Now a quarantine exemption plan for toffs – the rest of us will have to suffer – politicalbetting.co

MarqueeMark said:

CarlottaVance said:

Manchester travel ban lifted......

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/nicola-sturgeons-government-lifts-manchester-24421359

The horrible Scottish numbers suggest she was worried we might close the border into Scotland. She had already made the case for us to do it.

The differing regimes in England, Scotland, Wales and NI have been stupidity. One virus, one regime to attack that virus.

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

So indeed have the UUP.

But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.

I suppose that could be true, but it’s a futile endeavour and therefore a road to irrelevance for unionists.

They also have no answer to the question, “What replaces the Northern Ireland protocol”?

It's only futile if you think Brexit will inevitably lead to the relative economic decline of GB. If this doesn't happen then it makes unionists more relevant than they've been for a long time.

No, it’s futile because the Unionists will not and cannot muster a majority in the Assembly to scrap the Protocol.

Has nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a Brexit.

The relative decline has already started anyway; see the IMF’s latest assessment of U.K. GDP.

The IMF is predicting that the UK will recover faster than the Eurozone. You don't know how the relative economic position will look in a few years' time. A lot of people's credibility depends on the UK being seen to fail, but there's no guarantee this will happen.

RochdalePioneers said:

So the same as any outdated end of run products. Would be second hand by then as the manufacturers don't sells old designs with no life left on them.

Floater said:

Utterly stupid idea - what idiot came up with that?

What counts as "significant economic benefit?

Why would the other parties want to meet with you anyway - I would refuse a face to face in those circumstances

kinabalu said:

TOPPING said:

ping said:

I’ve come to an uncomfortable conclusion on the euro outright market.

Germany, at ~7/1, are the value bet.

I can’t quite bring myself to back them, though!

England win tonight. You heard it here first.

No, sorry, I've already said it a few times. We might not be lifting the trophy but we ARE going to the final. I'm very confident of this. And that's really all I want. Just for once, one of these big summer international football finals to have England in it. Used to feel the same about Tim Henman at Wimbledon and in his case it was an itch never scratched. His grass court peak lasted 5 years - and he was good - and yet every single Wimbledon final during that time ended up featuring 2 players who were not Tim Henman. It drove me mad. Guess it did him too.

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

So indeed have the UUP.

But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.

DecrepiterJohnL said:

turbotubbs said:

Nigel_Foremain said:

williamglenn said:

dixiedean said:

kinabalu said:

rcs1000 said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

TOPPING said:

HYUFD said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Those undertaking activities with significant economic benefit have always had favourable rules during this pandemic.

Remember the you can meet up with people in a restaurant if it was for this. Or travel, the plebs can't go on holiday, but business people have been able to travel basically unhindered throughout.

Given Freedom day is only 3 weeks away, I am not sure it will make a lot of difference.

I am not sure it will be full Freedom Day, with even Australia restoring lockdown in some states and LA county reimposing a mask wearing request because of the Delta variant I would imagine masks will still be required to be worn in shops and on public transport, the biggest events will still have a capacity limit and quarantine will still be required for visits to red list countries and for the non double vaccinated to amber countries even from the middle of next month.

I think this new government exemption would therefore certainly be very unpopular if executives returned from a red list country without quarantining

How can it be freedom day when it is still mooted that children will be kept from school if there is a positive test in the class. While literally hundreds of thousands of people go to sports events, the pub, etc.

What exactly does no more restrictions mean? It means restrictions the govt decides to keep. Plenty of them. Some idiot on R4 just now saying well children...long covid...can affect them....

Vanishingly small probability of a child suffering from Covid. Otherwise, given that it has ripped through schools and unis these past few weeks, we would be hearing reports of children dying by the bucketload each day. Doesn't seem to be happening.

Isn't freedom day also the end of term?

Friends and bush telegraph tells me that end of term in many instances is being curtailed a matter of weeks early as everyone self-isolates. Whole rite of passage experiences just not happening for tens of thousands of children.

End of term is a rite of passage without which we'd all be scarred?

You and @contrarian seem to have a very low opinion of the mental resilience of the average 18 year old.

End of school or uni year or of school or uni itself absolutely is a critical rite of passage.

And as for the mental resilience of the average 18-yr old, I suggest you listen to some of the news items on the radio in the UK today. Children on anti-depressants = up, children with mental distress = up, children missing on average 115 hours of face to face teaching, children simply going missing from school.

So yes, Robert and great vid on stopping illegal immigrants, btw, but absofuckinglutely yes, childrens' mental health is being fucked with.

Do you have children? Do you remember what it was like to be a child?

Literally the worst time of the entire school year was an enforced assembly while people trooped up to the front.

The bit that was fun was meeting up with your friends outside of school. Which is - ummm - completely unaffected.

(It is also worth remembering that "graduation" is a very modern concept. In the old days, you went for study leave and never came back. Which I guess explains why everyone over the age of about 50 is mentally scarred.)

Robert the instances of damage to children's mental health is being documented today as we speak on just about all news outlets. I won't google it all for you because I'm sure you will be able to do so.

And after a year or several years of school I could take or leave prize giving and speech day and what have you. I'm sure you the same and if it turned out that your May Ball was cancelled well not to worry your internship at GS was about to start. All perfectly charming.

But the last 15 months have been hell for hundreds of thousands of children perhaps not so fortunate as you or me or perhaps just as fortunate. And during this time school has often represented an oasis of normality. And people are being denied as I said a rite of passage that is part of growing up.

You're completely missing my point.

I TOTALLY AGREE WITH YOU REGARDNG THE IMPACT OF LOCKDOWN ON KIDS HEALTH.

I THINK YOU ARE A COMPLETE FUCKING RETARD IF YOU THINK GRADUATION CEREMONIES ARE SOME ESSENTIAL RIGHT OF PASSAGE THAT KIDS ENJOY.

"COMPLETE FUCKING RETARD" eh?

And shouting. Hmm, I think this discussion is moving in my direction.

