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The front pages that should frighten ministers – politicalbetting.com

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  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    IshmaelZ said:

    After reading the news this morning I went to the shop to buy some panic but they have run out even though I am assured there's enough panic to go round. What do I do?

    https://twitter.com/Scott_Wortley/status/1441323652062932995?s=20

    Laugh as much as you like, I'm the one with 80 litres of diesel in the tank and all Tavistock's remaining supplies of tonic water in the larder.
    I know people love to get Trans issues into every debate but what does a sex change clinic need tonic water for? 😉
    It's dangerous stuff, Clarissa Dickson Wright drank two bottles of gin a day for years and ended up being poisoned by the tonic water. Steer clear altogether or be sure to dilute it with plenty of Tanqueray.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    algarkirk said:

    Cicero said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    DavidL said:

    Brexit is working, its the only gamebin town. Driver shortages, container shortages etc are everywhere.

    Driver shortages and container shortages aren't the same as food and petrol shortages, however. I haven't seen any reports of these in northern continental Europe up to now, which is what the Daily Mail constituency are beginning to notice also.
    Disruptions in supply may well vary but a shortage of drivers makes such disruptions inevitable and that seems pretty universal in Europe at the moment.

    There was a professional driver on R5 when I was driving home a couple of days ago who described how drivers had been treated as third class citizens, made to wait hours for both loads to be put on or taken off with no provision for them in terms of places to go and a pretty basic wage for a lonely, boring job. He admitted that he had just had a wage increase and that the supermarkets were now much keener to get them in and out. I am sure the likes of Tesco will want all its drivers on the road again as fast as possible at the moment.
    5 live this morning had truckers phoning in complaining about the medias attempt to blame Brexit and reiterating the comments you make

    Furthermore a trucker phoned in who works in Europe who said there are half a million drivers short in Europe and the idea the UK could just get drivers from Europe is unrealistic

    It was very interesting to hear from trucker themselves
    We did this yesterday. If you are an EU driver you can work anywhere in the EU. The shortages in one country get covered by drivers from another country. "Just pay more" works here because there is a vast labour pool.

    If the UK offered a 3 month work visa and a shit ton of cash, we absolutely will get drivers come over. Because the fortune on offer here to your Latvian truck driver demolishes what is on offer elsewhere.

    "Just pay more" doesn't work in the GB because we have a small labour pool which is fixed. All we can do is poach drivers from one firm to another and back again without actually fixing the issue.
    The labour pool is about 50 million people in this country.

    32.7 million people (2019) have a full driver's licence.

    If poaching people is all we can do you have a very small imagination.

    So your solution is to suffer the shortages until enough people can be persuaded to train as HGV drivers when the alternative is to train HGV drivers and also solve the problems we have now immediately. And you say others lack imagination!!

    If we "solve the problems immediately" then what reason would anyone have to invest in training?

    If the only incentive you can think of to encourage investment in training is to deprive people of fuel and choice, then you have very little imagination.

    Necessity is the mother of invention.

    Command and control economies don't work. Let the market do its job with its invisible hand. People will invest in training if they have no alternative.
    So why command and control immigration?
    I support liberal immigration and people can get a visa so long as they're on a high wage.

    It's low wage open immigration that has ended. No new limits have been put on high wage immigration.
    So you would be enthusiastically backing the govt if it said that foreigners can come over here to drive trucks?
    I have no problem with bringing in truckers but where are you going to find them with half a million shortfall in Europe
    We would use some of Philip's money to pay them. Literally beggar thy neighbour but hey, that's the market solution. Right, Philip?
    You do realise that are neighbours are in a different market, not our market, don't you?

    We voted to leave the Single Market.
    No we did not. Hannon and many others explicitly said that voting to leave the EU DID NOT mean that we would leave the single market.

    They were wrong because Cúmmings and others had an agenda that if admitted at the time would have led to defeat for Leave.

    We will not let you people get away with lying about your lies.
    You are telling a lie.

    Hannon and others did not say that during the Referendum. That is a lie.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkof9CVerrQ

    That was 2015, though. So not during the referendum. Technically (if weaselly).

    The greater pathos is in what Dan Hannan wrote two days before the referendum;

    https://reaction.life/britain-looks-like-brexit/

    The United Kingdom now leads a 22-state bloc that forms a free trade area with the EU, but remains outside its political structures. For their part, the EU 24 have continued to push ahead with economic, military and political amalgamation. They now have a common police force and army, a pan-European income tax and a harmonised system of social security. These developments have prompted referendums in three other EU states on whether to copy Britain.
    Hannan’s fantasy was laughable.

    But a great source for deep psycho-analytic interpretation.

    There is a book to be written on the psychology and psychosis of Brexit.
    Maybe the issue is the psychology and psychosis of all people unable to see the merits of the other side's arguments, or are in denial about there being any.

    I would really like a PB fanbois to give me a "real" Brexit benefit, not just "sovereignty" crap as it doesn't pay any bills, and seems to restrict evrything we used to do.
    As has been discussed on here, rising wages across the UK is the best advert for Brexit

    No cheap labour from abroad undercutting wages and jobs
    Oh goody, inflation, leading to higher food and energy prices.
    Genuine question.

    Do you support importing cheap labour suppressing UK wages
    LUMP OF LABOUR FALLACY SIREN
    You hold a lot of store in that theory but it's just a theory based on the "science" of economics. Economics isn't an actual science and people who think it is usually think far too much of the field and themselves - see the likes of Krugman.
    Sorry, but your answer is total garbage.

    In any case, econometricians have looked time and time again at the impact of FOM and kept finding that overall it led to:

    Higher productivity.
    Higher skills across the board.
    Higher wages (for native workers)
    More products & services (for native consumers).

    It’s not just theory; it’s observation.
    Econometrics. Don't make me laugh. If those guys were actually any good they'd all have made millions in the city.

    Their framing is incorrect. They start with a goal of wanting all trade and all immigration to have value and then work backwards.

    The observation we have now is that the UK is seeing surging wages at the bottom of the market because low wage immigrants are now unable to come to the UK. What happens next is still up for debate, however, we know from countries like Switzerland which have very high barriers to entry at the bottom but none at the top it results in the whole nation being better off rather than just the few at the top who get cheaper services and better pay.

    You really should stop thinking of economics as a science. It isn't. Any economist who says it is and tries to dress it up with econometrics is a fool.
    Economics isn't really a hard science but econometric techniques, if applied properly, can yield useful insights. Simply dismissing their arguments because you disagree with their findings just makes you look silly.
    Plenty of economists do work in finance of course, and some of them are doing quite well out of it (cough). It's by no means the bad ones who stay in academia either. If anything it's a profession where wages tend to be inversely related to talent at the top, in my experience, because the best economists tend to gravitate towards academia and research careers.
    I don't disagree with any of that and I'm not dismissing the idea of the lump of labour fallacy, in fact I think it's probably correct and it's also why I think trade deals are a net good. My issue has always been the blind spot from academics who overwhelmingly support unlimited immigration on wages at the bottom of the market. Wages for people like me going up by 20% *may* create a trickle down effect to raise wages at the bottom, the evidence is not particularly clear on that, but we do know that people like me do well in a high immigration environment and wages at the top rising quickly does also result in higher overall GDP and better overall productivity. Those are probably close to fact.

    However, and there obviously is one, you can't simply apply the same theory to the bottom of the market where investment in productivity is low, the supply of labour is high and the barrier to entry non-existent. The market is totally different and it's increasingly obvious that the gains from EU immigration were made at the top (people like us) and those people at the bottom saw years of wage stagnation. That we're now seeing record wage inflation at the bottom does rather prove that quite emphatically. What I'm not saying and haven't said is that this will result to any increase in GDP, personally I don't think it will, it may lead to an overall reduction in GDP and maybe even GDP per capita.

    My main point is that I don't think GDP or GDP per capita is a particular valuable or important statistic, I'd rather have a lower GDP with the national income properly distributed than a very high one with the top 5% of people having an economic share of 40% and the bottom 20% of people having just 5% or whatever income inequality is at the moment. If it means I have to pay more for my coffee or my restaurant bill goes up a bit then that's probably worth it for people who serve me my coffee and bring the food to my table to earn a proper living wage.
    I agree with all of that. I would like to see a lasting compression of incomes but I am sceptical that Brexit will deliver it, and I think there are plenty of other policy changes that could deliver it with less collateral damage to the economy and without reducing people's rights and opportunities as Brexit has. I am also sceptical of all this championing of the lower paid from the kind of people who would normally cross the road to piss on the working class.
    Well I'm glad you agree and you may or may not be shocked to know that most of us who voted to leave want the lower paid to be better off. It's literally the first part of "work hard and get on in life". EU membership rigged the game for companies by giving them an unlimited pool of low wage labour. Now they don't have it and they're having to actually pay their employees properly.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited September 2021
    eek said:

    Anybody reading this thread would be tempted to think that in the olden days, before the EU, FOM and imported labour, British employers paid the working class generous wages that have only been undercut since we joined the EU (and then later when we imported workers from the accession countries). It's laughable - low wages have always been at the forefront of British capitalism, and it was only in the heavily unionised sectors that manual workers could bargain for higher wages. Why do people think London Transport and others were so keen on the Windrush immigrants? I suspect that the decline of the power of trades unions has more to do with the low wages in many sectors than imported labour.

    Anyway, it's great to see so many Tories now advocating higher wages for the working class. At least something we can all agree on.

    Windrush was at a time of high employment.

    The current issues relate to a combination of a rising minimum wage attached to unlimited immigration that contributed to more and more work becoming minimum wage.
    Germany imported 1 million immigrants in a year, and still maintains a tradition of far better wages and conditions in many sectors than the UK has had.
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 21,723

    IshmaelZ said:

    After reading the news this morning I went to the shop to buy some panic but they have run out even though I am assured there's enough panic to go round. What do I do?

    https://twitter.com/Scott_Wortley/status/1441323652062932995?s=20

    Laugh as much as you like, I'm the one with 80 litres of diesel in the tank and all Tavistock's remaining supplies of tonic water in the larder.
    I can sell you an 18 month old toilet roll

    £1 a sheet
    used...
    No they are discounted to half price
  • MaxPB said:

    algarkirk said:

    Cicero said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    DavidL said:

    Brexit is working, its the only gamebin town. Driver shortages, container shortages etc are everywhere.

    Driver shortages and container shortages aren't the same as food and petrol shortages, however. I haven't seen any reports of these in northern continental Europe up to now, which is what the Daily Mail constituency are beginning to notice also.
    Disruptions in supply may well vary but a shortage of drivers makes such disruptions inevitable and that seems pretty universal in Europe at the moment.

    There was a professional driver on R5 when I was driving home a couple of days ago who described how drivers had been treated as third class citizens, made to wait hours for both loads to be put on or taken off with no provision for them in terms of places to go and a pretty basic wage for a lonely, boring job. He admitted that he had just had a wage increase and that the supermarkets were now much keener to get them in and out. I am sure the likes of Tesco will want all its drivers on the road again as fast as possible at the moment.
    5 live this morning had truckers phoning in complaining about the medias attempt to blame Brexit and reiterating the comments you make

    Furthermore a trucker phoned in who works in Europe who said there are half a million drivers short in Europe and the idea the UK could just get drivers from Europe is unrealistic

    It was very interesting to hear from trucker themselves
    We did this yesterday. If you are an EU driver you can work anywhere in the EU. The shortages in one country get covered by drivers from another country. "Just pay more" works here because there is a vast labour pool.

    If the UK offered a 3 month work visa and a shit ton of cash, we absolutely will get drivers come over. Because the fortune on offer here to your Latvian truck driver demolishes what is on offer elsewhere.

    "Just pay more" doesn't work in the GB because we have a small labour pool which is fixed. All we can do is poach drivers from one firm to another and back again without actually fixing the issue.
    The labour pool is about 50 million people in this country.

    32.7 million people (2019) have a full driver's licence.

    If poaching people is all we can do you have a very small imagination.

    So your solution is to suffer the shortages until enough people can be persuaded to train as HGV drivers when the alternative is to train HGV drivers and also solve the problems we have now immediately. And you say others lack imagination!!

    If we "solve the problems immediately" then what reason would anyone have to invest in training?

    If the only incentive you can think of to encourage investment in training is to deprive people of fuel and choice, then you have very little imagination.

    Necessity is the mother of invention.

