only in certain parts of the country?
This FT article spells it out - the old stereotype about Eastern European workers living 3 to a room, doing shift work, then going home rich after a couple of years was not only true, it’s what our economy evolved to rely upon.
“ It’s hard to see how you can manage such a long and variable job if you have to take care of yourself ahead of time or have extra-work responsibilities. Even if you can, there are less demanding jobs with stable shifts that pay similar wages. However, certain groups of migrant workers who came without dependents and lived in communal quarters were able to manage food factory jobs. Nick Allen, chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, says that’s why jobs have developed this way. “To be honest, labor patterns have developed around a non-British workforce. Their main reason is to stay for three years and make a lot of money to go home.”
The location of his workshops also changed from small slaughterhouses spread across the country to large slaughterhouse groups in rural areas (because it’s easier to get animals there). “The whole structure of the industry has changed over the decades,” Allen says. “It ended up with a certain pattern and probably needs to change.”
Allen says salaries for new hires have already risen. “There are super entry jobs advertised for £22,000 now, and two years ago they would have been £18,000.” He’s talking to his members about changing work patterns, but warns that it won’t be easy. Eamon O’Hearn, the state officer of the GMB union, says employers in this sector have “some sympathy” because they are low-margin, large businesses that are constantly under pressure from powerful supermarkets. Meat in the UK is the cheapest in Western Europe. “
It's interesting that the government had hitherto believed that the "suffering" of the farmers, for example dairy farmers, was justified if it delivered cheap milk to Tescos and thereby greater economic good to the British Public.
The govt now believes that the "suffering" of low paid workers in all sectors is no longer justified to deliver such economic benefit to the country at large.
It is a huge rebalancing with likely higher prices and taxes. Where that leaves the UK in global growth and competitive stakes is a discussion for another day.
Johnson joking about the possible pig cull on yesterday's Marr was a mistake
Why?
If farmers and abattoirs won't pay a decent wage to their staff then cull them all if need be.
For all that you post some brilliant stuff you also post absurd stuff. Politically what you suggest will be a disaster. On our screens and in our newspapers will be "down on the farm" style piles of pig corpses that have been shot and are now rotting. On the other hand we won't have processed pigs through abattoirs and factories which means a big shortage of pork products in the run up to Christmas when demand is at its highest.
What you suggest would be bad for the government. We are likely to end up there anyway due to gross incompetence, but they won't actively be trying for it.
You've got more experience with Supermarkets than I do so I'll defer to your expertise on this: are you telling me that Supermarkets are so grossly incompetent at what they do that not only can they not pay a fair going rate to ensure that pork products are capable of going through the abattoirs of the UK . . . but they're so utterly incompetent at their jobs that they can't pay a fair going rate to buy pork products on the global markets and either ship or fly them in to stock the shelves?
Is that how little regard you have for the Supermarkets? If it is, I will defer to your low opinion of them.
1. Adjustments are not always for the better.
2. Whether they are for the better, the worse, or no real change either way, they take time.
Absolutely but they've had months if not years of notice to prepare so if they've failed to do so, then whose responsibility is it?
Pork is close to my heart (or belly), I love bacon, ham etc and we aren't that keen on turkey so always have gammon for Christmas (or gammon and chicken if hosting a large dinner). I will go to whichever supermarket or butcher has stock available, if one fails to do so but another manages to then they will get my business.
If any supermarkets are so incompetent they can't stock their shelves, but others can, then those who can will get the business. So they've got a competitive interest in ensuring their shelves are stocked.
@RochdalePioneers obviously doesn't hold the supermarkets in anything other than contempt based on the way he's speaking. I expect they're more competent than he thinks. We'll see.
A police sergeant has escaped disciplinary proceedings after being photographed while dressed as paedophile Jimmy Savile on his stag weekend alongside a group of fellow officers.
What do we think? Sackable offence, or none of the employer’s business?
Poor taste but he was on his free time, and not representing the police, so none of the employers business.
Is the Mail proposing to ban dark humour and fancy dress ? It'd be a very very dark day if people started getting sacked for what they wear on stag does.
A high wage economy, says Boris. So nurses are given a 3% pay rise for working through Covid with inadequate PPE and then 1% is taken back in national insurance, and the rest in higher petrol prices and electricity costs, leaving most of them poorer that before. You could say the same for lots of people, not to mention the Ponzi scheme of student loans which will burden most high achieving school leavers as soon as they graduate. We need lower taxes, so that people retain a decent proportion of what they earn.
And nurses, like everybody else need to increase their productivity so they can be paid higher wages.
In practical terms, what does that mean? Is a single staff nurse looking after a ward of 30 patients more productive? Or one who has enough time with each patient that they don't catch a hospital acquired infection, that their vital signs are monitored and acted on, and the patient leaves the hospital alive and expeditiously?
It means using fewer inputs to get the same output. So a staff nurse looking after 30 patients would be more productive than one looking after 29, provided she gives them the same quality of care. Of course it's difficult to measure in the service sector. And still more difficult to improve. But it is the key to higher pay.
Productivity increases in the service sector, which is by far the biggest bit of the economy, are inherently limited by the nature of those services. People value the time and personal input of much of these, whether healthcare, dining out or getting a beauty treatment.
Stagnant productivity is a feature of a post industrial economy. Demand may have pushed up HGV wages, but it hasn't made them more productive. Some individuals have benefited, but as an economy there has been no gain.
Eventually what we might see in the HGV sector is automated driving, which will be a spectacular increase in labour productivity.
We already have it - it's called railways. Thirty lorries in one train.
(runs for cover)
But the problem with automated lorries is the same as it is for trains: the last mile. It's fine saying you can drive along the motorways, or even to the depots, but somewhat pointless if you need drivers for the rest of it.
I've been bearish on automated driving for years. There hasn't been much progress to make me change my mind. If anything, the lack of progress cements it: it's an incredibly tricky problem, as Tesla, Waymo and others are finding out to their cost.
Automation works on some urban railways *because* you take out some of the unpredictability and risk that would otherwise have to be taken into account by a human driver. That's why it's feasible on the jubilee line extension, DLR or Crossrail (central section) as you separate the platform-train interface, and automate everything else.
You can't do that everywhere across the whole country.
Yep - although I was actually referring to the fact that each wagon doesn't have a driver - not that the whole train doesn't have one.
Incidentally, I don't think we have a single 'uncrewed' train in the UK. The ATO tube lines still have drivers, and the DLR has train captains (or whatever they're called this week). This is because the problem is interaction with the public, and particularly the doors. The necessity to have a staff member on the train reduces much of the savings of being driverless - e.g. a DLR train captain earns £42k. A tube driver £56k. Not a massive saving...
Totally unstaffed trains are much easier to implement on brand-new networks, with no links to existing networks. Or ones with no passengers,
We need lower taxes, so that people retain a decent proportion of what they earn.
And nurses, like everybody else need to increase their productivity so they can be paid higher wages.
In practical terms, what does that mean? Is a single staff nurse looking after a ward of 30 patients more productive? Or one who has enough time with each patient that they don't catch a hospital acquired infection, that their vital signs are monitored and acted on, and the patient leaves the hospital alive and expeditiously?
It means using fewer inputs to get the same output. So a staff nurse looking after 30 patients would be more productive than one looking after 29, provided she gives them the same quality of care. Of course it's difficult to measure in the service sector. And still more difficult to improve. But it is the key to higher pay.
Reducing staffing levels and automating some care is the key to getting higher output in the NHS for the same money because most of the cost of the NHS is accounted for by salaries.
However, that will be resisted every step of the way with lots of strikes - and oodles of public sympathy - because NHS workers are fetishized and lionised.
We'd rather keep our religious beliefs about it intact than save more lives.
But also, more efficiency in service industries tends to mean losing the personal touch.
So in education, you have pupil work which is designed to be robomarked. There's some really neat stuff out there, and if you design multiple choice questions right you can give incredibly useful feedback.
In healthcare, you can do online triage or video call consultations. Great. More efficient.
But then a proprtion of the customers complain because they're not seeing a real human teacher/doctor/bank clerk.
And some of that is bogstandard Luddism, but there's a kernel of a genuine issue as well.
Which is why it's harder to get productivity gains in services.
I wouldn't want to automate it all - I think people need a personal touch when they're ill.
But, there's an awful lot of process/checking/planning/data analysis/reporting etc. that could be automated.
Johnson joking about the possible pig cull on yesterday's Marr was a mistake
Remember that the pig chopping industry is lying for politically motivated reasons. There is no problem and besides which it is an absolute non-issue.
Until we get a simultaneous shortage of piggy woo on the shelves and there has been a messy and graphic cull on farms. Which is increasingly likely. Then it will be an issue. And the Muppet Show won't be able to try and blame the industry.
Why? If pigs can't go to an abattoir because the abattoir doesn't have enough staff whose fault is it.
Granted the people really responsible probably retired 5 to 10 years ago but it's the responsibility of a company to ensure they have the staff required to do the job required.
Curiously does anyone know where the actual issues are? Are they nationwide or only in certain parts of the country?
This FT article spells it out - the old stereotype about Eastern European workers living 3 to a room, doing shift work, then going home rich after a couple of years was not only true, it’s what our economy evolved to rely upon.
“ It’s hard to see how you can manage such a long and variable job if you have to take care of yourself ahead of time or have extra-work responsibilities. Even if you can, there are less demanding jobs with stable shifts that pay similar wages. However, certain groups of migrant workers who came without dependents and lived in communal quarters were able to manage food factory jobs. Nick Allen, chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, says that’s why jobs have developed this way. “To be honest, labor patterns have developed around a non-British workforce. Their main reason is to stay for three years and make a lot of money to go home.”
The location of his workshops also changed from small slaughterhouses spread across the country to large slaughterhouse groups in rural areas (because it’s easier to get animals there). “The whole structure of the industry has changed over the decades,” Allen says. “It ended up with a certain pattern and probably needs to change.”
Allen says salaries for new hires have already risen. “There are super entry jobs advertised for £22,000 now, and two years ago they would have been £18,000.” He’s talking to his members about changing work patterns, but warns that it won’t be easy. Eamon O’Hearn, the state officer of the GMB union, says employers in this sector have “some sympathy” because they are low-margin, large businesses that are constantly under pressure from powerful supermarkets. Meat in the UK is the cheapest in Western Europe. “
On topic (ish) Keir Starmer is an uninspiring product but that won't matter if the economy stagflates - Labour could simply win by default anyway.
Remember 1974.
I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose, oppositions don't win.
Your boy can win despite stagflation. And if winning is all that matters. starting ulture wars and scapegoating minorities are meat and drink to Johnson's current audience. Even if the economy is on its knees, my long held view that incumbency takes the hit has been proven wrong by the fuel crisis.
It is not the crisis, but who gets the blame for the crisis. Previous governments, Remainers, woke lefties, foreigners, foreign governments are all fair game, and Johnson is winning at that game.
Johnson joking about the possible pig cull on yesterday's Marr was a mistake
Remember that the pig chopping industry is lying for politically motivated reasons. There is no problem and besides which it is an absolute non-issue.
Until we get a simultaneous shortage of piggy woo on the shelves and there has been a messy and graphic cull on farms. Which is increasingly likely. Then it will be an issue. And the Muppet Show won't be able to try and blame the industry.
Why? If pigs can't go to an abattoir because the abattoir doesn't have enough staff whose fault is it.
Granted the people really responsible probably retired 5 to 10 years ago but it's the responsibility of a company to ensure they have the staff required to do the job required.
Curiously does anyone know where the actual issues are? Are they nationwide or only in certain parts of the country?
This FT article spells it out - the old stereotype about Eastern European workers living 3 to a room, doing shift work, then going home rich after a couple of years was not only true, it’s what our economy evolved to rely upon.
“ It’s hard to see how you can manage such a long and variable job if you have to take care of yourself ahead of time or have extra-work responsibilities. Even if you can, there are less demanding jobs with stable shifts that pay similar wages. However, certain groups of migrant workers who came without dependents and lived in communal quarters were able to manage food factory jobs. Nick Allen, chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, says that’s why jobs have developed this way. “To be honest, labor patterns have developed around a non-British workforce. Their main reason is to stay for three years and make a lot of money to go home.”
The location of his workshops also changed from small slaughterhouses spread across the country to large slaughterhouse groups in rural areas (because it’s easier to get animals there). “The whole structure of the industry has changed over the decades,” Allen says. “It ended up with a certain pattern and probably needs to change.”
Allen says salaries for new hires have already risen. “There are super entry jobs advertised for £22,000 now, and two years ago they would have been £18,000.” He’s talking to his members about changing work patterns, but warns that it won’t be easy. Eamon O’Hearn, the state officer of the GMB union, says employers in this sector have “some sympathy” because they are low-margin, large businesses that are constantly under pressure from powerful supermarkets. Meat in the UK is the cheapest in Western Europe. “
Yes. This deserves the widest audience. A system where all sorts of activities are built around ways of life being good enough for Johnny foreigner but not good enough for us is the sort of attitude you may expect from Saudi Arabia or Hampstead, but is absolutely unworthy of a nation with some self respect.
The use of migrant labour to do the dirty jobs is as old as the hills. Before the Eastern Europeans, it was the West Indians and Asians, and before them the Irish. Each has of their home countries has, in turn, become more prosperous and new sources of migrants have appeared. It's not just the UK either; it's a universal principle that people will, if permitted, move to wherever they can find better prospects than at home. It's how the USA was built, for example.
The ultimate result of heavily restricting migration will simply be to slow our economic development and possibly turn the UK into a source, rather than a sink, of migrants. Auf Wiedersehen, Pet.
A high wage economy, says Boris. So nurses are given a 3% pay rise for working through Covid with inadequate PPE and then 1% is taken back in national insurance, and the rest in higher petrol prices and electricity costs, leaving most of them poorer that before. You could say the same for lots of people, not to mention the Ponzi scheme of student loans which will burden most high achieving school leavers as soon as they graduate. We need lower taxes, so that people retain a decent proportion of what they earn.
