Spilled a full cup of coffee onto my work laptop today and now it's broken. I feel like a total whopper. How was your day?
At my last company, we gave all the salespeople mobile phones and they were supposed to last three years.
Whenever a new iPhone was released, there would be a massive rush of "oh, I'm so sorry, my phone broke".
It used to make me extremely cross.
Accidentally leaving a laptop or a phone on a car roof was a salesperson favourite. Reversing over it 3 times just to make sure was always strangely absent from the explanation.
I recall during the BREXIT debate @rcs1000 posting a comment from a physicist that the reason he supported BREXIT was that the U.K. was ultimately good at “error correction” while the EU was not. What is today’s COVID report if not a major intervention in “error correction”? Lord yes, we got things wrong, but we’re learning. Not sure I’ve seen the same from the EU….
That being said... here's an example: vaccine procurement. The EU did error correct relatively quickly. They fucked up. And then they got their chequebook out, and then they corrected.
And in the process traduced then sued the producer of one of the effective vaccines.
I doubt they'll learn from that....
Oh, that was a total fuck up, which damaged their reputation and did them no good at all.
But they did get the chequebook out and order f*ck loads of Pfizer. They did change direction.
Just having a think on what @TheScreamingEagles said about one of the scenes in NTTD riling people up but I can't think of which one it was. I didn't detect anything overtly woke in the movie.
The fact it featured a black female 007.
Which the film makers did intelligently - if someone retires, it is not uncommon to hire a replacement.
I recall no particular notice taken of the fact the new Miss Moneypenny was a failed 00 candidate, in a previous film.
Just having a think on what @TheScreamingEagles said about one of the scenes in NTTD riling people up but I can't think of which one it was. I didn't detect anything overtly woke in the movie.
Just having a think on what @TheScreamingEagles said about one of the scenes in NTTD riling people up but I can't think of which one it was. I didn't detect anything overtly woke in the movie.
The fact it featured a black female 007.
Man, anyone who gets upset by that has got issues. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that a black woman could be a top level agent inside the SiS, in fact I'm sure it's true.
Just having a think on what @TheScreamingEagles said about one of the scenes in NTTD riling people up but I can't think of which one it was. I didn't detect anything overtly woke in the movie.
The fact it featured a black female 007.
Man, anyone who gets upset by that has got issues. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that a black woman could be a top level agent inside the SiS, in fact I'm sure it's true.
I did see some BTL comments about it being political correctness/wokeness gone mad.
Honoured to be appointed United Nations Special Representative. I’ll be working with the @UN@ECA_OFFICIAL to help African economic recovery from the pandemic and promote sustainable development.
Spilled a full cup of coffee onto my work laptop today and now it's broken. I feel like a total whopper. How was your day?
At my last company, we gave all the salespeople mobile phones and they were supposed to last three years.
Whenever a new iPhone was released, there would be a massive rush of "oh, I'm so sorry, my phone broke".
It used to make me extremely cross.
Accidentally leaving a laptop or a phone on a car roof was a salesperson favourite. Reversing over it 3 times just to make sure was always strangely absent from the explanation.
When I worked for an oil company, a boss had very very funny way of dealing with that.
There were a small number of very expensive and basically indestructible laptops for use in the field - you could frisbee them off buildings etc. They were also horribly low spec and very very heavy.
Try the "my laptop is destroyed and I need a shiny new, lighter, one" and he would get you given one of the bricks.
Free movement wasn't really a big problem until three things came together:
(1) The integration of the EU 8, which were very significantly poorer than then existing EU members. When previously poor countries had joined (Portugal, Greece, Spain), they were relatively small, this was 8 countries (including one big one) all at the same time. The UK was also pretty much the only country not to go with transitional controls on immigration. This meant that instead of a few million people being spread out across the whole EU, they came mostly to the UK.
(2) The UK's benefits system. As far as I can tell, there is no other country in Europe that has either a system that is as non-contributory bases, not one which was so generous with in work benefits system like the UK. Prior to the Maastricht treaty, you could work in any member state, but there was no presumption of benefits. The consequence of this is that (pretty much alone of the countries in the EU), it was possible for a migrant to come to the UK and pick up benefits from day one.
(3) The Eurozone crisis, which caused a dramatic dip in demand for migrant labour in the Southern EU states *and* led to the exporting their own young.
Hold on. Are immigrants coming here and depressing wages or are they coming over here and claiming benefits?
Personally, I am broadly in favour of free movement of labour (on the basis that it is good for individuals, in that there is a wider variety of firms they can sell their skills to - and for companies, as there are more individuals they can hire).
What I oppose, though, is a system where people could come to the UK, having not paid a penny in tax or National Insurance, and receive benefits. That seems a very odd system.
I also find the argument that immigration has suppressed capital investment to be one which - while superficially plausible - does not seem to mesh with the fact. Both Switzerland and Germany have seen more immigration of unskilled and semi-skilled labour in the last five years than the UK (as a % of population), and yet both have seen very significant investment in automation.
So, Switzerland's Gross Capital Formation has risen from 22% to 27% as immigration has risen and Gemany's from 15% to 21%. While the UK remains marooned in the mid-teens. The simplistic explanation of "immigration means firms don't need to automate" seems to ignore the fact that in all the countries which saw even greater levels of Eastern European immigration did see much greater investment in automation.
I suspect that the big issue is that the UK has a consumption and services driven economy, which is much less easy to automate. But that is a much bigger problem to solve.
Yes I was being cheeky.
And yes, PT is trying to single out one part of one factor input to the economy, pointing a finger and saying: "told you so".
It is intuitively attractive. Millions of potential workers theoretically applying downwards pressure on wages in the UK such that employers only need pay the minimum because the supply of labour continues to shift the curve rightwards until it buffers up against the minimum wage. But there are too many variables involved to be able to make such a claim.
There weren't millions of workers on the minimum wage pre-expansion though - and now sectors reliant upon minimum wage labour are saying they're struggling to recruit without free movement.
We'll see what happens going forwards. The proof will be in the pudding, but if the proportion of jobs stuck the minimum wage ceiling comes down then I view that as a good thing. Do you?
Hang on.
That can happen two ways.
Imagine that in the UK today, there are 100 people working and 10 of those are doing minimum wage jobs. If 9 of those 10 are made redundant, then the proportion of people doing minimum wage jobs has declined 90% (yay!), but it's not because they're being paid more, it's because they are now unemployed.
I'd rather they were employed in minimum wage jobs than not employed at all.
So if the 1.5m increase in minimum wage employees were because they'd come off unemployment and into minimum wage that'd be reasonable. But that would also mean we had 750 million working people in the UK labour market.
Just having a think on what @TheScreamingEagles said about one of the scenes in NTTD riling people up but I can't think of which one it was. I didn't detect anything overtly woke in the movie.
The fact it featured a black female 007.
I was more annoyed that they outed Q as gay. Now, it obviously doesn’t matter what his sexuality is, but they just had to signal their virtue, didn’t they?
And that scene was so clumsy. As if MI6 would allow their staff to have all that kit in their own home. But we needed to be told that Q was gay. And that was symptomatic of the whole film. The plot was an afterthought.
Fascinating mortality patterns by age in today’s CMI Mortality Monitor for Q3 2021. Whilst year-to-date death rates at older ages are back within the normal range, at ages below 65 they are even higher than last year! https://t.co/HQpntIMpN2
Untreated cancers, etc?
No, I don't think so. "Excess deaths" figures are not disease specific, but we do know that cancer mortality, cardiovascular mortality etc all go up with age, so if it was "missed cancers" then the older age groups would not be spared. It could be suicides, alcoholism or many other conditions of the working ages, but I haven't seen figures that support that.
Ministers at Holyrood have been warned that they risk the effectiveness of a public health campaign if they urge “anyone with a cervix” to take a smear test rather than refer directly to women.
In a press release issued yesterday to promote smear tests, the Scottish government pushed “people” to go for a check-up, with the message that “two people” die from cervical cancer each day.
Surely the only other group that is relevant here after "women" are pre-surgical, transgender men, ie women who have changed gender and still have a cervix?
(Unless post-surgical transgender men also qualify - which I do not know without looking it up.)
What are the gender-critical lobby saying about them?
Don't. It is tipping it down here really crappy weather and I am gagging for a whisky (Glengoyne out of choice) and am wilfully resisting.
It's an interesting one - was recommend by the chef at a restaurant in Edinburgh. Extremely smokey - makes Laphroaig seem like a glass of water by comparison. I think they've overdone it, but interesting.
Wow. Frosty's on the war path. Boris's NI deal is as dead as a dodo.
It's all very predictable. The past tells us the future on this one:
"Boris" needs something to wave around and say "look, Deal" for his Brexit GE in Dec 19, because he doubts he can win on a No Deal platform.
So he accepts the 'NI stays in the SM' concept that the EU likes but which "No British Prime Minister could ever accept" and he presents this Protocol to the electorate as a great negotiating triumph (!) against the odds. Vote for me and this 'oven ready' Withdrawal Agreement and Brexit Will Be Done.
People do so in their droves, both those swallowing his bullshit and those sick & tired of the whole shebang and wanting it over. He's made it. PM with a big majority.
We duly exit under the WA and he must now conclude the FTA. No extending of the deadline due to the pandemic or for any other reason, this is not how he rolls, how he rolls is to pull exactly the same stunt as before. He lies.
He has to have a deal because for all the bluster he can't risk the chaos of No Deal. So he mendaciously affirms the details of the Protocol and we get a barebones FTA, just sufficient to allow the claim he has delivered on his promise. He has Got Brexit (with a deal) Done. It's choreographed to happen last minute on Christmas Eve and is presented once again to the public as a great negotiating triumph (!) against the odds.
Just as "No Deal" served its sole purpose (bogeyman to create a joy & relief dividend for domestic consumption) so the Protocol has served its sole purpose. Its sole purpose being to get the deal he needed to win an election and cement himself in power.
Time now to renege on it because it's burdensome and it threatens the constitutional integrity of the UK.
It is, in fact, something that no British Prime Minister could ever accept.
Great analysis. Also, picking a fight with the EU plays well with Tory voters and is easier than delivering on any of his promises.
Just having a think on what @TheScreamingEagles said about one of the scenes in NTTD riling people up but I can't think of which one it was. I didn't detect anything overtly woke in the movie.
The fact it featured a black female 007.
Man, anyone who gets upset by that has got issues. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that a black woman could be a top level agent inside the SiS, in fact I'm sure it's true.
I have no issue with a black female 00 agent, just not as Bond. Write the new character.
Ministers at Holyrood have been warned that they risk the effectiveness of a public health campaign if they urge “anyone with a cervix” to take a smear test rather than refer directly to women.
In a press release issued yesterday to promote smear tests, the Scottish government pushed “people” to go for a check-up, with the message that “two people” die from cervical cancer each day.
Surely the only other group that is relevant here after "women" are pre-surgical, transgender men, ie women who have changed gender and still have a cervix?
(Unless post-surgical transgender men also qualify - which I do not know without looking it up.)
What are the gender-critical lobby saying about them?
How do you have a cervix if you are not a woman
Asking that at some universities would get you the sack.
Fascinating mortality patterns by age in today’s CMI Mortality Monitor for Q3 2021. Whilst year-to-date death rates at older ages are back within the normal range, at ages below 65 they are even higher than last year! https://t.co/HQpntIMpN2
Untreated cancers, etc?
No, I don't think so. "Excess deaths" figures are not disease specific, but we do know that cancer mortality, cardiovascular mortality etc all go up with age, so if it was "missed cancers" then the older age groups would not be spared. It could be suicides, alcoholism or many other conditions of the working ages, but I haven't seen figures that support that.
It’s obviously COVID. Remember, younger people don’t tend to die, so whilst COVID is less harmful to them, it might have proportionally more of an impact on the death stats. And we know vaccination rates are lower too.
Ministers at Holyrood have been warned that they risk the effectiveness of a public health campaign if they urge “anyone with a cervix” to take a smear test rather than refer directly to women.
