I see the obsession over Boris Shakespeare book again....people do realise this is how lots of "celebrity" books are written right? Either the celeb witters to ghost writer or the named writer gets experts to condense a load of info.... shockingly its how those tv shows fronted by a "celeb" work as well, where a team of researchers do all the heavy lifting and the well known face deliveries it....sorry to bust the illusion.
Stephen Fry didn't really know or personally research all those "quite interesting" factoids....
And whisper it, but there are loads of books supposedly written by a named author, who aren't actually written by them at all. They just own the rights to a character and perhaps sketch out an idea for a plot.
Indeed. Is it normal though for Hodder & Stoughton to put the acknowledgements at the back, as they do in Johnson's The Churchill Factor? Johnson is also known for using the phrase "All glory goes to the führer" when demanding credit for other people's work in politics/policymaking.
There are loads of cases where no acknowledgements are made at all. Different books, different deals. Same with pop music, most of it is written by a very small number of individuals / teams. Sometimes they get credits with the distribution, other times they aren't publicly credited. A lot of the time it is the later.
I see the obsession over Boris Shakespeare book again....people do realise this is how lots of "celebrity" books are written right? Either the celeb witters to ghost writer or the named writer gets experts to condense a load of info.... shockingly its how those tv shows fronted by a "celeb" work as well, where a team of researchers do all the heavy lifting and the well known face deliveries it....sorry to bust the illusion.
Stephen Fry didn't really know or personally research all those "quite interesting" factoids....
And whisper it, but there are loads of books supposedly written by a named author, who aren't actually written by them at all. They just own the rights to a character and perhaps sketch out an idea for a plot.
Indeed. Is it normal though for Hodder & Stoughton to put the acknowledgements at the back, as they did in Johnson's The Churchill Factor? Johnson is also known for using the phrase "All glory goes to the führer" when demanding credit for other people's work in politics/policymaking.
I see the obsession over Boris Shakespeare book again....people do realise this is how lots of "celebrity" books are written right? Either the celeb witters to ghost writer or the named writer gets experts to condense a load of info.... shockingly its how those tv shows fronted by a "celeb" work as well, where a team of researchers do all the heavy lifting and the well known face deliveries it....sorry to bust the illusion.
Stephen Fry didn't really know or personally research all those "quite interesting" factoids....
And whisper it, but there are loads of books supposedly written by a named author, who aren't actually written by them at all. They just own the rights to a character and perhaps sketch out an idea for a plot.
Are we now conceding that Boris is a celebrity rather than a professional writer?
The statistics released today (Friday 2 July) show there were 6.02 million applications made to the scheme by 30 June with 5.1 million grants of status. There have been more than 5.3 million applications from England, 291,200 from Scotland, 98,600 from Wales, and 98,400 from Northern Ireland.
The surge in applications, including more than 400,000 in June alone, means that there are around 570,000 pending applications. The Government has repeatedly assured those who applied before the deadline that they will have their rights protected until their application is decided, as set out in law, and they have the means to prove their protected rights if needed.
Immigration levels were off the scale from 2004-2016, utterly extraordinary.
How did it affect you personally?
Personally? I got quite a bit of sex out of it. If we're going to have mass immigration then having young nubile blonde females emigrating en-mass from Poland and Lithuanian is as good as it gets. But, I live in an affluent rural area and my salary & prospects were unaffected.
I also saw very rapid social change in big towns and cities, including Basingstoke, that took place over a very short number of years, that changed the character of the town, and caused housing and wage pressures for many lower-earning locals and a friction and resentment that wasn't necessary.
I thought the immigration rates were crazy then and still do now.
The reality for me is complex.
On the one hand family wise, it’s been a great plus for me. I have a wonderful Finnish sister in law via my older brother - and my younger brother, with profound learning difficulties has undoubtedly benefitted from Eastern European carers. That likely wouldn’t have happened without EU freedom of movement.
But it’s probably come at a personal cost for me, employment wise - and the wider economic cost to lower paid Brits is obvious.
The key point is - that no one was asked, and anyone who objected to a 10% increase in the population via immigration was called racist.
That was profoundly unfair. Labour, the LDs and the liberal tories share the blame for this.
Thanks for answering.
Isn't the theory that lower paid Brits will, in the face of low-skilled immigration, move up the skills ladder?
Well, that was the pitch.
The way it turned out, low skilled immigrants were used, conveyor belt style, to reduce and hold wages at minimum wage levels in a number of jobs. The fact that the conditions of the jobs were horrible could be sustained by a steady stream of immigrants to replace the ones that were escaping from the shit jobs.
This resulted in chunks of the job market where pay was so low that it could only sustain living x adults in a room etc...
So what did the plucky Brits that were pushed out of such jobs do? And rightly or wrongly there is a minimum and national living wage that puts a floor under wages so where were all these jobs where the conditions were so horrible? Car washes?
You seem to view the minimum wage as a maximum. Why is that?
Where did the Brits go who were pushed out of these horrible jobs?
Many of them still do these jobs but the wages are suppressed by ensuring they're kept at the bottom.
To take one example that's been in the news a lot of care homes - 84% of care staff are actually British, but free movement has helped ensure that a job like care that really ought to not be a minimum wage job has been held down to being one.
If there were staff shortages seeing pay rise across the board that would see pay rises above the minimum for the 84% of Britons doing that job not just those attracted by higher wages.
Who is keeping them at the bottom?
If a worker in a care home felt they were being underpaid, why didn't they move jobs?
You of all people should be championing the market working in this way. You say you don't mind free movement of labour as long as there is ample housing but then cite an employment example as to why it's bad.
Philip believes in the primacy of the market in all things, except when he doesn't.
The statistics released today (Friday 2 July) show there were 6.02 million applications made to the scheme by 30 June with 5.1 million grants of status. There have been more than 5.3 million applications from England, 291,200 from Scotland, 98,600 from Wales, and 98,400 from Northern Ireland.
The surge in applications, including more than 400,000 in June alone, means that there are around 570,000 pending applications. The Government has repeatedly assured those who applied before the deadline that they will have their rights protected until their application is decided, as set out in law, and they have the means to prove their protected rights if needed.
That's very bad news for @isam and his bet with me.
Hasn't the census already been taken?
No one is suggesting that the EU immigrants have just arrived, just that they've been undercounted.
(Albeit, quite a few won't actually be resident in the UK, so it may well be that the effect is not as dramatic as all that.)
Yes, I know some EU migrants who registered who have been here more than two decades, and others who registered and then moved back to the EU, so they can keep options open. I expect the majority are more recent and still here, and being younger are a very significant part of the workforce.
The population expansion of recent years has not been of the working age, but rather the over 65s. Without the EU migrants we would have either had a higher dependency ratio, or higher non EU migration. It seems as if that there has been a big switch to non-EU migration since Brexit.
The future means either a continuation of immigration from other sources or a tightening squeeze on workers to pay the triple locked pensions of the ageing British population.
The statistics released today (Friday 2 July) show there were 6.02 million applications made to the scheme by 30 June with 5.1 million grants of status. There have been more than 5.3 million applications from England, 291,200 from Scotland, 98,600 from Wales, and 98,400 from Northern Ireland.
The surge in applications, including more than 400,000 in June alone, means that there are around 570,000 pending applications. The Government has repeatedly assured those who applied before the deadline that they will have their rights protected until their application is decided, as set out in law, and they have the means to prove their protected rights if needed.
Immigration levels were off the scale from 2004-2016, utterly extraordinary.
How did it affect you personally?
Personally? I got quite a bit of sex out of it. If we're going to have mass immigration then having young nubile blonde females emigrating en-mass from Poland and Lithuanian is as good as it gets. But, I live in an affluent rural area and my salary & prospects were unaffected.
I also saw very rapid social change in big towns and cities, including Basingstoke, that took place over a very short number of years, that changed the character of the town, and caused housing and wage pressures for many lower-earning locals and a friction and resentment that wasn't necessary.
I thought the immigration rates were crazy then and still do now.
The reality for me is complex.
On the one hand family wise, it’s been a great plus for me. I have a wonderful Finnish sister in law via my older brother - and my younger brother, with profound learning difficulties has undoubtedly benefitted from Eastern European carers. That likely wouldn’t have happened without EU freedom of movement.
But it’s probably come at a personal cost for me, employment wise - and the wider economic cost to lower paid Brits is obvious.
The key point is - that no one was asked, and anyone who objected to a 10% increase in the population via immigration was called racist.
That was profoundly unfair. Labour, the LDs and the liberal tories share the blame for this.
Thanks for answering.
Isn't the theory that lower paid Brits will, in the face of low-skilled immigration, move up the skills ladder?
Well, that was the pitch.
The way it turned out, low skilled immigrants were used, conveyor belt style, to reduce and hold wages at minimum wage levels in a number of jobs. The fact that the conditions of the jobs were horrible could be sustained by a steady stream of immigrants to replace the ones that were escaping from the shit jobs.
This resulted in chunks of the job market where pay was so low that it could only sustain living x adults in a room etc...
So what did the plucky Brits that were pushed out of such jobs do? And rightly or wrongly there is a minimum and national living wage that puts a floor under wages so where were all these jobs where the conditions were so horrible? Car washes?
You seem to view the minimum wage as a maximum. Why is that?
Where did the Brits go who were pushed out of these horrible jobs?
Many of them still do these jobs but the wages are suppressed by ensuring they're kept at the bottom.
To take one example that's been in the news a lot of care homes - 84% of care staff are actually British, but free movement has helped ensure that a job like care that really ought to not be a minimum wage job has been held down to being one.
If there were staff shortages seeing pay rise across the board that would see pay rises above the minimum for the 84% of Britons doing that job not just those attracted by higher wages.
Who is keeping them at the bottom?
If a worker in a care home felt they were being underpaid, why didn't they move jobs?
You of all people should be championing the market working in this way. You say you don't mind free movement of labour as long as there is ample housing but then cite an employment example as to why it's bad.
I never judged it as good or bad, I just understand actions have consequences. The consequences of free movement was suppressing the wages for the low-skilled because of the almost infinite amount of free movement from the East.
Now personally, I don't object to that. Others did. Those others had a point, it did have that consequence. It was simply a consequence I was prepared to live with.
The only thing that made it really unjustifiable is combining this wage suppression with increased demand for housing for which there was no quid pro quo free market.
Asked to sum up how she feels about Boris Johnson as a person, Angela Merkel replies: "We look at each other, we look at how different people can be and we make the best of it...." https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1410954102775943170
In fairness it can't be easy for him.
Do you mean that it can't be easy knowing that all serious leaders in the world think you are a clownish version of Donald Trump?
Merkel's record of disastrous failures is a problem for many people, particularly in Europe. Her appalling handling of the Greek crisis which resulted in a country which is part of the EZ effectively defaulting on its debts, the resistance to QE which aggravated the recession after 2008, the disastrous response to the immigration crisis and her failed attempts to dump the responsibility of caring for those she had invited on others, her failure to appreciate the pressures that Cameron was under resulting in the EU's second largest economy leaving, the determination to proceed with Nord Stream and increase the EU's dependency on Putin, it really goes on and on. Still, not long now.
Modern leaders really don't compare favourably with those of the eighties.
Do you mean the 1880s like Bismarck and Palmerston or the more recent 1980s of Thatcher and Kohl? Either way I would agree but the latter probably had the advantage of living in a somewhat simpler bipolar world than we have today.
Pam had been dead for 15 years in 1880 & Bismarck's legacy of a unified Germany lead by Prussian militarism wasn’t necessarily to the world’s (or Germany’s for that matter) advantage.
I see the obsession over Boris Shakespeare book again....people do realise this is how lots of "celebrity" books are written right? Either the celeb witters to ghost writer or the named writer gets experts to condense a load of info.... shockingly its how those tv shows fronted by a "celeb" work as well, where a team of researchers do all the heavy lifting and the well known face deliveries it....sorry to bust the illusion.
Stephen Fry didn't really know or personally research all those "quite interesting" factoids....
And whisper it, but there are loads of books supposedly written by a named author, who aren't actually written by them at all. They just own the rights to a character and perhaps sketch out an idea for a plot.
The statistics released today (Friday 2 July) show there were 6.02 million applications made to the scheme by 30 June with 5.1 million grants of status. There have been more than 5.3 million applications from England, 291,200 from Scotland, 98,600 from Wales, and 98,400 from Northern Ireland.
The surge in applications, including more than 400,000 in June alone, means that there are around 570,000 pending applications. The Government has repeatedly assured those who applied before the deadline that they will have their rights protected until their application is decided, as set out in law, and they have the means to prove their protected rights if needed.
Immigration levels were off the scale from 2004-2016, utterly extraordinary.
How did it affect you personally?
Personally? I got quite a bit of sex out of it. If we're going to have mass immigration then having young nubile blonde females emigrating en-mass from Poland and Lithuanian is as good as it gets. But, I live in an affluent rural area and my salary & prospects were unaffected.
I also saw very rapid social change in big towns and cities, including Basingstoke, that took place over a very short number of years, that changed the character of the town, and caused housing and wage pressures for many lower-earning locals and a friction and resentment that wasn't necessary.
I thought the immigration rates were crazy then and still do now.
The reality for me is complex.
On the one hand family wise, it’s been a great plus for me. I have a wonderful Finnish sister in law via my older brother - and my younger brother, with profound learning difficulties has undoubtedly benefitted from Eastern European carers. That likely wouldn’t have happened without EU freedom of movement.
But it’s probably come at a personal cost for me, employment wise - and the wider economic cost to lower paid Brits is obvious.
The key point is - that no one was asked, and anyone who objected to a 10% increase in the population via immigration was called racist.
That was profoundly unfair. Labour, the LDs and the liberal tories share the blame for this.
Thanks for answering.
Isn't the theory that lower paid Brits will, in the face of low-skilled immigration, move up the skills ladder?
Well, that was the pitch.
The way it turned out, low skilled immigrants were used, conveyor belt style, to reduce and hold wages at minimum wage levels in a number of jobs. The fact that the conditions of the jobs were horrible could be sustained by a steady stream of immigrants to replace the ones that were escaping from the shit jobs.
This resulted in chunks of the job market where pay was so low that it could only sustain living x adults in a room etc...
So what did the plucky Brits that were pushed out of such jobs do? And rightly or wrongly there is a minimum and national living wage that puts a floor under wages so where were all these jobs where the conditions were so horrible? Car washes?
You seem to view the minimum wage as a maximum. Why is that?
