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Ipsos-MORI: Starmer and BoJo level on who’d make most capable PM – politicalbetting.com

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  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    tlg86 said:

    TOPPING said:

    For those who think the fuel crisis is fabricated there are some questions.

    So you think there is a shortage of tanker drivers. If not then it is reasonable to think the fuel crisis is fabricated.

    If you do think that there is a shortage of tanker drivers then you must accept that that would mean less fuel delivered to petrol stations. If less fuel is delivered to petrol stations then there will be a shortage.

    If there is a shortage, and you don't know when it will be alleviated, then it is rational to try to get petrol.

    Hence not panicking but rational.

    It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. People are panic buying because they know that other people will panic buy.

    I filled up on Friday morning when without this nonsense I would have filled up on Friday afternoon. It will last me until the end of October. I don't expect to have any problems filling up then.
    If you filled up on Friday morning you are what several contributors to PB would call a moron.

    You don't strike me as a moron.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624

    isam said:

    I'm lovin it!

    Keir Starmer
    @Keir_Starmer



    Proud to stand in solidarity with McDonald’s workers in Wandsworth.

    They are standing up to corporate injustice, low pay and the exploitation of workers.

    Please support them. #McStrike

    https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1194204454448500738?s=20

    Oh dear.

    Oh dear oh dear oh dear.
    Shambles

    Boris must hardly believe his luck

    Demanding that a massively profitable multinational corporation pay its staff £15 an hour is very different to raising the minimum wage at all businesses of all sizes and all other entities by 50% in one go.

    You think all McDonald's franchises are multinationals?

    Demanding that a company increases its pay by 50% in one go is very different to potentially raising the minimum wage equitably for all within the next eight years.
    Aren't 90%+ of McDonalds franchises?

    Interestingly, around the world, it is quite common for them to be operated primarily by immigrants - common in the UK.

    A friend who went on an anti-McDonalds march in France was rather startled to see that a big chunk of the marchers were on the McDonalds=Immigrants=MustBeDrivenOut type of politics....
  • isam said:

    isam said:

    I'm lovin it!

    Keir Starmer
    @Keir_Starmer



    Proud to stand in solidarity with McDonald’s workers in Wandsworth.

    They are standing up to corporate injustice, low pay and the exploitation of workers.

    Please support them. #McStrike

    https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1194204454448500738?s=20

    Oh dear.

    Oh dear oh dear oh dear.
    Shambles

    Boris must hardly believe his luck

    Demanding that a massively profitable multinational corporation pay its staff £15 an hour is very different to raising the minimum wage at all businesses of all sizes and all other entities by 50% in one go.

    Having someone called McDonald quit because Sir Keir refused to back £15 ph, whilst there are pictures of him demanding £15ph for McDonalds is fun though

    Yep!

  • Hang on.

    That Starmer/McDonalds tweet is from November 2019.

    Indeed. So Starmer thinks that McDonalds should pay £15 in 2019 . . . but a Starmer government would oppose £15 pay by 2029?

    Over the space of a decade the earnings potential should be going up considerably, not down. Even just due to inflation.
  • isamisam Posts: 40,731
    edited September 2021

    Isn't life confusing?

    When Tories want to hike the wages of working people, it's excellent news and a welcome corrective to all those years when wages were undercut by our membership of the EU and FOM.

    When Labour wants to hike the wages of working people, it's extreme socialism, if not communism, in action, and how on earth are they going to afford it?

    Not really - the free marketeers on here have pointed out it will probably happen organically anyway - the only one against it is Sir Keir, unless it's a photo op at Wandsworth McDs
  • Farooq said:

    Farooq said:

    I hate to say it but Redwood's right.

    There's over a million people out there with HGV licences. And for those that don't have one it only takes a few weeks to train a new recruit to take the test. So yes, offer pay and conditions people want and the vacancies will be filled.

    Improving pay and conditions is the only viable (and decent) solution. Its a shame so many on the left now find suggesting good pay and conditions to be an anathema.
    Today's Conservative Party mantra: Simplistic solutions for simplistic followers. The real world of business and employment is a little more complex than this Philip. You, like Redwood are putting your head in the sand because you don't want to admit that the Government should have seen this coming. Brexit could have been managed so these problems did not exacerbate pre-existing problems, but we have a PM who likes simple ideas he can put into slogans on the back of a fag packet to provide red meat for his simple minded fanbois.
    I'm sorry but as a Thatcherite free market liberal Conservative I don't think its the government's job to tell business how to operate or "fix" problems in the market.

    To have a free market then the market has to be allowed to fail sometimes, otherwise you end up with moral hazard and freeriding within the market. If companies refuse to pay a decent wage to HGV drivers (of which we have many more times more than enough qualified) then they should be allowed to fail.

    If companies refuse to pay for transportation a decent enough rate to get their stock moved around, they too can fail.

    A few days of mass hysteria about fuel because is hardly the miner's strike now is it? In the eighties it was overly-coddled unions that were warping the market that needed sorting out, now its overly-coddled companies that feel they have a divine right to fill vacancies for shitty jobs at minimum wage that need sorting out. Either way, let the market do its thing - even if it causes some hardship or disruption from time to time.
    Did you know that, since before WWII, it was government policy to prevent (as much as possible) other industry developing in the coal mining regions of the UK?

    They were worried that no-one would put up with the conditions down the pits, if there were other jobs about.
    Any reliable sources for this?
    Not that I'm calling you unreliable, but, well, you know.
    It's in the civil service papers releases via Kew. Essentially, gentle(ish) pressure was placed on various large companies not to place factories in the wrong places. There was a big lot of this around the time of re-armament, but it was going on up til the 70s, at least.
    Ok, Kew is a long way away, so if you know of any write-ups I'd be interested in reading more.
    Interesting if true. And very, very wrong.
    I had some references in my piles of stuff - will try and find them.

    It is on-going feature of the permanent portion of government that it think it can control stuff like this.

    For example - https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16121783-500-trouble-in-paradise actually turned out to be that the Foreign Office *bribed* the government of the Virgin Islands to stop the project. The Virgin Islands government got into a spot of local bother over that. The FO had the idea that this would make the French happy (Ariane, competitor etc) and the Trade & Industry lot concurred.

    It all came out in Private Eye, IIRC.
    Beal Aerospace... haven't heard that name in a long time. Don't SpaceX use the engine test rig they built in Texas?
    Yes indeed, and they still do.
    Ah, I remember Beal as being relatively sane - and from memory I think he got out at about the right time, given the atmosphere at the time. But if he'd held on just five or six years, he would have been the frontrunner for the COTS program. I wonder if he regrets it?

    Timing is everything. Musk got exceptionally lucky with SpaceX.

    As for the insane: rotary rocket will always be one of my favourites...
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBL_UJyN88Y

    "For instance, the ATV demonstrated that landing the Rotary Rocket was tricky, even dangerous. Test pilots have a rating system, the Cooper-Harper rating scale, for vehicles between 1 and 10 that relates to difficulty to pilot. The Roton ATV scored a 10 — the vehicle simulator was found to be almost unflyable by anyone except the Rotary test pilots, and even then there were short periods where the vehicle was out of control."
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Hang on.

    That Starmer/McDonalds tweet is from November 2019.

    And?

    Makes it more embarrassing surely, as you have to anti-discount for inflation, so irt he was militating for £16.03 per hour?
  • darkage said:

    darkage said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Surrey on brink of declaring a major incident tonight.

    Key workers would be prioritised for fuel on the forecourt and electric vehicles brought in to help social, care and emergency workers move around the county.

    https://twitter.com/KayBurley/status/1442550994857046019

    Wow. Assuming this is true; it turns out the idiots queing up for fuel for hours on end had some foresight.

    A case of ancient common sense triumphing over the intellectuals and experts telling everyone that there was nothing to worry about.
    No.

    Morons with full tanks and full jerry cans who already had a half-full tank and were at no risk of running out didn't have common sense. They were selfish twunts.

    Falsely shouting fire in a crowded theatre may cause mayhem - the mayhem then happening isn't vindication for shouting fire.
    It doesn't honestly matter who started it. It is almost irrellevant. It is impossible to deny that people were acting entirely rationally in trying to get fuel. They correctly percieved that there was a panic; so demand would increase at a point where supply was obviously constrained. If people need to use their cars, then it was the right thing for them to do.

    Pretty much the same thing that happened with the hoarding of toilet paper and pasta last year.
    I don't think there was much panic-buying at supermarkets last year. What happened is that there was a sudden increase in demand for food from supermarkets because all the restaurants closed, and people took the sensible precaution to do one large shop every week or so, instead of several smaller shops more often.

    The situation with fuel is very different. I'd be very interested to see any statistics on daily deliveries of fuel made by each refinery, to see if there was a deficit overall, or if it was simply a case of not having the delivery capacity to react to random local fluctuations in demand.
    I've found the statistics here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/oil-and-oil-products-section-3-energy-trends

    What we can see is that monthly deliveries were very close to 2,000 (thousand tonnes) for each month of 2019, and the latest (estimated) figures were for delivery of 2,100 for June 2021.

    On the face of it not much sign of a deficit in delivery capacity, but we'll have to see what the next update of the statistics shows when they're released on the 30th September.
  • murali_s said:

    Isn't life confusing?

    When Tories want to hike the wages of working people, it's excellent news and a welcome corrective to all those years when wages were undercut by our membership of the EU and FOM.

    When Labour wants to hike the wages of working people, it's extreme socialism, if not communism, in action, and how on earth are they going to afford it?

    Hah! Our PB Tories are such a fascinating (as well as thick and ugly) species!
    You can't call them ugly. We have no idea what they look like! I imagine them as kind of grizzled, tanned and athletic, like an ageing boy band or Alan Hanson, but with a subscription to the Spectator and slightly drunk.
  • murali_s said:

    isam said:

    I'm lovin it!

    Keir Starmer
    @Keir_Starmer



    Proud to stand in solidarity with McDonald’s workers in Wandsworth.

    They are standing up to corporate injustice, low pay and the exploitation of workers.

    Please support them. #McStrike

    https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1194204454448500738?s=20

    Oh dear.

    Oh dear oh dear oh dear.
    Shambles

    Boris must hardly believe his luck
    I don't get it? What is the shambles? I know your Tories are not the brightest peas in the pod but am I missing something?
    You can throw cheap insults, but I am not a member of the conservative party and if you cannot see the shambes that has been the Labour Party conference, then you are clearly frightened to look
  • Isn't life confusing?

    When Tories want to hike the wages of working people, it's excellent news and a welcome corrective to all those years when wages were undercut by our membership of the EU and FOM.