And again, the graduation ceremonies, which you may or may not have enjoyed are absolutely an "ESSENTIAL RIGHT [sic] OF PASSAGE" for children. As is all the end of school/uni activities. I said at the beginning "End of term activities". Including graduation which formally marks the end of the era of schooling or uni.

You are simply wrong on this and quite why on the one hand you say lockdown has had an impact and on the other you are unable to see that a critical component of lockdown people are cheering at goodness only knows. I can only imagine something happened at your graduation that was unpleasant otherwise your response is irrational.

I apologise for shouting and calling you names.

I just remember the utter misery - both as a parent and a child - of sitting through assemblies - particularly ones where people go up to the front to be presented with a worthless bit of paper. Every time I've thought "this is two hours of my life, two hours of utter tedium, I will never get back."

Tony Blair, fwiw, agrees with me. He never actually turned up to graduate from Oxford, and therefore is technically not a graduate.

I skipped mine at Imperial. It was in the Albert Hall but I didn't fancy it.

Me too. Shelling out for a fancy dress costume to sit in a hall for hours while folk droned on didn't appeal somehow.

It's really all about the honorary degrees anyway.

Is it true that everyone gets either a first or a 2:1 now? No-one gets a Desmond anymore?

Not quite true, but the are arguably far too many getting firsts and 2:1's. having been involved for the last 10 years or so, its not hard to see why. Students on my course spend ages accumulating good grades in course work, where they can dedicate 5 or 10 times the amount of time we expect them too, and this makes up for generally lower marks in set piece exams. We reference performance back to previous years, but its easy to have a drift up of 1 or 2 % a year translate into many more students getting the top two grades. In many ways the ranking as a cohort is a better system, but I would perhaps retain the grade and include where the student came in their cohort.

Of interest in Pharmacy is that most students take an assessment in 3rd year that is external to the Universities. This is a national competition where students are ranked top to bottom across the piece in order to allocate pre-registration training places. The idea is that the highest ranked gets to choose their first pick and so on. Very revealing for comparing different uni's.

To be fair, there are non-sinister, natural explanations for why educational standards will have risen – the interwebs; pychologically-valid revision techniques; better teaching – as well as less good reasons like the free market in action, but eventually we run into the question of what exams and grades are intended for. Is it to show that a graduate has reached a particular standard, or is it to tell us who is the 279th-best historian this year?

DecrepiterJohnL said:

turbotubbs said:

Nigel_Foremain said:

williamglenn said:

dixiedean said:

kinabalu said:

rcs1000 said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

TOPPING said:

HYUFD said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Those undertaking activities with significant economic benefit have always had favourable rules during this pandemic.

Remember the you can meet up with people in a restaurant if it was for this. Or travel, the plebs can't go on holiday, but business people have been able to travel basically unhindered throughout.

Given Freedom day is only 3 weeks away, I am not sure it will make a lot of difference.

I am not sure it will be full Freedom Day, with even Australia restoring lockdown in some states and LA county reimposing a mask wearing request because of the Delta variant I would imagine masks will still be required to be worn in shops and on public transport, the biggest events will still have a capacity limit and quarantine will still be required for visits to red list countries and for the non double vaccinated to amber countries even from the middle of next month.

I think this new government exemption would therefore certainly be very unpopular if executives returned from a red list country without quarantining

How can it be freedom day when it is still mooted that children will be kept from school if there is a positive test in the class. While literally hundreds of thousands of people go to sports events, the pub, etc.

What exactly does no more restrictions mean? It means restrictions the govt decides to keep. Plenty of them. Some idiot on R4 just now saying well children...long covid...can affect them....

Vanishingly small probability of a child suffering from Covid. Otherwise, given that it has ripped through schools and unis these past few weeks, we would be hearing reports of children dying by the bucketload each day. Doesn't seem to be happening.

Isn't freedom day also the end of term?

Friends and bush telegraph tells me that end of term in many instances is being curtailed a matter of weeks early as everyone self-isolates. Whole rite of passage experiences just not happening for tens of thousands of children.

End of term is a rite of passage without which we'd all be scarred?

You and @contrarian seem to have a very low opinion of the mental resilience of the average 18 year old.

End of school or uni year or of school or uni itself absolutely is a critical rite of passage.

And as for the mental resilience of the average 18-yr old, I suggest you listen to some of the news items on the radio in the UK today. Children on anti-depressants = up, children with mental distress = up, children missing on average 115 hours of face to face teaching, children simply going missing from school.

So yes, Robert and great vid on stopping illegal immigrants, btw, but absofuckinglutely yes, childrens' mental health is being fucked with.

Do you have children? Do you remember what it was like to be a child?

Literally the worst time of the entire school year was an enforced assembly while people trooped up to the front.

The bit that was fun was meeting up with your friends outside of school. Which is - ummm - completely unaffected.

(It is also worth remembering that "graduation" is a very modern concept. In the old days, you went for study leave and never came back. Which I guess explains why everyone over the age of about 50 is mentally scarred.)

Robert the instances of damage to children's mental health is being documented today as we speak on just about all news outlets. I won't google it all for you because I'm sure you will be able to do so.

And after a year or several years of school I could take or leave prize giving and speech day and what have you. I'm sure you the same and if it turned out that your May Ball was cancelled well not to worry your internship at GS was about to start. All perfectly charming.

But the last 15 months have been hell for hundreds of thousands of children perhaps not so fortunate as you or me or perhaps just as fortunate. And during this time school has often represented an oasis of normality. And people are being denied as I said a rite of passage that is part of growing up.

You're completely missing my point.

I TOTALLY AGREE WITH YOU REGARDNG THE IMPACT OF LOCKDOWN ON KIDS HEALTH.

I THINK YOU ARE A COMPLETE FUCKING RETARD IF YOU THINK GRADUATION CEREMONIES ARE SOME ESSENTIAL RIGHT OF PASSAGE THAT KIDS ENJOY.

"COMPLETE FUCKING RETARD" eh?

And shouting. Hmm, I think this discussion is moving in my direction.