Where did the Brits go who were pushed out of these horrible jobs?
Many of them still do these jobs but the wages are suppressed by ensuring they're kept at the bottom.
To take one example that's been in the news a lot of care homes - 84% of care staff are actually British, but free movement has helped ensure that a job like care that really ought to not be a minimum wage job has been held down to being one.
If there were staff shortages seeing pay rise across the board that would see pay rises above the minimum for the 84% of Britons doing that job not just those attracted by higher wages.
Who is keeping them at the bottom?
If a worker in a care home felt they were being underpaid, why didn't they move jobs?
You of all people should be championing the market working in this way. You say you don't mind free movement of labour as long as there is ample housing but then cite an employment example as to why it's bad.
I never judged it as good or bad, I just understand actions have consequences. The consequences of free movement was suppressing the wages for the low-skilled because of the almost infinite amount of free movement from the East.
Now personally, I don't object to that. Others did. Those others had a point, it did have that consequence. It was simply a consequence I was prepared to live with.
The only thing that made it really unjustifiable is combining this wage suppression with increased demand for housing for which there was no quid pro quo free market.
In general, I think those are fair points in the header.
That said, holding on (narrowly) to B & S is no more than the very first step towards Labour presenting an electoral challenge to this government. For Labour to hold this seat was a necessity, For the Conservatives to have gained it would have been nice to have, but no more than that.
On balance that is probably fair, but for reasons I pointed out previously it also asks a lot of questions about assumptions that have been made about the Tories and their ability to hold the so-called Red wall seats at the next GE. If Tories become a little less complacent that is better for all.
It's very variable. One can look at seats where the UKIP/Brexit Party vote has broken very heavily towards the Conservatives. Hartlepool is the obvious case, but also Heywood & Middleton, or Rother Valley.
Then, you get a seat like this, where a big vote for UKIP in 2015, divided pretty evenly between the big two in 2017.
Exactly. And therein lies the risk for those that are complacent about Tory performance at the next GE. I think the risk for the Conservatives is that those in the south that don't like populism think they have nothing to lose by voting LD as Mr Starmer is boring but harmless, while the Red Wall seats fully or partially revert to type and vote Lab.
You need to distinguish between the Northern marginals, and those seats which have shifted Conservative at a rate of knots. The latter won't be shifting back.
To complicate it further. You need to distinguish again amongst those seats which have shifted Conservative at a rate of knots. Some now have pretty large majorities, some have only recently become marginal. The former won't be coming back any time soon. The latter are still very much in play.
Maybe. One question is why the Red Wall shifted blue, which I think is partly due to culture war reasons, and also (of course) to economic decline and marginalisation as brilliantly identified and exploited by everyone's favourite psephological guru, Dominic Cummings. Trouble is, internationalist London lawyer Keir Starmer might be even more of a problem than was Jeremy Corbyn.
Why some but not others is another question? N Midlands, S Yorkshire, Teesside, Durham very much so. GM, Merseyside, Cheshire, Tyneside, W Yorks much less so. Even in demographically very similar seats.
Teesside is simple, lack of competency from the unassailable local Labour councils who suffered serious problems under austerity from 2015 onwards but couldn't pin the blame on central Government. That has resulted in the local councils losing some Labour councillors so shifting to Tory lead councils just as some money started to appear and could be spent.
South Shields and Sunderland councils never had similar issues so in those areas Labour aren't be blamed for the austerity cuts they were forced to make.
I see the obsession over Boris Shakespeare book again....people do realise this is how lots of "celebrity" books are written right? Either the celeb witters to ghost writer or the named writer gets experts to condense a load of info.... shockingly its how those tv shows fronted by a "celeb" work as well, where a team of researchers do all the heavy lifting and the well known face deliveries it....sorry to bust the illusion.
Stephen Fry didn't really know or personally research all those "quite interesting" factoids....
And whisper it, but there are loads of books supposedly written by a named author, who aren't actually written by them at all. They just own the rights to a character and perhaps sketch out an idea for a plot.
Are we now conceding that Boris is a celebrity rather than a professional writer?
You can be both. Is David Attenborough a world leading expert in zoology? No. He is both a celebrity, professional broadcaster and fairly knowledgeable about the old animals....but there is a whole team of real experts behind the scenes who collect together the information for his shows.
Nobody is saying he isn't an excellent broadcaster and knowledgeable, but his celebrity name sells the shows as much as anything...you know you are getting a certain type of programme and his distinctive voice.
I personally prefer to hear from the genuine experts, but they don't sell shows / books in the same numbers and can often be harder to understand for the general public.
Asked to sum up how she feels about Boris Johnson as a person, Angela Merkel replies: "We look at each other, we look at how different people can be and we make the best of it...." https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1410954102775943170
In fairness it can't be easy for him.
Do you mean that it can't be easy knowing that all serious leaders in the world think you are a clownish version of Donald Trump?
Merkel's record of disastrous failures is a problem for many people, particularly in Europe. Her appalling handling of the Greek crisis which resulted in a country which is part of the EZ effectively defaulting on its debts, the resistance to QE which aggravated the recession after 2008, the disastrous response to the immigration crisis and her failed attempts to dump the responsibility of caring for those she had invited on others, her failure to appreciate the pressures that Cameron was under resulting in the EU's second largest economy leaving, the determination to proceed with Nord Stream and increase the EU's dependency on Putin, it really goes on and on. Still, not long now.
Modern leaders really don't compare favourably with those of the eighties.
Do you mean the 1880s like Bismarck and Palmerston or the more recent 1980s of Thatcher and Kohl? Either way I would agree but the latter probably had the advantage of living in a somewhat simpler bipolar world than we have today.
Pam had been dead for 15 years in 1880 & Bismarck's legacy of a unified Germany lead by Prussian militarism wasn’t necessarily to the world’s (or Germany’s for that matter) advantage.
It took you two hours to google that?
Just kidding I know you are an expert on this period.
The statistics released today (Friday 2 July) show there were 6.02 million applications made to the scheme by 30 June with 5.1 million grants of status. There have been more than 5.3 million applications from England, 291,200 from Scotland, 98,600 from Wales, and 98,400 from Northern Ireland.
The surge in applications, including more than 400,000 in June alone, means that there are around 570,000 pending applications. The Government has repeatedly assured those who applied before the deadline that they will have their rights protected until their application is decided, as set out in law, and they have the means to prove their protected rights if needed.
Immigration levels were off the scale from 2004-2016, utterly extraordinary.
How did it affect you personally?
Personally? I got quite a bit of sex out of it. If we're going to have mass immigration then having young nubile blonde females emigrating en-mass from Poland and Lithuanian is as good as it gets. But, I live in an affluent rural area and my salary & prospects were unaffected.
I also saw very rapid social change in big towns and cities, including Basingstoke, that took place over a very short number of years, that changed the character of the town, and caused housing and wage pressures for many lower-earning locals and a friction and resentment that wasn't necessary.
I thought the immigration rates were crazy then and still do now.
The reality for me is complex.
On the one hand family wise, it’s been a great plus for me. I have a wonderful Finnish sister in law via my older brother - and my younger brother, with profound learning difficulties has undoubtedly benefitted from Eastern European carers. That likely wouldn’t have happened without EU freedom of movement.
But it’s probably come at a personal cost for me, employment wise - and the wider economic cost to lower paid Brits is obvious.
The key point is - that no one was asked, and anyone who objected to a 10% increase in the population via immigration was called racist.
That was profoundly unfair. Labour, the LDs and the liberal tories share the blame for this.
Thanks for answering.
Isn't the theory that lower paid Brits will, in the face of low-skilled immigration, move up the skills ladder?
Well, that was the pitch.
The way it turned out, low skilled immigrants were used, conveyor belt style, to reduce and hold wages at minimum wage levels in a number of jobs. The fact that the conditions of the jobs were horrible could be sustained by a steady stream of immigrants to replace the ones that were escaping from the shit jobs.
This resulted in chunks of the job market where pay was so low that it could only sustain living x adults in a room etc...
So what did the plucky Brits that were pushed out of such jobs do? And rightly or wrongly there is a minimum and national living wage that puts a floor under wages so where were all these jobs where the conditions were so horrible? Car washes?
To give a simple example - I paid a couple of carpet fitters in 1998 more money in actual pounds to lay a carpet, than I paid in 2015 to carpet fitters, to replace the carpet in the same flat.
Great for me. Not sure the carpet fitters were wild about that one.
I have a friend who was a school-leaver-into-work type, who changed jobs several times as skilled trades were steadily turned into minimum wage jobs.
Everywhere you look in the low wage economy - the same thing.
I bet you would pay the carpet fitters a damn sight more now than you did in 2015 (not long post-GFC) or in 1998.
Actually, as it happens, I am having some carpet laid in the next couple of weeks. A not dissimilar area. The price for the job hasn't gone up much from 2015, though I would have to check.
I think for much of the private sector wages haven't necessarily risen over time. As might be consistent with a low inflationary/interest rate environment.
I make a shitload more money than I did in 1997. In every possible measure - real adjusted, relative to GDP etc... Quite a bit more than in 2015 - again, in all the measures.
Much =/= all.
Across the professionally credentialed, 2-1 or above from a Russell Group Uni, it's been gains, across the board, for years. Upward and onward.
True, pay rises aren't much. But you move jobs every few years - and always more money on the table. It's been great for quite a few people*. Though some do moan about being "stretched"...
*Well, really a few people in terms of the total population. But they make alot of the national conversation.
The statistics released today (Friday 2 July) show there were 6.02 million applications made to the scheme by 30 June with 5.1 million grants of status. There have been more than 5.3 million applications from England, 291,200 from Scotland, 98,600 from Wales, and 98,400 from Northern Ireland.
The surge in applications, including more than 400,000 in June alone, means that there are around 570,000 pending applications. The Government has repeatedly assured those who applied before the deadline that they will have their rights protected until their application is decided, as set out in law, and they have the means to prove their protected rights if needed.
Immigration levels were off the scale from 2004-2016, utterly extraordinary.
How did it affect you personally?
Personally? I got quite a bit of sex out of it. If we're going to have mass immigration then having young nubile blonde females emigrating en-mass from Poland and Lithuanian is as good as it gets. But, I live in an affluent rural area and my salary & prospects were unaffected.
I also saw very rapid social change in big towns and cities, including Basingstoke, that took place over a very short number of years, that changed the character of the town, and caused housing and wage pressures for many lower-earning locals and a friction and resentment that wasn't necessary.
I thought the immigration rates were crazy then and still do now.
The reality for me is complex.
On the one hand family wise, it’s been a great plus for me. I have a wonderful Finnish sister in law via my older brother - and my younger brother, with profound learning difficulties has undoubtedly benefitted from Eastern European carers. That likely wouldn’t have happened without EU freedom of movement.
But it’s probably come at a personal cost for me, employment wise - and the wider economic cost to lower paid Brits is obvious.
The key point is - that no one was asked, and anyone who objected to a 10% increase in the population via immigration was called racist.
That was profoundly unfair. Labour, the LDs and the liberal tories share the blame for this.
Thanks for answering.
Isn't the theory that lower paid Brits will, in the face of low-skilled immigration, move up the skills ladder?
Well, that was the pitch.
The way it turned out, low skilled immigrants were used, conveyor belt style, to reduce and hold wages at minimum wage levels in a number of jobs. The fact that the conditions of the jobs were horrible could be sustained by a steady stream of immigrants to replace the ones that were escaping from the shit jobs.
This resulted in chunks of the job market where pay was so low that it could only sustain living x adults in a room etc...
So what did the plucky Brits that were pushed out of such jobs do? And rightly or wrongly there is a minimum and national living wage that puts a floor under wages so where were all these jobs where the conditions were so horrible? Car washes?
You seem to view the minimum wage as a maximum. Why is that?
Where did the Brits go who were pushed out of these horrible jobs?
Many of them still do these jobs but the wages are suppressed by ensuring they're kept at the bottom.
To take one example that's been in the news a lot of care homes - 84% of care staff are actually British, but free movement has helped ensure that a job like care that really ought to not be a minimum wage job has been held down to being one.
If there were staff shortages seeing pay rise across the board that would see pay rises above the minimum for the 84% of Britons doing that job not just those attracted by higher wages.
Who is keeping them at the bottom?
If a worker in a care home felt they were being underpaid, why didn't they move jobs?
You of all people should be championing the market working in this way. You say you don't mind free movement of labour as long as there is ample housing but then cite an employment example as to why it's bad.
I never judged it as good or bad, I just understand actions have consequences. The consequences of free movement was suppressing the wages for the low-skilled because of the almost infinite amount of free movement from the East.
Now personally, I don't object to that. Others did. Those others had a point, it did have that consequence. It was simply a consequence I was prepared to live with.
The only thing that made it really unjustifiable is combining this wage suppression with increased demand for housing for which there was no quid pro quo free market.
So why didn't the low-skilled upskill?
You mean get the degree that is required for quite low level jobs these days?
Or the high quality degree to get the really high end jobs?
The statistics released today (Friday 2 July) show there were 6.02 million applications made to the scheme by 30 June with 5.1 million grants of status. There have been more than 5.3 million applications from England, 291,200 from Scotland, 98,600 from Wales, and 98,400 from Northern Ireland.
The surge in applications, including more than 400,000 in June alone, means that there are around 570,000 pending applications. The Government has repeatedly assured those who applied before the deadline that they will have their rights protected until their application is decided, as set out in law, and they have the means to prove their protected rights if needed.
Immigration levels were off the scale from 2004-2016, utterly extraordinary.
How did it affect you personally?
Personally? I got quite a bit of sex out of it. If we're going to have mass immigration then having young nubile blonde females emigrating en-mass from Poland and Lithuanian is as good as it gets. But, I live in an affluent rural area and my salary & prospects were unaffected.
I also saw very rapid social change in big towns and cities, including Basingstoke, that took place over a very short number of years, that changed the character of the town, and caused housing and wage pressures for many lower-earning locals and a friction and resentment that wasn't necessary.
I thought the immigration rates were crazy then and still do now.
The reality for me is complex.
On the one hand family wise, it’s been a great plus for me. I have a wonderful Finnish sister in law via my older brother - and my younger brother, with profound learning difficulties has undoubtedly benefitted from Eastern European carers. That likely wouldn’t have happened without EU freedom of movement.
But it’s probably come at a personal cost for me, employment wise - and the wider economic cost to lower paid Brits is obvious.
The key point is - that no one was asked, and anyone who objected to a 10% increase in the population via immigration was called racist.
