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)
Is it only supermarkets who pull that stunt ?
At my work if one of our despatches is delayed at the customer we pay the transport company for the waiting time and excess unloading.
It doesn't happen often but then we have an incentive to make sure it doesn't.
Encouraging investment in jobs is one thing, but massively increased utility bills is another.
The cost of wind per mega watt hour is heading south last time I checked. You're not reliant on global oil or gas prices, and you don't have the massive safety/anti-terrorist/black swan costs/problems of nuclear.
Just makes sense to have lots of turbines, quieter days are ideal for maintenance.
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)
Is it only supermarkets who pull that stunt ?
At my work if one of our despatches is delayed at the customer we pay the transport company for the waiting time and excess unloading.
It doesn't happen often but then we have an incentive to make sure it doesn't.
Do the transport company pass the wages on to the driver?
Done properly it's a nice additional profit for the transport company...
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.
On average every person on the day they die should still be alive the following day, week, month and in most cases, year. Funny things numbers.
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.
Get over it already.
Its just adding. Staff costs need to rise. Component costs are exploding. Transport costs too. And we have retailers and wholesalers and manufacturers not making much money as it is. You say "people will pay". No they won't. If you have £10 to spend on groceries you have £10. If that only now buys 4 items instead of 6 before then you do not buy the other two.
There is a very clear direct link between price and volume. When price goes up, volume goes down. And as supermarkets make profit from selling lots of items at <2% net profit a drop in volume very quickly becomes a problem.
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)
Is it only supermarkets who pull that stunt ?
At my work if one of our despatches is delayed at the customer we pay the transport company for the waiting time and excess unloading.
It doesn't happen often but then we have an incentive to make sure it doesn't.
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.
Well I agree with that, but that is not what you said in the last two posts of yours which I responded to. In fact your last two sentences (with capitals) was exactly the point I was making when you suggested otherwise yesterday. In fairness I enjoy your punchy funny posts and unfortunately humour does come at the cost of detail. Something I know only to well when I have tried to achieve the same and failed miserably as people have taken my post seriously and then picked at the detailed inaccuracy. And I don't have the same ability at humour as yourself.
Interesting ccomment in Stephen Bush of the Statesman's morning email:
'There’s a ‘but’ coming, though: Downing Street’s objection to the Northern Ireland protocol is genuine, and the fuel crisis may have changed the balance of opinion within the government about the risks or otherwise of triggering the protocol.
Why? Because an as yet-unnoticed subplot of the HGV driver shortage and the resulting shortages of petrol is that the shortages haven’t found their way into Northern Ireland: because the protocol means Northern Ireland essentially has a different Brexit deal from the rest of the United Kingdom.
[...] the chaos arising from triggering Article 16 may be easier to survive politically than having to explain the widening gulf emerging between Northern Ireland and Great Britain as the former remains in the EU de facto if not de jury while the latter’s promised “British renaissance” fails to arrive.'
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.
While people say "sod the farmers" its far more than just farmers that have lived in poor conditions and getting poor wages in recent years.
Indeed the farmer's staff seem to have been stuffed more than the farmers themselves.
There certainly doesn't seem to have been a flooding of the market of farmers desperate to sell their land for development because they can't survive.
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.
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.
However if the government restricts import of labour while allowing tariff free unrestricted import of goods, it is effectively directing the market to import the goods rather than make them here. That might be an unintended consequence but clear nevertheless.
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.
On average every person on the day they die should still be alive the following day, week, month and in most cases, year. Funny things numbers.
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.
On average every person on the day they die should still be alive the following day, week, month and in most cases, year. Funny things numbers.
It's a problem for things like Smart (or, not so smart) Motorways. Different people die and different people live. The different deaths are very visible. But we will never know which lives were saved.
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.
It will certainly be interesting! It is absolutely certain that the restructuring that a swathe of businesses will fail which will make the shortages even acuter until farm to form production and distribution lines are remapped. The question for the government is will their supporters be resolute through this period, or will they start complaining?
Looking at the various discussions about the police; deeper realities will soon begin to unveil themselves. For instance, the pay for a police officer post training at the MET is £30k. Someone has pointed out that a "train captain" on the driverless DLR is paid £42k. I have pointed out myself that local authority planning officers can current command a salary of well in excess of £100k per year.
Officers are leaving en masse already; last case I heard was someone who packed it in to become a manager at ALDI for twice the pay.
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.
If everyone who watches the prices others charge is an informal cartel, then the entire world is an informal cartel. Price is one of the functioning bits of a free market economy. The formula is simple: price is what you can get.
I'm not sure if this has been commented on but Jacinda Ardern has given up her Zero-Covid approach in the face of Delta and with a good level of vaccinations. Being a politician she is now claiming that Zero-Covid was never her aim.
The NZ people have been used to barely any Covid deaths. They are going to have quite a shock when they realise that vaccines don't completely prevent deaths and certainly not infections. I would expect their case numbers to start soaring if they continue to ease restrictions, especially as they don't have the large number of people who have had Covid like we do here. It will be interesting to see the reaction of the public and politicians there to it.
Like many on here, I'm comfortable if prices rise to enable higher wages for those who are currently low paid. But then, like most on here, I can afford it.
But what about those who can't? Those who won't benefit from higher wages for whatever reason, or those who are on benefits because they are incapable of work? Many of the same people who have lost the UC uplift?
If you can resolve that, then I'm with you. But I guess people would not be so much in favour of higher benefits, or higher wages in those sectors where demand is less tight, or in low-paid public sector roles.
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.
Get over it already.
Its just adding. Staff costs need to rise. Component costs are exploding. Transport costs too. And we have retailers and wholesalers and manufacturers not making much money as it is. You say "people will pay". No they won't. If you have £10 to spend on groceries you have £10. If that only now buys 4 items instead of 6 before then you do not buy the other two.
There is a very clear direct link between price and volume. When price goes up, volume goes down. And as supermarkets make profit from selling lots of items at less than 2% net profit a drop in volume very quickly becomes a problem.
Oh well. Poor old Supermarkets, what a shame.
Deal with it. If it adds up, it adds up. If people only buy 4 items instead of 6, they buy 4 items instead of 6.
You want to screw wages down to the floor to compensate for other costs inflating? I say no to that. And you claim to be of the left. 🤔
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.
A question: why can't we charge stamp duty on the sort of property transactions that allowed the Blairs to purchase their London townhouse?
Pippa Crerar @PippaCrerar Still think @AndyBurnhamGM is the only (male) politician who has struck the right tone on this: “Any answer to this issue that begins with the words ‘women should’ or ‘women must’ is in my view the wrong answer”.
As thousands of women have been saying for bloody ages! But when a male politician finally says it, people listen. Grrr!!!!!
That’s one reason why it was so bad. Dick was brought in to reform though - and was certainly not intended to be continuity Hogan-Howe (the two had, incidentally, fallen out).
… Sources close to Khan said that of the four candidates for the job, it was Dick who outlined the best vision for reforming the Met while keeping the capital safe, during two rounds of interviews. The source added Dick “accepts that there needs to be changes”.
The only change she was interested in was being put in charge.
Quite.. the BBC shouod be more careful before smearing someone. There is no evidence this giy has done anything wrong, not saying he hasnt but the BBC piece is full of holes as its all smear and innuendo
Ah - Telia Sonera: I remember that investigation. Can't tell you why of course.
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.
While people say "sod the farmers" its far more than just farmers that have lived in poor conditions and getting poor wages in recent years.
Indeed the farmer's staff seem to have been stuffed more than the farmers themselves.
There certainly doesn't seem to have been a flooding of the market of farmers desperate to sell their land for development because they can't survive.
As I said it appears that we the British consumers are about to undergo a huge transformation in our economic society as Boris alluded to in his interview. Whether theory and practice coincide in everyone being thoroughly joyous at the prospect we are about to find out.
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
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.
Get over it already.
Its just adding. Staff costs need to rise. Component costs are exploding. Transport costs too. And we have retailers and wholesalers and manufacturers not making much money as it is. You say "people will pay". No they won't. If you have £10 to spend on groceries you have £10. If that only now buys 4 items instead of 6 before then you do not buy the other two.
There is a very clear direct link between price and volume. When price goes up, volume goes down. And as supermarkets make profit from selling lots of items at less than 2% net profit a drop in volume very quickly becomes a problem.
Oh well. Poor old Supermarkets, what a shame.
Deal with it. If it adds up, it adds up. If people only buy 4 items instead of 6, they buy 4 items instead of 6.
You want to screw wages down to the floor to compensate for other costs inflating? I say no to that. And you claim to be of the left. 🤔
Point is that you said "If the alternative is no product then both consumers and supermarkets will pay what they have to pay" and all the evidence is that this is simply wrong. If you are now abandoning that claim then fine.
Like many on here, I'm comfortable if prices rise to enable higher wages for those who are currently low paid. But then, like most on here, I can afford it.
But what about those who can't? Those who won't benefit from higher wages for whatever reason, or those who are on benefits because they are incapable of work? Many of the same people who have lost the UC uplift?
If you can resolve that, then I'm with you. But I guess people would not be so much in favour of higher benefits, or higher wages in those sectors where demand is less tight, or in low-paid public sector roles.
I would suggest that in a competitive labour environment that anyone on benefits who wants to be better off, gets a job that leaves them better off. Though I'd like the UC taper abolishing/fixing to encourage that.
If everyone who can work does work and works earning a competitive salary that doesn't need in-work benefits then we'd have more money left over to provide welfare for the extremely small minority who generally can't.
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.
It will certainly be interesting! It is absolutely certain that the restructuring that a swathe of businesses will fail which will make the shortages even acuter until farm to form production and distribution lines are remapped. The question for the government is will their supporters be resolute through this period, or will they start complaining?
Is the key question. Rishi got the price of milk right this morning on LBC when asked the prices of a basket of goods. I would be interested to see what if anything will catch the media's attention in terms of the coming price rises such that Boris will take note.