    Command and control economies don't work. Let the market do its job with its invisible hand. People will invest in training if they have no alternative.
    So why command and control immigration?
    I support liberal immigration and people can get a visa so long as they're on a high wage.

    It's low wage open immigration that has ended. No new limits have been put on high wage immigration.
    So you would be enthusiastically backing the govt if it said that foreigners can come over here to drive trucks?
    I have no problem with bringing in truckers but where are you going to find them with half a million shortfall in Europe
    We would use some of Philip's money to pay them. Literally beggar thy neighbour but hey, that's the market solution. Right, Philip?
    You do realise that are neighbours are in a different market, not our market, don't you?

    We voted to leave the Single Market.
    No we did not. Hannon and many others explicitly said that voting to leave the EU DID NOT mean that we would leave the single market.

    They were wrong because Cúmmings and others had an agenda that if admitted at the time would have led to defeat for Leave.

    We will not let you people get away with lying about your lies.
    You are telling a lie.

    Hannon and others did not say that during the Referendum. That is a lie.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkof9CVerrQ

    That was 2015, though. So not during the referendum. Technically (if weaselly).

    The greater pathos is in what Dan Hannan wrote two days before the referendum;

    https://reaction.life/britain-looks-like-brexit/

    The United Kingdom now leads a 22-state bloc that forms a free trade area with the EU, but remains outside its political structures. For their part, the EU 24 have continued to push ahead with economic, military and political amalgamation. They now have a common police force and army, a pan-European income tax and a harmonised system of social security. These developments have prompted referendums in three other EU states on whether to copy Britain.
    Hannan’s fantasy was laughable.

    But a great source for deep psycho-analytic interpretation.

    There is a book to be written on the psychology and psychosis of Brexit.
    Maybe the issue is the psychology and psychosis of all people unable to see the merits of the other side's arguments, or are in denial about there being any.

    I would really like a PB fanbois to give me a "real" Brexit benefit, not just "sovereignty" crap as it doesn't pay any bills, and seems to restrict evrything we used to do.
    As has been discussed on here, rising wages across the UK is the best advert for Brexit

    No cheap labour from abroad undercutting wages and jobs
    Oh goody, inflation, leading to higher food and energy prices.
    Genuine question.

    Do you support importing cheap labour suppressing UK wages
    LUMP OF LABOUR FALLACY SIREN
    You hold a lot of store in that theory but it's just a theory based on the "science" of economics. Economics isn't an actual science and people who think it is usually think far too much of the field and themselves - see the likes of Krugman.
    Sorry, but your answer is total garbage.

    In any case, econometricians have looked time and time again at the impact of FOM and kept finding* that overall it led to:

    Higher productivity.
    Higher skills across the board.
    Higher wages (for native workers)
    More products & services (for native consumers).

    It’s not just theory; it’s observation from the data.

    *with one or two exceptions, and with a noted bias toward higher income groups.
    I think you keep using phrases like LUMP OF LABOUR FALLACY and fancy words like "econometricians" to support your pre-existing beliefs which you don't have whole-hearted confidence in.

    You had no answer to my question yesterday when I put it you that either: (a) a lack of EU free movement is pushing up wages due to labour shortages, or, (b) EU free movement had no effect on wages, except to benefit them, when we had all the labour we needed.

    They can't both be true. So which is it?
    Wage increases arising from a successful business in a benign environment, and wage increases necessitated by soaring costs are very different things.
    I'll answer it: free labour expands the size of the economy at a macro-level because it's easier to leverage greater production more quickly at lower cost to resource intensive businesses, and that will have a multiplier effect at the national level - it will keep costs of their products and services down giving some people more money in their pockets to spend.

    However, it will also - at the same time - keep wages low in those same jobs, defer investment in automation and equipment, lead to concentrated immigration in certain areas, create demand pressures on infrastructure, housing and public services, and - sadly - some social tensions.

    This is why we had such low unemployment and modest growth during the Cameron years, but poor productivity growth and very low real wage growth - most of the new jobs went to EU workers, and it was largely those in more globalised professional jobs that benefited.
  • Anybody reading this thread would be tempted to think that in the olden days, before the EU, FOM and imported labour, British employers paid the working class generous wages that have only been undercut since we joined the EU (and then later when we imported workers from the accession countries). It's laughable - low wages have always been at the forefront of British capitalism, and it was only in the heavily unionised sectors that manual workers could bargain for higher wages. Why do people think London Transport and others were so keen on the Windrush immigrants? I suspect that the decline of the power of trades unions has more to do with the low wages in many sectors than imported labour.

    Anyway, it's great to see so many Tories now advocating higher wages for the working class. At least something we can all agree on.

    No, low wages haven't always been at the forefront. Indeed its worth comparing with house prices, the largest cost coming from someone's wages nowadays tends to be their rent/mortgage but twenty years ago the ratio between price and earnings was much lower. So people were better off.

    Then we had decades of increasing prices (with people claiming that was prosperity) while holding wages down (claiming that was inflation).

    Riddle me this: If you're paying your rent or mortgage do you think that being a higher share of your wages than it was two decades ago makes you more or less prosperous?
  • IshmaelZ said:

    After reading the news this morning I went to the shop to buy some panic but they have run out even though I am assured there's enough panic to go round. What do I do?

    https://twitter.com/Scott_Wortley/status/1441323652062932995?s=20

    Laugh as much as you like, I'm the one with 80 litres of diesel in the tank and all Tavistock's remaining supplies of tonic water in the larder.
    Fingers crossed it's not the other way round.
  • rpjsrpjs Posts: 3,787
    HYUFD said:

    OT Chuck Grassley plans to stay in the Senate until he's 95:
    https://twitter.com/GrassleyWorks/status/1441326699593932805

    I don't generally like the House of Lords as an idea but having somewhere where politicians can go after they retire to drink and talk about politics and make speeches and continue to feel important seems like a useful way to make them let go. The UK shouldn't abolish the HoL, they should make it purely ceremonial like the Monarchy and just slot in a new thing underneath to do the actual work.

    The Senate is basically the US equivalent of the House of Lords (the House of Representatives is the US equivalent of the House of Commons). The fact Senators are elected only ever 6 years means they tend to take a longer term view of legislation rather than short term political considerations like Representatives. Hence it is full of elder statesmen like the Lords is (McCain was a Senator until he died) and if the Lords was ever elected it should equally only be for longer terms of 6 years or more so its function as a revising chamber is not changed.
    That’s correct, and until a century ago US Senators were not popularly elected but appointed by the legislature of their state. The US Constitution is at heart the 18th century British constitution with all the hereditary elements removed and the then still evolving concept of executive responsibility to a supreme legislature replaced with the Enlightenment doctrine of strict separation of powers.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    MaxPB said:

    algarkirk said:

    Cicero said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    DavidL said:

    Brexit is working, its the only gamebin town. Driver shortages, container shortages etc are everywhere.

    Driver shortages and container shortages aren't the same as food and petrol shortages, however. I haven't seen any reports of these in northern continental Europe up to now, which is what the Daily Mail constituency are beginning to notice also.
    Disruptions in supply may well vary but a shortage of drivers makes such disruptions inevitable and that seems pretty universal in Europe at the moment.

    There was a professional driver on R5 when I was driving home a couple of days ago who described how drivers had been treated as third class citizens, made to wait hours for both loads to be put on or taken off with no provision for them in terms of places to go and a pretty basic wage for a lonely, boring job. He admitted that he had just had a wage increase and that the supermarkets were now much keener to get them in and out. I am sure the likes of Tesco will want all its drivers on the road again as fast as possible at the moment.
    5 live this morning had truckers phoning in complaining about the medias attempt to blame Brexit and reiterating the comments you make

    Furthermore a trucker phoned in who works in Europe who said there are half a million drivers short in Europe and the idea the UK could just get drivers from Europe is unrealistic

    It was very interesting to hear from trucker themselves
    We did this yesterday. If you are an EU driver you can work anywhere in the EU. The shortages in one country get covered by drivers from another country. "Just pay more" works here because there is a vast labour pool.

    If the UK offered a 3 month work visa and a shit ton of cash, we absolutely will get drivers come over. Because the fortune on offer here to your Latvian truck driver demolishes what is on offer elsewhere.

    "Just pay more" doesn't work in the GB because we have a small labour pool which is fixed. All we can do is poach drivers from one firm to another and back again without actually fixing the issue.
    The labour pool is about 50 million people in this country.

    32.7 million people (2019) have a full driver's licence.

    If poaching people is all we can do you have a very small imagination.

    So your solution is to suffer the shortages until enough people can be persuaded to train as HGV drivers when the alternative is to train HGV drivers and also solve the problems we have now immediately. And you say others lack imagination!!

    If we "solve the problems immediately" then what reason would anyone have to invest in training?

    If the only incentive you can think of to encourage investment in training is to deprive people of fuel and choice, then you have very little imagination.

    Necessity is the mother of invention.

    Command and control economies don't work. Let the market do its job with its invisible hand. People will invest in training if they have no alternative.
    So why command and control immigration?
    I support liberal immigration and people can get a visa so long as they're on a high wage.

    It's low wage open immigration that has ended. No new limits have been put on high wage immigration.
    So you would be enthusiastically backing the govt if it said that foreigners can come over here to drive trucks?
    I have no problem with bringing in truckers but where are you going to find them with half a million shortfall in Europe
    We would use some of Philip's money to pay them. Literally beggar thy neighbour but hey, that's the market solution. Right, Philip?
    You do realise that are neighbours are in a different market, not our market, don't you?

    We voted to leave the Single Market.
    No we did not. Hannon and many others explicitly said that voting to leave the EU DID NOT mean that we would leave the single market.

    They were wrong because Cúmmings and others had an agenda that if admitted at the time would have led to defeat for Leave.

    We will not let you people get away with lying about your lies.
    You are telling a lie.

    Hannon and others did not say that during the Referendum. That is a lie.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkof9CVerrQ

    That was 2015, though. So not during the referendum. Technically (if weaselly).

    The greater pathos is in what Dan Hannan wrote two days before the referendum;

    https://reaction.life/britain-looks-like-brexit/

    The United Kingdom now leads a 22-state bloc that forms a free trade area with the EU, but remains outside its political structures. For their part, the EU 24 have continued to push ahead with economic, military and political amalgamation. They now have a common police force and army, a pan-European income tax and a harmonised system of social security. These developments have prompted referendums in three other EU states on whether to copy Britain.
    Hannan’s fantasy was laughable.

    But a great source for deep psycho-analytic interpretation.

    There is a book to be written on the psychology and psychosis of Brexit.
    Maybe the issue is the psychology and psychosis of all people unable to see the merits of the other side's arguments, or are in denial about there being any.

    I would really like a PB fanbois to give me a "real" Brexit benefit, not just "sovereignty" crap as it doesn't pay any bills, and seems to restrict evrything we used to do.
    As has been discussed on here, rising wages across the UK is the best advert for Brexit

    No cheap labour from abroad undercutting wages and jobs
    Oh goody, inflation, leading to higher food and energy prices.
    Genuine question.

    Do you support importing cheap labour suppressing UK wages
    LUMP OF LABOUR FALLACY SIREN
    You hold a lot of store in that theory but it's just a theory based on the "science" of economics. Economics isn't an actual science and people who think it is usually think far too much of the field and themselves - see the likes of Krugman.
    Sorry, but your answer is total garbage.

    In any case, econometricians have looked time and time again at the impact of FOM and kept finding* that overall it led to:

    Higher productivity.
    Higher skills across the board.
    Higher wages (for native workers)
    More products & services (for native consumers).

    It’s not just theory; it’s observation from the data.

    *with one or two exceptions, and with a noted bias toward higher income groups.
    I think you keep using phrases like LUMP OF LABOUR FALLACY and fancy words like "econometricians" to support your pre-existing beliefs which you don't have whole-hearted confidence in.

    You had no answer to my question yesterday when I put it you that either: (a) a lack of EU free movement is pushing up wages due to labour shortages, or, (b) EU free movement had no effect on wages, except to benefit them, when we had all the labour we needed.

    They can't both be true. So which is it?
    Wage increases arising from a successful business in a benign environment, and wage increases necessitated by soaring costs are very different things.
    I'll answer it: free labour expands the size of the economy at a macro-level because it's easier to leverage greater production more quickly at lower cost to resource intensive businesses, and that will have a multiplier effect at the national level - it will keep costs of their products and services down giving some people more money in their pockets to spend.