That was profoundly unfair. Labour, the LDs and the liberal tories share the blame for this.
Thanks for answering.
Isn't the theory that lower paid Brits will, in the face of low-skilled immigration, move up the skills ladder?
Well, that was the pitch.
The way it turned out, low skilled immigrants were used, conveyor belt style, to reduce and hold wages at minimum wage levels in a number of jobs. The fact that the conditions of the jobs were horrible could be sustained by a steady stream of immigrants to replace the ones that were escaping from the shit jobs.
This resulted in chunks of the job market where pay was so low that it could only sustain living x adults in a room etc...
So what did the plucky Brits that were pushed out of such jobs do? And rightly or wrongly there is a minimum and national living wage that puts a floor under wages so where were all these jobs where the conditions were so horrible? Car washes?
You seem to view the minimum wage as a maximum. Why is that?
Where did the Brits go who were pushed out of these horrible jobs?
Many of them still do these jobs but the wages are suppressed by ensuring they're kept at the bottom.
To take one example that's been in the news a lot of care homes - 84% of care staff are actually British, but free movement has helped ensure that a job like care that really ought to not be a minimum wage job has been held down to being one.
If there were staff shortages seeing pay rise across the board that would see pay rises above the minimum for the 84% of Britons doing that job not just those attracted by higher wages.
Who is keeping them at the bottom?
If a worker in a care home felt they were being underpaid, why didn't they move jobs?
You of all people should be championing the market working in this way. You say you don't mind free movement of labour as long as there is ample housing but then cite an employment example as to why it's bad.
I never judged it as good or bad, I just understand actions have consequences. The consequences of free movement was suppressing the wages for the low-skilled because of the almost infinite amount of free movement from the East.
Now personally, I don't object to that. Others did. Those others had a point, it did have that consequence. It was simply a consequence I was prepared to live with.
The only thing that made it really unjustifiable is combining this wage suppression with increased demand for housing for which there was no quid pro quo free market.
So why didn't the low-skilled upskill?
The problem of meritocracy is that many are incapable of doing so, lacking the academic, economic and/or social skills to do so. A fair society needs to be able to provide a decent life to all, not just those with monetiseable skills.
The statistics released today (Friday 2 July) show there were 6.02 million applications made to the scheme by 30 June with 5.1 million grants of status. There have been more than 5.3 million applications from England, 291,200 from Scotland, 98,600 from Wales, and 98,400 from Northern Ireland.
The surge in applications, including more than 400,000 in June alone, means that there are around 570,000 pending applications. The Government has repeatedly assured those who applied before the deadline that they will have their rights protected until their application is decided, as set out in law, and they have the means to prove their protected rights if needed.
Immigration levels were off the scale from 2004-2016, utterly extraordinary.
How did it affect you personally?
Personally? I got quite a bit of sex out of it. If we're going to have mass immigration then having young nubile blonde females emigrating en-mass from Poland and Lithuanian is as good as it gets. But, I live in an affluent rural area and my salary & prospects were unaffected.
I also saw very rapid social change in big towns and cities, including Basingstoke, that took place over a very short number of years, that changed the character of the town, and caused housing and wage pressures for many lower-earning locals and a friction and resentment that wasn't necessary.
I thought the immigration rates were crazy then and still do now.
The reality for me is complex.
On the one hand family wise, it’s been a great plus for me. I have a wonderful Finnish sister in law via my older brother - and my younger brother, with profound learning difficulties has undoubtedly benefitted from Eastern European carers. That likely wouldn’t have happened without EU freedom of movement.
But it’s probably come at a personal cost for me, employment wise - and the wider economic cost to lower paid Brits is obvious.
The key point is - that no one was asked, and anyone who objected to a 10% increase in the population via immigration was called racist.
That was profoundly unfair. Labour, the LDs and the liberal tories share the blame for this.
Thanks for answering.
Isn't the theory that lower paid Brits will, in the face of low-skilled immigration, move up the skills ladder?
Well, that was the pitch.
The way it turned out, low skilled immigrants were used, conveyor belt style, to reduce and hold wages at minimum wage levels in a number of jobs. The fact that the conditions of the jobs were horrible could be sustained by a steady stream of immigrants to replace the ones that were escaping from the shit jobs.
This resulted in chunks of the job market where pay was so low that it could only sustain living x adults in a room etc...
So what did the plucky Brits that were pushed out of such jobs do? And rightly or wrongly there is a minimum and national living wage that puts a floor under wages so where were all these jobs where the conditions were so horrible? Car washes?
To give a simple example - I paid a couple of carpet fitters in 1998 more money in actual pounds to lay a carpet, than I paid in 2015 to carpet fitters, to replace the carpet in the same flat.
Great for me. Not sure the carpet fitters were wild about that one.
I have a friend who was a school-leaver-into-work type, who changed jobs several times as skilled trades were steadily turned into minimum wage jobs.
Everywhere you look in the low wage economy - the same thing.
I bet you would pay the carpet fitters a damn sight more now than you did in 2015 (not long post-GFC) or in 1998.
Actually, as it happens, I am having some carpet laid in the next couple of weeks. A not dissimilar area. The price for the job hasn't gone up much from 2015, though I would have to check.
I think for much of the private sector wages haven't necessarily risen over time. As might be consistent with a low inflationary/interest rate environment.
I make a shitload more money than I did in 1997. In every possible measure - real adjusted, relative to GDP etc... Quite a bit more than in 2015 - again, in all the measures.
Much =/= all.
Across the professionally credentialed, 2-1 or above from a Russell Group Uni, it's been gains, across the board, for years. Upward and onward.
True, pay rises aren't much. But you move jobs every few years - and always more money on the table. It's been great for quite a few people*. Though some do moan about being "stretched"...
*Well, really a few people in terms of the total population. But they make alot of the national conversation.
Ah that is what I was wondering - same job, same pay, same hours. Of course if you move then you get a premium. But you moved because you weren't getting that previously.
The statistics released today (Friday 2 July) show there were 6.02 million applications made to the scheme by 30 June with 5.1 million grants of status. There have been more than 5.3 million applications from England, 291,200 from Scotland, 98,600 from Wales, and 98,400 from Northern Ireland.
The surge in applications, including more than 400,000 in June alone, means that there are around 570,000 pending applications. The Government has repeatedly assured those who applied before the deadline that they will have their rights protected until their application is decided, as set out in law, and they have the means to prove their protected rights if needed.
Immigration levels were off the scale from 2004-2016, utterly extraordinary.
What I find interesting is the way that today's elites view themselves as being totally different to the elites in previous eras, whereas the reality is they're exactly the same as elites in previous eras. Which is to say their attitude is "We'll do what suits us, and ordinary people should just lump it without complaining." Nothing has changed.
Sure it has - the elites are far more likely to make public arses of themselves on twitter than 100 years ago.
The statistics released today (Friday 2 July) show there were 6.02 million applications made to the scheme by 30 June with 5.1 million grants of status. There have been more than 5.3 million applications from England, 291,200 from Scotland, 98,600 from Wales, and 98,400 from Northern Ireland.
The surge in applications, including more than 400,000 in June alone, means that there are around 570,000 pending applications. The Government has repeatedly assured those who applied before the deadline that they will have their rights protected until their application is decided, as set out in law, and they have the means to prove their protected rights if needed.
Immigration levels were off the scale from 2004-2016, utterly extraordinary.
How did it affect you personally?
Personally? I got quite a bit of sex out of it. If we're going to have mass immigration then having young nubile blonde females emigrating en-mass from Poland and Lithuanian is as good as it gets. But, I live in an affluent rural area and my salary & prospects were unaffected.
I also saw very rapid social change in big towns and cities, including Basingstoke, that took place over a very short number of years, that changed the character of the town, and caused housing and wage pressures for many lower-earning locals and a friction and resentment that wasn't necessary.
I thought the immigration rates were crazy then and still do now.
The reality for me is complex.
On the one hand family wise, it’s been a great plus for me. I have a wonderful Finnish sister in law via my older brother - and my younger brother, with profound learning difficulties has undoubtedly benefitted from Eastern European carers. That likely wouldn’t have happened without EU freedom of movement.
But it’s probably come at a personal cost for me, employment wise - and the wider economic cost to lower paid Brits is obvious.
The key point is - that no one was asked, and anyone who objected to a 10% increase in the population via immigration was called racist.
That was profoundly unfair. Labour, the LDs and the liberal tories share the blame for this.
Thanks for answering.
Isn't the theory that lower paid Brits will, in the face of low-skilled immigration, move up the skills ladder?
Well, that was the pitch.
The way it turned out, low skilled immigrants were used, conveyor belt style, to reduce and hold wages at minimum wage levels in a number of jobs. The fact that the conditions of the jobs were horrible could be sustained by a steady stream of immigrants to replace the ones that were escaping from the shit jobs.
This resulted in chunks of the job market where pay was so low that it could only sustain living x adults in a room etc...
So what did the plucky Brits that were pushed out of such jobs do? And rightly or wrongly there is a minimum and national living wage that puts a floor under wages so where were all these jobs where the conditions were so horrible? Car washes?
You seem to view the minimum wage as a maximum. Why is that?
Where did the Brits go who were pushed out of these horrible jobs?
Many of them still do these jobs but the wages are suppressed by ensuring they're kept at the bottom.
To take one example that's been in the news a lot of care homes - 84% of care staff are actually British, but free movement has helped ensure that a job like care that really ought to not be a minimum wage job has been held down to being one.
If there were staff shortages seeing pay rise across the board that would see pay rises above the minimum for the 84% of Britons doing that job not just those attracted by higher wages.
Who is keeping them at the bottom?
If a worker in a care home felt they were being underpaid, why didn't they move jobs?
You of all people should be championing the market working in this way. You say you don't mind free movement of labour as long as there is ample housing but then cite an employment example as to why it's bad.
I never judged it as good or bad, I just understand actions have consequences. The consequences of free movement was suppressing the wages for the low-skilled because of the almost infinite amount of free movement from the East.
Now personally, I don't object to that. Others did. Those others had a point, it did have that consequence. It was simply a consequence I was prepared to live with.
The only thing that made it really unjustifiable is combining this wage suppression with increased demand for housing for which there was no quid pro quo free market.
So why didn't the low-skilled upskill?
The problem of meritocracy is that many are incapable of doing so, lacking the academic, economic and/or social skills to do so. A fair society needs to be able to provide a decent life to all, not just those with monetiseable skills.
One thing that really not understood by the highly educated, is that the concepts of future gain, risk taking etc are seen differently by the less educated.
A relative who went into the building business, after a serious academic career, could describe the process of trying to motivate people. He went through all the schemes of motivation to offer better rewards for better work - and was genuinely prepared to pay more for more.... The results were interesting. Oh, and cross cultural - you get the same issue with Polish brickies and Scottish brickies, it seems.
Pagel is still peddling the line that 10-20% of people who get infection end up with long Covid.
Indie SAGE Friday afternoon briefing.
She is completely off the deep end.
A third of the people who get it are completely asymptomatic.
Any idea what the honest figure is? Especially post-vaccines?
Part of the problem might be "self reporting" long covid. ONS says 960K self report as having symptoms of long covid.
10% for the unvaccinated doesn't seem that far off based on my friendship group... 1 still has very little/no sense of smell 4 months after... whilst another has been off work for a year and basically has some kind of chronic fatigue.
The statistics released today (Friday 2 July) show there were 6.02 million applications made to the scheme by 30 June with 5.1 million grants of status. There have been more than 5.3 million applications from England, 291,200 from Scotland, 98,600 from Wales, and 98,400 from Northern Ireland.
The surge in applications, including more than 400,000 in June alone, means that there are around 570,000 pending applications. The Government has repeatedly assured those who applied before the deadline that they will have their rights protected until their application is decided, as set out in law, and they have the means to prove their protected rights if needed.
Immigration levels were off the scale from 2004-2016, utterly extraordinary.
How did it affect you personally?
Personally? I got quite a bit of sex out of it. If we're going to have mass immigration then having young nubile blonde females emigrating en-mass from Poland and Lithuanian is as good as it gets. But, I live in an affluent rural area and my salary & prospects were unaffected.
I also saw very rapid social change in big towns and cities, including Basingstoke, that took place over a very short number of years, that changed the character of the town, and caused housing and wage pressures for many lower-earning locals and a friction and resentment that wasn't necessary.
I thought the immigration rates were crazy then and still do now.
The reality for me is complex.
On the one hand family wise, it’s been a great plus for me. I have a wonderful Finnish sister in law via my older brother - and my younger brother, with profound learning difficulties has undoubtedly benefitted from Eastern European carers. That likely wouldn’t have happened without EU freedom of movement.
But it’s probably come at a personal cost for me, employment wise - and the wider economic cost to lower paid Brits is obvious.
The key point is - that no one was asked, and anyone who objected to a 10% increase in the population via immigration was called racist.
That was profoundly unfair. Labour, the LDs and the liberal tories share the blame for this.
Thanks for answering.
Isn't the theory that lower paid Brits will, in the face of low-skilled immigration, move up the skills ladder?
Well, that was the pitch.
The way it turned out, low skilled immigrants were used, conveyor belt style, to reduce and hold wages at minimum wage levels in a number of jobs. The fact that the conditions of the jobs were horrible could be sustained by a steady stream of immigrants to replace the ones that were escaping from the shit jobs.
This resulted in chunks of the job market where pay was so low that it could only sustain living x adults in a room etc...
So what did the plucky Brits that were pushed out of such jobs do? And rightly or wrongly there is a minimum and national living wage that puts a floor under wages so where were all these jobs where the conditions were so horrible? Car washes?
To give a simple example - I paid a couple of carpet fitters in 1998 more money in actual pounds to lay a carpet, than I paid in 2015 to carpet fitters, to replace the carpet in the same flat.
Great for me. Not sure the carpet fitters were wild about that one.
I have a friend who was a school-leaver-into-work type, who changed jobs several times as skilled trades were steadily turned into minimum wage jobs.
Everywhere you look in the low wage economy - the same thing.
I bet you would pay the carpet fitters a damn sight more now than you did in 2015 (not long post-GFC) or in 1998.
Actually, as it happens, I am having some carpet laid in the next couple of weeks. A not dissimilar area. The price for the job hasn't gone up much from 2015, though I would have to check.
I think for much of the private sector wages haven't necessarily risen over time. As might be consistent with a low inflationary/interest rate environment.
