'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?
Why would we be forced buyers?
If I want to buy chicken from the Netherlands and they think we're a forced buyer then why wouldn't we buy from Thailand? Or Brazil? Or the USA? Or Poland? Or Turkey? Or . . .
We're not a forced buyer, because there's no monopoly supplier.
Blimey. Stockton South back into toss-up territory? Matt Vickers will have have to do more than social media posts whilst pissed and writing to the Palace of Westminster catering teams to get Parmo on the menu.
TBH to Matt I think he is a decent human being. Its just that punters in Stockton are fickle, they turned out in large numbers to vote for him and expect delivery. He hasn't done much yet.
'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.
Known and unknown unknowns is your friend here.
And which one applies for food that didn't apply for electricity?
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.
She’s actually tightened restrictions again, putting another region into lockdown today. Meanwhile, Greater Auckland, which accounts for around 40% of the entire NZ population, has been under lockdown for six weeks. And masks have to be worn indoors nationwide.
'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.
We benefited from massive subsidies in Brazil and Venezuela to make coal cheap. Alternately they could have banged the price up and we'd have been screwed. Point is that being reliant on someone else means you aren't in control - they are.
'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?
It isn't necessarily a bad thing if you believe immigration is bad per se, and restricting it is more important than maintaining home industries. But the consequence of restricting the means to profitably produce food at market prices, while you don't restrict imports of competitor products, is to see imports replace home production.
'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.
The UK productivity gap has long been noted by the Economist and other economic observers of standing.
'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?
It isn't necessarily a bad thing if you believe immigration is bad per se, and less important than maintaining home industries. But the consequence of restricting the means to profitably produce food at market prices, while you don't restrict imports of competitor products, is to see imports replace home production.
I don't think immigration is bad whatsoever. I support as much high-skilled, high-wage immigration as possible.
I think immigration for minimum wage jobs, deflating our economy and driving up costs combined with giving those who come here for minimum wages jobs housing benefit, universal credit etc because minimum wage isn't enough to live in this nation is bad. Don't you?
Blimey. Stockton South back into toss-up territory? Matt Vickers will have have to do more than social media posts whilst pissed and writing to the Palace of Westminster catering teams to get Parmo on the menu.
TBH to Matt I think he is a decent human being. Its just that punters in Stockton are fickle, they turned out in large numbers to vote for him and expect delivery. He hasn't done much yet.
Also worth saying - Redcar is always going to be a toss-up seat, unless you deliver.
North West Durham should be being used by SKS to show the reason why Corbyn died - a left wing loony only works as a candidate in a few constituencies...
'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?
Why would we be forced buyers?
If I want to buy chicken from the Netherlands and they think we're a forced buyer then why wouldn't we buy from Thailand? Or Brazil? Or the USA? Or Poland? Or Turkey? Or . . .
We're not a forced buyer, because there's no monopoly supplier.
Absolutely but at the same time if it is perceived (by all suppliers - we live in a world where Thai and Dutch chicken producers read the same analysis) that we are forced buyers then there will be a shift in pricing.
Will it send us to meat substitutes? Probably not. Will it result in higher prices? Probably.
At which point one has to ask what the aim of govt is. To put our farmers out of business and raise prices for consumers doesn't sit well in a GE manifesto.
'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 other words, how far the UK has gone back to the good old Speenhamland System of the 19th century.
'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?
Why would we be forced buyers?
If I want to buy chicken from the Netherlands and they think we're a forced buyer then why wouldn't we buy from Thailand? Or Brazil? Or the USA? Or Poland? Or Turkey? Or . . .
We're not a forced buyer, because there's no monopoly supplier.
Absolutely but at the same time if it is perceived (by all suppliers - we live in a world where Thai and Dutch chicken producers read the same analysis) that we are forced buyers then there will be a shift in pricing.
Will it send us to meat substitutes? Probably not. Will it result in higher prices? Probably.
At which point one has to ask what the aim of govt is. To put our farmers out of business and raise prices for consumers doesn't sit well in a GE manifesto.
That's not the way the market works. We will pay competitive global market rates, because there will be competition.
'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.
The UK productivity gap has long been noted by the Economist and other economic observers of standing.
Yep that's productivity. What would be interesting to know is what percentage of people are on the minimum wage in the UK compared to say France or Germany? That would show the extent of various problems I believe we have.
Blimey. Stockton South back into toss-up territory? Matt Vickers will have have to do more than social media posts whilst pissed and writing to the Palace of Westminster catering teams to get Parmo on the menu.
TBH to Matt I think he is a decent human being. Its just that punters in Stockton are fickle, they turned out in large numbers to vote for him and expect delivery. He hasn't done much yet.
Also worth saying - Redcar is always going to be a toss-up seat, unless you deliver.
North West Durham should be being used by SKS to show the reason why Corbyn died - a left wing loony only works as a candidate in a few constituencies...
I don't know if NW Durham CLP is still run by mouth-foamers or if Laura Pillock wants to contest the seat again.
Blimey. Stockton South back into toss-up territory? Matt Vickers will have have to do more than social media posts whilst pissed and writing to the Palace of Westminster catering teams to get Parmo on the menu.
TBH to Matt I think he is a decent human being. Its just that punters in Stockton are fickle, they turned out in large numbers to vote for him and expect delivery. He hasn't done much yet.
These constituency results are decidedly mixed for Labour IMO. Good swings in about 20 seats, but some of the others are pretty dismal.
'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.
We benefited from massive subsidies in Brazil and Venezuela to make coal cheap. Alternately they could have banged the price up and we'd have been screwed. Point is that being reliant on someone else means you aren't in control - they are.
It also assumes that the other countries have food to spare to export. An increasingly uncertain assumption.
On topic (ish) Keir Starmer is an uninspiring product but that won't matter if the economy stagflates - Labour could simply win by default anyway.
Remember 1974.
I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose, oppositions don't win.
Your boy can win despite stagflation. And if winning is all that matters. starting ulture wars and scapegoating minorities are meat and drink to Johnson's current audience. Even if the economy is on its knees, my long held view that incumbency takes the hit has been proven wrong by the fuel crisis.
It is not the crisis, but who gets the blame for the crisis. Previous governments, Remainers, woke lefties, foreigners, foreign governments are all fair game, and Johnson is winning at that game.
'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?
It isn't necessarily a bad thing if you believe immigration is bad per se, and less important than maintaining home industries. But the consequence of restricting the means to profitably produce food at market prices, while you don't restrict imports of competitor products, is to see imports replace home production.
I don't think immigration is bad whatsoever. I support as much high-skilled, high-wage immigration as possible.
I think immigration for minimum wage jobs, deflating our economy and driving up costs combined with giving those who come here for minimum wages jobs housing benefit, universal credit etc because minimum wage isn't enough to live in this nation is bad. Don't you?
I don't think this, no. Because it ignores market reality. Not an expert, but I don't think slaughtermen were working at minimum wage under FoM anyway.
'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?
It isn't necessarily a bad thing if you believe immigration is bad per se, and less important than maintaining home industries. But the consequence of restricting the means to profitably produce food at market prices, while you don't restrict imports of competitor products, is to see imports replace home production.
I don't think immigration is bad whatsoever. I support as much high-skilled, high-wage immigration as possible.
I think immigration for minimum wage jobs, deflating our economy and driving up costs combined with giving those who come here for minimum wages jobs housing benefit, universal credit etc because minimum wage isn't enough to live in this nation is bad. Don't you?
I don't think this, no. Because it ignores market reality. Not an expert, but I don't think slaughtermen were working at minimum wage under FoM anyway.
'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?
It isn't necessarily a bad thing if you believe immigration is bad per se, and less important than maintaining home industries. But the consequence of restricting the means to profitably produce food at market prices, while you don't restrict imports of competitor products, is to see imports replace home production.
I don't think immigration is bad whatsoever. I support as much high-skilled, high-wage immigration as possible.
I think immigration for minimum wage jobs, deflating our economy and driving up costs combined with giving those who come here for minimum wages jobs housing benefit, universal credit etc because minimum wage isn't enough to live in this nation is bad. Don't you?
I don't think this, no. Because it ignores market reality. Not an expert, but I don't think slaughtermen were working at minimum wage under FoM anyway.
Actually they were. We had job details being shared here saying that night shifts in an abattoir in South East England were being paid £9.12 per hour.
Do you think its feasible or productive to be working for £9.12 per hour for overnight shifts in South East England? Or to be frank anywhere in the UK.
Ashfield is unpredictable, Zadrozny was 2nd there last time round. And I can see Don Valley going more Tory as Flint would have retained eurosceptic vote. Don't see why West Bromwich East will swing more to the Tories though, the Brexit party vote wasn't very high at all there. I'd have thought it would be a good Labour target...
'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?
It isn't necessarily a bad thing if you believe immigration is bad per se, and less important than maintaining home industries. But the consequence of restricting the means to profitably produce food at market prices, while you don't restrict imports of competitor products, is to see imports replace home production.
I don't think immigration is bad whatsoever. I support as much high-skilled, high-wage immigration as possible.
I think immigration for minimum wage jobs, deflating our economy and driving up costs combined with giving those who come here for minimum wages jobs housing benefit, universal credit etc because minimum wage isn't enough to live in this nation is bad. Don't you?
I don't think this, no. Because it ignores market reality. Not an expert, but I don't think slaughtermen were working at minimum wage under FoM anyway.
Actually they were. We had job details being shared here saying that night shifts in an abattoir in South East England were being paid £9.12 per hour.
Do you think its feasible or productive to be working for £9.12 per hour for overnight shifts in South East England? Or to be frank anywhere in the UK.
Glassdoor has average slaughtermen salaries at £31 000, which is about twice minimum wage. I'm sure when you drill down there are big variations. But those apparently reasonably paid jobs will go if we import the products instead, thanks to the government immigration and trade policies.
Blimey. Stockton South back into toss-up territory? Matt Vickers will have have to do more than social media posts whilst pissed and writing to the Palace of Westminster catering teams to get Parmo on the menu.
TBH to Matt I think he is a decent human being. Its just that punters in Stockton are fickle, they turned out in large numbers to vote for him and expect delivery. He hasn't done much yet.
Also worth saying - Redcar is always going to be a toss-up seat, unless you deliver.
North West Durham should be being used by SKS to show the reason why Corbyn died - a left wing loony only works as a candidate in a few constituencies...
I’d be amazed if North West Durham swings back to labour by that degree.
Holden seems reasonably popular and the seat just feels demographically to be trending away from labour. Lots of nice middle class housing estates and nice little villages.
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.
Yes, in the US and the rest of the Anglosphere and most of continental Europe Sedgefield and Bishop Auckland would be pretty safe conservative areas. Both mainly rural, market town areas.
Brexit was the final push they needed to go Tory. Blair's Sedgefield could now be as lost to Labour going forward as Bill Clinton's Arkansas now is to the Democrats.
'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?
It isn't necessarily a bad thing if you believe immigration is bad per se, and less important than maintaining home industries. But the consequence of restricting the means to profitably produce food at market prices, while you don't restrict imports of competitor products, is to see imports replace home production.
I don't think immigration is bad whatsoever. I support as much high-skilled, high-wage immigration as possible.
I think immigration for minimum wage jobs, deflating our economy and driving up costs combined with giving those who come here for minimum wages jobs housing benefit, universal credit etc because minimum wage isn't enough to live in this nation is bad. Don't you?
I don't think this, no. Because it ignores market reality. Not an expert, but I don't think slaughtermen were working at minimum wage under FoM anyway.
Actually they were. We had job details being shared here saying that night shifts in an abattoir in South East England were being paid £9.12 per hour.
Do you think its feasible or productive to be working for £9.12 per hour for overnight shifts in South East England? Or to be frank anywhere in the UK.
Glassdoor has average slaughtermen salaries at £31 000, which is about twice minimum wage. I'm sure when you drill down there are big variations. But those apparently reasonably paid jobs will go if we import the products instead, thanks to the government immigration and trade policies.
No they won't, if they're productive they'll stay.
What will go is the £9.12 per hour jobs being advertised.
Do you think its acceptable to expect a night shift job for difficult work to be filled for £9.12 per hour?
'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?
Why would we be forced buyers?
If I want to buy chicken from the Netherlands and they think we're a forced buyer then why wouldn't we buy from Thailand? Or Brazil? Or the USA? Or Poland? Or Turkey? Or . . .
We're not a forced buyer, because there's no monopoly supplier.
Absolutely but at the same time if it is perceived (by all suppliers - we live in a world where Thai and Dutch chicken producers read the same analysis) that we are forced buyers then there will be a shift in pricing.
Will it send us to meat substitutes? Probably not. Will it result in higher prices? Probably.
At which point one has to ask what the aim of govt is. To put our farmers out of business and raise prices for consumers doesn't sit well in a GE manifesto.
That's not the way the market works. We will pay competitive global market rates, because there will be competition.
The way the market works is that if global suppliers realise we need to buy any product then the price will go up accordingly.
On topic (ish) Keir Starmer is an uninspiring product but that won't matter if the economy stagflates - Labour could simply win by default anyway.
Remember 1974.
I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose, oppositions don't win.
Your boy can win despite stagflation. And if winning is all that matters. starting ulture wars and scapegoating minorities are meat and drink to Johnson's current audience. Even if the economy is on its knees, my long held view that incumbency takes the hit has been proven wrong by the fuel crisis.
It is not the crisis, but who gets the blame for the crisis. Previous governments, Remainers, woke lefties, foreigners, foreign governments are all fair game, and Johnson is winning at that game.
'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?
Why would we be forced buyers?
If I want to buy chicken from the Netherlands and they think we're a forced buyer then why wouldn't we buy from Thailand? Or Brazil? Or the USA? Or Poland? Or Turkey? Or . . .
We're not a forced buyer, because there's no monopoly supplier.
Absolutely but at the same time if it is perceived (by all suppliers - we live in a world where Thai and Dutch chicken producers read the same analysis) that we are forced buyers then there will be a shift in pricing.
Will it send us to meat substitutes? Probably not. Will it result in higher prices? Probably.
At which point one has to ask what the aim of govt is. To put our farmers out of business and raise prices for consumers doesn't sit well in a GE manifesto.
That's not the way the market works. We will pay competitive global market rates, because there will be competition.
The way the market works is that if global suppliers realise we need to buy any product then the price will go up accordingly.
But we won't need to buy any product because there'll be alternative suppliers for the product. Hence competitive market rates 🤦♂️
Blimey. Stockton South back into toss-up territory? Matt Vickers will have have to do more than social media posts whilst pissed and writing to the Palace of Westminster catering teams to get Parmo on the menu.
TBH to Matt I think he is a decent human being. Its just that punters in Stockton are fickle, they turned out in large numbers to vote for him and expect delivery. He hasn't done much yet.
These constituency results are decidedly mixed for Labour IMO. Good swings in about 20 seats, but some of the others are pretty dismal.
That will be GE 2023 in a nutshell. The Con majority will reduce as Labour take back some seats (Lib-Dems will win a few as well) but it will be patchy and not enough to deprive the Conservatives of another 4-5 year term
Con majority 30-40? Seems about right to me.
It will mark the beginning of the end of this latest prolonged period of Tory government though IMO.