As per the fuel non-shortage example, blaming consumers for complaining about workers getting a "fair" wage will I'm sure feature prominently.
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.
Get over it already.
Its just adding. Staff costs need to rise. Component costs are exploding. Transport costs too. And we have retailers and wholesalers and manufacturers not making much money as it is. You say "people will pay". No they won't. If you have £10 to spend on groceries you have £10. If that only now buys 4 items instead of 6 before then you do not buy the other two.
There is a very clear direct link between price and volume. When price goes up, volume goes down. And as supermarkets make profit from selling lots of items at less than 2% net profit a drop in volume very quickly becomes a problem.
Oh well. Poor old Supermarkets, what a shame.
Deal with it. If it adds up, it adds up. If people only buy 4 items instead of 6, they buy 4 items instead of 6.
You want to screw wages down to the floor to compensate for other costs inflating? I say no to that. And you claim to be of the left. 🤔
Point is that you said "If the alternative is no product then both consumers and supermarkets will pay what they have to pay" and all the evidence is that this is simply wrong. If you are now abandoning that claim then fine.
I'm not abandoning that line, no.
If consumers and supermarkets want pork then they will pay whatever they need for pork.
If consumers decide they don't want a product anymore then that's an entirely different matter.
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
The revealing bit of that Boris interview was what he said about this being a transition. We are about to destructively test the drive of the last 20 years where consumers actively choose British products. Frankly a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign is the obvious thing missing from the government's strategy - why aren't they doing so?
Instead we are going to see our stuff get a lot more expensive, making imports more appealing than ever. People want to buy local but if they can't because it costs too much then the choice of import vs nothing will push import for many.
Which will literally fuck farming to death. Philip and some free market ideologues may welcome this, most people won't. The government will try and blame farmers until as with all the other "lets blame industry" attempts the actual numbers get published and the minister is shown up to be an absolute spanner. At which point the government caves in.
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..
Hence the inevitable AI revolt as they see humans are the problem!
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
How's that contradictory?
If third world wages are to be paid, they should be paid to people living in the third world. Not the UK.
Yes it is better to import products than import minimum wage people, who are then paid housing benefit and universal credit in order to live while driving up costs here.
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.
If everyone who watches the prices others charge is an informal cartel, then the entire world is an informal cartel. Price is one of the functioning bits of a free market economy. The formula is simple: price is what you can get.
Any perfect market will look little different from an informal cartel, the information you are seeing as creating the (informal) cartel is the information that exists in a perfect market.
Whether it's a perfect market or a cartel probably just depends on the level of profits being made and a 2% profit margin is definitely way closer to a perfect market than a cartel.
That’s one reason why it was so bad. Dick was brought in to reform though - and was certainly not intended to be continuity Hogan-Howe (the two had, incidentally, fallen out).
… Sources close to Khan said that of the four candidates for the job, it was Dick who outlined the best vision for reforming the Met while keeping the capital safe, during two rounds of interviews. The source added Dick “accepts that there needs to be changes”.
Yes, as I speculated a couple of threads back, it may be that the Mayor and Home Secretary are counting on Cressida Dick to enact other reforms with a view to enhancing both crime prevention and detection.
Or it might just be they don't want to admit their judgment if her was wrong.
Would that apply to the Home Secretary and Prime Minister, neither of whom was involved in her appointment in 2017? No, there must be more to it than that.
They just have very poor judgment, then.
The question is why, with so many examples of bad decision-making over the years, Cressida Dick has been allowed to stay in post, supported by both Conservatives and Labour?
Has she got something on them? Do they genuinely think she's the best person for an undeniably tough role? Are her known mistakes outweighed by unpublicised victories? Is she just a canny political operator? Is she a convenient scapegoat? All of the above?
A convenient scapegoat. No obviously better candidates. Concern about sacking a gay woman.
Ferociously fierce rain and hail here. A proper storm.
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.
Our architect suggested a minimum of ~£1300/sqm for extension costs (he also said that's likely an underestimate at present). So, same ball park. Land exclusive and, for us, oop north, so cheap. I can see reasons for an extension to be both more expensive and less expensive than rebuild (you don't have to build all new walls, but intefacing with existing building tricky).
It is worth noting that there must be some significant economy of scale factors in putting up a few hundred similar houses compared to a one-off extension/rebuild (supplies, more efficient use of labour, justify using more machinery). The RICS rebuild costs are for a one-off.
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.
While people say "sod the farmers" its far more than just farmers that have lived in poor conditions and getting poor wages in recent years.
Indeed the farmer's staff seem to have been stuffed more than the farmers themselves.
There certainly doesn't seem to have been a flooding of the market of farmers desperate to sell their land for development because they can't survive.
There does seem to have been a significant drop in the number of farmers in the UK in 2020.
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)
Is it only supermarkets who pull that stunt ?
At my work if one of our despatches is delayed at the customer we pay the transport company for the waiting time and excess unloading.
It doesn't happen often but then we have an incentive to make sure it doesn't.
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.
A question: why can't we charge stamp duty on the sort of property transactions that allowed the Blairs to purchase their London townhouse?
Pippa Crerar @PippaCrerar Still think @AndyBurnhamGM is the only (male) politician who has struck the right tone on this: “Any answer to this issue that begins with the words ‘women should’ or ‘women must’ is in my view the wrong answer”.
As thousands of women have been saying for bloody ages! But when a male politician finally says it, people listen. Grrr!!!!!
That’s one reason why it was so bad. Dick was brought in to reform though - and was certainly not intended to be continuity Hogan-Howe (the two had, incidentally, fallen out).
… Sources close to Khan said that of the four candidates for the job, it was Dick who outlined the best vision for reforming the Met while keeping the capital safe, during two rounds of interviews. The source added Dick “accepts that there needs to be changes”.
The only change she was interested in was being put in charge.
Quite.. the BBC shouod be more careful before smearing someone. There is no evidence this giy has done anything wrong, not saying he hasnt but the BBC piece is full of holes as its all smear and innuendo
Ah - Telia Sonera: I remember that investigation. Can't tell you why of course.
As Colbert used to say "As a man on behalf of women everywhere..."
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.
Our architect suggested a minimum of ~£1300/sqm for extension costs (he also said that's likely an underestimate at present). So, same ball park. Land exclusive and, for us, oop north, so cheap. I can see reasons for an extension to be both more expensive and less expensive than rebuild (you don't have to build all new walls, but intefacing with existing building tricky).
It is worth noting that there must be some significant economy of scale factors in putting up a few hundred similar houses compared to a one-off extension/rebuild (supplies, more efficient use of labour, justify using more machinery). The RICS rebuild costs are for a one-off.
There probably are significant savings that could be made on housing estate scales but given our previous allegory to investment in productivity (even small sites in France will have a crane and similar hardware) a lot of UK house builders will have a very long way to go.
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....
£200m wouldn't pay for more than a tidal puddle. They are two different things, and it need not be either/or.
I agree with you on the development of tidal power - decisions on which (as with nuclear) are about a decade too late.
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
The revealing bit of that Boris interview was what he said about this being a transition. We are about to destructively test the drive of the last 20 years where consumers actively choose British products. Frankly a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign is the obvious thing missing from the government's strategy - why aren't they doing so?
Instead we are going to see our stuff get a lot more expensive, making imports more appealing than ever. People want to buy local but if they can't because it costs too much then the choice of import vs nothing will push import for many.
Which will literally fuck farming to death. Philip and some free market ideologues may welcome this, most people won't. The government will try and blame farmers until as with all the other "lets blame industry" attempts the actual numbers get published and the minister is shown up to be an absolute spanner. At which point the government caves in.
Exactly, I can't work out if the government are autarkists (like Germany in 1930s) or free range marketeers (like the UK in the C19 and early C20, which wrecked farming also).
I'm not sure if this has been commented on but Jacinda Ardern has given up her Zero-Covid approach in the face of Delta and with a good level of vaccinations. Being a politician she is now claiming that Zero-Covid was never her aim.
The NZ people have been used to barely any Covid deaths. They are going to have quite a shock when they realise that vaccines don't completely prevent deaths and certainly not infections. I would expect their case numbers to start soaring if they continue to ease restrictions, especially as they don't have the large number of people who have had Covid like we do here. It will be interesting to see the reaction of the public and politicians there to it.
Enough goodwill has been bought with overall position.
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.
A question: why can't we charge stamp duty on the sort of property transactions that allowed the Blairs to purchase their London townhouse?
Because they aren’t buying the property, they’re buying a company in Belize (or whereever) that happens to own the property.
Cameron/Osbourne attempted to make this a more expensive route by charging a significant stamp on transfers of property into corporate ownership, but they didn’t do anything about properties that had already done this, nor was the tax so onerous that it would completely prevent future transfers.
There’s no obvious solution to this without upending current rules about UK property ownership: the government could insist that all UK property is held either by an named individual or through a UK registered ltd company & ban direct foreign ownership by corporations. Then they would have the power to intervene & find a way to charge stamp duty if they so chose.
But with the current system, where corporate ownership of UK property by foreign entities is permitted, it’s impossible to prevent this kind of tax evasion.
I'm not sure if this has been commented on but Jacinda Ardern has given up her Zero-Covid approach in the face of Delta and with a good level of vaccinations. Being a politician she is now claiming that Zero-Covid was never her aim.
The NZ people have been used to barely any Covid deaths. They are going to have quite a shock when they realise that vaccines don't completely prevent deaths and certainly not infections. I would expect their case numbers to start soaring if they continue to ease restrictions, especially as they don't have the large number of people who have had Covid like we do here. It will be interesting to see the reaction of the public and politicians there to it.
New Zealand can wait till they fully come out of restrictions because their FIRST vaccinations haven't plateaued yet let alone their second doses. NZ can't wait forever, but they can wait a bit longer to improve their mortality/morbidity.