    However, it will also - at the same time - keep wages low in those same jobs, defer investment in automation and equipment, lead to concentrated immigration in certain areas, create demand pressures on infrastructure, housing and public services, and - sadly - some social tensions.

    This is why we had such low unemployment and modest growth during the Cameron years, but poor productivity growth and very low real wage growth - most of the new jobs went to EU workers, and it was largely those in more globalised professional jobs that benefited.
    All hidden by a focus on GDP while completely ignoring GDP per capita details (which were wrong anyway as we had seemingly seriously underestimated immigration numbers).
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,749
    edited September 2021

    IshmaelZ said:

    After reading the news this morning I went to the shop to buy some panic but they have run out even though I am assured there's enough panic to go round. What do I do?

    https://twitter.com/Scott_Wortley/status/1441323652062932995?s=20

    Laugh as much as you like, I'm the one with 80 litres of diesel in the tank and all Tavistock's remaining supplies of tonic water in the larder.
    I can sell you an 18 month old toilet roll

    £1 a sheet
    Jeez, even Scotrail don't charge you a £ to have a sheet.
  • IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    After reading the news this morning I went to the shop to buy some panic but they have run out even though I am assured there's enough panic to go round. What do I do?

    https://twitter.com/Scott_Wortley/status/1441323652062932995?s=20

    Laugh as much as you like, I'm the one with 80 litres of diesel in the tank and all Tavistock's remaining supplies of tonic water in the larder.
    I know people love to get Trans issues into every debate but what does a sex change clinic need tonic water for? 😉
    It's dangerous stuff, Clarissa Dickson Wright drank two bottles of gin a day for years and ended up being poisoned by the tonic water. Steer clear altogether or be sure to dilute it with plenty of Tanqueray.
    I can relate to that from when I was younger and used to go clubbing. I could drink 15 bottles of beer or alcopops in a nightclub and be on top of the world but after eating a dodgy kebab on the way home you might not feel too good the next morning.
  • rpjs said:

    HYUFD said:

    OT Chuck Grassley plans to stay in the Senate until he's 95:
    https://twitter.com/GrassleyWorks/status/1441326699593932805

    I don't generally like the House of Lords as an idea but having somewhere where politicians can go after they retire to drink and talk about politics and make speeches and continue to feel important seems like a useful way to make them let go. The UK shouldn't abolish the HoL, they should make it purely ceremonial like the Monarchy and just slot in a new thing underneath to do the actual work.

    The Senate is basically the US equivalent of the House of Lords (the House of Representatives is the US equivalent of the House of Commons). The fact Senators are elected only ever 6 years means they tend to take a longer term view of legislation rather than short term political considerations like Representatives. Hence it is full of elder statesmen like the Lords is (McCain was a Senator until he died) and if the Lords was ever elected it should equally only be for longer terms of 6 years or more so its function as a revising chamber is not changed.
    That’s correct, and until a century ago US Senators were not popularly elected but appointed by the legislature of their state. The US Constitution is at heart the 18th century British constitution with all the hereditary elements removed and the then still evolving concept of executive responsibility to a supreme legislature replaced with the Enlightenment doctrine of strict separation of powers.
    Weirdly the states have flipped the whole design around. The Senate is popularly elected and the House is chosen by each legislature via gerrymandering.
  • Breaking

    AA President Edmund King says there is no shortage of fuel and thousands of petrol stations are operating normally with just a few suffering temporary supply chain problems
  • MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    Tesco offering drivers a £1,000 sign on to come to work for them

    Small print applies ie half after 3 months half after 6 months

    My step son says his mate drives for Tesco, £21.40 an hour, the problem he says is not the drivers, they can’t get the cheap Labour on minimum wage to work night shifts loading the lorries.

    "What self respecting person would work nights for minimum wage"

    back when the dinosaurs roamed and I was young, nights was time-and-a-half or often double-time. Same with working in pubs on the weekend.
    Double pay on bank holidays! Triple time to work Christmas Eve and Christmas Day!

    I think most places still do it.
    Most don't actually - they've shifted their T&Cs to being normal pay because until now there was always someone else willing to do the job.
    Wow, what idiot would work on a bank holiday without double time then?!
    I once did a shift behind the bar* on Christmas Day. Not only was I being payed extra wedge, but people kept buying me drinks.


    *In a Working Men's Club. Not some posho wine bar. Keeping it real.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    The AZ Audit report is going to be AMAZING.

    https://twitter.com/willsommer/status/1441233874340646919

    I see also that Abbot has decided that Texas needs one too now (but only in the Dem districts)
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 21,723

    IshmaelZ said:

    After reading the news this morning I went to the shop to buy some panic but they have run out even though I am assured there's enough panic to go round. What do I do?

    https://twitter.com/Scott_Wortley/status/1441323652062932995?s=20

    Laugh as much as you like, I'm the one with 80 litres of diesel in the tank and all Tavistock's remaining supplies of tonic water in the larder.
    I can sell you an 18 month old toilet roll

    £1 a sheet
    Used, or as new?

    (PS - how's Wes Streeting's leadership bid going?)
    Will only go ahead if Electoral College passes i assume
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,257


    James Melville
    @JamesMelville
    ·
    15h
    Sweden has announced they will not implement vaccine passports. Hats off to Sweden. Again.
    #NoVaccinePassports
    Heart suitFlag of Sweden

    Least surprising news of the day?

    In other news, googling that, Sweden is apparently going to remove its remaining Covid restrictions this month. Only two and a bit months after the UK...

    (Yes, I know for long periods they had looser restrictions than us and never had anything matching our tightest restrictions)
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,282

    rcs1000 said:

    Waiting staff receive 100% of their tips from today

    Excellent news and quite right

    Bad news for kitchen porters.
    I fail to see, and always have failed to see, why as a customer I should be expected to top up staff wages. When I ran a shop I didn't expect my staff, who often went over and beyond, to be tipped.
    +1
  • Alistair said:

    The AZ Audit report is going to be AMAZING.

    https://twitter.com/willsommer/status/1441233874340646919

    I see also that Abbot has decided that Texas needs one too now (but only in the Dem districts)

    You see there really is such a thing as karma. :)
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 21,723
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    After reading the news this morning I went to the shop to buy some panic but they have run out even though I am assured there's enough panic to go round. What do I do?

    https://twitter.com/Scott_Wortley/status/1441323652062932995?s=20

    Laugh as much as you like, I'm the one with 80 litres of diesel in the tank and all Tavistock's remaining supplies of tonic water in the larder.
    I know people love to get Trans issues into every debate but what does a sex change clinic need tonic water for? 😉
    It's dangerous stuff, Clarissa Dickson Wright drank two bottles of gin a day for years and ended up being poisoned by the tonic water. Steer clear altogether or be sure to dilute it with plenty of Tanqueray.
    I can relate to that from when I was younger and used to go clubbing. I could drink 15 bottles of beer or alcopops in a nightclub and be on top of the world but after eating a dodgy kebab on the way home you might not feel too good the next morning.
    But it was for real in her case - she buggered up her adrenal gland with quinine poisoning from the tonic.
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,257

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    After reading the news this morning I went to the shop to buy some panic but they have run out even though I am assured there's enough panic to go round. What do I do?

    https://twitter.com/Scott_Wortley/status/1441323652062932995?s=20

    Laugh as much as you like, I'm the one with 80 litres of diesel in the tank and all Tavistock's remaining supplies of tonic water in the larder.
    I know people love to get Trans issues into every debate but what does a sex change clinic need tonic water for? 😉
    It's dangerous stuff, Clarissa Dickson Wright drank two bottles of gin a day for years and ended up being poisoned by the tonic water. Steer clear altogether or be sure to dilute it with plenty of Tanqueray.
    I can relate to that from when I was younger and used to go clubbing. I could drink 15 bottles of beer or alcopops in a nightclub and be on top of the world but after eating a dodgy kebab on the way home you might not feel too good the next morning.
    Baron Hague, is that you? :tongue:
  • MaxPB said:

    algarkirk said:

    Cicero said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    DavidL said:

    Brexit is working, its the only gamebin town. Driver shortages, container shortages etc are everywhere.

    Driver shortages and container shortages aren't the same as food and petrol shortages, however. I haven't seen any reports of these in northern continental Europe up to now, which is what the Daily Mail constituency are beginning to notice also.
    Disruptions in supply may well vary but a shortage of drivers makes such disruptions inevitable and that seems pretty universal in Europe at the moment.

    There was a professional driver on R5 when I was driving home a couple of days ago who described how drivers had been treated as third class citizens, made to wait hours for both loads to be put on or taken off with no provision for them in terms of places to go and a pretty basic wage for a lonely, boring job. He admitted that he had just had a wage increase and that the supermarkets were now much keener to get them in and out. I am sure the likes of Tesco will want all its drivers on the road again as fast as possible at the moment.
    5 live this morning had truckers phoning in complaining about the medias attempt to blame Brexit and reiterating the comments you make

    Furthermore a trucker phoned in who works in Europe who said there are half a million drivers short in Europe and the idea the UK could just get drivers from Europe is unrealistic

    It was very interesting to hear from trucker themselves
    We did this yesterday. If you are an EU driver you can work anywhere in the EU. The shortages in one country get covered by drivers from another country. "Just pay more" works here because there is a vast labour pool.

    If the UK offered a 3 month work visa and a shit ton of cash, we absolutely will get drivers come over. Because the fortune on offer here to your Latvian truck driver demolishes what is on offer elsewhere.

    "Just pay more" doesn't work in the GB because we have a small labour pool which is fixed. All we can do is poach drivers from one firm to another and back again without actually fixing the issue.
    The labour pool is about 50 million people in this country.

    32.7 million people (2019) have a full driver's licence.

    If poaching people is all we can do you have a very small imagination.

    So your solution is to suffer the shortages until enough people can be persuaded to train as HGV drivers when the alternative is to train HGV drivers and also solve the problems we have now immediately. And you say others lack imagination!!

    If we "solve the problems immediately" then what reason would anyone have to invest in training?

    If the only incentive you can think of to encourage investment in training is to deprive people of fuel and choice, then you have very little imagination.

    Necessity is the mother of invention.

    Command and control economies don't work. Let the market do its job with its invisible hand. People will invest in training if they have no alternative.
    So why command and control immigration?
    I support liberal immigration and people can get a visa so long as they're on a high wage.

    It's low wage open immigration that has ended. No new limits have been put on high wage immigration.
    So you would be enthusiastically backing the govt if it said that foreigners can come over here to drive trucks?
    I have no problem with bringing in truckers but where are you going to find them with half a million shortfall in Europe
    We would use some of Philip's money to pay them. Literally beggar thy neighbour but hey, that's the market solution. Right, Philip?
    You do realise that are neighbours are in a different market, not our market, don't you?

    We voted to leave the Single Market.
    No we did not. Hannon and many others explicitly said that voting to leave the EU DID NOT mean that we would leave the single market.

    They were wrong because Cúmmings and others had an agenda that if admitted at the time would have led to defeat for Leave.

    We will not let you people get away with lying about your lies.
    You are telling a lie.

    Hannon and others did not say that during the Referendum. That is a lie.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkof9CVerrQ

    That was 2015, though. So not during the referendum. Technically (if weaselly).

    The greater pathos is in what Dan Hannan wrote two days before the referendum;

    https://reaction.life/britain-looks-like-brexit/

    The United Kingdom now leads a 22-state bloc that forms a free trade area with the EU, but remains outside its political structures. For their part, the EU 24 have continued to push ahead with economic, military and political amalgamation. They now have a common police force and army, a pan-European income tax and a harmonised system of social security. These developments have prompted referendums in three other EU states on whether to copy Britain.
    Hannan’s fantasy was laughable.

    But a great source for deep psycho-analytic interpretation.

    There is a book to be written on the psychology and psychosis of Brexit.
    Maybe the issue is the psychology and psychosis of all people unable to see the merits of the other side's arguments, or are in denial about there being any.

    I would really like a PB fanbois to give me a "real" Brexit benefit, not just "sovereignty" crap as it doesn't pay any bills, and seems to restrict evrything we used to do.
    As has been discussed on here, rising wages across the UK is the best advert for Brexit

    No cheap labour from abroad undercutting wages and jobs
    Oh goody, inflation, leading to higher food and energy prices.
    Genuine question.

    Do you support importing cheap labour suppressing UK wages
    LUMP OF LABOUR FALLACY SIREN
    You hold a lot of store in that theory but it's just a theory based on the "science" of economics. Economics isn't an actual science and people who think it is usually think far too much of the field and themselves - see the likes of Krugman.
    Sorry, but your answer is total garbage.