In a press release issued yesterday to promote smear tests, the Scottish government pushed “people” to go for a check-up, with the message that “two people” die from cervical cancer each day.
Surely the only other group that is relevant here after "women" are pre-surgical, transgender men, ie women who have changed gender and still have a cervix?
(Unless post-surgical transgender men also qualify - which I do not know without looking it up.)
What are the gender-critical lobby saying about them?
How do you have a cervix if you are not a woman
Asking that at some universities would get you the sack.
Laptop update. Had hair dryer on it for an hour and it may just be working again. Watch this space.
Possibly too late but a tip if you get it wet is to keep it off (or turn it off) and dry it, keeping it off until it is dry and then turning it back on.
Electronics engineers can probably confirm or deny but I've always understood that permanent damage is more likely if power is running through the device while wet.
If it's allowed to dry before you turn it back on, less risk of permanent damage. Or so I believe.
Wow. Frosty's on the war path. Boris's NI deal is as dead as a dodo.
It's all very predictable. The past tells us the future on this one:
"Boris" needs something to wave around and say "look, Deal" for his Brexit GE in Dec 19, because he doubts he can win on a No Deal platform.
So he accepts the 'NI stays in the SM' concept that the EU likes but which "No British Prime Minister could ever accept" and he presents this Protocol to the electorate as a great negotiating triumph (!) against the odds. Vote for me and this 'oven ready' Withdrawal Agreement and Brexit Will Be Done.
People do so in their droves, both those swallowing his bullshit and those sick & tired of the whole shebang and wanting it over. He's made it. PM with a big majority.
We duly exit under the WA and he must now conclude the FTA. No extending of the deadline due to the pandemic or for any other reason, this is not how he rolls, how he rolls is to pull exactly the same stunt as before. He lies.
He has to have a deal because for all the bluster he can't risk the chaos of No Deal. So he mendaciously affirms the details of the Protocol and we get a barebones FTA, just sufficient to allow the claim he has delivered on his promise. He has Got Brexit (with a deal) Done. It's choreographed to happen last minute on Christmas Eve and is presented once again to the public as a great negotiating triumph (!) against the odds.
Just as "No Deal" served its sole purpose (bogeyman to create a joy & relief dividend for domestic consumption) so the Protocol has served its sole purpose. Its sole purpose being to get the deal he needed to win an election and cement himself in power.
Time now to renege on it because it's burdensome and it threatens the constitutional integrity of the UK.
It is, in fact, something that no British Prime Minister could ever accept.
It's a real bugger's muddle. I'm actually losing track of what historical rewrite Boris's admirers are going with. We seem to have three options at present (with doubtless more to come):
1) The Frost opening: the deal was always crap and unworkable, but the British government signed it in panic because the EU frightened us.
2) The Phil Thompson variant: the deal was always crap but this was the intention because it gave Boris the perfect excuse to rip it up later (for reasons that are not altogether clear).
3) The Big G gambit: Article 16 blindsided the EU. (Still work in progress.)
Any more for any more?
Logically this permutation:
4) The original deal was great from the Brexit p of v but we've been forced to tear it up because Unionists (the NI kind), integrity of the UK, DUP support in the Mother of Parliaments, blah.
Free movement wasn't really a big problem until three things came together:
(1) The integration of the EU 8, which were very significantly poorer than then existing EU members. When previously poor countries had joined (Portugal, Greece, Spain), they were relatively small, this was 8 countries (including one big one) all at the same time. The UK was also pretty much the only country not to go with transitional controls on immigration. This meant that instead of a few million people being spread out across the whole EU, they came mostly to the UK.
(2) The UK's benefits system. As far as I can tell, there is no other country in Europe that has either a system that is as non-contributory bases, not one which was so generous with in work benefits system like the UK. Prior to the Maastricht treaty, you could work in any member state, but there was no presumption of benefits. The consequence of this is that (pretty much alone of the countries in the EU), it was possible for a migrant to come to the UK and pick up benefits from day one.
(3) The Eurozone crisis, which caused a dramatic dip in demand for migrant labour in the Southern EU states *and* led to the exporting their own young.
Hold on. Are immigrants coming here and depressing wages or are they coming over here and claiming benefits?
Personally, I am broadly in favour of free movement of labour (on the basis that it is good for individuals, in that there is a wider variety of firms they can sell their skills to - and for companies, as there are more individuals they can hire).
What I oppose, though, is a system where people could come to the UK, having not paid a penny in tax or National Insurance, and receive benefits. That seems a very odd system.
I also find the argument that immigration has suppressed capital investment to be one which - while superficially plausible - does not seem to mesh with the fact. Both Switzerland and Germany have seen more immigration of unskilled and semi-skilled labour in the last five years than the UK (as a % of population), and yet both have seen very significant investment in automation.
So, Switzerland's Gross Capital Formation has risen from 22% to 27% as immigration has risen and Gemany's from 15% to 21%. While the UK remains marooned in the mid-teens. The simplistic explanation of "immigration means firms don't need to automate" seems to ignore the fact that in all the countries which saw even greater levels of Eastern European immigration did see much greater investment in automation.
I suspect that the big issue is that the UK has a consumption and services driven economy, which is much less easy to automate. But that is a much bigger problem to solve.
Yes I was being cheeky.
And yes, PT is trying to single out one part of one factor input to the economy, pointing a finger and saying: "told you so".
It is intuitively attractive. Millions of potential workers theoretically applying downwards pressure on wages in the UK such that employers only need pay the minimum because the supply of labour continues to shift the curve rightwards until it buffers up against the minimum wage. But there are too many variables involved to be able to make such a claim.
There weren't millions of workers on the minimum wage pre-expansion though - and now sectors reliant upon minimum wage labour are saying they're struggling to recruit without free movement.
We'll see what happens going forwards. The proof will be in the pudding, but if the proportion of jobs stuck the minimum wage ceiling comes down then I view that as a good thing. Do you?
Hang on.
That can happen two ways.
Imagine that in the UK today, there are 100 people working and 10 of those are doing minimum wage jobs. If 9 of those 10 are made redundant, then the proportion of people doing minimum wage jobs has declined 90% (yay!), but it's not because they're being paid more, it's because they are now unemployed.
I'd rather they were employed in minimum wage jobs than not employed at all.
So if the 1.5m increase in minimum wage employees were because they'd come off unemployment and into minimum wage that'd be reasonable. But that would also mean we had 750 million working people in the UK labour market.
The increase in the minimum wage from 4.50 to 7.20 over the same period (it also increased a fair amount as a % of median wages over that period) may also be a factor in the increasing numbers who were paid it.
It would no more bother me for the next 007 to be female than it did when Doctor Who re-generated as a woman.
As far as the thread topic is concerned, I'd be surprised to see a Labour lead but I could envisage a tied poll between now and the end of the year.
On the slightly more substantive, the Government had choices in March 2020 and one would have been to allow the virus to run through the population and "keep buggering on" (as someone once put it).
As I recall, lockdown was not introduced because of the fear of mass deaths - it was quite clear that beyond the elderly, the mortality rate was very low but the fear of hospitals becoming overwhelmed by those wanting or needing treatment and there not being adequate resources to deal with the numbers.
Had we eschewed the policy of social isolation, there would have been horrendous scenes at hospitals and elsewhere - it would have been truly awful for a few weeks but as the virus went through the population, we would at some point have reached that level of "immunity" beyond which the virus ceases to be able to spread.
So, more deaths, forty, fifty, a hundred thousand perhaps (I don't know) and a brief period of significant economic dislocation before a return to normality. With more protected and higher antibody levels, we'd have had more protection against subsequent "waves" or variants.
There has been a cost to all this - we could have chosen to take an immediate hit in terms of deaths, people with long covid but instead we deferred the cost to an extent. Let's be honest - there has been a cost - lives have still been lost, the economy was damaged and more than anything else the mental cost and the pain and anguish inflicted on those trapped in abusive or violent relationships with no means of escape is becoming apparent.
As I've said before, the pandemic has given many a chance to evaluate or re-evaluate their lives - there have been some profound changes and I suspect this will become more apparent with time. The clock won't be turned back, the world has changed forever.
Fascinating mortality patterns by age in today’s CMI Mortality Monitor for Q3 2021. Whilst year-to-date death rates at older ages are back within the normal range, at ages below 65 they are even higher than last year! https://t.co/HQpntIMpN2
Untreated cancers, etc?
No, I don't think so. "Excess deaths" figures are not disease specific, but we do know that cancer mortality, cardiovascular mortality etc all go up with age, so if it was "missed cancers" then the older age groups would not be spared. It could be suicides, alcoholism or many other conditions of the working ages, but I haven't seen figures that support that.
Ministers at Holyrood have been warned that they risk the effectiveness of a public health campaign if they urge “anyone with a cervix” to take a smear test rather than refer directly to women.
In a press release issued yesterday to promote smear tests, the Scottish government pushed “people” to go for a check-up, with the message that “two people” die from cervical cancer each day.
Surely the only other group that is relevant here after "women" are pre-surgical, transgender men, ie women who have changed gender and still have a cervix?
(Unless post-surgical transgender men also qualify - which I do not know without looking it up.)
What are the gender-critical lobby saying about them?
Don't. It is tipping it down here really crappy weather and I am gagging for a whisky (Glengoyne out of choice) and am wilfully resisting.
It's an interesting one - was recommend by the chef at a restaurant in Edinburgh. Extremely smokey - makes Laphroaig seem like a glass of water by comparison. I think they've overdone it, but interesting.
I wouldn't have put it in the Laphroaig camp. It is quite sweet. Which I like.
The irony of locking down to prevent the hospitals being overwhelmed is that now the NHS is truly fucked. Huge waiting lists, likely thousands of deaths due to late treatment.
Had it continued as normal or something like that? Who knows what the current state would be.
Ministers at Holyrood have been warned that they risk the effectiveness of a public health campaign if they urge “anyone with a cervix” to take a smear test rather than refer directly to women.
In a press release issued yesterday to promote smear tests, the Scottish government pushed “people” to go for a check-up, with the message that “two people” die from cervical cancer each day.
Surely the only other group that is relevant here after "women" are pre-surgical, transgender men, ie women who have changed gender and still have a cervix?
(Unless post-surgical transgender men also qualify - which I do not know without looking it up.)
What are the gender-critical lobby saying about them?
How do you have a cervix if you are not a woman
Asking that at some universities would get you the sack.
And how do you have a sack if you are not a man?
In French, "sac à main" means "handbag"
And cul de sac means bag's arse. I assume some frog joker told an English town planner that it means cul de sac for a laugh back in the 1920s, and it worked. The French don't seem to use the expression.
A caveat about this polling, which has been reported in the Guardian and Sunday Times as showing that 70% of people supported allowing asylum seekers to work while their cases are assessed
It would no more bother me for the next 007 to be female than it did when Doctor Who re-generated as a woman.
As far as the thread topic is concerned, I'd be surprised to see a Labour lead but I could envisage a tied poll between now and the end of the year.
On the slightly more substantive, the Government had choices in March 2020 and one would have been to allow the virus to run through the population and "keep buggering on" (as someone once put it).
As I recall, lockdown was not introduced because of the fear of mass deaths - it was quite clear that beyond the elderly, the mortality rate was very low but the fear of hospitals becoming overwhelmed by those wanting or needing treatment and there not being adequate resources to deal with the numbers.
Had we eschewed the policy of social isolation, there would have been horrendous scenes at hospitals and elsewhere - it would have been truly awful for a few weeks but as the virus went through the population, we would at some point have reached that level of "immunity" beyond which the virus ceases to be able to spread.
So, more deaths, forty, fifty, a hundred thousand perhaps (I don't know) and a brief period of significant economic dislocation before a return to normality. With more protected and higher antibody levels, we'd have had more protection against subsequent "waves" or variants.