    When Labour wants to hike the wages of working people, it's extreme socialism, if not communism, in action, and how on earth are they going to afford it?

    The difference is that the Tories want wages hiked affordably and sustainably by good market conditions.

    Labour extremists tend to want wages hiked by diktat and conflict.

    Something the leftwing unions in the UK failed to understand, which more sensible unions in places like Germany can understand, is that its in the worker's own best interests to see the company they work for thrive.

    If the company you work for thrives they can afford pay rises and secure employment. If they don't . . . they can't.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624

    Farooq said:

    Farooq said:

    I hate to say it but Redwood's right.

    There's over a million people out there with HGV licences. And for those that don't have one it only takes a few weeks to train a new recruit to take the test. So yes, offer pay and conditions people want and the vacancies will be filled.

    Improving pay and conditions is the only viable (and decent) solution. Its a shame so many on the left now find suggesting good pay and conditions to be an anathema.
    Today's Conservative Party mantra: Simplistic solutions for simplistic followers. The real world of business and employment is a little more complex than this Philip. You, like Redwood are putting your head in the sand because you don't want to admit that the Government should have seen this coming. Brexit could have been managed so these problems did not exacerbate pre-existing problems, but we have a PM who likes simple ideas he can put into slogans on the back of a fag packet to provide red meat for his simple minded fanbois.
    I'm sorry but as a Thatcherite free market liberal Conservative I don't think its the government's job to tell business how to operate or "fix" problems in the market.

    To have a free market then the market has to be allowed to fail sometimes, otherwise you end up with moral hazard and freeriding within the market. If companies refuse to pay a decent wage to HGV drivers (of which we have many more times more than enough qualified) then they should be allowed to fail.

    If companies refuse to pay for transportation a decent enough rate to get their stock moved around, they too can fail.

    A few days of mass hysteria about fuel because is hardly the miner's strike now is it? In the eighties it was overly-coddled unions that were warping the market that needed sorting out, now its overly-coddled companies that feel they have a divine right to fill vacancies for shitty jobs at minimum wage that need sorting out. Either way, let the market do its thing - even if it causes some hardship or disruption from time to time.
    Did you know that, since before WWII, it was government policy to prevent (as much as possible) other industry developing in the coal mining regions of the UK?

    They were worried that no-one would put up with the conditions down the pits, if there were other jobs about.
    Any reliable sources for this?
    Not that I'm calling you unreliable, but, well, you know.
    It's in the civil service papers releases via Kew. Essentially, gentle(ish) pressure was placed on various large companies not to place factories in the wrong places. There was a big lot of this around the time of re-armament, but it was going on up til the 70s, at least.
    Ok, Kew is a long way away, so if you know of any write-ups I'd be interested in reading more.
    Interesting if true. And very, very wrong.
    I had some references in my piles of stuff - will try and find them.

    It is on-going feature of the permanent portion of government that it think it can control stuff like this.

    For example - https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16121783-500-trouble-in-paradise actually turned out to be that the Foreign Office *bribed* the government of the Virgin Islands to stop the project. The Virgin Islands government got into a spot of local bother over that. The FO had the idea that this would make the French happy (Ariane, competitor etc) and the Trade & Industry lot concurred.

    It all came out in Private Eye, IIRC.
    Beal Aerospace... haven't heard that name in a long time. Don't SpaceX use the engine test rig they built in Texas?
    Yes indeed, and they still do.
    Ah, I remember Beal as being relatively sane - and from memory I think he got out at about the right time, given the atmosphere at the time. But if he'd held on just five or six years, he would have been the frontrunner for the COTS program. I wonder if he regrets it?

    Timing is everything. Musk got exceptionally lucky with SpaceX.

    As for the insane: rotary rocket will always be one of my favourites...
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBL_UJyN88Y

    "For instance, the ATV demonstrated that landing the Rotary Rocket was tricky, even dangerous. Test pilots have a rating system, the Cooper-Harper rating scale, for vehicles between 1 and 10 that relates to difficulty to pilot. The Roton ATV scored a 10 — the vehicle simulator was found to be almost unflyable by anyone except the Rotary test pilots, and even then there were short periods where the vehicle was out of control."
    Musk was lucky, but also right.

    Everyone else was fixated on

    1) Staging is hard (Rotary)
    2) Turbo-pumps are expensive and hard (Rotary & Beal)
    3) etc etc

    The real problem was the absurd inefficiency of making stuff in rocket aerospace.

    Hence NASA is spending 100s of millions per engine to turn existing, reusable engines into throw aways. While Musk is reducing the price of brand new engine from $2m to $200K
  • FF43 said:

    moonshine said:

    Sandpit said:

    moonshine said:

    Is it not the case that lots of qualified hgv drivers have switched to driving local deliveries as the conditions are better?
    That’s the anecdotal evidence - some have moved to more sociable jobs driving smaller vehicles locally, and others have taken better pay offers to switch company on the HGVs.

    There’s apparently a wide variation in terms and conditions across the industry, for example some companies insist you sleep in your cab, while others cover a travel inn when away from home.
    So in short Redwood has a point.
    Maybe the UK should learn from the EU which generally has better conditions for lorry drivers than the UK AND Freedom of Movement.

    Lorry drivers benefit from freedom of movement for reasons that ought to be obvious, but apparently aren't. Lorry drivers, quite literally need freedom to move.
    Then the lib dems should stand on a platform to join the single market and freedom of movement and say so
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771
    tlg86 said:

    TOPPING said:

    For those who think the fuel crisis is fabricated there are some questions.

    So you think there is a shortage of tanker drivers. If not then it is reasonable to think the fuel crisis is fabricated.

    If you do think that there is a shortage of tanker drivers then you must accept that that would mean less fuel delivered to petrol stations. If less fuel is delivered to petrol stations then there will be a shortage.

    If there is a shortage, and you don't know when it will be alleviated, then it is rational to try to get petrol.

    Hence not panicking but rational.

    It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. People are panic buying because they know that other people will panic buy.

    I filled up on Friday morning when without this nonsense I would have filled up on Friday afternoon. It will last me until the end of October. I don't expect to have any problems filling up then.
    This is the key point.

    If you think others will panic buy, it is logical to wish to beat them to it.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165
    TOPPING said:

    tlg86 said:

    TOPPING said:

    For those who think the fuel crisis is fabricated there are some questions.

    So you think there is a shortage of tanker drivers. If not then it is reasonable to think the fuel crisis is fabricated.

    If you do think that there is a shortage of tanker drivers then you must accept that that would mean less fuel delivered to petrol stations. If less fuel is delivered to petrol stations then there will be a shortage.

    If there is a shortage, and you don't know when it will be alleviated, then it is rational to try to get petrol.

    Hence not panicking but rational.

    It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. People are panic buying because they know that other people will panic buy.

    I filled up on Friday morning when without this nonsense I would have filled up on Friday afternoon. It will last me until the end of October. I don't expect to have any problems filling up then.
    If you filled up on Friday morning you are what several contributors to PB would call a moron.

    You don't strike me as a moron.
    I had to take my sister to hospital on Friday afternoon - the news made me think "oh, I need to fill up" and thought better do it now, just in case. Had there been a big queue, I wouldn't have bothered as I could have made it, but I'd have been tight for football on Sunday.

    I don't blame people for filling up if they get the chance. It's the queuing up that I find strange (unless you are very low and need the fuel right this moment).
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771
    On the topic of this thread, this is undoubtedly good news for Mr Starmer. It is, however, only one statistic. And there are other questions in the poll that garner less favourable responses for him.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,787
    edited September 2021
    Tribune rally opened by @zarahsultana: “Want to open this rally with solidarity for our comrade Andy McDonald.” (Cue enormous applause). Says the current Labour leadership is “shameful.” Attacks the “Blairites.” #Lab21

    Sultana attacks the “Blairite clique” which she says is dominating the leadership, “gathering in drinks receptions with Peter Mandelson” [boos] “reliving the 1980s and 1990s.”

    More cheers when Sultana says “it’s an absolute disgrace that the leadership have let a scum newspaper have a stand at conference this year.”


    https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1442555117182537728
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,461
    edited September 2021
    isam said:

    Isn't life confusing?

    When Tories want to hike the wages of working people, it's excellent news and a welcome corrective to all those years when wages were undercut by our membership of the EU and FOM.

    When Labour wants to hike the wages of working people, it's extreme socialism, if not communism, in action, and how on earth are they going to afford it?

    Not really - the free marketeers on here have pointed out it will probably happen organically anyway - the only one against it is Sir Keir, unless it's a photo op at Wandsworth McDs
    Presumably the "free marketeers" you refer to, who want wages to settle "organically", are opposed to the minimum wage then? They certainly were back in 1997, warning of devastating consequences for employment levels. For free marketeers, wages must be able to go down as well as up, surely? Otherwise it's a rigged market, not a free market.

    Tories / free marketeers seem to be all over the place on wages, actually. Some of us just want significantly higher wages for all those paid poorly. Not just McDonalds and HGV drivers, but also textile workers, warehouse workers, shop assistants, care workers and lots of other poorly paid public sector workers. I don't think for a moment that Tories really want to raise the wages of all the lower paid.

    Anyway, I'm off now to watch Brighton stuff Palace and move to the top of the PL.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624
    FF43 said:

    moonshine said:

    Sandpit said:

    moonshine said:

    Is it not the case that lots of qualified hgv drivers have switched to driving local deliveries as the conditions are better?
    That’s the anecdotal evidence - some have moved to more sociable jobs driving smaller vehicles locally, and others have taken better pay offers to switch company on the HGVs.

    There’s apparently a wide variation in terms and conditions across the industry, for example some companies insist you sleep in your cab, while others cover a travel inn when away from home.
    So in short Redwood has a point.
    Maybe the UK should learn from the EU which generally has better conditions for lorry drivers than the UK AND Freedom of Movement.

    Lorry drivers benefit from freedom of movement for reasons that ought to be obvious, but apparently aren't. Lorry drivers, quite literally need freedom to move.
    Do you have some data on the better conditions - what they consist of, etc?
  • darkage said:

    darkage said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Surrey on brink of declaring a major incident tonight.

    Key workers would be prioritised for fuel on the forecourt and electric vehicles brought in to help social, care and emergency workers move around the county.

    https://twitter.com/KayBurley/status/1442550994857046019

    Wow. Assuming this is true; it turns out the idiots queing up for fuel for hours on end had some foresight.

    A case of ancient common sense triumphing over the intellectuals and experts telling everyone that there was nothing to worry about.
    No.