    In any case, econometricians have looked time and time again at the impact of FOM and kept finding* that overall it led to:

    Higher productivity.
    Higher skills across the board.
    Higher wages (for native workers)
    More products & services (for native consumers).

    It’s not just theory; it’s observation from the data.

    *with one or two exceptions, and with a noted bias toward higher income groups.
    I think you keep using phrases like LUMP OF LABOUR FALLACY and fancy words like "econometricians" to support your pre-existing beliefs which you don't have whole-hearted confidence in.

    You had no answer to my question yesterday when I put it you that either: (a) a lack of EU free movement is pushing up wages due to labour shortages, or, (b) EU free movement had no effect on wages, except to benefit them, when we had all the labour we needed.

    They can't both be true. So which is it?
    Wage increases arising from a successful business in a benign environment, and wage increases necessitated by soaring costs are very different things.
    I'll answer it: free labour expands the size of the economy at a macro-level because it's easier to leverage greater production more quickly at lower cost to resource intensive businesses, and that will have a multiplier effect at the national level - it will keep costs of their products and services down giving some people more money in their pockets to spend.

    However, it will also - at the same time - keep wages low in those same jobs, defer investment in automation and equipment, lead to concentrated immigration in certain areas, create demand pressures on infrastructure, housing and public services, and - sadly - some social tensions.

    This is why we had such low unemployment and modest growth during the Cameron years, but poor productivity growth and very low real wage growth - most of the new jobs went to EU workers, and it was largely those in more globalised professional jobs that benefited.
    I'm not sure where the money for this investment in automation and equipment is coming from if employers are now compelled to hire for vastly inflated wages. More likely each new-hire will be expected to do the work hitherto done by three. Something always has to give, and it's never the MD replacing his Jag with a push bike.
  • IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    After reading the news this morning I went to the shop to buy some panic but they have run out even though I am assured there's enough panic to go round. What do I do?

    https://twitter.com/Scott_Wortley/status/1441323652062932995?s=20

    Laugh as much as you like, I'm the one with 80 litres of diesel in the tank and all Tavistock's remaining supplies of tonic water in the larder.
    I know people love to get Trans issues into every debate but what does a sex change clinic need tonic water for? 😉
    It's dangerous stuff, Clarissa Dickson Wright drank two bottles of gin a day for years and ended up being poisoned by the tonic water. Steer clear altogether or be sure to dilute it with plenty of Tanqueray.
    I can relate to that from when I was younger and used to go clubbing. I could drink 15 bottles of beer or alcopops in a nightclub and be on top of the world but after eating a dodgy kebab on the way home you might not feel too good the next morning.
    But it was for real in her case - she buggered up her adrenal gland with quinine poisoning from the tonic.

    Oh I did not know that sorry, I thought it was a joke.

    I feel bad now.
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,257

    IshmaelZ said:

    After reading the news this morning I went to the shop to buy some panic but they have run out even though I am assured there's enough panic to go round. What do I do?

    https://twitter.com/Scott_Wortley/status/1441323652062932995?s=20

    Laugh as much as you like, I'm the one with 80 litres of diesel in the tank and all Tavistock's remaining supplies of tonic water in the larder.
    I can sell you an 18 month old toilet roll

    £1 a sheet
    Used, or as new?

    (PS - how's Wes Streeting's leadership bid going?)
    Will only go ahead if Electoral College passes i assume
    Must be tricky for the anti-Starmer wing. Do you:
    (a) vote against the electoral college reforms to defeat and humiliate Starmer?
    (b) vote for them, so that Wes Streeting can then defeat and humiliate Starmer?
    (semi serious - voting for strengthens Starmer, outwardly, voting against weakens him)

    More seriously, what's your position on Streeting?
  • Officially, London had sought to calm the situation, but privately, it was dismissive of the French complaints, arguing that Paris had spent years reassuring itself that Brexit would be a disaster, and had therefore failed to practice even basic diplomacy to understand how London might seek to protect its influence and standing. One senior British official close to Johnson, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to describe government deliberations, told me that French diplomats spent so long listening to people in London who agreed with their view—that Brexit would see Britain sidelined in the world—that they failed to recognize what the U.K. would do to remain a central part of the Western alliance. “If all your ambassadors do is read the pages of the FT, don’t be surprised if the ‘fifth wheel’ is actually still attached to the car,” the official said.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/09/britain-france-us-aukus/620186/

    It turned out the fifth wheel is the steering wheel. 😂
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    After reading the news this morning I went to the shop to buy some panic but they have run out even though I am assured there's enough panic to go round. What do I do?

    https://twitter.com/Scott_Wortley/status/1441323652062932995?s=20

    Laugh as much as you like, I'm the one with 80 litres of diesel in the tank and all Tavistock's remaining supplies of tonic water in the larder.
    I know people love to get Trans issues into every debate but what does a sex change clinic need tonic water for? 😉
    It's dangerous stuff, Clarissa Dickson Wright drank two bottles of gin a day for years and ended up being poisoned by the tonic water. Steer clear altogether or be sure to dilute it with plenty of Tanqueray.
    I can relate to that from when I was younger and used to go clubbing. I could drink 15 bottles of beer or alcopops in a nightclub and be on top of the world but after eating a dodgy kebab on the way home you might not feel too good the next morning.
    But it was for real in her case - she buggered up her adrenal gland with quinine poisoning from the tonic.

    Oh I did not know that sorry, I thought it was a joke.

    I feel bad now.
    Nah, she thought it was funny a.f., and it wasn't what killed her.
  • Officially, London had sought to calm the situation, but privately, it was dismissive of the French complaints, arguing that Paris had spent years reassuring itself that Brexit would be a disaster, and had therefore failed to practice even basic diplomacy to understand how London might seek to protect its influence and standing. One senior British official close to Johnson, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to describe government deliberations, told me that French diplomats spent so long listening to people in London who agreed with their view—that Brexit would see Britain sidelined in the world—that they failed to recognize what the U.K. would do to remain a central part of the Western alliance. “If all your ambassadors do is read the pages of the FT, don’t be surprised if the ‘fifth wheel’ is actually still attached to the car,” the official said.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/09/britain-france-us-aukus/620186/

    Given what I've read about French diplomats to the UK, I'm surprised any of them are still in a job.

    Their approach would make Jo Maugham blush.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    IshmaelZ said:

    After reading the news this morning I went to the shop to buy some panic but they have run out even though I am assured there's enough panic to go round. What do I do?

    https://twitter.com/Scott_Wortley/status/1441323652062932995?s=20

    Laugh as much as you like, I'm the one with 80 litres of diesel in the tank and all Tavistock's remaining supplies of tonic water in the larder.
    I can sell you an 18 month old toilet roll

    £1 a sheet
    Jeez, even Scotrail don't charge you a £ to have a sheet.
    :lol:
  • IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    After reading the news this morning I went to the shop to buy some panic but they have run out even though I am assured there's enough panic to go round. What do I do?

    https://twitter.com/Scott_Wortley/status/1441323652062932995?s=20

    Laugh as much as you like, I'm the one with 80 litres of diesel in the tank and all Tavistock's remaining supplies of tonic water in the larder.
    I know people love to get Trans issues into every debate but what does a sex change clinic need tonic water for? 😉
    It's dangerous stuff, Clarissa Dickson Wright drank two bottles of gin a day for years and ended up being poisoned by the tonic water. Steer clear altogether or be sure to dilute it with plenty of Tanqueray.
    I can relate to that from when I was younger and used to go clubbing. I could drink 15 bottles of beer or alcopops in a nightclub and be on top of the world but after eating a dodgy kebab on the way home you might not feel too good the next morning.
    But it was for real in her case - she buggered up her adrenal gland with quinine poisoning from the tonic.
    I had a friend who was advised to lay off the bitter lemon in his (copious) gin consumption cos it was destroying his teeth and possibly the cause of pre cancerous cells in his mouth. He did that but still carked it with the big C, though tbf that was probably the 40 a day Silk Cut..
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624

    MaxPB said:

    algarkirk said:

    Cicero said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    DavidL said:

    Brexit is working, its the only gamebin town. Driver shortages, container shortages etc are everywhere.

    Driver shortages and container shortages aren't the same as food and petrol shortages, however. I haven't seen any reports of these in northern continental Europe up to now, which is what the Daily Mail constituency are beginning to notice also.
    Disruptions in supply may well vary but a shortage of drivers makes such disruptions inevitable and that seems pretty universal in Europe at the moment.

    There was a professional driver on R5 when I was driving home a couple of days ago who described how drivers had been treated as third class citizens, made to wait hours for both loads to be put on or taken off with no provision for them in terms of places to go and a pretty basic wage for a lonely, boring job. He admitted that he had just had a wage increase and that the supermarkets were now much keener to get them in and out. I am sure the likes of Tesco will want all its drivers on the road again as fast as possible at the moment.
    5 live this morning had truckers phoning in complaining about the medias attempt to blame Brexit and reiterating the comments you make

    Furthermore a trucker phoned in who works in Europe who said there are half a million drivers short in Europe and the idea the UK could just get drivers from Europe is unrealistic

    It was very interesting to hear from trucker themselves
    We did this yesterday. If you are an EU driver you can work anywhere in the EU. The shortages in one country get covered by drivers from another country. "Just pay more" works here because there is a vast labour pool.

    If the UK offered a 3 month work visa and a shit ton of cash, we absolutely will get drivers come over. Because the fortune on offer here to your Latvian truck driver demolishes what is on offer elsewhere.

    "Just pay more" doesn't work in the GB because we have a small labour pool which is fixed. All we can do is poach drivers from one firm to another and back again without actually fixing the issue.
    The labour pool is about 50 million people in this country.

    32.7 million people (2019) have a full driver's licence.

    If poaching people is all we can do you have a very small imagination.

    So your solution is to suffer the shortages until enough people can be persuaded to train as HGV drivers when the alternative is to train HGV drivers and also solve the problems we have now immediately. And you say others lack imagination!!

    If we "solve the problems immediately" then what reason would anyone have to invest in training?

    If the only incentive you can think of to encourage investment in training is to deprive people of fuel and choice, then you have very little imagination.

    Necessity is the mother of invention.

    Command and control economies don't work. Let the market do its job with its invisible hand. People will invest in training if they have no alternative.
    So why command and control immigration?
    I support liberal immigration and people can get a visa so long as they're on a high wage.

    It's low wage open immigration that has ended. No new limits have been put on high wage immigration.
    So you would be enthusiastically backing the govt if it said that foreigners can come over here to drive trucks?
    I have no problem with bringing in truckers but where are you going to find them with half a million shortfall in Europe
    We would use some of Philip's money to pay them. Literally beggar thy neighbour but hey, that's the market solution. Right, Philip?
    You do realise that are neighbours are in a different market, not our market, don't you?

    We voted to leave the Single Market.
    No we did not. Hannon and many others explicitly said that voting to leave the EU DID NOT mean that we would leave the single market.

    They were wrong because Cúmmings and others had an agenda that if admitted at the time would have led to defeat for Leave.

    We will not let you people get away with lying about your lies.
    You are telling a lie.

    Hannon and others did not say that during the Referendum. That is a lie.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkof9CVerrQ

    That was 2015, though. So not during the referendum. Technically (if weaselly).

    The greater pathos is in what Dan Hannan wrote two days before the referendum;

    https://reaction.life/britain-looks-like-brexit/

    The United Kingdom now leads a 22-state bloc that forms a free trade area with the EU, but remains outside its political structures. For their part, the EU 24 have continued to push ahead with economic, military and political amalgamation. They now have a common police force and army, a pan-European income tax and a harmonised system of social security. These developments have prompted referendums in three other EU states on whether to copy Britain.
    Hannan’s fantasy was laughable.

    But a great source for deep psycho-analytic interpretation.

    There is a book to be written on the psychology and psychosis of Brexit.
    Maybe the issue is the psychology and psychosis of all people unable to see the merits of the other side's arguments, or are in denial about there being any.

    I would really like a PB fanbois to give me a "real" Brexit benefit, not just "sovereignty" crap as it doesn't pay any bills, and seems to restrict evrything we used to do.
    As has been discussed on here, rising wages across the UK is the best advert for Brexit

    No cheap labour from abroad undercutting wages and jobs
    Oh goody, inflation, leading to higher food and energy prices.
    Genuine question.