And again, the graduation ceremonies, which you may or may not have enjoyed are absolutely an "ESSENTIAL RIGHT [sic] OF PASSAGE" for children. As is all the end of school/uni activities. I said at the beginning "End of term activities". Including graduation which formally marks the end of the era of schooling or uni.

You are simply wrong on this and quite why on the one hand you say lockdown has had an impact and on the other you are unable to see that a critical component of lockdown people are cheering at goodness only knows. I can only imagine something happened at your graduation that was unpleasant otherwise your response is irrational.

I apologise for shouting and calling you names.

I just remember the utter misery - both as a parent and a child - of sitting through assemblies - particularly ones where people go up to the front to be presented with a worthless bit of paper. Every time I've thought "this is two hours of my life, two hours of utter tedium, I will never get back."

Tony Blair, fwiw, agrees with me. He never actually turned up to graduate from Oxford, and therefore is technically not a graduate.

I skipped mine at Imperial. It was in the Albert Hall but I didn't fancy it.

Me too. Shelling out for a fancy dress costume to sit in a hall for hours while folk droned on didn't appeal somehow.

It's really all about the honorary degrees anyway.

Is it true that everyone gets either a first or a 2:1 now? No-one gets a Desmond anymore?

Not quite true, but the are arguably far too many getting firsts and 2:1's. having been involved for the last 10 years or so, its not hard to see why. Students on my course spend ages accumulating good grades in course work, where they can dedicate 5 or 10 times the amount of time we expect them too, and this makes up for generally lower marks in set piece exams. We reference performance back to previous years, but its easy to have a drift up of 1 or 2 % a year translate into many more students getting the top two grades. In many ways the ranking as a cohort is a better system, but I would perhaps retain the grade and include where the student came in their cohort.

Of interest in Pharmacy is that most students take an assessment in 3rd year that is external to the Universities. This is a national competition where students are ranked top to bottom across the piece in order to allocate pre-registration training places. The idea is that the highest ranked gets to choose their first pick and so on. Very revealing for comparing different uni's.

To be fair, there are non-sinister, natural explanations for why educational standards will have risen – the interwebs; pychologically-valid revision techniques; better teaching – as well as less good reasons like the free market in action, but eventually we run into the question of what exams and grades are intended for. Is it to show that a graduate has reached a particular standard, or is it to tell us who is the 279th-best historian this year?

turbotubbs said:

kinabalu said:

TOPPING said:

ping said:

I’ve come to an uncomfortable conclusion on the euro outright market.

Germany, at ~7/1, are the value bet.

I can’t quite bring myself to back them, though!

England win tonight. You heard it here first.

No, sorry, I've already said it a few times. We might not be lifting the trophy but we ARE going to the final. I'm very confident of this. And that's really all I want. Just for once, one of these big summer international football finals to have England in it. Used to feel the same about Tim Henman at Wimbledon and in his case it was an itch never scratched. His grass court peak lasted 5 years - and he was good - and yet every single Wimbledon final during that time ended up featuring 2 players who were not Tim Henman. It drove me mad. Guess it did him too.

In Henman's case the rain did him against Ivanisevic. He would surely have won if it had carried on that night.

Philip_Thompson said:

JosiasJessop said:

Praise for MS:

I'm tight. I don't like spending money. Therefore for personal use, I prefer to use OpenOffice/LibreOffice - at least since I've not been working and can't get someone else to pay for Office.

But LibreOffice is annoying. During lockdown, when my time was really tight, I stole a few hours to do some of my own work. I created a spreadsheet that was a few hundred rows deep, by five columns. Cells were coloured according to a criteria by hand (no macros).

I saved the work (autosave was on anyway). I wanted to print it out, so I set the page format to landscape, and reduced the point size slightly. It crashes, taking out the autosave and the main save. So I checked I'm running a stable version and not a beta, got an older copy, did the changes, then altered the font size.

It crashed again. I'd found a reproducible bug whilst doing a really basic task. The old me would have written up and submitted a bug report. The new me, pi**ed off at having lost a couple of hours of precious time, just went online and got Office.

And you know what? It works. In fact, it works really well. Yes, it's cost money, but at least I haven't had the experience of it ****** well corrupting my work. It also 'feels' much better than LibreOffice as well - and I've used both extensively.

Sometimes you just want things that work. MS generally does that.

Excel is the big beast of MS.

Excel just works and is easily the best version of the software out there in my experience - and to be frank its all that most businesses really, really care about. The rest of Office is not that special, but Excel is the gold standard.

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

So indeed have the UUP.

But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.

I suppose that could be true, but it’s a futile endeavour and therefore a road to irrelevance for unionists.

They also have no answer to the question, “What replaces the Northern Ireland protocol”?

It's only futile if you think Brexit will inevitably lead to the relative economic decline of GB. If this doesn't happen then it makes unionists more relevant than they've been for a long time.

No, it’s futile because the Unionists will not and cannot muster a majority in the Assembly to scrap the Protocol.

Has nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a Brexit.

The relative decline has already started anyway; see the IMF’s latest assessment of U.K. GDP.

The IMF is predicting that the UK will recover faster than the Eurozone. You don't know how the relative economic position will look in a few years' time. A lot of people's credibility depends on the UK being seen to fail, but there's no guarantee this will happen.

The U.K.s “faster recovery” is simply the mirror of its steeper collapse.

I am not sure whose credibility rests of the U.K.‘s failure - maybe certain EU negotiators? Suspect this is mostly a phenomenon in the mind of Brexiters.

Anabobazina said:

Philip_Thompson said:

JosiasJessop said:

Praise for MS:

I'm tight. I don't like spending money. Therefore for personal use, I prefer to use OpenOffice/LibreOffice - at least since I've not been working and can't get someone else to pay for Office.

But LibreOffice is annoying. During lockdown, when my time was really tight, I stole a few hours to do some of my own work. I created a spreadsheet that was a few hundred rows deep, by five columns. Cells were coloured according to a criteria by hand (no macros).

I saved the work (autosave was on anyway). I wanted to print it out, so I set the page format to landscape, and reduced the point size slightly. It crashes, taking out the autosave and the main save. So I checked I'm running a stable version and not a beta, got an older copy, did the changes, then altered the font size.