There has been a cost to all this - we could have chosen to take an immediate hit in terms of deaths, people with long covid but instead we deferred the cost to an extent. Let's be honest - there has been a cost - lives have still been lost, the economy was damaged and more than anything else the mental cost and the pain and anguish inflicted on those trapped in abusive or violent relationships with no means of escape is becoming apparent.
As I've said before, the pandemic has given many a chance to evaluate or re-evaluate their lives - there have been some profound changes and I suspect this will become more apparent with time. The clock won't be turned back, the world has changed forever.
I would argue that the social benefits of Covid, such as the WFH revolution and people having an opportunity to reprioritise in their lives, more than outweighs the social harms.
Free movement wasn't really a big problem until three things came together:
(1) The integration of the EU 8, which were very significantly poorer than then existing EU members. When previously poor countries had joined (Portugal, Greece, Spain), they were relatively small, this was 8 countries (including one big one) all at the same time. The UK was also pretty much the only country not to go with transitional controls on immigration. This meant that instead of a few million people being spread out across the whole EU, they came mostly to the UK.
(2) The UK's benefits system. As far as I can tell, there is no other country in Europe that has either a system that is as non-contributory bases, not one which was so generous with in work benefits system like the UK. Prior to the Maastricht treaty, you could work in any member state, but there was no presumption of benefits. The consequence of this is that (pretty much alone of the countries in the EU), it was possible for a migrant to come to the UK and pick up benefits from day one.
(3) The Eurozone crisis, which caused a dramatic dip in demand for migrant labour in the Southern EU states *and* led to the exporting their own young.
Hold on. Are immigrants coming here and depressing wages or are they coming over here and claiming benefits?
Personally, I am broadly in favour of free movement of labour (on the basis that it is good for individuals, in that there is a wider variety of firms they can sell their skills to - and for companies, as there are more individuals they can hire).
What I oppose, though, is a system where people could come to the UK, having not paid a penny in tax or National Insurance, and receive benefits. That seems a very odd system.
I also find the argument that immigration has suppressed capital investment to be one which - while superficially plausible - does not seem to mesh with the fact. Both Switzerland and Germany have seen more immigration of unskilled and semi-skilled labour in the last five years than the UK (as a % of population), and yet both have seen very significant investment in automation.
So, Switzerland's Gross Capital Formation has risen from 22% to 27% as immigration has risen and Gemany's from 15% to 21%. While the UK remains marooned in the mid-teens. The simplistic explanation of "immigration means firms don't need to automate" seems to ignore the fact that in all the countries which saw even greater levels of Eastern European immigration did see much greater investment in automation.
I suspect that the big issue is that the UK has a consumption and services driven economy, which is much less easy to automate. But that is a much bigger problem to solve.
Yes I was being cheeky.
And yes, PT is trying to single out one part of one factor input to the economy, pointing a finger and saying: "told you so".
It is intuitively attractive. Millions of potential workers theoretically applying downwards pressure on wages in the UK such that employers only need pay the minimum because the supply of labour continues to shift the curve rightwards until it buffers up against the minimum wage. But there are too many variables involved to be able to make such a claim.
There weren't millions of workers on the minimum wage pre-expansion though - and now sectors reliant upon minimum wage labour are saying they're struggling to recruit without free movement.
We'll see what happens going forwards. The proof will be in the pudding, but if the proportion of jobs stuck the minimum wage ceiling comes down then I view that as a good thing. Do you?
Hang on.
That can happen two ways.
Imagine that in the UK today, there are 100 people working and 10 of those are doing minimum wage jobs. If 9 of those 10 are made redundant, then the proportion of people doing minimum wage jobs has declined 90% (yay!), but it's not because they're being paid more, it's because they are now unemployed.
I'd rather they were employed in minimum wage jobs than not employed at all.
So if the 1.5m increase in minimum wage employees were because they'd come off unemployment and into minimum wage that'd be reasonable. But that would also mean we had 750 million working people in the UK labour market.
The increase in the minimum wage from 4.50 to 7.20 over the same period (it also increased a fair amount as a % of median wages over that period) may also be a factor in the increasing numbers who were paid it.
If rising wages were the cause then you'd think logically the income of the bottom decile of wages would have risen relative to the median decile in the same time.
The irony of locking down to prevent the hospitals being overwhelmed is that now the NHS is truly fucked. Huge waiting lists, likely thousands of deaths due to late treatment.
Had it continued as normal or something like that? Who knows what the current state would be.
Fascinating mortality patterns by age in today’s CMI Mortality Monitor for Q3 2021. Whilst year-to-date death rates at older ages are back within the normal range, at ages below 65 they are even higher than last year! https://t.co/HQpntIMpN2
Untreated cancers, etc?
No, I don't think so. "Excess deaths" figures are not disease specific, but we do know that cancer mortality, cardiovascular mortality etc all go up with age, so if it was "missed cancers" then the older age groups would not be spared. It could be suicides, alcoholism or many other conditions of the working ages, but I haven't seen figures that support that.
It’s obviously COVID. Remember, younger people don’t tend to die, so whilst COVID is less harmful to them, it might have proportionally more of an impact on the death stats. And we know vaccination rates are lower too.
Yes, death rates under 65 are relatively low, so a 10% increase could result from modest numbers in absolute terms.
I did see that in America that child covid deaths are now higher than child cancer deaths. Both of course are really quite rare, but now about 20 per week in the USA. Divide by 5 for UK population, but I don't know what the absolute numbers here are.
Ministers at Holyrood have been warned that they risk the effectiveness of a public health campaign if they urge “anyone with a cervix” to take a smear test rather than refer directly to women.
In a press release issued yesterday to promote smear tests, the Scottish government pushed “people” to go for a check-up, with the message that “two people” die from cervical cancer each day.
Surely the only other group that is relevant here after "women" are pre-surgical, transgender men, ie women who have changed gender and still have a cervix?
(Unless post-surgical transgender men also qualify - which I do not know without looking it up.)
What are the gender-critical lobby saying about them?
How do you have a cervix if you are not a woman
Asking that at some universities would get you the sack.
And how do you have a sack if you are not a man?
In French, "sac à main" means "handbag"
And cul de sac means bag's arse. I assume some frog joker told an English town planner that it means cul de sac for a laugh back in the 1920s, and it worked. The French don't seem to use the expression.
Used since the 14th century in France for dead end streets according to Wiki.
I have no view on whether there might be a poll with a Labour lead by the start of November. What I do have a view on is the meaning of the polls and the intention of Labour.
Labour do not need to be in the lead in the polls to form the next government. They need to do better than 2019, which is not difficult, so as to win 35 net seats, the LDs need to win 10-15 net seats in the southern remain heartlands where they come a good second now, and the SNP to take 2 or 3 off the Tories.
That could be done, if Labour have the wind behind them, on roughly C 38, Lab 35 LD 12 (LDs having also tactical voting and irregular swing)
That is SKS as PM. Look at recent polling. And of course with L, LD, SNP and G combined, the centre left would have well over half the votes and some legitimacy.
Labour would also need not to lose any seats which may well prove a flaw in that plan.
Absolutely; I think there is about a 45%+ chance that this will produce SKS as PM, and the figures I give are net. The point I would make is that as of now, apart from insane plans, there can be no other plan for Labour led government and that the polls are perfectly consistent with that as an outcome in 2/3 years time.
In other words the gulf between Labour victory (+127 seats) and Labour led government (Tories lose 47+ seats to anybody) is immense. The second is a perfectly feasible plan. The outfit that will have noticed this is the Tory party.
For SKS what looks like headline polling fail is in fact success. He knows this. Don't expect him to let on.
Sounds like what Ed Miliband was thinking from 2012 until 10pm on May 7th 2015
The irony of locking down to prevent the hospitals being overwhelmed is that now the NHS is truly fucked. Huge waiting lists, likely thousands of deaths due to late treatment.
Had it continued as normal or something like that? Who knows what the current state would be.
Err it couldn't!
Surge capacity for covid was by rapid conversion of operating theatres into ICU and redeployment of staff.
Normal service would have necessitated refusing to admit covid patients, and leaving them to "hot broth" at home.
Free movement wasn't really a big problem until three things came together:
(1) The integration of the EU 8, which were very significantly poorer than then existing EU members. When previously poor countries had joined (Portugal, Greece, Spain), they were relatively small, this was 8 countries (including one big one) all at the same time. The UK was also pretty much the only country not to go with transitional controls on immigration. This meant that instead of a few million people being spread out across the whole EU, they came mostly to the UK.
(2) The UK's benefits system. As far as I can tell, there is no other country in Europe that has either a system that is as non-contributory bases, not one which was so generous with in work benefits system like the UK. Prior to the Maastricht treaty, you could work in any member state, but there was no presumption of benefits. The consequence of this is that (pretty much alone of the countries in the EU), it was possible for a migrant to come to the UK and pick up benefits from day one.
(3) The Eurozone crisis, which caused a dramatic dip in demand for migrant labour in the Southern EU states *and* led to the exporting their own young.
Hold on. Are immigrants coming here and depressing wages or are they coming over here and claiming benefits?
Personally, I am broadly in favour of free movement of labour (on the basis that it is good for individuals, in that there is a wider variety of firms they can sell their skills to - and for companies, as there are more individuals they can hire).
What I oppose, though, is a system where people could come to the UK, having not paid a penny in tax or National Insurance, and receive benefits. That seems a very odd system.
I also find the argument that immigration has suppressed capital investment to be one which - while superficially plausible - does not seem to mesh with the fact. Both Switzerland and Germany have seen more immigration of unskilled and semi-skilled labour in the last five years than the UK (as a % of population), and yet both have seen very significant investment in automation.
So, Switzerland's Gross Capital Formation has risen from 22% to 27% as immigration has risen and Gemany's from 15% to 21%. While the UK remains marooned in the mid-teens. The simplistic explanation of "immigration means firms don't need to automate" seems to ignore the fact that in all the countries which saw even greater levels of Eastern European immigration did see much greater investment in automation.
I suspect that the big issue is that the UK has a consumption and services driven economy, which is much less easy to automate. But that is a much bigger problem to solve.
Yes I was being cheeky.
And yes, PT is trying to single out one part of one factor input to the economy, pointing a finger and saying: "told you so".
It is intuitively attractive. Millions of potential workers theoretically applying downwards pressure on wages in the UK such that employers only need pay the minimum because the supply of labour continues to shift the curve rightwards until it buffers up against the minimum wage. But there are too many variables involved to be able to make such a claim.
There weren't millions of workers on the minimum wage pre-expansion though - and now sectors reliant upon minimum wage labour are saying they're struggling to recruit without free movement.
We'll see what happens going forwards. The proof will be in the pudding, but if the proportion of jobs stuck the minimum wage ceiling comes down then I view that as a good thing. Do you?
Hang on.
That can happen two ways.
Imagine that in the UK today, there are 100 people working and 10 of those are doing minimum wage jobs. If 9 of those 10 are made redundant, then the proportion of people doing minimum wage jobs has declined 90% (yay!), but it's not because they're being paid more, it's because they are now unemployed.
I'd rather they were employed in minimum wage jobs than not employed at all.
So if the 1.5m increase in minimum wage employees were because they'd come off unemployment and into minimum wage that'd be reasonable. But that would also mean we had 750 million working people in the UK labour market.
The increase in the minimum wage from 4.50 to 7.20 over the same period (it also increased a fair amount as a % of median wages over that period) may also be a factor in the increasing numbers who were paid it.
If rising wages were the cause then you'd think logically the income of the bottom decile of wages would have risen relative to the median decile in the same time.
I've no intention of watching the new Bond. I read a spoiler page about it which was so dull I can't even remember any of the spoilers. Except for one - apparently for the first time in 25(?) movies they've cut the blood dripping from the bullet hole in the opening titles.
From this weak position of ignorance, I've written a short review:
007? Pah! More like double woke heaven.
I hope the last word of the review isn't too much of a spoiler.
I see the Remoaners are getting awfully upset over on Twitter and in the media that Lord Frost might have another negotiating success over the NI protocol.