And nurses, like everybody else need to increase their productivity so they can be paid higher wages.
In practical terms, what does that mean? Is a single staff nurse looking after a ward of 30 patients more productive? Or one who has enough time with each patient that they don't catch a hospital acquired infection, that their vital signs are monitored and acted on, and the patient leaves the hospital alive and expeditiously?
It means using fewer inputs to get the same output. So a staff nurse looking after 30 patients would be more productive than one looking after 29, provided she gives them the same quality of care. Of course it's difficult to measure in the service sector. And still more difficult to improve. But it is the key to higher pay.
Reducing staffing levels and automating some care is the key to getting higher output in the NHS for the same money because most of the cost of the NHS is accounted for by salaries.
However, that will be resisted every step of the way with lots of strikes - and oodles of public sympathy - because NHS workers are fetishized and lionised.
We'd rather keep our religious beliefs about it intact than save more lives.
That's actually not fair.
I've been loosely involved in some studies (stats support, mainly) looking at greater efficiencies through tech and/or different working patterns.
There's been very little resistance, at least internally in the NHS - including at ward level - to this, as long as they trust that better care is a driver as well as cutting costs (and that the care won't be sacrified for costs). This is probably because the end game hasn't tended to be staff redundancies, but rather getting more done/tackling waiting lists. Obviously if you get on top of backlogs then down the line you can cut recruitment a bit. However we get nowhere near filling our staff needs with domestic graduates, so that again is not really controversial - there will be a job for every UK graduating nurse or doctor who wants to work in the NHS.
It's a bit different to the new machine at the sausage factory which puts half the people out of a job.
Fair enough, and I hope you're right - the way to do it would be to stabilise vacancies or allow natural wastage and simply not recruit at the same historical levels going forwards as the tech changes.
On topic (ish) Keir Starmer is an uninspiring product but that won't matter if the economy stagflates - Labour could simply win by default anyway.
Remember 1974.
Something on which we agree, Casino. I'm hoping it doesn't happen.
Me neither, I really don't want a Labour administration. But, flat growth, high inflation, increase in interest rates, sky high energy prices, and social unrest?
That could all happen in the next 3 years. And it could throw out Governments in Western countries around the world.
I am not betting on a Tory majority at current prices.
And again property being used as an investment instead of somewhere to live.
I'm really beginning to think that we need a tremendous property crash in this country and who cares if it leads to negative equity? If you're not planning on moving and are keeping up with your repayments then negative equity is just a figure.
Times change.
Let’s say you are offered a great career opportunity the other side of the country. Can’t move because of negative equity? That’s bad luck for you.
Indeed that's a shame. However those looking to move while having negative equity will benefit from reduced house prices too so swings and roundabouts.
But can't live where you already are because of insane house prices meaning you're essentially in negative equity without moving? That's even worse and a bigger evil.
How about destroying the banking system?
Believe me house prices are too high. But a crash is not the answer.
That's the problem though, people react with abject horror at any proposed solution.
As I've said before my preferred solution would be some years of high inflation combined with keeping house prices flattish, but then people react horrified at the suggestion of inflation - despite the fact we've had inflation in costs for years which is what has caused this crisis.
So how do you end the crisis of extremely high house prices without a crash and without inflation?
What you need is flattish house prices for a period of years so that affordability multiples decline. We’ve already had asset price inflation - that’s the problem.
But you suggested a crash.
Which is a spectacularly shit idea
For that to work you need visible inflation and visible wage inflation alongside something that stops people maximising their borrowing.
At the moment we have none of those things occurring at levels that would resolve the issue.
Remember that to fix this issue via wage inflation, wages in a lot of areas will need to double or even triple.
Exactly this.
I'm advocating more construction and more inflation as a preferred solution, but how many of those horrified by the notion of a potential and very-justified* crash are OK with years of high inflation that are the only viable alternative fix?
* If you agree that the prices as they stand are overvalued and or problematic then a crash is overdue.
Inflation would feed through to asset price inflation. You can’t just say “assuming it doesn’t”.
It’s really very simple: you need real house prices to grow at less than real wages for an extended period. Best would be decent real wage growth and flat nominal house prices.
Consumer price Inflation is about eroding the real value of debt, not impacting the house price/wage multiple. Also May be necessary but probably counterproductive in solving the housing issue
The best way to achieve that would be to increase house construction in the areas where it is unaffordable.
Difficult in London but easier in southern England generally.
So here's a suggestion - any business which wants to import workers has to fund an equivalent number of houses.
Your first 2 paragraphs are right. Your third would lead to misallocation of capital on a grand scale
The housing market in southern England already has a misallocation of capital on a grand scale.
I'm suggesting a way of reversing that.
Its not an original idea - when the landowners in mining areas wanted to attract workers for their new pits they built houses, whole villages in fact together with schools and other public facilities.
A high wage economy, says Boris. So nurses are given a 3% pay rise for working through Covid with inadequate PPE and then 1% is taken back in national insurance, and the rest in higher petrol prices and electricity costs, leaving most of them poorer that before. You could say the same for lots of people, not to mention the Ponzi scheme of student loans which will burden most high achieving school leavers as soon as they graduate. We need lower taxes, so that people retain a decent proportion of what they earn.
And nurses, like everybody else need to increase their productivity so they can be paid higher wages.
In practical terms, what does that mean? Is a single staff nurse looking after a ward of 30 patients more productive? Or one who has enough time with each patient that they don't catch a hospital acquired infection, that their vital signs are monitored and acted on, and the patient leaves the hospital alive and expeditiously?
It means using fewer inputs to get the same output. So a staff nurse looking after 30 patients would be more productive than one looking after 29, provided she gives them the same quality of care. Of course it's difficult to measure in the service sector. And still more difficult to improve. But it is the key to higher pay.
Productivity increases in the service sector, which is by far the biggest bit of the economy, are inherently limited by the nature of those services. People value the time and personal input of much of these, whether healthcare, dining out or getting a beauty treatment.
Stagnant productivity is a feature of a post industrial economy. Demand may have pushed up HGV wages, but it hasn't made them more productive. Some individuals have benefited, but as an economy there has been no gain.
Eventually what we might see in the HGV sector is automated driving, which will be a spectacular increase in labour productivity.
We already have it - it's called railways. Thirty lorries in one train.
(runs for cover)
But the problem with automated lorries is the same as it is for trains: the last mile. It's fine saying you can drive along the motorways, or even to the depots, but somewhat pointless if you need drivers for the rest of it.
I've been bearish on automated driving for years. There hasn't been much progress to make me change my mind. If anything, the lack of progress cements it: it's an incredibly tricky problem, as Tesla, Waymo and others are finding out to their cost.
Automation works on some urban railways *because* you take out some of the unpredictability and risk that would otherwise have to be taken into account by a human driver. That's why it's feasible on the jubilee line extension, DLR or Crossrail (central section) as you separate the platform-train interface, and automate everything else.
You can't do that everywhere across the whole country.
It's the same problem as self driving cars - unless everything is fully automated, human beings have a nasty habit of accidently creating serious issues..
Driverless cars are only 5 years away. And will be for many years to come.
There is a further reason why I am sceptical of a house price crash. Build costs. These are going upwards dramatically. I am generalising and there is a lot of regional variation, but for houses, these are around £1.5k/sqm and flats around £2k/sqm. The reality is that many houses (and flats in particular) are being sold on the resale market at or below the build cost. And this, at a point where there is an undersupply of housing leading to strong demand. I am consequently of the view that investing in property is a good hedge against inflation; the price of housing cannot deviate far from build costs.
I approve of this because as others have pointed out 'Council tax is 8% of the gross income of the poorest 10% and 1% of the gross income of the wealthiest 10%.'
Ministers mull council tax rise to plug social care black hole
Boris Johnson has said that he is “acutely conscious” of the precarious finances of local authorities amid calls to allow them to increase council tax to pay for social care.
The prime minister said the government would ensure local authorities can cover the increasing costs of social care as he acknowledged that their finances have been “depleted” during the pandemic.
Local authorities have warned that they need an extra £2.6 billion a year merely to sustain present levels of social care and have said that in the absence of central government funding council tax will have to increase by 9 per cent next year to help plug the gap.
Ministers are considering proposals to allow councils to increase the social care element of council tax, which is 3 per cent at present, without the need for a local referendum.
Johnson joking about the possible pig cull on yesterday's Marr was a mistake
Remember that the pig chopping industry is lying for politically motivated reasons. There is no problem and besides which it is an absolute non-issue.
Until we get a simultaneous shortage of piggy woo on the shelves and there has been a messy and graphic cull on farms. Which is increasingly likely. Then it will be an issue. And the Muppet Show won't be able to try and blame the industry.
Why? If pigs can't go to an abattoir because the abattoir doesn't have enough staff whose fault is it.
Granted the people really responsible probably retired 5 to 10 years ago but it's the responsibility of a company to ensure they have the staff required to do the job required.
Curiously does anyone know where the actual issues are? Are they nationwide or only in certain parts of the country?
This FT article spells it out - the old stereotype about Eastern European workers living 3 to a room, doing shift work, then going home rich after a couple of years was not only true, it’s what our economy evolved to rely upon.
“ It’s hard to see how you can manage such a long and variable job if you have to take care of yourself ahead of time or have extra-work responsibilities. Even if you can, there are less demanding jobs with stable shifts that pay similar wages. However, certain groups of migrant workers who came without dependents and lived in communal quarters were able to manage food factory jobs. Nick Allen, chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, says that’s why jobs have developed this way. “To be honest, labor patterns have developed around a non-British workforce. Their main reason is to stay for three years and make a lot of money to go home.”
The location of his workshops also changed from small slaughterhouses spread across the country to large slaughterhouse groups in rural areas (because it’s easier to get animals there). “The whole structure of the industry has changed over the decades,” Allen says. “It ended up with a certain pattern and probably needs to change.”
Allen says salaries for new hires have already risen. “There are super entry jobs advertised for £22,000 now, and two years ago they would have been £18,000.” He’s talking to his members about changing work patterns, but warns that it won’t be easy. Eamon O’Hearn, the state officer of the GMB union, says employers in this sector have “some sympathy” because they are low-margin, large businesses that are constantly under pressure from powerful supermarkets. Meat in the UK is the cheapest in Western Europe. “
What's struck me about ex-HGV drivers being interviewed is that it's not the money it's the working conditions.
If you have a horrible job you'll tend to want to leave it regardless of how much they offer you.
Possibly but the solution is the same.
If there's a labour shortage then employers should have a competitive interest in improving conditions because improved conditions will lower turnover. So the market should provide an incentive to fix that too - if recruitment is difficult and training is expensive (and necessary) then staff turnover becomes a harm to business.
If employers can get away with not giving a shit if their staff have poor conditions and pay because they'll just say "next" and replace them with someone else at no real cost then they've no incentive to fix either conditions or pay.
Without considering that some jobs are always going to be difficult conditions but if the pay is high enough people will gladly put up with that for the return. A classic example I believe is working on the North Sea, of which I believe we have a few people on this very site who've spoken highly of their time doing that despite the self-professed shitty conditions because they were so well renumerated.
A high wage economy, says Boris. So nurses are given a 3% pay rise for working through Covid with inadequate PPE and then 1% is taken back in national insurance, and the rest in higher petrol prices and electricity costs, leaving most of them poorer that before. You could say the same for lots of people, not to mention the Ponzi scheme of student loans which will burden most high achieving school leavers as soon as they graduate. We need lower taxes, so that people retain a decent proportion of what they earn.
And nurses, like everybody else need to increase their productivity so they can be paid higher wages.
In practical terms, what does that mean? Is a single staff nurse looking after a ward of 30 patients more productive? Or one who has enough time with each patient that they don't catch a hospital acquired infection, that their vital signs are monitored and acted on, and the patient leaves the hospital alive and expeditiously?
It means using fewer inputs to get the same output. So a staff nurse looking after 30 patients would be more productive than one looking after 29, provided she gives them the same quality of care. Of course it's difficult to measure in the service sector. And still more difficult to improve. But it is the key to higher pay.
Productivity increases in the service sector, which is by far the biggest bit of the economy, are inherently limited by the nature of those services. People value the time and personal input of much of these, whether healthcare, dining out or getting a beauty treatment.
Stagnant productivity is a feature of a post industrial economy. Demand may have pushed up HGV wages, but it hasn't made them more productive. Some individuals have benefited, but as an economy there has been no gain.
Eventually what we might see in the HGV sector is automated driving, which will be a spectacular increase in labour productivity.
We already have it - it's called railways. Thirty lorries in one train.
(runs for cover)
But the problem with automated lorries is the same as it is for trains: the last mile. It's fine saying you can drive along the motorways, or even to the depots, but somewhat pointless if you need drivers for the rest of it.
I've been bearish on automated driving for years. There hasn't been much progress to make me change my mind. If anything, the lack of progress cements it: it's an incredibly tricky problem, as Tesla, Waymo and others are finding out to their cost.
Automation works on some urban railways *because* you take out some of the unpredictability and risk that would otherwise have to be taken into account by a human driver. That's why it's feasible on the jubilee line extension, DLR or Crossrail (central section) as you separate the platform-train interface, and automate everything else.
You can't do that everywhere across the whole country.
Yep - although I was actually referring to the fact that each wagon doesn't have a driver - not that the whole train doesn't have one.
Incidentally, I don't think we have a single 'uncrewed' train in the UK. The ATO tube lines still have drivers, and the DLR has train captains (or whatever they're called this week). This is because the problem is interaction with the public, and particularly the doors. The necessity to have a staff member on the train reduces much of the savings of being driverless - e.g. a DLR train captain earns £42k. A tube driver £56k. Not a massive saving...
Totally unstaffed trains are much easier to implement on brand-new networks, with no links to existing networks. Or ones with no passengers,
Strictly speaking, DLR trains don't always. They do have a guy who comes on and checks oysters and *occasionally* takes the controls, particularly during rush hour, but a lot of the time the train just does its own thing.