It crashed again. I'd found a reproducible bug whilst doing a really basic task. The old me would have written up and submitted a bug report. The new me, pi**ed off at having lost a couple of hours of precious time, just went online and got Office.

And you know what? It works. In fact, it works really well. Yes, it's cost money, but at least I haven't had the experience of it ****** well corrupting my work. It also 'feels' much better than LibreOffice as well - and I've used both extensively.

Sometimes you just want things that work. MS generally does that.

Excel is the big beast of MS.

Excel just works and is easily the best version of the software out there in my experience - and to be frank its all that most businesses really, really care about. The rest of Office is not that special, but Excel is the gold standard.

Numbers on the Mac is vastly superior.

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

So indeed have the UUP.

But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.

I suppose that could be true, but it’s a futile endeavour and therefore a road to irrelevance for unionists.

They also have no answer to the question, “What replaces the Northern Ireland protocol”?

It's only futile if you think Brexit will inevitably lead to the relative economic decline of GB. If this doesn't happen then it makes unionists more relevant than they've been for a long time.

No, it’s futile because the Unionists will not and cannot muster a majority in the Assembly to scrap the Protocol.

Has nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a Brexit.

The relative decline has already started anyway; see the IMF’s latest assessment of U.K. GDP.

The IMF is predicting that the UK will recover faster than the Eurozone. You don't know how the relative economic position will look in a few years' time. A lot of people's credibility depends on the UK being seen to fail, but there's no guarantee this will happen.

The U.K.s “faster recovery” is simply the mirror of its steeper collapse.

I am not sure whose credibility rests of the U.K.‘s failure - maybe certain EU negotiators? Suspect this is mostly a phenomenon in the mind of Brexiters.

If Brexit Britain fails to live up to the image that has been painted of a fascistic, declining backwater but instead looks like prosperous modern state, then it will be a constant threat to the sense of inevitability of the EU project. "There is no alternative" doesn't work when people can see the alternative.

kinabalu said:

TOPPING said:

ping said:

I’ve come to an uncomfortable conclusion on the euro outright market.

Germany, at ~7/1, are the value bet.

I can’t quite bring myself to back them, though!

England win tonight. You heard it here first.

No, sorry, I've already said it a few times. We might not be lifting the trophy but we ARE going to the final. I'm very confident of this. And that's really all I want. Just for once, one of these big summer international football finals to have England in it.

Scott_xP said:

The Star firmly nails another front page.

One of the few mainstream media outlets that seem to be prepared to take a no holds barred approach to holding Johnson to account.

#JohnsonOut twitter.com/TheWordOfCarrie/status/1409767964610646017/photo/1

malcolmg said:

eek said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Gardenwalker said:

ping said:

Scott_xP said:

Taking back control-
Lorry driver shortage: UK government and retailers in emergency talks https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jun/28/lorry-driver-shortage-uk-government-and-retailers-in-emergency-talks-covid-brexit

I don’t agree with @Philip_Thompson and assorted other drawbridge brexiteers on much, but this is one area where they have a point.

The government should not manipulate the market to prevent wage rises. It’s a good thing for the industry to recalibrate to domestic employment, higher wages and slightly higher costs.

Except that the issue has been caused by a supply shock because of
- Covid
- Brexit
- IR35 etc

At least two of those are deliberate govt policy, and one of them is an act of god which we presumably wish to mitigate against.

It might be that simply overseeing a wage spike might have consequences at the grocery tills.

The bit that the minister studiously ignored at the previous meetings (where she accused the industry of "crying wolf") is that it isn't about money. You could offer drivers a stack of cash per hour and someone is still missing out.

There aren't enough drivers. Will take time to train new ones (as apparently truck driving lessons / tests haven't taken place at all during Covid) so we either allow EU drivers back in or stuff won't get shifted around.

Within a few months all this will feed directly into food price inflation (along with the other shortage which is people to work in factories and on farms) which analysts believe will be the biggest spike since 2007. Tesco et al insist they won't be putting up prices so I expect some fun times ahead with price negotiations

That would be the same tesco's who claimed that the shortage of drivers was resulting in 2 lorries worth of food going to waste. Which rather trivialises the issue into Tesco's needing to find a single lorry driver to do 2 shifts.

Last week it was 50,000 tonnes being wasted by Tesco due to lack of drivers

Selebian said:

JosiasJessop said:

Praise for MS:

I'm tight. I don't like spending money. Therefore for personal use, I prefer to use OpenOffice/LibreOffice - at least since I've not been working and can't get someone else to pay for Office.

But LibreOffice is annoying. During lockdown, when my time was really tight, I stole a few hours to do some of my own work. I created a spreadsheet that was a few hundred rows deep, by five columns. Cells were coloured according to a criteria by hand (no macros).

I saved the work (autosave was on anyway). I wanted to print it out, so I set the page format to landscape, and reduced the point size slightly. It crashes, taking out the autosave and the main save. So I checked I'm running a stable version and not a beta, got an older copy, did the changes, then altered the font size.

It crashed again. I'd found a reproducible bug whilst doing a really basic task. The old me would have written up and submitted a bug report. The new me, pi**ed off at having lost a couple of hours of precious time, just went online and got Office.

And you know what? It works. In fact, it works really well. Yes, it's cost money, but at least I haven't had the experience of it ****** well corrupting my work. It also 'feels' much better than LibreOffice as well - and I've used both extensively.

Sometimes you just want things that work. MS generally does that.

As a (mostly) Linux user for the past 15 years or so, I have to agree re Office. I think the LibreOffice issue is that it's (even more than MS Office) a hodge-podge of different cooks over a number of years, including Sun for whom there was no problem that couldn't be made worse by adding a bit more Java and IBM-Sun trench warfare was clearly more fun than fixing up the code. There's also the fact there's not actually that much demand for a better office suite on Linux - commercial users are mostly not using it for desktops and if they are it's pretty basic word processing and spreadsheets and real freetards use LaTeX even for letters to their mum and R/python for adding up a restaurant bill. Those after a free office suite on Windows are also not, generally, doing hugely demanding things.