    Morons with full tanks and full jerry cans who already had a half-full tank and were at no risk of running out didn't have common sense. They were selfish twunts.

    Falsely shouting fire in a crowded theatre may cause mayhem - the mayhem then happening isn't vindication for shouting fire.
    It doesn't honestly matter who started it. It is almost irrellevant. It is impossible to deny that people were acting entirely rationally in trying to get fuel. They correctly percieved that there was a panic; so demand would increase at a point where supply was obviously constrained. If people need to use their cars, then it was the right thing for them to do.

    Pretty much the same thing that happened with the hoarding of toilet paper and pasta last year.
    I don't think there was much panic-buying at supermarkets last year. What happened is that there was a sudden increase in demand for food from supermarkets because all the restaurants closed, and people took the sensible precaution to do one large shop every week or so, instead of several smaller shops more often.

    The situation with fuel is very different. I'd be very interested to see any statistics on daily deliveries of fuel made by each refinery, to see if there was a deficit overall, or if it was simply a case of not having the delivery capacity to react to random local fluctuations in demand.
    I've found the statistics here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/oil-and-oil-products-section-3-energy-trends

    What we can see is that monthly deliveries were very close to 2,000 (thousand tonnes) for each month of 2019, and the latest (estimated) figures were for delivery of 2,100 for June 2021.

    On the face of it not much sign of a deficit in delivery capacity, but we'll have to see what the next update of the statistics shows when they're released on the 30th September.
    And in the experimental weekly statistics stock levels at fuel stations were not notably different at the end of August than they were at the beginning - no sign of a developing problem of supply struggling to keep pace with demand.
  • isamisam Posts: 40,731

    Hang on.

    That Starmer/McDonalds tweet is from November 2019.

    It sure is

  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,618
    Been out. So Kelly McDonald has quit the Labour frontbench tonight, with Lord Falconer tipped to replace her?


  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,400
    edited September 2021

    Tribune rally opened by @zarahsultana: “Want to open this rally with solidarity for our comrade Andy McDonald.” (Cue enormous applause). Says the current Labour leadership is “shameful.” Attacks the “Blairites.” #Lab21

    Sultana attacks the “Blairite clique” which she says is dominating the leadership, “gathering in drinks receptions with Peter Mandelson” [boos] “reliving the 1980s and 1990s.”

    More cheers when Sultana says “it’s an absolute disgrace that the leadership have let a scum newspaper have a stand at conference this year.”


    https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1442555117182537728

    What an odd criticism given her own clique's penchance for reliving past battles. I guess if it is the 70s its ok?

    Sultana attacks the “Blairite clique” which she says is dominating the leadership, “gathering in drinks receptions with Peter Mandelson” [boos] “reliving the 1980s and 1990s"

    Also, it's a goddamn newspaper. That's all. However bad a paper it's just a paper.

    More cheers when Sultana says “it’s an absolute disgrace that the leadership have let a scum newspaper have a stand at conference this year.
  • isamisam Posts: 40,731

    isam said:

    Isn't life confusing?

    When Tories want to hike the wages of working people, it's excellent news and a welcome corrective to all those years when wages were undercut by our membership of the EU and FOM.

    When Labour wants to hike the wages of working people, it's extreme socialism, if not communism, in action, and how on earth are they going to afford it?

    Not really - the free marketeers on here have pointed out it will probably happen organically anyway - the only one against it is Sir Keir, unless it's a photo op at Wandsworth McDs
    Presumably the "free marketeers" you refer to, who want wages to settle "organically", are opposed to the minimum wage then? They certainly were back in 1997, warning of devastating consequences for employment levels. For free marketeers, wages must be able to go down as well as up, surely? Otherwise it's a rigged market, not a free market.

    Tories / free marketeers seem to be all over the place on wages, actually. Some of us just want significantly higher wages for all those paid poorly. Not just McDonalds and HGV drivers, but also textile workers, warehouse workers, shop assistants, care workers and lots of other poorly paid public sector workers. I don't think for a moment that Tories really want to raise the wages of all the lower paid.

    Anyway, I'm off now to watch Brighton stuff Palace and move to the top of the PL.
    Wouldn't know, ask them
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,072

    Tribune rally opened by @zarahsultana: “Want to open this rally with solidarity for our comrade Andy McDonald.” (Cue enormous applause). Says the current Labour leadership is “shameful.” Attacks the “Blairites.” #Lab21

    Sultana attacks the “Blairite clique” which she says is dominating the leadership, “gathering in drinks receptions with Peter Mandelson” [boos] “reliving the 1980s and 1990s.”

    More cheers when Sultana says “it’s an absolute disgrace that the leadership have let a scum newspaper have a stand at conference this year.”


    https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1442555117182537728

    Christ
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165
    Starmer's gonna get heckled during his speech.
  • FF43FF43 Posts: 15,545

    Isn't life confusing?

    When Tories want to hike the wages of working people, it's excellent news and a welcome corrective to all those years when wages were undercut by our membership of the EU and FOM.

    When Labour wants to hike the wages of working people, it's extreme socialism, if not communism, in action, and how on earth are they going to afford it?

    The difference is that the Tories want wages hiked affordably and sustainably by good market conditions.

    Labour extremists tend to want wages hiked by diktat and conflict.

    Something the leftwing unions in the UK failed to understand, which more sensible unions in places like Germany can understand, is that its in the worker's own best interests to see the company they work for thrive.

    If the company you work for thrives they can afford pay rises and secure employment. If they don't . . . they can't.
    Um. You were just a couple of days ago demanding the government impose conditions that would potentially require companies to pay lorry drivers £100 000 a year and now you pontificate on £15 an hour at Macdonald's being an extremist demand.

    The quoted tweet from Starmer is two years old, but genuinely, so what?
  • isamisam Posts: 40,731
    tlg86 said:

    Starmer's gonna get heckled during his speech.

    Can it be worse than Jezza's "important bit here" or whatever he read that he wasn't supposed to though?!
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    murali_s said:

    Isn't life confusing?

    When Tories want to hike the wages of working people, it's excellent news and a welcome corrective to all those years when wages were undercut by our membership of the EU and FOM.

    When Labour wants to hike the wages of working people, it's extreme socialism, if not communism, in action, and how on earth are they going to afford it?

    Hah! Our PB Tories are such a fascinating (as well as thick and ugly) species!
    murali nice to see you, but can I point out that although I am no longer a PB tory I was one once, and I look like a rather more chiselled version of the young Clint Eastwood? and secondly that you have never said anything of substance here in all the time I've known you, never mind anything that's going to have the ghost of Isaiah Berlin looking over its shoulder?

    Just saying.
  • isam said:

    tlg86 said:

    Starmer's gonna get heckled during his speech.

    Can it be worse than Jezza's "important bit here" or whatever he read that he wasn't supposed to though?!
    I remember thinking at the time italics inside square brackets is what you needed.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,400
    tlg86 said:

    Starmer's gonna get heckled during his speech.

    Would be a good opportunity. Not that he wants or needs to go the whole hog, but a heckle would give opportunity for Kinnock-esque 'I tell you, and you'll listen' moments.
  • isamisam Posts: 40,731
    edited September 2021

    isam said:

    tlg86 said:

    Starmer's gonna get heckled during his speech.

    Can it be worse than Jezza's "important bit here" or whatever he read that he wasn't supposed to though?!
    I remember thinking at the time italics inside square brackets is what you needed.
    Jezza's Ron Burgundy moment
  • tlg86 said:

    Starmer's gonna get heckled during his speech.

    He'll have to ad lib something inspirational like, "Nobody is ruling out paying anybody £15 an hour!"
  • isam said:

    Isn't life confusing?

    When Tories want to hike the wages of working people, it's excellent news and a welcome corrective to all those years when wages were undercut by our membership of the EU and FOM.

    When Labour wants to hike the wages of working people, it's extreme socialism, if not communism, in action, and how on earth are they going to afford it?

    Not really - the free marketeers on here have pointed out it will probably happen organically anyway - the only one against it is Sir Keir, unless it's a photo op at Wandsworth McDs
    Presumably the "free marketeers" you refer to, who want wages to settle "organically", are opposed to the minimum wage then? They certainly were back in 1997, warning of devastating consequences for employment levels. For free marketeers, wages must be able to go down as well as up, surely? Otherwise it's a rigged market, not a free market.

    Tories / free marketeers seem to be all over the place on wages, actually. Some of us just want significantly higher wages for all those paid poorly. Not just McDonalds and HGV drivers, but also textile workers, warehouse workers, shop assistants, care workers and lots of other poorly paid public sector workers. I don't think for a moment that Tories really want to raise the wages of all the lower paid.

    Anyway, I'm off now to watch Brighton stuff Palace and move to the top of the PL.
    I want significantly higher wages too and the way to get that is to have a healthy economy with competition for recruitment so that companies both can pay higher wages and are encouraged to do so. That can only happen if the economy is working well and more interventions in the economy hinders growth it doesn't help it.

    Minimum wages too high or done badly absolutely can and normally do have really devastating consequences. One of the biggest normally is rampant youth unemployment that it causes and is and was endemic across much of Europe.

    One thing Labour got right with the minimum wage was having staggered tiers across the ages - so that even today young workers can be on less than a fiver per hour, while older workers are on a minimum of basically £9. That actually gives a fiscal incentive to offer jobs to young workers who are normally crowded out by minimum wage rules. That, and only that, in my opinion prevented the normal catastrophic effects associated with minimum wage rules.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,618
    Worth noting that every Labour conference in history has been deemed a shambles on PB. In fairness, the same probably applies to the Tory and Lib conferences.
  • kle4 said:

    tlg86 said:

    Starmer's gonna get heckled during his speech.

    Would be a good opportunity. Not that he wants or needs to go the whole hog, but a heckle would give opportunity for Kinnock-esque 'I tell you, and you'll listen' moments.
    "They couldn't even scuttle round in taxis, because there were no drivers and no fuel."
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,400

    Worth noting that every Labour conference in history has been deemed a shambles on PB. In fairness, the same probably applies to the Tory and Lib conferences.

    A slightly shambolic conference for Labour might be alright, if it caused the Tory one to be unbearably smug and complacent.
  • kle4 said:

    tlg86 said:

    Starmer's gonna get heckled during his speech.

    Would be a good opportunity. Not that he wants or needs to go the whole hog, but a heckle would give opportunity for Kinnock-esque 'I tell you, and you'll listen' moments.
    Keir doesn't have the strength of personality that Kinnock had though.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,880

    Prof. Christina Pagel
    @chrischirp
    ·
    4h
    hate to say it, but the Labour conference looks kind of super spready... 4 days of rooms this full plus evening drinking in the bar... and not a mask in sight.