I make a shitload more money than I did in 1997. In every possible measure - real adjusted, relative to GDP etc... Quite a bit more than in 2015 - again, in all the measures.
Much =/= all.
Across the professionally credentialed, 2-1 or above from a Russell Group Uni, it's been gains, across the board, for years. Upward and onward.
True, pay rises aren't much. But you move jobs every few years - and always more money on the table. It's been great for quite a few people*. Though some do moan about being "stretched"...
*Well, really a few people in terms of the total population. But they make alot of the national conversation.
Are you looking for a massive and irreversible transfer of wealth and power in favour of indigenous carpet fitters?
The statistics released today (Friday 2 July) show there were 6.02 million applications made to the scheme by 30 June with 5.1 million grants of status. There have been more than 5.3 million applications from England, 291,200 from Scotland, 98,600 from Wales, and 98,400 from Northern Ireland.
The surge in applications, including more than 400,000 in June alone, means that there are around 570,000 pending applications. The Government has repeatedly assured those who applied before the deadline that they will have their rights protected until their application is decided, as set out in law, and they have the means to prove their protected rights if needed.
Immigration levels were off the scale from 2004-2016, utterly extraordinary.
What I find interesting is the way that today's elites view themselves as being totally different to the elites in previous eras, whereas the reality is they're exactly the same as elites in previous eras. Which is to say their attitude is "We'll do what suits us, and ordinary people should just lump it without complaining." Nothing has changed.
Sure it has - the elites are far more likely to make public arses of themselves on twitter than 100 years ago.
LOL
I remember explaining to the management at Home House what was going to happen at a certain event. Based entirely on how/why the Victorians clamped down on what went on at private members clubs.
Pagel is still peddling the line that 10-20% of people who get infection end up with long Covid.
Indie SAGE Friday afternoon briefing.
She is completely off the deep end.
A third of the people who get it are completely asymptomatic.
Any idea what the honest figure is? Especially post-vaccines?
Part of the problem might be "self reporting" long covid. ONS says 960K self report as having symptoms of long covid.
10% for the unvaccinated doesn't seem that far off based on my friendship group... 1 still has very little/no sense of smell 4 months after... whilst another has been off work for a year and basically has some kind of chronic fatigue.
Mrs Foxy still hasn't got her sense of smell back after 8 months.
Pagel is still peddling the line that 10-20% of people who get infection end up with long Covid.
Indie SAGE Friday afternoon briefing.
She is completely off the deep end.
A third of the people who get it are completely asymptomatic.
Any idea what the honest figure is? Especially post-vaccines?
Part of the problem might be "self reporting" long covid. ONS says 960K self report as having symptoms of long covid.
10% for the unvaccinated doesn't seem that far off based on my friendship group... 1 still has very little/no sense of smell 4 months after... whilst another has been off work for a year and basically has some kind of chronic fatigue.
Mrs Foxy still hasn't got her sense of smell back after 8 months.
That sucks. I hope it is the only lingering issue at least.
There must be a word for someone who cannot smell, like there is for those who cannot see, hear or speak, but I honestly cannot think of it.
Asked to sum up how she feels about Boris Johnson as a person, Angela Merkel replies: "We look at each other, we look at how different people can be and we make the best of it...." https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1410954102775943170
In fairness it can't be easy for him.
Do you mean that it can't be easy knowing that all serious leaders in the world think you are a clownish version of Donald Trump?
Merkel's record of disastrous failures is a problem for many people, particularly in Europe. Her appalling handling of the Greek crisis which resulted in a country which is part of the EZ effectively defaulting on its debts, the resistance to QE which aggravated the recession after 2008, the disastrous response to the immigration crisis and her failed attempts to dump the responsibility of caring for those she had invited on others, her failure to appreciate the pressures that Cameron was under resulting in the EU's second largest economy leaving, the determination to proceed with Nord Stream and increase the EU's dependency on Putin, it really goes on and on. Still, not long now.
Modern leaders really don't compare favourably with those of the eighties.
Do you mean the 1880s like Bismarck and Palmerston or the more recent 1980s of Thatcher and Kohl? Either way I would agree but the latter probably had the advantage of living in a somewhat simpler bipolar world than we have today.
Pam had been dead for 15 years in 1880 & Bismarck's legacy of a unified Germany lead by Prussian militarism wasn’t necessarily to the world’s (or Germany’s for that matter) advantage.
It took you two hours to google that?
Just kidding I know you are an expert on this period.
Course I am, I’ve read Flashman books.
I’ve bought Katja Hoyer’s Blood and Iron but have only dipped into it so far, it will make me an expert nonpareil once I’ve finished. I’m trying not to allow her being the Speccies go to person for German stuff put me off.
The statistics released today (Friday 2 July) show there were 6.02 million applications made to the scheme by 30 June with 5.1 million grants of status. There have been more than 5.3 million applications from England, 291,200 from Scotland, 98,600 from Wales, and 98,400 from Northern Ireland.
The surge in applications, including more than 400,000 in June alone, means that there are around 570,000 pending applications. The Government has repeatedly assured those who applied before the deadline that they will have their rights protected until their application is decided, as set out in law, and they have the means to prove their protected rights if needed.
Immigration levels were off the scale from 2004-2016, utterly extraordinary.
How did it affect you personally?
Personally? I got quite a bit of sex out of it. If we're going to have mass immigration then having young nubile blonde females emigrating en-mass from Poland and Lithuanian is as good as it gets. But, I live in an affluent rural area and my salary & prospects were unaffected.
I also saw very rapid social change in big towns and cities, including Basingstoke, that took place over a very short number of years, that changed the character of the town, and caused housing and wage pressures for many lower-earning locals and a friction and resentment that wasn't necessary.
I thought the immigration rates were crazy then and still do now.
The reality for me is complex.
On the one hand family wise, it’s been a great plus for me. I have a wonderful Finnish sister in law via my older brother - and my younger brother, with profound learning difficulties has undoubtedly benefitted from Eastern European carers. That likely wouldn’t have happened without EU freedom of movement.
But it’s probably come at a personal cost for me, employment wise - and the wider economic cost to lower paid Brits is obvious.
The key point is - that no one was asked, and anyone who objected to a 10% increase in the population via immigration was called racist.
That was profoundly unfair. Labour, the LDs and the liberal tories share the blame for this.
Thanks for answering.
Isn't the theory that lower paid Brits will, in the face of low-skilled immigration, move up the skills ladder?
Well, that was the pitch.
The way it turned out, low skilled immigrants were used, conveyor belt style, to reduce and hold wages at minimum wage levels in a number of jobs. The fact that the conditions of the jobs were horrible could be sustained by a steady stream of immigrants to replace the ones that were escaping from the shit jobs.
This resulted in chunks of the job market where pay was so low that it could only sustain living x adults in a room etc...
So what did the plucky Brits that were pushed out of such jobs do? And rightly or wrongly there is a minimum and national living wage that puts a floor under wages so where were all these jobs where the conditions were so horrible? Car washes?
To give a simple example - I paid a couple of carpet fitters in 1998 more money in actual pounds to lay a carpet, than I paid in 2015 to carpet fitters, to replace the carpet in the same flat.
Great for me. Not sure the carpet fitters were wild about that one.
I have a friend who was a school-leaver-into-work type, who changed jobs several times as skilled trades were steadily turned into minimum wage jobs.
Everywhere you look in the low wage economy - the same thing.
I bet you would pay the carpet fitters a damn sight more now than you did in 2015 (not long post-GFC) or in 1998.
Actually, as it happens, I am having some carpet laid in the next couple of weeks. A not dissimilar area. The price for the job hasn't gone up much from 2015, though I would have to check.
I think for much of the private sector wages haven't necessarily risen over time. As might be consistent with a low inflationary/interest rate environment.
I make a shitload more money than I did in 1997. In every possible measure - real adjusted, relative to GDP etc... Quite a bit more than in 2015 - again, in all the measures.
Much =/= all.
Across the professionally credentialed, 2-1 or above from a Russell Group Uni, it's been gains, across the board, for years. Upward and onward.
True, pay rises aren't much. But you move jobs every few years - and always more money on the table. It's been great for quite a few people*. Though some do moan about being "stretched"...
*Well, really a few people in terms of the total population. But they make alot of the national conversation.
Are you looking for a massive and irreversible transfer of wealth and power in favour of indigenous carpet fitters?
No - but unlike the Roman Senate, I can work out that a deal where I do better and better, but a large chunk of the population are getting less and less will end up. Asking them to *like* it is really taking the piss.
It's a bit like the housing debate - at the current rate you can see where the lines will cross and the renting classes will simply get properties built on the Green Belt.
In a democracy, the pressures build up and things change.
Asked to sum up how she feels about Boris Johnson as a person, Angela Merkel replies: "We look at each other, we look at how different people can be and we make the best of it...." https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1410954102775943170
In fairness it can't be easy for him.
Do you mean that it can't be easy knowing that all serious leaders in the world think you are a clownish version of Donald Trump?
Merkel's record of disastrous failures is a problem for many people, particularly in Europe. Her appalling handling of the Greek crisis which resulted in a country which is part of the EZ effectively defaulting on its debts, the resistance to QE which aggravated the recession after 2008, the disastrous response to the immigration crisis and her failed attempts to dump the responsibility of caring for those she had invited on others, her failure to appreciate the pressures that Cameron was under resulting in the EU's second largest economy leaving, the determination to proceed with Nord Stream and increase the EU's dependency on Putin, it really goes on and on. Still, not long now.
Modern leaders really don't compare favourably with those of the eighties.
Do you mean the 1880s like Bismarck and Palmerston or the more recent 1980s of Thatcher and Kohl? Either way I would agree but the latter probably had the advantage of living in a somewhat simpler bipolar world than we have today.
Pam had been dead for 15 years in 1880 & Bismarck's legacy of a unified Germany lead by Prussian militarism wasn’t necessarily to the world’s (or Germany’s for that matter) advantage.
It took you two hours to google that?
Just kidding I know you are an expert on this period.
Course I am, I’ve read Flashman books.
I’ve bought Katja Hoyer’s Blood and Iron but have only dipped into it so far, it will make me an expert nonpareil once I’ve finished. I’m trying not to allow her being the Speccies go to person for German stuff put me off.
Christopher Clark's Iron Kingdom was a good read, albeit covering a much broader period. I can see why there'd be a need for a book on just the rise of the Empire.
Pagel is still peddling the line that 10-20% of people who get infection end up with long Covid.
Indie SAGE Friday afternoon briefing.
She is completely off the deep end.
A third of the people who get it are completely asymptomatic.
Any idea what the honest figure is? Especially post-vaccines?
Part of the problem might be "self reporting" long covid. ONS says 960K self report as having symptoms of long covid.
10% for the unvaccinated doesn't seem that far off based on my friendship group... 1 still has very little/no sense of smell 4 months after... whilst another has been off work for a year and basically has some kind of chronic fatigue.
Mrs Foxy still hasn't got her sense of smell back after 8 months.
That sucks. I hope it is the only lingering issue at least.
There must be a word for someone who cannot smell, like there is for those who cannot see, hear or speak, but I honestly cannot think of it.
Anosmic is the term.
She can smell somethings, but it is quite patchy. She cannot smell my dogs minced raw tripe, bit can smell garlic for example. It has impacted her enjoyment of quite a few foods.
She is a lot more tired too, and often is in bed by 2100 at night, but hard to separate the effects of covid, menopause, working in PPE and age.
The statistics released today (Friday 2 July) show there were 6.02 million applications made to the scheme by 30 June with 5.1 million grants of status. There have been more than 5.3 million applications from England, 291,200 from Scotland, 98,600 from Wales, and 98,400 from Northern Ireland.
The surge in applications, including more than 400,000 in June alone, means that there are around 570,000 pending applications. The Government has repeatedly assured those who applied before the deadline that they will have their rights protected until their application is decided, as set out in law, and they have the means to prove their protected rights if needed.
Immigration levels were off the scale from 2004-2016, utterly extraordinary.
What I find interesting is the way that today's elites view themselves as being totally different to the elites in previous eras, whereas the reality is they're exactly the same as elites in previous eras. Which is to say their attitude is "We'll do what suits us, and ordinary people should just lump it without complaining." Nothing has changed.
Sure it has - the elites are far more likely to make public arses of themselves on twitter than 100 years ago.
Everything proceeded exactly as I had foreseen.
I knew you were Emperor Palpatine, it's why I respected you so much.
Want to know something very interesting which confirms to me Matt Hancock is awesome.
It's easy to call these things in hindsight but, looking back, the clues were there from the outset that Matt Hancock's marriage would always take a back seat to his office relationships.
Those present at the wedding noticed with some astonishment that the first person Matt Hancock chose to thank in his groom's speech – mentioning them before his family, his wife's family or, indeed, his wife – was... George Osborne.
The statistics released today (Friday 2 July) show there were 6.02 million applications made to the scheme by 30 June with 5.1 million grants of status. There have been more than 5.3 million applications from England, 291,200 from Scotland, 98,600 from Wales, and 98,400 from Northern Ireland.
The surge in applications, including more than 400,000 in June alone, means that there are around 570,000 pending applications. The Government has repeatedly assured those who applied before the deadline that they will have their rights protected until their application is decided, as set out in law, and they have the means to prove their protected rights if needed.
That's very bad news for @isam and his bet with me.
Hasn't the census already been taken?
No one is suggesting that the EU immigrants have just arrived, just that they've been undercounted.
(Albeit, quite a few won't actually be resident in the UK, so it may well be that the effect is not as dramatic as all that.)
Yes, I know some EU migrants who registered who have been here more than two decades, and others who registered and then moved back to the EU, so they can keep options open. I expect the majority are more recent and still here, and being younger are a very significant part of the workforce.
The population expansion of recent years has not been of the working age, but rather the over 65s. Without the EU migrants we would have either had a higher dependency ratio, or higher non EU migration. It seems as if that there has been a big switch to non-EU migration since Brexit.
The future means either a continuation of immigration from other sources or a tightening squeeze on workers to pay the triple locked pensions of the ageing British population.
Oh, the economic performance of countries where the dependency ratio keeps worsening (Italy, Japan) is pretty miserable. The combination of a sub-replacement birth rate, longer life-expectancy, ever increasing healthcare costs, etc., will be a serious drag in future.
Indeed, if you end up with more retirees (and soon to be retirees) voting than those of working age, then you can end up with deeply fucked up political systems, where the not working vote repeatedly to take from the working. (See Japan and Italy.)