Mind you, I do also hate Word and Excel a fair bit. Luckily I do very little in Excel, but I do have the pain of Word for writing up papers with colleagues. But even Word is much better than it was - equation editor doesn't crash it every time now

Anabobazina said:

Philip_Thompson said:

JosiasJessop said:

Praise for MS:

I'm tight. I don't like spending money. Therefore for personal use, I prefer to use OpenOffice/LibreOffice - at least since I've not been working and can't get someone else to pay for Office.

But LibreOffice is annoying. During lockdown, when my time was really tight, I stole a few hours to do some of my own work. I created a spreadsheet that was a few hundred rows deep, by five columns. Cells were coloured according to a criteria by hand (no macros).

I saved the work (autosave was on anyway). I wanted to print it out, so I set the page format to landscape, and reduced the point size slightly. It crashes, taking out the autosave and the main save. So I checked I'm running a stable version and not a beta, got an older copy, did the changes, then altered the font size.

It crashed again. I'd found a reproducible bug whilst doing a really basic task. The old me would have written up and submitted a bug report. The new me, pi**ed off at having lost a couple of hours of precious time, just went online and got Office.

And you know what? It works. In fact, it works really well. Yes, it's cost money, but at least I haven't had the experience of it ****** well corrupting my work. It also 'feels' much better than LibreOffice as well - and I've used both extensively.

Sometimes you just want things that work. MS generally does that.

Excel is the big beast of MS.

Excel just works and is easily the best version of the software out there in my experience - and to be frank its all that most businesses really, really care about. The rest of Office is not that special, but Excel is the gold standard.

Numbers on the Mac is vastly superior.

FrancisUrquhart said:

Anabobazina said:

Philip_Thompson said:

JosiasJessop said:

Praise for MS:

I'm tight. I don't like spending money. Therefore for personal use, I prefer to use OpenOffice/LibreOffice - at least since I've not been working and can't get someone else to pay for Office.

But LibreOffice is annoying. During lockdown, when my time was really tight, I stole a few hours to do some of my own work. I created a spreadsheet that was a few hundred rows deep, by five columns. Cells were coloured according to a criteria by hand (no macros).

I saved the work (autosave was on anyway). I wanted to print it out, so I set the page format to landscape, and reduced the point size slightly. It crashes, taking out the autosave and the main save. So I checked I'm running a stable version and not a beta, got an older copy, did the changes, then altered the font size.

It crashed again. I'd found a reproducible bug whilst doing a really basic task. The old me would have written up and submitted a bug report. The new me, pi**ed off at having lost a couple of hours of precious time, just went online and got Office.

And you know what? It works. In fact, it works really well. Yes, it's cost money, but at least I haven't had the experience of it ****** well corrupting my work. It also 'feels' much better than LibreOffice as well - and I've used both extensively.

Sometimes you just want things that work. MS generally does that.

Excel is the big beast of MS.

Excel just works and is easily the best version of the software out there in my experience - and to be frank its all that most businesses really, really care about. The rest of Office is not that special, but Excel is the gold standard.

Numbers on the Mac is vastly superior.

Said nobody ever....

kinabalu said:

TOPPING said:

ping said:

I’ve come to an uncomfortable conclusion on the euro outright market.

Germany, at ~7/1, are the value bet.

I can’t quite bring myself to back them, though!

England win tonight. You heard it here first.

No, sorry, I've already said it a few times. We might not be lifting the trophy but we ARE going to the final. I'm very confident of this. And that's really all I want. Just for once, one of these big summer international football finals to have England in it. Used to feel the same about Tim Henman at Wimbledon and in his case it was an itch never scratched. His grass court peak lasted 5 years - and he was good - and yet every single Wimbledon final during that time ended up featuring 2 players who were not Tim Henman. It drove me mad. Guess it did him too.

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

So indeed have the UUP.

But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.

I suppose that could be true, but it’s a futile endeavour and therefore a road to irrelevance for unionists.

They also have no answer to the question, “What replaces the Northern Ireland protocol”?

It's only futile if you think Brexit will inevitably lead to the relative economic decline of GB. If this doesn't happen then it makes unionists more relevant than they've been for a long time.

No, it’s futile because the Unionists will not and cannot muster a majority in the Assembly to scrap the Protocol.

Has nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a Brexit.

The relative decline has already started anyway; see the IMF’s latest assessment of U.K. GDP.

The IMF is predicting that the UK will recover faster than the Eurozone. You don't know how the relative economic position will look in a few years' time. A lot of people's credibility depends on the UK being seen to fail, but there's no guarantee this will happen.

There's some cred on the line for the opposite too. And it's unlikely to ever get settled as to whether Brexit has made us richer or poorer. Unless it's very stark and obvious - which it won't be - there'll be enough wriggle room to build an argument either way. But it's about identity anyway, so who cares.

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

So indeed have the UUP.

But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.

I suppose that could be true, but it’s a futile endeavour and therefore a road to irrelevance for unionists.

They also have no answer to the question, “What replaces the Northern Ireland protocol”?

It's only futile if you think Brexit will inevitably lead to the relative economic decline of GB. If this doesn't happen then it makes unionists more relevant than they've been for a long time.

No, it’s futile because the Unionists will not and cannot muster a majority in the Assembly to scrap the Protocol.

Has nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a Brexit.

The relative decline has already started anyway; see the IMF’s latest assessment of U.K. GDP.

The IMF is predicting that the UK will recover faster than the Eurozone. You don't know how the relative economic position will look in a few years' time. A lot of people's credibility depends on the UK being seen to fail, but there's no guarantee this will happen.

The U.K.s “faster recovery” is simply the mirror of its steeper collapse.

I am not sure whose credibility rests of the U.K.‘s failure - maybe certain EU negotiators? Suspect this is mostly a phenomenon in the mind of Brexiters.

