Genuine question: how many PB-ers have actually encountered a proper empty shelf in a supermarket?
There must surely be some examples underlying the multitude of stories.
And by ‘empty shelf’ I mean exactly that, an entire shelf wiped clean, so not just a lack of ‘Tilda Microwavable Basmati and Wild Rice’ but a shelf with all rice gone, or no bread, or zero citrus fruit, etc
Bottled water, Tesco, 6-8 weeks ago. Ony "with a hint of" stuff left.
Annoyingly, the first time for at least a decade I have wanted bottled water, as a fallback supply on a little boat I've just bought in case I get swept out to sea.
Surely if you not already on the boat when you get swept out to sea…
Swept on the boat. If I'm detached from the boat drinking water will be a secondary, at best, worry.
Boris's jokes are the best ones I've heard for ages.
The best from a politician in my lifetime. Hague could be funny, but not as funny as Boris
People may belittle this - ‘court jester’ - but it’s also highly effective in politics as it is in life. If you make people laugh, you’re popular. That’s it. People want to see you again, and listen to you again. You get another hearing
Will I ever sit through another 90 minutes of Starmer droning? God, no. I did it because it was his debut
This is probably the fourth or fifth Boris speech I’ve watched, and this was the funniest. So, I’ll watch another. It’s as basic as that
I've heard from people who have met Boris that it gets wearing after a bit, but since the public only meet or see him in snippets it works pretty well.
Yes, Boris - so it is said - does not retain male friends particularly well. He’s too competitive, too easily bored, perhaps. And that must chafe with others - see Dom Cummings. But he is genuinely funny and smart, it is absurd to claim otherwise
And humour is hugely helpful in politics
The best comparison for Boris is maybe - weirdly - Ronald Reagan. ‘Morning in America’. Reagan also told good jokes (his own) and also exuded patriotic optimism. And was highly successful. And Reagan, like Boris, was an actor
Reagan was also America's greatest and most consequential postwar PM. Although hated by others.
Other than Thatcher and Attlee, Boris is surely going to be up their as our most consequential postwar PM by the time he is done.
I suspect in seventy years time for better or worse people will be talking about Boris far more than Cameron, May, Brown or even Blair.
Boris is a kind of gift. We all have troubles in our lives - sometimes we even experience tragedy - but if we can just sit back, breath deeply and focus on the fact that Boris is there - and in some indescribable, transcendent way will always be there - then life, history, even the cosmos itself, become imbued with a meaning that humanity hitherto could only long for.
The short version - New head of company discovers the place is a mess and not doing stuff like the "cool" company. His plan to address this is
1) Hire management consultants to read stuff off the internet and make a report 2) Filter it through 3 levels of C suite idiots - who "translate" the findings. 3) i.e. "They have a workforce motivated to work long hours" = "We must flog the serfs harder". 4) Make some notes from that
WTAF?
What a mess, yet they seem surprised at still losing good people to their main rival.
Yes.
What makes it almost poetic is that they are looking at a company where, according to multiple sources the situation is this -
1) The CEO/owner works himself as hard as anyone. 2) Has relocated himself to be onsite at the current biggest project. 3) Understands the projects down to the nut and bolts level 4) Is available 24/7 to make decisions. 5) Pays decently. 6) Stock options are worth a fuckton 7) Offers a working environment of "if you are a mad hobbyist in rocketry, you can do real rocketry 18 hours a day. No impediments". 8) Offers responsibility - see the recent video where an engineer in her 20s gets to be responsible for the launch mount of the largest rocket in the world. And briefs the owner of the company directly on it.
vs
1) Owner has bought a bigger boat 2) Devotes 2 whole afternoon a week to the company 3) Understands lawsuits. 4) Pays ok 5) Stock options are worth shit and you have to stay to get anything. 6) Offers a work environment of "If you like meetings, we have meetings"
And their answer is the serfs need to work harder.
7) Is the big one. There’s only one company who’s letting the rocket scientists actually build stuff, do it quickly and iteratively, and not worry a huge amount if they blow up.
BO, NASA, SLS and the legacy contractors spend a decade talking and making drawings, while SX are making and testing actual rockets!