The statistics released today (Friday 2 July) show there were 6.02 million applications made to the scheme by 30 June with 5.1 million grants of status. There have been more than 5.3 million applications from England, 291,200 from Scotland, 98,600 from Wales, and 98,400 from Northern Ireland.
The surge in applications, including more than 400,000 in June alone, means that there are around 570,000 pending applications. The Government has repeatedly assured those who applied before the deadline that they will have their rights protected until their application is decided, as set out in law, and they have the means to prove their protected rights if needed.
Immigration levels were off the scale from 2004-2016, utterly extraordinary.
What I find interesting is the way that today's elites view themselves as being totally different to the elites in previous eras, whereas the reality is they're exactly the same as elites in previous eras. Which is to say their attitude is "We'll do what suits us, and ordinary people should just lump it without complaining." Nothing has changed.
Sure it has - the elites are far more likely to make public arses of themselves on twitter than 100 years ago.
LOL
I remember explaining to the management at Home House what was going to happen at a certain event. Based entirely on how/why the Victorians clamped down on what went on at private members clubs.
Pagel is still peddling the line that 10-20% of people who get infection end up with long Covid.
Indie SAGE Friday afternoon briefing.
She is completely off the deep end.
A third of the people who get it are completely asymptomatic.
Any idea what the honest figure is? Especially post-vaccines?
Part of the problem might be "self reporting" long covid. ONS says 960K self report as having symptoms of long covid.
10% for the unvaccinated doesn't seem that far off based on my friendship group... 1 still has very little/no sense of smell 4 months after... whilst another has been off work for a year and basically has some kind of chronic fatigue.
Mrs Foxy still hasn't got her sense of smell back after 8 months.
That sucks. I hope it is the only lingering issue at least.
There must be a word for someone who cannot smell, like there is for those who cannot see, hear or speak, but I honestly cannot think of it.
Allies of Sir Keir Starmer have turned on Angela Rayner’s supporters following the Batley & Spen by-election, with calls for her to be sacked for disloyalty.
Parliamentary allies of the deputy leader had been canvassing support this week for a potential leadership challenge if Labour lost the vote......
.....A shadow cabinet minister said: “[Rayner] spent the last eight weeks promoting her[self] as the next Labour leader. A total embarrassment.
“They actively helped [the effort] to defeat Labour. I think he should sack her and let her be deputy from the backbenches.”
This morning Labour sources argued that the decision to sack Rayner as the party’s national campaign chairwoman in May and replace her with Shabana Mahmood, the Birmingham Ladywood MP, was instrumental to the party’s victory.
“The reshuffle was messy. But it resulted in Shabana Mahmood being made campaign chair. That was the turning point. This is a victory for those who made that happen,” a source said.
Pagel is still peddling the line that 10-20% of people who get infection end up with long Covid.
Indie SAGE Friday afternoon briefing.
She is completely off the deep end.
A third of the people who get it are completely asymptomatic.
Any idea what the honest figure is? Especially post-vaccines?
Part of the problem might be "self reporting" long covid. ONS says 960K self report as having symptoms of long covid.
10% for the unvaccinated doesn't seem that far off based on my friendship group... 1 still has very little/no sense of smell 4 months after... whilst another has been off work for a year and basically has some kind of chronic fatigue.
Mrs Foxy still hasn't got her sense of smell back after 8 months.
That sucks. I hope it is the only lingering issue at least.
There must be a word for someone who cannot smell, like there is for those who cannot see, hear or speak, but I honestly cannot think of it.
Anosmic is the term.
She can smell somethings, but it is quite patchy. She cannot smell my dogs minced raw tripe, bit can smell garlic for example. It has impacted her enjoyment of quite a few foods.
She is a lot more tired too, and often is in bed by 2100 at night, but hard to separate the effects of covid, menopause, working in PPE and age.
On the positive side, you can save time by not showering so often now.
The statistics released today (Friday 2 July) show there were 6.02 million applications made to the scheme by 30 June with 5.1 million grants of status. There have been more than 5.3 million applications from England, 291,200 from Scotland, 98,600 from Wales, and 98,400 from Northern Ireland.
The surge in applications, including more than 400,000 in June alone, means that there are around 570,000 pending applications. The Government has repeatedly assured those who applied before the deadline that they will have their rights protected until their application is decided, as set out in law, and they have the means to prove their protected rights if needed.
Immigration levels were off the scale from 2004-2016, utterly extraordinary.
How did it affect you personally?
Personally? I got quite a bit of sex out of it. If we're going to have mass immigration then having young nubile blonde females emigrating en-mass from Poland and Lithuanian is as good as it gets. But, I live in an affluent rural area and my salary & prospects were unaffected.
I also saw very rapid social change in big towns and cities, including Basingstoke, that took place over a very short number of years, that changed the character of the town, and caused housing and wage pressures for many lower-earning locals and a friction and resentment that wasn't necessary.
I thought the immigration rates were crazy then and still do now.
The reality for me is complex.
On the one hand family wise, it’s been a great plus for me. I have a wonderful Finnish sister in law via my older brother - and my younger brother, with profound learning difficulties has undoubtedly benefitted from Eastern European carers. That likely wouldn’t have happened without EU freedom of movement.
But it’s probably come at a personal cost for me, employment wise - and the wider economic cost to lower paid Brits is obvious.
The key point is - that no one was asked, and anyone who objected to a 10% increase in the population via immigration was called racist.
That was profoundly unfair. Labour, the LDs and the liberal tories share the blame for this.
Thanks for answering.
Isn't the theory that lower paid Brits will, in the face of low-skilled immigration, move up the skills ladder?
Well, that was the pitch.
The way it turned out, low skilled immigrants were used, conveyor belt style, to reduce and hold wages at minimum wage levels in a number of jobs. The fact that the conditions of the jobs were horrible could be sustained by a steady stream of immigrants to replace the ones that were escaping from the shit jobs.
This resulted in chunks of the job market where pay was so low that it could only sustain living x adults in a room etc...
So what did the plucky Brits that were pushed out of such jobs do? And rightly or wrongly there is a minimum and national living wage that puts a floor under wages so where were all these jobs where the conditions were so horrible? Car washes?
To give a simple example - I paid a couple of carpet fitters in 1998 more money in actual pounds to lay a carpet, than I paid in 2015 to carpet fitters, to replace the carpet in the same flat.
Great for me. Not sure the carpet fitters were wild about that one.
I have a friend who was a school-leaver-into-work type, who changed jobs several times as skilled trades were steadily turned into minimum wage jobs.
Everywhere you look in the low wage economy - the same thing.
I bet you would pay the carpet fitters a damn sight more now than you did in 2015 (not long post-GFC) or in 1998.
Actually, as it happens, I am having some carpet laid in the next couple of weeks. A not dissimilar area. The price for the job hasn't gone up much from 2015, though I would have to check.
I think for much of the private sector wages haven't necessarily risen over time. As might be consistent with a low inflationary/interest rate environment.
I make a shitload more money than I did in 1997. In every possible measure - real adjusted, relative to GDP etc... Quite a bit more than in 2015 - again, in all the measures.
He only found out because he was in same place as someone positive and track and trace got in touch - he has no symptoms, she feels a tiny bit under weather
Want to know something very interesting which confirms to me Matt Hancock is awesome.
It's easy to call these things in hindsight but, looking back, the clues were there from the outset that Matt Hancock's marriage would always take a back seat to his office relationships.
Those present at the wedding noticed with some astonishment that the first person Matt Hancock chose to thank in his groom's speech – mentioning them before his family, his wife's family or, indeed, his wife – was... George Osborne.
Did he or Dave get first mention in your groom’s speech?
Pagel is still peddling the line that 10-20% of people who get infection end up with long Covid.
Indie SAGE Friday afternoon briefing.
She is completely off the deep end.
A third of the people who get it are completely asymptomatic.
Any idea what the honest figure is? Especially post-vaccines?
Part of the problem might be "self reporting" long covid. ONS says 960K self report as having symptoms of long covid.
10% for the unvaccinated doesn't seem that far off based on my friendship group... 1 still has very little/no sense of smell 4 months after... whilst another has been off work for a year and basically has some kind of chronic fatigue.
Mrs Foxy still hasn't got her sense of smell back after 8 months.
That sucks. I hope it is the only lingering issue at least.
There must be a word for someone who cannot smell, like there is for those who cannot see, hear or speak, but I honestly cannot think of it.
Anosmic is the term.
She can smell somethings, but it is quite patchy. She cannot smell my dogs minced raw tripe, bit can smell garlic for example. It has impacted her enjoyment of quite a few foods.
She is a lot more tired too, and often is in bed by 2100 at night, but hard to separate the effects of covid, menopause, working in PPE and age.
On the positive side, you can save time by not showering so often now.
I have pointed out that we can save money now by shopping at Iceland rather than Waitrose.
Want to know something very interesting which confirms to me Matt Hancock is awesome.
It's easy to call these things in hindsight but, looking back, the clues were there from the outset that Matt Hancock's marriage would always take a back seat to his office relationships.
Those present at the wedding noticed with some astonishment that the first person Matt Hancock chose to thank in his groom's speech – mentioning them before his family, his wife's family or, indeed, his wife – was... George Osborne.
Isn't it traditional to thank/toast the wife last?
I thought the Best Man (who'd have just spoken) was traditionally thanked first before then moving on to family, friends and finishing with the wife?
The French are as bigger sore losers as the Welsh.
Over 270,000 fans have signed a petition calling on Uefa to replay the Euro 2020 last-16 match between France and Switzerland because "the rules (of the game) were not respected" when Swiss goalkeeper Yann Sommer saved Kylian Mbappé's decisive penalty.
Mbappé's miss resulted in the world champions crashing out of the tournament in Bucharest after leading their eventual conquerors 3-1 at one point in the match.
But a petition was launched by a disgruntled French fan, Pierre, in the aftermath of the penalty shootout, demanding that Uefa replay the tie because Sommer's feet were over the line as Mbappe struck the ball. Goalkeepers need to keep at least one foot on the goal-line when facing a penalty, otherwise the spot-kick can be retaken.
Neither the referee nor Var intervened on Sommer's save but more than 270,000 people signed the petition - which has now been closed - despite several different angles showing that Sommer's foot was on the line when Mbappé kicked the ball.
The hosts of the petition, leslignesbougent.org, wrote that "Uefa had been officially approached to gauge its position on the matter", and that Pierre had informed the host site that he wished for the petition to be closed after the angles showing the legality of Sommer's position came to light. "Our servers exploded," the site added.
The original petition read: "During the penalty shootout of the France v Switzerland match, goalkeeper Sommer was not on his line ahead of Mbappé's shot. We ask that Switzerland's qualification is cancelled so that the match can be replayed.
"Sport must be played within the rules and that evening the rules were not respected."
Want to know something very interesting which confirms to me Matt Hancock is awesome.
It's easy to call these things in hindsight but, looking back, the clues were there from the outset that Matt Hancock's marriage would always take a back seat to his office relationships.
Those present at the wedding noticed with some astonishment that the first person Matt Hancock chose to thank in his groom's speech – mentioning them before his family, his wife's family or, indeed, his wife – was... George Osborne.
Did he or Dave get first mention in your groom’s speech?
Didn't know them that well at the time of my wedding.
So I take it the reason the tory vote is down is because many tories liked the homophobic, anti semitic campaign of George Galloway?
After all that was going to be the smear on Muslims if Labour lost the by election.
The opposite I think. Galloways campaign probably convinced more than 300 Tories to switch to Labour because they didn't like the hompohobia and anti-semitism Leadbeater was subjected to.
The statistics released today (Friday 2 July) show there were 6.02 million applications made to the scheme by 30 June with 5.1 million grants of status. There have been more than 5.3 million applications from England, 291,200 from Scotland, 98,600 from Wales, and 98,400 from Northern Ireland.
The surge in applications, including more than 400,000 in June alone, means that there are around 570,000 pending applications. The Government has repeatedly assured those who applied before the deadline that they will have their rights protected until their application is decided, as set out in law, and they have the means to prove their protected rights if needed.
Immigration levels were off the scale from 2004-2016, utterly extraordinary.
What I find interesting is the way that today's elites view themselves as being totally different to the elites in previous eras, whereas the reality is they're exactly the same as elites in previous eras. Which is to say their attitude is "We'll do what suits us, and ordinary people should just lump it without complaining." Nothing has changed.
Sure it has - the elites are far more likely to make public arses of themselves on twitter than 100 years ago.
Everything proceeded exactly as I had foreseen.
I knew you were Emperor Palpatine, it's why I respected you so much.
In this case, I wasn't thrown down a bottomless pit* by my assistant whose life I had ruined** for LOLs.
*I enforce H&S rigorously on my planet destroying space stations. **I always take the view that one should be reasonably nice to subordinates. I think that would go double for subordinates with tastes running to light recreational genocide.
EU migration has been bloody brilliant for this country. London became capital of the world in approximately 2001, in large part because of the influx of talented, young, skilled Europeans.
There’s very little evidence that migration has suppressed working class wages - and it’s not as if people haven’t looked. Rather, the evidence suggests that European migration has been of significant benefit to U.K. productivity.
I am sympathetic to the argument that “nobody asked us”, but sadly the alternative this country looks likely to face is slow economic decline and cultural stagnation.
A country which has bitter debates about important issues is more likely to have cultural vitality than one which is smug and self-congratulatory.
The French are as bigger sore losers as the Welsh.
Over 270,000 fans have signed a petition calling on Uefa to replay the Euro 2020 last-16 match between France and Switzerland because "the rules (of the game) were not respected" when Swiss goalkeeper Yann Sommer saved Kylian Mbappé's decisive penalty.
Mbappé's miss resulted in the world champions crashing out of the tournament in Bucharest after leading their eventual conquerors 3-1 at one point in the match.
But a petition was launched by a disgruntled French fan, Pierre, in the aftermath of the penalty shootout, demanding that Uefa replay the tie because Sommer's feet were over the line as Mbappe struck the ball. Goalkeepers need to keep at least one foot on the goal-line when facing a penalty, otherwise the spot-kick can be retaken.
Neither the referee nor Var intervened on Sommer's save but more than 270,000 people signed the petition - which has now been closed - despite several different angles showing that Sommer's foot was on the line when Mbappé kicked the ball.
The hosts of the petition, leslignesbougent.org, wrote that "Uefa had been officially approached to gauge its position on the matter", and that Pierre had informed the host site that he wished for the petition to be closed after the angles showing the legality of Sommer's position came to light. "Our servers exploded," the site added.