If Brexit Britain fails to live up to the image that has been painted of a fascistic, declining backwater but instead looks like prosperous modern state, then it will be a constant threat to the sense of inevitability of the EU project. "There is no alternative" doesn't work when people can see the alternative.

TOPPING said:

Andy_Cooke said:

TOPPING said:

HYUFD said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Those undertaking activities with significant economic benefit have always had favourable rules during this pandemic.

Remember the you can meet up with people in a restaurant if it was for this. Or travel, the plebs can't go on holiday, but business people have been able to travel basically unhindered throughout.

Given Freedom day is only 3 weeks away, I am not sure it will make a lot of difference.

I am not sure it will be full Freedom Day, with even Australia restoring lockdown in some states and LA county reimposing a mask wearing request because of the Delta variant I would imagine masks will still be required to be worn in shops and on public transport, the biggest events will still have a capacity limit and quarantine will still be required for visits to red list countries and for the non double vaccinated to amber countries even from the middle of next month.

I think this new government exemption would therefore certainly be very unpopular if executives returned from a red list country without quarantining

How can it be freedom day when it is still mooted that children will be kept from school if there is a positive test in the class. While literally hundreds of thousands of people go to sports events, the pub, etc.

What exactly does no more restrictions mean? It means restrictions the govt decides to keep. Plenty of them. Some idiot on R4 just now saying well children...long covid...can affect them....

Vanishingly small probability of a child suffering from Covid. Otherwise, given that it has ripped through schools and unis these past few weeks, we would be hearing reports of children dying by the bucketload each day. Doesn't seem to be happening.

Not just death, though, is it?
The probability of them being so seriously ill that they get hospitalised isn't trivial.
Nor is the chance of chronic illness and potential long-term organ damage.
They're not at the level where we can see any realistic chance of the NHS being overwhelmed by such, but we can't really dismiss the concern out of hand.

Unless they authorise use of vaccines for the under-18s very rapidly and get a whole load more supply, I can't see them getting jabbed in time, so it's not really plausible for them to be protected prior to opening up on the 19th. I can understand some being very worried about that, but it's not likely to cause any realistic delay, I wouldn't have thought. The schools breaking up should help a lot by limiting spread, though.

Was it you who posted the stats yesterday? Some number, perhaps 60 under 30s had died.

Shocking obvs but not a reason to seriously fuck with the education and mental health of an entire generation.

Won't someone think of the children works both ways.

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

So indeed have the UUP.

But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.

I suppose that could be true, but it’s a futile endeavour and therefore a road to irrelevance for unionists.

They also have no answer to the question, “What replaces the Northern Ireland protocol”?

It's only futile if you think Brexit will inevitably lead to the relative economic decline of GB. If this doesn't happen then it makes unionists more relevant than they've been for a long time.

No, it’s futile because the Unionists will not and cannot muster a majority in the Assembly to scrap the Protocol.

Has nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a Brexit.

The relative decline has already started anyway; see the IMF’s latest assessment of U.K. GDP.

FrancisUrquhart said:

20,479....23.... 265

Boris is going to shit his pants in 3 weeks isn't he.

MaxPB said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

So indeed have the UUP.

But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.

I suppose that could be true, but it’s a futile endeavour and therefore a road to irrelevance for unionists.

They also have no answer to the question, “What replaces the Northern Ireland protocol”?

It's only futile if you think Brexit will inevitably lead to the relative economic decline of GB. If this doesn't happen then it makes unionists more relevant than they've been for a long time.

No, it’s futile because the Unionists will not and cannot muster a majority in the Assembly to scrap the Protocol.

Has nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a Brexit.

The relative decline has already started anyway; see the IMF’s latest assessment of U.K. GDP.

The same IMF that rebuked Osborne for austerity and lauded Obama for not despite Obama cutting more than Osborne?

RochdalePioneers said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Scott_xP said:

The Star firmly nails another front page.

One of the few mainstream media outlets that seem to be prepared to take a no holds barred approach to holding Johnson to account.

#JohnsonOut twitter.com/TheWordOfCarrie/status/1409767964610646017/photo/1

"Remainian trapt in Brexitannia" - Sounds like another impartial and balanced source.

The Daily Star? Since when did newspapers have to be impartial and balanced? What is most interesting about their now long-running series of front pages is that the Ooh Ah Daily Star ordinarily have no interest in politics. Their readers are more interested in Love Island.

So when they do a politics front page - and keep doing them every more biting and sarcastic - I have to assume that it cuts through to their readership. If it didn't then the editor gets told in no uncertain terms to stop pissing off the people who pay the bills and print stories they want.

Despite the Robert Buckland "we're popular no-one cares" bluster I get the feeling that dissent and open disdain is bubbling away under the surface. Not saying that is a gimme for Labour (far from it) but it won't take much for another moment of Shagger idiocy to tip people over the edge and him into the bin.

Sean_F said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

20,479....23.... 265

Boris is going to shit his pants in 3 weeks isn't he.

I can't see why. Numbers in hospital are up 15%, week on week, the rolling average for admissions is up 10% week on week.

SandyRentool said:

Cav!!!!

SandyRentool said:

Cav!!!!

FrancisUrquhart said:

Hmmm no Gnabry starting for Germany. Going with Werner.

Cookie said:

Sean_F said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

20,479....23.... 265

Boris is going to shit his pants in 3 weeks isn't he.

I can't see why. Numbers in hospital are up 15%, week on week, the rolling average for admissions is up 10% week on week.

Hospitalisation figures in Manchester (and Bolton, and other NW hotspots) still resolutely failing to alarm:
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare?areaType=nhstrust&areaName=Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust

Andy_Cooke said:

TOPPING said:

Andy_Cooke said:

TOPPING said:

HYUFD said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Those undertaking activities with significant economic benefit have always had favourable rules during this pandemic.

Remember the you can meet up with people in a restaurant if it was for this. Or travel, the plebs can't go on holiday, but business people have been able to travel basically unhindered throughout.

Given Freedom day is only 3 weeks away, I am not sure it will make a lot of difference.