I'm back in (oh lanky lanky) Lancashire and already the contrasts between sanity in Scotland and lunacy down here is stark. Whilst I successfully refuelled the car for the trip home later it was stark the issues down here. Asda was open on one island only with a huge queue (late Sunday afternoon). A shell station had premium only. A Texaco station was open but had thought charging motorway prices was appropriate. 4th one I went past was open and quiet so went there.
And this is good compared to dahn sarf? Crazy.
After Brexit, the army will be called in so that people in the south of England can still get fuel?
Nah, never going to happen, mate! Just more Project Fear.
The petrol shortages have been brought about by Project Fire in the Theatre. We are pretty much back to filling up normally everywhere except the SE - without a single tanker load being delivered by the Army.
The petrol shortage was made infinitely worse by Project Fire in the Theatre but not because of it. You seem to be one of those who puts your fingers in his ears and just goes lalala in response to the evidence eg this morning on Radio 4 they were reporting deliveries at 50% of normal to certain SE petrol stations. At least Philip accepts this as a transition problem. But to deny there is an issue on deliveries of petrol and food is just bonkers. Fortunately we haven't had the mad panic buying on food so the effect has been minimal and seems to have disappeared now, I assume because supermarkets have adapted. I assume you don't think this existed either nor the abattoir issue.
You could argue it is something we have to tolerate as the economy adapts but to pretend it doesn't exist at all is just bizarre.
Your post yesterday telling us all in the SE to get on the tubes, trains and buses that don't actually exist (unless you want to go to London in which case there are oodles, but guess what, that doesn't get you to Sainsbury's) is just typical.
I have never denied there have been supply chain issues. We have over years moved to a system where transport and distribution are now central to the way we buy goods - accelerated by the Covid pandemic. And how many HGV drivers have become drivers for Amazon or others because, frankly, they get a better quality of life for often better money (certainly per hour, for those who have to work four nights a week away from home)?
But the SE had a specific and limited problem that got out of all proportion until it was a full blown panic. That became a problem for everybody else too. People who do NOT have the option of going anywhere on the tube, or the railway, and maybe twice a week on a bus. People for whom fuel is the ONLY option to get to Sainsbury's.
And again property being used as an investment instead of somewhere to live.
I'm really beginning to think that we need a tremendous property crash in this country and who cares if it leads to negative equity? If you're not planning on moving and are keeping up with your repayments then negative equity is just a figure.
Times change.
Let’s say you are offered a great career opportunity the other side of the country. Can’t move because of negative equity? That’s bad luck for you.
Indeed that's a shame. However those looking to move while having negative equity will benefit from reduced house prices too so swings and roundabouts.
But can't live where you already are because of insane house prices meaning you're essentially in negative equity without moving? That's even worse and a bigger evil.
We'll get meaningful mortgage rate increases following the inflationary cycle that is in part fuelled by Johnson's shortage-driven "transition to a high wage economy"
But don't forget the increase in house-to-income ratios preceded the fall in interest rates, it didn't follow it.
So unless the underlying supply and demand issues are fixed, the ratios will remain crazy even when interest rates rise again.
Exactly. It's a multiplication. We're moving from a high house price to income ratio times a modest interest payment to the same times a much higher interest payment. Those mortgages will be unaffordable, even if inflation has the beneficial effect of reducing house prices in real terms.
Because mortgage rates have been so low the increase in monthly payments will oversized. Average mortgage payment rates at the moment I think are 2% or so. If they go up to 5%, which is likely, monthly payments will double.
It will be brutal.
It’s why I fixed for 7 years at 1.49% earlier this year
There is a further reason why I am sceptical of a house price crash. Build costs. These are going upwards dramatically. I am generalising and there is a lot of regional variation, but for houses, these are around £1.5k/sqm and flats around £2k/sqm. The reality is that many houses (and flats in particular) are being sold on the resale market at or below the build cost. And this, at a point where there is an undersupply of housing leading to strong demand. I am consequently of the view that investing in property is a good hedge against inflation; the price of housing cannot deviate far from build costs.
I'd be curious to see a citation on that. Especially is that build costs alone or does that include land cost?
Land cost isn't a build cost and should be viewed separately. The only reason land is expensive is our planning system.
Johnson joking about the possible pig cull on yesterday's Marr was a mistake
Remember that the pig chopping industry is lying for politically motivated reasons. There is no problem and besides which it is an absolute non-issue.
Until we get a simultaneous shortage of piggy woo on the shelves and there has been a messy and graphic cull on farms. Which is increasingly likely. Then it will be an issue. And the Muppet Show won't be able to try and blame the industry.
Why? If pigs can't go to an abattoir because the abattoir doesn't have enough staff whose fault is it.
Granted the people really responsible probably retired 5 to 10 years ago but it's the responsibility of a company to ensure they have the staff required to do the job required.
Curiously does anyone know where the actual issues are? Are they nationwide or only in certain parts of the country?
This FT article spells it out - the old stereotype about Eastern European workers living 3 to a room, doing shift work, then going home rich after a couple of years was not only true, it’s what our economy evolved to rely upon.
“ It’s hard to see how you can manage such a long and variable job if you have to take care of yourself ahead of time or have extra-work responsibilities. Even if you can, there are less demanding jobs with stable shifts that pay similar wages. However, certain groups of migrant workers who came without dependents and lived in communal quarters were able to manage food factory jobs. Nick Allen, chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, says that’s why jobs have developed this way. “To be honest, labor patterns have developed around a non-British workforce. Their main reason is to stay for three years and make a lot of money to go home.”
The location of his workshops also changed from small slaughterhouses spread across the country to large slaughterhouse groups in rural areas (because it’s easier to get animals there). “The whole structure of the industry has changed over the decades,” Allen says. “It ended up with a certain pattern and probably needs to change.”
Allen says salaries for new hires have already risen. “There are super entry jobs advertised for £22,000 now, and two years ago they would have been £18,000.” He’s talking to his members about changing work patterns, but warns that it won’t be easy. Eamon O’Hearn, the state officer of the GMB union, says employers in this sector have “some sympathy” because they are low-margin, large businesses that are constantly under pressure from powerful supermarkets. Meat in the UK is the cheapest in Western Europe. “
What's struck me about ex-HGV drivers being interviewed is that it's not the money it's the working conditions.
If you have a horrible job you'll tend to want to leave it regardless of how much they offer you.
Possibly but the solution is the same.
If there's a labour shortage then employers should have a competitive interest in improving conditions because improved conditions will lower turnover. So the market should provide an incentive to fix that too - if recruitment is difficult and training is expensive (and necessary) then staff turnover becomes a harm to business.
If employers can get away with not giving a shit if their staff have poor conditions and pay because they'll just say "next" and replace them with someone else at no real cost then they've no incentive to fix either conditions or pay.
Without considering that some jobs are always going to be difficult conditions but if the pay is high enough people will gladly put up with that for the return. A classic example I believe is working on the North Sea, of which I believe we have a few people on this very site who've spoken highly of their time doing that despite the self-professed shitty conditions because they were so well renumerated.
The sh1tty conditions on the North Sea are because of the environment of working there, rather than the attitude of the employers. The employers have to offer good conditions because the job itself is crap.
What we are seeing on the mainland, is sh1tty attitudes from employers.
Mr. Dickson, sad to hear that he was likely murdered over a cartoon.
I'm sure 'Je suis Charlie' will be on a few politicians' lips, until the headlines fade and we go back to craven appeasement (cf Batley Grammar School).
There is a lot of soul searching going on in Sweden today. The state and especially the art community treated Vilks like shit. He was effectively ostracised.
Yes but will something be done or will it be, as Morris said, back to normal?
Johnson joking about the possible pig cull on yesterday's Marr was a mistake
Remember that the pig chopping industry is lying for politically motivated reasons. There is no problem and besides which it is an absolute non-issue.
Until we get a simultaneous shortage of piggy woo on the shelves and there has been a messy and graphic cull on farms. Which is increasingly likely. Then it will be an issue. And the Muppet Show won't be able to try and blame the industry.
Why? If pigs can't go to an abattoir because the abattoir doesn't have enough staff whose fault is it.
Granted the people really responsible probably retired 5 to 10 years ago but it's the responsibility of a company to ensure they have the staff required to do the job required.
Curiously does anyone know where the actual issues are? Are they nationwide or only in certain parts of the country?
This FT article spells it out - the old stereotype about Eastern European workers living 3 to a room, doing shift work, then going home rich after a couple of years was not only true, it’s what our economy evolved to rely upon.
“ It’s hard to see how you can manage such a long and variable job if you have to take care of yourself ahead of time or have extra-work responsibilities. Even if you can, there are less demanding jobs with stable shifts that pay similar wages. However, certain groups of migrant workers who came without dependents and lived in communal quarters were able to manage food factory jobs. Nick Allen, chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, says that’s why jobs have developed this way. “To be honest, labor patterns have developed around a non-British workforce. Their main reason is to stay for three years and make a lot of money to go home.”
The location of his workshops also changed from small slaughterhouses spread across the country to large slaughterhouse groups in rural areas (because it’s easier to get animals there). “The whole structure of the industry has changed over the decades,” Allen says. “It ended up with a certain pattern and probably needs to change.”
Allen says salaries for new hires have already risen. “There are super entry jobs advertised for £22,000 now, and two years ago they would have been £18,000.” He’s talking to his members about changing work patterns, but warns that it won’t be easy. Eamon O’Hearn, the state officer of the GMB union, says employers in this sector have “some sympathy” because they are low-margin, large businesses that are constantly under pressure from powerful supermarkets. Meat in the UK is the cheapest in Western Europe. “
What's struck me about ex-HGV drivers being interviewed is that it's not the money it's the working conditions.
If you have a horrible job you'll tend to want to leave it regardless of how much they offer you.
Possibly but the solution is the same.
If there's a labour shortage then employers should have a competitive interest in improving conditions because improved conditions will lower turnover. So the market should provide an incentive to fix that too - if recruitment is difficult and training is expensive (and necessary) then staff turnover becomes a harm to business.
If employers can get away with not giving a shit if their staff have poor conditions and pay because they'll just say "next" and replace them with someone else at no real cost then they've no incentive to fix either conditions or pay.
Without considering that some jobs are always going to be difficult conditions but if the pay is high enough people will gladly put up with that for the return. A classic example I believe is working on the North Sea, of which I believe we have a few people on this very site who've spoken highly of their time doing that despite the self-professed shitty conditions because they were so well renumerated.
The sh1tty conditions on the North Sea are because of the environment of working there, rather than the attitude of the employers. The employers have to offer good conditions because the job itself is crap.
What we are seeing on the mainland, is sh1tty attitudes from employers.
Yes indeed that was my point.
If conditions can be improved by being a better employer, then try that. If they can't, try compensation.
We all misinterpret stats and facts, some more than others (you know who you are) so listening to a bit on R4 this morning was interesting. Sadly I missed the beginning. An academic was giving some examples re the pandemic and came out with the following:
'The average age of a person dying with covid was slightly greater than the average life expectancy'. As per previous discussions on here this 'fact' stops being so once it is used inappropriately and boy did some use it inappropriately by jumping to the wrong obvious conclusions (something I think I may well have done easily in different circumstances). The reality in fact was a lot more people were dying, but the age spread was similar giving this misleading fact. In fact on average a person dying from covid lost 10 years of their life.
Johnson joking about the possible pig cull on yesterday's Marr was a mistake
Remember that the pig chopping industry is lying for politically motivated reasons. There is no problem and besides which it is an absolute non-issue.
Until we get a simultaneous shortage of piggy woo on the shelves and there has been a messy and graphic cull on farms. Which is increasingly likely. Then it will be an issue. And the Muppet Show won't be able to try and blame the industry.
Why? If pigs can't go to an abattoir because the abattoir doesn't have enough staff whose fault is it.
Granted the people really responsible probably retired 5 to 10 years ago but it's the responsibility of a company to ensure they have the staff required to do the job required.
Curiously does anyone know where the actual issues are? Are they nationwide or only in certain parts of the country?
This FT article spells it out - the old stereotype about Eastern European workers living 3 to a room, doing shift work, then going home rich after a couple of years was not only true, it’s what our economy evolved to rely upon.
“ It’s hard to see how you can manage such a long and variable job if you have to take care of yourself ahead of time or have extra-work responsibilities. Even if you can, there are less demanding jobs with stable shifts that pay similar wages. However, certain groups of migrant workers who came without dependents and lived in communal quarters were able to manage food factory jobs. Nick Allen, chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, says that’s why jobs have developed this way. “To be honest, labor patterns have developed around a non-British workforce. Their main reason is to stay for three years and make a lot of money to go home.”
The location of his workshops also changed from small slaughterhouses spread across the country to large slaughterhouse groups in rural areas (because it’s easier to get animals there). “The whole structure of the industry has changed over the decades,” Allen says. “It ended up with a certain pattern and probably needs to change.”
Allen says salaries for new hires have already risen. “There are super entry jobs advertised for £22,000 now, and two years ago they would have been £18,000.” He’s talking to his members about changing work patterns, but warns that it won’t be easy. Eamon O’Hearn, the state officer of the GMB union, says employers in this sector have “some sympathy” because they are low-margin, large businesses that are constantly under pressure from powerful supermarkets. Meat in the UK is the cheapest in Western Europe. “
What's struck me about ex-HGV drivers being interviewed is that it's not the money it's the working conditions.
If you have a horrible job you'll tend to want to leave it regardless of how much they offer you.
Possibly but the solution is the same.
If there's a labour shortage then employers should have a competitive interest in improving conditions because improved conditions will lower turnover. So the market should provide an incentive to fix that too - if recruitment is difficult and training is expensive (and necessary) then staff turnover becomes a harm to business.
If employers can get away with not giving a shit if their staff have poor conditions and pay because they'll just say "next" and replace them with someone else at no real cost then they've no incentive to fix either conditions or pay.