The original petition read: "During the penalty shootout of the France v Switzerland match, goalkeeper Sommer was not on his line ahead of Mbappé's shot. We ask that Switzerland's qualification is cancelled so that the match can be replayed.
"Sport must be played within the rules and that evening the rules were not respected."
The French are as bigger sore losers as the Welsh.
Over 270,000 fans have signed a petition calling on Uefa to replay the Euro 2020 last-16 match between France and Switzerland because "the rules (of the game) were not respected" when Swiss goalkeeper Yann Sommer saved Kylian Mbappé's decisive penalty.
Mbappé's miss resulted in the world champions crashing out of the tournament in Bucharest after leading their eventual conquerors 3-1 at one point in the match.
But a petition was launched by a disgruntled French fan, Pierre, in the aftermath of the penalty shootout, demanding that Uefa replay the tie because Sommer's feet were over the line as Mbappe struck the ball. Goalkeepers need to keep at least one foot on the goal-line when facing a penalty, otherwise the spot-kick can be retaken.
Neither the referee nor Var intervened on Sommer's save but more than 270,000 people signed the petition - which has now been closed - despite several different angles showing that Sommer's foot was on the line when Mbappé kicked the ball.
The hosts of the petition, leslignesbougent.org, wrote that "Uefa had been officially approached to gauge its position on the matter", and that Pierre had informed the host site that he wished for the petition to be closed after the angles showing the legality of Sommer's position came to light. "Our servers exploded," the site added.
The original petition read: "During the penalty shootout of the France v Switzerland match, goalkeeper Sommer was not on his line ahead of Mbappé's shot. We ask that Switzerland's qualification is cancelled so that the match can be replayed.
"Sport must be played within the rules and that evening the rules were not respected."
The statistics released today (Friday 2 July) show there were 6.02 million applications made to the scheme by 30 June with 5.1 million grants of status. There have been more than 5.3 million applications from England, 291,200 from Scotland, 98,600 from Wales, and 98,400 from Northern Ireland.
The surge in applications, including more than 400,000 in June alone, means that there are around 570,000 pending applications. The Government has repeatedly assured those who applied before the deadline that they will have their rights protected until their application is decided, as set out in law, and they have the means to prove their protected rights if needed.
Immigration levels were off the scale from 2004-2016, utterly extraordinary.
How did it affect you personally?
Personally? I got quite a bit of sex out of it. If we're going to have mass immigration then having young nubile blonde females emigrating en-mass from Poland and Lithuanian is as good as it gets. But, I live in an affluent rural area and my salary & prospects were unaffected.
I also saw very rapid social change in big towns and cities, including Basingstoke, that took place over a very short number of years, that changed the character of the town, and caused housing and wage pressures for many lower-earning locals and a friction and resentment that wasn't necessary.
I thought the immigration rates were crazy then and still do now.
The reality for me is complex.
On the one hand family wise, it’s been a great plus for me. I have a wonderful Finnish sister in law via my older brother - and my younger brother, with profound learning difficulties has undoubtedly benefitted from Eastern European carers. That likely wouldn’t have happened without EU freedom of movement.
But it’s probably come at a personal cost for me, employment wise - and the wider economic cost to lower paid Brits is obvious.
The key point is - that no one was asked, and anyone who objected to a 10% increase in the population via immigration was called racist.
That was profoundly unfair. Labour, the LDs and the liberal tories share the blame for this.
Thanks for answering.
Isn't the theory that lower paid Brits will, in the face of low-skilled immigration, move up the skills ladder?
Well, that was the pitch.
The way it turned out, low skilled immigrants were used, conveyor belt style, to reduce and hold wages at minimum wage levels in a number of jobs. The fact that the conditions of the jobs were horrible could be sustained by a steady stream of immigrants to replace the ones that were escaping from the shit jobs.
This resulted in chunks of the job market where pay was so low that it could only sustain living x adults in a room etc...
So what did the plucky Brits that were pushed out of such jobs do? And rightly or wrongly there is a minimum and national living wage that puts a floor under wages so where were all these jobs where the conditions were so horrible? Car washes?
You seem to view the minimum wage as a maximum. Why is that?
Where did the Brits go who were pushed out of these horrible jobs?
Many of them still do these jobs but the wages are suppressed by ensuring they're kept at the bottom.
To take one example that's been in the news a lot of care homes - 84% of care staff are actually British, but free movement has helped ensure that a job like care that really ought to not be a minimum wage job has been held down to being one.
If there were staff shortages seeing pay rise across the board that would see pay rises above the minimum for the 84% of Britons doing that job not just those attracted by higher wages.
Who is keeping them at the bottom?
If a worker in a care home felt they were being underpaid, why didn't they move jobs?
You of all people should be championing the market working in this way. You say you don't mind free movement of labour as long as there is ample housing but then cite an employment example as to why it's bad.
I never judged it as good or bad, I just understand actions have consequences. The consequences of free movement was suppressing the wages for the low-skilled because of the almost infinite amount of free movement from the East.
Now personally, I don't object to that. Others did. Those others had a point, it did have that consequence. It was simply a consequence I was prepared to live with.
The only thing that made it really unjustifiable is combining this wage suppression with increased demand for housing for which there was no quid pro quo free market.
So why didn't the low-skilled upskill?
The problem of meritocracy is that many are incapable of doing so, lacking the academic, economic and/or social skills to do so. A fair society needs to be able to provide a decent life to all, not just those with monetiseable skills.
One thing that really not understood by the highly educated, is that the concepts of future gain, risk taking etc are seen differently by the less educated.
A relative who went into the building business, after a serious academic career, could describe the process of trying to motivate people. He went through all the schemes of motivation to offer better rewards for better work - and was genuinely prepared to pay more for more.... The results were interesting. Oh, and cross cultural - you get the same issue with Polish brickies and Scottish brickies, it seems.
Were they like Highland peasants, etc.? Presumably reluctant to risk what they knew worked for them, at least on a basic level (e.g. oats + seasonal labour in the Lowlands) in favour of the boss's get rich schemes (whaling at Leverburgh)?
The French are as bigger sore losers as the Welsh.
Over 270,000 fans have signed a petition calling on Uefa to replay the Euro 2020 last-16 match between France and Switzerland because "the rules (of the game) were not respected" when Swiss goalkeeper Yann Sommer saved Kylian Mbappé's decisive penalty.
Mbappé's miss resulted in the world champions crashing out of the tournament in Bucharest after leading their eventual conquerors 3-1 at one point in the match.
But a petition was launched by a disgruntled French fan, Pierre, in the aftermath of the penalty shootout, demanding that Uefa replay the tie because Sommer's feet were over the line as Mbappe struck the ball. Goalkeepers need to keep at least one foot on the goal-line when facing a penalty, otherwise the spot-kick can be retaken.
Neither the referee nor Var intervened on Sommer's save but more than 270,000 people signed the petition - which has now been closed - despite several different angles showing that Sommer's foot was on the line when Mbappé kicked the ball.
The hosts of the petition, leslignesbougent.org, wrote that "Uefa had been officially approached to gauge its position on the matter", and that Pierre had informed the host site that he wished for the petition to be closed after the angles showing the legality of Sommer's position came to light. "Our servers exploded," the site added.
The original petition read: "During the penalty shootout of the France v Switzerland match, goalkeeper Sommer was not on his line ahead of Mbappé's shot. We ask that Switzerland's qualification is cancelled so that the match can be replayed.
"Sport must be played within the rules and that evening the rules were not respected."
The statistics released today (Friday 2 July) show there were 6.02 million applications made to the scheme by 30 June with 5.1 million grants of status. There have been more than 5.3 million applications from England, 291,200 from Scotland, 98,600 from Wales, and 98,400 from Northern Ireland.
The surge in applications, including more than 400,000 in June alone, means that there are around 570,000 pending applications. The Government has repeatedly assured those who applied before the deadline that they will have their rights protected until their application is decided, as set out in law, and they have the means to prove their protected rights if needed.
Immigration levels were off the scale from 2004-2016, utterly extraordinary.
How did it affect you personally?
Personally? I got quite a bit of sex out of it. If we're going to have mass immigration then having young nubile blonde females emigrating en-mass from Poland and Lithuanian is as good as it gets. But, I live in an affluent rural area and my salary & prospects were unaffected.
I also saw very rapid social change in big towns and cities, including Basingstoke, that took place over a very short number of years, that changed the character of the town, and caused housing and wage pressures for many lower-earning locals and a friction and resentment that wasn't necessary.
I thought the immigration rates were crazy then and still do now.
The reality for me is complex.
On the one hand family wise, it’s been a great plus for me. I have a wonderful Finnish sister in law via my older brother - and my younger brother, with profound learning difficulties has undoubtedly benefitted from Eastern European carers. That likely wouldn’t have happened without EU freedom of movement.
But it’s probably come at a personal cost for me, employment wise - and the wider economic cost to lower paid Brits is obvious.
The key point is - that no one was asked, and anyone who objected to a 10% increase in the population via immigration was called racist.
That was profoundly unfair. Labour, the LDs and the liberal tories share the blame for this.
Thanks for answering.
Isn't the theory that lower paid Brits will, in the face of low-skilled immigration, move up the skills ladder?
Well, that was the pitch.
The way it turned out, low skilled immigrants were used, conveyor belt style, to reduce and hold wages at minimum wage levels in a number of jobs. The fact that the conditions of the jobs were horrible could be sustained by a steady stream of immigrants to replace the ones that were escaping from the shit jobs.
This resulted in chunks of the job market where pay was so low that it could only sustain living x adults in a room etc...
So what did the plucky Brits that were pushed out of such jobs do? And rightly or wrongly there is a minimum and national living wage that puts a floor under wages so where were all these jobs where the conditions were so horrible? Car washes?
You seem to view the minimum wage as a maximum. Why is that?
Where did the Brits go who were pushed out of these horrible jobs?
Many of them still do these jobs but the wages are suppressed by ensuring they're kept at the bottom.
To take one example that's been in the news a lot of care homes - 84% of care staff are actually British, but free movement has helped ensure that a job like care that really ought to not be a minimum wage job has been held down to being one.
If there were staff shortages seeing pay rise across the board that would see pay rises above the minimum for the 84% of Britons doing that job not just those attracted by higher wages.
Who is keeping them at the bottom?
If a worker in a care home felt they were being underpaid, why didn't they move jobs?
You of all people should be championing the market working in this way. You say you don't mind free movement of labour as long as there is ample housing but then cite an employment example as to why it's bad.
I never judged it as good or bad, I just understand actions have consequences. The consequences of free movement was suppressing the wages for the low-skilled because of the almost infinite amount of free movement from the East.
Now personally, I don't object to that. Others did. Those others had a point, it did have that consequence. It was simply a consequence I was prepared to live with.
The only thing that made it really unjustifiable is combining this wage suppression with increased demand for housing for which there was no quid pro quo free market.
So why didn't the low-skilled upskill?
The problem of meritocracy is that many are incapable of doing so, lacking the academic, economic and/or social skills to do so. A fair society needs to be able to provide a decent life to all, not just those with monetiseable skills.
One thing that really not understood by the highly educated, is that the concepts of future gain, risk taking etc are seen differently by the less educated.
A relative who went into the building business, after a serious academic career, could describe the process of trying to motivate people. He went through all the schemes of motivation to offer better rewards for better work - and was genuinely prepared to pay more for more.... The results were interesting. Oh, and cross cultural - you get the same issue with Polish brickies and Scottish brickies, it seems.
There is another issue. I left my grammar school, unofficially, just before my 15th birthday as I had to work to support my mother and younger siblings. Many people can’t afford to stay through the full stint to get a “nice” degree and a career in the professions. Feeding and housing yourself and your now takes precedence for many of us.
EU migration has been bloody brilliant for this country. London became capital of the world in approximately 2001, in large part because of the influx of talented, young, skilled Europeans.
There’s very little evidence that migration has suppressed working class wages - and it’s not as if people haven’t looked. Rather, the evidence suggests that European migration has been of significant benefit to U.K. productivity.
I am sympathetic to the argument that “nobody asked us”, but sadly the alternative this country looks likely to face is slow economic decline and cultural stagnation.
A country which has bitter debates about important issues is more likely to have cultural vitality than one which is smug and self-congratulatory.
Although one only has to look to the US to see the dangers of two sides that may be bitter, but are not having anything approaching a debate.
EU migration has been bloody brilliant for this country. London became capital of the world in approximately 2001, in large part because of the influx of talented, young, skilled Europeans.
There’s very little evidence that migration has suppressed working class wages - and it’s not as if people haven’t looked. Rather, the evidence suggests that European migration has been of significant benefit to U.K. productivity.
I am sympathetic to the argument that “nobody asked us”, but sadly the alternative this country looks likely to face is slow economic decline and cultural stagnation.
A country which has bitter debates about important issues is more likely to have cultural vitality than one which is smug and self-congratulatory.
Although one only has to look to the US to see the dangers of two sides that may be bitter, but are not having anything approaching a debate.
I dunno. Where Trump is you will always find a masturbate going on.
EU migration has been bloody brilliant for this country. London became capital of the world in approximately 2001, in large part because of the influx of talented, young, skilled Europeans.
There’s very little evidence that migration has suppressed working class wages - and it’s not as if people haven’t looked. Rather, the evidence suggests that European migration has been of significant benefit to U.K. productivity.
I am sympathetic to the argument that “nobody asked us”, but sadly the alternative this country looks likely to face is slow economic decline and cultural stagnation.
A country which has bitter debates about important issues is more likely to have cultural vitality than one which is smug and self-congratulatory.
Although one only has to look to the US to see the dangers of two sides that may be bitter, but are not having anything approaching a debate.
Part of the issue with the USA is the lack of debate. Decisions that rational countries solve through the ballot box are resolved by lawyers and the Supreme Court instead.
So now rather than a cathartic decision making process everything is dialled permanently to eleven and anyone who is impure is suspect.
So I take it the reason the tory vote is down is because many tories liked the homophobic, anti semitic campaign of George Galloway?
After all that was going to be the smear on Muslims if Labour lost the by election.