Free movement wasn't really a big problem until three things came together:
(1) The integration of the EU 8, which were very significantly poorer than then existing EU members. When previously poor countries had joined (Portugal, Greece, Spain), they were relatively small, this was 8 countries (including one big one) all at the same time. The UK was also pretty much the only country not to go with transitional controls on immigration. This meant that instead of a few million people being spread out across the whole EU, they came mostly to the UK.
(2) The UK's benefits system. As far as I can tell, there is no other country in Europe that has either a system that is as non-contributory bases, not one which was so generous with in work benefits system like the UK. Prior to the Maastricht treaty, you could work in any member state, but there was no presumption of benefits. The consequence of this is that (pretty much alone of the countries in the EU), it was possible for a migrant to come to the UK and pick up benefits from day one.
(3) The Eurozone crisis, which caused a dramatic dip in demand for migrant labour in the Southern EU states *and* led to the exporting their own young.
Hold on. Are immigrants coming here and depressing wages or are they coming over here and claiming benefits?
Personally, I am broadly in favour of free movement of labour (on the basis that it is good for individuals, in that there is a wider variety of firms they can sell their skills to - and for companies, as there are more individuals they can hire).
What I oppose, though, is a system where people could come to the UK, having not paid a penny in tax or National Insurance, and receive benefits. That seems a very odd system.
I also find the argument that immigration has suppressed capital investment to be one which - while superficially plausible - does not seem to mesh with the fact. Both Switzerland and Germany have seen more immigration of unskilled and semi-skilled labour in the last five years than the UK (as a % of population), and yet both have seen very significant investment in automation.
So, Switzerland's Gross Capital Formation has risen from 22% to 27% as immigration has risen and Gemany's from 15% to 21%. While the UK remains marooned in the mid-teens. The simplistic explanation of "immigration means firms don't need to automate" seems to ignore the fact that in all the countries which saw even greater levels of Eastern European immigration did see much greater investment in automation.
I suspect that the big issue is that the UK has a consumption and services driven economy, which is much less easy to automate. But that is a much bigger problem to solve.
Yes I was being cheeky.
And yes, PT is trying to single out one part of one factor input to the economy, pointing a finger and saying: "told you so".
It is intuitively attractive. Millions of potential workers theoretically applying downwards pressure on wages in the UK such that employers only need pay the minimum because the supply of labour continues to shift the curve rightwards until it buffers up against the minimum wage. But there are too many variables involved to be able to make such a claim.
There weren't millions of workers on the minimum wage pre-expansion though - and now sectors reliant upon minimum wage labour are saying they're struggling to recruit without free movement.
We'll see what happens going forwards. The proof will be in the pudding, but if the proportion of jobs stuck the minimum wage ceiling comes down then I view that as a good thing. Do you?
Hang on.
That can happen two ways.
Imagine that in the UK today, there are 100 people working and 10 of those are doing minimum wage jobs. If 9 of those 10 are made redundant, then the proportion of people doing minimum wage jobs has declined 90% (yay!), but it's not because they're being paid more, it's because they are now unemployed.
I'd rather they were employed in minimum wage jobs than not employed at all.
So if the 1.5m increase in minimum wage employees were because they'd come off unemployment and into minimum wage that'd be reasonable. But that would also mean we had 750 million working people in the UK labour market.
The increase in the minimum wage from 4.50 to 7.20 over the same period (it also increased a fair amount as a % of median wages over that period) may also be a factor in the increasing numbers who were paid it.
That's a fair point.
If you increase the minimum wage to £20/ph, then you will have a lot more people on minimum wage.
Free movement wasn't really a big problem until three things came together:
(1) The integration of the EU 8, which were very significantly poorer than then existing EU members. When previously poor countries had joined (Portugal, Greece, Spain), they were relatively small, this was 8 countries (including one big one) all at the same time. The UK was also pretty much the only country not to go with transitional controls on immigration. This meant that instead of a few million people being spread out across the whole EU, they came mostly to the UK.
(2) The UK's benefits system. As far as I can tell, there is no other country in Europe that has either a system that is as non-contributory bases, not one which was so generous with in work benefits system like the UK. Prior to the Maastricht treaty, you could work in any member state, but there was no presumption of benefits. The consequence of this is that (pretty much alone of the countries in the EU), it was possible for a migrant to come to the UK and pick up benefits from day one.
(3) The Eurozone crisis, which caused a dramatic dip in demand for migrant labour in the Southern EU states *and* led to the exporting their own young.
Hold on. Are immigrants coming here and depressing wages or are they coming over here and claiming benefits?
Personally, I am broadly in favour of free movement of labour (on the basis that it is good for individuals, in that there is a wider variety of firms they can sell their skills to - and for companies, as there are more individuals they can hire).
What I oppose, though, is a system where people could come to the UK, having not paid a penny in tax or National Insurance, and receive benefits. That seems a very odd system.
I also find the argument that immigration has suppressed capital investment to be one which - while superficially plausible - does not seem to mesh with the fact. Both Switzerland and Germany have seen more immigration of unskilled and semi-skilled labour in the last five years than the UK (as a % of population), and yet both have seen very significant investment in automation.
So, Switzerland's Gross Capital Formation has risen from 22% to 27% as immigration has risen and Gemany's from 15% to 21%. While the UK remains marooned in the mid-teens. The simplistic explanation of "immigration means firms don't need to automate" seems to ignore the fact that in all the countries which saw even greater levels of Eastern European immigration did see much greater investment in automation.
I suspect that the big issue is that the UK has a consumption and services driven economy, which is much less easy to automate. But that is a much bigger problem to solve.
Yes I was being cheeky.
And yes, PT is trying to single out one part of one factor input to the economy, pointing a finger and saying: "told you so".
It is intuitively attractive. Millions of potential workers theoretically applying downwards pressure on wages in the UK such that employers only need pay the minimum because the supply of labour continues to shift the curve rightwards until it buffers up against the minimum wage. But there are too many variables involved to be able to make such a claim.
There weren't millions of workers on the minimum wage pre-expansion though - and now sectors reliant upon minimum wage labour are saying they're struggling to recruit without free movement.
We'll see what happens going forwards. The proof will be in the pudding, but if the proportion of jobs stuck the minimum wage ceiling comes down then I view that as a good thing. Do you?
Hang on.
That can happen two ways.
Imagine that in the UK today, there are 100 people working and 10 of those are doing minimum wage jobs. If 9 of those 10 are made redundant, then the proportion of people doing minimum wage jobs has declined 90% (yay!), but it's not because they're being paid more, it's because they are now unemployed.
I'd rather they were employed in minimum wage jobs than not employed at all.
So if the 1.5m increase in minimum wage employees were because they'd come off unemployment and into minimum wage that'd be reasonable. But that would also mean we had 750 million working people in the UK labour market.
The increase in the minimum wage from 4.50 to 7.20 over the same period (it also increased a fair amount as a % of median wages over that period) may also be a factor in the increasing numbers who were paid it.
If rising wages were the cause then you'd think logically the income of the bottom decile of wages would have risen relative to the median decile in the same time.
Spoiler: They didn't.
Minimum wage 2016 / 2003: 7.20 / 4.50 67% rise
Median wage 2016 / 2003 28,195 / 21,124 33% rise
Explain.
Minimum wage ≠ Bottom Decile
Try using the right figures and see the change.
Why did you shift from talking about minimum wage to bottom decile? Is it because you cherry-pick data to support your opinions and hope that nobody will notice?
No because its a like-for-like comparison. You're fallaciously trying to compare 500k in 2003 with four times that population in 2016.
If minimum wage going up was dragging up wages within the bottom decile then you'd have seen wages go up in the bottom decile.
But it hasn't. Because wages haven't been dragged up.
Spilled a full cup of coffee onto my work laptop today and now it's broken. I feel like a total whopper. How was your day?
At my last company, we gave all the salespeople mobile phones and they were supposed to last three years.
Whenever a new iPhone was released, there would be a massive rush of "oh, I'm so sorry, my phone broke".
It used to make me extremely cross.
You mean that Apple incorporate a self destruct function that is activated when the new model is released?
Cunning buggers.
I think the technical term is a "free software update"
I'm pretty sure it was proved that on older phones, software updates deliberately slowed the device; effectively forcing you to upgrade as the phone was virtually unusable.
I recall during the BREXIT debate @rcs1000 posting a comment from a physicist that the reason he supported BREXIT was that the U.K. was ultimately good at “error correction” while the EU was not. What is today’s COVID report if not a major intervention in “error correction”? Lord yes, we got things wrong, but we’re learning. Not sure I’ve seen the same from the EU….
What are we learning?
The line from Government today has been "we were right all along".
The irony of locking down to prevent the hospitals being overwhelmed is that now the NHS is truly fucked. Huge waiting lists, likely thousands of deaths due to late treatment.
Had it continued as normal or something like that? Who knows what the current state would be.
If we hadn't mass isolated then there would have been more Covid patients and less treatment of other patients. The situation would undoubtedly have been worse - but probably not much worse, because the government never introduced restrictions until after many people had started to modify their behaviour themselves, and once the hospitals are overwhelmed most people recognise the self-interest in avoiding any risk of requiring hospitalization.
The irony of locking down to prevent the hospitals being overwhelmed is that now the NHS is truly fucked. Huge waiting lists, likely thousands of deaths due to late treatment.
Had it continued as normal or something like that? Who knows what the current state would be.
Must be a lucrative time for private consultants.
A friend in the UK has had the start of her cancer treatment delayed due to COVID backlogs and she's not using the NHS, but BUPA.
I've just read David Frost's speech. To say it is disingenuous is an understatement. It's actually quite unpleasant, disguised as being reasonable. If I were a big EU fish, I wouldn't be very happy.
To remind people of the context, here's Frost's tweets from Xmas Eve 2020, the day the deal was signed:
I'm very pleased and proud to have led a great UK team to secure today's excellent deal with the EU.
(the deal) It also restores Britain's sovereignty in full. EU law ceases to apply; the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice ends; there is no alignment with EU rules; and our Parliament sets all laws for our country once again.
So was that last tweet a complete lie, or did he believe it at the time? Sounds like the perfect deal to me.
He's rather too much like the PM in my view - good at rewriting history.
Accidentally leaving a laptop or a phone on a car roof was a salesperson favourite. Reversing over it 3 times just to make sure was always strangely absent from the explanation.
My favourite (probably apocryphal) story was the user who complained his laptop was defective and sent it in for repair, only for the service department to return it, no fault found.
He sent it in again, and again they returned it.
He sent it for a third time, confident it was definitely defective this time.
I've just read David Frost's speech. To say it is disingenuous is an understatement. It's actually quite unpleasant, disguised as being reasonable. If I were a big EU fish, I wouldn't be very happy.
To remind people of the context, here's Frost's tweets from Xmas Eve 2020, the day the deal was signed:
I'm very pleased and proud to have led a great UK team to secure today's excellent deal with the EU.
(the deal) It also restores Britain's sovereignty in full. EU law ceases to apply; the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice ends; there is no alignment with EU rules; and our Parliament sets all laws for our country once again.
So was that last tweet a complete lie, or did he believe it at the time? Sounds like the perfect deal to me.
He's rather too much like the PM in my view - good at rewriting history.
Sketch of @DavidGHFrost’s radioactive arse dribble speech here. So much filth packed in but you have to stand and applaud this bit where, having fucked everything up in NI with his shit-for-brains project they didn’t vote for, he threatens the EU over it.
Just having a think on what @TheScreamingEagles said about one of the scenes in NTTD riling people up but I can't think of which one it was. I didn't detect anything overtly woke in the movie.
The fact it featured a black female 007.
Man, anyone who gets upset by that has got issues. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that a black woman could be a top level agent inside the SiS, in fact I'm sure it's true.
I did see some BTL comments about it being political correctness/wokeness gone mad.