    Do you support importing cheap labour suppressing UK wages
    LUMP OF LABOUR FALLACY SIREN
    You hold a lot of store in that theory but it's just a theory based on the "science" of economics. Economics isn't an actual science and people who think it is usually think far too much of the field and themselves - see the likes of Krugman.
    Sorry, but your answer is total garbage.

    In any case, econometricians have looked time and time again at the impact of FOM and kept finding* that overall it led to:

    Higher productivity.
    Higher skills across the board.
    Higher wages (for native workers)
    More products & services (for native consumers).

    It’s not just theory; it’s observation from the data.

    *with one or two exceptions, and with a noted bias toward higher income groups.
    I think you keep using phrases like LUMP OF LABOUR FALLACY and fancy words like "econometricians" to support your pre-existing beliefs which you don't have whole-hearted confidence in.

    You had no answer to my question yesterday when I put it you that either: (a) a lack of EU free movement is pushing up wages due to labour shortages, or, (b) EU free movement had no effect on wages, except to benefit them, when we had all the labour we needed.

    They can't both be true. So which is it?
    Wage increases arising from a successful business in a benign environment, and wage increases necessitated by soaring costs are very different things.
    I'll answer it: free labour expands the size of the economy at a macro-level because it's easier to leverage greater production more quickly at lower cost to resource intensive businesses, and that will have a multiplier effect at the national level - it will keep costs of their products and services down giving some people more money in their pockets to spend.

    However, it will also - at the same time - keep wages low in those same jobs, defer investment in automation and equipment, lead to concentrated immigration in certain areas, create demand pressures on infrastructure, housing and public services, and - sadly - some social tensions.

    This is why we had such low unemployment and modest growth during the Cameron years, but poor productivity growth and very low real wage growth - most of the new jobs went to EU workers, and it was largely those in more globalised professional jobs that benefited.
    I'm not sure where the money for this investment in automation and equipment is coming from if employers are now compelled to hire for vastly inflated wages. More likely each new-hire will be expected to do the work hitherto done by three. Something always has to give, and it's never the MD replacing his Jag with a push bike.
    When I visited JCB recently (one of their depots, actually), they are working round the clock and orders are piling up. Someone is buying an awful lot of machinery.

    Given I was there related to an investment in equipment inspired by the massive tax incentive in the recent budget....
  • Officially, London had sought to calm the situation, but privately, it was dismissive of the French complaints, arguing that Paris had spent years reassuring itself that Brexit would be a disaster, and had therefore failed to practice even basic diplomacy to understand how London might seek to protect its influence and standing. One senior British official close to Johnson, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to describe government deliberations, told me that French diplomats spent so long listening to people in London who agreed with their view—that Brexit would see Britain sidelined in the world—that they failed to recognize what the U.K. would do to remain a central part of the Western alliance. “If all your ambassadors do is read the pages of the FT, don’t be surprised if the ‘fifth wheel’ is actually still attached to the car,” the official said.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/09/britain-france-us-aukus/620186/

    Given what I've read about French diplomats to the UK, I'm surprised any of them are still in a job.

    Their approach would make Jo Maugham blush.
    The French ambassador was recommending to her followers that they should reflect on 'Britain Alone'.

    https://twitter.com/AmbColonna/status/1378024545865580545
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    Officially, London had sought to calm the situation, but privately, it was dismissive of the French complaints, arguing that Paris had spent years reassuring itself that Brexit would be a disaster, and had therefore failed to practice even basic diplomacy to understand how London might seek to protect its influence and standing. One senior British official close to Johnson, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to describe government deliberations, told me that French diplomats spent so long listening to people in London who agreed with their view—that Brexit would see Britain sidelined in the world—that they failed to recognize what the U.K. would do to remain a central part of the Western alliance. “If all your ambassadors do is read the pages of the FT, don’t be surprised if the ‘fifth wheel’ is actually still attached to the car,” the official said.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/09/britain-france-us-aukus/620186/

    Given what I've read about French diplomats to the UK, I'm surprised any of them are still in a job.

    Their approach would make Jo Maugham blush.
    Ever tried to fire someone in France?

    Easier just to send then to a subsidy where they can do little harm....
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    Florida Republicans now looking at rescinding measles & mumps vaccine requirements, while continuing to spread disinformation that the Covid vaccine isn't "proven to work"
    https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/1441071490489856002

    Measles is one of the biggest childhood killers.
  • Breaking

    AA President Edmund King says there is no shortage of fuel and thousands of petrol stations are operating normally with just a few suffering temporary supply chain problems

    Hope this guy's more reliable than the predecessor of his who brawled with his sales director in a Basingstoke bar.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624
    eek said:

    Officially, London had sought to calm the situation, but privately, it was dismissive of the French complaints, arguing that Paris had spent years reassuring itself that Brexit would be a disaster, and had therefore failed to practice even basic diplomacy to understand how London might seek to protect its influence and standing. One senior British official close to Johnson, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to describe government deliberations, told me that French diplomats spent so long listening to people in London who agreed with their view—that Brexit would see Britain sidelined in the world—that they failed to recognize what the U.K. would do to remain a central part of the Western alliance. “If all your ambassadors do is read the pages of the FT, don’t be surprised if the ‘fifth wheel’ is actually still attached to the car,” the official said.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/09/britain-france-us-aukus/620186/

    Given what I've read about French diplomats to the UK, I'm surprised any of them are still in a job.

    Their approach would make Jo Maugham blush.
    Ever tried to fire someone in France?

    Easier just to send then to a subsidy where they can do little harm....
    Part of the problem will be group think - diplomacy often falls into the trap of hearing what you want. And actively suppressing the other noises....

    Before the Falklands, an MI6 agent in Argentina warned that something was up. The FO response was to suppress his reports and try and get him fired, so that reports wouldn't reach ministers and upset the FO internal policy on the Falklands.

    They were still trying to crush his career *after* Port Stanley was recaptured.
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 21,723
    Selebian said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    After reading the news this morning I went to the shop to buy some panic but they have run out even though I am assured there's enough panic to go round. What do I do?

    https://twitter.com/Scott_Wortley/status/1441323652062932995?s=20

    Laugh as much as you like, I'm the one with 80 litres of diesel in the tank and all Tavistock's remaining supplies of tonic water in the larder.
    I can sell you an 18 month old toilet roll

    £1 a sheet
    Used, or as new?

    (PS - how's Wes Streeting's leadership bid going?)
    Will only go ahead if Electoral College passes i assume
    Must be tricky for the anti-Starmer wing. Do you:
    (a) vote against the electoral college reforms to defeat and humiliate Starmer?
    (b) vote for them, so that Wes Streeting can then defeat and humiliate Starmer?
    (semi serious - voting for strengthens Starmer, outwardly, voting against weakens him)

    More seriously, what's your position on Streeting?
    No longer a member so no say on the matter.

    Had i still been a member i would not be voting for him under any foreseeable circumstance
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited September 2021
    Jake Brown, a 27-year-old former non-league footballer, founded Avro Energy in 2014 while studying law at Birmingham University

    The collapse of Avro’s consumer division on Wednesday was the biggest failure yet seen of a household supplier

    Jake's father Andrew joined the business in 2017. The pair do not appear to have invested any of their own money in the company, which has been financed by the advance fees paid by customers. Each owns half the shares in Avro Group, the holding company for a string of businesses

    https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1441305343816990720?s=20

    Sounds rather ponzi-scheme light....we have no money, no investment, we rely on new money coming in. No wonder they weren't hedging.
  • Breaking

    AA President Edmund King says there is no shortage of fuel and thousands of petrol stations are operating normally with just a few suffering temporary supply chain problems

    Hope this guy's more reliable than the predecessor of his who brawled with his sales director in a Basingstoke bar.
    He is being quoted on Sky and both Sky and BBC are confirming that there is no fuel shortage and only a small number of service stations are suffering supply problems
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739
  • Breaking

    AA President Edmund King says there is no shortage of fuel and thousands of petrol stations are operating normally with just a few suffering temporary supply chain problems

    Hope this guy's more reliable than the predecessor of his who brawled with his sales director in a Basingstoke bar.
    He is being quoted on Sky and both Sky and BBC are confirming that there is no fuel shortage and only a small number of service stations are suffering supply problems
    Anecdata: I drove past my local BP garage on the way back from my run. It is normally fairly quiet (compared to the nearby Mossies petrol station), but every lane was queuing.

    On another note: yesterday I reached 2,000 miles run this year. Obsessive, moi? ;)
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575

    Nigelb said:

    Florida Republicans now looking at rescinding measles & mumps vaccine requirements, while continuing to spread disinformation that the Covid vaccine isn't "proven to work"
    https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/1441071490489856002

    Measles is one of the biggest childhood killers.

    To be fair, it is good progress in finally reducing the percentage of children killed by guns.
    There's that.
    OTOH, measles infection wipes immune memory (which is why it's a killer), so if an outbreak is sufficiently widespread, we might even get a whole new Covid wave sometime in the future.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,884

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    algarkirk said:

    Cicero said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    DavidL said:

    Brexit is working, its the only gamebin town. Driver shortages, container shortages etc are everywhere.

    Driver shortages and container shortages aren't the same as food and petrol shortages, however. I haven't seen any reports of these in northern continental Europe up to now, which is what the Daily Mail constituency are beginning to notice also.
    Disruptions in supply may well vary but a shortage of drivers makes such disruptions inevitable and that seems pretty universal in Europe at the moment.

    There was a professional driver on R5 when I was driving home a couple of days ago who described how drivers had been treated as third class citizens, made to wait hours for both loads to be put on or taken off with no provision for them in terms of places to go and a pretty basic wage for a lonely, boring job. He admitted that he had just had a wage increase and that the supermarkets were now much keener to get them in and out. I am sure the likes of Tesco will want all its drivers on the road again as fast as possible at the moment.
    5 live this morning had truckers phoning in complaining about the medias attempt to blame Brexit and reiterating the comments you make

    Furthermore a trucker phoned in who works in Europe who said there are half a million drivers short in Europe and the idea the UK could just get drivers from Europe is unrealistic

    It was very interesting to hear from trucker themselves
    We did this yesterday. If you are an EU driver you can work anywhere in the EU. The shortages in one country get covered by drivers from another country. "Just pay more" works here because there is a vast labour pool.

    If the UK offered a 3 month work visa and a shit ton of cash, we absolutely will get drivers come over. Because the fortune on offer here to your Latvian truck driver demolishes what is on offer elsewhere.

    "Just pay more" doesn't work in the GB because we have a small labour pool which is fixed. All we can do is poach drivers from one firm to another and back again without actually fixing the issue.
    The labour pool is about 50 million people in this country.

    32.7 million people (2019) have a full driver's licence.

    If poaching people is all we can do you have a very small imagination.

    So your solution is to suffer the shortages until enough people can be persuaded to train as HGV drivers when the alternative is to train HGV drivers and also solve the problems we have now immediately. And you say others lack imagination!!

    If we "solve the problems immediately" then what reason would anyone have to invest in training?

    If the only incentive you can think of to encourage investment in training is to deprive people of fuel and choice, then you have very little imagination.

    Necessity is the mother of invention.

    Command and control economies don't work. Let the market do its job with its invisible hand. People will invest in training if they have no alternative.
    So why command and control immigration?
    I support liberal immigration and people can get a visa so long as they're on a high wage.

    It's low wage open immigration that has ended. No new limits have been put on high wage immigration.
    So you would be enthusiastically backing the govt if it said that foreigners can come over here to drive trucks?
    I have no problem with bringing in truckers but where are you going to find them with half a million shortfall in Europe
    We would use some of Philip's money to pay them. Literally beggar thy neighbour but hey, that's the market solution. Right, Philip?
    You do realise that are neighbours are in a different market, not our market, don't you?

    We voted to leave the Single Market.
    No we did not. Hannon and many others explicitly said that voting to leave the EU DID NOT mean that we would leave the single market.

    They were wrong because Cúmmings and others had an agenda that if admitted at the time would have led to defeat for Leave.

    We will not let you people get away with lying about your lies.
    You are telling a lie.

    Hannon and others did not say that during the Referendum. That is a lie.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkof9CVerrQ

    That was 2015, though. So not during the referendum. Technically (if weaselly).