I am not sure it will be full Freedom Day, with even Australia restoring lockdown in some states and LA county reimposing a mask wearing request because of the Delta variant I would imagine masks will still be required to be worn in shops and on public transport, the biggest events will still have a capacity limit and quarantine will still be required for visits to red list countries and for the non double vaccinated to amber countries even from the middle of next month.

I think this new government exemption would therefore certainly be very unpopular if executives returned from a red list country without quarantining

How can it be freedom day when it is still mooted that children will be kept from school if there is a positive test in the class. While literally hundreds of thousands of people go to sports events, the pub, etc.

What exactly does no more restrictions mean? It means restrictions the govt decides to keep. Plenty of them. Some idiot on R4 just now saying well children...long covid...can affect them....

Vanishingly small probability of a child suffering from Covid. Otherwise, given that it has ripped through schools and unis these past few weeks, we would be hearing reports of children dying by the bucketload each day. Doesn't seem to be happening.

Not just death, though, is it?
The probability of them being so seriously ill that they get hospitalised isn't trivial.
Nor is the chance of chronic illness and potential long-term organ damage.
They're not at the level where we can see any realistic chance of the NHS being overwhelmed by such, but we can't really dismiss the concern out of hand.

Unless they authorise use of vaccines for the under-18s very rapidly and get a whole load more supply, I can't see them getting jabbed in time, so it's not really plausible for them to be protected prior to opening up on the 19th. I can understand some being very worried about that, but it's not likely to cause any realistic delay, I wouldn't have thought. The schools breaking up should help a lot by limiting spread, though.

Was it you who posted the stats yesterday? Some number, perhaps 60 under 30s had died.

Shocking obvs but not a reason to seriously fuck with the education and mental health of an entire generation.

Won't someone think of the children works both ways.

Why do you persist in ignoring the thousands of hospitalisations of under-18s, and chronic illnesses there?
I mean, the attitude that if something doesn't promptly kill someone would imply that multiple sclerosis is nothing to worry about, that polio wasn't much of an issue for anyone, that herpes is certainly not worth avoiding, and so forth.

Several thousand children have been hospitalised.
Well over a hundred thousand children have ended up with chronic illness.
That's specifically what I was talking about, so why on Earth completely ignore it to focus solely on the metric that you most prefer?

williamglenn said:

rcs1000 said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

So indeed have the UUP.

But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.

I suppose that could be true, but it’s a futile endeavour and therefore a road to irrelevance for unionists.

They also have no answer to the question, “What replaces the Northern Ireland protocol”?

It's only futile if you think Brexit will inevitably lead to the relative economic decline of GB. If this doesn't happen then it makes unionists more relevant than they've been for a long time.

No, it’s futile because the Unionists will not and cannot muster a majority in the Assembly to scrap the Protocol.

Has nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a Brexit.

The relative decline has already started anyway; see the IMF’s latest assessment of U.K. GDP.

The IMF is predicting that the UK will recover faster than the Eurozone. You don't know how the relative economic position will look in a few years' time. A lot of people's credibility depends on the UK being seen to fail, but there's no guarantee this will happen.

The U.K.s “faster recovery” is simply the mirror of its steeper collapse.

I am not sure whose credibility rests of the U.K.‘s failure - maybe certain EU negotiators? Suspect this is mostly a phenomenon in the mind of Brexiters.

If Brexit Britain fails to live up to the image that has been painted of a fascistic, declining backwater but instead looks like prosperous modern state, then it will be a constant threat to the sense of inevitability of the EU project. "There is no alternative" doesn't work when people can see the alternative.

The UK is going to be a prosperous modern state, irrespective of Brexit.

But your comparison is specious. The UK in 1970 was a prosperous modern state, but it still looked like it was failing relative to the Continental economies.

Now, do I believe that we will similar again? Probably not. But it's in the hands of the British electorate now.

I thought it was obvious I was making a comparative point. If the UK is seen to be doing better, in whatever way you choose to measure, then it will be a challenge to the EU system.

williamglenn said:

RochdalePioneers said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

So indeed have the UUP.

But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.

I suppose that could be true, but it’s a futile endeavour and therefore a road to irrelevance for unionists.

They also have no answer to the question, “What replaces the Northern Ireland protocol”?

It's only futile if you think Brexit will inevitably lead to the relative economic decline of GB. If this doesn't happen then it makes unionists more relevant than they've been for a long time.

No, it’s futile because the Unionists will not and cannot muster a majority in the Assembly to scrap the Protocol.

Has nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a Brexit.

The relative decline has already started anyway; see the IMF’s latest assessment of U.K. GDP.

The IMF is predicting that the UK will recover faster than the Eurozone. You don't know how the relative economic position will look in a few years' time. A lot of people's credibility depends on the UK being seen to fail, but there's no guarantee this will happen.

The U.K.s “faster recovery” is simply the mirror of its steeper collapse.

I am not sure whose credibility rests of the U.K.‘s failure - maybe certain EU negotiators? Suspect this is mostly a phenomenon in the mind of Brexiters.

If Brexit Britain fails to live up to the image that has been painted of a fascistic, declining backwater but instead looks like prosperous modern state, then it will be a constant threat to the sense of inevitability of the EU project. "There is no alternative" doesn't work when people can see the alternative.

It isn't absolutist as you portray. The alternative is a trading partner with the EU - the EEA. Even if an EU member decided they had had enough, they wuldn't be getting Lord Frost on the phone wondering if he could negotiate an exit deal for them like ours.

Only an absolute lunatic would set out to deliberately torpedo your biggest trading relationship and end up with a chunk of your country no longer in the same customs zone with threat of civil war hanging over it. In Liar's case he didn't understand the detail or care about Mick so its all an accident anyway.

There would have been absolutely no point in leaving the position we had in order to join the EEA. Brexit only made sense politically as a break from the dogma of the single market and bureaucratic integration.

rcs1000 said:

Sean_F said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

20,479....23.... 265

Boris is going to shit his pants in 3 weeks isn't he.

I can't see why. Numbers in hospital are up 15%, week on week, the rolling average for admissions is up 10% week on week.

Is that a UK number? The English number is only up 11% - 1,301 to 1,445.