Blimey. Stockton South back into toss-up territory? Matt Vickers will have have to do more than social media posts whilst pissed and writing to the Palace of Westminster catering teams to get Parmo on the menu.
TBH to Matt I think he is a decent human being. Its just that punters in Stockton are fickle, they turned out in large numbers to vote for him and expect delivery. He hasn't done much yet.
These constituency results are decidedly mixed for Labour IMO. Good swings in about 20 seats, but some of the others are pretty dismal.
That will be GE 2023 in a nutshell. The Con majority will reduce as Labour take back some seats... but it will be patchy and not enough to deprive the Conservatives of another 4-5 year term
Con majority 30-40? Seems about right to me.
It will mark the beginning of the end of this latest prolonged period of Tory government though IMO.
Mind you still some achievement, only one party has won a general election after ten years in power since universal suffrage in 1918. Major's Tories in 1992
A high wage economy, says Boris. So nurses are given a 3% pay rise for working through Covid with inadequate PPE and then 1% is taken back in national insurance, and the rest in higher petrol prices and electricity costs, leaving most of them poorer that before. You could say the same for lots of people, not to mention the Ponzi scheme of student loans which will burden most high achieving school leavers as soon as they graduate. We need lower taxes, so that people retain a decent proportion of what they earn.
And nurses, like everybody else need to increase their productivity so they can be paid higher wages.
In practical terms, what does that mean? Is a single staff nurse looking after a ward of 30 patients more productive? Or one who has enough time with each patient that they don't catch a hospital acquired infection, that their vital signs are monitored and acted on, and the patient leaves the hospital alive and expeditiously?
It means using fewer inputs to get the same output. So a staff nurse looking after 30 patients would be more productive than one looking after 29, provided she gives them the same quality of care. Of course it's difficult to measure in the service sector. And still more difficult to improve. But it is the key to higher pay.
Productivity increases in the service sector, which is by far the biggest bit of the economy, are inherently limited by the nature of those services. People value the time and personal input of much of these, whether healthcare, dining out or getting a beauty treatment.
Stagnant productivity is a feature of a post industrial economy. Demand may have pushed up HGV wages, but it hasn't made them more productive. Some individuals have benefited, but as an economy there has been no gain.
Eventually what we might see in the HGV sector is automated driving, which will be a spectacular increase in labour productivity.
We already have it - it's called railways. Thirty lorries in one train.
(runs for cover)
But the problem with automated lorries is the same as it is for trains: the last mile. It's fine saying you can drive along the motorways, or even to the depots, but somewhat pointless if you need drivers for the rest of it.
I've been bearish on automated driving for years. There hasn't been much progress to make me change my mind. If anything, the lack of progress cements it: it's an incredibly tricky problem, as Tesla, Waymo and others are finding out to their cost.
Automation works on some urban railways *because* you take out some of the unpredictability and risk that would otherwise have to be taken into account by a human driver. That's why it's feasible on the jubilee line extension, DLR or Crossrail (central section) as you separate the platform-train interface, and automate everything else.
You can't do that everywhere across the whole country.
It's the same problem as self driving cars - unless everything is fully automated, human beings have a nasty habit of accidently creating serious issues..
Driverless cars are only 5 years away. And will be for many years to come.
Unfair. Driverless cars will be coming on stream just at the point that ‘the North’ will be levelled up.
Blimey. Stockton South back into toss-up territory? Matt Vickers will have have to do more than social media posts whilst pissed and writing to the Palace of Westminster catering teams to get Parmo on the menu.
TBH to Matt I think he is a decent human being. Its just that punters in Stockton are fickle, they turned out in large numbers to vote for him and expect delivery. He hasn't done much yet.
These constituency results are decidedly mixed for Labour IMO. Good swings in about 20 seats, but some of the others are pretty dismal.
That will be GE 2023 in a nutshell. The Con majority will reduce as Labour take back some seats... but it will be patchy and not enough to deprive the Conservatives of another 4-5 year term
Con majority 30-40? Seems about right to me.
It will mark the beginning of the end of this latest prolonged period of Tory government though IMO.
Mind you still some achievement, only one party has won a general election after ten years in power since universal suffrage in 1918. Major's Tories in 1992
Oh yeah. In 2010 who would have thought the Tories would have another 18 year of government ether in coalition or alone?
'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?
It isn't necessarily a bad thing if you believe immigration is bad per se, and less important than maintaining home industries. But the consequence of restricting the means to profitably produce food at market prices, while you don't restrict imports of competitor products, is to see imports replace home production.
I don't think immigration is bad whatsoever. I support as much high-skilled, high-wage immigration as possible.
I think immigration for minimum wage jobs, deflating our economy and driving up costs combined with giving those who come here for minimum wages jobs housing benefit, universal credit etc because minimum wage isn't enough to live in this nation is bad. Don't you?
I don't think this, no. Because it ignores market reality. Not an expert, but I don't think slaughtermen were working at minimum wage under FoM anyway.
Actually they were. We had job details being shared here saying that night shifts in an abattoir in South East England were being paid £9.12 per hour.
Do you think its feasible or productive to be working for £9.12 per hour for overnight shifts in South East England? Or to be frank anywhere in the UK.
Glassdoor has average slaughtermen salaries at £31 000, which is about twice minimum wage. I'm sure when you drill down there are big variations. But those apparently reasonably paid jobs will go if we import the products instead, thanks to the government immigration and trade policies.
No they won't, if they're productive they'll stay.
What will go is the £9.12 per hour jobs being advertised.
Do you think its acceptable to expect a night shift job for difficult work to be filled for £9.12 per hour?
Glassdoor really isn't accurate when looking at wages for UK jobs...
'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?
It isn't necessarily a bad thing if you believe immigration is bad per se, and less important than maintaining home industries. But the consequence of restricting the means to profitably produce food at market prices, while you don't restrict imports of competitor products, is to see imports replace home production.
I don't think immigration is bad whatsoever. I support as much high-skilled, high-wage immigration as possible.
I think immigration for minimum wage jobs, deflating our economy and driving up costs combined with giving those who come here for minimum wages jobs housing benefit, universal credit etc because minimum wage isn't enough to live in this nation is bad. Don't you?
I don't think this, no. Because it ignores market reality. Not an expert, but I don't think slaughtermen were working at minimum wage under FoM anyway.
Actually they were. We had job details being shared here saying that night shifts in an abattoir in South East England were being paid £9.12 per hour.
Do you think its feasible or productive to be working for £9.12 per hour for overnight shifts in South East England? Or to be frank anywhere in the UK.
It's ok as long as the workers are Eastern European, apparently
And dont forget, it was reciprocal, so we had the opportunity to go and work in their abbatoirs for 94p an hour
'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?
It isn't necessarily a bad thing if you believe immigration is bad per se, and less important than maintaining home industries. But the consequence of restricting the means to profitably produce food at market prices, while you don't restrict imports of competitor products, is to see imports replace home production.
I don't think immigration is bad whatsoever. I support as much high-skilled, high-wage immigration as possible.
I think immigration for minimum wage jobs, deflating our economy and driving up costs combined with giving those who come here for minimum wages jobs housing benefit, universal credit etc because minimum wage isn't enough to live in this nation is bad. Don't you?
I don't think this, no. Because it ignores market reality. Not an expert, but I don't think slaughtermen were working at minimum wage under FoM anyway.
Actually they were. We had job details being shared here saying that night shifts in an abattoir in South East England were being paid £9.12 per hour.
Do you think its feasible or productive to be working for £9.12 per hour for overnight shifts in South East England? Or to be frank anywhere in the UK.
Glassdoor has average slaughtermen salaries at £31 000, which is about twice minimum wage. I'm sure when you drill down there are big variations. But those apparently reasonably paid jobs will go if we import the products instead, thanks to the government immigration and trade policies.
No they won't, if they're productive they'll stay.
What will go is the £9.12 per hour jobs being advertised.
Do you think its acceptable to expect a night shift job for difficult work to be filled for £9.12 per hour?
You really aren't understanding the market forces at play here. Point is, British meat is competitive against imports at whatever the average salary is - stated to be £31 000. As they can't get sufficient staff at that salary, abbatoirs could increase the offer but then they would no longer be competitive with imports. In effect the £31 000, or whatever it is, is the ceiling.
That's the system devised by the government. They could restrict imports of goods through quotas and tariffs. That would have consequences. Restrictions on imports of labour and of goods are really two sides of the same coin. The government has chosen to restrict the first but not the second. That's the market environment.
'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."'
This is nonsense of course. The whole of international trade depends on Ricardo's law of comparative advantage. Of course domestic producers want special favours. That is protectionism/mercantilism down the ages. It will never go away. The reality is that UK agri would barely exist except for the immense subsidies, support and favours they receive already.
Because food security is essential, personally I support this, but it doesn't alter the laws 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.
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?
It isn't necessarily a bad thing if you believe immigration is bad per se, and less important than maintaining home industries. But the consequence of restricting the means to profitably produce food at market prices, while you don't restrict imports of competitor products, is to see imports replace home production.
I don't think immigration is bad whatsoever. I support as much high-skilled, high-wage immigration as possible.
I think immigration for minimum wage jobs, deflating our economy and driving up costs combined with giving those who come here for minimum wages jobs housing benefit, universal credit etc because minimum wage isn't enough to live in this nation is bad. Don't you?
I don't think this, no. Because it ignores market reality. Not an expert, but I don't think slaughtermen were working at minimum wage under FoM anyway.
Actually they were. We had job details being shared here saying that night shifts in an abattoir in South East England were being paid £9.12 per hour.
Do you think its feasible or productive to be working for £9.12 per hour for overnight shifts in South East England? Or to be frank anywhere in the UK.
Glassdoor has average slaughtermen salaries at £31 000, which is about twice minimum wage. I'm sure when you drill down there are big variations. But those apparently reasonably paid jobs will go if we import the products instead, thanks to the government immigration and trade policies.
No they won't, if they're productive they'll stay.
What will go is the £9.12 per hour jobs being advertised.
Do you think its acceptable to expect a night shift job for difficult work to be filled for £9.12 per hour?
You really aren't understanding the market forces at play here. Point is, British meat is competitive against imports at whatever the average salary is - stated to be £31 000. As they can't get sufficient staff at that salary, abbatoirs could increase the offer but then they would no longer be competitive with imports. In effect the £31 000, or whatever it is, is the ceiling.
That's the system devised by the government. They could restrict imports of goods through quotas and tariffs. That would have consequences. Restrictions on imports of labour and of goods are really two sides of the same coin. The government has chosen to restrict the first but not the second. That's the market environment.
The average salary is not £31k, glassdoor is not accurate. But nor is today's price a ceiling for tomorrow's price, supply and demand is constantly adjusting prices.
If they're no longer competitive, so be it. If it sees the death of £9.12 per hour night shift jobs then fantastic.
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.
Yes, in the US and the rest of the Anglosphere and most of continental Europe Sedgefield and Bishop Auckland would be pretty safe conservative areas. Both mainly rural, market town areas.
Brexit was the final push they needed to go Tory. Blair's Sedgefield could now be as lost to Labour going forward as Bill Clinton's Arkansas now is to the Democrats.
I suspect Bishop Auckland is lost too. The town itself is only a small part of the seat and there are lots of new housing estates being thrown up. All nice 3/4 bed houses. It’s the sort of place I look at and am surprised it was labour for so long.
On topic (ish) Keir Starmer is an uninspiring product but that won't matter if the economy stagflates - Labour could simply win by default anyway.
Remember 1974.
I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose, oppositions don't win.
Your boy can win despite stagflation. And if winning is all that matters. starting ulture wars and scapegoating minorities are meat and drink to Johnson's current audience. Even if the economy is on its knees, my long held view that incumbency takes the hit has been proven wrong by the fuel crisis.
It is not the crisis, but who gets the blame for the crisis. Previous governments, Remainers, woke lefties, foreigners, foreign governments are all fair game, and Johnson is winning at that game.
Is it shocking that only a small minority women would date someone who (presumably, if supporting Trump) think it is ok to "grab them by the pussy"?
How would you feel about a poll finding that few women of Jewish heritage would date a Corbynista? Would that be shocking evidence of the the 'rise of regressive authoritarianism'?
If you want to shape the world, then get out there and do it, whether left, right or centre. US conservatives need to stop being such snowflakes.
A high wage economy, says Boris. So nurses are given a 3% pay rise for working through Covid with inadequate PPE and then 1% is taken back in national insurance, and the rest in higher petrol prices and electricity costs, leaving most of them poorer that before. You could say the same for lots of people, not to mention the Ponzi scheme of student loans which will burden most high achieving school leavers as soon as they graduate. We need lower taxes, so that people retain a decent proportion of what they earn.
And nurses, like everybody else need to increase their productivity so they can be paid higher wages.
In practical terms, what does that mean? Is a single staff nurse looking after a ward of 30 patients more productive? Or one who has enough time with each patient that they don't catch a hospital acquired infection, that their vital signs are monitored and acted on, and the patient leaves the hospital alive and expeditiously?
It means using fewer inputs to get the same output. So a staff nurse looking after 30 patients would be more productive than one looking after 29, provided she gives them the same quality of care. Of course it's difficult to measure in the service sector. And still more difficult to improve. But it is the key to higher pay.
Productivity increases in the service sector, which is by far the biggest bit of the economy, are inherently limited by the nature of those services. People value the time and personal input of much of these, whether healthcare, dining out or getting a beauty treatment.
Stagnant productivity is a feature of a post industrial economy. Demand may have pushed up HGV wages, but it hasn't made them more productive. Some individuals have benefited, but as an economy there has been no gain.
Eventually what we might see in the HGV sector is automated driving, which will be a spectacular increase in labour productivity.
We already have it - it's called railways. Thirty lorries in one train.
(runs for cover)
But the problem with automated lorries is the same as it is for trains: the last mile. It's fine saying you can drive along the motorways, or even to the depots, but somewhat pointless if you need drivers for the rest of it.
I've been bearish on automated driving for years. There hasn't been much progress to make me change my mind. If anything, the lack of progress cements it: it's an incredibly tricky problem, as Tesla, Waymo and others are finding out to their cost.
Automation works on some urban railways *because* you take out some of the unpredictability and risk that would otherwise have to be taken into account by a human driver. That's why it's feasible on the jubilee line extension, DLR or Crossrail (central section) as you separate the platform-train interface, and automate everything else.
You can't do that everywhere across the whole country.
It's the same problem as self driving cars - unless everything is fully automated, human beings have a nasty habit of accidently creating serious issues..
Driverless cars are only 5 years away. And will be for many years to come.
Unfair. Driverless cars will be coming on stream just at the point that ‘the North’ will be levelled up.
They'll happen. They will start with motorways, and - this is the key point - they will be centrally controlled, via 8g and AI superdupercomputers. That eliminates the main problem of their misconstruing each others' intentions, cos they won't have individual intentions.
With of course heaps of onboard computing power so you can make them autonomous, but limit their speed to 30 mph, in case of outages.
'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?
It isn't necessarily a bad thing if you believe immigration is bad per se, and less important than maintaining home industries. But the consequence of restricting the means to profitably produce food at market prices, while you don't restrict imports of competitor products, is to see imports replace home production.