Portugal looks to me to be the nation in best shape against coronavirus right now with 10.5% of the population being known ex cases and a vaccination rate of 85% (I suspect in reality it's a bit lower). The UK is 66%/11.5%.
"Boris Johnson’s majority would be almost halved if an election were held today, new modelling suggests.
In results that will cause significant discomfort among many of Johnson’s new MPs, the model suggested that the Conservatives would lose 18 red wall seats to Labour, with a further 14 seats that are too close to call.
According to the poll, the Tories have 41 per cent backing in the red wall, with Labour on 40 per cent. For Johnson that figure is 7 points down on the 2019 general election, when he was backed by 48 per cent in the red wall, and even two points down on 2017, when May lost her majority.
The results are modest progress for Sir Keir Starmer. The 40 per cent support for his party is up two points on 2019, but 10 points down on Jeremy Corbyn’s red wall backing in 2017.
The model predicts that four Conservative seats will be won by Labour by crushing margins of 10 points or more: Redcar, North West Durham, Heywood & Middleton and Lincoln. A handful of seats have become more Conservative: Colne Valley, West Bromwich East, Don Valley, Bishop Auckland and Ashfield."
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.
If everyone who watches the prices others charge is an informal cartel, then the entire world is an informal cartel. Price is one of the functioning bits of a free market economy. The formula is simple: price is what you can get.
Any perfect market will look little different from an informal cartel, the information you are seeing as creating the (informal) cartel is the information that exists in a perfect market.
Whether it's a perfect market or a cartel probably just depends on the level of profits being made and a 2% profit margin is definitely way closer to a perfect market than a cartel.
Very true! I just wanted to make the point that there are no free floating prices out there. Retail price is not the price consumers are willing to pay for it, it is the price set by retailers based on the price of the product in other retailers.
Some of their actions are quite funny as well. Asda "Rollback" can involve regular and repeated price cuts of 2-5p. Then a reset back to the starting price. Then regular and repeated price cuts of 2-5p...
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
The revealing bit of that Boris interview was what he said about this being a transition. We are about to destructively test the drive of the last 20 years where consumers actively choose British products. Frankly a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign is the obvious thing missing from the government's strategy - why aren't they doing so?
Instead we are going to see our stuff get a lot more expensive, making imports more appealing than ever. People want to buy local but if they can't because it costs too much then the choice of import vs nothing will push import for many.
Which will literally fuck farming to death. Philip and some free market ideologues may welcome this, most people won't. The government will try and blame farmers until as with all the other "lets blame industry" attempts the actual numbers get published and the minister is shown up to be an absolute spanner. At which point the government caves in.
The alternative is that there is no strategy, there is no transition, there are no ninjas, and BoJo is waving real wage rises (which are already starting to dissipate) as a triumph because it's all he has to hand today.
Like many on here, I'm comfortable if prices rise to enable higher wages for those who are currently low paid. But then, like most on here, I can afford it.
But what about those who can't? Those who won't benefit from higher wages for whatever reason, or those who are on benefits because they are incapable of work? Many of the same people who have lost the UC uplift?
If you can resolve that, then I'm with you. But I guess people would not be so much in favour of higher benefits, or higher wages in those sectors where demand is less tight, or in low-paid public sector roles.
There is one way to square the circle, and it is by cutting the cost of housing. If you can cut the cost of housing then people will have the money available to pay higher prices for food, etc.
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
The revealing bit of that Boris interview was what he said about this being a transition. We are about to destructively test the drive of the last 20 years where consumers actively choose British products. Frankly a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign is the obvious thing missing from the government's strategy - why aren't they doing so?
Instead we are going to see our stuff get a lot more expensive, making imports more appealing than ever. People want to buy local but if they can't because it costs too much then the choice of import vs nothing will push import for many.
Which will literally fuck farming to death. Philip and some free market ideologues may welcome this, most people won't. The government will try and blame farmers until as with all the other "lets blame industry" attempts the actual numbers get published and the minister is shown up to be an absolute spanner. At which point the government caves in.
Exactly, I can't work out if the government are autarkists (like Germany in 1930s) or free range marketeers (like the UK in the C19 and early C20, which wrecked farming also).
Why the heck should the government get involved in a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign? How is that the government's responsibility? Advertising and marketing is not the government's responsibility, that's not what we pay our taxes for.
Buying British when its economically competitive so why not buy British is easy to do. Buying British when it costs a premium ... that's actually then up to the consumers to make their choice.
If British farming gets fucked to death, then quite frankly I don't see why we should care - any more than when British mining got fucked to death. How are farmers any different to miners?
Farming takes up 70% of this countries land, but agriculture represents 0.59% of GDP. I'm not sure if that includes the 0.1% of GDP that the fisheries represent.
If we import more, we import more, but what we should not be importing is slavesserfspeasants minimum wage employees.
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
Is this person arguing in favour of the UK being self-sufficient in food?
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....
£200m wouldn't pay for more than a tidal puddle. They are two different things, and it need not be either/or.
I agree with you on the development of tidal power - decisions on which (as with nuclear) are about a decade too late.
The £200m would have been more than was needed by way of Government commitment to get Swansea going until it got subsumed into the purchase contracts for the much larger Cardiff lagoon coming along a few years behind it.
The tidal industry needed some very modest pump priming (less than the equivalent spend on 100m of HS2 track per year) but they are developed using private capital, not government money.
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
Is this person arguing in favour of the UK being self-sufficient in food?
Certainly in favour of the UK being able to produce meat.
Just realised that all that discussion on my post focused on the '10 year lost' life element and not the key point being made. So I am posting it again without that distraction because I thought it an interesting observation by the academic.
" '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. "
The key point is people assumed from this fact that lots more people weren't dying because all the excess deaths from covid mimicked the age spread of normal deaths. They were all going to die anyway!!!
We all misinterpret facts no matter how clear they seem to be and this was all this guy was pointing out. Most of us understand when we do this when it is pointed out, or appreciate we are coming to an opinion based upon a fact and it is possible we now might be wrong because we are making an assumption, no matter how reasonable it might seem to be. Unfortunately many don't in the general population.
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
The revealing bit of that Boris interview was what he said about this being a transition. We are about to destructively test the drive of the last 20 years where consumers actively choose British products. Frankly a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign is the obvious thing missing from the government's strategy - why aren't they doing so?
Instead we are going to see our stuff get a lot more expensive, making imports more appealing than ever. People want to buy local but if they can't because it costs too much then the choice of import vs nothing will push import for many.
Which will literally fuck farming to death. Philip and some free market ideologues may welcome this, most people won't. The government will try and blame farmers until as with all the other "lets blame industry" attempts the actual numbers get published and the minister is shown up to be an absolute spanner. At which point the government caves in.
Exactly, I can't work out if the government are autarkists (like Germany in 1930s) or free range marketeers (like the UK in the C19 and early C20, which wrecked farming also).
Why the heck should the government get involved in a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign? How is that the government's responsibility? Advertising and marketing is not the government's responsibility, that's not what we pay our taxes for.
Buying British when its economically competitive so why not buy British is easy to do. Buying British when it costs a premium ... that's actually then up to the consumers to make their choice.
If British farming gets fucked to death, then quite frankly I don't see why we should care - any more than when British mining got fucked to death. How are farmers any different to miners?
Farming takes up 70% of this countries land, but agriculture represents 0.59% of GDP. I'm not sure if that includes the 0.1% of GDP that the fisheries represent.
If we import more, we import more, but what we should not be importing is slavesserfspeasants minimum wage employees.
That's what the Tories and free market liberals said until the Great War. Which the UK very nearly lost if the Germans hadn't been so pusillanimous with the U-boats.
Amazing the Brexiters love to go on about Spitfires but forget the Battle of the Atlantic.
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
Is this person arguing in favour of the UK being self-sufficient in food?
Certainly in favour of the UK being able to produce meat.
Then they should pay a UK living wage to their employees.
Otherwise processing meat should go the way of coal mining.
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
The revealing bit of that Boris interview was what he said about this being a transition. We are about to destructively test the drive of the last 20 years where consumers actively choose British products. Frankly a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign is the obvious thing missing from the government's strategy - why aren't they doing so?
Instead we are going to see our stuff get a lot more expensive, making imports more appealing than ever. People want to buy local but if they can't because it costs too much then the choice of import vs nothing will push import for many.
Which will literally fuck farming to death. Philip and some free market ideologues may welcome this, most people won't. The government will try and blame farmers until as with all the other "lets blame industry" attempts the actual numbers get published and the minister is shown up to be an absolute spanner. At which point the government caves in.
A Buy British campaign has limited effect - people who put patriotism over perceived price/quality do exist but they are already buying British - it's why British cars cost more in Britain than they do in some other countries, since the manufacturers build in a consumer loyalty profit margin. The same happens in other countries.
The other option is protectionism - refuse to accept zero-tariff free trade deals with countries that have lower wages (many of us already advocate this for countries with animal welfare stands that would be illegal in Britain). Difficult to define, though.
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....
£200m wouldn't pay for more than a tidal puddle. They are two different things, and it need not be either/or.
I agree with you on the development of tidal power - decisions on which (as with nuclear) are about a decade too late.
The £200m would have been more than was needed by way of Government commitment to get Swansea going until it got subsumed into the purchase contracts for the much larger Cardiff lagoon coming along a few years behind it.
The tidal industry needed some very modest pump priming (less than the equivalent spend on 100m of HS2 track per year) but they are developed using private capital, not government money.
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....
£200m wouldn't pay for more than a tidal puddle. They are two different things, and it need not be either/or.
I agree with you on the development of tidal power - decisions on which (as with nuclear) are about a decade too late.
The £200m would have been more than was needed by way of Government commitment to get Swansea going until it got subsumed into the purchase contracts for the much larger Cardiff lagoon coming along a few years behind it.
The tidal industry needed some very modest pump priming (less than the equivalent spend on 100m of HS2 track per year) but they are developed using private capital, not government money.