I have just logged on since this morning and gasped when I read such an utterly disgusting post
For clarification, and your education, this was this conservative members post at 7.15 this morning
Good morning
Congratulations to Kim Leadbeater for retaining Batley and Spen for labour. She seems a very pleasant and able person. It is a very strange constituency and of course she will be it's last mp as I understand it disappears in the boundary review
I did predict this yesterday and the unacceptable bile and hate spewed at her by Galloway's mob was totally unacceptable (as is any personal abuse) and I am certain many more than her majority of 323 voted for her in solidarity against Galloway
It goes without saying this is a good result for Keir Starmer and should keep him in post to fight the next GE
However, the thing that disturbs me most is that such a despicable character as Galloway can accumulate 8,264 (21.9) votes standing on his utterly divisive platform. I cannot see these voters returning to labour, or indeed for those who may have voted conservative previously, and this is labour biggest problem to resolve and I am not sure there is a resolution
If I was a conservative mp this morning I would be very angry at the perceived complacency that has taken over and of course with the narrowing of the polls, the mishandling of the Hancock resignation by Boris, and his recent mumblings, all no doubt played a part, though I doubt many voters watch PMQ's
I would just like to conclude by congratulating our own @NickPalmer for his very accurate and interesting reports from the labour camp, and award the 'dunces hat' to Jon Craig of Sky who got it completely wrong, and in the end had to eat humble pie
Re the US, Delta, and places with low vaccination levels:
Mississippi - 30% of the population double jabbed, cases up 64% in the last 14 days Alabama - 33% and +34% Arkansas - 34% and +81%
The US is very fortunate that schools are now on break. And, of course, the most vulnerable are double jabbed. But there are still an awful lot of 50, 60 and even 70 year olds in the Deep South who have not had even a single vaccine dose.
In Europe, there are a couple of real laggards too, where there will be an almighty awful wave: Bulgaria has 16.6% of *adults* with a single dose, and Romania's at only 30%. Both of those countries could well get absolutely hammered.
The French are as bigger sore losers as the Welsh.
Over 270,000 fans have signed a petition calling on Uefa to replay the Euro 2020 last-16 match between France and Switzerland because "the rules (of the game) were not respected" when Swiss goalkeeper Yann Sommer saved Kylian Mbappé's decisive penalty.
Mbappé's miss resulted in the world champions crashing out of the tournament in Bucharest after leading their eventual conquerors 3-1 at one point in the match.
But a petition was launched by a disgruntled French fan, Pierre, in the aftermath of the penalty shootout, demanding that Uefa replay the tie because Sommer's feet were over the line as Mbappe struck the ball. Goalkeepers need to keep at least one foot on the goal-line when facing a penalty, otherwise the spot-kick can be retaken.
Neither the referee nor Var intervened on Sommer's save but more than 270,000 people signed the petition - which has now been closed - despite several different angles showing that Sommer's foot was on the line when Mbappé kicked the ball.
The hosts of the petition, leslignesbougent.org, wrote that "Uefa had been officially approached to gauge its position on the matter", and that Pierre had informed the host site that he wished for the petition to be closed after the angles showing the legality of Sommer's position came to light. "Our servers exploded," the site added.
The original petition read: "During the penalty shootout of the France v Switzerland match, goalkeeper Sommer was not on his line ahead of Mbappé's shot. We ask that Switzerland's qualification is cancelled so that the match can be replayed.
"Sport must be played within the rules and that evening the rules were not respected."
Asked to sum up how she feels about Boris Johnson as a person, Angela Merkel replies: "We look at each other, we look at how different people can be and we make the best of it...." https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1410954102775943170
In fairness it can't be easy for him.
Do you mean that it can't be easy knowing that all serious leaders in the world think you are a clownish version of Donald Trump?
Merkel's record of disastrous failures is a problem for many people, particularly in Europe. Her appalling handling of the Greek crisis which resulted in a country which is part of the EZ effectively defaulting on its debts, the resistance to QE which aggravated the recession after 2008, the disastrous response to the immigration crisis and her failed attempts to dump the responsibility of caring for those she had invited on others, her failure to appreciate the pressures that Cameron was under resulting in the EU's second largest economy leaving, the determination to proceed with Nord Stream and increase the EU's dependency on Putin, it really goes on and on. Still, not long now.
Modern leaders really don't compare favourably with those of the eighties.
Do you mean the 1880s like Bismarck and Palmerston or the more recent 1980s of Thatcher and Kohl? Either way I would agree but the latter probably had the advantage of living in a somewhat simpler bipolar world than we have today.
Pam had been dead for 15 years in 1880 & Bismarck's legacy of a unified Germany lead by Prussian militarism wasn’t necessarily to the world’s (or Germany’s for that matter) advantage.
It took you two hours to google that?
Just kidding I know you are an expert on this period.
Course I am, I’ve read Flashman books.
I’ve bought Katja Hoyer’s Blood and Iron but have only dipped into it so far, it will make me an expert nonpareil once I’ve finished. I’m trying not to allow her being the Speccies go to person for German stuff put me off.
Hopefully the B&S result will water down some of the red wall generalising that has been doing the rounds in the media for too long. Tories took lots of seats and gained vote share in lots of seats in the North and Midlands in 2019, and that's a real phenomenon. But this has then become "the North is turning Tory", or at most "The North (apart from Manchester and Liverpool) is turning Tory. We've now had it confirmed that the North of England is, actually, a politically diverse and varied place. Who'd a thought it.
Same with the Blue wall in the South. Boris is not uniformly "losing the home counties", nor, where he is losing support, is it uniformly to the Lib Dems. In a large arc broadly speaking from the Chilterns through the Surrey hills and bagshot beds into the South downs of Hampshire that is happening. In certain other gentrifying spots in old seaside and university towns they have been losing votes to Labour and the Greens since the Brexit vote, and in large swathes of Herts, Essex, Kent and Sussex as well as much of the South West they are still doing very nicely.
The statistics released today (Friday 2 July) show there were 6.02 million applications made to the scheme by 30 June with 5.1 million grants of status. There have been more than 5.3 million applications from England, 291,200 from Scotland, 98,600 from Wales, and 98,400 from Northern Ireland.
The surge in applications, including more than 400,000 in June alone, means that there are around 570,000 pending applications. The Government has repeatedly assured those who applied before the deadline that they will have their rights protected until their application is decided, as set out in law, and they have the means to prove their protected rights if needed.
Immigration levels were off the scale from 2004-2016, utterly extraordinary.
How did it affect you personally?
Personally? I got quite a bit of sex out of it. If we're going to have mass immigration then having young nubile blonde females emigrating en-mass from Poland and Lithuanian is as good as it gets. But, I live in an affluent rural area and my salary & prospects were unaffected.
I also saw very rapid social change in big towns and cities, including Basingstoke, that took place over a very short number of years, that changed the character of the town, and caused housing and wage pressures for many lower-earning locals and a friction and resentment that wasn't necessary.
I thought the immigration rates were crazy then and still do now.
The reality for me is complex.
On the one hand family wise, it’s been a great plus for me. I have a wonderful Finnish sister in law via my older brother - and my younger brother, with profound learning difficulties has undoubtedly benefitted from Eastern European carers. That likely wouldn’t have happened without EU freedom of movement.
But it’s probably come at a personal cost for me, employment wise - and the wider economic cost to lower paid Brits is obvious.
The key point is - that no one was asked, and anyone who objected to a 10% increase in the population via immigration was called racist.
That was profoundly unfair. Labour, the LDs and the liberal tories share the blame for this.
Thanks for answering.
Isn't the theory that lower paid Brits will, in the face of low-skilled immigration, move up the skills ladder?
Well, that was the pitch.
The way it turned out, low skilled immigrants were used, conveyor belt style, to reduce and hold wages at minimum wage levels in a number of jobs. The fact that the conditions of the jobs were horrible could be sustained by a steady stream of immigrants to replace the ones that were escaping from the shit jobs.
This resulted in chunks of the job market where pay was so low that it could only sustain living x adults in a room etc...
So what did the plucky Brits that were pushed out of such jobs do? And rightly or wrongly there is a minimum and national living wage that puts a floor under wages so where were all these jobs where the conditions were so horrible? Car washes?
You seem to view the minimum wage as a maximum. Why is that?
Where did the Brits go who were pushed out of these horrible jobs?
Many of them still do these jobs but the wages are suppressed by ensuring they're kept at the bottom.
To take one example that's been in the news a lot of care homes - 84% of care staff are actually British, but free movement has helped ensure that a job like care that really ought to not be a minimum wage job has been held down to being one.
If there were staff shortages seeing pay rise across the board that would see pay rises above the minimum for the 84% of Britons doing that job not just those attracted by higher wages.
Who is keeping them at the bottom?
If a worker in a care home felt they were being underpaid, why didn't they move jobs?
You of all people should be championing the market working in this way. You say you don't mind free movement of labour as long as there is ample housing but then cite an employment example as to why it's bad.
I never judged it as good or bad, I just understand actions have consequences. The consequences of free movement was suppressing the wages for the low-skilled because of the almost infinite amount of free movement from the East.
Now personally, I don't object to that. Others did. Those others had a point, it did have that consequence. It was simply a consequence I was prepared to live with.
The only thing that made it really unjustifiable is combining this wage suppression with increased demand for housing for which there was no quid pro quo free market.
So why didn't the low-skilled upskill?
The problem of meritocracy is that many are incapable of doing so, lacking the academic, economic and/or social skills to do so. A fair society needs to be able to provide a decent life to all, not just those with monetiseable skills.
One thing that really not understood by the highly educated, is that the concepts of future gain, risk taking etc are seen differently by the less educated.
A relative who went into the building business, after a serious academic career, could describe the process of trying to motivate people. He went through all the schemes of motivation to offer better rewards for better work - and was genuinely prepared to pay more for more.... The results were interesting. Oh, and cross cultural - you get the same issue with Polish brickies and Scottish brickies, it seems.
If you work in your local shop/factory with colleagues who have become good friends, and it suits your family/social life for it to stay that way, why would you want to retrain/up skill for a possible small pay rise? Maybe these people didn’t want an influx of competition for their low wage but reliable work. Is it the governments job to squeeze every bit of economic value out of the continents Labour market or do what makes the population content?
Lesson number 1 from these by-elections is that it's usually a bad idea to try to take lessons from by-elections. Imagine if only one of the three had happened and not the other two?
Asked to sum up how she feels about Boris Johnson as a person, Angela Merkel replies: "We look at each other, we look at how different people can be and we make the best of it...." https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1410954102775943170
In fairness it can't be easy for him.
Do you mean that it can't be easy knowing that all serious leaders in the world think you are a clownish version of Donald Trump?
Merkel's record of disastrous failures is a problem for many people, particularly in Europe. Her appalling handling of the Greek crisis which resulted in a country which is part of the EZ effectively defaulting on its debts, the resistance to QE which aggravated the recession after 2008, the disastrous response to the immigration crisis and her failed attempts to dump the responsibility of caring for those she had invited on others, her failure to appreciate the pressures that Cameron was under resulting in the EU's second largest economy leaving, the determination to proceed with Nord Stream and increase the EU's dependency on Putin, it really goes on and on. Still, not long now.
Modern leaders really don't compare favourably with those of the eighties.
Do you mean the 1880s like Bismarck and Palmerston or the more recent 1980s of Thatcher and Kohl? Either way I would agree but the latter probably had the advantage of living in a somewhat simpler bipolar world than we have today.
Pam had been dead for 15 years in 1880 & Bismarck's legacy of a unified Germany lead by Prussian militarism wasn’t necessarily to the world’s (or Germany’s for that matter) advantage.
It took you two hours to google that?
Just kidding I know you are an expert on this period.
Course I am, I’ve read Flashman books.
I’ve bought Katja Hoyer’s Blood and Iron but have only dipped into it so far, it will make me an expert nonpareil once I’ve finished. I’m trying not to allow her being the Speccies go to person for German stuff put me off.
Ooooh thanks for that, I’ll give that a read.
I found this book very interesting on the period, with some useful insights into Bismarcks Germany.
Disturbing. But hardly new. Look at Aldington v Watts/Tolstoy, where Tolstoy successfully avoided paying any* of the vast sums of damages and costs imposed by the jury.
Watts avoided paying as well, although he did later spend time in prison for stalking Aldington.
It’s just that our libel laws are a bit shit.
*Or virtually any. Of the £2 million he owed, he paid £57,000, and even then only after Aldington died.
Hopefully the B&S result will water down some of the red wall generalising that has been doing the rounds in the media for too long. Tories took lots of seats and gained vote share in lots of seats in the North and Midlands in 2019, and that's a real phenomenon. But this has then become "the North is turning Tory", or at most "The North (apart from Manchester and Liverpool) is turning Tory. We've now had it confirmed that the North of England is, actually, a politically diverse and varied place. Who'd a thought it.
Same with the Blue wall in the South. Boris is not uniformly "losing the home counties", nor, where he is losing support, is it uniformly to the Lib Dems. In a large arc broadly speaking from the Chilterns through the Surrey hills and bagshot beds into the South downs of Hampshire that is happening. In certain other gentrifying spots in old seaside and university towns they have been losing votes to Labour and the Greens since the Brexit vote, and in large swathes of Herts, Essex, Kent and Sussex as well as much of the South West they are still doing very nicely.
Ah, but. "The North is turning Tory" enables journalists to spout this without having to visit one of those ghastly places and do some research. In fact, the North is the most heterogeneous of the broad regions, and thus currently the most politically interesting.
I would just like to conclude by congratulating our own @NickPalmer for his very accurate and interesting reports from the labour camp, and award the 'dunces hat' to Jon Craig of Sky who got it completely wrong, and in the end had to eat humble pie
One pundit who surprised on the upside was Tom Harwood of GB News, who was among the first last night to warn that Labour were in danger of winning.
Asked to sum up how she feels about Boris Johnson as a person, Angela Merkel replies: "We look at each other, we look at how different people can be and we make the best of it...." https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1410954102775943170
In fairness it can't be easy for him.
Do you mean that it can't be easy knowing that all serious leaders in the world think you are a clownish version of Donald Trump?
Merkel's record of disastrous failures is a problem for many people, particularly in Europe. Her appalling handling of the Greek crisis which resulted in a country which is part of the EZ effectively defaulting on its debts, the resistance to QE which aggravated the recession after 2008, the disastrous response to the immigration crisis and her failed attempts to dump the responsibility of caring for those she had invited on others, her failure to appreciate the pressures that Cameron was under resulting in the EU's second largest economy leaving, the determination to proceed with Nord Stream and increase the EU's dependency on Putin, it really goes on and on. Still, not long now.
Modern leaders really don't compare favourably with those of the eighties.
Do you mean the 1880s like Bismarck and Palmerston or the more recent 1980s of Thatcher and Kohl? Either way I would agree but the latter probably had the advantage of living in a somewhat simpler bipolar world than we have today.