I don't think immigration is bad whatsoever. I support as much high-skilled, high-wage immigration as possible.
I think immigration for minimum wage jobs, deflating our economy and driving up costs combined with giving those who come here for minimum wages jobs housing benefit, universal credit etc because minimum wage isn't enough to live in this nation is bad. Don't you?
I don't think this, no. Because it ignores market reality. Not an expert, but I don't think slaughtermen were working at minimum wage under FoM anyway.
Actually they were. We had job details being shared here saying that night shifts in an abattoir in South East England were being paid £9.12 per hour.
Do you think its feasible or productive to be working for £9.12 per hour for overnight shifts in South East England? Or to be frank anywhere in the UK.
Glassdoor has average slaughtermen salaries at £31 000, which is about twice minimum wage. I'm sure when you drill down there are big variations. But those apparently reasonably paid jobs will go if we import the products instead, thanks to the government immigration and trade policies.
No they won't, if they're productive they'll stay.
What will go is the £9.12 per hour jobs being advertised.
Do you think its acceptable to expect a night shift job for difficult work to be filled for £9.12 per hour?
Glassdoor really isn't accurate when looking at wages for UK jobs...
I agree, but at least a proportion of people will be paid that. £9 an hour isn't the average salary either. The market forces principle still applies, regardless of what the actual average salary is.
On topic (ish) Keir Starmer is an uninspiring product but that won't matter if the economy stagflates - Labour could simply win by default anyway.
Remember 1974.
I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose, oppositions don't win.
Your boy can win despite stagflation. And if winning is all that matters. starting ulture wars and scapegoating minorities are meat and drink to Johnson's current audience. Even if the economy is on its knees, my long held view that incumbency takes the hit has been proven wrong by the fuel crisis.
It is not the crisis, but who gets the blame for the crisis. Previous governments, Remainers, woke lefties, foreigners, foreign governments are all fair game, and Johnson is winning at that game.
Is it shocking that only a small minority women would date someone who (presumably, if supporting Trump) think it is ok to "grab them by the pussy"?
How would you feel about a poll finding that few women of Jewish heritage would date a Corbynista? Would that be shocking evidence of the the 'rise of regressive authoritarianism'?
If you want to shape the world, then get out there and do it, whether left, right or centre. US conservatives need to stop being such snowflakes.
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.
Oh, I completely agree. Not easy to push through though.
The soft power brokers in London - the lawyers & accountants who service the world’s oligarchs, the people who run the City as the UK’s finest tax haven in order to line their own pockets, the owners of fleet street’s finest who rely on these schemes for their own profitability & so on & on - will move heaven and earth to prevent it happening. The increased transparency would be anathema to the landed gentry as well - the Crown will hate it for a start.
It’s the kind of change this country really needs though.
'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?
It isn't necessarily a bad thing if you believe immigration is bad per se, and less important than maintaining home industries. But the consequence of restricting the means to profitably produce food at market prices, while you don't restrict imports of competitor products, is to see imports replace home production.
I don't think immigration is bad whatsoever. I support as much high-skilled, high-wage immigration as possible.
I think immigration for minimum wage jobs, deflating our economy and driving up costs combined with giving those who come here for minimum wages jobs housing benefit, universal credit etc because minimum wage isn't enough to live in this nation is bad. Don't you?
I don't think this, no. Because it ignores market reality. Not an expert, but I don't think slaughtermen were working at minimum wage under FoM anyway.
Actually they were. We had job details being shared here saying that night shifts in an abattoir in South East England were being paid £9.12 per hour.
Do you think its feasible or productive to be working for £9.12 per hour for overnight shifts in South East England? Or to be frank anywhere in the UK.
Glassdoor has average slaughtermen salaries at £31 000, which is about twice minimum wage. I'm sure when you drill down there are big variations. But those apparently reasonably paid jobs will go if we import the products instead, thanks to the government immigration and trade policies.
No they won't, if they're productive they'll stay.
What will go is the £9.12 per hour jobs being advertised.
Do you think its acceptable to expect a night shift job for difficult work to be filled for £9.12 per hour?
Glassdoor really isn't accurate when looking at wages for UK jobs...
I agree, but at least a proportion of people will be paid that. £9 an hour isn't the average salary either. The market forces principle still applies, regardless of what the actual average salary is.
The market was broken because of the Single Market making £9 per hour plus in work benefits sound attractive to people from Eastern Europe earning potentially £2
'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?
It isn't necessarily a bad thing if you believe immigration is bad per se, and less important than maintaining home industries. But the consequence of restricting the means to profitably produce food at market prices, while you don't restrict imports of competitor products, is to see imports replace home production.
I don't think immigration is bad whatsoever. I support as much high-skilled, high-wage immigration as possible.
I think immigration for minimum wage jobs, deflating our economy and driving up costs combined with giving those who come here for minimum wages jobs housing benefit, universal credit etc because minimum wage isn't enough to live in this nation is bad. Don't you?
I don't think this, no. Because it ignores market reality. Not an expert, but I don't think slaughtermen were working at minimum wage under FoM anyway.
Actually they were. We had job details being shared here saying that night shifts in an abattoir in South East England were being paid £9.12 per hour.
Do you think its feasible or productive to be working for £9.12 per hour for overnight shifts in South East England? Or to be frank anywhere in the UK.
Glassdoor has average slaughtermen salaries at £31 000, which is about twice minimum wage. I'm sure when you drill down there are big variations. But those apparently reasonably paid jobs will go if we import the products instead, thanks to the government immigration and trade policies.
No they won't, if they're productive they'll stay.
What will go is the £9.12 per hour jobs being advertised.
Do you think its acceptable to expect a night shift job for difficult work to be filled for £9.12 per hour?
Glassdoor really isn't accurate when looking at wages for UK jobs...
I agree, but at least a proportion of people will be paid that. £9 an hour isn't the average salary either. The market forces principle still applies, regardless of what the actual average salary is.
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.
Yes, in the US and the rest of the Anglosphere and most of continental Europe Sedgefield and Bishop Auckland would be pretty safe conservative areas. Both mainly rural, market town areas.
Brexit was the final push they needed to go Tory. Blair's Sedgefield could now be as lost to Labour going forward as Bill Clinton's Arkansas now is to the Democrats.
Spot on. It is a generalisation from that chart, but. The "true" Red Wall, places you mention included, are staying Tory, probably for some time. These are ex-mining or industrial, suffered heavily under Thatcher. But, barely no-one working now was at work, or on the Dole in the early 80's. They are retired. Or long since moved away. A grotesque number, in comparison, are dead. They are now, demographically Tory. Small town, rural, and crucially cheap housing so very high owner occupiers. They also are close to full employment. The "true" marginals, though, Bolton, Warrington, Dewsbury, Wrexham, are all to play for. They went Tory as you would expect because they won an 80 seat majority. They can go back. Oh. And Redcar is continuing to be fickle.
'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?
It isn't necessarily a bad thing if you believe immigration is bad per se, and less important than maintaining home industries. But the consequence of restricting the means to profitably produce food at market prices, while you don't restrict imports of competitor products, is to see imports replace home production.
I don't think immigration is bad whatsoever. I support as much high-skilled, high-wage immigration as possible.
I think immigration for minimum wage jobs, deflating our economy and driving up costs combined with giving those who come here for minimum wages jobs housing benefit, universal credit etc because minimum wage isn't enough to live in this nation is bad. Don't you?
I don't think this, no. Because it ignores market reality. Not an expert, but I don't think slaughtermen were working at minimum wage under FoM anyway.
Actually they were. We had job details being shared here saying that night shifts in an abattoir in South East England were being paid £9.12 per hour.
Do you think its feasible or productive to be working for £9.12 per hour for overnight shifts in South East England? Or to be frank anywhere in the UK.
Glassdoor has average slaughtermen salaries at £31 000, which is about twice minimum wage. I'm sure when you drill down there are big variations. But those apparently reasonably paid jobs will go if we import the products instead, thanks to the government immigration and trade policies.
No they won't, if they're productive they'll stay.
What will go is the £9.12 per hour jobs being advertised.
Do you think its acceptable to expect a night shift job for difficult work to be filled for £9.12 per hour?
Glassdoor really isn't accurate when looking at wages for UK jobs...
I agree, but at least a proportion of people will be paid that. £9 an hour isn't the average salary either. The market forces principle still applies, regardless of what the actual average salary is.
The market was broken because of the Single Market making £9 per hour plus in work benefits sound attractive to people from Eastern Europe earning potentially £2
Which, slice it how you like, was the purest form of arbitrage against UK workers.
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.
Yes, in the US and the rest of the Anglosphere and most of continental Europe Sedgefield and Bishop Auckland would be pretty safe conservative areas. Both mainly rural, market town areas.
Brexit was the final push they needed to go Tory. Blair's Sedgefield could now be as lost to Labour going forward as Bill Clinton's Arkansas now is to the Democrats.
I suspect Bishop Auckland is lost too. The town itself is only a small part of the seat and there are lots of new housing estates being thrown up. All nice 3/4 bed houses. It’s the sort of place I look at and am surprised it was labour for so long.
And Teesdale has always been a solid Tory area. I suspect when we left Bish, the people who bought our nice 4 bed house are Tory voters.
'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?
It isn't necessarily a bad thing if you believe immigration is bad per se, and less important than maintaining home industries. But the consequence of restricting the means to profitably produce food at market prices, while you don't restrict imports of competitor products, is to see imports replace home production.
I don't think immigration is bad whatsoever. I support as much high-skilled, high-wage immigration as possible.
I think immigration for minimum wage jobs, deflating our economy and driving up costs combined with giving those who come here for minimum wages jobs housing benefit, universal credit etc because minimum wage isn't enough to live in this nation is bad. Don't you?
I don't think this, no. Because it ignores market reality. Not an expert, but I don't think slaughtermen were working at minimum wage under FoM anyway.
Actually they were. We had job details being shared here saying that night shifts in an abattoir in South East England were being paid £9.12 per hour.
Do you think its feasible or productive to be working for £9.12 per hour for overnight shifts in South East England? Or to be frank anywhere in the UK.
Glassdoor has average slaughtermen salaries at £31 000, which is about twice minimum wage. I'm sure when you drill down there are big variations. But those apparently reasonably paid jobs will go if we import the products instead, thanks to the government immigration and trade policies.
No they won't, if they're productive they'll stay.
What will go is the £9.12 per hour jobs being advertised.
Do you think its acceptable to expect a night shift job for difficult work to be filled for £9.12 per hour?
Glassdoor really isn't accurate when looking at wages for UK jobs...
I agree, but at least a proportion of people will be paid that. £9 an hour isn't the average salary either. The market forces principle still applies, regardless of what the actual average salary is.
The £9.12ph jobs are now £10.57ph
Yeah but not all jobs are at that rate. The more skilled jobs get paid higher and is the way of the world, those jobs are more likely to be indigenous workers. Abbatoirs will be looking at their wage bill in the round. If the average wage is uncompetitive, all those jobs will go, including the higher paid ones.
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.
Yes, in the US and the rest of the Anglosphere and most of continental Europe Sedgefield and Bishop Auckland would be pretty safe conservative areas. Both mainly rural, market town areas.
Brexit was the final push they needed to go Tory. Blair's Sedgefield could now be as lost to Labour going forward as Bill Clinton's Arkansas now is to the Democrats.
I suspect Bishop Auckland is lost too. The town itself is only a small part of the seat and there are lots of new housing estates being thrown up. All nice 3/4 bed houses. It’s the sort of place I look at and am surprised it was labour for so long.
And Teesdale has always been a solid Tory area. I suspect when we left Bish, the people who bought our nice 4 bed house are Tory voters.
I remember even when labour had the vast majority of seats on the council Teesdale returned Tories.
'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?
It isn't necessarily a bad thing if you believe immigration is bad per se, and less important than maintaining home industries. But the consequence of restricting the means to profitably produce food at market prices, while you don't restrict imports of competitor products, is to see imports replace home production.
I don't think immigration is bad whatsoever. I support as much high-skilled, high-wage immigration as possible.
I think immigration for minimum wage jobs, deflating our economy and driving up costs combined with giving those who come here for minimum wages jobs housing benefit, universal credit etc because minimum wage isn't enough to live in this nation is bad. Don't you?
I don't think this, no. Because it ignores market reality. Not an expert, but I don't think slaughtermen were working at minimum wage under FoM anyway.
Actually they were. We had job details being shared here saying that night shifts in an abattoir in South East England were being paid £9.12 per hour.
Do you think its feasible or productive to be working for £9.12 per hour for overnight shifts in South East England? Or to be frank anywhere in the UK.
Glassdoor has average slaughtermen salaries at £31 000, which is about twice minimum wage. I'm sure when you drill down there are big variations. But those apparently reasonably paid jobs will go if we import the products instead, thanks to the government immigration and trade policies.
No they won't, if they're productive they'll stay.
What will go is the £9.12 per hour jobs being advertised.
Do you think its acceptable to expect a night shift job for difficult work to be filled for £9.12 per hour?
Glassdoor really isn't accurate when looking at wages for UK jobs...
I agree, but at least a proportion of people will be paid that. £9 an hour isn't the average salary either. The market forces principle still applies, regardless of what the actual average salary is.
The £9.12ph jobs are now £10.57ph
Yeah but not all jobs are at that rate. The more skilled jobs get paid higher and is the way of the world, those jobs are more likely to be indigenous workers. Abbatoirs will be looking at their wage bill in the round. If the average wage is uncompetitive, all those jobs will go, including the higher paid ones.
After 15 years of a abattoir solely using Eastern European Labour the higher skilled jobs (for time served experienced workers) will still be with indigenous workers.
It's a view I suppose but based on my knowledge of similar factories I would be very surprised if the factory had (m)any indigenous workers 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."'
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?
It isn't necessarily a bad thing if you believe immigration is bad per se, and less important than maintaining home industries. But the consequence of restricting the means to profitably produce food at market prices, while you don't restrict imports of competitor products, is to see imports replace home production.
I don't think immigration is bad whatsoever. I support as much high-skilled, high-wage immigration as possible.
I think immigration for minimum wage jobs, deflating our economy and driving up costs combined with giving those who come here for minimum wages jobs housing benefit, universal credit etc because minimum wage isn't enough to live in this nation is bad. Don't you?
I don't think this, no. Because it ignores market reality. Not an expert, but I don't think slaughtermen were working at minimum wage under FoM anyway.
Actually they were. We had job details being shared here saying that night shifts in an abattoir in South East England were being paid £9.12 per hour.
Do you think its feasible or productive to be working for £9.12 per hour for overnight shifts in South East England? Or to be frank anywhere in the UK.
Glassdoor has average slaughtermen salaries at £31 000, which is about twice minimum wage. I'm sure when you drill down there are big variations. But those apparently reasonably paid jobs will go if we import the products instead, thanks to the government immigration and trade policies.
No they won't, if they're productive they'll stay.
What will go is the £9.12 per hour jobs being advertised.
Do you think its acceptable to expect a night shift job for difficult work to be filled for £9.12 per hour?
Glassdoor really isn't accurate when looking at wages for UK jobs...