Miles or metres of track? Miles, I assume.
No - metres! It is THAT small a contribution required to kick start it.
Even more infuriating, the budget for this very purpose was sat there, unused....
Like many on here, I'm comfortable if prices rise to enable higher wages for those who are currently low paid. But then, like most on here, I can afford it.
But what about those who can't? Those who won't benefit from higher wages for whatever reason, or those who are on benefits because they are incapable of work? Many of the same people who have lost the UC uplift?
If you can resolve that, then I'm with you. But I guess people would not be so much in favour of higher benefits, or higher wages in those sectors where demand is less tight, or in low-paid public sector roles.
There is one way to square the circle, and it is by cutting the cost of housing. If you can cut the cost of housing then people will have the money available to pay higher prices for food, etc.
And that's the problem. Because the eye of the needle that needs threading to reduce the cost of housing without widespread misery is awfully small.
And as things stand, I can more easily imagine a situation where any increases in wages that the government achieves very quickly trickle down to "improved affordability" and even higher house prices.
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....
£200m wouldn't pay for more than a tidal puddle. They are two different things, and it need not be either/or.
I agree with you on the development of tidal power - decisions on which (as with nuclear) are about a decade too late.
The £200m would have been more than was needed by way of Government commitment to get Swansea going until it got subsumed into the purchase contracts for the much larger Cardiff lagoon coming along a few years behind it.
The tidal industry needed some very modest pump priming (less than the equivalent spend on 100m of HS2 track per year) but they are developed using private capital, not government money.
Miles or metres of track? Miles, I assume.
No - metres! It is THAT small a contribution required to kick start it.
Even more infuriating, the budget for this very purpose was sat there, unused....
"Boris Johnson’s majority would be almost halved if an election were held today, new modelling suggests.
In results that will cause significant discomfort among many of Johnson’s new MPs, the model suggested that the Conservatives would lose 18 red wall seats to Labour, with a further 14 seats that are too close to call.
According to the poll, the Tories have 41 per cent backing in the red wall, with Labour on 40 per cent. For Johnson that figure is 7 points down on the 2019 general election, when he was backed by 48 per cent in the red wall, and even two points down on 2017, when May lost her majority.
The results are modest progress for Sir Keir Starmer. The 40 per cent support for his party is up two points on 2019, but 10 points down on Jeremy Corbyn’s red wall backing in 2017.
The model predicts that four Conservative seats will be won by Labour by crushing margins of 10 points or more: Redcar, North West Durham, Heywood & Middleton and Lincoln. A handful of seats have become more Conservative: Colne Valley, West Bromwich East, Don Valley, Bishop Auckland and Ashfield."
Young nobber in Redcar has absolutely screwed himself. Campaigned to save the Dorman Long tower as part of the "lets demolish the steelworks" plan. Gets outmanoeuvred by Ben Houchen International Airport who has young Jacob's listing of said tower rescinded and promptly demolishes it. A bonfire of tweets and facebook posts and they are now blocking anyone pointing out that Jacob Young ever said anything about it.
Yes it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things - its a tower. But Redcar has changed from Red to yellow to red to blue in a decade because of the steelworks. And Jacob Young MP has absolutely screwed himself.
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....
£200m wouldn't pay for more than a tidal puddle. They are two different things, and it need not be either/or.
I agree with you on the development of tidal power - decisions on which (as with nuclear) are about a decade too late.
The £200m would have been more than was needed by way of Government commitment to get Swansea going until it got subsumed into the purchase contracts for the much larger Cardiff lagoon coming along a few years behind it.
The tidal industry needed some very modest pump priming (less than the equivalent spend on 100m of HS2 track per year) but they are developed using private capital, not government money.
Miles or metres of track? Miles, I assume.
No - metres! It is THAT small a contribution required to kick start it.
Even more infuriating, the budget for this very purpose was sat there, unused....
Have you thought about writing a thread on this. I for one would be very interested and you seem to know your stuff.
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
The revealing bit of that Boris interview was what he said about this being a transition. We are about to destructively test the drive of the last 20 years where consumers actively choose British products. Frankly a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign is the obvious thing missing from the government's strategy - why aren't they doing so?
Instead we are going to see our stuff get a lot more expensive, making imports more appealing than ever. People want to buy local but if they can't because it costs too much then the choice of import vs nothing will push import for many.
Which will literally fuck farming to death. Philip and some free market ideologues may welcome this, most people won't. The government will try and blame farmers until as with all the other "lets blame industry" attempts the actual numbers get published and the minister is shown up to be an absolute spanner. At which point the government caves in.
Exactly, I can't work out if the government are autarkists (like Germany in 1930s) or free range marketeers (like the UK in the C19 and early C20, which wrecked farming also).
Why the heck should the government get involved in a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign? How is that the government's responsibility? Advertising and marketing is not the government's responsibility, that's not what we pay our taxes for.
Buying British when its economically competitive so why not buy British is easy to do. Buying British when it costs a premium ... that's actually then up to the consumers to make their choice.
If British farming gets fucked to death, then quite frankly I don't see why we should care - any more than when British mining got fucked to death. How are farmers any different to miners?
Farming takes up 70% of this countries land, but agriculture represents 0.59% of GDP. I'm not sure if that includes the 0.1% of GDP that the fisheries represent.
If we import more, we import more, but what we should not be importing is slavesserfspeasants minimum wage employees.
One other practical point. Mr Johnson and his allies are destroying the farming and fishing element - a key part of their support in the countryside, for instance in Scotland. That must have some effect on party support and not just voting, especially as SKS is now centre stage rather than Mr Corbyn.
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.
Our architect suggested a minimum of ~£1300/sqm for extension costs (he also said that's likely an underestimate at present). So, same ball park. Land exclusive and, for us, oop north, so cheap. I can see reasons for an extension to be both more expensive and less expensive than rebuild (you don't have to build all new walls, but intefacing with existing building tricky).
It is worth noting that there must be some significant economy of scale factors in putting up a few hundred similar houses compared to a one-off extension/rebuild (supplies, more efficient use of labour, justify using more machinery). The RICS rebuild costs are for a one-off.
Yep - the unspoken reality is that developers have ways and means of doing things on the cheap. The real build costs of cheap housing estates is probably closer to £800-£1000 / sqm, and the quality is poor; it is unlikely to last the way that much second hand housing has.
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.
A question: why can't we charge stamp duty on the sort of property transactions that allowed the Blairs to purchase their London townhouse?
Because they aren’t buying the property, they’re buying a company in Belize (or whereever) that happens to own the property.
Cameron/Osbourne attempted to make this a more expensive route by charging a significant stamp on transfers of property into corporate ownership, but they didn’t do anything about properties that had already done this, nor was the tax so onerous that it would completely prevent future transfers.
There’s no obvious solution to this without upending current rules about UK property ownership: the government could insist that all UK property is held either by an named individual or through a UK registered ltd company & ban direct foreign ownership by corporations. Then they would have the power to intervene & find a way to charge stamp duty if they so chose.
But with the current system, where corporate ownership of UK property by foreign entities is permitted, it’s impossible to prevent this kind of tax evasion.
I haven't thought about this in any detail but at first reading I'd quite like a change of this sort to be made. Property in the U.K. - especially in London - needs to stop being treated as a bank by foreigners who do not live here.
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
The revealing bit of that Boris interview was what he said about this being a transition. We are about to destructively test the drive of the last 20 years where consumers actively choose British products. Frankly a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign is the obvious thing missing from the government's strategy - why aren't they doing so?
Instead we are going to see our stuff get a lot more expensive, making imports more appealing than ever. People want to buy local but if they can't because it costs too much then the choice of import vs nothing will push import for many.
Which will literally fuck farming to death. Philip and some free market ideologues may welcome this, most people won't. The government will try and blame farmers until as with all the other "lets blame industry" attempts the actual numbers get published and the minister is shown up to be an absolute spanner. At which point the government caves in.
Exactly, I can't work out if the government are autarkists (like Germany in 1930s) or free range marketeers (like the UK in the C19 and early C20, which wrecked farming also).
Why the heck should the government get involved in a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign? How is that the government's responsibility? Advertising and marketing is not the government's responsibility, that's not what we pay our taxes for.
Buying British when its economically competitive so why not buy British is easy to do. Buying British when it costs a premium ... that's actually then up to the consumers to make their choice.
If British farming gets fucked to death, then quite frankly I don't see why we should care - any more than when British mining got fucked to death. How are farmers any different to miners?
Farming takes up 70% of this countries land, but agriculture represents 0.59% of GDP. I'm not sure if that includes the 0.1% of GDP that the fisheries represent.
If we import more, we import more, but what we should not be importing is slavesserfspeasants minimum wage employees.
That's what the Tories and free market liberals said until the Great War. Which the UK very nearly lost if the Germans hadn't been so pusillanimous with the U-boats.
Amazing the Brexiters love to go on about Spitfires but forget the Battle of the Atlantic.
Indeed. "just import it" is fine until you can't. Or the price increases 300%.
Like many on here, I'm comfortable if prices rise to enable higher wages for those who are currently low paid. But then, like most on here, I can afford it.
But what about those who can't? Those who won't benefit from higher wages for whatever reason, or those who are on benefits because they are incapable of work? Many of the same people who have lost the UC uplift?
If you can resolve that, then I'm with you. But I guess people would not be so much in favour of higher benefits, or higher wages in those sectors where demand is less tight, or in low-paid public sector roles.
There is one way to square the circle, and it is by cutting the cost of housing. If you can cut the cost of housing then people will have the money available to pay higher prices for food, etc.
And that's the problem. Because the eye of the needle that needs threading to reduce the cost of housing without widespread misery is awfully small.
And as things stand, I can more easily imagine a situation where any increases in wages that the government achieves very quickly trickle down to "improved affordability" and even higher house prices.
I can't imagine a situation with current bank regulations where any increase in wages doesn't result in higher house prices.
House prices are a remarkable sink that drains all available spare money out of the economy.
