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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » This week’s PB/Polling Matters podcast looks at Germany, Brexi

In part one, Keiran speaks to German political commentator and elections expect Nina Schick, who explains what we should look out for in German politics, the SPD surge and what the German government wants from Brexit.
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Robotics will shortly do away with the need for manual labour on the land. At least for arable and vegetable. Herding cows and sheep may take a while longer.
Apparently
https://www.ft.com/content/e22c9d5c-e95c-11e6-893c-082c54a7f539
Good news for the workers:
"Farms and food producers are having to compete harder for a shrinking pool of workers. One poultry farmer said he had raised wages by 15 per cent. Pete Taylor, operations director at recruitment firm Encore Personnel, which supplies labour to the food industry, is laying on minibuses to bring in staff to pick and process food in Spalding, Lincolnshire, from the wider surrounding area.
“Over Christmas, one company said that out of 500 workers on one particular shift, they were about 200 short,” he said. “It’s the aftermath panic of Brexit, and people are running for the hills. They’re certainly not running for the Fens, which is where we need them.” "
However, on the subject of not-at-all-xenophobic Britain:
"Nick Houghton, managing director of a food manufacturing company in Nottingham, relies on EU staff to fill 75 per cent of his workforce and complains that the atmosphere has become increasingly hostile.
“Staff have said to me they don’t talk on the phone on the bus any more because they don’t want people to hear them speaking Polish. That’s despicable in my view,” he said.
Mr Houghton scoffs when asked why he can’t find local workers to fill the gaps. “There isn’t a pool of unemployed workers sitting there waiting for the EU workers to go back, ready and able to take up these jobs,” he said."
Liam Young @liamyoung Feb 8
Those spreading false rumours about Jeremy Corbyn will destabilise and eventually destroy the Labour Party. Perhaps that's what they want?
Blair's rating in November 1997 was an impressive net plus 50
At present assuming a sustained reduction of the workforce I think we can expect a 10% rise in the real terms of cost fresh food.
The second point merits more serious attention, but I'd be interested to know if these workers had actually suffered abuse for speaking Polish, or were merely concerned that they would.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjd5DaxkLhQ
BevC - people would agree, if only they had the time to stop and think. Cucumbers are fifty pence for heavens' sake.
Not quite the way I remember it to be honest but the memory plays tricks.
It clearly was not that way by the election the following month but it shows that even a narrow lead is probably not enough for an opposition party. To be 46% behind must surely be unprecedented in modern times.
But anyway - I agree - agricultural products are astonishingly cheap. I don't understand how I can get a bag or carrots for about 40p. When you think of the costs involved in logistics (i.e. from the farm to the vegetable depot in Lincolnshire, to the Tesco depot, from the Tesco depot to the store, employing the people to load/unload them at either end) and marketing them (putting them on the shelf, paying for Tesco to actually operate a store and run a company), how much does a carrot cost when it comes out of the ground - 1p? 2p? Surely no more than 5p? How on earth can it be economically possible to grow and pick such things? Even if the armies of Estonians were giving their labour free for the sheer joy of extracting vegetables from the loamy soils of Lincolnshire, I can't see how the model works.
The social networking service reported a loss of $167m (£133m) in the final three months of 2016, as against $90m in the same period a year earlier.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38920856
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/#/politics/event/28051208/market?marketId=1.120629015
At the time Ipsos Mori, the gold standard of leader ratings still had Dave ahead.
Hague had a much worse gap than 46% behind
https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/88/Political-Monitor-Satisfaction-Ratings-1997Present.aspx
Is there a market on Gorsuch being confirmed, then overturning Trump's ban (and maybe some other stuff) ?
If the rule applied one more level then the farmer would get about 6p...
Is that 5/1 still available?
The consumers are only able to demand what suppliers are able to supply. If suppliers stop supplying cheap food, consumers will stop being able to demand it. To expect consumers to unilaterally demand expensive food defies all economics (unless its for something specific like consumers buying free range eggs).
This foreign worker thing is going to get levelled out anyway, as the lovely lovely EU raises the standard of living in Poland by giving them humongous grants to build car factories and coming over here becomes less enticing (and as the £:€ rate moves against us). At the moment we are rather unkindly arbitraging living standards to get cheap cabbages, just as we do to get cheap iphones.