Without considering that some jobs are always going to be difficult conditions but if the pay is high enough people will gladly put up with that for the return. A classic example I believe is working on the North Sea, of which I believe we have a few people on this very site who've spoken highly of their time doing that despite the self-professed shitty conditions because they were so well renumerated.
True, but you got respect for doing that, and long rest periods ashore between shifts. And, also, the pay was absolutely fantastic.
I think the trouble with HGV driving is that it's a relentless grind, with very poor facilities, and very little respect.
I'm back in (oh lanky lanky) Lancashire and already the contrasts between sanity in Scotland and lunacy down here is stark. Whilst I successfully refuelled the car for the trip home later it was stark the issues down here. Asda was open on one island only with a huge queue (late Sunday afternoon). A shell station had premium only. A Texaco station was open but had thought charging motorway prices was appropriate. 4th one I went past was open and quiet so went there.
And this is good compared to dahn sarf? Crazy.
After Brexit, the army will be called in so that people in the south of England can still get fuel?
Nah, never going to happen, mate! Just more Project Fear.
The petrol shortages have been brought about by Project Fire in the Theatre. We are pretty much back to filling up normally everywhere except the SE - without a single tanker load being delivered by the Army.
The petrol shortage was made infinitely worse by Project Fire in the Theatre but not because of it. You seem to be one of those who puts your fingers in his ears and just goes lalala in response to the evidence eg this morning on Radio 4 they were reporting deliveries at 50% of normal to certain SE petrol stations. At least Philip accepts this as a transition problem. But to deny there is an issue on deliveries of petrol and food is just bonkers. Fortunately we haven't had the mad panic buying on food so the effect has been minimal and seems to have disappeared now, I assume because supermarkets have adapted. I assume you don't think this existed either nor the abattoir issue.
You could argue it is something we have to tolerate as the economy adapts but to pretend it doesn't exist at all is just bizarre.
Your post yesterday telling us all in the SE to get on the tubes, trains and buses that don't actually exist (unless you want to go to London in which case there are oodles, but guess what, that doesn't get you to Sainsbury's) is just typical.
I have never denied there have been supply chain issues. We have over years moved to a system where transport and distribution are now central to the way we buy goods - accelerated by the Covid pandemic. And how many HGV drivers have become drivers for Amazon or others because, frankly, they get a better quality of life for often better money (certainly per hour, for those who have to work four nights a week away from home)?
But the SE had a specific and limited problem that got out of all proportion until it was a full blown panic. That became a problem for everybody else too. People who do NOT have the option of going anywhere on the tube, or the railway, and maybe twice a week on a bus. People for whom fuel is the ONLY option to get to Sainsbury's.
If only Waitrose had filling stations.
Don't know why they don't either - they'd get a constant steam of BMWs and Range Rovers happily paying 20% more than they would for ASDA fuel.
This is mildly interesting about the plight of women in America in 1971:
In 1971 a woman could not: 1. Get a Credit Card in her own name – it wasn’t until 1974 that a law forced credit card companies to issue cards to women without their husband’s signature. 2. Be guaranteed that they wouldn’t be unceremoniously fired for the offense of getting pregnant – that changed with the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978. 3. Serve on a jury - It varied by state (Utah deemed women fit for jury duty way back in 1879), but the main reason women were kept out of jury pools was that they were considered the center of the home, which was their primary responsibility as caregivers. They were also thought to be too fragile to hear the grisly details of crimes and too sympathetic by nature to be able to remain objective about those accused of offenses. In 1961, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld a Florida law that exempted women from serving on juries. It wasn't until 1973 that women could serve on juries in all 50 states. 4. Fight on the front lines – admitted into military academies in 1976 it wasn’t until 2013 that the military ban on women in combat was lifted. Prior to 1973 women were only allowed in the military as nurses or support staff. 5. Get an Ivy League education - Yale and Princeton didn't accept female students until 1969. Harvard didn't admit women until 1977 (when it merged with the all-female Radcliffe College). Brown (which merged with women's college Pembroke), Dartmouth and Columbia did not offer admission to women until 1971, 1972 and 1981, respectively. Other case-specific instances allowed some women to take certain classes at Ivy League institutions (such as Barnard women taking classes at Columbia), but by and large, women in the '60s who harbored Ivy League dreams had to put them on hold. 6. Take legal action against workplace sexual harassment. Indeed the first time a court recognized office sexual harassment as grounds for any legal action was in 1977. 7. Decide not to have sex if their husband wanted to – spousal rape wasn’t criminalized in all 50 states until 1993. Read that again...1993. 8. Obtain health insurance at the same monetary rate as a man. Sex discrimination wasn’t outlawed in health insurance until 2010 and today many, including sitting elected officials at the Federal level, feel women don’t mind paying a little more. Again, that date was 2010. 9. Also, take the birth control pill: The pill was illegal in some states and could be prescribed only to married women for purposes of family planning, and not all pharmacies stocked it. It wasn't until several years later that birth control was approved for use by all women, regardless of marital status.
Personally I'd regard 3 as a blessing, 5 as only partly true and 8 as not discrimination if justified by higher claims, but anyway there are some interesting facts in there
On topic (ish) Keir Starmer is an uninspiring product but that won't matter if the economy stagflates - Labour could simply win by default anyway.
Remember 1974.
Something on which we agree, Casino. I'm hoping it doesn't happen.
Me neither, I really don't want a Labour administration. But, flat growth, high inflation, increase in interest rates, sky high energy prices, and social unrest?
That could all happen in the next 3 years. And it could throw out Governments in Western countries around the world.
I am not betting on a Tory majority at current prices.
I think you are spot on and while the media concentrate on UK problems this report is actually quite frightening and I not only would not bet on a conservative majority, nor would I bet on any government surviving the tsaumi about to hit the globe, indeed is already hitting the globe
This should be compulsory reading for everyone, not least the media and politicians
I’m not sure it really got started in Scotland. Yes, a few Scots saw the idiocy in SE England on the news and followed suit, but it was purely a media effect, not a concrete supply/demand issue.
@Charles Just wanted to say how much I have enjoyed your contribution this morning. Shame we don't have a like for a collection of posts as opposed to the single punchy post.
We all misinterpret stats and facts, some more than others (you know who you are) so listening to a bit on R4 this morning was interesting. Sadly I missed the beginning. An academic was giving some examples re the pandemic and came out with the following:
'The average age of a person dying with covid was slightly greater than the average life expectancy'. As per previous discussions on here this 'fact' stops being so once it is used inappropriately and boy did some use it inappropriately by jumping to the wrong obvious conclusions (something I think I may well have done easily in different circumstances). The reality in fact was a lot more people were dying, but the age spread was similar giving this misleading fact. In fact on average a person dying from covid lost 10 years of their life.
I'm still very sceptical about the 10 year stat - it would imply that age, and only age, was the factor determining risk of death from COVID.
But, yes, not enough was done to emphasise that someone who is 80 has, on average, around 10 years left to live.
Mind you it isn't just a Met issue, The Sunday Times flagged up the issues Police Scotland have, utterly jaw dropping.
Presumably that’s referring to internal disciplinary issues, rather than criminal convictions?
So, an unwanted asking of a colleague on a date, which gets reported, constitutes an offence of ‘sexual misconduct’?
Behind the raw data, which tells you next to nothing about the actual details of the offences, are individuals like the five Scotland Yard officers who joked about getting victims of crime in the back of a police van and sexually assaulting them – including demanding oral sex.
The group, who were secretly recorded, exchanged comments such as ‘Bring on our next duty in the van. Victim. Hot. I get to choose.’ In other exchanges, they chatted about one of them having sex with a stripper who had been arrested a few months earlier. One victim of crime was called a ‘hot slag’.
But, after being found guilty by a disciplinary panel of misconduct and gross misconduct less than a year ago, they have been allowed to resume normal duties.
I repeat – the men in question are still serving police officers.
There is a further reason why I am sceptical of a house price crash. Build costs. These are going upwards dramatically. I am generalising and there is a lot of regional variation, but for houses, these are around £1.5k/sqm and flats around £2k/sqm. The reality is that many houses (and flats in particular) are being sold on the resale market at or below the build cost. And this, at a point where there is an undersupply of housing leading to strong demand. I am consequently of the view that investing in property is a good hedge against inflation; the price of housing cannot deviate far from build costs.
I'd be curious to see a citation on that. Especially is that build costs alone or does that include land cost?
Land cost isn't a build cost and should be viewed separately. The only reason land is expensive is our planning system.
Sure. The actual build cost data is held by RICS and you have to pay $$$ to access it, but you can get approximations for free on various parts of the internet. For instance, you can calculate the rebuilding cost of any house using this calculator: I just did an example; a 3 bed 100sqm terraced house in the midlands would cost £162,000 to rebuild, which means £1,620 per sqm. My understanding is that the value of land is not included in this calculation.
I'm back in (oh lanky lanky) Lancashire and already the contrasts between sanity in Scotland and lunacy down here is stark. Whilst I successfully refuelled the car for the trip home later it was stark the issues down here. Asda was open on one island only with a huge queue (late Sunday afternoon). A shell station had premium only. A Texaco station was open but had thought charging motorway prices was appropriate. 4th one I went past was open and quiet so went there.
And this is good compared to dahn sarf? Crazy.
After Brexit, the army will be called in so that people in the south of England can still get fuel?
Nah, never going to happen, mate! Just more Project Fear.
The petrol shortages have been brought about by Project Fire in the Theatre. We are pretty much back to filling up normally everywhere except the SE - without a single tanker load being delivered by the Army.
The petrol shortage was made infinitely worse by Project Fire in the Theatre but not because of it. You seem to be one of those who puts your fingers in his ears and just goes lalala in response to the evidence eg this morning on Radio 4 they were reporting deliveries at 50% of normal to certain SE petrol stations. At least Philip accepts this as a transition problem. But to deny there is an issue on deliveries of petrol and food is just bonkers. Fortunately we haven't had the mad panic buying on food so the effect has been minimal and seems to have disappeared now, I assume because supermarkets have adapted. I assume you don't think this existed either nor the abattoir issue.
You could argue it is something we have to tolerate as the economy adapts but to pretend it doesn't exist at all is just bizarre.
Your post yesterday telling us all in the SE to get on the tubes, trains and buses that don't actually exist (unless you want to go to London in which case there are oodles, but guess what, that doesn't get you to Sainsbury's) is just typical.
I have never denied there have been supply chain issues. We have over years moved to a system where transport and distribution are now central to the way we buy goods - accelerated by the Covid pandemic. And how many HGV drivers have become drivers for Amazon or others because, frankly, they get a better quality of life for often better money (certainly per hour, for those who have to work four nights a week away from home)?
But the SE had a specific and limited problem that got out of all proportion until it was a full blown panic. That became a problem for everybody else too. People who do NOT have the option of going anywhere on the tube, or the railway, and maybe twice a week on a bus. People for whom fuel is the ONLY option to get to Sainsbury's.
If only Waitrose had filling stations.
Don't know why they don't either - they'd get a constant steam of BMWs and Range Rovers happily paying 20% more than they would for ASDA fuel.
The profits would be enormous.
Waitrose do have filling stations, there's one at the Lincoln superstore for starters.
Mind you it isn't just a Met issue, The Sunday Times flagged up the issues Police Scotland have, utterly jaw dropping.
Not just sexual misconduct. This officer threatened to fit a member of the public up and was just given a warning, it’s gross misconduct. How I it not a sackable offence.
We all misinterpret stats and facts, some more than others (you know who you are) so listening to a bit on R4 this morning was interesting. Sadly I missed the beginning. An academic was giving some examples re the pandemic and came out with the following:
'The average age of a person dying with covid was slightly greater than the average life expectancy'. As per previous discussions on here this 'fact' stops being so once it is used inappropriately and boy did some use it inappropriately by jumping to the wrong obvious conclusions (something I think I may well have done easily in different circumstances). The reality in fact was a lot more people were dying, but the age spread was similar giving this misleading fact. In fact on average a person dying from covid lost 10 years of their life.
I'm still very sceptical about the 10 year stat - it would imply that age, and only age, was the factor determining risk of death from COVID.
But, yes, not enough was done to emphasise that someone who is 80 has, on average, around 10 years left to live.
Though that's equally a failure of averaging because not all 80 year olds were equally vulnerable to the virus.
80 year olds in hospital and care homes were considerably more likely to die - and they do not have a 10 year life expectancy. An 80 year old in a care home, and an 80 year old in their own home, do not have the same life expectancy and the virus cherrypicked those who were most vulnerable to dying soon anyway.
A fact little spoken about is that quite probably most residents of a care home in January 2020 when we first heard of Covid would be dead by now even if Covid hadn't hit our shores.
Frost and JRM above Rishi indicates annoyance at tax rises and a desire to suspend NI protocol
Interesting
JRM ahead of Rishi is quite surprising but also shows how popular he is amongst the grassroots. Tory association dinners where the Mogg is guest speaker sell out very quickly.
Looks like Truss enjoying a bit of a honeymoon at the Foreign Office too
Johnson joking about the possible pig cull on yesterday's Marr was a mistake
He didn’t joke about it
Johnson certainly did joke about the prospective pig cull on the Marr show:
Marr asked asked Johnson "...but if it does happen 'It's my fault' you'll say?"
Johnson deflected with a joke: "I'm not saying it's your fault Andrew."
Yes, it's very lame but it's clearly a joke.
The non-jokey answer was either "Yes, the buck stops with me" or possibly "No, the abattoirs have had since 2016 to prepare for this, it's not the government's responsibility to run their businesses for them."
I'm back in (oh lanky lanky) Lancashire and already the contrasts between sanity in Scotland and lunacy down here is stark. Whilst I successfully refuelled the car for the trip home later it was stark the issues down here. Asda was open on one island only with a huge queue (late Sunday afternoon). A shell station had premium only. A Texaco station was open but had thought charging motorway prices was appropriate. 4th one I went past was open and quiet so went there.
And this is good compared to dahn sarf? Crazy.
After Brexit, the army will be called in so that people in the south of England can still get fuel?