Were I to think about how you can fix it without changing anything I suspect I would end up with small wealth / land value tax (as well as council tax, not replacing it) being the easiest solution
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
Is this person arguing in favour of the UK being self-sufficient in food?
The key question is whether UKG is in favour of self sufficiency in food. Their actions suggest otherwise, as they prioritise imports over home production. Which is what this person is saying.
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
Is this person arguing in favour of the UK being self-sufficient in food?
Certainly in favour of the UK being able to produce meat.
Then they should pay a UK living wage to their employees.
Otherwise processing meat should go the way of coal mining.
They can already be sponsored to come in by employers, and need to be paid a wage of about £25k, which I make to be about 70% of median. "Skilled" means A-level or higher.
It would be better to add to that list, rather than play around with short term measures. The latter could become a habit.
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.
If everyone who watches the prices others charge is an informal cartel, then the entire world is an informal cartel. Price is one of the functioning bits of a free market economy. The formula is simple: price is what you can get.
Any perfect market will look little different from an informal cartel, the information you are seeing as creating the (informal) cartel is the information that exists in a perfect market.
Whether it's a perfect market or a cartel probably just depends on the level of profits being made and a 2% profit margin is definitely way closer to a perfect market than a cartel.
Very true! I just wanted to make the point that there are no free floating prices out there. Retail price is not the price consumers are willing to pay for it, it is the price set by retailers based on the price of the product in other retailers.
Some of their actions are quite funny as well. Asda "Rollback" can involve regular and repeated price cuts of 2-5p. Then a reset back to the starting price. Then regular and repeated price cuts of 2-5p...
The latter shenanigans is why I would force large supermarkets to display the price history for products for the past two years.
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
The revealing bit of that Boris interview was what he said about this being a transition. We are about to destructively test the drive of the last 20 years where consumers actively choose British products. Frankly a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign is the obvious thing missing from the government's strategy - why aren't they doing so?
Instead we are going to see our stuff get a lot more expensive, making imports more appealing than ever. People want to buy local but if they can't because it costs too much then the choice of import vs nothing will push import for many.
Which will literally fuck farming to death. Philip and some free market ideologues may welcome this, most people won't. The government will try and blame farmers until as with all the other "lets blame industry" attempts the actual numbers get published and the minister is shown up to be an absolute spanner. At which point the government caves in.
Exactly, I can't work out if the government are autarkists (like Germany in 1930s) or free range marketeers (like the UK in the C19 and early C20, which wrecked farming also).
Why the heck should the government get involved in a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign? How is that the government's responsibility? Advertising and marketing is not the government's responsibility, that's not what we pay our taxes for.
Buying British when its economically competitive so why not buy British is easy to do. Buying British when it costs a premium ... that's actually then up to the consumers to make their choice.
If British farming gets fucked to death, then quite frankly I don't see why we should care - any more than when British mining got fucked to death. How are farmers any different to miners?
Farming takes up 70% of this countries land, but agriculture represents 0.59% of GDP. I'm not sure if that includes the 0.1% of GDP that the fisheries represent.
If we import more, we import more, but what we should not be importing is slavesserfspeasants minimum wage employees.
That's what the Tories and free market liberals said until the Great War. Which the UK very nearly lost if the Germans hadn't been so pusillanimous with the U-boats.
Amazing the Brexiters love to go on about Spitfires but forget the Battle of the Atlantic.
Yes and the liberals were right then and even more right now.
We didn't lose the war and we're not at any real risk in the 21st century of being blockaded so get real. We are a wealthy nation, especially if we stop deflating our economy by importing from the third world, or dedicating 70% of land to 0.49% of GDP.
We spent decades relying upon imported coal for our electricity and we didn't get impoverished as a nation or blockaded by U-Boats when that happened. Special pleading by vested interests should be treated with the same amount of respect as the NUM got in the 80s.
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
The revealing bit of that Boris interview was what he said about this being a transition. We are about to destructively test the drive of the last 20 years where consumers actively choose British products. Frankly a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign is the obvious thing missing from the government's strategy - why aren't they doing so?
Instead we are going to see our stuff get a lot more expensive, making imports more appealing than ever. People want to buy local but if they can't because it costs too much then the choice of import vs nothing will push import for many.
Which will literally fuck farming to death. Philip and some free market ideologues may welcome this, most people won't. The government will try and blame farmers until as with all the other "lets blame industry" attempts the actual numbers get published and the minister is shown up to be an absolute spanner. At which point the government caves in.
A Buy British campaign has limited effect - people who put patriotism over perceived price/quality do exist but they are already buying British - it's why British cars cost more in Britain than they do in some other countries, since the manufacturers build in a consumer loyalty profit margin. The same happens in other countries.
The other option is protectionism - refuse to accept zero-tariff free trade deals with countries that have lower wages (many of us already advocate this for countries with animal welfare stands that would be illegal in Britain). Difficult to define, though.
Its a balance. If the British product is shit patriotism will only get you so far. But a lot of the lessons of the past can now be translated back into positives for production. We either invest in skills and tech and manufacturing or we let our competitors do it.
"Buy British" doesn't need to be either patriotic acceptance of crap product or protectionism.
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
The revealing bit of that Boris interview was what he said about this being a transition. We are about to destructively test the drive of the last 20 years where consumers actively choose British products. Frankly a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign is the obvious thing missing from the government's strategy - why aren't they doing so?
Instead we are going to see our stuff get a lot more expensive, making imports more appealing than ever. People want to buy local but if they can't because it costs too much then the choice of import vs nothing will push import for many.
Which will literally fuck farming to death. Philip and some free market ideologues may welcome this, most people won't. The government will try and blame farmers until as with all the other "lets blame industry" attempts the actual numbers get published and the minister is shown up to be an absolute spanner. At which point the government caves in.
Exactly, I can't work out if the government are autarkists (like Germany in 1930s) or free range marketeers (like the UK in the C19 and early C20, which wrecked farming also).
Why the heck should the government get involved in a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign? How is that the government's responsibility? Advertising and marketing is not the government's responsibility, that's not what we pay our taxes for.
Buying British when its economically competitive so why not buy British is easy to do. Buying British when it costs a premium ... that's actually then up to the consumers to make their choice.
If British farming gets fucked to death, then quite frankly I don't see why we should care - any more than when British mining got fucked to death. How are farmers any different to miners?
Farming takes up 70% of this countries land, but agriculture represents 0.59% of GDP. I'm not sure if that includes the 0.1% of GDP that the fisheries represent.
If we import more, we import more, but what we should not be importing is slavesserfspeasants minimum wage employees.
That's what the Tories and free market liberals said until the Great War. Which the UK very nearly lost if the Germans hadn't been so pusillanimous with the U-boats.
Amazing the Brexiters love to go on about Spitfires but forget the Battle of the Atlantic.
Indeed. "just import it" is fine until you can't. Or the price increases 300%.
What you don't seem to understand is that sovereignty is all about making the choice to be held hostage by foreign beef and poultry farmers.
Quite.. the BBC shouod be more careful before smearing someone. There is no evidence this giy has done anything wrong, not saying he hasnt but the BBC piece is full of holes as its all smear and innuendo
That's what the media does and to be honest the public doesn't care about the details. The expenses scandal was typical of this with those who were largely innocent being caught up with the villians. It isn't fair but people and organisations in these arenas should be extra careful. In the business I ran the potential for conflict of interest was huge so I made sure that even where there wasn't one, one could not be made up or imagined.
However in all your posts you do seem to want to wrap up the conservatives in cotton wool. Are you going to post the same next time there is a potential labour scandal?
Well according to everyone on here i am a dyed in the wool PB Tory.. so what would you expect🤣🤣🤣🤣
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
The revealing bit of that Boris interview was what he said about this being a transition. We are about to destructively test the drive of the last 20 years where consumers actively choose British products. Frankly a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign is the obvious thing missing from the government's strategy - why aren't they doing so?
Instead we are going to see our stuff get a lot more expensive, making imports more appealing than ever. People want to buy local but if they can't because it costs too much then the choice of import vs nothing will push import for many.
Which will literally fuck farming to death. Philip and some free market ideologues may welcome this, most people won't. The government will try and blame farmers until as with all the other "lets blame industry" attempts the actual numbers get published and the minister is shown up to be an absolute spanner. At which point the government caves in.
Exactly, I can't work out if the government are autarkists (like Germany in 1930s) or free range marketeers (like the UK in the C19 and early C20, which wrecked farming also).
Why the heck should the government get involved in a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign? How is that the government's responsibility? Advertising and marketing is not the government's responsibility, that's not what we pay our taxes for.
Buying British when its economically competitive so why not buy British is easy to do. Buying British when it costs a premium ... that's actually then up to the consumers to make their choice.
If British farming gets fucked to death, then quite frankly I don't see why we should care - any more than when British mining got fucked to death. How are farmers any different to miners?
Farming takes up 70% of this countries land, but agriculture represents 0.59% of GDP. I'm not sure if that includes the 0.1% of GDP that the fisheries represent.
If we import more, we import more, but what we should not be importing is slavesserfspeasants minimum wage employees.
That's what the Tories and free market liberals said until the Great War. Which the UK very nearly lost if the Germans hadn't been so pusillanimous with the U-boats.
Amazing the Brexiters love to go on about Spitfires but forget the Battle of the Atlantic.
Indeed. "just import it" is fine until you can't. Or the price increases 300%.
Indeed like all those rolling blackouts we've repeatedly suffered in the thirty years between Thatcher defeating the NUM and the Tories turning off coal power plants.
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
Is this person arguing in favour of the UK being self-sufficient in food?
The key question is whether UKG is in favour of self sufficiency in food. Their actions suggest otherwise, as they prioritise imports over home production. Which is what this person is saying.
I don't think it's remotely possible for the UK to be self sufficient in food. It's not a question of what anyone is in favour of, it's a question of reality.