Free movement wasn't really a big problem until three things came together:
(1) The integration of the EU 8, which were very significantly poorer than then existing EU members. When previously poor countries had joined (Portugal, Greece, Spain), they were relatively small, this was 8 countries (including one big one) all at the same time. The UK was also pretty much the only country not to go with transitional controls on immigration. This meant that instead of a few million people being spread out across the whole EU, they came mostly to the UK.
(2) The UK's benefits system. As far as I can tell, there is no other country in Europe that has either a system that is as non-contributory bases, not one which was so generous with in work benefits system like the UK. Prior to the Maastricht treaty, you could work in any member state, but there was no presumption of benefits. The consequence of this is that (pretty much alone of the countries in the EU), it was possible for a migrant to come to the UK and pick up benefits from day one.
(3) The Eurozone crisis, which caused a dramatic dip in demand for migrant labour in the Southern EU states *and* led to the exporting their own young.
Hold on. Are immigrants coming here and depressing wages or are they coming over here and claiming benefits?
Personally, I am broadly in favour of free movement of labour (on the basis that it is good for individuals, in that there is a wider variety of firms they can sell their skills to - and for companies, as there are more individuals they can hire).
What I oppose, though, is a system where people could come to the UK, having not paid a penny in tax or National Insurance, and receive benefits. That seems a very odd system.
I also find the argument that immigration has suppressed capital investment to be one which - while superficially plausible - does not seem to mesh with the fact. Both Switzerland and Germany have seen more immigration of unskilled and semi-skilled labour in the last five years than the UK (as a % of population), and yet both have seen very significant investment in automation.
So, Switzerland's Gross Capital Formation has risen from 22% to 27% as immigration has risen and Gemany's from 15% to 21%. While the UK remains marooned in the mid-teens. The simplistic explanation of "immigration means firms don't need to automate" seems to ignore the fact that in all the countries which saw even greater levels of Eastern European immigration did see much greater investment in automation.
I suspect that the big issue is that the UK has a consumption and services driven economy, which is much less easy to automate. But that is a much bigger problem to solve.
Yes I was being cheeky.
And yes, PT is trying to single out one part of one factor input to the economy, pointing a finger and saying: "told you so".
It is intuitively attractive. Millions of potential workers theoretically applying downwards pressure on wages in the UK such that employers only need pay the minimum because the supply of labour continues to shift the curve rightwards until it buffers up against the minimum wage. But there are too many variables involved to be able to make such a claim.
There weren't millions of workers on the minimum wage pre-expansion though - and now sectors reliant upon minimum wage labour are saying they're struggling to recruit without free movement.
We'll see what happens going forwards. The proof will be in the pudding, but if the proportion of jobs stuck the minimum wage ceiling comes down then I view that as a good thing. Do you?
Hang on.
That can happen two ways.
Imagine that in the UK today, there are 100 people working and 10 of those are doing minimum wage jobs. If 9 of those 10 are made redundant, then the proportion of people doing minimum wage jobs has declined 90% (yay!), but it's not because they're being paid more, it's because they are now unemployed.
I'd rather they were employed in minimum wage jobs than not employed at all.
So if the 1.5m increase in minimum wage employees were because they'd come off unemployment and into minimum wage that'd be reasonable. But that would also mean we had 750 million working people in the UK labour market.
The increase in the minimum wage from 4.50 to 7.20 over the same period (it also increased a fair amount as a % of median wages over that period) may also be a factor in the increasing numbers who were paid it.
If rising wages were the cause then you'd think logically the income of the bottom decile of wages would have risen relative to the median decile in the same time.
Not fatal in itself - I wouldn't say Kinnock at Brighton beach - but just gives off a clumsy, never-completely-in-control-of-events air. Not good spinning.
I would argue that the social benefits of Covid, such as the WFH revolution and people having an opportunity to reprioritise in their lives, more than outweighs the social harms.
Yet there are those for whom the periods of enforced isolation have been purgatory whether because they are alone or with someone with whom they no longer want to live or for a myriad other reasons.
Many have, as you say, coped not only well but prospered. Getting off the commuting treadmill has been a positive personal benefit but I'd never want to generalise it.
It's clear some on here have found it hard going at times and if this forum has provided some much needed contact I'm delighted we've all managed to help each other through this.
I see the Remoaners are getting awfully upset over on Twitter and in the media that Lord Frost might have another negotiating success over the NI protocol.
You’re missing the point entirely . I’d be very happy to see the situation resolved in NI and to just move on with improved UK EU relations . However it’s blatantly obvious that Frost and Johnson never had any intention of honouring the agreement and just signed the deal to hoodwink the public . Without a deal would the Tories have gained that majority ? So the irritation is how the oven ready deal was used to help the Tories when that was a pack of lies !
I see the Remoaners are getting awfully upset over on Twitter and in the media that Lord Frost might have another negotiating success over the NI protocol.
He just threw one almighty strop. Not sure how that can be spun as a negotiating anything yet.
Free movement wasn't really a big problem until three things came together:
(1) The integration of the EU 8, which were very significantly poorer than then existing EU members. When previously poor countries had joined (Portugal, Greece, Spain), they were relatively small, this was 8 countries (including one big one) all at the same time. The UK was also pretty much the only country not to go with transitional controls on immigration. This meant that instead of a few million people being spread out across the whole EU, they came mostly to the UK.
(2) The UK's benefits system. As far as I can tell, there is no other country in Europe that has either a system that is as non-contributory bases, not one which was so generous with in work benefits system like the UK. Prior to the Maastricht treaty, you could work in any member state, but there was no presumption of benefits. The consequence of this is that (pretty much alone of the countries in the EU), it was possible for a migrant to come to the UK and pick up benefits from day one.
(3) The Eurozone crisis, which caused a dramatic dip in demand for migrant labour in the Southern EU states *and* led to the exporting their own young.
Hold on. Are immigrants coming here and depressing wages or are they coming over here and claiming benefits?
Personally, I am broadly in favour of free movement of labour (on the basis that it is good for individuals, in that there is a wider variety of firms they can sell their skills to - and for companies, as there are more individuals they can hire).
What I oppose, though, is a system where people could come to the UK, having not paid a penny in tax or National Insurance, and receive benefits. That seems a very odd system.
I also find the argument that immigration has suppressed capital investment to be one which - while superficially plausible - does not seem to mesh with the fact. Both Switzerland and Germany have seen more immigration of unskilled and semi-skilled labour in the last five years than the UK (as a % of population), and yet both have seen very significant investment in automation.
So, Switzerland's Gross Capital Formation has risen from 22% to 27% as immigration has risen and Gemany's from 15% to 21%. While the UK remains marooned in the mid-teens. The simplistic explanation of "immigration means firms don't need to automate" seems to ignore the fact that in all the countries which saw even greater levels of Eastern European immigration did see much greater investment in automation.
I suspect that the big issue is that the UK has a consumption and services driven economy, which is much less easy to automate. But that is a much bigger problem to solve.
Yes I was being cheeky.
And yes, PT is trying to single out one part of one factor input to the economy, pointing a finger and saying: "told you so".
It is intuitively attractive. Millions of potential workers theoretically applying downwards pressure on wages in the UK such that employers only need pay the minimum because the supply of labour continues to shift the curve rightwards until it buffers up against the minimum wage. But there are too many variables involved to be able to make such a claim.
There weren't millions of workers on the minimum wage pre-expansion though - and now sectors reliant upon minimum wage labour are saying they're struggling to recruit without free movement.
We'll see what happens going forwards. The proof will be in the pudding, but if the proportion of jobs stuck the minimum wage ceiling comes down then I view that as a good thing. Do you?
Hang on.
That can happen two ways.
Imagine that in the UK today, there are 100 people working and 10 of those are doing minimum wage jobs. If 9 of those 10 are made redundant, then the proportion of people doing minimum wage jobs has declined 90% (yay!), but it's not because they're being paid more, it's because they are now unemployed.
I'd rather they were employed in minimum wage jobs than not employed at all.
So if the 1.5m increase in minimum wage employees were because they'd come off unemployment and into minimum wage that'd be reasonable. But that would also mean we had 750 million working people in the UK labour market.
The increase in the minimum wage from 4.50 to 7.20 over the same period (it also increased a fair amount as a % of median wages over that period) may also be a factor in the increasing numbers who were paid it.
If rising wages were the cause then you'd think logically the income of the bottom decile of wages would have risen relative to the median decile in the same time.
Spoiler: They didn't.
Minimum wage 2016 / 2003: 7.20 / 4.50 67% rise
Median wage 2016 / 2003 28,195 / 21,124 33% rise
Explain.
Minimum wage ≠ Bottom Decile
Try using the right figures and see the change.
My memory (and it might be wrong) is that the bottom income decile is dominated by the poorest pensioners, rather than by people in work earning minimum wage. I'm not sure it's therefore a good compare.
Instructor: You'd have failed your test. Starmer: Very good. Very good.
Labour are killing his leadership off in much the way the Tories did with Hague. Too much good (and overrated) intention, nothing malign. They did this with Corbyn, but there was so much empty space with him that it just resulted in him looking in a mirror and wearing a tie.
I see the Remoaners are getting awfully upset over on Twitter and in the media that Lord Frost might have another negotiating success over the NI protocol.
I know that's meant to provoke, but there is an interesting bit of psychology in all this. I do think there really is a difference in the population - perhaps this is the lover vs fighter point raised earlier - between those who enjoy a good old fight and those who couldn't think of anything worse.
For those of us of a more, shall we say, conflict avoiding disposition seeing Frost do what Frost does is embarrassing. So much so that in my case I find myself wincing and watching the thing through my hands. It's embarrassing in exactly the same way as when you're with one of those people who decide very loudly to complain in a restaurant. You plead with them not to make a fuss. You try to explain things from the establishment's point of view. But they won't be dissuaded. Off they go on their rant, demanding to speak to the chef, and the rest of the table just wants the ground to open up and swallow them.
Now the trouble is you never know what will happen. Possibly half the time or more the blighter complaining will get a little victory, like drinks on the house or a partial refund, because the staff just want a way to make them go quietly. That just makes them all the more likely to act up at the next establishment. Occasionally they get kicked out of the restaurant and told never to come back. In that case the rest of the table feel it more keenly than the complainant, who just launches into a torrent of swearwords and bangs on about how unfair it is.
So I'm afraid - and I don't think this is just a remainer thing, it's a cultural thing - there will always be a substantial chunk of the public who will wince when their politicians ask to speak to the manager.
Free movement wasn't really a big problem until three things came together:
(1) The integration of the EU 8, which were very significantly poorer than then existing EU members. When previously poor countries had joined (Portugal, Greece, Spain), they were relatively small, this was 8 countries (including one big one) all at the same time. The UK was also pretty much the only country not to go with transitional controls on immigration. This meant that instead of a few million people being spread out across the whole EU, they came mostly to the UK.
(2) The UK's benefits system. As far as I can tell, there is no other country in Europe that has either a system that is as non-contributory bases, not one which was so generous with in work benefits system like the UK. Prior to the Maastricht treaty, you could work in any member state, but there was no presumption of benefits. The consequence of this is that (pretty much alone of the countries in the EU), it was possible for a migrant to come to the UK and pick up benefits from day one.
(3) The Eurozone crisis, which caused a dramatic dip in demand for migrant labour in the Southern EU states *and* led to the exporting their own young.
Hold on. Are immigrants coming here and depressing wages or are they coming over here and claiming benefits?
Personally, I am broadly in favour of free movement of labour (on the basis that it is good for individuals, in that there is a wider variety of firms they can sell their skills to - and for companies, as there are more individuals they can hire).
What I oppose, though, is a system where people could come to the UK, having not paid a penny in tax or National Insurance, and receive benefits. That seems a very odd system.
I also find the argument that immigration has suppressed capital investment to be one which - while superficially plausible - does not seem to mesh with the fact. Both Switzerland and Germany have seen more immigration of unskilled and semi-skilled labour in the last five years than the UK (as a % of population), and yet both have seen very significant investment in automation.