Nah, never going to happen, mate! Just more Project Fear.
The petrol shortages have been brought about by Project Fire in the Theatre. We are pretty much back to filling up normally everywhere except the SE - without a single tanker load being delivered by the Army.
The petrol shortage was made infinitely worse by Project Fire in the Theatre but not because of it. You seem to be one of those who puts your fingers in his ears and just goes lalala in response to the evidence eg this morning on Radio 4 they were reporting deliveries at 50% of normal to certain SE petrol stations. At least Philip accepts this as a transition problem. But to deny there is an issue on deliveries of petrol and food is just bonkers. Fortunately we haven't had the mad panic buying on food so the effect has been minimal and seems to have disappeared now, I assume because supermarkets have adapted. I assume you don't think this existed either nor the abattoir issue.
You could argue it is something we have to tolerate as the economy adapts but to pretend it doesn't exist at all is just bizarre.
Your post yesterday telling us all in the SE to get on the tubes, trains and buses that don't actually exist (unless you want to go to London in which case there are oodles, but guess what, that doesn't get you to Sainsbury's) is just typical.
I have never denied there have been supply chain issues. We have over years moved to a system where transport and distribution are now central to the way we buy goods - accelerated by the Covid pandemic. And how many HGV drivers have become drivers for Amazon or others because, frankly, they get a better quality of life for often better money (certainly per hour, for those who have to work four nights a week away from home)?
But the SE had a specific and limited problem that got out of all proportion until it was a full blown panic. That became a problem for everybody else too. People who do NOT have the option of going anywhere on the tube, or the railway, and maybe twice a week on a bus. People for whom fuel is the ONLY option to get to Sainsbury's.
If only Waitrose had filling stations.
Don't know why they don't either - they'd get a constant steam of BMWs and Range Rovers happily paying 20% more than they would for ASDA fuel.
The profits would be enormous.
The massive Waitrose / JL superstore in Salisbury has a petrol station attached. At least, it did the last time I was there three years ago.
Johnson joking about the possible pig cull on yesterday's Marr was a mistake
He didn’t joke about it
Johnson certainly did joke about the prospective pig cull on the Marr show:
Marr asked asked Johnson "...but if it does happen 'It's my fault' you'll say?"
Johnson deflected with a joke: "I'm not saying it's your fault Andrew."
Yes, it's very lame but it's clearly a joke.
The non-jokey answer was either "Yes, the buck stops with me" or possibly "No, the abattoirs have had since 2016 to prepare for this, it's not the government's responsibility to run their businesses for them."
That's not a joke, its a classic politicians non-answer.
Johnson joking about the possible pig cull on yesterday's Marr was a mistake
Remember that the pig chopping industry is lying for politically motivated reasons. There is no problem and besides which it is an absolute non-issue.
Until we get a simultaneous shortage of piggy woo on the shelves and there has been a messy and graphic cull on farms. Which is increasingly likely. Then it will be an issue. And the Muppet Show won't be able to try and blame the industry.
Why? If pigs can't go to an abattoir because the abattoir doesn't have enough staff whose fault is it.
Granted the people really responsible probably retired 5 to 10 years ago but it's the responsibility of a company to ensure they have the staff required to do the job required.
Curiously does anyone know where the actual issues are? Are they nationwide or only in certain parts of the country?
This FT article spells it out - the old stereotype about Eastern European workers living 3 to a room, doing shift work, then going home rich after a couple of years was not only true, it’s what our economy evolved to rely upon.
“ It’s hard to see how you can manage such a long and variable job if you have to take care of yourself ahead of time or have extra-work responsibilities. Even if you can, there are less demanding jobs with stable shifts that pay similar wages. However, certain groups of migrant workers who came without dependents and lived in communal quarters were able to manage food factory jobs. Nick Allen, chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, says that’s why jobs have developed this way. “To be honest, labor patterns have developed around a non-British workforce. Their main reason is to stay for three years and make a lot of money to go home.”
The location of his workshops also changed from small slaughterhouses spread across the country to large slaughterhouse groups in rural areas (because it’s easier to get animals there). “The whole structure of the industry has changed over the decades,” Allen says. “It ended up with a certain pattern and probably needs to change.”
Allen says salaries for new hires have already risen. “There are super entry jobs advertised for £22,000 now, and two years ago they would have been £18,000.” He’s talking to his members about changing work patterns, but warns that it won’t be easy. Eamon O’Hearn, the state officer of the GMB union, says employers in this sector have “some sympathy” because they are low-margin, large businesses that are constantly under pressure from powerful supermarkets. Meat in the UK is the cheapest in Western Europe. “
What's struck me about ex-HGV drivers being interviewed is that it's not the money it's the working conditions.
If you have a horrible job you'll tend to want to leave it regardless of how much they offer you.
Possibly but the solution is the same.
If there's a labour shortage then employers should have a competitive interest in improving conditions because improved conditions will lower turnover. So the market should provide an incentive to fix that too - if recruitment is difficult and training is expensive (and necessary) then staff turnover becomes a harm to business.
If employers can get away with not giving a shit if their staff have poor conditions and pay because they'll just say "next" and replace them with someone else at no real cost then they've no incentive to fix either conditions or pay.
Without considering that some jobs are always going to be difficult conditions but if the pay is high enough people will gladly put up with that for the return. A classic example I believe is working on the North Sea, of which I believe we have a few people on this very site who've spoken highly of their time doing that despite the self-professed shitty conditions because they were so well renumerated.
The sh1tty conditions on the North Sea are because of the environment of working there, rather than the attitude of the employers. The employers have to offer good conditions because the job itself is crap.
What we are seeing on the mainland, is sh1tty attitudes from employers.
The problem is that it's not just the employers but also the customers of the employers.
Supermarkets see nothing wrong in requiring lorry drivers to wait 3 hours before unloading a delivery. And the employer almost encourages the supermarket to do it because their current contract says you are not paid while sat waiting to unload.
One quick fix would be to reduce the minimum wage slightly and insist that people are paid for all the time they are at work (including any breaks that are currently allowed to be unpaid)
Mr. Fishing, got to say I still think automated driving is like flying cars - something technically possible that won't be practical for almost anything.
You get slow burns though. Look at video calls. "Vidphones" were a staple of c20th Sci fi. Then there were 15 years when they were possible via Skype and facetime but nobody saw the point. Then lockdown and kaboom.
Same thing happened with faxes, actually. The technology was there since ww2, the legal profession had them from the 70s, but it took a postal strike in the 80s before they caught on.
Faxes and video calls don't immediately stop you paying for something else, though, except relatively cheap stamps. Automation saves wages. It'll catch on fine.
25 years ago, Acorn did a lot of work on Video-on-Demand technology. Set Top Boxes were needed, as PC graphics cards and processors were generally not powerful enough to decode the video streams.
Apparently there was a certain amount of negativity in the market, because few people saw the possibility that the Internet could handle the traffic from everyone, and the boxes were restricted to certain cable providers.
I could see the Internet having the bandwidth; what I never guessed was that phones would, within a decade, be able to stream videos at high quality. The rate the technology increased at was massive.
But it involved no fundamental new technology; only improvements on what was existing.
People are very bad at accepting the implications of exponential changes.
In this case, the exponential increase in computing power / £ was going to turn available radio bandwidth & video compression from expensive impossibilities to trivialities in single digit years.
You see similar "unpossible!" thinking around lots of exponential processes - the delayed response to the Covid pandemic is one obvious recent example. Unless you’ve had the kind of mathematical training that lets you trust a model of an exponential process, your gut feeling just doesn’t line up with reality & that leads to making bad decisions.
I’m not sure it really got started in Scotland. Yes, a few Scots saw the idiocy in SE England on the news and followed suit, but it was purely a media effect, not a concrete supply/demand issue.
@Charles Just wanted to say how much I have enjoyed your contribution this morning. Shame we don't have a like for a collection of posts as opposed to the single punchy post.
That's just lazy: you need to go into @Charles profile, find all his comments, and spread the love.
Aside from Tony Blair on one building, it looks so far like a list of foreign leaders. It is hard so far to see any immediate electoral consequences, unless it turns out later to include some of the richer Conservatives.
Who unashamedly pinned their colours to Blair recently?
Keir Starmer really is a dud. Extraordinarily poor judgement, timing and luck.
And it is becoming increasingly obvious that Anas Sarwar is cast from the same mould.
Mr. Fishing, got to say I still think automated driving is like flying cars - something technically possible that won't be practical for almost anything.
You get slow burns though. Look at video calls. "Vidphones" were a staple of c20th Sci fi. Then there were 15 years when they were possible via Skype and facetime but nobody saw the point. Then lockdown and kaboom.
Same thing happened with faxes, actually. The technology was there since ww2, the legal profession had them from the 70s, but it took a postal strike in the 80s before they caught on.
Faxes and video calls don't immediately stop you paying for something else, though, except relatively cheap stamps. Automation saves wages. It'll catch on fine.
25 years ago, Acorn did a lot of work on Video-on-Demand technology. Set Top Boxes were needed, as PC graphics cards and processors were generally not powerful enough to decode the video streams.
Apparently there was a certain amount of negativity in the market, because few people saw the possibility that the Internet could handle the traffic from everyone, and the boxes were restricted to certain cable providers.
I could see the Internet having the bandwidth; what I never guessed was that phones would, within a decade, be able to stream videos at high quality. The rate the technology increased at was massive.
But it involved no fundamental new technology; only improvements on what was existing.
People are very bad at accepting the implications of exponential changes.
In this case, the exponential increase in computing power / £ was going to turn available radio bandwidth & video compression from expensive impossibilities to trivialities in single digit years.
You see similar "unpossible!" thinking around lots of exponential processes - the delayed response to the Covid pandemic is one obvious recent example. Unless you’ve had the kind of mathematical training that lets you trust a model of an exponential process, your gut feeling just doesn’t line up with reality & that leads to making bad decisions.
I am overawed at the thought how rich you must be.
Johnson joking about the possible pig cull on yesterday's Marr was a mistake
Remember that the pig chopping industry is lying for politically motivated reasons. There is no problem and besides which it is an absolute non-issue.
Until we get a simultaneous shortage of piggy woo on the shelves and there has been a messy and graphic cull on farms. Which is increasingly likely. Then it will be an issue. And the Muppet Show won't be able to try and blame the industry.
Why? If pigs can't go to an abattoir because the abattoir doesn't have enough staff whose fault is it.
Granted the people really responsible probably retired 5 to 10 years ago but it's the responsibility of a company to ensure they have the staff required to do the job required.
Curiously does anyone know where the actual issues are? Are they nationwide or only in certain parts of the country?
This FT article spells it out - the old stereotype about Eastern European workers living 3 to a room, doing shift work, then going home rich after a couple of years was not only true, it’s what our economy evolved to rely upon.
“ It’s hard to see how you can manage such a long and variable job if you have to take care of yourself ahead of time or have extra-work responsibilities. Even if you can, there are less demanding jobs with stable shifts that pay similar wages. However, certain groups of migrant workers who came without dependents and lived in communal quarters were able to manage food factory jobs. Nick Allen, chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, says that’s why jobs have developed this way. “To be honest, labor patterns have developed around a non-British workforce. Their main reason is to stay for three years and make a lot of money to go home.”
The location of his workshops also changed from small slaughterhouses spread across the country to large slaughterhouse groups in rural areas (because it’s easier to get animals there). “The whole structure of the industry has changed over the decades,” Allen says. “It ended up with a certain pattern and probably needs to change.”
Allen says salaries for new hires have already risen. “There are super entry jobs advertised for £22,000 now, and two years ago they would have been £18,000.” He’s talking to his members about changing work patterns, but warns that it won’t be easy. Eamon O’Hearn, the state officer of the GMB union, says employers in this sector have “some sympathy” because they are low-margin, large businesses that are constantly under pressure from powerful supermarkets. Meat in the UK is the cheapest in Western Europe. “
What's struck me about ex-HGV drivers being interviewed is that it's not the money it's the working conditions.
If you have a horrible job you'll tend to want to leave it regardless of how much they offer you.
Possibly but the solution is the same.
If there's a labour shortage then employers should have a competitive interest in improving conditions because improved conditions will lower turnover. So the market should provide an incentive to fix that too - if recruitment is difficult and training is expensive (and necessary) then staff turnover becomes a harm to business.
If employers can get away with not giving a shit if their staff have poor conditions and pay because they'll just say "next" and replace them with someone else at no real cost then they've no incentive to fix either conditions or pay.
Without considering that some jobs are always going to be difficult conditions but if the pay is high enough people will gladly put up with that for the return. A classic example I believe is working on the North Sea, of which I believe we have a few people on this very site who've spoken highly of their time doing that despite the self-professed shitty conditions because they were so well renumerated.
The sh1tty conditions on the North Sea are because of the environment of working there, rather than the attitude of the employers. The employers have to offer good conditions because the job itself is crap.
What we are seeing on the mainland, is sh1tty attitudes from employers.
The problem is that it's not just the employers but also the customers of the employers.
Supermarkets see nothing wrong in requiring lorry drivers to wait 3 hours before unloading a delivery. And the employer almost encourages the supermarket to do it because their current contract says you are not paid while sat waiting to unload.
One quick fix would be to reduce the minimum wage slightly and insist that people are paid for all the time they are at work (including any breaks that are currently allowed to be unpaid)
Completely agree. This kind of “on the job, but not on the clock” abuse has to stop.
I'm back in (oh lanky lanky) Lancashire and already the contrasts between sanity in Scotland and lunacy down here is stark. Whilst I successfully refuelled the car for the trip home later it was stark the issues down here. Asda was open on one island only with a huge queue (late Sunday afternoon). A shell station had premium only. A Texaco station was open but had thought charging motorway prices was appropriate. 4th one I went past was open and quiet so went there.
And this is good compared to dahn sarf? Crazy.
After Brexit, the army will be called in so that people in the south of England can still get fuel?
Nah, never going to happen, mate! Just more Project Fear.