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
Is this person arguing in favour of the UK being self-sufficient in food?
The key question is whether UKG is in favour of self sufficiency in food. Their actions suggest otherwise, as they prioritise imports over home production. Which is what this person is saying.
I don't think it's remotely possible for the UK to be self sufficient in food. It's not a question of what anyone is in favour of, it's a question of reality.
We're not but UK produced meat is why our countryside looks the way it does.
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
The revealing bit of that Boris interview was what he said about this being a transition. We are about to destructively test the drive of the last 20 years where consumers actively choose British products. Frankly a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign is the obvious thing missing from the government's strategy - why aren't they doing so?
Instead we are going to see our stuff get a lot more expensive, making imports more appealing than ever. People want to buy local but if they can't because it costs too much then the choice of import vs nothing will push import for many.
Which will literally fuck farming to death. Philip and some free market ideologues may welcome this, most people won't. The government will try and blame farmers until as with all the other "lets blame industry" attempts the actual numbers get published and the minister is shown up to be an absolute spanner. At which point the government caves in.
Exactly, I can't work out if the government are autarkists (like Germany in 1930s) or free range marketeers (like the UK in the C19 and early C20, which wrecked farming also).
Why the heck should the government get involved in a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign? How is that the government's responsibility? Advertising and marketing is not the government's responsibility, that's not what we pay our taxes for.
Buying British when its economically competitive so why not buy British is easy to do. Buying British when it costs a premium ... that's actually then up to the consumers to make their choice.
If British farming gets fucked to death, then quite frankly I don't see why we should care - any more than when British mining got fucked to death. How are farmers any different to miners?
Farming takes up 70% of this countries land, but agriculture represents 0.59% of GDP. I'm not sure if that includes the 0.1% of GDP that the fisheries represent.
If we import more, we import more, but what we should not be importing is slavesserfspeasants minimum wage employees.
That's what the Tories and free market liberals said until the Great War. Which the UK very nearly lost if the Germans hadn't been so pusillanimous with the U-boats.
Amazing the Brexiters love to go on about Spitfires but forget the Battle of the Atlantic.
That I think, was another Hitler f-up. He told them "no war for x years", then started after one . I'm not really aware of the Battle of the Atlantic being de-emphasized.
I think calling minimum wage employees "slaves" or "serfs" is absurd. UK has one of the highest minimum wage levels in Europe - on a level with France, Germany etc. Luxembourg and Switzerland and Norway are higher - we need to learn some lessons from there.
Not quite so sure about Labour mobility - there's a balance to be struck, and people earning more here then returning home helps poorer countries develop. Which is actually what we need for long term peace.
A buy British campaign is great - we have very high standards (especially eg for numbers of pigs grown outdoors) and should shout about it.
We also have some vociferous animal rights types with their heads in the clouds, who are sometimes locked into "misery UK" narratives, which are overdone. It's like Greens pretending that the UK has done nothing eg for emissions reduction, or insulation.
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
The revealing bit of that Boris interview was what he said about this being a transition. We are about to destructively test the drive of the last 20 years where consumers actively choose British products. Frankly a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign is the obvious thing missing from the government's strategy - why aren't they doing so?
Instead we are going to see our stuff get a lot more expensive, making imports more appealing than ever. People want to buy local but if they can't because it costs too much then the choice of import vs nothing will push import for many.
Which will literally fuck farming to death. Philip and some free market ideologues may welcome this, most people won't. The government will try and blame farmers until as with all the other "lets blame industry" attempts the actual numbers get published and the minister is shown up to be an absolute spanner. At which point the government caves in.
Exactly, I can't work out if the government are autarkists (like Germany in 1930s) or free range marketeers (like the UK in the C19 and early C20, which wrecked farming also).
Why the heck should the government get involved in a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign? How is that the government's responsibility? Advertising and marketing is not the government's responsibility, that's not what we pay our taxes for.
Buying British when its economically competitive so why not buy British is easy to do. Buying British when it costs a premium ... that's actually then up to the consumers to make their choice.
If British farming gets fucked to death, then quite frankly I don't see why we should care - any more than when British mining got fucked to death. How are farmers any different to miners?
Farming takes up 70% of this countries land, but agriculture represents 0.59% of GDP. I'm not sure if that includes the 0.1% of GDP that the fisheries represent.
If we import more, we import more, but what we should not be importing is slavesserfspeasants minimum wage employees.
That's what the Tories and free market liberals said until the Great War. Which the UK very nearly lost if the Germans hadn't been so pusillanimous with the U-boats.
Amazing the Brexiters love to go on about Spitfires but forget the Battle of the Atlantic.
Indeed. "just import it" is fine until you can't. Or the price increases 300%.
What you don't seem to understand is that sovereignty is all about making the choice to be held hostage by foreign beef and poultry farmers.
Yes it is.
Though if the world's foreign beef and poultry farmers ever chose to hold us to hostage that would be rather surprising considering they're not OPEC they're diverse across the entire planet. If any one nation's beef and poultry farmers chose to hold us to hostage, why would we not import from a different one?
I'm not sure if this has been commented on but Jacinda Ardern has given up her Zero-Covid approach in the face of Delta and with a good level of vaccinations. Being a politician she is now claiming that Zero-Covid was never her aim.
The NZ people have been used to barely any Covid deaths. They are going to have quite a shock when they realise that vaccines don't completely prevent deaths and certainly not infections. I would expect their case numbers to start soaring if they continue to ease restrictions, especially as they don't have the large number of people who have had Covid like we do here. It will be interesting to see the reaction of the public and politicians there to it.
New Zealand has one of the highest obesity rates in the world IIRC. That could be a problem wrt Covid-19 infections once Zero Covid has been abandoned.
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
The revealing bit of that Boris interview was what he said about this being a transition. We are about to destructively test the drive of the last 20 years where consumers actively choose British products. Frankly a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign is the obvious thing missing from the government's strategy - why aren't they doing so?
Instead we are going to see our stuff get a lot more expensive, making imports more appealing than ever. People want to buy local but if they can't because it costs too much then the choice of import vs nothing will push import for many.
Which will literally fuck farming to death. Philip and some free market ideologues may welcome this, most people won't. The government will try and blame farmers until as with all the other "lets blame industry" attempts the actual numbers get published and the minister is shown up to be an absolute spanner. At which point the government caves in.
Exactly, I can't work out if the government are autarkists (like Germany in 1930s) or free range marketeers (like the UK in the C19 and early C20, which wrecked farming also).
Why the heck should the government get involved in a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign? How is that the government's responsibility? Advertising and marketing is not the government's responsibility, that's not what we pay our taxes for.
Buying British when its economically competitive so why not buy British is easy to do. Buying British when it costs a premium ... that's actually then up to the consumers to make their choice.
If British farming gets fucked to death, then quite frankly I don't see why we should care - any more than when British mining got fucked to death. How are farmers any different to miners?
Farming takes up 70% of this countries land, but agriculture represents 0.59% of GDP. I'm not sure if that includes the 0.1% of GDP that the fisheries represent.
If we import more, we import more, but what we should not be importing is slavesserfspeasants minimum wage employees.
That's what the Tories and free market liberals said until the Great War. Which the UK very nearly lost if the Germans hadn't been so pusillanimous with the U-boats.
Amazing the Brexiters love to go on about Spitfires but forget the Battle of the Atlantic.
Yes and the liberals were right then and even more right now.
We didn't lose the war and we're not at any real risk in the 21st century of being blockaded so get real. We are a wealthy nation, especially if we stop deflating our economy by importing from the third world, or dedicating 70% of land to 0.49% of GDP.
We spent decades relying upon imported coal for our electricity and we didn't get impoverished as a nation or blockaded by U-Boats when that happened. Special pleading by vested interests should be treated with the same amount of respect as the NUM got in the 80s.
Remarkable that Darlington with significant investment and Treasury North is a swing seat while Sedgefield and Bishop Auckland are still firmly Tory...
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
The revealing bit of that Boris interview was what he said about this being a transition. We are about to destructively test the drive of the last 20 years where consumers actively choose British products. Frankly a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign is the obvious thing missing from the government's strategy - why aren't they doing so?
Instead we are going to see our stuff get a lot more expensive, making imports more appealing than ever. People want to buy local but if they can't because it costs too much then the choice of import vs nothing will push import for many.
Which will literally fuck farming to death. Philip and some free market ideologues may welcome this, most people won't. The government will try and blame farmers until as with all the other "lets blame industry" attempts the actual numbers get published and the minister is shown up to be an absolute spanner. At which point the government caves in.
Exactly, I can't work out if the government are autarkists (like Germany in 1930s) or free range marketeers (like the UK in the C19 and early C20, which wrecked farming also).
Why the heck should the government get involved in a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign? How is that the government's responsibility? Advertising and marketing is not the government's responsibility, that's not what we pay our taxes for.
Buying British when its economically competitive so why not buy British is easy to do. Buying British when it costs a premium ... that's actually then up to the consumers to make their choice.
If British farming gets fucked to death, then quite frankly I don't see why we should care - any more than when British mining got fucked to death. How are farmers any different to miners?
Farming takes up 70% of this countries land, but agriculture represents 0.59% of GDP. I'm not sure if that includes the 0.1% of GDP that the fisheries represent.
If we import more, we import more, but what we should not be importing is slavesserfspeasants minimum wage employees.
That's what the Tories and free market liberals said until the Great War. Which the UK very nearly lost if the Germans hadn't been so pusillanimous with the U-boats.
Amazing the Brexiters love to go on about Spitfires but forget the Battle of the Atlantic.
Yes and the liberals were right then and even more right now.
We didn't lose the war and we're not at any real risk in the 21st century of being blockaded so get real. We are a wealthy nation, especially if we stop deflating our economy by importing from the third world, or dedicating 70% of land to 0.49% of GDP.