I agree, but at least a proportion of people will be paid that. £9 an hour isn't the average salary either. The market forces principle still applies, regardless of what the actual average salary is.
The £9.12ph jobs are now £10.57ph
Yeah but not all jobs are at that rate. The more skilled jobs get paid higher and is the way of the world, those jobs are more likely to be indigenous workers. Abbatoirs will be looking at their wage bill in the round. If the average wage is uncompetitive, all those jobs will go, including the higher paid ones.
So you back a teensy tiny minority ggetting merely OK wages on the back of a lot of people getting absolutely shit wages?
'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.
Miners voted Labour.
Farmers vote Conservative. And put bloody big signs in their fields during election campaigns.
A high wage economy, says Boris. So nurses are given a 3% pay rise for working through Covid with inadequate PPE and then 1% is taken back in national insurance, and the rest in higher petrol prices and electricity costs, leaving most of them poorer that before. You could say the same for lots of people, not to mention the Ponzi scheme of student loans which will burden most high achieving school leavers as soon as they graduate. We need lower taxes, so that people retain a decent proportion of what they earn.
And nurses, like everybody else need to increase their productivity so they can be paid higher wages.
In practical terms, what does that mean? Is a single staff nurse looking after a ward of 30 patients more productive? Or one who has enough time with each patient that they don't catch a hospital acquired infection, that their vital signs are monitored and acted on, and the patient leaves the hospital alive and expeditiously?
It means using fewer inputs to get the same output. So a staff nurse looking after 30 patients would be more productive than one looking after 29, provided she gives them the same quality of care. Of course it's difficult to measure in the service sector. And still more difficult to improve. But it is the key to higher pay.
Productivity increases in the service sector, which is by far the biggest bit of the economy, are inherently limited by the nature of those services. People value the time and personal input of much of these, whether healthcare, dining out or getting a beauty treatment.
Stagnant productivity is a feature of a post industrial economy. Demand may have pushed up HGV wages, but it hasn't made them more productive. Some individuals have benefited, but as an economy there has been no gain.
Eventually what we might see in the HGV sector is automated driving, which will be a spectacular increase in labour productivity.
We already have it - it's called railways. Thirty lorries in one train.
(runs for cover)
But the problem with automated lorries is the same as it is for trains: the last mile. It's fine saying you can drive along the motorways, or even to the depots, but somewhat pointless if you need drivers for the rest of it.
I've been bearish on automated driving for years. There hasn't been much progress to make me change my mind. If anything, the lack of progress cements it: it's an incredibly tricky problem, as Tesla, Waymo and others are finding out to their cost.
Automation works on some urban railways *because* you take out some of the unpredictability and risk that would otherwise have to be taken into account by a human driver. That's why it's feasible on the jubilee line extension, DLR or Crossrail (central section) as you separate the platform-train interface, and automate everything else.
You can't do that everywhere across the whole country.
It's the same problem as self driving cars - unless everything is fully automated, human beings have a nasty habit of accidently creating serious issues..
Driverless cars are only 5 years away. And will be for many years to come.
Unfair. Driverless cars will be coming on stream just at the point that ‘the North’ will be levelled up.
They'll happen. They will start with motorways, and - this is the key point - they will be centrally controlled, via 8g and AI superdupercomputers. That eliminates the main problem of their misconstruing each others' intentions, cos they won't have individual intentions.
With of course heaps of onboard computing power so you can make them autonomous, but limit their speed to 30 mph, in case of outages.
No doubt, but I can’t see them becoming prevalent and/or affordable in my time, I expect to be worrying about whatever shagged out old Alfa I have passing its mot until I cark it or am judged too senile to be allowed on the road. Not to sound too ‘I’m a driver not a passenger’ wanky they don’t appeal, I’ve never even switched on cruise control on any car I’ve had except by accident.
'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?
It isn't necessarily a bad thing if you believe immigration is bad per se, and less important than maintaining home industries. But the consequence of restricting the means to profitably produce food at market prices, while you don't restrict imports of competitor products, is to see imports replace home production.
I don't think immigration is bad whatsoever. I support as much high-skilled, high-wage immigration as possible.
I think immigration for minimum wage jobs, deflating our economy and driving up costs combined with giving those who come here for minimum wages jobs housing benefit, universal credit etc because minimum wage isn't enough to live in this nation is bad. Don't you?
I don't think this, no. Because it ignores market reality. Not an expert, but I don't think slaughtermen were working at minimum wage under FoM anyway.
Actually they were. We had job details being shared here saying that night shifts in an abattoir in South East England were being paid £9.12 per hour.
Do you think its feasible or productive to be working for £9.12 per hour for overnight shifts in South East England? Or to be frank anywhere in the UK.
Glassdoor has average slaughtermen salaries at £31 000, which is about twice minimum wage. I'm sure when you drill down there are big variations. But those apparently reasonably paid jobs will go if we import the products instead, thanks to the government immigration and trade policies.
No they won't, if they're productive they'll stay.
What will go is the £9.12 per hour jobs being advertised.
Do you think its acceptable to expect a night shift job for difficult work to be filled for £9.12 per hour?
Glassdoor really isn't accurate when looking at wages for UK jobs...
I agree, but at least a proportion of people will be paid that. £9 an hour isn't the average salary either. The market forces principle still applies, regardless of what the actual average salary is.
The £9.12ph jobs are now £10.57ph
Yeah but not all jobs are at that rate. The more skilled jobs get paid higher and is the way of the world, those jobs are more likely to be indigenous workers. Abbatoirs will be looking at their wage bill in the round. If the average wage is uncompetitive, all those jobs will go, including the higher paid ones.
So you back a teensy tiny minority ggetting merely OK wages on the back of a lot of people getting absolutely shit wages?
I didn't invent the capitalist system, as implemented by this government.
'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.
Miners voted Labour.
Farmers vote Conservative. And put bloody big signs in their fields during election campaigns.
I think PT has forgotten the Tory Party was the party who introduced the Corn Laws in 1815.
Peel was only able to repeal them with the support of the Whigs. Most of his party still backed them and so his fellow free trading Peelites who were a minority in the Tory party ended up forming the Liberal party with the Whigs and Radicals in the 1850s
'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.
Miners voted Labour.
Farmers vote Conservative. And put bloody big signs in their fields during election campaigns.
New election slogan: We got rid of the miners and we’ll get rid of the farmers*!
'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?
It isn't necessarily a bad thing if you believe immigration is bad per se, and less important than maintaining home industries. But the consequence of restricting the means to profitably produce food at market prices, while you don't restrict imports of competitor products, is to see imports replace home production.
I don't think immigration is bad whatsoever. I support as much high-skilled, high-wage immigration as possible.
I think immigration for minimum wage jobs, deflating our economy and driving up costs combined with giving those who come here for minimum wages jobs housing benefit, universal credit etc because minimum wage isn't enough to live in this nation is bad. Don't you?
I don't think this, no. Because it ignores market reality. Not an expert, but I don't think slaughtermen were working at minimum wage under FoM anyway.
Actually they were. We had job details being shared here saying that night shifts in an abattoir in South East England were being paid £9.12 per hour.
Do you think its feasible or productive to be working for £9.12 per hour for overnight shifts in South East England? Or to be frank anywhere in the UK.
Glassdoor has average slaughtermen salaries at £31 000, which is about twice minimum wage. I'm sure when you drill down there are big variations. But those apparently reasonably paid jobs will go if we import the products instead, thanks to the government immigration and trade policies.
No they won't, if they're productive they'll stay.
What will go is the £9.12 per hour jobs being advertised.
Do you think its acceptable to expect a night shift job for difficult work to be filled for £9.12 per hour?
Glassdoor really isn't accurate when looking at wages for UK jobs...
I agree, but at least a proportion of people will be paid that. £9 an hour isn't the average salary either. The market forces principle still applies, regardless of what the actual average salary is.
The £9.12ph jobs are now £10.57ph
Yeah but not all jobs are at that rate. The more skilled jobs get paid higher and is the way of the world, those jobs are more likely to be indigenous workers. Abbatoirs will be looking at their wage bill in the round. If the average wage is uncompetitive, all those jobs will go, including the higher paid ones.
So you back a teensy tiny minority ggetting merely OK wages on the back of a lot of people getting absolutely shit wages?
I didn't invent the capitalist system, as implemented by this government.
I must off.
But importing people from the developing world to devalue the efforts of others isn't being implemented by this government. Its what you're advocating not them.
Redcar is all over the place. They went LD in a massive swing because of the steel plant going under, and that may have given them a taste for big changes, having swung back to Labour and then to Con.
On the wider point, the Tories will not like losing any seats of course, but they can afford to lose quite a few Red Wall seats so long as they don't suffer a mass problem in the South, so expect some pivoting (hence the planning retreat recently).
A high wage economy, says Boris. So nurses are given a 3% pay rise for working through Covid with inadequate PPE and then 1% is taken back in national insurance, and the rest in higher petrol prices and electricity costs, leaving most of them poorer that before. You could say the same for lots of people, not to mention the Ponzi scheme of student loans which will burden most high achieving school leavers as soon as they graduate. We need lower taxes, so that people retain a decent proportion of what they earn.
And nurses, like everybody else need to increase their productivity so they can be paid higher wages.
In practical terms, what does that mean? Is a single staff nurse looking after a ward of 30 patients more productive? Or one who has enough time with each patient that they don't catch a hospital acquired infection, that their vital signs are monitored and acted on, and the patient leaves the hospital alive and expeditiously?
It means using fewer inputs to get the same output. So a staff nurse looking after 30 patients would be more productive than one looking after 29, provided she gives them the same quality of care. Of course it's difficult to measure in the service sector. And still more difficult to improve. But it is the key to higher pay.
Productivity increases in the service sector, which is by far the biggest bit of the economy, are inherently limited by the nature of those services. People value the time and personal input of much of these, whether healthcare, dining out or getting a beauty treatment.
Stagnant productivity is a feature of a post industrial economy. Demand may have pushed up HGV wages, but it hasn't made them more productive. Some individuals have benefited, but as an economy there has been no gain.
Eventually what we might see in the HGV sector is automated driving, which will be a spectacular increase in labour productivity.
We already have it - it's called railways. Thirty lorries in one train.
(runs for cover)
But the problem with automated lorries is the same as it is for trains: the last mile. It's fine saying you can drive along the motorways, or even to the depots, but somewhat pointless if you need drivers for the rest of it.
I've been bearish on automated driving for years. There hasn't been much progress to make me change my mind. If anything, the lack of progress cements it: it's an incredibly tricky problem, as Tesla, Waymo and others are finding out to their cost.
Automation works on some urban railways *because* you take out some of the unpredictability and risk that would otherwise have to be taken into account by a human driver. That's why it's feasible on the jubilee line extension, DLR or Crossrail (central section) as you separate the platform-train interface, and automate everything else.
You can't do that everywhere across the whole country.
It's the same problem as self driving cars - unless everything is fully automated, human beings have a nasty habit of accidently creating serious issues..
Driverless cars are only 5 years away. And will be for many years to come.
Unfair. Driverless cars will be coming on stream just at the point that ‘the North’ will be levelled up.
They'll happen. They will start with motorways, and - this is the key point - they will be centrally controlled, via 8g and AI superdupercomputers. That eliminates the main problem of their misconstruing each others' intentions, cos they won't have individual intentions.
With of course heaps of onboard computing power so you can make them autonomous, but limit their speed to 30 mph, in case of outages.
No doubt, but I can’t see them becoming prevalent and/or affordable in my time, I expect to be worrying about whatever shagged out old Alfa I have passing its mot until I cark it or am judged too senile to be allowed on the road. Not to sound too ‘I’m a driver not a passenger’ wanky they don’t appeal, I’ve never even switched on cruise control on any car I’ve had except by accident.
Cruise control with a fixed speed is beyond annoying unless you wish to travel slowly.
Adaptive Cruise control which keeps your car at the same speed as the car in front of you is a completely different experience. It makes motorway driving so much easier even if you don't notice the difference.
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.
Yes, in the US and the rest of the Anglosphere and most of continental Europe Sedgefield and Bishop Auckland would be pretty safe conservative areas. Both mainly rural, market town areas.
Brexit was the final push they needed to go Tory. Blair's Sedgefield could now be as lost to Labour going forward as Bill Clinton's Arkansas now is to the Democrats.
I suspect Bishop Auckland is lost too. The town itself is only a small part of the seat and there are lots of new housing estates being thrown up. All nice 3/4 bed houses. It’s the sort of place I look at and am surprised it was labour for so long.
And Teesdale has always been a solid Tory area. I suspect when we left Bish, the people who bought our nice 4 bed house are Tory voters.
I remember even when labour had the vast majority of seats on the council Teesdale returned Tories.
The basic reality is that when 'time for a change' time comes, which it will, only the Labour party can either be a government or head an alliance. Not because it is better, but because there are only 2 parties that can do this, and Labour is the other one.
Which is why, regardless of merits, SKS has a roughly 40% chance of being next PM and the odds are wrong.
Any third option for government alongside 'Tory led' or 'Labour led' would be properly called a Black Swan.
'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.
Miners voted Labour.
Farmers vote Conservative. And put bloody big signs in their fields during election campaigns.
I think PT has forgotten the Tory Party was the party who introduced the Corn Laws in 1815.
Peel was only able to repeal them with the support of the Whigs. Most of his party still backed them and so his fellow free trading Peelites who were a minority in the Tory party ended up forming the Liberal party with the Whigs and Radicals in the 1850s
The Tories implemented them, and the Conservatives repealed them. The old Tory party you back is dead, it died in the 19th century.
I would be a Whig if we had Tory v Whig old-school. But the Conservatives absorbed a lot of the old Whig thinking.
On topic (ish) Keir Starmer is an uninspiring product but that won't matter if the economy stagflates - Labour could simply win by default anyway.
Remember 1974.
I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose, oppositions don't win.
Your boy can win despite stagflation. And if winning is all that matters. starting culture wars and scapegoating minorities are meat and drink to Johnson's current audience. Even if the economy is on its knees, my long held view that incumbency takes the hit has been proven wrong by the fuel crisis.
It is not the crisis, but who gets the blame for the crisis. Previous governments, Remainers, woke lefties, foreigners, foreign governments are all fair game, and Johnson is winning at that game.
The article seems offended that 94% of Ivy League female students wouldn't date a Trumper. But why? That ought to be a high figure and it's good to see it is. It shows the right sort of young women, those with both brains and high personal standards, are getting into top colleges over there. Trump supporters are likely to be thick and bigoted. Who wants to date somebody like that if they can avoid it? It's not prejudiced to say this, it's the plain and simple truth. They like Donald Trump, ffs. I mean, c'mon, that's a 'tell' if ever there was one, and you have to draw the line somewhere. Some Trumpers will be ok, of course, and it's important to say so, but it makes perfect sense to screen them out if you're time limited (which I'm guessing these Ivy League types will be).
'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.
Miners voted Labour.
Farmers vote Conservative. And put bloody big signs in their fields during election campaigns.
New election slogan: We got rid of the miners and we’ll get rid of the farmers*!
*Kulaks
Farmers have been more loyal to the Conservatives over the decades than the former New Labour voting libertarian PT.