So, Switzerland's Gross Capital Formation has risen from 22% to 27% as immigration has risen and Gemany's from 15% to 21%. While the UK remains marooned in the mid-teens. The simplistic explanation of "immigration means firms don't need to automate" seems to ignore the fact that in all the countries which saw even greater levels of Eastern European immigration did see much greater investment in automation.
I suspect that the big issue is that the UK has a consumption and services driven economy, which is much less easy to automate. But that is a much bigger problem to solve.
Yes I was being cheeky.
And yes, PT is trying to single out one part of one factor input to the economy, pointing a finger and saying: "told you so".
It is intuitively attractive. Millions of potential workers theoretically applying downwards pressure on wages in the UK such that employers only need pay the minimum because the supply of labour continues to shift the curve rightwards until it buffers up against the minimum wage. But there are too many variables involved to be able to make such a claim.
There weren't millions of workers on the minimum wage pre-expansion though - and now sectors reliant upon minimum wage labour are saying they're struggling to recruit without free movement.
We'll see what happens going forwards. The proof will be in the pudding, but if the proportion of jobs stuck the minimum wage ceiling comes down then I view that as a good thing. Do you?
Hang on.
That can happen two ways.
Imagine that in the UK today, there are 100 people working and 10 of those are doing minimum wage jobs. If 9 of those 10 are made redundant, then the proportion of people doing minimum wage jobs has declined 90% (yay!), but it's not because they're being paid more, it's because they are now unemployed.
I'd rather they were employed in minimum wage jobs than not employed at all.
So if the 1.5m increase in minimum wage employees were because they'd come off unemployment and into minimum wage that'd be reasonable. But that would also mean we had 750 million working people in the UK labour market.
The increase in the minimum wage from 4.50 to 7.20 over the same period (it also increased a fair amount as a % of median wages over that period) may also be a factor in the increasing numbers who were paid it.
If rising wages were the cause then you'd think logically the income of the bottom decile of wages would have risen relative to the median decile in the same time.
Spoiler: They didn't.
Sorry maybe I wasn't clear in what I was saying. My point was simply that since the floor on wages had risen (both in absolute terms and relative to the median of the wage distribution) it was logical that more people's wages would be at the floor. When it was introduced the minimum wage was set at a very low level and it has risen over time relative to median wages, with the result that more people now receive it. That's just an inevitable feature of truncating the wage distribution at a higher point. As a result, it's dangerous to start ascribing that increase in people receiving the minimum wage to other factors. I mean, maybe you are right, but there are other equally plausible explanations.
I see the Remoaners are getting awfully upset over on Twitter and in the media that Lord Frost might have another negotiating success over the NI protocol.
Five and a bit years on and you're still coming out with this "Remoaner" crap.
I also voted to leave in 2016 and it's embarrassing to see those who voted as I did still fighting the last war or the war before that instead of looking forward and trying to make a go of the new reality.
Let those who voted the other way have their say - ignore them if you want - but we have a responsibility to build a future for this country that works for us all however we voted.
I see the Remoaners are getting awfully upset over on Twitter and in the media that Lord Frost might have another negotiating success over the NI protocol.
I know that's meant to provoke, but there is an interesting bit of psychology in all this. I do think there really is a difference in the population - perhaps this is the lover vs fighter point raised earlier - between those who enjoy a good old fight and those who couldn't think of anything worse.
For those of us of a more, shall we say, conflict avoiding disposition seeing Frost do what Frost does is embarrassing. So much so that in my case I find myself wincing and watching the thing through my hands. It's embarrassing in exactly the same way as when you're with one of those people who decide very loudly to complain in a restaurant. You plead with them not to make a fuss. You try to explain things from the establishment's point of view. But they won't be dissuaded. Off they go on their rant, demanding to speak to the chef, and the rest of the table just wants the ground to open up and swallow them.
Now the trouble is you never know what will happen. Possibly half the time or more the blighter complaining will get a little victory, like drinks on the house or a partial refund, because the staff just want a way to make them go quietly. That just makes them all the more likely to act up at the next establishment. Occasionally they get kicked out of the restaurant and told never to come back. In that case the rest of the table feel it more keenly than the complainant, who just launches into a torrent of swearwords and bangs on about how unfair it is.
So I'm afraid - and I don't think this is just a remainer thing, it's a cultural thing - there will always be a substantial chunk of the public who will wince when their politicians ask to speak to the manager.
Good analogy. People who complain in restaurants are the absolute dregs of humanity.
Not fatal in itself - I wouldn't say Kinnock at Brighton beach - but just gives off a clumsy, never-completely-in-control-of-events air. Not good spinning.
Didn't he run over a bicyclist the other day? Pattern emerging...
I see the Remoaners are getting awfully upset over on Twitter and in the media that Lord Frost might have another negotiating success over the NI protocol.
I know that's meant to provoke, but there is an interesting bit of psychology in all this. I do think there really is a difference in the population - perhaps this is the lover vs fighter point raised earlier - between those who enjoy a good old fight and those who couldn't think of anything worse.
For those of us of a more, shall we say, conflict avoiding disposition seeing Frost do what Frost does is embarrassing. So much so that in my case I find myself wincing and watching the thing through my hands. It's embarrassing in exactly the same way as when you're with one of those people who decide very loudly to complain in a restaurant. You plead with them not to make a fuss. You try to explain things from the establishment's point of view. But they won't be dissuaded. Off they go on their rant, demanding to speak to the chef, and the rest of the table just wants the ground to open up and swallow them.
Now the trouble is you never know what will happen. Possibly half the time or more the blighter complaining will get a little victory, like drinks on the house or a partial refund, because the staff just want a way to make them go quietly. That just makes them all the more likely to act up at the next establishment. Occasionally they get kicked out of the restaurant and told never to come back. In that case the rest of the table feel it more keenly than the complainant, who just launches into a torrent of swearwords and bangs on about how unfair it is.
So I'm afraid - and I don't think this is just a remainer thing, it's a cultural thing - there will always be a substantial chunk of the public who will wince when their politicians ask to speak to the manager.
Good analogy. People who complain in restaurants are the absolute dregs of humanity.
Don't some of the "absolute dregs of humanity" have good reason to complain immediately and do it in a reasonable way?
Surely a restaurant would prefer that to a customer meekly lying that everything was good, and then posting their real review online later.
I see the Remoaners are getting awfully upset over on Twitter and in the media that Lord Frost might have another negotiating success over the NI protocol.
I'm sure there are a lot of unreconciled Remainers who think that this proves that everything they ever said about Brexit was right.
However, I'm interested in why you don't have a problem with HMG's behaviour. Given the motivation for you to vote Brexit had a lot to do with democratic accountability, how does it work when a government wins a large majority on a campaign for "getting Brexit done" with an "oven ready deal", only to bore us all to tears less than two years later with another interminable negotiation to replace the very deal the public voted for?
How can the democratic relationship between voters and their representatives function when there is such fundamental dishonesty?
Now you may feel it's fine on this occasion, because they are sticking it to the EU, and annoying the Remoaners, but I think it sets a dangerous precedent that the government hasn't become a laughing stock for trashing the deal they were recently so proud of.
Free movement wasn't really a big problem until three things came together:
(1) The integration of the EU 8, which were very significantly poorer than then existing EU members. When previously poor countries had joined (Portugal, Greece, Spain), they were relatively small, this was 8 countries (including one big one) all at the same time. The UK was also pretty much the only country not to go with transitional controls on immigration. This meant that instead of a few million people being spread out across the whole EU, they came mostly to the UK.
(2) The UK's benefits system. As far as I can tell, there is no other country in Europe that has either a system that is as non-contributory bases, not one which was so generous with in work benefits system like the UK. Prior to the Maastricht treaty, you could work in any member state, but there was no presumption of benefits. The consequence of this is that (pretty much alone of the countries in the EU), it was possible for a migrant to come to the UK and pick up benefits from day one.
(3) The Eurozone crisis, which caused a dramatic dip in demand for migrant labour in the Southern EU states *and* led to the exporting their own young.
Hold on. Are immigrants coming here and depressing wages or are they coming over here and claiming benefits?
Personally, I am broadly in favour of free movement of labour (on the basis that it is good for individuals, in that there is a wider variety of firms they can sell their skills to - and for companies, as there are more individuals they can hire).
What I oppose, though, is a system where people could come to the UK, having not paid a penny in tax or National Insurance, and receive benefits. That seems a very odd system.
I also find the argument that immigration has suppressed capital investment to be one which - while superficially plausible - does not seem to mesh with the fact. Both Switzerland and Germany have seen more immigration of unskilled and semi-skilled labour in the last five years than the UK (as a % of population), and yet both have seen very significant investment in automation.
So, Switzerland's Gross Capital Formation has risen from 22% to 27% as immigration has risen and Gemany's from 15% to 21%. While the UK remains marooned in the mid-teens. The simplistic explanation of "immigration means firms don't need to automate" seems to ignore the fact that in all the countries which saw even greater levels of Eastern European immigration did see much greater investment in automation.
I suspect that the big issue is that the UK has a consumption and services driven economy, which is much less easy to automate. But that is a much bigger problem to solve.
Yes I was being cheeky.
And yes, PT is trying to single out one part of one factor input to the economy, pointing a finger and saying: "told you so".
It is intuitively attractive. Millions of potential workers theoretically applying downwards pressure on wages in the UK such that employers only need pay the minimum because the supply of labour continues to shift the curve rightwards until it buffers up against the minimum wage. But there are too many variables involved to be able to make such a claim.
There weren't millions of workers on the minimum wage pre-expansion though - and now sectors reliant upon minimum wage labour are saying they're struggling to recruit without free movement.
We'll see what happens going forwards. The proof will be in the pudding, but if the proportion of jobs stuck the minimum wage ceiling comes down then I view that as a good thing. Do you?
Hang on.
That can happen two ways.
Imagine that in the UK today, there are 100 people working and 10 of those are doing minimum wage jobs. If 9 of those 10 are made redundant, then the proportion of people doing minimum wage jobs has declined 90% (yay!), but it's not because they're being paid more, it's because they are now unemployed.
I'd rather they were employed in minimum wage jobs than not employed at all.
So if the 1.5m increase in minimum wage employees were because they'd come off unemployment and into minimum wage that'd be reasonable. But that would also mean we had 750 million working people in the UK labour market.
The increase in the minimum wage from 4.50 to 7.20 over the same period (it also increased a fair amount as a % of median wages over that period) may also be a factor in the increasing numbers who were paid it.
If rising wages were the cause then you'd think logically the income of the bottom decile of wages would have risen relative to the median decile in the same time.
"Rather than a positive story of more male part-timers working in good quality jobs, and satisfied with them, instead we found clear evidence of growing involuntary male part-time employment, low quality part-time jobs for larger numbers of men, and declining levels of job satisfaction, with working-class men hardest hit."
I see the Remoaners are getting awfully upset over on Twitter and in the media that Lord Frost might have another negotiating success over the NI protocol.
I know that's meant to provoke, but there is an interesting bit of psychology in all this. I do think there really is a difference in the population - perhaps this is the lover vs fighter point raised earlier - between those who enjoy a good old fight and those who couldn't think of anything worse.
For those of us of a more, shall we say, conflict avoiding disposition seeing Frost do what Frost does is embarrassing. So much so that in my case I find myself wincing and watching the thing through my hands. It's embarrassing in exactly the same way as when you're with one of those people who decide very loudly to complain in a restaurant. You plead with them not to make a fuss. You try to explain things from the establishment's point of view. But they won't be dissuaded. Off they go on their rant, demanding to speak to the chef, and the rest of the table just wants the ground to open up and swallow them.
Now the trouble is you never know what will happen. Possibly half the time or more the blighter complaining will get a little victory, like drinks on the house or a partial refund, because the staff just want a way to make them go quietly. That just makes them all the more likely to act up at the next establishment. Occasionally they get kicked out of the restaurant and told never to come back. In that case the rest of the table feel it more keenly than the complainant, who just launches into a torrent of swearwords and bangs on about how unfair it is.