    ===

    Brighton numbers will be interesting in a week.

    Do you think she really “hates to say it” ?
    Plus it’s happening everywhere. Listen to the tales of people’s nights out. The freshers weeks. She needs to move on.
  • isam said:

    Isn't life confusing?

    When Tories want to hike the wages of working people, it's excellent news and a welcome corrective to all those years when wages were undercut by our membership of the EU and FOM.

    When Labour wants to hike the wages of working people, it's extreme socialism, if not communism, in action, and how on earth are they going to afford it?

    Not really - the free marketeers on here have pointed out it will probably happen organically anyway - the only one against it is Sir Keir, unless it's a photo op at Wandsworth McDs
    Presumably the "free marketeers" you refer to, who want wages to settle "organically", are opposed to the minimum wage then? They certainly were back in 1997, warning of devastating consequences for employment levels. For free marketeers, wages must be able to go down as well as up, surely? Otherwise it's a rigged market, not a free market.

    Tories / free marketeers seem to be all over the place on wages, actually. Some of us just want significantly higher wages for all those paid poorly. Not just McDonalds and HGV drivers, but also textile workers, warehouse workers, shop assistants, care workers and lots of other poorly paid public sector workers. I don't think for a moment that Tories really want to raise the wages of all the lower paid.

    Anyway, I'm off now to watch Brighton stuff Palace and move to the top of the PL.
    I thought you were 'northern'?
  • kle4 said:

    tlg86 said:

    Starmer's gonna get heckled during his speech.

    Would be a good opportunity. Not that he wants or needs to go the whole hog, but a heckle would give opportunity for Kinnock-esque 'I tell you, and you'll listen' moments.
    Keir doesn't have the strength of personality that Kinnock had though.
    Kinnock would have had a lot more experience of being heckled in his earlier political career I expect. Not much of that going on in court, or at the more sanitised events that most politicians give speeches at these days.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Tribune rally opened by @zarahsultana: “Want to open this rally with solidarity for our comrade Andy McDonald.” (Cue enormous applause). Says the current Labour leadership is “shameful.” Attacks the “Blairites.” #Lab21

    Sultana attacks the “Blairite clique” which she says is dominating the leadership, “gathering in drinks receptions with Peter Mandelson” [boos] “reliving the 1980s and 1990s.”

    More cheers when Sultana says “it’s an absolute disgrace that the leadership have let a scum newspaper have a stand at conference this year.”


    https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1442555117182537728

    Christ
    Sultana on the case of the currant labour leadership. Raisin' the temperature.
  • CatManCatMan Posts: 2,722
    At the next election, no one will remember the fuel crisis, and no one will remember the Labour Party Conference
  • isamisam Posts: 40,731

    isam said:

    Isn't life confusing?

    When Tories want to hike the wages of working people, it's excellent news and a welcome corrective to all those years when wages were undercut by our membership of the EU and FOM.

    When Labour wants to hike the wages of working people, it's extreme socialism, if not communism, in action, and how on earth are they going to afford it?

    Not really - the free marketeers on here have pointed out it will probably happen organically anyway - the only one against it is Sir Keir, unless it's a photo op at Wandsworth McDs
    Presumably the "free marketeers" you refer to, who want wages to settle "organically", are opposed to the minimum wage then? They certainly were back in 1997, warning of devastating consequences for employment levels. For free marketeers, wages must be able to go down as well as up, surely? Otherwise it's a rigged market, not a free market.

    Tories / free marketeers seem to be all over the place on wages, actually. Some of us just want significantly higher wages for all those paid poorly. Not just McDonalds and HGV drivers, but also textile workers, warehouse workers, shop assistants, care workers and lots of other poorly paid public sector workers. I don't think for a moment that Tories really want to raise the wages of all the lower paid.

    Anyway, I'm off now to watch Brighton stuff Palace and move to the top of the PL.
    I thought you were 'northern'?
    He's from Hurstpierpoint!
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,880
    TOPPING said:

    tlg86 said:

    TOPPING said:

    For those who think the fuel crisis is fabricated there are some questions.

    So you think there is a shortage of tanker drivers. If not then it is reasonable to think the fuel crisis is fabricated.

    If you do think that there is a shortage of tanker drivers then you must accept that that would mean less fuel delivered to petrol stations. If less fuel is delivered to petrol stations then there will be a shortage.

    If there is a shortage, and you don't know when it will be alleviated, then it is rational to try to get petrol.

    Hence not panicking but rational.

    It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. People are panic buying because they know that other people will panic buy.

    I filled up on Friday morning when without this nonsense I would have filled up on Friday afternoon. It will last me until the end of October. I don't expect to have any problems filling up then.
    If you filled up on Friday morning you are what several contributors to PB would call a moron.

    You don't strike me as a moron.
    Not a moron, but part of the problem if you wouldn’t normally have filled up.
  • Farooq said:

    Farooq said:

    I hate to say it but Redwood's right.

    There's over a million people out there with HGV licences. And for those that don't have one it only takes a few weeks to train a new recruit to take the test. So yes, offer pay and conditions people want and the vacancies will be filled.

    Improving pay and conditions is the only viable (and decent) solution. Its a shame so many on the left now find suggesting good pay and conditions to be an anathema.
    Today's Conservative Party mantra: Simplistic solutions for simplistic followers. The real world of business and employment is a little more complex than this Philip. You, like Redwood are putting your head in the sand because you don't want to admit that the Government should have seen this coming. Brexit could have been managed so these problems did not exacerbate pre-existing problems, but we have a PM who likes simple ideas he can put into slogans on the back of a fag packet to provide red meat for his simple minded fanbois.
    I'm sorry but as a Thatcherite free market liberal Conservative I don't think its the government's job to tell business how to operate or "fix" problems in the market.

    To have a free market then the market has to be allowed to fail sometimes, otherwise you end up with moral hazard and freeriding within the market. If companies refuse to pay a decent wage to HGV drivers (of which we have many more times more than enough qualified) then they should be allowed to fail.

    If companies refuse to pay for transportation a decent enough rate to get their stock moved around, they too can fail.

    A few days of mass hysteria about fuel because is hardly the miner's strike now is it? In the eighties it was overly-coddled unions that were warping the market that needed sorting out, now its overly-coddled companies that feel they have a divine right to fill vacancies for shitty jobs at minimum wage that need sorting out. Either way, let the market do its thing - even if it causes some hardship or disruption from time to time.
    Did you know that, since before WWII, it was government policy to prevent (as much as possible) other industry developing in the coal mining regions of the UK?

    They were worried that no-one would put up with the conditions down the pits, if there were other jobs about.
    Any reliable sources for this?
    Not that I'm calling you unreliable, but, well, you know.
    It's in the civil service papers releases via Kew. Essentially, gentle(ish) pressure was placed on various large companies not to place factories in the wrong places. There was a big lot of this around the time of re-armament, but it was going on up til the 70s, at least.
    Ok, Kew is a long way away, so if you know of any write-ups I'd be interested in reading more.
    Interesting if true. And very, very wrong.
    I had some references in my piles of stuff - will try and find them.

    It is on-going feature of the permanent portion of government that it think it can control stuff like this.

    For example - https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16121783-500-trouble-in-paradise actually turned out to be that the Foreign Office *bribed* the government of the Virgin Islands to stop the project. The Virgin Islands government got into a spot of local bother over that. The FO had the idea that this would make the French happy (Ariane, competitor etc) and the Trade & Industry lot concurred.

    It all came out in Private Eye, IIRC.
    Beal Aerospace... haven't heard that name in a long time. Don't SpaceX use the engine test rig they built in Texas?
    Yes indeed, and they still do.
    Ah, I remember Beal as being relatively sane - and from memory I think he got out at about the right time, given the atmosphere at the time. But if he'd held on just five or six years, he would have been the frontrunner for the COTS program. I wonder if he regrets it?

    Timing is everything. Musk got exceptionally lucky with SpaceX.

    As for the insane: rotary rocket will always be one of my favourites...
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBL_UJyN88Y

    "For instance, the ATV demonstrated that landing the Rotary Rocket was tricky, even dangerous. Test pilots have a rating system, the Cooper-Harper rating scale, for vehicles between 1 and 10 that relates to difficulty to pilot. The Roton ATV scored a 10 — the vehicle simulator was found to be almost unflyable by anyone except the Rotary test pilots, and even then there were short periods where the vehicle was out of control."
    Musk was lucky, but also right.

    Everyone else was fixated on

    1) Staging is hard (Rotary)
    2) Turbo-pumps are expensive and hard (Rotary & Beal)
    3) etc etc

    The real problem was the absurd inefficiency of making stuff in rocket aerospace.

    Hence NASA is spending 100s of millions per engine to turn existing, reusable engines into throw aways. While Musk is reducing the price of brand new engine from $2m to $200K
    Yep, but if it wasn't for their COTS contracts, SpaceX probably might still be at the F1 stage, if they existed at all. The timing was perfect, and that was mostly luck. If he had started SpaceX a year or two earlier, they'd have had big problems. If they'd started it a year or two later, they'd probably have missed COTS (then again, Kistler got a contract...)
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,083
    IshmaelZ said:

    Tribune rally opened by @zarahsultana: “Want to open this rally with solidarity for our comrade Andy McDonald.” (Cue enormous applause). Says the current Labour leadership is “shameful.” Attacks the “Blairites.” #Lab21

    Sultana attacks the “Blairite clique” which she says is dominating the leadership, “gathering in drinks receptions with Peter Mandelson” [boos] “reliving the 1980s and 1990s.”

    More cheers when Sultana says “it’s an absolute disgrace that the leadership have let a scum newspaper have a stand at conference this year.”


    https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1442555117182537728

    Christ
    Sultana on the case of the currant labour leadership. Raisin' the temperature.
    Hardly currant news.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603

    tlg86 said:

    Starmer's gonna get heckled during his speech.

    He'll have to ad lib something inspirational like, "Nobody is ruling out paying anybody £15 an hour!"
    The pressure the raise the minimum wage is going to become a lot lower over the next few years as labour shortages start to bite and employers in the lower end services sectors have to raise hourly rates. Minimum wage was a policy for an era of free movement of cheap labour undercutting low wage workers.

    They're constantly fighting the last war. The next one is already older voters leeching off working age people, it's not just happening here. All across the western world where the number of workers per retired person is declining older voters want a larger and larger slice of the pie.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,400
    glw said:

    Tribune rally opened by @zarahsultana: “Want to open this rally with solidarity for our comrade Andy McDonald.” (Cue enormous applause). Says the current Labour leadership is “shameful.” Attacks the “Blairites.” #Lab21

    Sultana attacks the “Blairite clique” which she says is dominating the leadership, “gathering in drinks receptions with Peter Mandelson” [boos] “reliving the 1980s and 1990s.”