Trump heavily subsidised farmers, the Australian Nationals also are based on the farming vote, Chirac was a big supporter of agricultural subsidy too. Conservatives around the western world support our farmers
'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.
Miners voted Labour.
Farmers vote Conservative. And put bloody big signs in their fields during election campaigns.
New election slogan: We got rid of the miners and we’ll get rid of the farmers*!
*Kulaks
Farmers have been more loyal to the Conservatives over the decades than the former New Labour voting libertarian PT.
Indeed and the Conservatives have lost when they solely had Farmer Votes.
The Conservatives have won when they had mine. Except 2005 although I was in the plurality of England on that time (with a metaphorical peg on my nose).
For many years we've had talk of "productivity crisis" in the UK, whereby output per hour worked has been relatively stagnant.
It is becoming clear that part of this was many industries relying on the open tap of cheap immigrant labour that worked under terrible conditions at or below minimum wage.
This will have to lead to improved wages or better working conditions to attract domestic workers, which will result in one of the following in the long-run:
1) Higher costs feed into higher price of foods - i.e. inflation
2) Higher costs reduce corporate profitability
3) Businesses wind up or fail, such that we increase imports. While this sounds bad, almost by definition we are stopping some of the least productive areas of the economy that can't survive on paying decent wages and working conditions.
In the short-run, disruption will reign supreme as businesses adjust.
On topic (ish) Keir Starmer is an uninspiring product but that won't matter if the economy stagflates - Labour could simply win by default anyway.
Remember 1974.
I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose, oppositions don't win.
Your boy can win despite stagflation. And if winning is all that matters. starting ulture wars and scapegoating minorities are meat and drink to Johnson's current audience. Even if the economy is on its knees, my long held view that incumbency takes the hit has been proven wrong by the fuel crisis.
It is not the crisis, but who gets the blame for the crisis. Previous governments, Remainers, woke lefties, foreigners, foreign governments are all fair game, and Johnson is winning at that game.
Is it shocking that only a small minority women would date someone who (presumably, if supporting Trump) think it is ok to "grab them by the pussy"?
How would you feel about a poll finding that few women of Jewish heritage would date a Corbynista? Would that be shocking evidence of the the 'rise of regressive authoritarianism'?
If you want to shape the world, then get out there and do it, whether left, right or centre. US conservatives need to stop being such snowflakes.
You haven't read the article, have you?
I have. I don't have time to go through each of the points raised or the issues with many of the dubious studies quoted (they tend to be surveys with carefully worded questions and samples and no comparison group - how many elite Trumpers would date a Sanders supporter?) so I focused on the claim that the article leads with.
I fully support the First... and Second... paragraphs towards the end of the article. They are statements of common sense. Only an imagined woke bogeyman is fighting against those.
Kaufmann mentions the Forstater case - which she won (belatedly, after appeal, but she won). It established her right to have her views and to express them, the opposite of what Kaufmann is claiming.
I don't know how to explain this. There will be people with leftist/woke views who try and impose those on others and employ them in recruitment or promotion. Those people should be sacked. They are a tiny minority - I don't believe I have ever met one. There were in the past (and likely now) those who tried to impose their racism/sexism on employment/promotion or wouldn't hire the person who was a union rep or whatever (also a tiny minority, but I have met them). They should have been sacked too.
In the UK, at least, there are protections. Those apparently hated ethnic group/ sexual orientation/gender forms from HR on recruitment? Guess what, they're there to pick up on white straight men not getting a fair deal too. As long as the white straight men bother to fill them it, that is. I recruit in a university, we never get to see those forms in recruitment and nor should we.
'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.
Miners voted Labour.
Farmers vote Conservative. And put bloody big signs in their fields during election campaigns.
New election slogan: We got rid of the miners and we’ll get rid of the farmers*!
*Kulaks
Farmers have been more loyal to the Conservatives over the decades than the former New Labour voting libertarian PT.
Trump heavily subsidised farmers, the Australian Nationals also are based on the farming vote, Chirac was a big supporter of farming subsidy too. Conservatives support our farmers
Fuck knows why, given it was Labour who created an entirely new class of hereditary right in favour of tenant farmers. No gratitude.
'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.
Miners voted Labour.
Farmers vote Conservative. And put bloody big signs in their fields during election campaigns.
I think PT has forgotten the Tory Party was the party who introduced the Corn Laws in 1815.
Peel was only able to repeal them with the support of the Whigs. Most of his party still backed them and so his fellow free trading Peelites who were a minority in the Tory party ended up forming the Liberal party with the Whigs and Radicals in the 1850s
The Tories implemented them, and the Conservatives repealed them. The old Tory party you back is dead, it died in the 19th century.
I would be a Whig if we had Tory v Whig old-school. But the Conservatives absorbed a lot of the old Whig thinking.
No the Conservatives did not repeal them.
Most Tory MPs voted against repealing the Corn Laws, as I said Peel was only able to repeal them with the support of Whig MPs.
Brexit has revived the protectionist Tory party in terms of the party's core vote. Many middle class professional, pro free trade Remainers who voted for Cameron are now voting LD or Starmer Labour. Most protectionist working class UKIP voters from 2015 are now voting Conservative
Redcar is all over the place. They went LD in a massive swing because of the steel plant going under, and that may have given them a taste for big changes, having swung back to Labour and then to Con.
On the wider point, the Tories will not like losing any seats of course, but they can afford to lose quite a few Red Wall seats so long as they don't suffer a mass problem in the South, so expect some pivoting (hence the planning retreat recently).
Redcar is Labour except in protest.
the Lib Dems won because the steel works went bankrupt in 2009 but returned to Labour in 2015 after it was rescued. Note that the Tories even under Cameron were so toxic that the LDems got the protest vote.
The steel works finally closed in 2019 at which point the seat went back Tory.
Redcar is an awkward place to predict because it's 30 minutes from absolutely anywhere else so unless there is a local focus the seat will return to Labour as it's natural state.
'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?
It isn't necessarily a bad thing if you believe immigration is bad per se, and less important than maintaining home industries. But the consequence of restricting the means to profitably produce food at market prices, while you don't restrict imports of competitor products, is to see imports replace home production.
I don't think immigration is bad whatsoever. I support as much high-skilled, high-wage immigration as possible.
I think immigration for minimum wage jobs, deflating our economy and driving up costs combined with giving those who come here for minimum wages jobs housing benefit, universal credit etc because minimum wage isn't enough to live in this nation is bad. Don't you?
I don't think this, no. Because it ignores market reality. Not an expert, but I don't think slaughtermen were working at minimum wage under FoM anyway.
Actually they were. We had job details being shared here saying that night shifts in an abattoir in South East England were being paid £9.12 per hour.
Do you think its feasible or productive to be working for £9.12 per hour for overnight shifts in South East England? Or to be frank anywhere in the UK.
Glassdoor has average slaughtermen salaries at £31 000, which is about twice minimum wage. I'm sure when you drill down there are big variations. But those apparently reasonably paid jobs will go if we import the products instead, thanks to the government immigration and trade policies.
No they won't, if they're productive they'll stay.
What will go is the £9.12 per hour jobs being advertised.
Do you think its acceptable to expect a night shift job for difficult work to be filled for £9.12 per hour?
Glassdoor really isn't accurate when looking at wages for UK jobs...
I agree, but at least a proportion of people will be paid that. £9 an hour isn't the average salary either. The market forces principle still applies, regardless of what the actual average salary is.
The £9.12ph jobs are now £10.57ph
Yeah but not all jobs are at that rate. The more skilled jobs get paid higher and is the way of the world, those jobs are more likely to be indigenous workers. Abbatoirs will be looking at their wage bill in the round. If the average wage is uncompetitive, all those jobs will go, including the higher paid ones.
That's not true. Some abattoirs will go under, others will increase automation/management practices for the basic tasks, and survive. The idea that we should maintain low wage work for the sake of protecting slightly higher paid jobs is a curious one for the left. It never applies to arguments over the minimum wage strangely.
For many years we've had talk of "productivity crisis" in the UK, whereby output per hour worked has been relatively stagnant.
It is becoming clear that part of this was many industries relying on the open tap of cheap immigrant labour that worked under terrible conditions at or below minimum wage.
This will have to lead to improved wages or better working conditions to attract domestic workers, which will result in one of the following in the long-run:
1) Higher costs feed into higher price of foods - i.e. inflation
2) Higher costs reduce corporate profitability
3) Businesses wind up or fail, such that we increase imports. While this sounds bad, almost by definition we are stopping some of the least productive areas of the economy that can't survive on paying decent wages and working conditions.
In the short-run, disruption will reign supreme as businesses adjust.
Absolutely right. But don't forget the biggest benefit of #3 - that failing businesses in low productivity areas leads to labour and capital being redeployed to more productive and efficient sectors.
On topic (ish) Keir Starmer is an uninspiring product but that won't matter if the economy stagflates - Labour could simply win by default anyway.
Remember 1974.
I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose, oppositions don't win.
Your boy can win despite stagflation. And if winning is all that matters. starting culture wars and scapegoating minorities are meat and drink to Johnson's current audience. Even if the economy is on its knees, my long held view that incumbency takes the hit has been proven wrong by the fuel crisis.
It is not the crisis, but who gets the blame for the crisis. Previous governments, Remainers, woke lefties, foreigners, foreign governments are all fair game, and Johnson is winning at that game.
The article seems offended that 94% of Ivy League female students wouldn't date a Trumper. But why? That ought to be a high figure and it's good to see it is. It shows the right sort of young women, those with both brains and high personal standards, are getting into top colleges over there. Trump supporters are likely to be thick and bigoted. Who wants to date somebody like that if they can avoid it? It's not prejudiced to say this, it's the plain and simple truth. They like Donald Trump, ffs. I mean, c'mon, that's a 'tell' if ever there was one, and you have to draw the line somewhere. Some Trumpers will be ok, of course, and it's important to say so, but it makes perfect sense to screen them out if you're time limited (which I'm guessing these Ivy League types will be).
Not that anyone cares anymore but I am sure we all have a list of no-no's. In my case:
a) Trump supporters obviously b) Religious zealots c) Conspiracy cranks d) Fascists e) Communists f) Those with no views g) Those who are just a bit too weird h) Those who are irrational except in the heat of an argument
'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?
It isn't necessarily a bad thing if you believe immigration is bad per se, and less important than maintaining home industries. But the consequence of restricting the means to profitably produce food at market prices, while you don't restrict imports of competitor products, is to see imports replace home production.
I don't think immigration is bad whatsoever. I support as much high-skilled, high-wage immigration as possible.
I think immigration for minimum wage jobs, deflating our economy and driving up costs combined with giving those who come here for minimum wages jobs housing benefit, universal credit etc because minimum wage isn't enough to live in this nation is bad. Don't you?
I don't think this, no. Because it ignores market reality. Not an expert, but I don't think slaughtermen were working at minimum wage under FoM anyway.
Actually they were. We had job details being shared here saying that night shifts in an abattoir in South East England were being paid £9.12 per hour.
Do you think its feasible or productive to be working for £9.12 per hour for overnight shifts in South East England? Or to be frank anywhere in the UK.
Glassdoor has average slaughtermen salaries at £31 000, which is about twice minimum wage. I'm sure when you drill down there are big variations. But those apparently reasonably paid jobs will go if we import the products instead, thanks to the government immigration and trade policies.
No they won't, if they're productive they'll stay.
What will go is the £9.12 per hour jobs being advertised.
Do you think its acceptable to expect a night shift job for difficult work to be filled for £9.12 per hour?
Glassdoor really isn't accurate when looking at wages for UK jobs...
I agree, but at least a proportion of people will be paid that. £9 an hour isn't the average salary either. The market forces principle still applies, regardless of what the actual average salary is.
The £9.12ph jobs are now £10.57ph
Yeah but not all jobs are at that rate. The more skilled jobs get paid higher and is the way of the world, those jobs are more likely to be indigenous workers. Abbatoirs will be looking at their wage bill in the round. If the average wage is uncompetitive, all those jobs will go, including the higher paid ones.
So you back a teensy tiny minority ggetting merely OK wages on the back of a lot of people getting absolutely shit wages?
I didn't invent the capitalist system, as implemented by this government.
I must off.
But importing people from the developing world to devalue the efforts of others isn't being implemented by this government. Its what you're advocating not them.
Final from me. I'm not advocating anything. I am pointing out the choice the government is making, which is to import goods, with the consequent loss of income and jobs, than to import labour. If you are a UK farmer, get used to lower incomes or none at all.
People can decide whether that's a good policy or not.
On topic (ish) Keir Starmer is an uninspiring product but that won't matter if the economy stagflates - Labour could simply win by default anyway.
Remember 1974.
I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose, oppositions don't win.
Your boy can win despite stagflation. And if winning is all that matters. starting ulture wars and scapegoating minorities are meat and drink to Johnson's current audience. Even if the economy is on its knees, my long held view that incumbency takes the hit has been proven wrong by the fuel crisis.
It is not the crisis, but who gets the blame for the crisis. Previous governments, Remainers, woke lefties, foreigners, foreign governments are all fair game, and Johnson is winning at that game.
Is it shocking that only a small minority women would date someone who (presumably, if supporting Trump) think it is ok to "grab them by the pussy"?
How would you feel about a poll finding that few women of Jewish heritage would date a Corbynista? Would that be shocking evidence of the the 'rise of regressive authoritarianism'?
If you want to shape the world, then get out there and do it, whether left, right or centre. US conservatives need to stop being such snowflakes.
You haven't read the article, have you?
I have. I don't have time to go through each of the points raised or the issues with many of the dubious studies quoted (they tend to be surveys with carefully worded questions and samples and no comparison group - how many elite Trumpers would date a Sanders supporter?) so I focused on the claim that the article leads with.
I fully support the First... and Second... paragraphs towards the end of the article. They are statements of common sense. Only an imagined woke bogeyman is fighting against those.
Kaufmann mentions the Forstater case - which she won (belatedly, after appeal, but she won). It established her right to have her views and to express them, the opposite of what Kaufmann is claiming.
I don't know how to explain this. There will be people with leftist/woke views who try and impose those on others and employ them in recruitment or promotion. Those people should be sacked. They are a tiny minority - I don't believe I have ever met one. There were in the past (and likely now) those who tried to impose their racism/sexism on employment/promotion or wouldn't hire the person who was a union rep or whatever (also a tiny minority, but I have met them). They should have been sacked too.
In the UK, at least, there are protections. Those apparently hated ethnic group/ sexual orientation/gender forms from HR on recruitment? Guess what, they're there to pick up on white straight men not getting a fair deal too. As long as the white straight men bother to fill them it, that is. I recruit in a university, we never get to see those forms in recruitment and nor should we.
"Precisely the same manner..." ...Among their male counterparts, 90 percent would date a Clinton supporter but only 33 percent would date a Trump supporter. Spencer Case argues that those who politically discriminate are acting in precisely the same manner as those who justify prejudice against Muslims or Jews...
On topic (ish) Keir Starmer is an uninspiring product but that won't matter if the economy stagflates - Labour could simply win by default anyway.
Remember 1974.
I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose, oppositions don't win.