    The greater pathos is in what Dan Hannan wrote two days before the referendum;

    https://reaction.life/britain-looks-like-brexit/

    The United Kingdom now leads a 22-state bloc that forms a free trade area with the EU, but remains outside its political structures. For their part, the EU 24 have continued to push ahead with economic, military and political amalgamation. They now have a common police force and army, a pan-European income tax and a harmonised system of social security. These developments have prompted referendums in three other EU states on whether to copy Britain.
    Hannan’s fantasy was laughable.

    But a great source for deep psycho-analytic interpretation.

    There is a book to be written on the psychology and psychosis of Brexit.
    Maybe the issue is the psychology and psychosis of all people unable to see the merits of the other side's arguments, or are in denial about there being any.

    I would really like a PB fanbois to give me a "real" Brexit benefit, not just "sovereignty" crap as it doesn't pay any bills, and seems to restrict evrything we used to do.
    As has been discussed on here, rising wages across the UK is the best advert for Brexit

    No cheap labour from abroad undercutting wages and jobs
    Oh goody, inflation, leading to higher food and energy prices.
    Genuine question.

    Do you support importing cheap labour suppressing UK wages
    LUMP OF LABOUR FALLACY SIREN
    You hold a lot of store in that theory but it's just a theory based on the "science" of economics. Economics isn't an actual science and people who think it is usually think far too much of the field and themselves - see the likes of Krugman.
    Sorry, but your answer is total garbage.

    In any case, econometricians have looked time and time again at the impact of FOM and kept finding that overall it led to:

    Higher productivity.
    Higher skills across the board.
    Higher wages (for native workers)
    More products & services (for native consumers).

    It’s not just theory; it’s observation.
    Econometrics. Don't make me laugh. If those guys were actually any good they'd all have made millions in the city.

    Their framing is incorrect. They start with a goal of wanting all trade and all immigration to have value and then work backwards.

    The observation we have now is that the UK is seeing surging wages at the bottom of the market because low wage immigrants are now unable to come to the UK. What happens next is still up for debate, however, we know from countries like Switzerland which have very high barriers to entry at the bottom but none at the top it results in the whole nation being better off rather than just the few at the top who get cheaper services and better pay.

    You really should stop thinking of economics as a science. It isn't. Any economist who says it is and tries to dress it up with econometrics is a fool.
    Economics isn't really a hard science but econometric techniques, if applied properly, can yield useful insights. Simply dismissing their arguments because you disagree with their findings just makes you look silly.
    Plenty of economists do work in finance of course, and some of them are doing quite well out of it (cough). It's by no means the bad ones who stay in academia either. If anything it's a profession where wages tend to be inversely related to talent at the top, in my experience, because the best economists tend to gravitate towards academia and research careers.
    I don't disagree with any of that and I'm not dismissing the idea of the lump of labour fallacy, in fact I think it's probably correct and it's also why I think trade deals are a net good. My issue has always been the blind spot from academics who overwhelmingly support unlimited immigration on wages at the bottom of the market. Wages for people like me going up by 20% *may* create a trickle down effect to raise wages at the bottom, the evidence is not particularly clear on that, but we do know that people like me do well in a high immigration environment and wages at the top rising quickly does also result in higher overall GDP and better overall productivity. Those are probably close to fact.

    However, and there obviously is one, you can't simply apply the same theory to the bottom of the market where investment in productivity is low, the supply of labour is high and the barrier to entry non-existent. The market is totally different and it's increasingly obvious that the gains from EU immigration were made at the top (people like us) and those people at the bottom saw years of wage stagnation. That we're now seeing record wage inflation at the bottom does rather prove that quite emphatically. What I'm not saying and haven't said is that this will result to any increase in GDP, personally I don't think it will, it may lead to an overall reduction in GDP and maybe even GDP per capita.

    My main point is that I don't think GDP or GDP per capita is a particular valuable or important statistic, I'd rather have a lower GDP with the national income properly distributed than a very high one with the top 5% of people having an economic share of 40% and the bottom 20% of people having just 5% or whatever income inequality is at the moment. If it means I have to pay more for my coffee or my restaurant bill goes up a bit then that's probably worth it for people who serve me my coffee and bring the food to my table to earn a proper living wage.
    I agree with all of that. I would like to see a lasting compression of incomes but I am sceptical that Brexit will deliver it, and I think there are plenty of other policy changes that could deliver it with less collateral damage to the economy and without reducing people's rights and opportunities as Brexit has. I am also sceptical of all this championing of the lower paid from the kind of people who would normally cross the road to piss on the working class.
    That's not fair. Most of us (very few exceptions) genuinely want to see the working class do well.

    The difference is in how we think that should be achieved.

    For instance I have long argued we should lower real tax rates on the poorest in society instead of relying upon tax and redistribution. Now for people who believe in redistribution as the solution that may sound like piss, but it isn't.

    Its the old 'teach a man to fish' analogy. Those who advocate 'teaching a man to fish' aren't advocating pushing him in the water and letting him drown or starve.
    I too think that those who earn the least should pay very little tax. However others think that paying some tax is part of the social contract - its showing that stuffs costs money. The NHS costs money etc. Its the old issue with prescriptions - if you don't pay for them, you perhaps value them less and don't worry if you don't use the meds. I know of people who get the repeats month after month, despite no longer needing/using them. They wouldn't do that if they paid for them. (I'm not arguing that everyone should pay, by the way.)
    And yet we do all pay tax - VAT, but in the UK we hide that. The American system where the state tax etc is added on to the display price is one example.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,003
    edited September 2021
    1 in 90 have covid in England in the last week, down from 1 in 80
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739
    🚨 | NEW: A vegetable firm in Lincolnshire is currently advertising a broccoli picker role for £30-per-hour - equivalent to around £62,000-a-year. 

    Via @DailyMailUK
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    The cheapest production car which will do 0-60 in under 3 seconds will be a 2.7t pickup truck.
    https://insideevs.com/news/534101/electric-cars-60mph-acceleration-20210919/
  • Jake Brown, a 27-year-old former non-league footballer, founded Avro Energy in 2014 while studying law at Birmingham University

    The collapse of Avro’s consumer division on Wednesday was the biggest failure yet seen of a household supplier

    Jake's father Andrew joined the business in 2017. The pair do not appear to have invested any of their own money in the company, which has been financed by the advance fees paid by customers. Each owns half the shares in Avro Group, the holding company for a string of businesses

    https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1441305343816990720?s=20

    Sounds rather ponzi-scheme light....we have no money, no investment, we rely on new money coming in. No wonder they weren't hedging.

    The big question is: what the hell was the regulator (OFGEM) doing? Did they not even do two minutes due diligence before granting Avro's Electricity Supply Licence?
    Probably run by the same people who run the Gambling Commission.....Football Index, seems a solid idea to us....
  • Jake Brown, a 27-year-old former non-league footballer, founded Avro Energy in 2014 while studying law at Birmingham University

    The collapse of Avro’s consumer division on Wednesday was the biggest failure yet seen of a household supplier

    Jake's father Andrew joined the business in 2017. The pair do not appear to have invested any of their own money in the company, which has been financed by the advance fees paid by customers. Each owns half the shares in Avro Group, the holding company for a string of businesses

    https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1441305343816990720?s=20

    Sounds rather ponzi-scheme light....we have no money, no investment, we rely on new money coming in. No wonder they weren't hedging.

    The big question is: what the hell was the regulator (OFGEM) doing? Did they not even do two minutes due diligence before granting Avro's Electricity Supply Licence?
    Indeed.

    My suspicion is they went really light on regulating these businesses with funny names because the politicians wanted to see a really active market full of supposed choice. Of course we now see the whole thing was an illusion.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739
    Petrol panic-buying begins as UK plunges towards Winter of Discontent 2.0 https://trib.al/NGGZxZk https://twitter.com/DailyMailUK/status/1441340407816749058/photo/1
  • Scott_xP said:

    🚨 | NEW: A vegetable firm in Lincolnshire is currently advertising a broccoli picker role for £30-per-hour - equivalent to around £62,000-a-year. 

    Via @DailyMailUK

    Should thoroughly test the theory that Brits wont do this back breaking hard labour at any price.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739
    More than half of U.K. adults say they have faced more difficulties than usual shopping for food over the past two weeks, according to an official survey https://trib.al/uXYRWyB
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,884
    Selebian said:


    James Melville
    @JamesMelville
    ·
    15h
    Sweden has announced they will not implement vaccine passports. Hats off to Sweden. Again.
    #NoVaccinePassports
    Heart suitFlag of Sweden

    Least surprising news of the day?

    In other news, googling that, Sweden is apparently going to remove its remaining Covid restrictions this month. Only two and a bit months after the UK...

    (Yes, I know for long periods they had looser restrictions than us and never had anything matching our tightest restrictions)
    Isn't the point of vaccine passports to provide pressure on the unvaccinated, as happened in France?
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540
    edited September 2021
    Slowly declining in England & NI, flat everywhere else:

    Last week:


    This week:

  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739

    Should thoroughly test the theory that Brits wont do this back breaking hard labour at any price.

    Followed swiftly by how willing we are to pay 20 quid for a head of broccoli...
  • Scott_xP said:
    Never urge people not to panic buy should be one of politics rule 101s.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited September 2021

    Jake Brown, a 27-year-old former non-league footballer, founded Avro Energy in 2014 while studying law at Birmingham University

    The collapse of Avro’s consumer division on Wednesday was the biggest failure yet seen of a household supplier

    Jake's father Andrew joined the business in 2017. The pair do not appear to have invested any of their own money in the company, which has been financed by the advance fees paid by customers. Each owns half the shares in Avro Group, the holding company for a string of businesses

    https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1441305343816990720?s=20

    Sounds rather ponzi-scheme light....we have no money, no investment, we rely on new money coming in. No wonder they weren't hedging.

    The big question is: what the hell was the regulator (OFGEM) doing? Did they not even do two minutes due diligence before granting Avro's Electricity Supply Licence?
    Indeed.

    My suspicion is they went really light on regulating these businesses with funny names because the politicians wanted to see a really active market full of supposed choice. Of course we now see the whole thing was an illusion.
    I was wondering how a sector could go from a big 6 plus a small number of niche providers e.g. only using renewables, to 80+ companies in the space of a few years.

    I think it has become clear now, no money down, business model based upon taking payment upfront, no hedging, no obvious signs you a suitable for such a business, no problemo says the authorities.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851
    Labour, my party, the only party with an interest in fighting class privilege, whither we?

    I'm most familiar with the Owen Jones recipe and I like it. But today I read Mandy's take - as below - and I like this too. Are they are at odds and so me liking both shows my utter confusion? No. They are ying and yang. It's about fusing modernity and radicalism. I'd like to see both of them in Starmer's first cabinet.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/23/keir-starmer-labour-three-things-to-do?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
  • 'But the French!' always a reliable indicator on the PB squirrelometer; somewhere between 'But Merkel' and 'But Ursula vdL!'.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,587

    algarkirk said:

    Cicero said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    DavidL said:

    Brexit is working, its the only gamebin town. Driver shortages, container shortages etc are everywhere.

    Driver shortages and container shortages aren't the same as food and petrol shortages, however. I haven't seen any reports of these in northern continental Europe up to now, which is what the Daily Mail constituency are beginning to notice also.
    Disruptions in supply may well vary but a shortage of drivers makes such disruptions inevitable and that seems pretty universal in Europe at the moment.

    There was a professional driver on R5 when I was driving home a couple of days ago who described how drivers had been treated as third class citizens, made to wait hours for both loads to be put on or taken off with no provision for them in terms of places to go and a pretty basic wage for a lonely, boring job. He admitted that he had just had a wage increase and that the supermarkets were now much keener to get them in and out. I am sure the likes of Tesco will want all its drivers on the road again as fast as possible at the moment.
    5 live this morning had truckers phoning in complaining about the medias attempt to blame Brexit and reiterating the comments you make

    Furthermore a trucker phoned in who works in Europe who said there are half a million drivers short in Europe and the idea the UK could just get drivers from Europe is unrealistic

    It was very interesting to hear from trucker themselves
    We did this yesterday. If you are an EU driver you can work anywhere in the EU. The shortages in one country get covered by drivers from another country. "Just pay more" works here because there is a vast labour pool.

    If the UK offered a 3 month work visa and a shit ton of cash, we absolutely will get drivers come over. Because the fortune on offer here to your Latvian truck driver demolishes what is on offer elsewhere.

    "Just pay more" doesn't work in the GB because we have a small labour pool which is fixed. All we can do is poach drivers from one firm to another and back again without actually fixing the issue.
    The labour pool is about 50 million people in this country.