Yeah - my favourite was that George Mueller was so bored with his job a senior rocket engine designer at TRW that he started building a big rocket engine in his garage. Because TRW wasn't actually doing anything.
George then went to look for a rocket test stand and ran into Elon at a conference....
Musk was very lucky to have around a large labour pool of very expensively trained rocket engineers who were either redundant, or didn't have much to do. But very little else was down to luck.
Oh, it was. He was very lucky with the timing, especially with regards to COTS. And COTS was a result of a decade-long effort by others to commercialise US access to space.
You could easily argue that the COTS deal made SpaceX in several ways. It gave them assured funding that allowed them to progress the F9; it gave them an assured market; and it gave them kudos. All of which helped them continue to get funding when the SpaceX/Tesla crunch happened in 2008.
Yes, but the reasons for COTS, and the availability of a lot of underemployed engineers were not exactly unlinked.
Here's a random story about machining, with a political connection (and something positive to say about Brown's government)
When they started restreamlining the Duchess of Hamilton in 2008, they hit a snag that delayed them for many months. They needed large sheets of 3mx2m steel for the cladding, at 1.5mm thickness. No-one makes it any more in that size, with that thickness steel only coming in 1.5m rolls. Using smaller sheets, or thicker ones, would spoil the effect. A supplier in China would only accept a 1,000 tonne order!
So a former Bromsgrove MP, Baron Snape, had a word with Gordon Brown's PPS, Ian Austin. Austin talked to Corus' owners, Tata, and their South Wales plant was given special permission to make some 1.5mm thick sheets.
I think Starmer's only chance of limping across the line by depriving Johnson of a majority now rests on the economy going totally tits up in next two years.
Otherwise Johnson has already framed the key question of next election and Labour have lost it already.
Tend to agree we need observable tangible things to get so bad that even the large numbers who've drunk his kool aid start to wonder if they should maybe think about weaning themselves off.
But I'm intrigued - What was the key question he framed that Labour have lost already?
Not sure if it was covered yesterday but what are the procedural thoughts on the Welsh Assembly's vote yesterday where the outcome was changed because one member could not log on to Zoom?
Feels unsatisfactory to me, and open to someone targeting their broadband in important votes.
I suppose the non-internet parallel would be someone missing a vote because of a delayed train. Since they wouldn't delay a vote for that reason it's consistent not to do so for internet connection problems, though it does feel unsatisfactory.
I think Starmer's only chance of limping across the line by depriving Johnson of a majority now rests on the economy going totally tits up in next two years.
Otherwise Johnson has already framed the key question of next election and Labour have lost it already.
Tend to agree we need observable tangible things to get so bad that even the large numbers who've drunk his kool aid start to wonder if they should maybe think about weaning themselves off.
But I'm intrigued - What was the key question he framed that Labour have lost already?
Perhaps conference bounces are a thing of the past? There was always a chunk of any publicity is good publicity going on; remind people that a politician exists, their measured support goes up.
Whilst there's plenty of coverage there if you look for it, lots of people get a lot less news beamed into their eyeballs than in the olden days of 3 or 4 channels. The audience for the big BBC bulletins is 3-4 million, ITV gets 2-3 million tops. (source: https://www.thinkbox.tv/research/barb-data/top-programmes-report/)
That's a lot of people not getting much TV news at all.
If you get your music via Spotify and your entertainment via Netflix, you can quite easily go for days without having significant news wafted past you. In particular, it's pretty easy to avoid hearing the voice of the other side.
There must be enough polling data out there to check this, but not by me.
“ Perhaps conference bounces are a thing of the past?”
John Rentoul @JohnRentoul · 10m Speech didn't make a lot of sense, rambled all over the place, but the meta narrative so strong it didn't matter
The Boris Johnson equation in a nutshell?
Everything about the phoney Boris Johnson project, just like any phoney football manager project, is based on keeping your sight on the sunlit horizon, the brilliant things to happen the day after tomorrow, once the best of Britain is unleashed.
Flag up any pain today and it’s no gain without pain.
He’ll be gone within a year.