The GOP in the Senate are more than happy with Gorsuch as an SC nominee, is it actually possible for his nomination to be rescinded at this stage?
School sends parents an awkwardly hilarious letter of complaint home after their ten-year-old son invents an imaginary friend called ‘Wildo the Dildo’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4207314/School-sends-parents-letter-Wildo-Dildo.html
1) One says why Labour are being understated in the polls
and
2) How Corbyn becomes PM, and it is so obvious
Ok the second piece might be called pure clickbait, but I'm not writing either piece as a Tory4Corbyn
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2017/feb/09/corbyn-dismisses-claims-he-has-set-date-for-resigning-as-fake-news-politics-live
13:41
If they could alienate 100% of its users they could eliminate its losses altogether.
Either way every step of the way must essentially have supply equaling demand. If suppliers were no longer capable of supplying (either because their subsidiaries couldn't anymore or after taking into account subsidies) then consumers would be unable to demand it from them.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-09/paris-to-build-barrier-around-eiffel-tower-to-counter-terrorism
--- Mushroom soup for two ---
250g chestnut mushrooms £1
100g onion 10p (ish)
sprig of Thyme 10p ish
one clove garlic 1p
nob of butter
Cost £1.21 (ish), defo less than £1.50 for two people, 20 mins inc prep
Use a medium size pot (15 - 20cm across)
Fry the garlic and onions in the butter until golden. Chop the mushrooms quite small and add to the onions and garlic and mix well. Add the thyme and just cover the whole lot with boiling water and leave to simmer for 10 to 15 minutes.
Blend with a hand blender until smooth and add salt and pepper to suit your taste. If you need to thicken it then mix 1 tsp of cornflour with one tbsp of water and stir into the soup.
They've just banned Gab's account - that looks like anti-trust too. It's a great shame. Apple is refusing to sanction Gab's app too.
The liberal left have lost the plot - shutting down speech platforms doesn't disappear opinions - they just pop up somewhere else more irked than before.
The problem may be UK consumers expecting *British* farm produce to be ultra cheap.
In reality, in the long-term, it will move into value-added, higher-end products and maize/corn/basic root veg will be a niche organic market in the UK, and not a mass one.
https://twitter.com/laudreport/status/827513421587431425
https://twitter.com/richardhine/status/829513758800232448
@TomBoadle: John McDonnell doorstep: "it’s been a tough week for us, obviously" before predicting Labour uniting and Tories splitting over the next yr.
McDonnell on @labourlewis' resignation: "a real loss, we hope he’ll be back in due course... it's a shame, but I'm sure he''ll be back."
McDonnell on Corbyn: “There’s all this fake news story about his future but that comes from the Murdoch press and who can trust them?”
Most of the very poor go to places buy cheap processed foods that can be thrown in a microwave/oven, that tends to be very orange with plenty of MSG.
You need families and social networks that can teach you to cook, pick up the skills, and dispel some of the fears.
On top of all of that is motivation: many people get stuck because they can't be motivated to move, work, cook, learn or exercise for anything or anyone unless it delivers them instant gratification.
I stole the first "If it has a question mark then the answer is No, and don't bother reading"
The second is "Any headline with the word hilarious is inevitably dull. And don't bother reading."
I can't believe I fell for your. Luck bait. Calling a imaginary friend dildo is, I'll admit mildly assuming, the schools letter and the DM article however sucked all the fun.
I grew up in Belfast when the whole city centre was ringed by a barrier to counter terrorism. There was nothing racist about it, they searched everybody. We were all treated with equal suspicion.
it's just another type of socialism :-)
Conservative official suspended over 'racist' tweet aimed at Diane Abbott
Alan Pearmain, deputy chairman of the South Ribble Conservative Association, shared a tweet that portrayed the shadow home secretary as an ape
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/09/alan-pearmain-conservative-official-suspended-over-racist-tweet-aimed-at-diane-abbott?CMP=share_btn_tw
oh happy days
hoax bombscares during exam time was another favourite