The petrol shortages have been brought about by Project Fire in the Theatre. We are pretty much back to filling up normally everywhere except the SE - without a single tanker load being delivered by the Army.
The petrol shortage was made infinitely worse by Project Fire in the Theatre but not because of it. You seem to be one of those who puts your fingers in his ears and just goes lalala in response to the evidence eg this morning on Radio 4 they were reporting deliveries at 50% of normal to certain SE petrol stations. At least Philip accepts this as a transition problem. But to deny there is an issue on deliveries of petrol and food is just bonkers. Fortunately we haven't had the mad panic buying on food so the effect has been minimal and seems to have disappeared now, I assume because supermarkets have adapted. I assume you don't think this existed either nor the abattoir issue.
You could argue it is something we have to tolerate as the economy adapts but to pretend it doesn't exist at all is just bizarre.
Your post yesterday telling us all in the SE to get on the tubes, trains and buses that don't actually exist (unless you want to go to London in which case there are oodles, but guess what, that doesn't get you to Sainsbury's) is just typical.
I have never denied there have been supply chain issues. We have over years moved to a system where transport and distribution are now central to the way we buy goods - accelerated by the Covid pandemic. And how many HGV drivers have become drivers for Amazon or others because, frankly, they get a better quality of life for often better money (certainly per hour, for those who have to work four nights a week away from home)?
But the SE had a specific and limited problem that got out of all proportion until it was a full blown panic. That became a problem for everybody else too. People who do NOT have the option of going anywhere on the tube, or the railway, and maybe twice a week on a bus. People for whom fuel is the ONLY option to get to Sainsbury's.
If only Waitrose had filling stations.
Don't know why they don't either - they'd get a constant steam of BMWs and Range Rovers happily paying 20% more than they would for ASDA fuel.
The profits would be enormous.
I could never use supermarket fuel, no matter how upmarket. I just get BB&R to send me a few cases of Good Ordinary Diesel at 200 guineas the dozen, every so often.
Mr. Fishing, got to say I still think automated driving is like flying cars - something technically possible that won't be practical for almost anything.
You get slow burns though. Look at video calls. "Vidphones" were a staple of c20th Sci fi. Then there were 15 years when they were possible via Skype and facetime but nobody saw the point. Then lockdown and kaboom.
Same thing happened with faxes, actually. The technology was there since ww2, the legal profession had them from the 70s, but it took a postal strike in the 80s before they caught on.
Faxes and video calls don't immediately stop you paying for something else, though, except relatively cheap stamps. Automation saves wages. It'll catch on fine.
25 years ago, Acorn did a lot of work on Video-on-Demand technology. Set Top Boxes were needed, as PC graphics cards and processors were generally not powerful enough to decode the video streams.
Apparently there was a certain amount of negativity in the market, because few people saw the possibility that the Internet could handle the traffic from everyone, and the boxes were restricted to certain cable providers.
I could see the Internet having the bandwidth; what I never guessed was that phones would, within a decade, be able to stream videos at high quality. The rate the technology increased at was massive.
But it involved no fundamental new technology; only improvements on what was existing.
People are very bad at accepting the implications of exponential changes.
In this case, the exponential increase in computing power / £ was going to turn available radio bandwidth & video compression from expensive impossibilities to trivialities in single digit years.
You see similar "unpossible!" thinking around lots of exponential processes - the delayed response to the Covid pandemic is one obvious recent example. Unless you’ve had the kind of mathematical training that lets you trust a model of an exponential process, your gut feeling just doesn’t line up with reality & that leads to making bad decisions.
I am overawed at the thought how rich you must be.
Hah. If only...
Although I did tell everyone I knew to buy Acorn stock because they would get 1/2 of ARM back in the 90s. Sadly none of them believed me & I had no capital at the time...
I have (on the other hand) managed to stay out of the way of various inevitable bubble crashes however. So it’s not all bad.
Johnson joking about the possible pig cull on yesterday's Marr was a mistake
Remember that the pig chopping industry is lying for politically motivated reasons. There is no problem and besides which it is an absolute non-issue.
Until we get a simultaneous shortage of piggy woo on the shelves and there has been a messy and graphic cull on farms. Which is increasingly likely. Then it will be an issue. And the Muppet Show won't be able to try and blame the industry.
Why? If pigs can't go to an abattoir because the abattoir doesn't have enough staff whose fault is it.
Granted the people really responsible probably retired 5 to 10 years ago but it's the responsibility of a company to ensure they have the staff required to do the job required.
Curiously does anyone know where the actual issues are? Are they nationwide or only in certain parts of the country?
This FT article spells it out - the old stereotype about Eastern European workers living 3 to a room, doing shift work, then going home rich after a couple of years was not only true, it’s what our economy evolved to rely upon.
“ It’s hard to see how you can manage such a long and variable job if you have to take care of yourself ahead of time or have extra-work responsibilities. Even if you can, there are less demanding jobs with stable shifts that pay similar wages. However, certain groups of migrant workers who came without dependents and lived in communal quarters were able to manage food factory jobs. Nick Allen, chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, says that’s why jobs have developed this way. “To be honest, labor patterns have developed around a non-British workforce. Their main reason is to stay for three years and make a lot of money to go home.”
The location of his workshops also changed from small slaughterhouses spread across the country to large slaughterhouse groups in rural areas (because it’s easier to get animals there). “The whole structure of the industry has changed over the decades,” Allen says. “It ended up with a certain pattern and probably needs to change.”
Allen says salaries for new hires have already risen. “There are super entry jobs advertised for £22,000 now, and two years ago they would have been £18,000.” He’s talking to his members about changing work patterns, but warns that it won’t be easy. Eamon O’Hearn, the state officer of the GMB union, says employers in this sector have “some sympathy” because they are low-margin, large businesses that are constantly under pressure from powerful supermarkets. Meat in the UK is the cheapest in Western Europe. “
What's struck me about ex-HGV drivers being interviewed is that it's not the money it's the working conditions.
If you have a horrible job you'll tend to want to leave it regardless of how much they offer you.
Blair’s govt estimated 50% of future jobs would require a degree, so exploited millions of Eastern Europeans by getting them to do our dirty work for lower than the going rate, whilst pretending only 13,000 would come.
Big business got so used to being able to exploit this that they don’t know what to do now it’s gone.
It’s like having a clean bet365 account, then finding out you can’t make betting pay anymore when they limit you to £2 and no special offers
We all misinterpret stats and facts, some more than others (you know who you are) so listening to a bit on R4 this morning was interesting. Sadly I missed the beginning. An academic was giving some examples re the pandemic and came out with the following:
'The average age of a person dying with covid was slightly greater than the average life expectancy'. As per previous discussions on here this 'fact' stops being so once it is used inappropriately and boy did some use it inappropriately by jumping to the wrong obvious conclusions (something I think I may well have done easily in different circumstances). The reality in fact was a lot more people were dying, but the age spread was similar giving this misleading fact. In fact on average a person dying from covid lost 10 years of their life.
I'm still very sceptical about the 10 year stat - it would imply that age, and only age, was the factor determining risk of death from COVID.
But, yes, not enough was done to emphasise that someone who is 80 has, on average, around 10 years left to live.
He didn't explain where that came from; just pointing out the misunderstanding of stuff, but from memory of MorL from months ago an obese 80 year old man with heart disease has on average 5 years to live. An average 80 yr old (who will include that person) has on average 10 years, so the fit ones longer. I just checked it on ONS. Obviously I can only check the average and not those with specific issues, but I assume most 80 years are a bit dodgy in some area or another, but presumably those with more issues are more likely to die from covid so I think that means you might be correct as there will be more deaths to the left of the average, but it isn't going to make much difference I don't think if even really dodgy ones were expected to make it to 85.
I'm now wittering and concerned I am blithely referring to dodgy 80 year olds when I am not that far away myself.
Johnson joking about the possible pig cull on yesterday's Marr was a mistake
Why?
If farmers and abattoirs won't pay a decent wage to their staff then cull them all if need be.
For all that you post some brilliant stuff you also post absurd stuff. Politically what you suggest will be a disaster. On our screens and in our newspapers will be "down on the farm" style piles of pig corpses that have been shot and are now rotting. On the other hand we won't have processed pigs through abattoirs and factories which means a big shortage of pork products in the run up to Christmas when demand is at its highest.
What you suggest would be bad for the government. We are likely to end up there anyway due to gross incompetence, but they won't actively be trying for it.
You've got more experience with Supermarkets than I do so I'll defer to your expertise on this: are you telling me that Supermarkets are so grossly incompetent at what they do that not only can they not pay a fair going rate to ensure that pork products are capable of going through the abattoirs of the UK . . . but they're so utterly incompetent at their jobs that they can't pay a fair going rate to buy pork products on the global markets and either ship or fly them in to stock the shelves?
Is that how little regard you have for the Supermarkets? If it is, I will defer to your low opinion of them.
British consumers will not do as you want them to do and see British farming go to the wall whilst they eat flown in imports. The reason why even the German supermarkets like Aldi are so heavily UK sourced is because that is what the market demands. Believe me they would love to source pan-European, they can't as punters won't buy it.
This not about supermarkets not paying enough however many times you say it. Its about consumers. People both demand British stuff and cannot pay +20/30/40% more than they do now because cost of living.
Another point. Supermarkets make shit margins selling food. Like less than 2 percent at best. They make big profits because they shift an awful lot of these marginal items, but it isn't a profitable business at least with the cost loading they have in terms of large stores, more choice, staff levels etc.
I'm back in (oh lanky lanky) Lancashire and already the contrasts between sanity in Scotland and lunacy down here is stark. Whilst I successfully refuelled the car for the trip home later it was stark the issues down here. Asda was open on one island only with a huge queue (late Sunday afternoon). A shell station had premium only. A Texaco station was open but had thought charging motorway prices was appropriate. 4th one I went past was open and quiet so went there.
And this is good compared to dahn sarf? Crazy.
After Brexit, the army will be called in so that people in the south of England can still get fuel?
Nah, never going to happen, mate! Just more Project Fear.
The petrol shortages have been brought about by Project Fire in the Theatre. We are pretty much back to filling up normally everywhere except the SE - without a single tanker load being delivered by the Army.
The petrol shortage was made infinitely worse by Project Fire in the Theatre but not because of it. You seem to be one of those who puts your fingers in his ears and just goes lalala in response to the evidence eg this morning on Radio 4 they were reporting deliveries at 50% of normal to certain SE petrol stations. At least Philip accepts this as a transition problem. But to deny there is an issue on deliveries of petrol and food is just bonkers. Fortunately we haven't had the mad panic buying on food so the effect has been minimal and seems to have disappeared now, I assume because supermarkets have adapted. I assume you don't think this existed either nor the abattoir issue.
You could argue it is something we have to tolerate as the economy adapts but to pretend it doesn't exist at all is just bizarre.
Your post yesterday telling us all in the SE to get on the tubes, trains and buses that don't actually exist (unless you want to go to London in which case there are oodles, but guess what, that doesn't get you to Sainsbury's) is just typical.
I have never denied there have been supply chain issues. We have over years moved to a system where transport and distribution are now central to the way we buy goods - accelerated by the Covid pandemic. And how many HGV drivers have become drivers for Amazon or others because, frankly, they get a better quality of life for often better money (certainly per hour, for those who have to work four nights a week away from home)?
But the SE had a specific and limited problem that got out of all proportion until it was a full blown panic. That became a problem for everybody else too. People who do NOT have the option of going anywhere on the tube, or the railway, and maybe twice a week on a bus. People for whom fuel is the ONLY option to get to Sainsbury's.
If only Waitrose had filling stations.
Don't know why they don't either - they'd get a constant steam of BMWs and Range Rovers happily paying 20% more than they would for ASDA fuel.
The profits would be enormous.
Waitrose do have filling stations, there's one at the Lincoln superstore for starters.
Actual Waitrose branded filling stations ?
I've just googled Waitrose Lincoln and it has a Shell station next to it.
I'm back in (oh lanky lanky) Lancashire and already the contrasts between sanity in Scotland and lunacy down here is stark. Whilst I successfully refuelled the car for the trip home later it was stark the issues down here. Asda was open on one island only with a huge queue (late Sunday afternoon). A shell station had premium only. A Texaco station was open but had thought charging motorway prices was appropriate. 4th one I went past was open and quiet so went there.
And this is good compared to dahn sarf? Crazy.
After Brexit, the army will be called in so that people in the south of England can still get fuel?
Nah, never going to happen, mate! Just more Project Fear.
The petrol shortages have been brought about by Project Fire in the Theatre. We are pretty much back to filling up normally everywhere except the SE - without a single tanker load being delivered by the Army.
The petrol shortage was made infinitely worse by Project Fire in the Theatre but not because of it. You seem to be one of those who puts your fingers in his ears and just goes lalala in response to the evidence eg this morning on Radio 4 they were reporting deliveries at 50% of normal to certain SE petrol stations. At least Philip accepts this as a transition problem. But to deny there is an issue on deliveries of petrol and food is just bonkers. Fortunately we haven't had the mad panic buying on food so the effect has been minimal and seems to have disappeared now, I assume because supermarkets have adapted. I assume you don't think this existed either nor the abattoir issue.
You could argue it is something we have to tolerate as the economy adapts but to pretend it doesn't exist at all is just bizarre.
Your post yesterday telling us all in the SE to get on the tubes, trains and buses that don't actually exist (unless you want to go to London in which case there are oodles, but guess what, that doesn't get you to Sainsbury's) is just typical.
I have never denied there have been supply chain issues. We have over years moved to a system where transport and distribution are now central to the way we buy goods - accelerated by the Covid pandemic. And how many HGV drivers have become drivers for Amazon or others because, frankly, they get a better quality of life for often better money (certainly per hour, for those who have to work four nights a week away from home)?
But the SE had a specific and limited problem that got out of all proportion until it was a full blown panic. That became a problem for everybody else too. People who do NOT have the option of going anywhere on the tube, or the railway, and maybe twice a week on a bus. People for whom fuel is the ONLY option to get to Sainsbury's.