We spent decades relying upon imported coal for our electricity and we didn't get impoverished as a nation or blockaded by U-Boats when that happened. Special pleading by vested interests should be treated with the same amount of respect as the NUM got in the 80s.
Plenty of hostages to fortune there.
Why was it OK to import coal for our electricity but not import meat?
In the modern world electricity is just as important as food.
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
Is this person arguing in favour of the UK being self-sufficient in food?
The key question is whether UKG is in favour of self sufficiency in food. Their actions suggest otherwise, as they prioritise imports over home production. Which is what this person is saying.
I don't think it's remotely possible for the UK to be self sufficient in food. It's not a question of what anyone is in favour of, it's a question of reality.
OK. To reiterate my point. UKG by its actions is making the UK less sufficient in food by prioritising imports over home production.
Remarkable that Darlington with significant investment and Treasury North is a swing seat while Sedgefield and Bishop Auckland are still firmly Tory...
Probably because Darlington is an urban seat whereas Sedgefield and Bishop Auckland are both fairly rural.
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
The revealing bit of that Boris interview was what he said about this being a transition. We are about to destructively test the drive of the last 20 years where consumers actively choose British products. Frankly a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign is the obvious thing missing from the government's strategy - why aren't they doing so?
Instead we are going to see our stuff get a lot more expensive, making imports more appealing than ever. People want to buy local but if they can't because it costs too much then the choice of import vs nothing will push import for many.
Which will literally fuck farming to death. Philip and some free market ideologues may welcome this, most people won't. The government will try and blame farmers until as with all the other "lets blame industry" attempts the actual numbers get published and the minister is shown up to be an absolute spanner. At which point the government caves in.
Exactly, I can't work out if the government are autarkists (like Germany in 1930s) or free range marketeers (like the UK in the C19 and early C20, which wrecked farming also).
Why the heck should the government get involved in a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign? How is that the government's responsibility? Advertising and marketing is not the government's responsibility, that's not what we pay our taxes for.
Buying British when its economically competitive so why not buy British is easy to do. Buying British when it costs a premium ... that's actually then up to the consumers to make their choice.
If British farming gets fucked to death, then quite frankly I don't see why we should care - any more than when British mining got fucked to death. How are farmers any different to miners?
Farming takes up 70% of this countries land, but agriculture represents 0.59% of GDP. I'm not sure if that includes the 0.1% of GDP that the fisheries represent.
If we import more, we import more, but what we should not be importing is slavesserfspeasants minimum wage employees.
That's what the Tories and free market liberals said until the Great War. Which the UK very nearly lost if the Germans hadn't been so pusillanimous with the U-boats.
Amazing the Brexiters love to go on about Spitfires but forget the Battle of the Atlantic.
Indeed. "just import it" is fine until you can't. Or the price increases 300%.
What you don't seem to understand is that sovereignty is all about making the choice to be held hostage by foreign beef and poultry farmers.
Yes it is.
Though if the world's foreign beef and poultry farmers ever chose to hold us to hostage that would be rather surprising considering they're not OPEC they're diverse across the entire planet. If any one nation's beef and poultry farmers chose to hold us to hostage, why would we not import from a different one?
I don't think pricing their products robustly constitutes holding us hostage. If foreign producers thought that we were forced buyers then you know what would happen to prices. Or would we all switch to Quorn instead?
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
Is this person arguing in favour of the UK being self-sufficient in food?
The key question is whether UKG is in favour of self sufficiency in food. Their actions suggest otherwise, as they prioritise imports over home production. Which is what this person is saying.
I don't think it's remotely possible for the UK to be self sufficient in food. It's not a question of what anyone is in favour of, it's a question of reality.
OK. To reiterate my point. UKG by its actions is making the UK less sufficient in food by prioritising imports over home production.
Why is that a bad thing?
Was it a bad thing we were less sufficient in coal?
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
The revealing bit of that Boris interview was what he said about this being a transition. We are about to destructively test the drive of the last 20 years where consumers actively choose British products. Frankly a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign is the obvious thing missing from the government's strategy - why aren't they doing so?
Instead we are going to see our stuff get a lot more expensive, making imports more appealing than ever. People want to buy local but if they can't because it costs too much then the choice of import vs nothing will push import for many.
Which will literally fuck farming to death. Philip and some free market ideologues may welcome this, most people won't. The government will try and blame farmers until as with all the other "lets blame industry" attempts the actual numbers get published and the minister is shown up to be an absolute spanner. At which point the government caves in.
Exactly, I can't work out if the government are autarkists (like Germany in 1930s) or free range marketeers (like the UK in the C19 and early C20, which wrecked farming also).
Why the heck should the government get involved in a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign? How is that the government's responsibility? Advertising and marketing is not the government's responsibility, that's not what we pay our taxes for.
Buying British when its economically competitive so why not buy British is easy to do. Buying British when it costs a premium ... that's actually then up to the consumers to make their choice.
If British farming gets fucked to death, then quite frankly I don't see why we should care - any more than when British mining got fucked to death. How are farmers any different to miners?
Farming takes up 70% of this countries land, but agriculture represents 0.59% of GDP. I'm not sure if that includes the 0.1% of GDP that the fisheries represent.
If we import more, we import more, but what we should not be importing is slavesserfspeasants minimum wage employees.
That's what the Tories and free market liberals said until the Great War. Which the UK very nearly lost if the Germans hadn't been so pusillanimous with the U-boats.
Amazing the Brexiters love to go on about Spitfires but forget the Battle of the Atlantic.
That I think, was another Hitler f-up. He told them "no war for x years", then started after one . I'm not really aware of the Battle of the Atlantic being de-emphasized.
I think calling minimum wage employees "slaves" or "serfs" is absurd. UK has one of the highest minimum wage levels in Europe - on a level with France, Germany etc. Luxembourg and Switzerland and Norway are higher - we need to learn some lessons from there.
Not quite so sure about Labour mobility - there's a balance to be struck, and people earning more here then returning home helps poorer countries develop. Which is actually what we need for long term peace.
A buy British campaign is great - we have very high standards (especially eg for numbers of pigs grown outdoors) and should shout about it.
We also have some vociferous animal rights types with their heads in the clouds, who are sometimes locked into "misery UK" narratives, which are overdone. It's like Greens pretending that the UK has done nothing eg for emissions reduction, or insulation.
A better measure than minimum wage levels would be the percentage of the population on the minimum wage - I suspect that would be very revealing and show that been using labour rather than investment to solve problems for the past 10 years.
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
The revealing bit of that Boris interview was what he said about this being a transition. We are about to destructively test the drive of the last 20 years where consumers actively choose British products. Frankly a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign is the obvious thing missing from the government's strategy - why aren't they doing so?
Instead we are going to see our stuff get a lot more expensive, making imports more appealing than ever. People want to buy local but if they can't because it costs too much then the choice of import vs nothing will push import for many.
Which will literally fuck farming to death. Philip and some free market ideologues may welcome this, most people won't. The government will try and blame farmers until as with all the other "lets blame industry" attempts the actual numbers get published and the minister is shown up to be an absolute spanner. At which point the government caves in.
Exactly, I can't work out if the government are autarkists (like Germany in 1930s) or free range marketeers (like the UK in the C19 and early C20, which wrecked farming also).
Why the heck should the government get involved in a "buy British, eat British, build British" campaign? How is that the government's responsibility? Advertising and marketing is not the government's responsibility, that's not what we pay our taxes for.
Buying British when its economically competitive so why not buy British is easy to do. Buying British when it costs a premium ... that's actually then up to the consumers to make their choice.
If British farming gets fucked to death, then quite frankly I don't see why we should care - any more than when British mining got fucked to death. How are farmers any different to miners?
Farming takes up 70% of this countries land, but agriculture represents 0.59% of GDP. I'm not sure if that includes the 0.1% of GDP that the fisheries represent.
If we import more, we import more, but what we should not be importing is slavesserfspeasants minimum wage employees.
That's what the Tories and free market liberals said until the Great War. Which the UK very nearly lost if the Germans hadn't been so pusillanimous with the U-boats.
Amazing the Brexiters love to go on about Spitfires but forget the Battle of the Atlantic.
Yes and the liberals were right then and even more right now.
We didn't lose the war and we're not at any real risk in the 21st century of being blockaded so get real. We are a wealthy nation, especially if we stop deflating our economy by importing from the third world, or dedicating 70% of land to 0.49% of GDP.
We spent decades relying upon imported coal for our electricity and we didn't get impoverished as a nation or blockaded by U-Boats when that happened. Special pleading by vested interests should be treated with the same amount of respect as the NUM got in the 80s.
Plenty of hostages to fortune there.
Why was it OK to import coal for our electricity but not import meat?
In the modern world electricity is just as important as food.
Comments
At my work if one of our despatches is delayed at the customer we pay the transport company for the waiting time and excess unloading.
It doesn't happen often but then we have an incentive to make sure it doesn't.
Just makes sense to have lots of turbines, quieter days are ideal for maintenance.
Done properly it's a nice additional profit for the transport company...
There is a very clear direct link between price and volume. When price goes up, volume goes down. And as supermarkets make profit from selling lots of items at <2% net profit a drop in volume very quickly becomes a problem.
Interesting ccomment in Stephen Bush of the Statesman's morning email:
'There’s a ‘but’ coming, though: Downing Street’s objection to the Northern Ireland protocol is genuine, and the fuel crisis may have changed the balance of opinion within the government about the risks or otherwise of triggering the protocol.
Why? Because an as yet-unnoticed subplot of the HGV driver shortage and the resulting shortages of petrol is that the shortages haven’t found their way into Northern Ireland: because the protocol means Northern Ireland essentially has a different Brexit deal from the rest of the United Kingdom.
[...] the chaos arising from triggering Article 16 may be easier to survive politically than having to explain the widening gulf emerging between Northern Ireland and Great Britain as the former remains in the EU de facto if not de jury while the latter’s promised “British renaissance” fails to arrive.'
Indeed the farmer's staff seem to have been stuffed more than the farmers themselves.