    32.7 million people (2019) have a full driver's licence.

    If poaching people is all we can do you have a very small imagination.

    So your solution is to suffer the shortages until enough people can be persuaded to train as HGV drivers when the alternative is to train HGV drivers and also solve the problems we have now immediately. And you say others lack imagination!!

    If we "solve the problems immediately" then what reason would anyone have to invest in training?

    If the only incentive you can think of to encourage investment in training is to deprive people of fuel and choice, then you have very little imagination.

    Necessity is the mother of invention.

    Command and control economies don't work. Let the market do its job with its invisible hand. People will invest in training if they have no alternative.
    So why command and control immigration?
    I support liberal immigration and people can get a visa so long as they're on a high wage.

    It's low wage open immigration that has ended. No new limits have been put on high wage immigration.
    So you would be enthusiastically backing the govt if it said that foreigners can come over here to drive trucks?
    I have no problem with bringing in truckers but where are you going to find them with half a million shortfall in Europe
    We would use some of Philip's money to pay them. Literally beggar thy neighbour but hey, that's the market solution. Right, Philip?
    You do realise that are neighbours are in a different market, not our market, don't you?

    We voted to leave the Single Market.
    No we did not. Hannon and many others explicitly said that voting to leave the EU DID NOT mean that we would leave the single market.

    They were wrong because Cúmmings and others had an agenda that if admitted at the time would have led to defeat for Leave.

    We will not let you people get away with lying about your lies.
    You are telling a lie.

    Hannon and others did not say that during the Referendum. That is a lie.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkof9CVerrQ

    That was 2015, though. So not during the referendum. Technically (if weaselly).

    The greater pathos is in what Dan Hannan wrote two days before the referendum;

    https://reaction.life/britain-looks-like-brexit/

    The United Kingdom now leads a 22-state bloc that forms a free trade area with the EU, but remains outside its political structures. For their part, the EU 24 have continued to push ahead with economic, military and political amalgamation. They now have a common police force and army, a pan-European income tax and a harmonised system of social security. These developments have prompted referendums in three other EU states on whether to copy Britain.
    Hannan’s fantasy was laughable.

    But a great source for deep psycho-analytic interpretation.

    There is a book to be written on the psychology and psychosis of Brexit.
    Maybe the issue is the psychology and psychosis of all people unable to see the merits of the other side's arguments, or are in denial about there being any.

    I would really like a PB fanbois to give me a "real" Brexit benefit, not just "sovereignty" crap as it doesn't pay any bills, and seems to restrict evrything we used to do.
    Five real benefits:

    1: We can elect the government that sets our laws - and kick out the bastards if they do things we dislike.
    2: We can control the money that we spend rather than having over £350m a week gross being sent into Europe, of which we only got some of it back and not all spent in the UK how we wanted it spent.
    3: We can cherrypick and have a free trade, zero-tariff, zero-quota agreement with Europe and sign free trade deals with any other nations we choose to do so too such as the CPTPP etc potentially. The CPTPP if we join it will be even bigger than the EU and would come on top of our free trade agreement with Europe.
    4: We can control our own natural resources as we choose to do so.
    5: We can control the immigration system so that we can get high skilled, high wage migrants who can contribute to society instead of low skilled, low wage migrants who deflated our economy while increasing pressure on housing and services.

    If you want those 5 summarised in one word each: Laws, Money, Trade, Fish and Borders - the issues we've been debating for years now!
    Ooh, I have just seen the FIVE unicorns you have shown me happily grazing on the filling station forecourt lawn as I queued to panic buy 50 litres of diesel.
  • Jake Brown, a 27-year-old former non-league footballer, founded Avro Energy in 2014 while studying law at Birmingham University

    The collapse of Avro’s consumer division on Wednesday was the biggest failure yet seen of a household supplier

    Jake's father Andrew joined the business in 2017. The pair do not appear to have invested any of their own money in the company, which has been financed by the advance fees paid by customers. Each owns half the shares in Avro Group, the holding company for a string of businesses

    https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1441305343816990720?s=20

    Sounds rather ponzi-scheme light....we have no money, no investment, we rely on new money coming in. No wonder they weren't hedging.

    The big question is: what the hell was the regulator (OFGEM) doing? Did they not even do two minutes due diligence before granting Avro's Electricity Supply Licence?
    Curiouser and curiouser. Possibly Ofgem warned the government. Government took no notice. Ofgem leaked to Ed Miliband.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/energy-companies-uk-bust-latest-b1925373.html
  • Owen's been on the black broth again.

    Owen Paterson
    @OwenPaterson
    1h
    I'm proud to be a Spartan. Our determination to resist extraordinary pressure & consistently vote against bad deals has made British democracy much freer to make its own decisions.
    Eg 1.9m UK citizens in NI have not fully left EU & much still to do in other areas such as fishing.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited September 2021

    Jake Brown, a 27-year-old former non-league footballer, founded Avro Energy in 2014 while studying law at Birmingham University

    The collapse of Avro’s consumer division on Wednesday was the biggest failure yet seen of a household supplier

    Jake's father Andrew joined the business in 2017. The pair do not appear to have invested any of their own money in the company, which has been financed by the advance fees paid by customers. Each owns half the shares in Avro Group, the holding company for a string of businesses

    https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1441305343816990720?s=20

    Sounds rather ponzi-scheme light....we have no money, no investment, we rely on new money coming in. No wonder they weren't hedging.

    The big question is: what the hell was the regulator (OFGEM) doing? Did they not even do two minutes due diligence before granting Avro's Electricity Supply Licence?
    Curiouser and curiouser. Possibly Ofgem warned the government. Government took no notice. Ofgem leaked to Ed Miliband.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/energy-companies-uk-bust-latest-b1925373.html
    Ed Miliband, the idiot for whom a price cap on energy bills was a central plank of his manifesto....
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842

    Jake Brown, a 27-year-old former non-league footballer, founded Avro Energy in 2014 while studying law at Birmingham University

    The collapse of Avro’s consumer division on Wednesday was the biggest failure yet seen of a household supplier

    Jake's father Andrew joined the business in 2017. The pair do not appear to have invested any of their own money in the company, which has been financed by the advance fees paid by customers. Each owns half the shares in Avro Group, the holding company for a string of businesses

    https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1441305343816990720?s=20

    Sounds rather ponzi-scheme light....we have no money, no investment, we rely on new money coming in. No wonder they weren't hedging.

    The big question is: what the hell was the regulator (OFGEM) doing? Did they not even do two minutes due diligence before granting Avro's Electricity Supply Licence?
    Probably run by the same people who run the Gambling Commission.....Football Index, seems a solid idea to us....
    Also the FCA & Lendy, Savingstream....

    Now these are businesses where I punted (And got out ahead due to bonus clearing & err panicking early) based on pawnbroking & charges over properties.
    Never mind the paintings not being sold for valuation at auction, in plenty of cases Savingstream didn't even have the physical painting; and the RICS valuations for Lendy were frankly fraudulent.

    Yet the FCA seems determined to go after cryptocurrencies, specifically Binance. Now you may well lose your shirt in Crypto, but the currencies are all at least there in the various blockchains unlike all the above...
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    Jake Brown, a 27-year-old former non-league footballer, founded Avro Energy in 2014 while studying law at Birmingham University

    The collapse of Avro’s consumer division on Wednesday was the biggest failure yet seen of a household supplier

    Jake's father Andrew joined the business in 2017. The pair do not appear to have invested any of their own money in the company, which has been financed by the advance fees paid by customers. Each owns half the shares in Avro Group, the holding company for a string of businesses

    https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1441305343816990720?s=20

    Sounds rather ponzi-scheme light....we have no money, no investment, we rely on new money coming in. No wonder they weren't hedging.

    The big question is: what the hell was the regulator (OFGEM) doing? Did they not even do two minutes due diligence before granting Avro's Electricity Supply Licence?
    Curiouser and curiouser. Possibly Ofgem warned the government. Government took no notice. Ofgem leaked to Ed Miliband.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/energy-companies-uk-bust-latest-b1925373.html
    But Ofgem are the regulator, not the government.
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,257

    Selebian said:


    James Melville
    @JamesMelville
    ·
    15h
    Sweden has announced they will not implement vaccine passports. Hats off to Sweden. Again.
    #NoVaccinePassports
    Heart suitFlag of Sweden

    Least surprising news of the day?

    In other news, googling that, Sweden is apparently going to remove its remaining Covid restrictions this month. Only two and a bit months after the UK...

    (Yes, I know for long periods they had looser restrictions than us and never had anything matching our tightest restrictions)
    Isn't the point of vaccine passports to provide pressure on the unvaccinated, as happened in France?
    My quick google (I didn't find a good source for the OP tweet) suggested that Sweden had announced plans for a vaccine passport - may have just been for travel. If so, announcing then cancelling probably does the work for you (as here, arguably).
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739
    Key cabinet ministers will meet this afternoon to agree plan for lorry drivers shortage.

    Cabinet are split on visas, with George Eustice and Steve Barclay pushing for.

    I understand solution could involve something similar to Seasonal Workers Scheme to avert immediate pressure.

    Not confirmed whether Priti Patel will attend, but strongest opposition expected from the home office.

    Strong rhetoric from Grant Shapps and Kwasi Kwarteng on need to reduce reliance on cheap foreign labour.

    Sources expect any scheme would need to be strictly time-limited.


    https://twitter.com/tamcohen/status/1441362264271962118
  • Jake Brown, a 27-year-old former non-league footballer, founded Avro Energy in 2014 while studying law at Birmingham University

    The collapse of Avro’s consumer division on Wednesday was the biggest failure yet seen of a household supplier

    Jake's father Andrew joined the business in 2017. The pair do not appear to have invested any of their own money in the company, which has been financed by the advance fees paid by customers. Each owns half the shares in Avro Group, the holding company for a string of businesses

    https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1441305343816990720?s=20

    Sounds rather ponzi-scheme light....we have no money, no investment, we rely on new money coming in. No wonder they weren't hedging.

    The big question is: what the hell was the regulator (OFGEM) doing? Did they not even do two minutes due diligence before granting Avro's Electricity Supply Licence?
    Curiouser and curiouser. Possibly Ofgem warned the government. Government took no notice. Ofgem leaked to Ed Miliband.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/energy-companies-uk-bust-latest-b1925373.html
    Ed Miliband, the idiot for whom a price cap on energy bills was a central plank of his manifesto....
    I thought that was Theresa May.

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9652603/millions-line-80-year-theresa-mays-energy-price-cap-effects/
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    edited September 2021
    Scott_xP said:

    Should thoroughly test the theory that Brits wont do this back breaking hard labour at any price.

    Followed swiftly by how willing we are to pay 20 quid for a head of broccoli...
    More likely, the broccoli just isn’t harvested and doesn’t make it to the shops. Nobody can buy that broccoli.

    Result:

    Less broccoli choice
    More expensive broccoli
    Fewer broccoli jobs
    More broccoli imports
    Fewer broccoli exports

    Now repeat across the entire economy.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited September 2021
    Scott_xP said:

    Key cabinet ministers will meet this afternoon to agree plan for lorry drivers shortage.

    Cabinet are split on visas, with George Eustice and Steve Barclay pushing for.

    I understand solution could involve something similar to Seasonal Workers Scheme to avert immediate pressure.

    Not confirmed whether Priti Patel will attend, but strongest opposition expected from the home office.

    Strong rhetoric from Grant Shapps and Kwasi Kwarteng on need to reduce reliance on cheap foreign labour.

    Sources expect any scheme would need to be strictly time-limited.


    https://twitter.com/tamcohen/status/1441362264271962118

    What an ideological bind. The official line is that Brexit is now a heroic quest for better working conditions, although it was originally conceived in exactly the opposite ideological spirit, but that's much too long-term a rhetoric to solve a current and pressing problem.

  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,282
    Good idea from Labour: they intend to reduce the number of foreign investors buying property in this country.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10024705/Labour-bids-Tory-mantle-party-home-ownership.html
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited September 2021
    Pulpstar said:

    Jake Brown, a 27-year-old former non-league footballer, founded Avro Energy in 2014 while studying law at Birmingham University

    The collapse of Avro’s consumer division on Wednesday was the biggest failure yet seen of a household supplier

    Jake's father Andrew joined the business in 2017. The pair do not appear to have invested any of their own money in the company, which has been financed by the advance fees paid by customers. Each owns half the shares in Avro Group, the holding company for a string of businesses

    https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1441305343816990720?s=20

    Sounds rather ponzi-scheme light....we have no money, no investment, we rely on new money coming in. No wonder they weren't hedging.