If only Waitrose had filling stations.
Don't know why they don't either - they'd get a constant steam of BMWs and Range Rovers happily paying 20% more than they would for ASDA fuel.
The profits would be enormous.
I could never use supermarket fuel, no matter how upmarket. I just get BB&R to send me a few cases of Good Ordinary Diesel at 200 guineas the dozen, every so often.
Fortnum's do a lovely hamper of the stuff. Comes with a delightful little pot of screen-wash too....
Johnson joking about the possible pig cull on yesterday's Marr was a mistake
Remember that the pig chopping industry is lying for politically motivated reasons. There is no problem and besides which it is an absolute non-issue.
Until we get a simultaneous shortage of piggy woo on the shelves and there has been a messy and graphic cull on farms. Which is increasingly likely. Then it will be an issue. And the Muppet Show won't be able to try and blame the industry.
Why? If pigs can't go to an abattoir because the abattoir doesn't have enough staff whose fault is it.
Granted the people really responsible probably retired 5 to 10 years ago but it's the responsibility of a company to ensure they have the staff required to do the job required.
Curiously does anyone know where the actual issues are? Are they nationwide or only in certain parts of the country?
This FT article spells it out - the old stereotype about Eastern European workers living 3 to a room, doing shift work, then going home rich after a couple of years was not only true, it’s what our economy evolved to rely upon.
“ It’s hard to see how you can manage such a long and variable job if you have to take care of yourself ahead of time or have extra-work responsibilities. Even if you can, there are less demanding jobs with stable shifts that pay similar wages. However, certain groups of migrant workers who came without dependents and lived in communal quarters were able to manage food factory jobs. Nick Allen, chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, says that’s why jobs have developed this way. “To be honest, labor patterns have developed around a non-British workforce. Their main reason is to stay for three years and make a lot of money to go home.”
The location of his workshops also changed from small slaughterhouses spread across the country to large slaughterhouse groups in rural areas (because it’s easier to get animals there). “The whole structure of the industry has changed over the decades,” Allen says. “It ended up with a certain pattern and probably needs to change.”
Allen says salaries for new hires have already risen. “There are super entry jobs advertised for £22,000 now, and two years ago they would have been £18,000.” He’s talking to his members about changing work patterns, but warns that it won’t be easy. Eamon O’Hearn, the state officer of the GMB union, says employers in this sector have “some sympathy” because they are low-margin, large businesses that are constantly under pressure from powerful supermarkets. Meat in the UK is the cheapest in Western Europe. “
What's struck me about ex-HGV drivers being interviewed is that it's not the money it's the working conditions.
If you have a horrible job you'll tend to want to leave it regardless of how much they offer you.
Blair’s govt estimated 50% of future jobs would require a degree, so exploited millions of Eastern Europeans by getting them to do our dirty work for lower than the going rate, whilst pretending only 13,000 would come.
Big business got so used to being able to exploit this that they don’t know what to do now it’s gone.
It’s like having a clean bet365 account then finding out you can’t make betting pay anymore now they limit you to £2 and no special offers
Farmer complained that he couldn't fill his vacancies, but listen to what she has to say in response. Absolutely incredible.
Quite clear that the farmer means he couldn't advertise his vacancies for minimum wage in Eastern Europe anymore and he has no clue or even desire to fill the vacancies domestically.
So, the food and farming industry is in crisis because of the pressure put on them by supermarkets.
But surely, this cannot be happening? The market is king and settles eveything satisfactorily.
Ultimately, yes.
If the supermarkets won't pay a fair amount for stock, they won't get any stock and consumers will go elsewhere.
If supermarkets can keep the shelves full then there's no issue and everything is resolved satisfactorily.
Supermarkets can't pay what you consider to be a fair amount as consumers do not have the means to pay for them at +40% of current prices. Competition drives costs into the ground. Nobody can pay vastly more for milk (as an example) because competitors will keep selling it at a loss.
Supermarkets are a cartel. Not an organised one, there isn't a meeting where all the CEOs sit round a table plotting to price fix the price of milk. Instead their trading teams have KPIs where they have to be within x% of a named basket of competitors.
When one moves the price the others rapidly follow. You will often see supermarkets advertising how much they have invested into retail prices. Sometimes they really do, I had a mega-volume product in Morrisons where they were selling it 40% below the price they bought it for. Mostly though the "investment" is just trading.
I’m not sure it really got started in Scotland. Yes, a few Scots saw the idiocy in SE England on the news and followed suit, but it was purely a media effect, not a concrete supply/demand issue.
I saw the after-effects of a run on fuel in Aberdeen city and Aberdeenshire. But it looked like it was literally a couple of days and then people realised there was plenty of fuel and calmed down.
A fleet of tidal lagoons brings 80,000 jobs and apprenticeships. Not to mention the construction supply lines across the Red Wall seats. Mostly located in places that would get a massive uplift in the local economy.
The politics of tidal lagoons for the Blues are hugely favourable. As well as being the right thing to do anyway, they are being stupidly short-sighted in their political interests in not pursuing them. Instead we get what, £200m++ subsidies to RollsRoyce for mini-nukes? That none of their MPs wants in their constituencies....
So, the food and farming industry is in crisis because of the pressure put on them by supermarkets.
But surely, this cannot be happening? The market is king and settles eveything satisfactorily.
Ultimately, yes.
If the supermarkets won't pay a fair amount for stock, they won't get any stock and consumers will go elsewhere.
If supermarkets can keep the shelves full then there's no issue and everything is resolved satisfactorily.
Supermarkets can't pay what you consider to be a fair amount as consumers do not have the means to pay for them at +40% of current prices. Competition drives costs into the ground. Nobody can pay vastly more for milk (as an example) because competitors will keep selling it at a loss.
Supermarkets are a cartel. Not an organised one, there isn't a meeting where all the CEOs sit round a table plotting to price fix the price of milk. Instead their trading teams have KPIs where they have to be within x% of a named basket of competitors.
When one moves the price the others rapidly follow. You will often see supermarkets advertising how much they have invested into retail prices. Sometimes they really do, I had a mega-volume product in Morrisons where they were selling it 40% below the price they bought it for. Mostly though the "investment" is just trading.
Prices won't go up 40% since staff costs aren't 100% of the costs.
But prices will go up if the costs demand it. A few years ago it was possible a few years ago to get an array of 3 bottles of wine for a tenner at ASDA. Now you'd be lucky to get 2 for that price.
If the alternative is no product then both consumers and supermarkets will pay what they have to pay, the supermarkets don't keep costs down out of generosity to consumers no matter how much you like to imply that. They keep them down because its a competitive environment but if costs go up in a competitive environment then they go up.
Johnson joking about the possible pig cull on yesterday's Marr was a mistake
Why?
If farmers and abattoirs won't pay a decent wage to their staff then cull them all if need be.
For all that you post some brilliant stuff you also post absurd stuff. Politically what you suggest will be a disaster. On our screens and in our newspapers will be "down on the farm" style piles of pig corpses that have been shot and are now rotting. On the other hand we won't have processed pigs through abattoirs and factories which means a big shortage of pork products in the run up to Christmas when demand is at its highest.
What you suggest would be bad for the government. We are likely to end up there anyway due to gross incompetence, but they won't actively be trying for it.
You've got more experience with Supermarkets than I do so I'll defer to your expertise on this: are you telling me that Supermarkets are so grossly incompetent at what they do that not only can they not pay a fair going rate to ensure that pork products are capable of going through the abattoirs of the UK . . . but they're so utterly incompetent at their jobs that they can't pay a fair going rate to buy pork products on the global markets and either ship or fly them in to stock the shelves?
Is that how little regard you have for the Supermarkets? If it is, I will defer to your low opinion of them.
British consumers will not do as you want them to do and see British farming go to the wall whilst they eat flown in imports. The reason why even the German supermarkets like Aldi are so heavily UK sourced is because that is what the market demands. Believe me they would love to source pan-European, they can't as punters won't buy it.
This not about supermarkets not paying enough however many times you say it. Its about consumers. People both demand British stuff and cannot pay +20/30/40% more than they do now because cost of living.
Another point. Supermarkets make shit margins selling food. Like less than 2 percent at best. They make big profits because they shift an awful lot of these marginal items, but it isn't a profitable business at least with the cost loading they have in terms of large stores, more choice, staff levels etc.
Supermarkets have screwed over suppliers for years because it has been felt that it was a price worth paying for the greater financialy benefit of the British public and aggregate economy. It has been the dirty little secret which has suited "everyone" well as the economy has grown in aggregate and sod the farmers, for example.
It appears that this government has had it with delivering such economic benefits to British consumers and as such those consumers are going to have to learn to pay up for their goods.
I am not 110% sure they are quite ready for the transition but it appears that we are about to find out.
Boris would still retain his majority though on that swing, even if his majority was halved.
Starmer needs a much bigger swing in the Redwall for Labour to be largest party, let alone win a majority
True. And it comes back to how we should interpret these numbers.
Is the swing Con-Lab (no Jez so centrists can safely vote Labour) and Lab-Green (no Jez so bereft lefties have gone elsewhere)? And if so, are those swings equally robust? Surely the Greens haven't increased their support sevenfold... If Labour can squeeze them and the score goes to (say) 41-44, the picture starts to look more interesting. Alternatively, is it some sort of NOTA vote that went blue in 2019 and has now gone elsewhere? Sort of like the Lib Dem-UKIP swing votes in the South West?
Then, what kind of graph are we looking at over the parliament? Is there going to be swingback, in which case Conservatives ahead midterm = easy win next time? Or can Labour make more progress from here?
The consolation for the country is that we have a very good COE in Rishi, who is the antithesis of Boris, being competent and is popular
If I had my way he would be PM, but at present Boris does seem to have that special something, even unique, that confounds all his opponents
“very good COE Rishi”
Ho ho. That’s a keeper. I confidently predict his reputation will be in tatters by this time next year.
Too partisan. All parties have good and bad in them, and whatever his faults you can't just dismiss Sunak like that.
It wasn't perfect. It had holes. But at very high speed Sunak and the Treasury identified that Covid lockdowns would be an Extinction-Level Event for vast swathes of business and industry. The hosing of money at an unthinkable pace and scale was truly brilliant.
As I said to him when I met him last year, his actions saved the business I was working for. As always they could have gone further and done more. But nobody expected they would do that much, and keep extending it and expanding it.
Comments
If I had my way he would be PM, but at present Boris does seem to have that special something, even unique, that confounds all his opponents
CON: 41% (-7)
LAB: 40% (+2)
GRN: 7% (+6)
via @YouGov, 17 - 28 Sep
Chgs. w/ GE2019
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/theresa-mays-red-wall-support-beats-boris-johnson-gvd70wt05?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=newsletter_119&utm_medium=email&utm_content=119_15592505&CMP=TNLEmail_2014964_15592505_119
You can't do that everywhere across the whole country.
Is that how little regard you have for the Supermarkets? If it is, I will defer to your low opinion of them.
If you have a horrible job you'll tend to want to leave it regardless of how much they offer you.
General rule of thumb: the most dogmatic cling to an ideology in all circumstances because they don't have the intelligence to deal with the greyness of the real world
2. Whether they are for the better, the worse, or no real change either way, they take time.
You've already confirmed that you thought offering £70k-80k for drivers (which is the going rate for drivers in the USA) would see vacancies filled virtually instantly.
Paying 131% of fuck all is still pretty pathetic.
I've been loosely involved in some studies (stats support, mainly) looking at greater efficiencies through tech and/or different working patterns.
There's been very little resistance, at least internally in the NHS - including at ward level - to this, as long as they trust that better care is a driver as well as cutting costs (and that the care won't be sacrified for costs). This is probably because the end game hasn't tended to be staff redundancies, but rather getting more done/tackling waiting lists. Obviously if you get on top of backlogs then down the line you can cut recruitment a bit. However we get nowhere near filling our staff needs with domestic graduates, so that again is not really controversial - there will be a job for every UK graduating nurse or doctor who wants to work in the NHS.
It's a bit different to the new machine at the sausage factory which puts half the people out of a job.
Your boy can win despite stagflation. And if winning is all that matters. starting ulture wars and scapegoating minorities are meat and drink to Johnson's current audience. Even if the economy is on its knees, my long held view that incumbency takes the hit has been proven wrong by the fuel crisis.
It is not the crisis, but who gets the blame for the crisis. Previous governments, Remainers, woke lefties, foreigners, foreign governments are all fair game, and Johnson is winning at that game.
So in education, you have pupil work which is designed to be robomarked. There's some really neat stuff out there, and if you design multiple choice questions right you can give incredibly useful feedback.
In healthcare, you can do online triage or video call consultations. Great. More efficient.
But then a proprtion of the customers complain because they're not seeing a real human teacher/doctor/bank clerk.
And some of that is bogstandard Luddism, but there's a kernel of a genuine issue as well.
Which is why it's harder to get productivity gains in services.
What he is not doing any better than Corbyn did was to appeal to large numbers of 2019 Tory voters who also voted Leave in the RedWall Labour needs to win over to be largest party let alone win a majority. See also the Tory gain in Hartlepool in the by election. I expect Burnham would be doing better with them
The govt now believes that the "suffering" of low paid workers in all sectors is no longer justified to deliver such economic benefit to the country at large.
It is a huge rebalancing with likely higher prices and taxes. Where that leaves the UK in global growth and competitive stakes is a discussion for another day.
And the left has the temerity to criticise.
Pork is close to my heart (or belly), I love bacon, ham etc and we aren't that keen on turkey so always have gammon for Christmas (or gammon and chicken if hosting a large dinner). I will go to whichever supermarket or butcher has stock available, if one fails to do so but another manages to then they will get my business.
If any supermarkets are so incompetent they can't stock their shelves, but others can, then those who can will get the business. So they've got a competitive interest in ensuring their shelves are stocked.
@RochdalePioneers obviously doesn't hold the supermarkets in anything other than contempt based on the way he's speaking. I expect they're more competent than he thinks. We'll see.