There certainly doesn't seem to have been a flooding of the market of farmers desperate to sell their land for development because they can't survive.
A bit like the Newark one.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/citikey.uk/amp/display/waitrose-petrol-station-T2ZNS
Officers are leaving en masse already; last case I heard was someone who packed it in to become a manager at ALDI for twice the pay.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-04/new-zealand-extends-auckland-lockdown-but-eases-some-coronavirus/100512666
The NZ people have been used to barely any Covid deaths. They are going to have quite a shock when they realise that vaccines don't completely prevent deaths and certainly not infections. I would expect their case numbers to start soaring if they continue to ease restrictions, especially as they don't have the large number of people who have had Covid like we do here. It will be interesting to see the reaction of the public and politicians there to it.
So despite nobody knowing who Keir Starmer is, he's still making progress?
But what about those who can't? Those who won't benefit from higher wages for whatever reason, or those who are on benefits because they are incapable of work? Many of the same people who have lost the UC uplift?
If you can resolve that, then I'm with you. But I guess people would not be so much in favour of higher benefits, or higher wages in those sectors where demand is less tight, or in low-paid public sector roles.
Deal with it. If it adds up, it adds up. If people only buy 4 items instead of 6, they buy 4 items instead of 6.
You want to screw wages down to the floor to compensate for other costs inflating? I say no to that. And you claim to be of the left. 🤔
'In a separate interview, Nick Allen, the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, told Sky News that while the government criticised producers for paying low wages, it was happy for meat to be imported from countries that paid low wages. He said:
"What’s interesting is [the government is] happy to ban the import of non-UK labour in this country, but they continue to actually aid and abet imported food from countries that have got access to this labour.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for these increased wages and they somewhat get in the way of that by aiding and abetting imported food."'
If everyone who can work does work and works earning a competitive salary that doesn't need in-work benefits then we'd have more money left over to provide welfare for the extremely small minority who generally can't.
As per the fuel non-shortage example, blaming consumers for complaining about workers getting a "fair" wage will I'm sure feature prominently.
If consumers and supermarkets want pork then they will pay whatever they need for pork.
If consumers decide they don't want a product anymore then that's an entirely different matter.
Instead we are going to see our stuff get a lot more expensive, making imports more appealing than ever. People want to buy local but if they can't because it costs too much then the choice of import vs nothing will push import for many.
Which will literally fuck farming to death. Philip and some free market ideologues may welcome this, most people won't. The government will try and blame farmers until as with all the other "lets blame industry" attempts the actual numbers get published and the minister is shown up to be an absolute spanner. At which point the government caves in.
If third world wages are to be paid, they should be paid to people living in the third world. Not the UK.
Yes it is better to import products than import minimum wage people, who are then paid housing benefit and universal credit in order to live while driving up costs here.
Whether it's a perfect market or a cartel probably just depends on the level of profits being made and a 2% profit margin is definitely way closer to a perfect market than a cartel.
Ferociously fierce rain and hail here. A proper storm.
It is worth noting that there must be some significant economy of scale factors in putting up a few hundred similar houses compared to a one-off extension/rebuild (supplies, more efficient use of labour, justify using more machinery). The RICS rebuild costs are for a one-off.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/319325/number-of-farmers-in-the-uk/
JK.
They are two different things, and it need not be either/or.
I agree with you on the development of tidal power - decisions on which (as with nuclear) are about a decade too late.
Cameron/Osbourne attempted to make this a more expensive route by charging a significant stamp on transfers of property into corporate ownership, but they didn’t do anything about properties that had already done this, nor was the tax so onerous that it would completely prevent future transfers.
There’s no obvious solution to this without upending current rules about UK property ownership: the government could insist that all UK property is held either by an named individual or through a UK registered ltd company & ban direct foreign ownership by corporations. Then they would have the power to intervene & find a way to charge stamp duty if they so chose.
But with the current system, where corporate ownership of UK property by foreign entities is permitted, it’s impossible to prevent this kind of tax evasion.
NZ can't wait forever, but they can wait a bit longer to improve their mortality/morbidity.
Portugal looks to me to be the nation in best shape against coronavirus right now with 10.5% of the population being known ex cases and a vaccination rate of 85% (I suspect in reality it's a bit lower). The UK is 66%/11.5%.
"Boris Johnson’s majority would be almost halved if an election were held today, new modelling suggests.
In results that will cause significant discomfort among many of Johnson’s new MPs, the model suggested that the Conservatives would lose 18 red wall seats to Labour, with a further 14 seats that are too close to call.
According to the poll, the Tories have 41 per cent backing in the red wall, with Labour on 40 per cent. For Johnson that figure is 7 points down on the 2019 general election, when he was backed by 48 per cent in the red wall, and even two points down on 2017, when May lost her majority.
The results are modest progress for Sir Keir Starmer. The 40 per cent support for his party is up two points on 2019, but 10 points down on Jeremy Corbyn’s red wall backing in 2017.
The model predicts that four Conservative seats will be won by Labour by crushing margins of 10 points or more: Redcar, North West Durham, Heywood & Middleton and Lincoln. A handful of seats have become more Conservative: Colne Valley, West Bromwich East, Don Valley, Bishop Auckland and Ashfield."
Some of their actions are quite funny as well. Asda "Rollback" can involve regular and repeated price cuts of 2-5p. Then a reset back to the starting price. Then regular and repeated price cuts of 2-5p...
Short answer - yes.
Ominous red wall polling in The Times this morning:
32 out of 50 Tory seats in the north, midlands and north Wales are at risk
54 per cent disapprove of government, 55 per cent think it is handling economy badly
41 per cent want Johnson to quit
Time for Boris to actually deliver on levelling up...
Buying British when its economically competitive so why not buy British is easy to do. Buying British when it costs a premium ... that's actually then up to the consumers to make their choice.
If British farming gets fucked to death, then quite frankly I don't see why we should care - any more than when British mining got fucked to death. How are farmers any different to miners?
Farming takes up 70% of this countries land, but agriculture represents 0.59% of GDP. I'm not sure if that includes the 0.1% of GDP that the fisheries represent.
If we import more, we import more, but what we should not be importing is slaves serfs peasants minimum wage employees.
The tidal industry needed some very modest pump priming (less than the equivalent spend on 100m of HS2 track per year) but they are developed using private capital, not government money.
" '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. "
The key point is people assumed from this fact that lots more people weren't dying because all the excess deaths from covid mimicked the age spread of normal deaths. They were all going to die anyway!!!
We all misinterpret facts no matter how clear they seem to be and this was all this guy was pointing out. Most of us understand when we do this when it is pointed out, or appreciate we are coming to an opinion based upon a fact and it is possible we now might be wrong because we are making an assumption, no matter how reasonable it might seem to be. Unfortunately many don't in the general population.
Amazing the Brexiters love to go on about Spitfires but forget the Battle of the Atlantic.
Otherwise processing meat should go the way of coal mining.
Which reminds me I most chase them up on how to fix that and change the email address to a valid one.
The other option is protectionism - refuse to accept zero-tariff free trade deals with countries that have lower wages (many of us already advocate this for countries with animal welfare stands that would be illegal in Britain). Difficult to define, though.
That 59% don't want Boris to quit or can't be arsed to have a view doesn't sound quite so damning.
Even more infuriating, the budget for this very purpose was sat there, unused....
And as things stand, I can more easily imagine a situation where any increases in wages that the government achieves very quickly trickle down to "improved affordability" and even higher house prices.
Yes it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things - its a tower. But Redcar has changed from Red to yellow to red to blue in a decade because of the steelworks. And Jacob Young MP has absolutely screwed himself.
House prices are a remarkable sink that drains all available spare money out of the economy.
Were I to think about how you can fix it without changing anything I suspect I would end up with small wealth / land value tax (as well as council tax, not replacing it) being the easiest solution
https://www.pig-world.co.uk/news/association-calls-for-meat-processors-to-be-eligible-for-skilled-worker-visas.html
They can already be sponsored to come in by employers, and need to be paid a wage of about £25k, which I make to be about 70% of median. "Skilled" means A-level or higher.
It would be better to add to that list, rather than play around with short term measures. The latter could become a habit.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2021/10/04/new-yougov-mrp-model-shows-conservatives-losing-32
We didn't lose the war and we're not at any real risk in the 21st century of being blockaded so get real. We are a wealthy nation, especially if we stop deflating our economy by importing from the third world, or dedicating 70% of land to 0.49% of GDP.
We spent decades relying upon imported coal for our electricity and we didn't get impoverished as a nation or blockaded by U-Boats when that happened. Special pleading by vested interests should be treated with the same amount of respect as the NUM got in the 80s.
"Buy British" doesn't need to be either patriotic acceptance of crap product or protectionism.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-58786003
on here i am a dyed in the wool PB Tory.. so what would you expect🤣🤣🤣🤣
Oh wait. That didn't happen.
I think calling minimum wage employees "slaves" or "serfs" is absurd. UK has one of the highest minimum wage levels in Europe - on a level with France, Germany etc. Luxembourg and Switzerland and Norway are higher - we need to learn some lessons from there.
Not quite so sure about Labour mobility - there's a balance to be struck, and people earning more here then returning home helps poorer countries develop. Which is actually what we need for long term peace.
A buy British campaign is great - we have very high standards (especially eg for numbers of pigs grown outdoors) and should shout about it.
We also have some vociferous animal rights types with their heads in the clouds, who are sometimes locked into "misery UK" narratives, which are overdone. It's like Greens pretending that the UK has done nothing eg for emissions reduction, or insulation.
Constituency swings
Though if the world's foreign beef and poultry farmers ever chose to hold us to hostage that would be rather surprising considering they're not OPEC they're diverse across the entire planet. If any one nation's beef and poultry farmers chose to hold us to hostage, why would we not import from a different one?
In the modern world electricity is just as important as food.
Was it a bad thing we were less sufficient in coal?