Your boy can win despite stagflation. And if winning is all that matters. starting culture wars and scapegoating minorities are meat and drink to Johnson's current audience. Even if the economy is on its knees, my long held view that incumbency takes the hit has been proven wrong by the fuel crisis.
It is not the crisis, but who gets the blame for the crisis. Previous governments, Remainers, woke lefties, foreigners, foreign governments are all fair game, and Johnson is winning at that game.
The article seems offended that 94% of Ivy League female students wouldn't date a Trumper. But why? That ought to be a high figure and it's good to see it is. It shows the right sort of young women, those with both brains and high personal standards, are getting into top colleges over there. Trump supporters are likely to be thick and bigoted. Who wants to date somebody like that if they can avoid it? It's not prejudiced to say this, it's the plain and simple truth. They like Donald Trump, ffs. I mean, c'mon, that's a 'tell' if ever there was one, and you have to draw the line somewhere. Some Trumpers will be ok, of course, and it's important to say so, but it makes perfect sense to screen them out if you're time limited (which I'm guessing these Ivy League types will be).
Not that anyone cares anymore but I am sure we all have a list of no-no's. In my case:
a) Trump supporters obviously b) Religious zealots c) Conspiracy cranks d) Fascists e) Communists f) Those with no views g) Those who are just a bit too weird h) Those who are irrational except in the heat of an argument
and the list goes on.
You are acting in precisely the same manner as... etc.
On topic (ish) Keir Starmer is an uninspiring product but that won't matter if the economy stagflates - Labour could simply win by default anyway.
Remember 1974.
I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose, oppositions don't win.
Your boy can win despite stagflation. And if winning is all that matters. starting culture wars and scapegoating minorities are meat and drink to Johnson's current audience. Even if the economy is on its knees, my long held view that incumbency takes the hit has been proven wrong by the fuel crisis.
It is not the crisis, but who gets the blame for the crisis. Previous governments, Remainers, woke lefties, foreigners, foreign governments are all fair game, and Johnson is winning at that game.
The article seems offended that 94% of Ivy League female students wouldn't date a Trumper. But why? That ought to be a high figure and it's good to see it is. It shows the right sort of young women, those with both brains and high personal standards, are getting into top colleges over there. Trump supporters are likely to be thick and bigoted. Who wants to date somebody like that if they can avoid it? It's not prejudiced to say this, it's the plain and simple truth. They like Donald Trump, ffs. I mean, c'mon, that's a 'tell' if ever there was one, and you have to draw the line somewhere. Some Trumpers will be ok, of course, and it's important to say so, but it makes perfect sense to screen them out if you're time limited (which I'm guessing these Ivy League types will be).
Not that anyone cares anymore but I am sure we all have a list of no-no's. In my case:
a) Trump supporters obviously b) Religious zealots c) Conspiracy cranks d) Fascists e) Communists f) Those with no views g) Those who are just a bit too weird h) Those who are irrational except in the heat of an argument
and the list goes on.
Pretty much with you on all bar (h). Not quite sure what you mean there.
Interesting header. It has long been my view that the Brexit obsessed Tory right has convinced itself of a lie: that ex-labour voters either voted Tory or abstained because of Brexit. That data clearly shows that that was minority interest: the real driver was Corbyn. Now they have "got Brexit done" and gotten rid of Corbyn, why will that demographic vote Tory? Maybe some of them like having a bit of a clown for their PM?
'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?
It isn't necessarily a bad thing if you believe immigration is bad per se, and less important than maintaining home industries. But the consequence of restricting the means to profitably produce food at market prices, while you don't restrict imports of competitor products, is to see imports replace home production.
I don't think immigration is bad whatsoever. I support as much high-skilled, high-wage immigration as possible.
I think immigration for minimum wage jobs, deflating our economy and driving up costs combined with giving those who come here for minimum wages jobs housing benefit, universal credit etc because minimum wage isn't enough to live in this nation is bad. Don't you?
I don't think this, no. Because it ignores market reality. Not an expert, but I don't think slaughtermen were working at minimum wage under FoM anyway.
Actually they were. We had job details being shared here saying that night shifts in an abattoir in South East England were being paid £9.12 per hour.
Do you think its feasible or productive to be working for £9.12 per hour for overnight shifts in South East England? Or to be frank anywhere in the UK.
Glassdoor has average slaughtermen salaries at £31 000, which is about twice minimum wage. I'm sure when you drill down there are big variations. But those apparently reasonably paid jobs will go if we import the products instead, thanks to the government immigration and trade policies.
No they won't, if they're productive they'll stay.
What will go is the £9.12 per hour jobs being advertised.
Do you think its acceptable to expect a night shift job for difficult work to be filled for £9.12 per hour?
Glassdoor really isn't accurate when looking at wages for UK jobs...
I agree, but at least a proportion of people will be paid that. £9 an hour isn't the average salary either. The market forces principle still applies, regardless of what the actual average salary is.
The £9.12ph jobs are now £10.57ph
Yeah but not all jobs are at that rate. The more skilled jobs get paid higher and is the way of the world, those jobs are more likely to be indigenous workers. Abbatoirs will be looking at their wage bill in the round. If the average wage is uncompetitive, all those jobs will go, including the higher paid ones.
So you back a teensy tiny minority ggetting merely OK wages on the back of a lot of people getting absolutely shit wages?
I didn't invent the capitalist system, as implemented by this government.
I must off.
But importing people from the developing world to devalue the efforts of others isn't being implemented by this government. Its what you're advocating not them.
Final from me. I'm not advocating anything. I am pointing out the choice the government is making, which is to import goods, with the consequent loss of income and jobs, than to import labour. If you are a UK farmer, get used to lower incomes or none at all.
People can decide whether that's a good policy or not.
There is a hell of a jump in logic with zero explanation or reasons between you second and third sentences.
And sorry but we won't be importing low paid labour, the reason we both had Brexit and we have the current mess is because we imported Low Paid labour without thought to the impact it did to our own workforce.
On topic (ish) Keir Starmer is an uninspiring product but that won't matter if the economy stagflates - Labour could simply win by default anyway.
Remember 1974.
I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose, oppositions don't win.
Your boy can win despite stagflation. And if winning is all that matters. starting culture wars and scapegoating minorities are meat and drink to Johnson's current audience. Even if the economy is on its knees, my long held view that incumbency takes the hit has been proven wrong by the fuel crisis.
It is not the crisis, but who gets the blame for the crisis. Previous governments, Remainers, woke lefties, foreigners, foreign governments are all fair game, and Johnson is winning at that game.
The article seems offended that 94% of Ivy League female students wouldn't date a Trumper. But why? That ought to be a high figure and it's good to see it is. It shows the right sort of young women, those with both brains and high personal standards, are getting into top colleges over there. Trump supporters are likely to be thick and bigoted. Who wants to date somebody like that if they can avoid it? It's not prejudiced to say this, it's the plain and simple truth. They like Donald Trump, ffs. I mean, c'mon, that's a 'tell' if ever there was one, and you have to draw the line somewhere. Some Trumpers will be ok, of course, and it's important to say so, but it makes perfect sense to screen them out if you're time limited (which I'm guessing these Ivy League types will be).
Not that anyone cares anymore but I am sure we all have a list of no-no's. In my case:
a) Trump supporters obviously b) Religious zealots c) Conspiracy cranks d) Fascists e) Communists f) Those with no views g) Those who are just a bit too weird h) Those who are irrational except in the heat of an argument
and the list goes on.
Pretty much with you on all bar (h). Not quite sure what you mean there.
On topic (ish) Keir Starmer is an uninspiring product but that won't matter if the economy stagflates - Labour could simply win by default anyway.
Remember 1974.
I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose, oppositions don't win.
Your boy can win despite stagflation. And if winning is all that matters. starting culture wars and scapegoating minorities are meat and drink to Johnson's current audience. Even if the economy is on its knees, my long held view that incumbency takes the hit has been proven wrong by the fuel crisis.
It is not the crisis, but who gets the blame for the crisis. Previous governments, Remainers, woke lefties, foreigners, foreign governments are all fair game, and Johnson is winning at that game.
The article seems offended that 94% of Ivy League female students wouldn't date a Trumper. But why? That ought to be a high figure and it's good to see it is. It shows the right sort of young women, those with both brains and high personal standards, are getting into top colleges over there. Trump supporters are likely to be thick and bigoted. Who wants to date somebody like that if they can avoid it? It's not prejudiced to say this, it's the plain and simple truth. They like Donald Trump, ffs. I mean, c'mon, that's a 'tell' if ever there was one, and you have to draw the line somewhere. Some Trumpers will be ok, of course, and it's important to say so, but it makes perfect sense to screen them out if you're time limited (which I'm guessing these Ivy League types will be).
Not that anyone cares anymore but I am sure we all have a list of no-no's. In my case:
a) Trump supporters obviously b) Religious zealots c) Conspiracy cranks d) Fascists e) Communists f) Those with no views g) Those who are just a bit too weird h) Those who are irrational except in the heat of an argument
and the list goes on.
Pretty much with you on all bar (h). Not quite sure what you mean there.
I can't deal with someone who is irrational in day to day life conversations, but once you get to the point where you are throwing saucepans at each other I am more tolerant.
Mr. Fishing, got to say I still think automated driving is like flying cars - something technically possible that won't be practical for almost anything.
You get slow burns though. Look at video calls. "Vidphones" were a staple of c20th Sci fi. Then there were 15 years when they were possible via Skype and facetime but nobody saw the point. Then lockdown and kaboom.
Same thing happened with faxes, actually. The technology was there since ww2, the legal profession had them from the 70s, but it took a postal strike in the 80s before they caught on.
Faxes and video calls don't immediately stop you paying for something else, though, except relatively cheap stamps. Automation saves wages. It'll catch on fine.
25 years ago, Acorn did a lot of work on Video-on-Demand technology. Set Top Boxes were needed, as PC graphics cards and processors were generally not powerful enough to decode the video streams.
Apparently there was a certain amount of negativity in the market, because few people saw the possibility that the Internet could handle the traffic from everyone, and the boxes were restricted to certain cable providers.
I could see the Internet having the bandwidth; what I never guessed was that phones would, within a decade, be able to stream videos at high quality. The rate the technology increased at was massive.
But it involved no fundamental new technology; only improvements on what was existing.
People are very bad at accepting the implications of exponential changes.
In this case, the exponential increase in computing power / £ was going to turn available radio bandwidth & video compression from expensive impossibilities to trivialities in single digit years.
You see similar "unpossible!" thinking around lots of exponential processes - the delayed response to the Covid pandemic is one obvious recent example. Unless you’ve had the kind of mathematical training that lets you trust a model of an exponential process, your gut feeling just doesn’t line up with reality & that leads to making bad decisions.
I am overawed at the thought how rich you must be.
Hah. If only...
Although I did tell everyone I knew to buy Acorn stock because they would get 1/2 of ARM back in the 90s. Sadly none of them believed me & I had no capital at the time...
I have (on the other hand) managed to stay out of the way of various inevitable bubble crashes however. So it’s not all bad.
Heh. I bought a bit of Acorn stock in the early 90s, then got share options when I joined the company. When ARM was sold a while back, it kept me going for a few years.
Between us, Mrs J and I have worked directly for probably a dozen companies. They have all offered stock options. Acorn were the only options that has got us any appreciable sums of money. The stories of grunts making life-changing sums of money from options are mostly myths, designed to enchant naive young engineers ...
On topic (ish) Keir Starmer is an uninspiring product but that won't matter if the economy stagflates - Labour could simply win by default anyway.
Remember 1974.
I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose, oppositions don't win.
Your boy can win despite stagflation. And if winning is all that matters. starting ulture wars and scapegoating minorities are meat and drink to Johnson's current audience. Even if the economy is on its knees, my long held view that incumbency takes the hit has been proven wrong by the fuel crisis.
It is not the crisis, but who gets the blame for the crisis. Previous governments, Remainers, woke lefties, foreigners, foreign governments are all fair game, and Johnson is winning at that game.
Is it shocking that only a small minority women would date someone who (presumably, if supporting Trump) think it is ok to "grab them by the pussy"?
How would you feel about a poll finding that few women of Jewish heritage would date a Corbynista? Would that be shocking evidence of the the 'rise of regressive authoritarianism'?
If you want to shape the world, then get out there and do it, whether left, right or centre. US conservatives need to stop being such snowflakes.
You haven't read the article, have you?
I have. I don't have time to go through each of the points raised or the issues with many of the dubious studies quoted (they tend to be surveys with carefully worded questions and samples and no comparison group - how many elite Trumpers would date a Sanders supporter?) so I focused on the claim that the article leads with.
I fully support the First... and Second... paragraphs towards the end of the article. They are statements of common sense. Only an imagined woke bogeyman is fighting against those.
Kaufmann mentions the Forstater case - which she won (belatedly, after appeal, but she won). It established her right to have her views and to express them, the opposite of what Kaufmann is claiming.
I don't know how to explain this. There will be people with leftist/woke views who try and impose those on others and employ them in recruitment or promotion. Those people should be sacked. They are a tiny minority - I don't believe I have ever met one. There were in the past (and likely now) those who tried to impose their racism/sexism on employment/promotion or wouldn't hire the person who was a union rep or whatever (also a tiny minority, but I have met them). They should have been sacked too.
In the UK, at least, there are protections. Those apparently hated ethnic group/ sexual orientation/gender forms from HR on recruitment? Guess what, they're there to pick up on white straight men not getting a fair deal too. As long as the white straight men bother to fill them it, that is. I recruit in a university, we never get to see those forms in recruitment and nor should we.
"Precisely the same manner..." ...Among their male counterparts, 90 percent would date a Clinton supporter but only 33 percent would date a Trump supporter. Spencer Case argues that those who politically discriminate are acting in precisely the same manner as those who justify prejudice against Muslims or Jews...
It's an absolute nonsense, people can date who they like - the same horseshit has been used about people (Mainly lesbians it seems) that won't date trans. There's no human right that you have to be dated by anyone, you can discriminate on colour, political preferences, gender, trans, baldness - whatever the hell basis you like.
'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?
It isn't necessarily a bad thing if you believe immigration is bad per se, and less important than maintaining home industries. But the consequence of restricting the means to profitably produce food at market prices, while you don't restrict imports of competitor products, is to see imports replace home production.
I don't think immigration is bad whatsoever. I support as much high-skilled, high-wage immigration as possible.
I think immigration for minimum wage jobs, deflating our economy and driving up costs combined with giving those who come here for minimum wages jobs housing benefit, universal credit etc because minimum wage isn't enough to live in this nation is bad. Don't you?
I don't think this, no. Because it ignores market reality. Not an expert, but I don't think slaughtermen were working at minimum wage under FoM anyway.
Actually they were. We had job details being shared here saying that night shifts in an abattoir in South East England were being paid £9.12 per hour.
Do you think its feasible or productive to be working for £9.12 per hour for overnight shifts in South East England? Or to be frank anywhere in the UK.
Glassdoor has average slaughtermen salaries at £31 000, which is about twice minimum wage. I'm sure when you drill down there are big variations. But those apparently reasonably paid jobs will go if we import the products instead, thanks to the government immigration and trade policies.