Pam had been dead for 15 years in 1880 & Bismarck's legacy of a unified Germany lead by Prussian militarism wasn’t necessarily to the world’s (or Germany’s for that matter) advantage.
It took you two hours to google that?
Just kidding I know you are an expert on this period.
Course I am, I’ve read Flashman books.
I’ve bought Katja Hoyer’s Blood and Iron but have only dipped into it so far, it will make me an expert nonpareil once I’ve finished. I’m trying not to allow her being the Speccies go to person for German stuff put me off.
Ooooh thanks for that, I’ll give that a read.
I found this book very interesting on the period, with some useful insights into Bismarcks Germany.
Asked to sum up how she feels about Boris Johnson as a person, Angela Merkel replies: "We look at each other, we look at how different people can be and we make the best of it...." https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1410954102775943170
In fairness it can't be easy for him.
Do you mean that it can't be easy knowing that all serious leaders in the world think you are a clownish version of Donald Trump?
Merkel's record of disastrous failures is a problem for many people, particularly in Europe. Her appalling handling of the Greek crisis which resulted in a country which is part of the EZ effectively defaulting on its debts, the resistance to QE which aggravated the recession after 2008, the disastrous response to the immigration crisis and her failed attempts to dump the responsibility of caring for those she had invited on others, her failure to appreciate the pressures that Cameron was under resulting in the EU's second largest economy leaving, the determination to proceed with Nord Stream and increase the EU's dependency on Putin, it really goes on and on. Still, not long now.
Modern leaders really don't compare favourably with those of the eighties.
Do you mean the 1880s like Bismarck and Palmerston or the more recent 1980s of Thatcher and Kohl? Either way I would agree but the latter probably had the advantage of living in a somewhat simpler bipolar world than we have today.
Pam had been dead for 15 years in 1880 & Bismarck's legacy of a unified Germany lead by Prussian militarism wasn’t necessarily to the world’s (or Germany’s for that matter) advantage.
It took you two hours to google that?
Just kidding I know you are an expert on this period.
Course I am, I’ve read Flashman books.
I’ve bought Katja Hoyer’s Blood and Iron but have only dipped into it so far, it will make me an expert nonpareil once I’ve finished. I’m trying not to allow her being the Speccies go to person for German stuff put me off.
Ooooh thanks for that, I’ll give that a read.
I found this book very interesting on the period, with some useful insights into Bismarcks Germany.
I am not finding the Spanish very convincing. Indeed the Swiss look to have more fight in them.
He he...
Not long after I laid a Spanish win...
The market was very slow to react to the Swiss equaliser. Unfortunately I missed the prices by trying to post them here rather than pressing the Betfair button.
Hopefully the B&S result will water down some of the red wall generalising that has been doing the rounds in the media for too long. Tories took lots of seats and gained vote share in lots of seats in the North and Midlands in 2019, and that's a real phenomenon. But this has then become "the North is turning Tory", or at most "The North (apart from Manchester and Liverpool) is turning Tory. We've now had it confirmed that the North of England is, actually, a politically diverse and varied place. Who'd a thought it.
Same with the Blue wall in the South. Boris is not uniformly "losing the home counties", nor, where he is losing support, is it uniformly to the Lib Dems. In a large arc broadly speaking from the Chilterns through the Surrey hills and bagshot beds into the South downs of Hampshire that is happening. In certain other gentrifying spots in old seaside and university towns they have been losing votes to Labour and the Greens since the Brexit vote, and in large swathes of Herts, Essex, Kent and Sussex as well as much of the South West they are still doing very nicely.
Ah, but. "The North is turning Tory" enables journalists to spout this without having to visit one of those ghastly places and do some research. In fact, the North is the most heterogeneous of the broad regions, and thus currently the most politically interesting.
Yup, it's not all flat caps, whippets, and to t'pub.
Heck you could argue that parts of Manchester/Greater Manchester are the most heterogeneous parts of the of country.
I would just like to conclude by congratulating our own @NickPalmer for his very accurate and interesting reports from the labour camp, and award the 'dunces hat' to Jon Craig of Sky who got it completely wrong, and in the end had to eat humble pie
One pundit who surprised on the upside was Tom Harwood of GB News, who was among the first last night to warn that Labour were in danger of winning.
Indeed, some of his Tweets (which implied a very close election) were rubbished on here on the basis that he didn't have much by-election experience.
He also had a nice, measured tone, far away from the usual bombast, and not what one might have expected.
"From where I’m standing I’m not convinced the Labour piles are smaller than the Tory piles."
Comments
The funny world of the arts.
The population expansion of recent years has not been of the working age, but rather the over 65s. Without the EU migrants we would have either had a higher dependency ratio, or higher non EU migration. It seems as if that there has been a big switch to non-EU migration since Brexit.
The future means either a continuation of immigration from other sources or a tightening squeeze on workers to pay the triple locked pensions of the ageing British population.
Now personally, I don't object to that. Others did. Those others had a point, it did have that consequence. It was simply a consequence I was prepared to live with.
The only thing that made it really unjustifiable is combining this wage suppression with increased demand for housing for which there was no quid pro quo free market.
South Shields and Sunderland councils never had similar issues so in those areas Labour aren't be blamed for the austerity cuts they were forced to make.
Nobody is saying he isn't an excellent broadcaster and knowledgeable, but his celebrity name sells the shows as much as anything...you know you are getting a certain type of programme and his distinctive voice.
I personally prefer to hear from the genuine experts, but they don't sell shows / books in the same numbers and can often be harder to understand for the general public.
Just kidding I know you are an expert on this period.
True, pay rises aren't much. But you move jobs every few years - and always more money on the table. It's been great for quite a few people*. Though some do moan about being "stretched"...
*Well, really a few people in terms of the total population. But they make alot of the national conversation.
Or the high quality degree to get the really high end jobs?
Not surprised at all.
A relative who went into the building business, after a serious academic career, could describe the process of trying to motivate people. He went through all the schemes of motivation to offer better rewards for better work - and was genuinely prepared to pay more for more.... The results were interesting. Oh, and cross cultural - you get the same issue with Polish brickies and Scottish brickies, it seems.
I remember explaining to the management at Home House what was going to happen at a certain event. Based entirely on how/why the Victorians clamped down on what went on at private members clubs.
Everything proceeded exactly as I had foreseen.
There must be a word for someone who cannot smell, like there is for those who cannot see, hear or speak, but I honestly cannot think of it.
I’ve bought Katja Hoyer’s Blood and Iron but have only dipped into it so far, it will make me an expert nonpareil once I’ve finished. I’m trying not to allow her being the Speccies go to person for German stuff put me off.
It's a bit like the housing debate - at the current rate you can see where the lines will cross and the renting classes will simply get properties built on the Green Belt.
In a democracy, the pressures build up and things change.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9728749/SARAH-VINE-problem-wife-knows-youre-not-Master-Universe.html
She can smell somethings, but it is quite patchy. She cannot smell my dogs minced raw tripe, bit can smell garlic for example. It has impacted her enjoyment of quite a few foods.
She is a lot more tired too, and often is in bed by 2100 at night, but hard to separate the effects of covid, menopause, working in PPE and age.
It's easy to call these things in hindsight but, looking back, the clues were there from the outset that Matt Hancock's marriage would always take a back seat to his office relationships.
Those present at the wedding noticed with some astonishment that the first person Matt Hancock chose to thank in his groom's speech – mentioning them before his family, his wife's family or, indeed, his wife – was... George Osborne.
Indeed, if you end up with more retirees (and soon to be retirees) voting than those of working age, then you can end up with deeply fucked up political systems, where the not working vote repeatedly to take from the working. (See Japan and Italy.)
But those problems are abstract ones for now.
Allies of Sir Keir Starmer have turned on Angela Rayner’s supporters following the Batley & Spen by-election, with calls for her to be sacked for disloyalty.
Parliamentary allies of the deputy leader had been canvassing support this week for a potential leadership challenge if Labour lost the vote......
.....A shadow cabinet minister said: “[Rayner] spent the last eight weeks promoting her[self] as the next Labour leader. A total embarrassment.
“They actively helped [the effort] to defeat Labour. I think he should sack her and let her be deputy from the backbenches.”
This morning Labour sources argued that the decision to sack Rayner as the party’s national campaign chairwoman in May and replace her with Shabana Mahmood, the Birmingham Ladywood MP, was instrumental to the party’s victory.
“The reshuffle was messy. But it resulted in Shabana Mahmood being made campaign chair. That was the turning point. This is a victory for those who made that happen,” a source said.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/batley-amp-spen-by-election-sir-keir-starmers-allies-turn-on-angela-rayner-after-poll-victory-tpzwzgdwc
After all that was going to be the smear on Muslims if Labour lost the by election.
This is his second bout and he is double jabbed
He only found out because he was in same place as someone positive and track and trace got in touch - he has no symptoms, she feels a tiny bit under weather
I thought the Best Man (who'd have just spoken) was traditionally thanked first before then moving on to family, friends and finishing with the wife?
Over 270,000 fans have signed a petition calling on Uefa to replay the Euro 2020 last-16 match between France and Switzerland because "the rules (of the game) were not respected" when Swiss goalkeeper Yann Sommer saved Kylian Mbappé's decisive penalty.
Mbappé's miss resulted in the world champions crashing out of the tournament in Bucharest after leading their eventual conquerors 3-1 at one point in the match.
But a petition was launched by a disgruntled French fan, Pierre, in the aftermath of the penalty shootout, demanding that Uefa replay the tie because Sommer's feet were over the line as Mbappe struck the ball. Goalkeepers need to keep at least one foot on the goal-line when facing a penalty, otherwise the spot-kick can be retaken.
Neither the referee nor Var intervened on Sommer's save but more than 270,000 people signed the petition - which has now been closed - despite several different angles showing that Sommer's foot was on the line when Mbappé kicked the ball.
The hosts of the petition, leslignesbougent.org, wrote that "Uefa had been officially approached to gauge its position on the matter", and that Pierre had informed the host site that he wished for the petition to be closed after the angles showing the legality of Sommer's position came to light. "Our servers exploded," the site added.
The original petition read: "During the penalty shootout of the France v Switzerland match, goalkeeper Sommer was not on his line ahead of Mbappé's shot. We ask that Switzerland's qualification is cancelled so that the match can be replayed.
"Sport must be played within the rules and that evening the rules were not respected."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/euro-2021/2021/07/02/euros-2020-live-news-quarter-finals-latest-updates-england/
*I enforce H&S rigorously on my planet destroying space stations.
**I always take the view that one should be reasonably nice to subordinates. I think that would go double for subordinates with tastes running to light recreational genocide.
1 England 3.25 30.8%
2 Spain 3.65 27.4%
3 Italy 5.8 17.2%
4 Belgium 8.6 11.6%
5 Denmark 13 7.7%
6 Czechia 36 2.8%
7 Switzerland 65 1.5%
8 Ukraine 50 2.0%
All quoted.
Same old Arsenal, always cheating.
Feeding and housing yourself and your now takes precedence for many of us.
So now rather than a cathartic decision making process everything is dialled permanently to eleven and anyone who is impure is suspect.
For clarification, and your education, this was this conservative members post at 7.15 this morning
Good morning
Congratulations to Kim Leadbeater for retaining Batley and Spen for labour. She seems a very pleasant and able person. It is a very strange constituency and of course she will be it's last mp as I understand it disappears in the boundary review
I did predict this yesterday and the unacceptable bile and hate spewed at her by Galloway's mob was totally unacceptable (as is any personal abuse) and I am certain many more than her majority of 323 voted for her in solidarity against Galloway
It goes without saying this is a good result for Keir Starmer and should keep him in post to fight the next GE
However, the thing that disturbs me most is that such a despicable character as Galloway can accumulate 8,264 (21.9) votes standing on his utterly divisive platform. I cannot see these voters returning to labour, or indeed for those who may have voted conservative previously, and this is labour biggest problem to resolve and I am not sure there is a resolution
If I was a conservative mp this morning I would be very angry at the perceived complacency that has taken over and of course with the narrowing of the polls, the mishandling of the Hancock resignation by Boris, and his recent mumblings, all no doubt played a part, though I doubt many voters watch PMQ's
I would just like to conclude by congratulating our own @NickPalmer for his very accurate and interesting reports from the labour camp, and award the 'dunces hat' to Jon Craig of Sky who got it completely wrong, and in the end had to eat humble pie
An apology would be welcome
Mississippi - 30% of the population double jabbed, cases up 64% in the last 14 days
Alabama - 33% and +34%
Arkansas - 34% and +81%
The US is very fortunate that schools are now on break. And, of course, the most vulnerable are double jabbed. But there are still an awful lot of 50, 60 and even 70 year olds in the Deep South who have not had even a single vaccine dose.
In Europe, there are a couple of real laggards too, where there will be an almighty awful wave: Bulgaria has 16.6% of *adults* with a single dose, and Romania's at only 30%. Both of those countries could well get absolutely hammered.
https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/july-2021/the-long-arm-of-the-chekists/
Same with the Blue wall in the South. Boris is not uniformly "losing the home counties", nor, where he is losing support, is it uniformly to the Lib Dems. In a large arc broadly speaking from the Chilterns through the Surrey hills and bagshot beds into the South downs of Hampshire that is happening. In certain other gentrifying spots in old seaside and university towns they have been losing votes to Labour and the Greens since the Brexit vote, and in large swathes of Herts, Essex, Kent and Sussex as well as much of the South West they are still doing very nicely.
Lesson number 1 from these by-elections is that it's usually a bad idea to try to take lessons from by-elections. Imagine if only one of the three had happened and not the other two?
https://twitter.com/MattSingh_/status/1411000382109663245
The power of NickPalmer canvassing is the only lesson learned.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0857205285/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_fabc_NCSS15Z84ZCTCW2KV0KV
Watts avoided paying as well, although he did later spend time in prison for stalking Aldington.
It’s just that our libel laws are a bit shit.
*Or virtually any. Of the £2 million he owed, he paid £57,000, and even then only after Aldington died.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_United_States_presidential_election
In fact, the North is the most heterogeneous of the broad regions, and thus currently the most politically interesting.
Not long after I laid a Spanish win...
Heck you could argue that parts of Manchester/Greater Manchester are the most heterogeneous parts of the of country.
He also had a nice, measured tone, far away from the usual bombast, and not what one might have expected.
"From where I’m standing I’m not convinced the Labour piles are smaller than the Tory piles."