    More cheers when Sultana says “it’s an absolute disgrace that the leadership have let a scum newspaper have a stand at conference this year.”


    https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1442555117182537728

    What an idiot, if the Labour leadership was dominated by a "Blairite clique" then Labour would be ahead in the polls and idiots like Sultana would have been booted out ages ago.
    Nah, she'd just not get as much attention as she handed out leaflets at the back of the room with Corbyn, Abbott and McDonnell.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    IanB2 said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Tribune rally opened by @zarahsultana: “Want to open this rally with solidarity for our comrade Andy McDonald.” (Cue enormous applause). Says the current Labour leadership is “shameful.” Attacks the “Blairites.” #Lab21

    Sultana attacks the “Blairite clique” which she says is dominating the leadership, “gathering in drinks receptions with Peter Mandelson” [boos] “reliving the 1980s and 1990s.”

    More cheers when Sultana says “it’s an absolute disgrace that the leadership have let a scum newspaper have a stand at conference this year.”


    https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1442555117182537728

    Christ
    Sultana on the case of the currant labour leadership. Raisin' the temperature.
    Hardly currant news.
    Unsurprising, didn't think the currant did news!
  • glw said:

    Tribune rally opened by @zarahsultana: “Want to open this rally with solidarity for our comrade Andy McDonald.” (Cue enormous applause). Says the current Labour leadership is “shameful.” Attacks the “Blairites.” #Lab21

    Sultana attacks the “Blairite clique” which she says is dominating the leadership, “gathering in drinks receptions with Peter Mandelson” [boos] “reliving the 1980s and 1990s.”

    More cheers when Sultana says “it’s an absolute disgrace that the leadership have let a scum newspaper have a stand at conference this year.”


    https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1442555117182537728

    What an idiot, if the Labour leadership was dominated by a "Blairite clique" then Labour would be ahead in the polls and idiots like Sultana would have been booted out ages ago.
    Reliving the 1990s?

    Yes. When Labour last defeated the Tories and won power after a long long period in opposition.
  • FF43 said:

    Isn't life confusing?

    When Tories want to hike the wages of working people, it's excellent news and a welcome corrective to all those years when wages were undercut by our membership of the EU and FOM.

    When Labour wants to hike the wages of working people, it's extreme socialism, if not communism, in action, and how on earth are they going to afford it?

    The difference is that the Tories want wages hiked affordably and sustainably by good market conditions.

    Labour extremists tend to want wages hiked by diktat and conflict.

    Something the leftwing unions in the UK failed to understand, which more sensible unions in places like Germany can understand, is that its in the worker's own best interests to see the company they work for thrive.

    If the company you work for thrives they can afford pay rises and secure employment. If they don't . . . they can't.
    Um. You were just a couple of days ago demanding the government impose conditions that would potentially require companies to pay lorry drivers £100 000 a year and now you pontificate on £15 an hour at Macdonald's being an extremist demand.

    The quoted tweet from Starmer is two years old, but genuinely, so what?
    What I was demanding is that companies pay the fair market rate based on supply and demand. If for HGV drivers who are qualified, licenced and doing what is almost universally recognised as a long and difficult job that has poor working conditions that happens to be £70-80,000 per annum (which is what I said, based on over $100k being the going rate in the USA for that job) then fair enough.

    If on the other hand for McDonalds the going fair market rate is between £5 per hour (for under 18s) to £9 or £10 per hour for adults then so be it. Although actually McDonalds are almost universally rated as a good place to work by people who look into this kind of thing anyway.

    £15 per hour at full time could mean a McDonalds worker, in what can be an unqualified and relatively easy, fun and very social job* would be earning more than a qualified HGV driver could be earning until recently in a relatively difficult, unsocial and poor conditioned job.

    * As a student I worked for McDonalds. They were a very good employer, it was fun and social and I enjoyed it.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    IanB2 said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Tribune rally opened by @zarahsultana: “Want to open this rally with solidarity for our comrade Andy McDonald.” (Cue enormous applause). Says the current Labour leadership is “shameful.” Attacks the “Blairites.” #Lab21

    Sultana attacks the “Blairite clique” which she says is dominating the leadership, “gathering in drinks receptions with Peter Mandelson” [boos] “reliving the 1980s and 1990s.”

    More cheers when Sultana says “it’s an absolute disgrace that the leadership have let a scum newspaper have a stand at conference this year.”


    https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1442555117182537728

    Christ
    Sultana on the case of the currant labour leadership. Raisin' the temperature.
    Hardly currant news.
    Take it she is for raisin the minimum wage.
  • CatMan said:

    At the next election, no one will remember the fuel crisis, and no one will remember the Labour Party Conference

    Indeed.

    But they may well remember the coming £20 UC cut.

    Especially in the Red Wall.

  • FF43FF43 Posts: 15,545

    FF43 said:

    moonshine said:

    Sandpit said:

    moonshine said:

    Is it not the case that lots of qualified hgv drivers have switched to driving local deliveries as the conditions are better?
    That’s the anecdotal evidence - some have moved to more sociable jobs driving smaller vehicles locally, and others have taken better pay offers to switch company on the HGVs.

    There’s apparently a wide variation in terms and conditions across the industry, for example some companies insist you sleep in your cab, while others cover a travel inn when away from home.
    So in short Redwood has a point.
    Maybe the UK should learn from the EU which generally has better conditions for lorry drivers than the UK AND Freedom of Movement.

    Lorry drivers benefit from freedom of movement for reasons that ought to be obvious, but apparently aren't. Lorry drivers, quite literally need freedom to move.
    Do you have some data on the better conditions - what they consist of, etc?
    Some data on gross wages here: https://trans.info/en/eu-report-reveals-pay-gap-between-western-and-eastern-european-truckers-226234.

    Big difference between East and West Europe, which presumably explains why Eastern Europe drivers previously came to the UK, but not why they didn't stick to France, Germany etc, instead, where wages are higher.

    Facilities for truck drivers appear to be better in other Western European countries too: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/27/getting-into-europe-a-relief-hgv-driver-on-uk-crisis

    I think there will be an overdue improvement in HGV driver conditions in the UK. Other workers won't be so lucky, including the McDonald's workers that @Philip_Thompson disparages so.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624

    Farooq said:

    Farooq said:

    I hate to say it but Redwood's right.

    There's over a million people out there with HGV licences. And for those that don't have one it only takes a few weeks to train a new recruit to take the test. So yes, offer pay and conditions people want and the vacancies will be filled.

    Improving pay and conditions is the only viable (and decent) solution. Its a shame so many on the left now find suggesting good pay and conditions to be an anathema.
    Today's Conservative Party mantra: Simplistic solutions for simplistic followers. The real world of business and employment is a little more complex than this Philip. You, like Redwood are putting your head in the sand because you don't want to admit that the Government should have seen this coming. Brexit could have been managed so these problems did not exacerbate pre-existing problems, but we have a PM who likes simple ideas he can put into slogans on the back of a fag packet to provide red meat for his simple minded fanbois.
    I'm sorry but as a Thatcherite free market liberal Conservative I don't think its the government's job to tell business how to operate or "fix" problems in the market.

    To have a free market then the market has to be allowed to fail sometimes, otherwise you end up with moral hazard and freeriding within the market. If companies refuse to pay a decent wage to HGV drivers (of which we have many more times more than enough qualified) then they should be allowed to fail.

    If companies refuse to pay for transportation a decent enough rate to get their stock moved around, they too can fail.

    A few days of mass hysteria about fuel because is hardly the miner's strike now is it? In the eighties it was overly-coddled unions that were warping the market that needed sorting out, now its overly-coddled companies that feel they have a divine right to fill vacancies for shitty jobs at minimum wage that need sorting out. Either way, let the market do its thing - even if it causes some hardship or disruption from time to time.
    Did you know that, since before WWII, it was government policy to prevent (as much as possible) other industry developing in the coal mining regions of the UK?

    They were worried that no-one would put up with the conditions down the pits, if there were other jobs about.
    Any reliable sources for this?
    Not that I'm calling you unreliable, but, well, you know.
    It's in the civil service papers releases via Kew. Essentially, gentle(ish) pressure was placed on various large companies not to place factories in the wrong places. There was a big lot of this around the time of re-armament, but it was going on up til the 70s, at least.
    Ok, Kew is a long way away, so if you know of any write-ups I'd be interested in reading more.
    Interesting if true. And very, very wrong.
    I had some references in my piles of stuff - will try and find them.

    It is on-going feature of the permanent portion of government that it think it can control stuff like this.

    For example - https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16121783-500-trouble-in-paradise actually turned out to be that the Foreign Office *bribed* the government of the Virgin Islands to stop the project. The Virgin Islands government got into a spot of local bother over that. The FO had the idea that this would make the French happy (Ariane, competitor etc) and the Trade & Industry lot concurred.

    It all came out in Private Eye, IIRC.
    Beal Aerospace... haven't heard that name in a long time. Don't SpaceX use the engine test rig they built in Texas?
    Yes indeed, and they still do.
    Ah, I remember Beal as being relatively sane - and from memory I think he got out at about the right time, given the atmosphere at the time. But if he'd held on just five or six years, he would have been the frontrunner for the COTS program. I wonder if he regrets it?

    Timing is everything. Musk got exceptionally lucky with SpaceX.

    As for the insane: rotary rocket will always be one of my favourites...
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBL_UJyN88Y

    "For instance, the ATV demonstrated that landing the Rotary Rocket was tricky, even dangerous. Test pilots have a rating system, the Cooper-Harper rating scale, for vehicles between 1 and 10 that relates to difficulty to pilot. The Roton ATV scored a 10 — the vehicle simulator was found to be almost unflyable by anyone except the Rotary test pilots, and even then there were short periods where the vehicle was out of control."
    Musk was lucky, but also right.

    Everyone else was fixated on

    1) Staging is hard (Rotary)
    2) Turbo-pumps are expensive and hard (Rotary & Beal)
    3) etc etc

    The real problem was the absurd inefficiency of making stuff in rocket aerospace.

    Hence NASA is spending 100s of millions per engine to turn existing, reusable engines into throw aways. While Musk is reducing the price of brand new engine from $2m to $200K
    Yep, but if it wasn't for their COTS contracts, SpaceX probably might still be at the F1 stage, if they existed at all. The timing was perfect, and that was mostly luck. If he had started SpaceX a year or two earlier, they'd have had big problems. If they'd started it a year or two later, they'd probably have missed COTS (then again, Kistler got a contract...)
    Beal had kicked the door on opening up NASA contracts to "outsiders" - the attempts to undermine him from certain quarters got noticed and pushed back. Bit late for Beal...but...