So I'm afraid - and I don't think this is just a remainer thing, it's a cultural thing - there will always be a substantial chunk of the public who will wince when their politicians ask to speak to the manager.
Good analogy. People who complain in restaurants are the absolute dregs of humanity.
You’ve never had poor service then? It’s not about getting free stuff. My last complaint? I bought a latte from MacDonalds that was served cold. I’m certain it was from a previous order, and left on the side for ages, then given to me. I asked for it to be replaced, and it was, with a larger serving, which I appreciated but had not asked for or expected. Does that make me the dregs of humanity?
I see the Remoaners are getting awfully upset over on Twitter and in the media that Lord Frost might have another negotiating success over the NI protocol.
Five and a bit years on and you're still coming out with this "Remoaner" crap.
I also voted to leave in 2016 and it's embarrassing to see those who voted as I did still fighting the last war or the war before that instead of looking forward and trying to make a go of the new reality.
Let those who voted the other way have their say - ignore them if you want - but we have a responsibility to build a future for this country that works for us all however we voted.
I think of it as a useful public service. I don't use Twitter myself so I never know what the "FBPE Remoaners" are thinking. How else can I calibrate my political and cultural position except by figuring out what is currently triggering CR? 😉
I would argue that the social benefits of Covid, such as the WFH revolution and people having an opportunity to reprioritise in their lives, more than outweighs the social harms.
Yet there are those for whom the periods of enforced isolation have been purgatory whether because they are alone or with someone with whom they no longer want to live or for a myriad other reasons.
Many have, as you say, coped not only well but prospered. Getting off the commuting treadmill has been a positive personal benefit but I'd never want to generalise it.
It's clear some on here have found it hard going at times and if this forum has provided some much needed contact I'm delighted we've all managed to help each other through this.
Oh yes, I am not saying that it was a bed of roses. Some people certainly have struggled. Three months where my weekly adventure was taking the bins out got a bit wearing. However, taking a utilitarian approach, I think society has gained from the transition to the new normal.
I am not, of course, including the death and serious illness resulting from Covid in that equation - just the social impact.
I see the Remoaners are getting awfully upset over on Twitter and in the media that Lord Frost might have another negotiating success over the NI protocol.
I'm sure there are a lot of unreconciled Remainers who think that this proves that everything they ever said about Brexit was right.
However, I'm interested in why you don't have a problem with HMG's behaviour. Given the motivation for you to vote Brexit had a lot to do with democratic accountability, how does it work when a government wins a large majority on a campaign for "getting Brexit done" with an "oven ready deal", only to bore us all to tears less than two years later with another interminable negotiation to replace the very deal the public voted for?
How can the democratic relationship between voters and their representatives function when there is such fundamental dishonesty?
Now you may feel it's fine on this occasion, because they are sticking it to the EU, and annoying the Remoaners, but I think it sets a dangerous precedent that the government hasn't become a laughing stock for trashing the deal they were recently so proud of.
Have you forgotten that during the 2019 election campaign, Boris Johnson explicitly said that he wouldn't enforce NI-GB checks, prompting lots of people to say that he didn't understand the deal?
@blakeyblogs Asked if govt just won’t enforce alternative customs declarations needed for NI to GB shipments PM says “That's right - we're one UK territory, we need to get this deal done, get it over the line and take the country forward."
I see the Remoaners are getting awfully upset over on Twitter and in the media that Lord Frost might have another negotiating success over the NI protocol.
I know that's meant to provoke, but there is an interesting bit of psychology in all this. I do think there really is a difference in the population - perhaps this is the lover vs fighter point raised earlier - between those who enjoy a good old fight and those who couldn't think of anything worse.
For those of us of a more, shall we say, conflict avoiding disposition seeing Frost do what Frost does is embarrassing. So much so that in my case I find myself wincing and watching the thing through my hands. It's embarrassing in exactly the same way as when you're with one of those people who decide very loudly to complain in a restaurant. You plead with them not to make a fuss. You try to explain things from the establishment's point of view. But they won't be dissuaded. Off they go on their rant, demanding to speak to the chef, and the rest of the table just wants the ground to open up and swallow them.
Now the trouble is you never know what will happen. Possibly half the time or more the blighter complaining will get a little victory, like drinks on the house or a partial refund, because the staff just want a way to make them go quietly. That just makes them all the more likely to act up at the next establishment. Occasionally they get kicked out of the restaurant and told never to come back. In that case the rest of the table feel it more keenly than the complainant, who just launches into a torrent of swearwords and bangs on about how unfair it is.
So I'm afraid - and I don't think this is just a remainer thing, it's a cultural thing - there will always be a substantial chunk of the public who will wince when their politicians ask to speak to the manager.
Good analogy. People who complain in restaurants are the absolute dregs of humanity.
People should do what I do, and torch the place if they get bad service.
Ministers and civil servants are required by policy to set instant messaging chats to delete automatically, it has been revealed, as a judicial review over the government’s use of self-destructing messages was given the go-ahead.
The not-profit organisation the Citizens says the use of disappearing messages, which has been described as “government by WhatsApp”, violates British law on public records and freedom of information.
Its legal challenge comes amid concerns that the likes of WhatsApp and Signal, which have a disappearing messages option, are being used to avoid scrutiny of decision-making processes, including on significant issues such as the government’s coronavirus response.
At a high court hearing in London on Tuesday, it was revealed that the Cabinet Office’s “information and records retention and destruction policy”, disclosed in response to the Citizens application for a judicial review, obliges officials to delete instant chats.
The policy says: “Instant messaging is provided to all staff and should be used in preference to email for routine communications where there is no need to retain a record of the communication. Instant messages history in individual and group chats must be switched off and should not be retained once a session is finished. If the content of an instant message is required for the record or as an audit trail, a note for the record should be created and the message content saved in that.”
On a more general level I find that there are a lot of functionaries who take the idea of good records management to the extreme, taking the presumption of not keeping things that are not required to be kept so far, that I am sure a lot of things that are supposed to be retained get destroyed in the interests of 'tidying up' and to avoid seeming to hold data unnecessarily.
So people can come at it from both ways, seeking to obfuscate and seeking to treat data properly, and end up with the same result - no one can figure out what the hell happened.
Free movement wasn't really a big problem until three things came together:
(1) The integration of the EU 8, which were very significantly poorer than then existing EU members. When previously poor countries had joined (Portugal, Greece, Spain), they were relatively small, this was 8 countries (including one big one) all at the same time. The UK was also pretty much the only country not to go with transitional controls on immigration. This meant that instead of a few million people being spread out across the whole EU, they came mostly to the UK.
(2) The UK's benefits system. As far as I can tell, there is no other country in Europe that has either a system that is as non-contributory bases, not one which was so generous with in work benefits system like the UK. Prior to the Maastricht treaty, you could work in any member state, but there was no presumption of benefits. The consequence of this is that (pretty much alone of the countries in the EU), it was possible for a migrant to come to the UK and pick up benefits from day one.
(3) The Eurozone crisis, which caused a dramatic dip in demand for migrant labour in the Southern EU states *and* led to the exporting their own young.
Hold on. Are immigrants coming here and depressing wages or are they coming over here and claiming benefits?
Personally, I am broadly in favour of free movement of labour (on the basis that it is good for individuals, in that there is a wider variety of firms they can sell their skills to - and for companies, as there are more individuals they can hire).
What I oppose, though, is a system where people could come to the UK, having not paid a penny in tax or National Insurance, and receive benefits. That seems a very odd system.
I also find the argument that immigration has suppressed capital investment to be one which - while superficially plausible - does not seem to mesh with the fact. Both Switzerland and Germany have seen more immigration of unskilled and semi-skilled labour in the last five years than the UK (as a % of population), and yet both have seen very significant investment in automation.
So, Switzerland's Gross Capital Formation has risen from 22% to 27% as immigration has risen and Gemany's from 15% to 21%. While the UK remains marooned in the mid-teens. The simplistic explanation of "immigration means firms don't need to automate" seems to ignore the fact that in all the countries which saw even greater levels of Eastern European immigration did see much greater investment in automation.
I suspect that the big issue is that the UK has a consumption and services driven economy, which is much less easy to automate. But that is a much bigger problem to solve.
Yes I was being cheeky.
And yes, PT is trying to single out one part of one factor input to the economy, pointing a finger and saying: "told you so".
It is intuitively attractive. Millions of potential workers theoretically applying downwards pressure on wages in the UK such that employers only need pay the minimum because the supply of labour continues to shift the curve rightwards until it buffers up against the minimum wage. But there are too many variables involved to be able to make such a claim.
There weren't millions of workers on the minimum wage pre-expansion though - and now sectors reliant upon minimum wage labour are saying they're struggling to recruit without free movement.
We'll see what happens going forwards. The proof will be in the pudding, but if the proportion of jobs stuck the minimum wage ceiling comes down then I view that as a good thing. Do you?
Hang on.
That can happen two ways.
Imagine that in the UK today, there are 100 people working and 10 of those are doing minimum wage jobs. If 9 of those 10 are made redundant, then the proportion of people doing minimum wage jobs has declined 90% (yay!), but it's not because they're being paid more, it's because they are now unemployed.
I'd rather they were employed in minimum wage jobs than not employed at all.
So if the 1.5m increase in minimum wage employees were because they'd come off unemployment and into minimum wage that'd be reasonable. But that would also mean we had 750 million working people in the UK labour market.
The increase in the minimum wage from 4.50 to 7.20 over the same period (it also increased a fair amount as a % of median wages over that period) may also be a factor in the increasing numbers who were paid it.
If rising wages were the cause then you'd think logically the income of the bottom decile of wages would have risen relative to the median decile in the same time.
Spoiler: They didn't.
Minimum wage 2016 / 2003: 7.20 / 4.50 67% rise
Median wage 2016 / 2003 28,195 / 21,124 33% rise
Explain.
Minimum wage ≠ Bottom Decile
Try using the right figures and see the change.
My memory (and it might be wrong) is that the bottom income decile is dominated by the poorest pensioners, rather than by people in work earning minimum wage. I'm not sure it's therefore a good compare.
That's a good point, well made.
Can you think of a better comparator? If possible it'd be interesting to know the ~two-millionth lowest wage rate in 2003 and then compare that.
I see the Remoaners are getting awfully upset over on Twitter and in the media that Lord Frost might have another negotiating success over the NI protocol.
I know that's meant to provoke, but there is an interesting bit of psychology in all this. I do think there really is a difference in the population - perhaps this is the lover vs fighter point raised earlier - between those who enjoy a good old fight and those who couldn't think of anything worse.
For those of us of a more, shall we say, conflict avoiding disposition seeing Frost do what Frost does is embarrassing. So much so that in my case I find myself wincing and watching the thing through my hands. It's embarrassing in exactly the same way as when you're with one of those people who decide very loudly to complain in a restaurant. You plead with them not to make a fuss. You try to explain things from the establishment's point of view. But they won't be dissuaded. Off they go on their rant, demanding to speak to the chef, and the rest of the table just wants the ground to open up and swallow them.
Now the trouble is you never know what will happen. Possibly half the time or more the blighter complaining will get a little victory, like drinks on the house or a partial refund, because the staff just want a way to make them go quietly. That just makes them all the more likely to act up at the next establishment. Occasionally they get kicked out of the restaurant and told never to come back. In that case the rest of the table feel it more keenly than the complainant, who just launches into a torrent of swearwords and bangs on about how unfair it is.
So I'm afraid - and I don't think this is just a remainer thing, it's a cultural thing - there will always be a substantial chunk of the public who will wince when their politicians ask to speak to the manager.
Good analogy. People who complain in restaurants are the absolute dregs of humanity.
Don't some of the "absolute dregs of humanity" have good reason to complain immediately and do it in a reasonable way?
Surely a restaurant would prefer that to a customer meekly lying that everything was good, and then posting their real review online later.