That's a pretty brave prediction.
Once it enters the if it’s not hurting it ain’t working, no gain without pain sound bite stage, this traditionally, mercifully, is the final stage before the end?
Okay. Alternative scenario, the only way he can save himself - Do you think this substance lite election rally speech, aspiration not policy, makes a 2022 cut and run election less or more likely?
And before you answer that, it’s now a no brainier there’s a GE next spring isn’t it?
I think a cut and run election is highly likely to be honest.
Autumn ‘23 is the most likely date IMHO, as soon as the new boundaries are in place.
Oh yes. The Johnson appeal rests on more than one thing but class deference is in the mix.
Optimism is his main appeal.
There's a real division between the miserable gits who expect (and want) to see everything fail, the glass a quarter empty brigade, and the optimists who are confident looking to the future.
When the miserable gits main complaint is that we have job vacancies and full employment, then we're through the looking glass.
Optimism is attractive but if that (plus a comedic presence) is the main offering of our PM (and I agree with you it is) we're selling ourselves very cheaply imo.
Genuine question: how many PB-ers have actually encountered a proper empty shelf in a supermarket?
There must surely be some examples underlying the multitude of stories.
And by ‘empty shelf’ I mean exactly that, an entire shelf wiped clean, so not just a lack of ‘Tilda Microwavable Basmati and Wild Rice’ but a shelf with all rice gone, or no bread, or zero citrus fruit, etc
Bottled water, Tesco, 6-8 weeks ago. Ony "with a hint of" stuff left.
Annoyingly, the first time for at least a decade I have wanted bottled water, as a fallback supply on a little boat I've just bought in case I get swept out to sea.
I hoard bottled water even in the good times. I love the taste of Highland Spring. I always have a bottle by the bed. I generally keep about 20 bottles in stock and start to get a tingle of panic when the number goes below about 12
Hydration, hydration, hydration
Read the science on hydration. Honestly - the claims of 8 glasses of water a day are utter nonsense. Almost as bad as the whole Mediterranean diet farago.
Oh yes. The Johnson appeal rests on more than one thing but class deference is in the mix.
Optimism is his main appeal.
There's a real division between the miserable gits who expect (and want) to see everything fail, the glass a quarter empty brigade, and the optimists who are confident looking to the future.
When the miserable gits main complaint is that we have job vacancies and full employment, then we're through the looking glass.
you still peddling that pack of lies. Show anywhere it states there is no-one unemployed in UK.
Here's a random story about machining, with a political connection (and something positive to say about Brown's government)
When they started restreamlining the Duchess of Hamilton in 2008, they hit a snag that delayed them for many months. They needed large sheets of 3mx2m steel for the cladding, at 1.5mm thickness. No-one makes it any more in that size, with that thickness steel only coming in 1.5m rolls. Using smaller sheets, or thicker ones, would spoil the effect. A supplier in China would only accept a 1,000 tonne order!
So a former Bromsgrove MP, Baron Snape, had a word with Gordon Brown's PPS, Ian Austin. Austin talked to Corus' owners, Tata, and their South Wales plant was given special permission to make some 1.5mm thick sheets.
Comments
Totally unfit to be PM but who TF cares.
When they started restreamlining the Duchess of Hamilton in 2008, they hit a snag that delayed them for many months. They needed large sheets of 3mx2m steel for the cladding, at 1.5mm thickness. No-one makes it any more in that size, with that thickness steel only coming in 1.5m rolls. Using smaller sheets, or thicker ones, would spoil the effect. A supplier in China would only accept a 1,000 tonne order!
So a former Bromsgrove MP, Baron Snape, had a word with Gordon Brown's PPS, Ian Austin. Austin talked to Corus' owners, Tata, and their South Wales plant was given special permission to make some 1.5mm thick sheets.
And hence we now have this sublime beauty:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LMS_Princess_Coronation_Class_6229_Duchess_of_Hamilton#/media/File:6229_Duchess_of_Hamilton_at_the_National_Railway_Museum.jpg
But I'm intrigued - What was the key question he framed that Labour have lost already?
That’d be convenient!