    Kistler, ironically, kicked that door all the way open. They got a our-best-mates deal from NASA, which got ruled illegal by the GAO and had to be turned into a proper competition.
  • Let's look on the bright side. If the fuel shortage does result in riots in the streets, at least there won't be any Molotov Cocktails being thrown.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    Macron got egged again. Again, if it wasn't for the last 5 years I'd feel bad for him.
  • Is it acceptable for a senior politician to publicly call opponents scum

    Acceptable 17% Unacceptable 70 %

    Working class voters

    Acceptable 17% Unacceptable 71%

    Yougov 27th September
  • ThomasNasheThomasNashe Posts: 4,920
    edited September 2021



    Fake news.

    The 2007 Labour conference was brilliant, everyone said so.

    Let’s be clear: this is a mad one. You won’t have heard it anywhere else, but you can take it from me. At the age of 38, this is my 17th consecutive Labour Party conference, and I’ve never been to one quite like this.

    It’s in the nature of collective hysteria that no single act can be adduced to prove its existence. But there is a fin de siecle, self-destructive, decadent craziness about Conference 2007. Somewhere in the wads of twenty somethings and thirtywouldbes jamming the chintzy Bournemouth bars long after they’re normally silent lurks the jitterbugging desperation of the Twenties before the Crash, Berlin between the wars, London as Imperial Glory died with its queen. The collective psyche of this group of individuals who’ve never had it so good has rarely been so uncertain.

    This is not a columnar conceit. I do not really have a thesis; no point to prove. I can only tentatively explain this atmosphere. But nor am I wrong. This mood is as real as the grief in the church. I am simply reporting what is here.

    Perhaps the magnitude of the moment we face is too great for us collectively to bear. Shortly there will be an election, in which Labour will increase its majority, and in so doing utterly shatter the glass paradigm of cyclical politics which has contained us for the century since 1906. This ought to herald another decade of strong, confident, consensual Labour government. Which will finally and irrevocably transform the nature of politics and civic life in Britain.

    That is a frightening responsibility. The young princes who now stride the parade ground with the confidence born of aristocratic schooling can never be afraid. They never have been. Like latter day Pushkins drilled in the elite academy of Brownian blitzkrieg, they are bursting with their sense of destiny. It’s not the Milibands, the Ballses or the Burnhams who are unconsciously nervous. This is the moment for which they were created. They are ready.


    https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2007/09/labour-majority-increase

    What an extraordinary piece! I'm really surprised that you've held back on quoting it for such a long time.

    Incidentally, note that 'self-destructive' in the second paragraph; maybe there was just a little bit of unconscious insight here?
  • FF43 said:

    FF43 said:

    moonshine said:

    Sandpit said:

    moonshine said:

    Is it not the case that lots of qualified hgv drivers have switched to driving local deliveries as the conditions are better?
    That’s the anecdotal evidence - some have moved to more sociable jobs driving smaller vehicles locally, and others have taken better pay offers to switch company on the HGVs.

    There’s apparently a wide variation in terms and conditions across the industry, for example some companies insist you sleep in your cab, while others cover a travel inn when away from home.
    So in short Redwood has a point.
    Maybe the UK should learn from the EU which generally has better conditions for lorry drivers than the UK AND Freedom of Movement.

    Lorry drivers benefit from freedom of movement for reasons that ought to be obvious, but apparently aren't. Lorry drivers, quite literally need freedom to move.
    Do you have some data on the better conditions - what they consist of, etc?
    Some data on gross wages here: https://trans.info/en/eu-report-reveals-pay-gap-between-western-and-eastern-european-truckers-226234.

    Big difference between East and West Europe, which presumably explains why Eastern Europe drivers previously came to the UK, but not why they didn't stick to France, Germany etc, instead, where wages are higher.

    Facilities for truck drivers appear to be better in other Western European countries too: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/27/getting-into-europe-a-relief-hgv-driver-on-uk-crisis

    I think there will be an overdue improvement in HGV driver conditions in the UK. Other workers won't be so lucky, including the McDonald's workers that @Philip_Thompson disparages so.
    I don't disparage McDonald's workers. I'm happy to have worked for them myselves and I respect the company and its workers so where did you get that from?

    I just don't think McDonald's is the sort of company that necessarily should or could be paying 50% more than its competitors pay - and I certainly don't think its realistic that the starting wage for McDonald's employees would ever be higher than what HGV drivers were getting until recently.

    But as a company they do tend to pay above minimum wage anyway as far as I know, they did when I worked there. McDonald's where a much, much better employer than the Co-Op which I worked for before them.
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535

    glw said:

    Tribune rally opened by @zarahsultana: “Want to open this rally with solidarity for our comrade Andy McDonald.” (Cue enormous applause). Says the current Labour leadership is “shameful.” Attacks the “Blairites.” #Lab21

    Sultana attacks the “Blairite clique” which she says is dominating the leadership, “gathering in drinks receptions with Peter Mandelson” [boos] “reliving the 1980s and 1990s.”

    More cheers when Sultana says “it’s an absolute disgrace that the leadership have let a scum newspaper have a stand at conference this year.”


    https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1442555117182537728

    What an idiot, if the Labour leadership was dominated by a "Blairite clique" then Labour would be ahead in the polls and idiots like Sultana would have been booted out ages ago.
    Reliving the 1990s?

    Yes. When Labour last defeated the Tories and won power after a long long period in opposition.
    Imagine a Liverpool fan who didn't like Kenny Dalglish, or a United fan who hated Ferguson, it's not easy is it? The very idea is fantastical. There is something deeply wrong with the Labour Party when so many members revile their most successful leader ever.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    glw said:

    Tribune rally opened by @zarahsultana: “Want to open this rally with solidarity for our comrade Andy McDonald.” (Cue enormous applause). Says the current Labour leadership is “shameful.” Attacks the “Blairites.” #Lab21

    Sultana attacks the “Blairite clique” which she says is dominating the leadership, “gathering in drinks receptions with Peter Mandelson” [boos] “reliving the 1980s and 1990s.”

    More cheers when Sultana says “it’s an absolute disgrace that the leadership have let a scum newspaper have a stand at conference this year.”


    https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1442555117182537728

    What an idiot, if the Labour leadership was dominated by a "Blairite clique" then Labour would be ahead in the polls and idiots like Sultana would have been booted out ages ago.
    Ultimately Labour seems like a party where half of the MPs don't want to win over the 2-3m Tory voters they need to get a majority. They'd rather stay in opposition than win the votes of the scum who had the temerity to vote Tory.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739

    Let's look on the bright side. If the fuel shortage does result in riots in the streets, at least there won't be any Molotov Cocktails being thrown.

    And the Army will already be there
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,072
    edited September 2021

    CatMan said:

    At the next election, no one will remember the fuel crisis, and no one will remember the Labour Party Conference

    Indeed.

    But they may well remember the coming £20 UC cut.

    Especially in the Red Wall.

    I will be surprised if the UC cut actually happens
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603

    FF43 said:

    FF43 said:

    moonshine said:

    Sandpit said:

    moonshine said:

    Is it not the case that lots of qualified hgv drivers have switched to driving local deliveries as the conditions are better?
    That’s the anecdotal evidence - some have moved to more sociable jobs driving smaller vehicles locally, and others have taken better pay offers to switch company on the HGVs.

    There’s apparently a wide variation in terms and conditions across the industry, for example some companies insist you sleep in your cab, while others cover a travel inn when away from home.
    So in short Redwood has a point.
    Maybe the UK should learn from the EU which generally has better conditions for lorry drivers than the UK AND Freedom of Movement.

    Lorry drivers benefit from freedom of movement for reasons that ought to be obvious, but apparently aren't. Lorry drivers, quite literally need freedom to move.
    Do you have some data on the better conditions - what they consist of, etc?
    Some data on gross wages here: https://trans.info/en/eu-report-reveals-pay-gap-between-western-and-eastern-european-truckers-226234.

    Big difference between East and West Europe, which presumably explains why Eastern Europe drivers previously came to the UK, but not why they didn't stick to France, Germany etc, instead, where wages are higher.

    Facilities for truck drivers appear to be better in other Western European countries too: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/27/getting-into-europe-a-relief-hgv-driver-on-uk-crisis

    I think there will be an overdue improvement in HGV driver conditions in the UK. Other workers won't be so lucky, including the McDonald's workers that @Philip_Thompson disparages so.
    I don't disparage McDonald's workers. I'm happy to have worked for them myselves and I respect the company and its workers so where did you get that from?

    I just don't think McDonald's is the sort of company that necessarily should or could be paying 50% more than its competitors pay - and I certainly don't think its realistic that the starting wage for McDonald's employees would ever be higher than what HGV drivers were getting until recently.

    But as a company they do tend to pay above minimum wage anyway as far as I know, they did when I worked there. McDonald's where a much, much better employer than the Co-Op which I worked for before them.
    What's interesting is that McDonald's and other low skilled employers may need to start paying significantly more competitive wages. My wife worked for McDonald's in Basel when she was in school and they paid her 23 Francs per hour and that was over 10 years ago.

    If we really are heading in the same direction as Switzerland then I expect the working poor will cease to exist over the next decade as payrises pull them out of poverty.
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535
    MaxPB said:

    glw said:

    Tribune rally opened by @zarahsultana: “Want to open this rally with solidarity for our comrade Andy McDonald.” (Cue enormous applause). Says the current Labour leadership is “shameful.” Attacks the “Blairites.” #Lab21

    Sultana attacks the “Blairite clique” which she says is dominating the leadership, “gathering in drinks receptions with Peter Mandelson” [boos] “reliving the 1980s and 1990s.”

    More cheers when Sultana says “it’s an absolute disgrace that the leadership have let a scum newspaper have a stand at conference this year.”


    https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1442555117182537728

    What an idiot, if the Labour leadership was dominated by a "Blairite clique" then Labour would be ahead in the polls and idiots like Sultana would have been booted out ages ago.
    Ultimately Labour seems like a party where half of the MPs don't want to win over the 2-3m Tory voters they need to get a majority. They'd rather stay in opposition than win the votes of the scum who had the temerity to vote Tory.
    The Tories are much better at politics than Labour. It's not even close.
  • CatManCatMan Posts: 2,722
    glw said:

    glw said:

    Tribune rally opened by @zarahsultana: “Want to open this rally with solidarity for our comrade Andy McDonald.” (Cue enormous applause). Says the current Labour leadership is “shameful.” Attacks the “Blairites.” #Lab21

    Sultana attacks the “Blairite clique” which she says is dominating the leadership, “gathering in drinks receptions with Peter Mandelson” [boos] “reliving the 1980s and 1990s.”