No they won't, if they're productive they'll stay.
What will go is the £9.12 per hour jobs being advertised.
Do you think its acceptable to expect a night shift job for difficult work to be filled for £9.12 per hour?
Glassdoor really isn't accurate when looking at wages for UK jobs...
I agree, but at least a proportion of people will be paid that. £9 an hour isn't the average salary either. The market forces principle still applies, regardless of what the actual average salary is.
The £9.12ph jobs are now £10.57ph
Yeah but not all jobs are at that rate. The more skilled jobs get paid higher and is the way of the world, those jobs are more likely to be indigenous workers. Abbatoirs will be looking at their wage bill in the round. If the average wage is uncompetitive, all those jobs will go, including the higher paid ones.
So you back a teensy tiny minority ggetting merely OK wages on the back of a lot of people getting absolutely shit wages?
I didn't invent the capitalist system, as implemented by this government.
I must off.
But importing people from the developing world to devalue the efforts of others isn't being implemented by this government. Its what you're advocating not them.
Final from me. I'm not advocating anything. I am pointing out the choice the government is making, which is to import goods, with the consequent loss of income and jobs, than to import labour. If you are a UK farmer, get used to lower incomes or none at all.
People can decide whether that's a good policy or not.
Mr. Fishing, got to say I still think automated driving is like flying cars - something technically possible that won't be practical for almost anything.
You get slow burns though. Look at video calls. "Vidphones" were a staple of c20th Sci fi. Then there were 15 years when they were possible via Skype and facetime but nobody saw the point. Then lockdown and kaboom.
Same thing happened with faxes, actually. The technology was there since ww2, the legal profession had them from the 70s, but it took a postal strike in the 80s before they caught on.
Faxes and video calls don't immediately stop you paying for something else, though, except relatively cheap stamps. Automation saves wages. It'll catch on fine.
25 years ago, Acorn did a lot of work on Video-on-Demand technology. Set Top Boxes were needed, as PC graphics cards and processors were generally not powerful enough to decode the video streams.
Apparently there was a certain amount of negativity in the market, because few people saw the possibility that the Internet could handle the traffic from everyone, and the boxes were restricted to certain cable providers.
I could see the Internet having the bandwidth; what I never guessed was that phones would, within a decade, be able to stream videos at high quality. The rate the technology increased at was massive.
But it involved no fundamental new technology; only improvements on what was existing.
People are very bad at accepting the implications of exponential changes.
In this case, the exponential increase in computing power / £ was going to turn available radio bandwidth & video compression from expensive impossibilities to trivialities in single digit years.
You see similar "unpossible!" thinking around lots of exponential processes - the delayed response to the Covid pandemic is one obvious recent example. Unless you’ve had the kind of mathematical training that lets you trust a model of an exponential process, your gut feeling just doesn’t line up with reality & that leads to making bad decisions.
I am overawed at the thought how rich you must be.
Hah. If only...
Although I did tell everyone I knew to buy Acorn stock because they would get 1/2 of ARM back in the 90s. Sadly none of them believed me & I had no capital at the time...
I have (on the other hand) managed to stay out of the way of various inevitable bubble crashes however. So it’s not all bad.
Heh. I bought a bit of Acorn stock in the early 90s, then got share options when I joined the company. When ARM was sold a while back, it kept me going for a few years.
Between us, Mrs J and I have worked directly for probably a dozen companies. They have all offered stock options. Acorn were the only options that has got us any appreciable sums of money. The stories of grunts making life-changing sums of money from options are mostly myths, designed to enchant naive young engineers ...
+1, unless you are in early enough ( before the company takes off) share options rarely generate much money.
Wayne Couzens will keep at least a third of his police pension because rules do not allow him to be stripped of the full amount, The Times has learnt.
Home Office guidelines state that an individual’s pension cannot be forfeited by more than 65 per cent, the amount that relates to the contributions made by the police force and therefore the public purse.
It adds that at least four judges, in separate cases about pensions, concluded that it would be wrong to take the remaining 35 per cent as it represented the officer’s own contributions from their salary. To strip any of that would be a “clear infringement of the officer’s rights” under the European Convention on Human Rights.
'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?
It isn't necessarily a bad thing if you believe immigration is bad per se, and less important than maintaining home industries. But the consequence of restricting the means to profitably produce food at market prices, while you don't restrict imports of competitor products, is to see imports replace home production.
I don't think immigration is bad whatsoever. I support as much high-skilled, high-wage immigration as possible.
I think immigration for minimum wage jobs, deflating our economy and driving up costs combined with giving those who come here for minimum wages jobs housing benefit, universal credit etc because minimum wage isn't enough to live in this nation is bad. Don't you?
I don't think this, no. Because it ignores market reality. Not an expert, but I don't think slaughtermen were working at minimum wage under FoM anyway.
Actually they were. We had job details being shared here saying that night shifts in an abattoir in South East England were being paid £9.12 per hour.
Do you think its feasible or productive to be working for £9.12 per hour for overnight shifts in South East England? Or to be frank anywhere in the UK.
Glassdoor has average slaughtermen salaries at £31 000, which is about twice minimum wage. I'm sure when you drill down there are big variations. But those apparently reasonably paid jobs will go if we import the products instead, thanks to the government immigration and trade policies.
No they won't, if they're productive they'll stay.
What will go is the £9.12 per hour jobs being advertised.
Do you think its acceptable to expect a night shift job for difficult work to be filled for £9.12 per hour?
Glassdoor really isn't accurate when looking at wages for UK jobs...
I agree, but at least a proportion of people will be paid that. £9 an hour isn't the average salary either. The market forces principle still applies, regardless of what the actual average salary is.
The £9.12ph jobs are now £10.57ph
Yeah but not all jobs are at that rate. The more skilled jobs get paid higher and is the way of the world, those jobs are more likely to be indigenous workers. Abbatoirs will be looking at their wage bill in the round. If the average wage is uncompetitive, all those jobs will go, including the higher paid ones.
That's not true. Some abattoirs will go under, others will increase automation/management practices for the basic tasks, and survive. The idea that we should maintain low wage work for the sake of protecting slightly higher paid jobs is a curious one for the left. It never applies to arguments over the minimum wage strangely.
We don't have enough abattoirs at present even without closures. They're too thinly scattered as it is.
On topic (ish) Keir Starmer is an uninspiring product but that won't matter if the economy stagflates - Labour could simply win by default anyway.
Remember 1974.
I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose, oppositions don't win.
Your boy can win despite stagflation. And if winning is all that matters. starting ulture wars and scapegoating minorities are meat and drink to Johnson's current audience. Even if the economy is on its knees, my long held view that incumbency takes the hit has been proven wrong by the fuel crisis.
It is not the crisis, but who gets the blame for the crisis. Previous governments, Remainers, woke lefties, foreigners, foreign governments are all fair game, and Johnson is winning at that game.
Is it shocking that only a small minority women would date someone who (presumably, if supporting Trump) think it is ok to "grab them by the pussy"?
How would you feel about a poll finding that few women of Jewish heritage would date a Corbynista? Would that be shocking evidence of the the 'rise of regressive authoritarianism'?
If you want to shape the world, then get out there and do it, whether left, right or centre. US conservatives need to stop being such snowflakes.
You haven't read the article, have you?
I have. I don't have time to go through each of the points raised or the issues with many of the dubious studies quoted (they tend to be surveys with carefully worded questions and samples and no comparison group - how many elite Trumpers would date a Sanders supporter?) so I focused on the claim that the article leads with.
I fully support the First... and Second... paragraphs towards the end of the article. They are statements of common sense. Only an imagined woke bogeyman is fighting against those.
Kaufmann mentions the Forstater case - which she won (belatedly, after appeal, but she won). It established her right to have her views and to express them, the opposite of what Kaufmann is claiming.
I don't know how to explain this. There will be people with leftist/woke views who try and impose those on others and employ them in recruitment or promotion. Those people should be sacked. They are a tiny minority - I don't believe I have ever met one. There were in the past (and likely now) those who tried to impose their racism/sexism on employment/promotion or wouldn't hire the person who was a union rep or whatever (also a tiny minority, but I have met them). They should have been sacked too.
In the UK, at least, there are protections. Those apparently hated ethnic group/ sexual orientation/gender forms from HR on recruitment? Guess what, they're there to pick up on white straight men not getting a fair deal too. As long as the white straight men bother to fill them it, that is. I recruit in a university, we never get to see those forms in recruitment and nor should we.
"Precisely the same manner..." ...Among their male counterparts, 90 percent would date a Clinton supporter but only 33 percent would date a Trump supporter. Spencer Case argues that those who politically discriminate are acting in precisely the same manner as those who justify prejudice against Muslims or Jews...
Yeah, I saw that. Haven't seen the original study and I couldn't get the context from the article - what's the actual support split among 'all graduates'? Hard to see the implications without that.
Assuming the Trump supporters are still in a strong minority, you come to other questions about availability. You might preferentially want to date blond women, but if you find yourself in a population with very few blond women, you might be a bit more open to other hair colours. If you're a Trump supporter in a 80% Dem population, you can't afford to be as picky about your date's politics as a Dem supporter can be.
I always find these questions intriguing. Do people actually ask about politics on a date? Or are people saying they'd break it off later? What's a Trump supporter? Someone who happened to vote Trump for various reasons, or someone who actualy likes Trump? Big differences and why the question, as reported, is very - perhaps, intentionally - vague. If you didn't use the names, you'd have to ask different questions - (i) would you date someone who supports a fairly mainstream if dull politician? (ii) would you date someone who supports an obvious misogynist?
'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?
It isn't necessarily a bad thing if you believe immigration is bad per se, and less important than maintaining home industries. But the consequence of restricting the means to profitably produce food at market prices, while you don't restrict imports of competitor products, is to see imports replace home production.
I don't think immigration is bad whatsoever. I support as much high-skilled, high-wage immigration as possible.
I think immigration for minimum wage jobs, deflating our economy and driving up costs combined with giving those who come here for minimum wages jobs housing benefit, universal credit etc because minimum wage isn't enough to live in this nation is bad. Don't you?
I don't think this, no. Because it ignores market reality. Not an expert, but I don't think slaughtermen were working at minimum wage under FoM anyway.
Actually they were. We had job details being shared here saying that night shifts in an abattoir in South East England were being paid £9.12 per hour.
Do you think its feasible or productive to be working for £9.12 per hour for overnight shifts in South East England? Or to be frank anywhere in the UK.
Glassdoor has average slaughtermen salaries at £31 000, which is about twice minimum wage. I'm sure when you drill down there are big variations. But those apparently reasonably paid jobs will go if we import the products instead, thanks to the government immigration and trade policies.
No they won't, if they're productive they'll stay.
What will go is the £9.12 per hour jobs being advertised.
Do you think its acceptable to expect a night shift job for difficult work to be filled for £9.12 per hour?
Glassdoor really isn't accurate when looking at wages for UK jobs...
I agree, but at least a proportion of people will be paid that. £9 an hour isn't the average salary either. The market forces principle still applies, regardless of what the actual average salary is.
The £9.12ph jobs are now £10.57ph
Yeah but not all jobs are at that rate. The more skilled jobs get paid higher and is the way of the world, those jobs are more likely to be indigenous workers. Abbatoirs will be looking at their wage bill in the round. If the average wage is uncompetitive, all those jobs will go, including the higher paid ones.
So you back a teensy tiny minority ggetting merely OK wages on the back of a lot of people getting absolutely shit wages?
I didn't invent the capitalist system, as implemented by this government.
I must off.
But importing people from the developing world to devalue the efforts of others isn't being implemented by this government. Its what you're advocating not them.
You are an unusual mix of EngNat and market fundamentalist and what I notice is that when these 2 things clash it's the Nat side which tends to prevail.
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.
Remember that the average newbuild in the UK has something 30-40k of Planning Gain taxes on it. Which contribute nothing to the quality of the build.
On topic (ish) Keir Starmer is an uninspiring product but that won't matter if the economy stagflates - Labour could simply win by default anyway.
Remember 1974.
I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose, oppositions don't win.
Your boy can win despite stagflation. And if winning is all that matters. starting ulture wars and scapegoating minorities are meat and drink to Johnson's current audience. Even if the economy is on its knees, my long held view that incumbency takes the hit has been proven wrong by the fuel crisis.
It is not the crisis, but who gets the blame for the crisis. Previous governments, Remainers, woke lefties, foreigners, foreign governments are all fair game, and Johnson is winning at that game.
Is it shocking that only a small minority women would date someone who (presumably, if supporting Trump) think it is ok to "grab them by the pussy"?
How would you feel about a poll finding that few women of Jewish heritage would date a Corbynista? Would that be shocking evidence of the the 'rise of regressive authoritarianism'?
If you want to shape the world, then get out there and do it, whether left, right or centre. US conservatives need to stop being such snowflakes.
You haven't read the article, have you?
I have. I don't have time to go through each of the points raised or the issues with many of the dubious studies quoted (they tend to be surveys with carefully worded questions and samples and no comparison group - how many elite Trumpers would date a Sanders supporter?) so I focused on the claim that the article leads with.
I fully support the First... and Second... paragraphs towards the end of the article. They are statements of common sense. Only an imagined woke bogeyman is fighting against those.
Kaufmann mentions the Forstater case - which she won (belatedly, after appeal, but she won). It established her right to have her views and to express them, the opposite of what Kaufmann is claiming.
I don't know how to explain this. There will be people with leftist/woke views who try and impose those on others and employ them in recruitment or promotion. Those people should be sacked. They are a tiny minority - I don't believe I have ever met one. There were in the past (and likely now) those who tried to impose their racism/sexism on employment/promotion or wouldn't hire the person who was a union rep or whatever (also a tiny minority, but I have met them). They should have been sacked too.
In the UK, at least, there are protections. Those apparently hated ethnic group/ sexual orientation/gender forms from HR on recruitment? Guess what, they're there to pick up on white straight men not getting a fair deal too. As long as the white straight men bother to fill them it, that is. I recruit in a university, we never get to see those forms in recruitment and nor should we.
"Precisely the same manner..." ...Among their male counterparts, 90 percent would date a Clinton supporter but only 33 percent would date a Trump supporter. Spencer Case argues that those who politically discriminate are acting in precisely the same manner as those who justify prejudice against Muslims or Jews...
I wouldn't date someone who was more than faintly religious. Nothing wrong with that. If someone wants to throw the word "prejudice" around, it's their prerogative to be wrong.
Plenty of religious people only date religious people too.
On topic (ish) Keir Starmer is an uninspiring product but that won't matter if the economy stagflates - Labour could simply win by default anyway.
Remember 1974.
I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose, oppositions don't win.
Your boy can win despite stagflation. And if winning is all that matters. starting ulture wars and scapegoating minorities are meat and drink to Johnson's current audience. Even if the economy is on its knees, my long held view that incumbency takes the hit has been proven wrong by the fuel crisis.
It is not the crisis, but who gets the blame for the crisis. Previous governments, Remainers, woke lefties, foreigners, foreign governments are all fair game, and Johnson is winning at that game.
Is it shocking that only a small minority women would date someone who (presumably, if supporting Trump) think it is ok to "grab them by the pussy"?