YBarddCwsc said:

Omnium said:

Re header:

Mike ( @MikeSmithson )- surely you're almost the definition of Toff!?

I know you didn't set out to be so.

Toffs are Other People.

I am getting by. You are merely affluent. But he is a toff.

But, of course, you are right.

pb.com is Toffs betting on Politics.

And the LibDems are TWA. Toffs With Attitude.

williamglenn said:

rcs1000 said:

williamglenn said:

rcs1000 said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

So indeed have the UUP.

But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.

I suppose that could be true, but it’s a futile endeavour and therefore a road to irrelevance for unionists.

They also have no answer to the question, “What replaces the Northern Ireland protocol”?

It's only futile if you think Brexit will inevitably lead to the relative economic decline of GB. If this doesn't happen then it makes unionists more relevant than they've been for a long time.

No, it’s futile because the Unionists will not and cannot muster a majority in the Assembly to scrap the Protocol.

Has nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a Brexit.

The relative decline has already started anyway; see the IMF’s latest assessment of U.K. GDP.

The IMF is predicting that the UK will recover faster than the Eurozone. You don't know how the relative economic position will look in a few years' time. A lot of people's credibility depends on the UK being seen to fail, but there's no guarantee this will happen.

The U.K.s “faster recovery” is simply the mirror of its steeper collapse.

I am not sure whose credibility rests of the U.K.‘s failure - maybe certain EU negotiators? Suspect this is mostly a phenomenon in the mind of Brexiters.

If Brexit Britain fails to live up to the image that has been painted of a fascistic, declining backwater but instead looks like prosperous modern state, then it will be a constant threat to the sense of inevitability of the EU project. "There is no alternative" doesn't work when people can see the alternative.

The UK is going to be a prosperous modern state, irrespective of Brexit.

But your comparison is specious. The UK in 1970 was a prosperous modern state, but it still looked like it was failing relative to the Continental economies.

Now, do I believe that we will similar again? Probably not. But it's in the hands of the British electorate now.

I thought it was obvious I was making a comparative point. If the UK is seen to be doing better, in whatever way you choose to measure, then it will be a challenge to the EU system.

"If Brexit Britain fails to live up to the image that has been painted of a fascistic, declining backwater but instead looks like prosperous modern state"

That's a strawman argument.

If the UK grows at 1% a year, and the EU at 2.5% a year (not what I'm forecasting), then it will be a "prosperous modern state", but it won't be a threat to "the EU system" or a notable success. And nor will it be a "fascistic, declining backwater".

There's a massive fucking middle between disaster and glorious success.

I said "looks like", so I was obviously making a point about relative perceptions. You're just wilfully missing the point.

williamglenn said:

rcs1000 said:

williamglenn said:

rcs1000 said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

So indeed have the UUP.

But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.

I suppose that could be true, but it’s a futile endeavour and therefore a road to irrelevance for unionists.

They also have no answer to the question, “What replaces the Northern Ireland protocol”?

It's only futile if you think Brexit will inevitably lead to the relative economic decline of GB. If this doesn't happen then it makes unionists more relevant than they've been for a long time.

No, it’s futile because the Unionists will not and cannot muster a majority in the Assembly to scrap the Protocol.

Has nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a Brexit.

The relative decline has already started anyway; see the IMF’s latest assessment of U.K. GDP.

The IMF is predicting that the UK will recover faster than the Eurozone. You don't know how the relative economic position will look in a few years' time. A lot of people's credibility depends on the UK being seen to fail, but there's no guarantee this will happen.

The U.K.s “faster recovery” is simply the mirror of its steeper collapse.

I am not sure whose credibility rests of the U.K.‘s failure - maybe certain EU negotiators? Suspect this is mostly a phenomenon in the mind of Brexiters.

If Brexit Britain fails to live up to the image that has been painted of a fascistic, declining backwater but instead looks like prosperous modern state, then it will be a constant threat to the sense of inevitability of the EU project. "There is no alternative" doesn't work when people can see the alternative.

The UK is going to be a prosperous modern state, irrespective of Brexit.

But your comparison is specious. The UK in 1970 was a prosperous modern state, but it still looked like it was failing relative to the Continental economies.

Now, do I believe that we will similar again? Probably not. But it's in the hands of the British electorate now.

I thought it was obvious I was making a comparative point. If the UK is seen to be doing better, in whatever way you choose to measure, then it will be a challenge to the EU system.

"If Brexit Britain fails to live up to the image that has been painted of a fascistic, declining backwater but instead looks like prosperous modern state"

That's a strawman argument.

If the UK grows at 1% a year, and the EU at 2.5% a year (not what I'm forecasting), then it will be a "prosperous modern state", but it won't be a threat to "the EU system" or a notable success. And nor will it be a "fascistic, declining backwater".

There's a massive fucking middle between disaster and glorious success.

I said "looks like", so I was obviously making a point about relative perceptions. You're just wilfully missing the point.

MarqueeMark said:

Mexicanpete said:

Northern_Al said:

kinabalu said:

TOPPING said:

ping said:

I’ve come to an uncomfortable conclusion on the euro outright market.

Germany, at ~7/1, are the value bet.

I can’t quite bring myself to back them, though!

England win tonight. You heard it here first.

No, sorry, I've already said it a few times. We might not be lifting the trophy but we ARE going to the final. I'm very confident of this. And that's really all I want. Just for once, one of these big summer international football finals to have England in it. Used to feel the same about Tim Henman at Wimbledon and in his case it was an itch never scratched. His grass court peak lasted 5 years - and he was good - and yet every single Wimbledon final during that time ended up featuring 2 players who were not Tim Henman. It drove me mad. Guess it did him too.

You have a (hypothetical) choice.

If England beat Germany, Conservatives will win Batley & Spen (feelgood factor - Boris).
If Germany beat England, Labour will win Batley & Spen.

Which is it to be for you?

Is Boris doing a pre match touchline team talk. I do hope so?

We know what tactics he will be recommending:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWIUp19bBoA&ab_channel=Ellisaacson