    More cheers when Sultana says “it’s an absolute disgrace that the leadership have let a scum newspaper have a stand at conference this year.”


    https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1442555117182537728

    What an idiot, if the Labour leadership was dominated by a "Blairite clique" then Labour would be ahead in the polls and idiots like Sultana would have been booted out ages ago.
    Reliving the 1990s?

    Yes. When Labour last defeated the Tories and won power after a long long period in opposition.
    Imagine a Liverpool fan who didn't like Kenny Dalglish, or a United fan who hated Ferguson, it's not easy is it? The very idea is fantastical. There is something deeply wrong with the Labour Party when so many members revile their most successful leader ever.
    The Labour Party hate Blair because of Iraq, which to be fair I don't think is that unreasonable.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624
    MaxPB said:

    FF43 said:

    FF43 said:

    moonshine said:

    Sandpit said:

    moonshine said:

    Is it not the case that lots of qualified hgv drivers have switched to driving local deliveries as the conditions are better?
    That’s the anecdotal evidence - some have moved to more sociable jobs driving smaller vehicles locally, and others have taken better pay offers to switch company on the HGVs.

    There’s apparently a wide variation in terms and conditions across the industry, for example some companies insist you sleep in your cab, while others cover a travel inn when away from home.
    So in short Redwood has a point.
    Maybe the UK should learn from the EU which generally has better conditions for lorry drivers than the UK AND Freedom of Movement.

    Lorry drivers benefit from freedom of movement for reasons that ought to be obvious, but apparently aren't. Lorry drivers, quite literally need freedom to move.
    Do you have some data on the better conditions - what they consist of, etc?
    Some data on gross wages here: https://trans.info/en/eu-report-reveals-pay-gap-between-western-and-eastern-european-truckers-226234.

    Big difference between East and West Europe, which presumably explains why Eastern Europe drivers previously came to the UK, but not why they didn't stick to France, Germany etc, instead, where wages are higher.

    Facilities for truck drivers appear to be better in other Western European countries too: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/27/getting-into-europe-a-relief-hgv-driver-on-uk-crisis

    I think there will be an overdue improvement in HGV driver conditions in the UK. Other workers won't be so lucky, including the McDonald's workers that @Philip_Thompson disparages so.
    I don't disparage McDonald's workers. I'm happy to have worked for them myselves and I respect the company and its workers so where did you get that from?

    I just don't think McDonald's is the sort of company that necessarily should or could be paying 50% more than its competitors pay - and I certainly don't think its realistic that the starting wage for McDonald's employees would ever be higher than what HGV drivers were getting until recently.

    But as a company they do tend to pay above minimum wage anyway as far as I know, they did when I worked there. McDonald's where a much, much better employer than the Co-Op which I worked for before them.
    What's interesting is that McDonald's and other low skilled employers may need to start paying significantly more competitive wages. My wife worked for McDonald's in Basel when she was in school and they paid her 23 Francs per hour and that was over 10 years ago.

    If we really are heading in the same direction as Switzerland then I expect the working poor will cease to exist over the next decade as payrises pull them out of poverty.
    I would expect that the first thing to happen is automation - which will be a bit of a management revolution by itself.

    "Invest??!!!? But that money is for our bonuses!"
  • R Kelly guilty of all charges
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-58714203

    I await people to say he should be excused because of his 'talent' ...
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,748
    edited September 2021

    murali_s said:

    Isn't life confusing?

    When Tories want to hike the wages of working people, it's excellent news and a welcome corrective to all those years when wages were undercut by our membership of the EU and FOM.

    When Labour wants to hike the wages of working people, it's extreme socialism, if not communism, in action, and how on earth are they going to afford it?

    Hah! Our PB Tories are such a fascinating (as well as thick and ugly) species!
    You can't call them ugly. We have no idea what they look like! I imagine them as kind of grizzled, tanned and athletic, like an ageing boy band or Alan Hanson, but with a subscription to the Spectator and slightly drunk.
    There have been photos from social gatherings.
    Think some of the more unworldly teams on Only Connect.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603

    MaxPB said:

    FF43 said:

    FF43 said:

    moonshine said:

    Sandpit said:

    moonshine said:

    Is it not the case that lots of qualified hgv drivers have switched to driving local deliveries as the conditions are better?
    That’s the anecdotal evidence - some have moved to more sociable jobs driving smaller vehicles locally, and others have taken better pay offers to switch company on the HGVs.

    There’s apparently a wide variation in terms and conditions across the industry, for example some companies insist you sleep in your cab, while others cover a travel inn when away from home.
    So in short Redwood has a point.
    Maybe the UK should learn from the EU which generally has better conditions for lorry drivers than the UK AND Freedom of Movement.

    Lorry drivers benefit from freedom of movement for reasons that ought to be obvious, but apparently aren't. Lorry drivers, quite literally need freedom to move.
    Do you have some data on the better conditions - what they consist of, etc?
    Some data on gross wages here: https://trans.info/en/eu-report-reveals-pay-gap-between-western-and-eastern-european-truckers-226234.

    Big difference between East and West Europe, which presumably explains why Eastern Europe drivers previously came to the UK, but not why they didn't stick to France, Germany etc, instead, where wages are higher.

    Facilities for truck drivers appear to be better in other Western European countries too: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/27/getting-into-europe-a-relief-hgv-driver-on-uk-crisis

    I think there will be an overdue improvement in HGV driver conditions in the UK. Other workers won't be so lucky, including the McDonald's workers that @Philip_Thompson disparages so.
    I don't disparage McDonald's workers. I'm happy to have worked for them myselves and I respect the company and its workers so where did you get that from?

    I just don't think McDonald's is the sort of company that necessarily should or could be paying 50% more than its competitors pay - and I certainly don't think its realistic that the starting wage for McDonald's employees would ever be higher than what HGV drivers were getting until recently.

    But as a company they do tend to pay above minimum wage anyway as far as I know, they did when I worked there. McDonald's where a much, much better employer than the Co-Op which I worked for before them.
    What's interesting is that McDonald's and other low skilled employers may need to start paying significantly more competitive wages. My wife worked for McDonald's in Basel when she was in school and they paid her 23 Francs per hour and that was over 10 years ago.

    If we really are heading in the same direction as Switzerland then I expect the working poor will cease to exist over the next decade as payrises pull them out of poverty.
    I would expect that the first thing to happen is automation - which will be a bit of a management revolution by itself.

    "Invest??!!!? But that money is for our bonuses!"
    Yeah which is where the ordering screens came from but even after that McDonald's found that they just had so much more capacity to produce burgers that they ended up being able to get rid of endless queues, get the burgers out faster and serve more customers and ultimately employ more people.
  • MaxPB said:

    FF43 said:

    FF43 said:

    moonshine said:

    Sandpit said:

    moonshine said:

    Is it not the case that lots of qualified hgv drivers have switched to driving local deliveries as the conditions are better?
    That’s the anecdotal evidence - some have moved to more sociable jobs driving smaller vehicles locally, and others have taken better pay offers to switch company on the HGVs.

    There’s apparently a wide variation in terms and conditions across the industry, for example some companies insist you sleep in your cab, while others cover a travel inn when away from home.
    So in short Redwood has a point.
    Maybe the UK should learn from the EU which generally has better conditions for lorry drivers than the UK AND Freedom of Movement.

    Lorry drivers benefit from freedom of movement for reasons that ought to be obvious, but apparently aren't. Lorry drivers, quite literally need freedom to move.
    Do you have some data on the better conditions - what they consist of, etc?
    Some data on gross wages here: https://trans.info/en/eu-report-reveals-pay-gap-between-western-and-eastern-european-truckers-226234.

    Big difference between East and West Europe, which presumably explains why Eastern Europe drivers previously came to the UK, but not why they didn't stick to France, Germany etc, instead, where wages are higher.

    Facilities for truck drivers appear to be better in other Western European countries too: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/27/getting-into-europe-a-relief-hgv-driver-on-uk-crisis

    I think there will be an overdue improvement in HGV driver conditions in the UK. Other workers won't be so lucky, including the McDonald's workers that @Philip_Thompson disparages so.
    I don't disparage McDonald's workers. I'm happy to have worked for them myselves and I respect the company and its workers so where did you get that from?

    I just don't think McDonald's is the sort of company that necessarily should or could be paying 50% more than its competitors pay - and I certainly don't think its realistic that the starting wage for McDonald's employees would ever be higher than what HGV drivers were getting until recently.

    But as a company they do tend to pay above minimum wage anyway as far as I know, they did when I worked there. McDonald's where a much, much better employer than the Co-Op which I worked for before them.
    What's interesting is that McDonald's and other low skilled employers may need to start paying significantly more competitive wages. My wife worked for McDonald's in Basel when she was in school and they paid her 23 Francs per hour and that was over 10 years ago.

    If we really are heading in the same direction as Switzerland then I expect the working poor will cease to exist over the next decade as payrises pull them out of poverty.
    Absolutely and that is something to celebrate if so.

    I can't remember what my pay rate as a McDonald's cashier was in 2000-2001 but I think it was £4.50 - either way it was considerably above minimum wage for an 18 year old of the time which is what the Co-Op had paid.

    In recent years there's been a tendency for the "minimum" to be a "maximum" instead. It'd be great to have that reversed.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540
    edited September 2021
    There were other results in that poll.....



    Second lowest in the series - pipped only by Ed Miliband....
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,249

    Worth noting that every Labour conference in history has been deemed a shambles on PB. In fairness, the same probably applies to the Tory and Lib conferences.

    Fake news.

    The 2007 Labour conference was brilliant, everyone said so.

    Let’s be clear: this is a mad one. You won’t have heard it anywhere else, but you can take it from me. At the age of 38, this is my 17th consecutive Labour Party conference, and I’ve never been to one quite like this.

    It’s in the nature of collective hysteria that no single act can be adduced to prove its existence. But there is a fin de siecle, self-destructive, decadent craziness about Conference 2007. Somewhere in the wads of twenty somethings and thirtywouldbes jamming the chintzy Bournemouth bars long after they’re normally silent lurks the jitterbugging desperation of the Twenties before the Crash, Berlin between the wars, London as Imperial Glory died with its queen. The collective psyche of this group of individuals who’ve never had it so good has rarely been so uncertain.