How would you feel about a poll finding that few women of Jewish heritage would date a Corbynista? Would that be shocking evidence of the the 'rise of regressive authoritarianism'?
If you want to shape the world, then get out there and do it, whether left, right or centre. US conservatives need to stop being such snowflakes.
You haven't read the article, have you?
I have. I don't have time to go through each of the points raised or the issues with many of the dubious studies quoted (they tend to be surveys with carefully worded questions and samples and no comparison group - how many elite Trumpers would date a Sanders supporter?) so I focused on the claim that the article leads with.
I fully support the First... and Second... paragraphs towards the end of the article. They are statements of common sense. Only an imagined woke bogeyman is fighting against those.
Kaufmann mentions the Forstater case - which she won (belatedly, after appeal, but she won). It established her right to have her views and to express them, the opposite of what Kaufmann is claiming.
I don't know how to explain this. There will be people with leftist/woke views who try and impose those on others and employ them in recruitment or promotion. Those people should be sacked. They are a tiny minority - I don't believe I have ever met one. There were in the past (and likely now) those who tried to impose their racism/sexism on employment/promotion or wouldn't hire the person who was a union rep or whatever (also a tiny minority, but I have met them). They should have been sacked too.
In the UK, at least, there are protections. Those apparently hated ethnic group/ sexual orientation/gender forms from HR on recruitment? Guess what, they're there to pick up on white straight men not getting a fair deal too. As long as the white straight men bother to fill them it, that is. I recruit in a university, we never get to see those forms in recruitment and nor should we.
"Precisely the same manner..." ...Among their male counterparts, 90 percent would date a Clinton supporter but only 33 percent would date a Trump supporter. Spencer Case argues that those who politically discriminate are acting in precisely the same manner as those who justify prejudice against Muslims or Jews...
It's an absolute nonsense, people can date who they like - the same horseshit has been used about people (Mainly lesbians it seems) that won't date trans. There's no human right that you have to be dated by anyone, you can discriminate on colour, political preferences, gender, trans, baldness - whatever the hell basis you like.
Indeed. Is discriminating between movie star looks with an athlete's body and somewhat obese and ugly to be regarded as just like prejudice against religion or race?
'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?
It isn't necessarily a bad thing if you believe immigration is bad per se, and less important than maintaining home industries. But the consequence of restricting the means to profitably produce food at market prices, while you don't restrict imports of competitor products, is to see imports replace home production.
I don't think immigration is bad whatsoever. I support as much high-skilled, high-wage immigration as possible.
I think immigration for minimum wage jobs, deflating our economy and driving up costs combined with giving those who come here for minimum wages jobs housing benefit, universal credit etc because minimum wage isn't enough to live in this nation is bad. Don't you?
I don't think this, no. Because it ignores market reality. Not an expert, but I don't think slaughtermen were working at minimum wage under FoM anyway.
Actually they were. We had job details being shared here saying that night shifts in an abattoir in South East England were being paid £9.12 per hour.
Do you think its feasible or productive to be working for £9.12 per hour for overnight shifts in South East England? Or to be frank anywhere in the UK.
Glassdoor has average slaughtermen salaries at £31 000, which is about twice minimum wage. I'm sure when you drill down there are big variations. But those apparently reasonably paid jobs will go if we import the products instead, thanks to the government immigration and trade policies.
No they won't, if they're productive they'll stay.
What will go is the £9.12 per hour jobs being advertised.
Do you think its acceptable to expect a night shift job for difficult work to be filled for £9.12 per hour?
Glassdoor really isn't accurate when looking at wages for UK jobs...
I agree, but at least a proportion of people will be paid that. £9 an hour isn't the average salary either. The market forces principle still applies, regardless of what the actual average salary is.
The £9.12ph jobs are now £10.57ph
Yeah but not all jobs are at that rate. The more skilled jobs get paid higher and is the way of the world, those jobs are more likely to be indigenous workers. Abbatoirs will be looking at their wage bill in the round. If the average wage is uncompetitive, all those jobs will go, including the higher paid ones.
So you back a teensy tiny minority ggetting merely OK wages on the back of a lot of people getting absolutely shit wages?
I didn't invent the capitalist system, as implemented by this government.
I must off.
But importing people from the developing world to devalue the efforts of others isn't being implemented by this government. Its what you're advocating not them.
Final from me. I'm not advocating anything. I am pointing out the choice the government is making, which is to import goods, with the consequent loss of income and jobs, than to import labour. If you are a UK farmer, get used to lower incomes or none at all.
People can decide whether that's a good policy or not.
Leaving the SM and CU actually means there are more restrictions on meat and fruit and vegetables coming to the UK from the EEA than there were before coupled with the end of EEA free movement. The Australian trade deal which reduces restrictions on Australian meat imports to the UK is only a fraction of the impact of the overall more protectionist nature of the Boris government due to Brexit
Comments
If I want to buy chicken from the Netherlands and they think we're a forced buyer then why wouldn't we buy from Thailand? Or Brazil? Or the USA? Or Poland? Or Turkey? Or . . .
We're not a forced buyer, because there's no monopoly supplier.
TBH to Matt I think he is a decent human being. Its just that punters in Stockton are fickle, they turned out in large numbers to vote for him and expect delivery. He hasn't done much yet.
I think immigration for minimum wage jobs, deflating our economy and driving up costs combined with giving those who come here for minimum wages jobs housing benefit, universal credit etc because minimum wage isn't enough to live in this nation is bad. Don't you?
North West Durham should be being used by SKS to show the reason why Corbyn died - a left wing loony only works as a candidate in a few constituencies...
Will it send us to meat substitutes? Probably not. Will it result in higher prices? Probably.
At which point one has to ask what the aim of govt is. To put our farmers out of business and raise prices for consumers doesn't sit well in a GE manifesto.
Do you think its feasible or productive to be working for £9.12 per hour for overnight shifts in South East England? Or to be frank anywhere in the UK.
It's accurate then because it models imminent voting behaviour correctly. Today, it's modelling an ethereal mid-term opinion poll.
Don't see why West Bromwich East will swing more to the Tories though, the Brexit party vote wasn't very high at all there. I'd have thought it would be a good Labour target...
Holden seems reasonably popular and the seat just feels demographically to be trending away from labour. Lots of nice middle class housing estates and nice little villages.
Brexit was the final push they needed to go Tory. Blair's Sedgefield could now be as lost to Labour going forward as Bill Clinton's Arkansas now is to the Democrats.
What will go is the £9.12 per hour jobs being advertised.
Do you think its acceptable to expect a night shift job for difficult work to be filled for £9.12 per hour?
Con majority 30-40? Seems about right to me.
It will mark the beginning of the end of this latest prolonged period of Tory government though IMO.
https://twitter.com/PoliticsForAlI/status/1444967088448282625?s=20
Driverless cars will be coming on stream just at the point that ‘the North’ will be levelled up.
And dont forget, it was reciprocal, so we had the opportunity to go and work in their abbatoirs for 94p an hour
That's the system devised by the government. They could restrict imports of goods through quotas and tariffs. That would have consequences. Restrictions on imports of labour and of goods are really two sides of the same coin. The government has chosen to restrict the first but not the second. That's the market environment.
Because food security is essential, personally I support this, but it doesn't alter the laws of reality.
If they're no longer competitive, so be it. If it sees the death of £9.12 per hour night shift jobs then fantastic.
How would you feel about a poll finding that few women of Jewish heritage would date a Corbynista? Would that be shocking evidence of the the 'rise of regressive authoritarianism'?
If you want to shape the world, then get out there and do it, whether left, right or centre. US conservatives need to stop being such snowflakes.
With of course heaps of onboard computing power so you can make them autonomous, but limit their speed to 30 mph, in case of outages.
The soft power brokers in London - the lawyers & accountants who service the world’s oligarchs, the people who run the City as the UK’s finest tax haven in order to line their own pockets, the owners of fleet street’s finest who rely on these schemes for their own profitability & so on & on - will move heaven and earth to prevent it happening. The increased transparency would be anathema to the landed gentry as well - the Crown will hate it for a start.
It’s the kind of change this country really needs though.
It is a generalisation from that chart, but. The "true" Red Wall, places you mention included, are staying Tory, probably for some time. These are ex-mining or industrial, suffered heavily under Thatcher.
But, barely no-one working now was at work, or on the Dole in the early 80's. They are retired. Or long since moved away. A grotesque number, in comparison, are dead. They are now, demographically Tory. Small town, rural, and crucially cheap housing so very high owner occupiers. They also are close to full employment.
The "true" marginals, though, Bolton, Warrington, Dewsbury, Wrexham, are all to play for. They went Tory as you would expect because they won an 80 seat majority. They can go back.
Oh. And Redcar is continuing to be fickle.
It's a view I suppose but based on my knowledge of similar factories I would be very surprised if the factory had (m)any indigenous workers left.
Farmers vote Conservative. And put bloody big signs in their fields during election campaigns.
I must off.
Peel was only able to repeal them with the support of the Whigs. Most of his party still backed them and so his fellow free trading Peelites who were a minority in the Tory party ended up forming the Liberal party with the Whigs and Radicals in the 1850s
*Kulaks
On the wider point, the Tories will not like losing any seats of course, but they can afford to lose quite a few Red Wall seats so long as they don't suffer a mass problem in the South, so expect some pivoting (hence the planning retreat recently).
Adaptive Cruise control which keeps your car at the same speed as the car in front of you is a completely different experience. It makes motorway driving so much easier even if you don't notice the difference.
Which is why, regardless of merits, SKS has a roughly 40% chance of being next PM and the odds are wrong.
Any third option for government alongside 'Tory led' or 'Labour led' would be properly called a Black Swan.
I would be a Whig if we had Tory v Whig old-school. But the Conservatives absorbed a lot of the old Whig thinking.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10056773/Pictured-Met-Police-officer-unit-Wayne-Couzens-charged-rape.html
Met on tinder. Sounds like the cop denies having sex with her rather than saying it was consensual.
Also, suggests the girl came forward after the Couzens sentence.
Trump heavily subsidised farmers, the Australian Nationals also are based on the farming vote, Chirac was a big supporter of agricultural subsidy too. Conservatives around the western world support our farmers
The Conservatives have won when they had mine. Except 2005 although I was in the plurality of England on that time (with a metaphorical peg on my nose).
I'm surprised I am able to type.
It is becoming clear that part of this was many industries relying on the open tap of cheap immigrant labour that worked under terrible conditions at or below minimum wage.
This will have to lead to improved wages or better working conditions to attract domestic workers, which will result in one of the following in the long-run:
1) Higher costs feed into higher price of foods - i.e. inflation
2) Higher costs reduce corporate profitability
3) Businesses wind up or fail, such that we increase imports. While this sounds bad, almost by definition we are stopping some of the least productive areas of the economy that can't survive on paying decent wages and working conditions.
In the short-run, disruption will reign supreme as businesses adjust.
I fully support the First... and Second... paragraphs towards the end of the article. They are statements of common sense. Only an imagined woke bogeyman is fighting against those.
Kaufmann mentions the Forstater case - which she won (belatedly, after appeal, but she won). It established her right to have her views and to express them, the opposite of what Kaufmann is claiming.
I don't know how to explain this. There will be people with leftist/woke views who try and impose those on others and employ them in recruitment or promotion. Those people should be sacked. They are a tiny minority - I don't believe I have ever met one. There were in the past (and likely now) those who tried to impose their racism/sexism on employment/promotion or wouldn't hire the person who was a union rep or whatever (also a tiny minority, but I have met them). They should have been sacked too.
In the UK, at least, there are protections. Those apparently hated ethnic group/ sexual orientation/gender forms from HR on recruitment? Guess what, they're there to pick up on white straight men not getting a fair deal too. As long as the white straight men bother to fill them it, that is. I recruit in a university, we never get to see those forms in recruitment and nor should we.
Most Tory MPs voted against repealing the Corn Laws, as I said Peel was only able to repeal them with the support of Whig MPs.
Brexit has revived the protectionist Tory party in terms of the party's core vote. Many middle class professional, pro free trade Remainers who voted for Cameron are now voting LD or Starmer Labour. Most protectionist working class UKIP voters from 2015 are now voting Conservative
the Lib Dems won because the steel works went bankrupt in 2009 but returned to Labour in 2015 after it was rescued. Note that the Tories even under Cameron were so toxic that the LDems got the protest vote.
The steel works finally closed in 2019 at which point the seat went back Tory.
Redcar is an awkward place to predict because it's 30 minutes from absolutely anywhere else so unless there is a local focus the seat will return to Labour as it's natural state.
a) Trump supporters obviously
b) Religious zealots
c) Conspiracy cranks
d) Fascists
e) Communists
f) Those with no views
g) Those who are just a bit too weird
h) Those who are irrational except in the heat of an argument
and the list goes on.
People can decide whether that's a good policy or not.
...Among their male counterparts, 90 percent would date a Clinton supporter but only 33 percent would date a Trump supporter. Spencer Case argues that those who politically discriminate are acting in precisely the same manner as those who justify prejudice against Muslims or Jews...
And sorry but we won't be importing low paid labour, the reason we both had Brexit and we have the current mess is because we imported Low Paid labour without thought to the impact it did to our own workforce.
Between us, Mrs J and I have worked directly for probably a dozen companies. They have all offered stock options. Acorn were the only options that has got us any appreciable sums of money. The stories of grunts making life-changing sums of money from options are mostly myths, designed to enchant naive young engineers ...
There's no human right that you have to be dated by anyone, you can discriminate on colour, political preferences, gender, trans, baldness - whatever the hell basis you like.
Wayne Couzens will keep at least a third of his police pension because rules do not allow him to be stripped of the full amount, The Times has learnt.
Home Office guidelines state that an individual’s pension cannot be forfeited by more than 65 per cent, the amount that relates to the contributions made by the police force and therefore the public purse.
It adds that at least four judges, in separate cases about pensions, concluded that it would be wrong to take the remaining 35 per cent as it represented the officer’s own contributions from their salary. To strip any of that would be a “clear infringement of the officer’s rights” under the European Convention on Human Rights.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/killer-can-keep-at-least-one-third-of-his-police-pension-lvvbdqp96
Assuming the Trump supporters are still in a strong minority, you come to other questions about availability. You might preferentially want to date blond women, but if you find yourself in a population with very few blond women, you might be a bit more open to other hair colours. If you're a Trump supporter in a 80% Dem population, you can't afford to be as picky about your date's politics as a Dem supporter can be.
I always find these questions intriguing. Do people actually ask about politics on a date? Or are people saying they'd break it off later? What's a Trump supporter? Someone who happened to vote Trump for various reasons, or someone who actualy likes Trump? Big differences and why the question, as reported, is very - perhaps, intentionally - vague. If you didn't use the names, you'd have to ask different questions - (i) would you date someone who supports a fairly mainstream if dull politician? (ii) would you date someone who supports an obvious misogynist?
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/907203/The_Value_and_Incidence_of_Developer_Contributions_in_England_201819.pdf
Just passed two petrol stations on my way back from a beautiful run around the Great Ouse flood plains at St Ives. Both were closed, with no fuel.
Here in Cambridgeshire, the fuel drought apparently continues ...