Incidentally, I don't think we have a single 'uncrewed' train in the UK. The ATO tube lines still have drivers, and the DLR has train captains (or whatever they're called this week). This is because the problem is interaction with the public, and particularly the doors. The necessity to have a staff member on the train reduces much of the savings of being driverless - e.g. a DLR train captain earns £42k. A tube driver £56k. Not a massive saving...
Totally unstaffed trains are much easier to implement on brand-new networks, with no links to existing networks. Or ones with no passengers,
But, there's an awful lot of process/checking/planning/data analysis/reporting etc. that could be automated.
I'm hoping it doesn't happen.
If they can now get similar money elsewhere and they were happy with the money how much more money will it take to encourage them to go back
The ultimate result of heavily restricting migration will simply be to slow our economic development and possibly turn the UK into a source, rather than a sink, of migrants. Auf Wiedersehen, Pet.
But surely, this cannot be happening? The market is king and settles eveything satisfactorily.
That could all happen in the next 3 years. And it could throw out Governments in Western countries around the world.
I am not betting on a Tory majority at current prices.
I'm suggesting a way of reversing that.
Its not an original idea - when the landowners in mining areas wanted to attract workers for their new pits they built houses, whole villages in fact together with schools and other public facilities.
Ben Wallace 2nd
Lord Frost 3rd
JRM 4th
Rishi 5th
Frost and JRM above Rishi indicates annoyance at tax rises and a desire to suspend NI protocol
Interesting
Ministers mull council tax rise to plug social care black hole
Boris Johnson has said that he is “acutely conscious” of the precarious finances of local authorities amid calls to allow them to increase council tax to pay for social care.
The prime minister said the government would ensure local authorities can cover the increasing costs of social care as he acknowledged that their finances have been “depleted” during the pandemic.
Local authorities have warned that they need an extra £2.6 billion a year merely to sustain present levels of social care and have said that in the absence of central government funding council tax will have to increase by 9 per cent next year to help plug the gap.
Ministers are considering proposals to allow councils to increase the social care element of council tax, which is 3 per cent at present, without the need for a local referendum.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ministers-mull-council-tax-rise-to-plug-social-care-black-hole-n8qd0dh7l
If there's a labour shortage then employers should have a competitive interest in improving conditions because improved conditions will lower turnover. So the market should provide an incentive to fix that too - if recruitment is difficult and training is expensive (and necessary) then staff turnover becomes a harm to business.
If employers can get away with not giving a shit if their staff have poor conditions and pay because they'll just say "next" and replace them with someone else at no real cost then they've no incentive to fix either conditions or pay.
Without considering that some jobs are always going to be difficult conditions but if the pay is high enough people will gladly put up with that for the return. A classic example I believe is working on the North Sea, of which I believe we have a few people on this very site who've spoken highly of their time doing that despite the self-professed shitty conditions because they were so well renumerated.
But the SE had a specific and limited problem that got out of all proportion until it was a full blown panic. That became a problem for everybody else too. People who do NOT have the option of going anywhere on the tube, or the railway, and maybe twice a week on a bus. People for whom fuel is the ONLY option to get to Sainsbury's.
Land cost isn't a build cost and should be viewed separately. The only reason land is expensive is our planning system.
What we are seeing on the mainland, is sh1tty attitudes from employers.
If conditions can be improved by being a better employer, then try that.
If they can't, try compensation.
Either way there's a fix.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10055307/More-HALF-Met-officers-guilty-sexual-misconduct-four-year-period-kept-job.html?ito=social-twitter_mailonline
Mind you it isn't just a Met issue, The Sunday Times flagged up the issues Police Scotland have, utterly jaw dropping.
'The average age of a person dying with covid was slightly greater than the average life expectancy'. As per previous discussions on here this 'fact' stops being so once it is used inappropriately and boy did some use it inappropriately by jumping to the wrong obvious conclusions (something I think I may well have done easily in different circumstances). The reality in fact was a lot more people were dying, but the age spread was similar giving this misleading fact. In fact on average a person dying from covid lost 10 years of their life.
If the supermarkets won't pay a fair amount for stock, they won't get any stock and consumers will go elsewhere.
If supermarkets can keep the shelves full then there's no issue and everything is resolved satisfactorily.
Ho ho. That’s a keeper. I confidently predict his reputation will be in tatters by this time next year.
I think the trouble with HGV driving is that it's a relentless grind, with very poor facilities, and very little respect.
So, an unwanted asking of a colleague on a date, which gets reported, constitutes an offence of ‘sexual misconduct’?
Don't know why they don't either - they'd get a constant steam of BMWs and Range Rovers happily paying 20% more than they would for ASDA fuel.
The profits would be enormous.
In 1971 a woman could not:
1. Get a Credit Card in her own name – it wasn’t until 1974 that a law forced credit card companies to issue cards to women without their husband’s signature.
2. Be guaranteed that they wouldn’t be unceremoniously fired for the offense of getting pregnant – that changed with the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978.
3. Serve on a jury - It varied by state (Utah deemed women fit for jury duty way back in 1879), but the main reason women were kept out of jury pools was that they were considered the center of the home, which was their primary responsibility as caregivers. They were also thought to be too fragile to hear the grisly details of crimes and too sympathetic by nature to be able to remain objective about those accused of offenses. In 1961, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld a Florida law that exempted women from serving on juries. It wasn't until 1973 that women could serve on juries in all 50 states.
4. Fight on the front lines – admitted into military academies in 1976 it wasn’t until 2013 that the military ban on women in combat was lifted. Prior to 1973 women were only allowed in the military as nurses or support staff.
5. Get an Ivy League education - Yale and Princeton didn't accept female students until 1969. Harvard didn't admit women until 1977 (when it merged with the all-female Radcliffe College). Brown (which merged with women's college Pembroke), Dartmouth and Columbia did not offer admission to women until 1971, 1972 and 1981, respectively. Other case-specific instances allowed some women to take certain classes at Ivy League institutions (such as Barnard women taking classes at Columbia), but by and large, women in the '60s who harbored Ivy League dreams had to put them on hold.
6. Take legal action against workplace sexual harassment. Indeed the first time a court recognized office sexual harassment as grounds for any legal action was in 1977.
7. Decide not to have sex if their husband wanted to – spousal rape wasn’t criminalized in all 50 states until 1993. Read that again...1993.
8. Obtain health insurance at the same monetary rate as a man. Sex discrimination wasn’t outlawed in health insurance until 2010 and today many, including sitting elected officials at the Federal level, feel women don’t mind paying a little more. Again, that date was 2010.
9. Also, take the birth control pill: The pill was illegal in some states and could be prescribed only to married women for purposes of family planning, and not all pharmacies stocked it. It wasn't until several years later that birth control was approved for use by all women, regardless of marital status.
Personally I'd regard 3 as a blessing, 5 as only partly true and 8 as not discrimination if justified by higher claims, but anyway there are some interesting facts in there
This should be compulsory reading for everyone, not least the media and politicians
https://www.forbes.com/sites/garthfriesen/2021/09/03/no-end-in-sight-for-the-covid-led-global-supply-chain-disruption/
And this
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/126562992/covid19-usps-stops-nz-mail-service-due-to-unavailability-of-transportation
As far as I know it is on jobs that require a DBS like being a teacher, or a pub landlord etc
Why on earth are the Police held to a lower standard than teachers or landlords?
But, yes, not enough was done to emphasise that someone who is 80 has, on average, around 10 years left to live.
The group, who were secretly recorded, exchanged comments such as ‘Bring on our next duty in the van. Victim. Hot. I get to choose.’ In other exchanges, they chatted about one of them having sex with a stripper who had been arrested a few months earlier. One victim of crime was called a ‘hot slag’.
But, after being found guilty by a disciplinary panel of misconduct and gross misconduct less than a year ago, they have been allowed to resume normal duties.
I repeat – the men in question are still serving police officers.
https://calculator.bcis.co.uk/
https://www.itv.com/news/granada/2021-08-30/warning-for-police-officer-who-threatened-to-make-something-up-to-arrest-man
80 year olds in hospital and care homes were considerably more likely to die - and they do not have a 10 year life expectancy. An 80 year old in a care home, and an 80 year old in their own home, do not have the same life expectancy and the virus cherrypicked those who were most vulnerable to dying soon anyway.
A fact little spoken about is that quite probably most residents of a care home in January 2020 when we first heard of Covid would be dead by now even if Covid hadn't hit our shores.
Looks like Truss enjoying a bit of a honeymoon at the Foreign Office too
Marr asked asked Johnson "...but if it does happen 'It's my fault' you'll say?"
Johnson deflected with a joke: "I'm not saying it's your fault Andrew."
Yes, it's very lame but it's clearly a joke.
The non-jokey answer was either "Yes, the buck stops with me" or possibly "No, the abattoirs have had since 2016 to prepare for this, it's not the government's responsibility to run their businesses for them."
Since when were non-answers jokes?
Supermarkets see nothing wrong in requiring lorry drivers to wait 3 hours before unloading a delivery. And the employer almost encourages the supermarket to do it because their current contract says you are not paid while sat waiting to unload.
One quick fix would be to reduce the minimum wage slightly and insist that people are paid for all the time they are at work (including any breaks that are currently allowed to be unpaid)
Starmer needs a much bigger swing in the Redwall for Labour to be largest party, let alone win a majority
b) Labour not the primary beneficiary. Red Wall former Tories go 3:1 to the Greens rather than Labour? Labour still has a major credibility problem.
In this case, the exponential increase in computing power / £ was going to turn available radio bandwidth & video compression from expensive impossibilities to trivialities in single digit years.
You see similar "unpossible!" thinking around lots of exponential processes - the delayed response to the Covid pandemic is one obvious recent example. Unless you’ve had the kind of mathematical training that lets you trust a model of an exponential process, your gut feeling just doesn’t line up with reality & that leads to making bad decisions.
And it is becoming increasingly obvious that Anas Sarwar is cast from the same mould.
Although I did tell everyone I knew to buy Acorn stock because they would get 1/2 of ARM back in the 90s. Sadly none of them believed me & I had no capital at the time...
I have (on the other hand) managed to stay out of the way of various inevitable bubble crashes however. So it’s not all bad.
Big business got so used to being able to exploit this that they don’t know what to do now it’s gone.
It’s like having a clean bet365 account, then finding out you can’t make betting pay anymore when they limit you to £2 and no special offers
That regular kind of guy Wykehamist vibe.
I'm now wittering and concerned I am blithely referring to dodgy 80 year olds when I am not that far away myself.
This not about supermarkets not paying enough however many times you say it. Its about consumers. People both demand British stuff and cannot pay +20/30/40% more than they do now because cost of living.
Another point. Supermarkets make shit margins selling food. Like less than 2 percent at best. They make big profits because they shift an awful lot of these marginal items, but it isn't a profitable business at least with the cost loading they have in terms of large stores, more choice, staff levels etc.
and this from Yougov
Red Wall voting intention: our MRP shows the Tories have lost the gains they made in vote share, but Labour has not recovered
Con: 41% (-7 from GE2019, -2 from GE2017)
Lab: 40% (+2 from GE2019, -10 from GE2017)
Lib Dem: 5%
Green: 7%
Reform UK: 3%
I've just googled Waitrose Lincoln and it has a Shell station next to it.
As does the Waitrose in Sheffield.
When it comes to paying for those things though ...
https://twitter.com/IsabelOakeshott/status/1443122045173260288
Farmer complained that he couldn't fill his vacancies, but listen to what she has to say in response. Absolutely incredible.
Quite clear that the farmer means he couldn't advertise his vacancies for minimum wage in Eastern Europe anymore and he has no clue or even desire to fill the vacancies domestically.
Supermarkets are a cartel. Not an organised one, there isn't a meeting where all the CEOs sit round a table plotting to price fix the price of milk. Instead their trading teams have KPIs where they have to be within x% of a named basket of competitors.
When one moves the price the others rapidly follow. You will often see supermarkets advertising how much they have invested into retail prices. Sometimes they really do, I had a mega-volume product in Morrisons where they were selling it 40% below the price they bought it for. Mostly though the "investment" is just trading.
The politics of tidal lagoons for the Blues are hugely favourable. As well as being the right thing to do anyway, they are being stupidly short-sighted in their political interests in not pursuing them. Instead we get what, £200m++ subsidies to RollsRoyce for mini-nukes? That none of their MPs wants in their constituencies....
But prices will go up if the costs demand it. A few years ago it was possible a few years ago to get an array of 3 bottles of wine for a tenner at ASDA. Now you'd be lucky to get 2 for that price.
If the alternative is no product then both consumers and supermarkets will pay what they have to pay, the supermarkets don't keep costs down out of generosity to consumers no matter how much you like to imply that. They keep them down because its a competitive environment but if costs go up in a competitive environment then they go up.
Get over it already.
It appears that this government has had it with delivering such economic benefits to British consumers and as such those consumers are going to have to learn to pay up for their goods.
I am not 110% sure they are quite ready for the transition but it appears that we are about to find out.
Is the swing Con-Lab (no Jez so centrists can safely vote Labour) and Lab-Green (no Jez so bereft lefties have gone elsewhere)? And if so, are those swings equally robust? Surely the Greens haven't increased their support sevenfold... If Labour can squeeze them and the score goes to (say) 41-44, the picture starts to look more interesting.
Alternatively, is it some sort of NOTA vote that went blue in 2019 and has now gone elsewhere? Sort of like the Lib Dem-UKIP swing votes in the South West?
Then, what kind of graph are we looking at over the parliament? Is there going to be swingback, in which case Conservatives ahead midterm = easy win next time? Or can Labour make more progress from here?
It wasn't perfect. It had holes. But at very high speed Sunak and the Treasury identified that Covid lockdowns would be an Extinction-Level Event for vast swathes of business and industry. The hosing of money at an unthinkable pace and scale was truly brilliant.
As I said to him when I met him last year, his actions saved the business I was working for. As always they could have gone further and done more. But nobody expected they would do that much, and keep extending it and expanding it.