I worked in a restaurant for 5 years. My experience was that complaints were a function of the personality of the customer and were more or less orthogonal to their culinary experience. Some complained about *everything*, others would apologise to you as they pointed out that there was broken glass in their water. You could usually predict who was going to be a prick before they even sat down. Restaurants know when they've given you shit service, you won't be helping them by pointing it out, and it's rarely the fault of the person you will get to complain to. If you've got nothing nice to say, say nothing.
I see the Remoaners are getting awfully upset over on Twitter and in the media that Lord Frost might have another negotiating success over the NI protocol.
I know that's meant to provoke, but there is an interesting bit of psychology in all this. I do think there really is a difference in the population - perhaps this is the lover vs fighter point raised earlier - between those who enjoy a good old fight and those who couldn't think of anything worse.
For those of us of a more, shall we say, conflict avoiding disposition seeing Frost do what Frost does is embarrassing. So much so that in my case I find myself wincing and watching the thing through my hands. It's embarrassing in exactly the same way as when you're with one of those people who decide very loudly to complain in a restaurant. You plead with them not to make a fuss. You try to explain things from the establishment's point of view. But they won't be dissuaded. Off they go on their rant, demanding to speak to the chef, and the rest of the table just wants the ground to open up and swallow them.
Now the trouble is you never know what will happen. Possibly half the time or more the blighter complaining will get a little victory, like drinks on the house or a partial refund, because the staff just want a way to make them go quietly. That just makes them all the more likely to act up at the next establishment. Occasionally they get kicked out of the restaurant and told never to come back. In that case the rest of the table feel it more keenly than the complainant, who just launches into a torrent of swearwords and bangs on about how unfair it is.
So I'm afraid - and I don't think this is just a remainer thing, it's a cultural thing - there will always be a substantial chunk of the public who will wince when their politicians ask to speak to the manager.
Good analogy. People who complain in restaurants are the absolute dregs of humanity.
People should do what I do, and torch the place if they get bad service.
I see the Remoaners are getting awfully upset over on Twitter and in the media that Lord Frost might have another negotiating success over the NI protocol.
I'm sure there are a lot of unreconciled Remainers who think that this proves that everything they ever said about Brexit was right.
However, I'm interested in why you don't have a problem with HMG's behaviour. Given the motivation for you to vote Brexit had a lot to do with democratic accountability, how does it work when a government wins a large majority on a campaign for "getting Brexit done" with an "oven ready deal", only to bore us all to tears less than two years later with another interminable negotiation to replace the very deal the public voted for?
How can the democratic relationship between voters and their representatives function when there is such fundamental dishonesty?
Now you may feel it's fine on this occasion, because they are sticking it to the EU, and annoying the Remoaners, but I think it sets a dangerous precedent that the government hasn't become a laughing stock for trashing the deal they were recently so proud of.
Have you forgotten that during the 2019 election campaign, Boris Johnson explicitly said that he wouldn't enforce NI-GB checks, prompting lots of people to say that he didn't understand the deal?
@blakeyblogs Asked if govt just won’t enforce alternative customs declarations needed for NI to GB shipments PM says “That's right - we're one UK territory, we need to get this deal done, get it over the line and take the country forward."
Comments
But they did get the chequebook out and order f*ck loads of Pfizer. They did change direction.
I recall no particular notice taken of the fact the new Miss Moneypenny was a failed 00 candidate, in a previous film.
There were a small number of very expensive and basically indestructible laptops for use in the field - you could frisbee them off buildings etc. They were also horribly low spec and very very heavy.
Try the "my laptop is destroyed and I need a shiny new, lighter, one" and he would get you given one of the bricks.
2003: 0.5m minimum wage employees; 5.0% unemployment rate.
2016: 2.0m minimum wage employees; 4.8% unemployment rate.
So if the 1.5m increase in minimum wage employees were because they'd come off unemployment and into minimum wage that'd be reasonable. But that would also mean we had 750 million working people in the UK labour market.
And that scene was so clumsy. As if MI6 would allow their staff to have all that kit in their own home. But we needed to be told that Q was gay. And that was symptomatic of the whole film. The plot was an afterthought.
Cunning buggers.
Electronics engineers can probably confirm or deny but I've always understood that permanent damage is more likely if power is running through the device while wet.
If it's allowed to dry before you turn it back on, less risk of permanent damage. Or so I believe.
4) The original deal was great from the Brexit p of v but we've been forced to tear it up because Unionists (the NI kind), integrity of the UK, DUP support in the Mother of Parliaments, blah.
It would no more bother me for the next 007 to be female than it did when Doctor Who re-generated as a woman.
As far as the thread topic is concerned, I'd be surprised to see a Labour lead but I could envisage a tied poll between now and the end of the year.
On the slightly more substantive, the Government had choices in March 2020 and one would have been to allow the virus to run through the population and "keep buggering on" (as someone once put it).
As I recall, lockdown was not introduced because of the fear of mass deaths - it was quite clear that beyond the elderly, the mortality rate was very low but the fear of hospitals becoming overwhelmed by those wanting or needing treatment and there not being adequate resources to deal with the numbers.
Had we eschewed the policy of social isolation, there would have been horrendous scenes at hospitals and elsewhere - it would have been truly awful for a few weeks but as the virus went through the population, we would at some point have reached that level of "immunity" beyond which the virus ceases to be able to spread.
So, more deaths, forty, fifty, a hundred thousand perhaps (I don't know) and a brief period of significant economic dislocation before a return to normality. With more protected and higher antibody levels, we'd have had more protection against subsequent "waves" or variants.
There has been a cost to all this - we could have chosen to take an immediate hit in terms of deaths, people with long covid but instead we deferred the cost to an extent. Let's be honest - there has been a cost - lives have still been lost, the economy was damaged and more than anything else the mental cost and the pain and anguish inflicted on those trapped in abusive or violent relationships with no means of escape is becoming apparent.
As I've said before, the pandemic has given many a chance to evaluate or re-evaluate their lives - there have been some profound changes and I suspect this will become more apparent with time. The clock won't be turned back, the world has changed forever.
Had it continued as normal or something like that? Who knows what the current state would be.
A caveat about this polling, which has been reported in the Guardian and Sunday Times as showing that 70% of people supported allowing asylum seekers to work while their cases are assessed
https://twitter.com/anthonyjwells/status/1447991487409557507?s=20
Spoiler: They didn't.
I did see that in America that child covid deaths are now higher than child cancer deaths. Both of course are really quite rare, but now about 20 per week in the USA. Divide by 5 for UK population, but I don't know what the absolute numbers here are.
Surge capacity for covid was by rapid conversion of operating theatres into ICU and redeployment of staff.
Normal service would have necessitated refusing to admit covid patients, and leaving them to "hot broth" at home.
@MattHancock
Honoured to be appointed United Nations Special Representative.
I’ll be working with the @UN @ECA_OFFICIAL to help African economic recovery from the pandemic and promote sustainable development.
===
Bye!! Thanks for everything.
Try using the right figures and see the change.
From this weak position of ignorance, I've written a short review:
I hope the last word of the review isn't too much of a spoiler.
If you increase the minimum wage to £20/ph, then you will have a lot more people on minimum wage.
If minimum wage going up was dragging up wages within the bottom decile then you'd have seen wages go up in the bottom decile.
But it hasn't. Because wages haven't been dragged up.
The line from Government today has been "we were right all along".
I think it was when the instructor told him to turn left
Useless nonentity is turning into a bigger laughing stock than the PM
https://twitter.com/PoliticsForAlI/status/1447939566565040140
To remind people of the context, here's Frost's tweets from Xmas Eve 2020, the day the deal was signed:
https://twitter.com/DavidGHFrost/status/1342128239075057666
A couple of highlights:
I'm very pleased and proud to have led a great UK team to secure today's excellent deal with the EU.
(the deal) It also restores Britain's sovereignty in full. EU law ceases to apply; the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice ends; there is no alignment with EU rules; and our Parliament sets all laws for our country once again.
So was that last tweet a complete lie, or did he believe it at the time? Sounds like the perfect deal to me.
He's rather too much like the PM in my view - good at rewriting history.
He sent it in again, and again they returned it.
He sent it for a third time, confident it was definitely defective this time.
There was a bullet hole in it...
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/david-frost-brexit-speech-northern-ireland-protocol-b1937093.html https://twitter.com/tompeck/status/1447998705274077186/photo/1
Today it was announced that my response to the pandemic was the worst public health crisis in UK memory.
Also, I was put in charge of a whole continent’s economic recovery.
Which was nice.
"Do you have any mates that run a pub..?"
Many have, as you say, coped not only well but prospered. Getting off the commuting treadmill has been a positive personal benefit but I'd never want to generalise it.
It's clear some on here have found it hard going at times and if this forum has provided some much needed contact I'm delighted we've all managed to help each other through this.
Instructor: You'd have failed your test.
Starmer: Okay, very good. Very good.
For those of us of a more, shall we say, conflict avoiding disposition seeing Frost do what Frost does is embarrassing. So much so that in my case I find myself wincing and watching the thing through my hands. It's embarrassing in exactly the same way as when you're with one of those people who decide very loudly to complain in a restaurant. You plead with them not to make a fuss. You try to explain things from the establishment's point of view. But they won't be dissuaded. Off they go on their rant, demanding to speak to the chef, and the rest of the table just wants the ground to open up and swallow them.
Now the trouble is you never know what will happen. Possibly half the time or more the blighter complaining will get a little victory, like drinks on the house or a partial refund, because the staff just want a way to make them go quietly. That just makes them all the more likely to act up at the next establishment. Occasionally they get kicked out of the restaurant and told never to come back. In that case the rest of the table feel it more keenly than the complainant, who just launches into a torrent of swearwords and bangs on about how unfair it is.
So I'm afraid - and I don't think this is just a remainer thing, it's a cultural thing - there will always be a substantial chunk of the public who will wince when their politicians ask to speak to the manager.
I also voted to leave in 2016 and it's embarrassing to see those who voted as I did still fighting the last war or the war before that instead of looking forward and trying to make a go of the new reality.
Let those who voted the other way have their say - ignore them if you want - but we have a responsibility to build a future for this country that works for us all however we voted.
Surely a restaurant would prefer that to a customer meekly lying that everything was good, and then posting their real review online later.
However, I'm interested in why you don't have a problem with HMG's behaviour. Given the motivation for you to vote Brexit had a lot to do with democratic accountability, how does it work when a government wins a large majority on a campaign for "getting Brexit done" with an "oven ready deal", only to bore us all to tears less than two years later with another interminable negotiation to replace the very deal the public voted for?
How can the democratic relationship between voters and their representatives function when there is such fundamental dishonesty?
Now you may feel it's fine on this occasion, because they are sticking it to the EU, and annoying the Remoaners, but I think it sets a dangerous precedent that the government hasn't become a laughing stock for trashing the deal they were recently so proud of.
https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/men-working-part-time-20-years-ago/
"Rather than a positive story of more male part-timers working in good quality jobs, and satisfied with them, instead we found clear evidence of growing involuntary male part-time employment, low quality part-time jobs for larger numbers of men, and declining levels of job satisfaction, with working-class men hardest hit."
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/growing-part-time-employment-among-men/
I am not, of course, including the death and serious illness resulting from Covid in that equation - just the social impact.
@blakeyblogs
Asked if govt just won’t enforce alternative customs declarations needed for NI to GB shipments PM says “That's right - we're one UK territory, we need to get this deal done, get it over the line and take the country forward."
https://twitter.com/blakeyblogs/status/1192759453453635584
On a more general level I find that there are a lot of functionaries who take the idea of good records management to the extreme, taking the presumption of not keeping things that are not required to be kept so far, that I am sure a lot of things that are supposed to be retained get destroyed in the interests of 'tidying up' and to avoid seeming to hold data unnecessarily.
So people can come at it from both ways, seeking to obfuscate and seeking to treat data properly, and end up with the same result - no one can figure out what the hell happened.
Can you think of a better comparator? If possible it'd be interesting to know the ~two-millionth lowest wage rate in 2003 and then compare that.
Not like you to make such a simple error.