    The big question is: what the hell was the regulator (OFGEM) doing? Did they not even do two minutes due diligence before granting Avro's Electricity Supply Licence?
    Probably run by the same people who run the Gambling Commission.....Football Index, seems a solid idea to us....
    Also the FCA & Lendy, Savingstream....

    Now these are businesses where I punted (And got out ahead due to bonus clearing & err panicking early) based on pawnbroking & charges over properties.
    Never mind the paintings not being sold for valuation at auction, in plenty of cases Savingstream didn't even have the physical painting; and the RICS valuations for Lendy were frankly fraudulent.

    Yet the FCA seems determined to go after cryptocurrencies, specifically Binance. Now you may well lose your shirt in Crypto, but the currencies are all at least there in the various blockchains unlike all the above...
    I think the particular issue with Binance is that there are 10,000 coins that have been created and they love to list any old shit on there. There are absolutely legit projects e.g. Solana, that are backed by big money, network can handle more transactions per second than VISA, but every one of those there are 100 that are scams.

    Coinbase on the other hand are much more cautious over what they list, I think its only 50-60, and they never seem less in the crosshairs of UK regulators.

    Binance also offer a whole load of financial products as well, loans, staking, etc. And again, quite a bit of it is on the lot more riskier end of things. BlockFi offers a smaller range of finances products, that look a lot more legit and again isn't in trouble in the UK.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880
    Scott_xP said:

    Petrol panic-buying begins as UK plunges towards Winter of Discontent 2.0 https://trib.al/NGGZxZk https://twitter.com/DailyMailUK/status/1441340407816749058/photo/1

    Life is going to be exactly as depicted by Cormac McCarthy in The Road and it's all going to be blamed on Brexit.
  • Breaking

    Key cabinet ministers meeting this afternoon to address driver shortages and visa scheme
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    edited September 2021
    RobD said:

    Jake Brown, a 27-year-old former non-league footballer, founded Avro Energy in 2014 while studying law at Birmingham University

    The collapse of Avro’s consumer division on Wednesday was the biggest failure yet seen of a household supplier

    Jake's father Andrew joined the business in 2017. The pair do not appear to have invested any of their own money in the company, which has been financed by the advance fees paid by customers. Each owns half the shares in Avro Group, the holding company for a string of businesses

    https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1441305343816990720?s=20

    Sounds rather ponzi-scheme light....we have no money, no investment, we rely on new money coming in. No wonder they weren't hedging.

    The big question is: what the hell was the regulator (OFGEM) doing? Did they not even do two minutes due diligence before granting Avro's Electricity Supply Licence?
    Curiouser and curiouser. Possibly Ofgem warned the government. Government took no notice. Ofgem leaked to Ed Miliband.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/energy-companies-uk-bust-latest-b1925373.html
    But Ofgem are the regulator, not the government.
    That's an article of Ofgem talking about systemic risk, not the "goings on" at Avro - where they look to have been completely asleep at the wheel.
  • I see @Casino_Royale has trouble with the word “econometricians”.

    Perhaps he discovered an undercover “woke” cell at HM Treasury or something.
  • Andy_JS said:

    Good idea from Labour: they intend to reduce the number of foreign investors buying property in this country.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10024705/Labour-bids-Tory-mantle-party-home-ownership.html

    It is a 50 (yes fifty) percent cap! The only place it will make any difference is prime central London, and then only marginally at 50% foreign ownership.

    If it was a 10% cap it would make a difference. Increasing the foreign non resident surcharge significantly is the better solution.
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,257

    Scott_xP said:

    Should thoroughly test the theory that Brits wont do this back breaking hard labour at any price.

    Followed swiftly by how willing we are to pay 20 quid for a head of broccoli...
    More likely, the broccoli just isn’t harvested and doesn’t make it to the shops. Nobody can buy that broccoli.

    Result:

    Less broccoli choice
    More expensive broccoli
    Fewer broccoli jobs
    More broccoli imports
    Fewer broccoli exports

    Now repeat across the entire economy.
    You forget: happier (if possibly less healthy) kids :wink:

    (although my two actually eat broccoli very happily - pretty much at the top of their veg preference list, maybe after sweetcorn - it's supposed to be something they hate, isn't it?)
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739

    Result:

    Less broccoli choice
    More expensive broccoli
    Fewer broccoli jobs
    More broccoli imports
    Fewer broccoli exports

    Now repeat across the entire economy.

    I believe the phrase you are looking for is "Brexit dividend"...
  • Breaking

    Key cabinet ministers meeting this afternoon to address driver shortages and visa scheme

    Cue frantic ideological whiplash from the PB Tories.
  • Jake Brown, a 27-year-old former non-league footballer, founded Avro Energy in 2014 while studying law at Birmingham University

    The collapse of Avro’s consumer division on Wednesday was the biggest failure yet seen of a household supplier

    Jake's father Andrew joined the business in 2017. The pair do not appear to have invested any of their own money in the company, which has been financed by the advance fees paid by customers. Each owns half the shares in Avro Group, the holding company for a string of businesses

    https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1441305343816990720?s=20

    Sounds rather ponzi-scheme light....we have no money, no investment, we rely on new money coming in. No wonder they weren't hedging.

    The big question is: what the hell was the regulator (OFGEM) doing? Did they not even do two minutes due diligence before granting Avro's Electricity Supply Licence?
    Curiouser and curiouser. Possibly Ofgem warned the government. Government took no notice. Ofgem leaked to Ed Miliband.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/energy-companies-uk-bust-latest-b1925373.html
    Ed Miliband, the idiot for whom a price cap on energy bills was a central plank of his manifesto....
    I thought that was Theresa May.

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9652603/millions-line-80-year-theresa-mays-energy-price-cap-effects/
    She was an idiot too.
  • Breaking

    Key cabinet ministers meeting this afternoon to address driver shortages and visa scheme

    The government need to have the courage of their Brexit convictions here. Tell the hauliers to offer higher wages, recruit the Billy Brits, or else get stuffed.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Dura_Ace said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Petrol panic-buying begins as UK plunges towards Winter of Discontent 2.0 https://trib.al/NGGZxZk https://twitter.com/DailyMailUK/status/1441340407816749058/photo/1

    Life is going to be exactly as depicted by Cormac McCarthy in The Road and it's all going to be blamed on Brexit.
    Christ, the Daily Mail in that link. Has nobody told them that you never go full retard?
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739

    Cue frantic ideological whiplash from the PB Tories.

    "We have never been at war with Eastasia said that foreign truckers were bad..."
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,884

    Breaking

    AA President Edmund King says there is no shortage of fuel and thousands of petrol stations are operating normally with just a few suffering temporary supply chain problems

    Hope this guy's more reliable than the predecessor of his who brawled with his sales director in a Basingstoke bar.
    He is being quoted on Sky and both Sky and BBC are confirming that there is no fuel shortage and only a small number of service stations are suffering supply problems
    Anecdata: I drove past my local BP garage on the way back from my run. It is normally fairly quiet (compared to the nearby Mossies petrol station), but every lane was queuing.

    On another note: yesterday I reached 2,000 miles run this year. Obsessive, moi? ;)
    Top work on the running. I was trying to walk or run 1000 for the year. Lockdown helped, now mostly back on campus and less done, so need another 400 miles by Dec 2021...
  • Breaking

    Key cabinet ministers meeting this afternoon to address driver shortages and visa scheme

    The government need to have the courage of their Brexit convictions here. Tell the hauliers to offer higher wages, recruit the Billy Brits, or else get stuffed.
    I don't think that's going to work, otherwise they wouldn't already be considering the about-face on visas.
  • Scott_xP said:

    Key cabinet ministers will meet this afternoon to agree plan for lorry drivers shortage.

    Cabinet are split on visas, with George Eustice and Steve Barclay pushing for.

    I understand solution could involve something similar to Seasonal Workers Scheme to avert immediate pressure.

    Not confirmed whether Priti Patel will attend, but strongest opposition expected from the home office.

    Strong rhetoric from Grant Shapps and Kwasi Kwarteng on need to reduce reliance on cheap foreign labour.

    Sources expect any scheme would need to be strictly time-limited.


    https://twitter.com/tamcohen/status/1441362264271962118

    That Shapps was doing the morning rounds suggests they are not yet for turning. When we get Sharma or Dowden defending the policy that is the indicator for the inevitable u-turn.

    (At which point those cheering the government for holding firm today, will praise them for being pragmatic and flexible. It is a bit like umpires call in the cricket, whatever their decision, they will see the govt as correct.)
  • Selebian said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Should thoroughly test the theory that Brits wont do this back breaking hard labour at any price.

    Followed swiftly by how willing we are to pay 20 quid for a head of broccoli...
    More likely, the broccoli just isn’t harvested and doesn’t make it to the shops. Nobody can buy that broccoli.

    Result:

    Less broccoli choice
    More expensive broccoli
    Fewer broccoli jobs
    More broccoli imports
    Fewer broccoli exports

    Now repeat across the entire economy.
    You forget: happier (if possibly less healthy) kids :wink:

    (although my two actually eat broccoli very happily - pretty much at the top of their veg preference list, maybe after sweetcorn - it's supposed to be something they hate, isn't it?)
    I once introduced a teenager to purple sprouting broccoli, which I prefer to calabrese and, indeed, regard as a seasonal delicacy. She was unimpressed, expecting "little trees".
  • gealbhangealbhan Posts: 2,362

    Breaking

    AA President Edmund King says there is no shortage of fuel and thousands of petrol stations are operating normally with just a few suffering temporary supply chain problems

    It’s a civic duty really isn’t. Keep calm, carry on as normal, if anyone breaks habit and takes more the usual that’s what will cause the problem - depriving it from someone else.
  • Any SKS fans explain why Lab are on 32 in latest YG

    Thanks in advance

    30 mins and counting

    Come on SKS fans

    Surely RP could at least say but Corbyn Trot Trot Trot
    Sorry luv, been out.

    Just for you "but Corbyn Trot Trot Trot"
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,884

    Slowly declining in England & NI, flat everywhere else:

    Last week:


    This week:

    Don't think your maths is right there on NI...
  • Scott_xP said:

    More than half of U.K. adults say they have faced more difficulties than usual shopping for food over the past two weeks, according to an official survey https://trib.al/uXYRWyB

    Don’t tell @Taz

    Apparently it’s a fiction, apart from that one time it happened to him.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165
    gealbhan said:

    Breaking

    AA President Edmund King says there is no shortage of fuel and thousands of petrol stations are operating normally with just a few suffering temporary supply chain problems

    It’s a civic duty really isn’t. Keep calm, carry on as normal, if anyone breaks habit and takes more the usual that’s what will cause the problem - depriving it from someone else.
    Thankfully, people can't hoard petrol/diesel like they can do with toilet rolls (at least, most people can't/won't).
  • Scott_xP said:

    🚨 | NEW: A vegetable firm in Lincolnshire is currently advertising a broccoli picker role for £30-per-hour - equivalent to around £62,000-a-year. 

    Via @DailyMailUK

    Fantastic. Hard work should get a good pay rate, don't you agree?
  • I see @Casino_Royale has trouble with the word “econometricians”.

    Perhaps he discovered an undercover “woke” cell at HM Treasury or something.

    1½ hours to think about it and (still) no answers, just more ad hominem.

    I rest my case, ladies and gentlemen.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,884
    Selebian said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Should thoroughly test the theory that Brits wont do this back breaking hard labour at any price.

    Followed swiftly by how willing we are to pay 20 quid for a head of broccoli...
    More likely, the broccoli just isn’t harvested and doesn’t make it to the shops. Nobody can buy that broccoli.

    Result:

    Less broccoli choice
    More expensive broccoli
    Fewer broccoli jobs
    More broccoli imports
    Fewer broccoli exports

    Now repeat across the entire economy.
    You forget: happier (if possibly less healthy) kids :wink:

    (although my two actually eat broccoli very happily - pretty much at the top of their veg preference list, maybe after sweetcorn - it's supposed to be something they hate, isn't it?)
    I like broccoli, but the wife does not. She prefers cauliflower. Hence we tend to have mismatched plates - hers mostly white, mine mostly green... And don't start on the sprouts...
This discussion has been closed.