    This is not a columnar conceit. I do not really have a thesis; no point to prove. I can only tentatively explain this atmosphere. But nor am I wrong. This mood is as real as the grief in the church. I am simply reporting what is here.

    Perhaps the magnitude of the moment we face is too great for us collectively to bear. Shortly there will be an election, in which Labour will increase its majority, and in so doing utterly shatter the glass paradigm of cyclical politics which has contained us for the century since 1906. This ought to herald another decade of strong, confident, consensual Labour government. Which will finally and irrevocably transform the nature of politics and civic life in Britain.

    That is a frightening responsibility. The young princes who now stride the parade ground with the confidence born of aristocratic schooling can never be afraid. They never have been. Like latter day Pushkins drilled in the elite academy of Brownian blitzkrieg, they are bursting with their sense of destiny. It’s not the Milibands, the Ballses or the Burnhams who are unconsciously nervous. This is the moment for which they were created. They are ready.


    https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2007/09/labour-majority-increase
    One of the reasons that piece is endlessly rehashed on here is that it is quite a brilliant chunk of writing. Knowingly hyperbolic, wittily hysterical, that is a writer inhaling pure oxygen (and maybe a bit of coke) and lovin' it
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,751

    Is it acceptable for a senior politician to publicly call opponents scum

    Acceptable 17% Unacceptable 70 %

    Working class voters

    Acceptable 17% Unacceptable 71%

    Yougov 27th September

    Did they poll on whether it’s acceptable for third rate backbenchers to call senior figures in their own party scum?

    Just asking…
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069

    Isn't life confusing?

    When Tories want to hike the wages of working people, it's excellent news and a welcome corrective to all those years when wages were undercut by our membership of the EU and FOM.

    When Labour wants to hike the wages of working people, it's extreme socialism, if not communism, in action, and how on earth are they going to afford it?

    The difference is that the Tories want wages hiked affordably and sustainably by good market conditions.

    Labour extremists tend to want wages hiked by diktat and conflict.

    Something the leftwing unions in the UK failed to understand, which more sensible unions in places like Germany can understand, is that its in the worker's own best interests to see the company they work for thrive.

    If the company you work for thrives they can afford pay rises and secure employment. If they don't . . . they can't.
    As I recall, last week you were saying that companies that couldn't pay should go bust, in the overall interest of the economy.
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,704
    Leon said:

    Worth noting that every Labour conference in history has been deemed a shambles on PB. In fairness, the same probably applies to the Tory and Lib conferences.

    Fake news.

    The 2007 Labour conference was brilliant, everyone said so.

    Let’s be clear: this is a mad one. You won’t have heard it anywhere else, but you can take it from me. At the age of 38, this is my 17th consecutive Labour Party conference, and I’ve never been to one quite like this.

    It’s in the nature of collective hysteria that no single act can be adduced to prove its existence. But there is a fin de siecle, self-destructive, decadent craziness about Conference 2007. Somewhere in the wads of twenty somethings and thirtywouldbes jamming the chintzy Bournemouth bars long after they’re normally silent lurks the jitterbugging desperation of the Twenties before the Crash, Berlin between the wars, London as Imperial Glory died with its queen. The collective psyche of this group of individuals who’ve never had it so good has rarely been so uncertain.

    This is not a columnar conceit. I do not really have a thesis; no point to prove. I can only tentatively explain this atmosphere. But nor am I wrong. This mood is as real as the grief in the church. I am simply reporting what is here.

    Perhaps the magnitude of the moment we face is too great for us collectively to bear. Shortly there will be an election, in which Labour will increase its majority, and in so doing utterly shatter the glass paradigm of cyclical politics which has contained us for the century since 1906. This ought to herald another decade of strong, confident, consensual Labour government. Which will finally and irrevocably transform the nature of politics and civic life in Britain.

    That is a frightening responsibility. The young princes who now stride the parade ground with the confidence born of aristocratic schooling can never be afraid. They never have been. Like latter day Pushkins drilled in the elite academy of Brownian blitzkrieg, they are bursting with their sense of destiny. It’s not the Milibands, the Ballses or the Burnhams who are unconsciously nervous. This is the moment for which they were created. They are ready.


    https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2007/09/labour-majority-increase
    One of the reasons that piece is endlessly rehashed on here is that it is quite a brilliant chunk of writing. Knowingly hyperbolic, wittily hysterical, that is a writer inhaling pure oxygen (and maybe a bit of coke) and lovin' it
    Whatever became of Sion Simon ?
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165
    Taz said:

    Leon said:

    Worth noting that every Labour conference in history has been deemed a shambles on PB. In fairness, the same probably applies to the Tory and Lib conferences.

    Fake news.

    The 2007 Labour conference was brilliant, everyone said so.

    Let’s be clear: this is a mad one. You won’t have heard it anywhere else, but you can take it from me. At the age of 38, this is my 17th consecutive Labour Party conference, and I’ve never been to one quite like this.

    It’s in the nature of collective hysteria that no single act can be adduced to prove its existence. But there is a fin de siecle, self-destructive, decadent craziness about Conference 2007. Somewhere in the wads of twenty somethings and thirtywouldbes jamming the chintzy Bournemouth bars long after they’re normally silent lurks the jitterbugging desperation of the Twenties before the Crash, Berlin between the wars, London as Imperial Glory died with its queen. The collective psyche of this group of individuals who’ve never had it so good has rarely been so uncertain.

    This is not a columnar conceit. I do not really have a thesis; no point to prove. I can only tentatively explain this atmosphere. But nor am I wrong. This mood is as real as the grief in the church. I am simply reporting what is here.

    Perhaps the magnitude of the moment we face is too great for us collectively to bear. Shortly there will be an election, in which Labour will increase its majority, and in so doing utterly shatter the glass paradigm of cyclical politics which has contained us for the century since 1906. This ought to herald another decade of strong, confident, consensual Labour government. Which will finally and irrevocably transform the nature of politics and civic life in Britain.

    That is a frightening responsibility. The young princes who now stride the parade ground with the confidence born of aristocratic schooling can never be afraid. They never have been. Like latter day Pushkins drilled in the elite academy of Brownian blitzkrieg, they are bursting with their sense of destiny. It’s not the Milibands, the Ballses or the Burnhams who are unconsciously nervous. This is the moment for which they were created. They are ready.


    https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2007/09/labour-majority-increase
    One of the reasons that piece is endlessly rehashed on here is that it is quite a brilliant chunk of writing. Knowingly hyperbolic, wittily hysterical, that is a writer inhaling pure oxygen (and maybe a bit of coke) and lovin' it
    Whatever became of Sion Simon ?
    He lost to Andy Street.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,880

    Worth noting that every Labour conference in history has been deemed a shambles on PB. In fairness, the same probably applies to the Tory and Lib conferences.

    Yep, the Lib Dem one passed us all by and the Torres will amuse next week. Meanwhile, in the real world no one gives a stuff about the conferences, but they do know the petrol situation is a bit shit...
  • Foxy said:

    Isn't life confusing?

    When Tories want to hike the wages of working people, it's excellent news and a welcome corrective to all those years when wages were undercut by our membership of the EU and FOM.

    When Labour wants to hike the wages of working people, it's extreme socialism, if not communism, in action, and how on earth are they going to afford it?

    The difference is that the Tories want wages hiked affordably and sustainably by good market conditions.

    Labour extremists tend to want wages hiked by diktat and conflict.

    Something the leftwing unions in the UK failed to understand, which more sensible unions in places like Germany can understand, is that its in the worker's own best interests to see the company they work for thrive.

    If the company you work for thrives they can afford pay rises and secure employment. If they don't . . . they can't.
    As I recall, last week you were saying that companies that couldn't pay should go bust, in the overall interest of the economy.
    If other companies are out-competing them, yes.

    Not because of artificial restrictions that is making even good companies go bust without better replacements waiting in the wings.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,249
    MaxPB said:

    glw said:

    Tribune rally opened by @zarahsultana: “Want to open this rally with solidarity for our comrade Andy McDonald.” (Cue enormous applause). Says the current Labour leadership is “shameful.” Attacks the “Blairites.” #Lab21

    Sultana attacks the “Blairite clique” which she says is dominating the leadership, “gathering in drinks receptions with Peter Mandelson” [boos] “reliving the 1980s and 1990s.”

    More cheers when Sultana says “it’s an absolute disgrace that the leadership have let a scum newspaper have a stand at conference this year.”


    https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1442555117182537728

    What an idiot, if the Labour leadership was dominated by a "Blairite clique" then Labour would be ahead in the polls and idiots like Sultana would have been booted out ages ago.
    Ultimately Labour seems like a party where half of the MPs don't want to win over the 2-3m Tory voters they need to get a majority. They'd rather stay in opposition than win the votes of the scum who had the temerity to vote Tory.
    As I said yesterday, they are like servants viciously battling for the job of butler, in the basement of Downton Abbey. Labour knows its place. Opposition.

    They have lost any idea of actually going Upstairs and being the posh people, ie the government. That is the Tories and always will be

    It is tragic, really
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,751
    @Gallowgate

    Your figures on the amount you need to earn to pay off the student loan are exactly why it was a very stupid idea that no sane person would have proposed* and the government should have rejected as expensive, unworkable, futile and damaging,

    Frustrating though it was that the Tories had endorsed the proposals without seeing them, what still bewilders me is that the Lib Dems went along with it. I can only conclude they simply decided unless they had a more realistic alternative available there was no point vetoing it.

    But it will need to go simply because it’s an utter failure.

    *It was of course not proposed by a sane person, being proposed instead by the egregious Lord Browne.
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535

    There were other results in that poll.....



    Second lowest in the series - pipped only by Ed Miliband....

    I wonder what Sultana would think of that? I wonder if she even realises how far behind Labour are? They are miles away from forming a government with sentiment like that.
  • CatMan said:

    glw said:

    glw said:

    Tribune rally opened by @zarahsultana: “Want to open this rally with solidarity for our comrade Andy McDonald.” (Cue enormous applause). Says the current Labour leadership is “shameful.” Attacks the “Blairites.” #Lab21

    Sultana attacks the “Blairite clique” which she says is dominating the leadership, “gathering in drinks receptions with Peter Mandelson” [boos] “reliving the 1980s and 1990s.”

    More cheers when Sultana says “it’s an absolute disgrace that the leadership have let a scum newspaper have a stand at conference this year.”


    https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1442555117182537728

    What an idiot, if the Labour leadership was dominated by a "Blairite clique" then Labour would be ahead in the polls and idiots like Sultana would have been booted out ages ago.
    Reliving the 1990s?

    Yes. When Labour last defeated the Tories and won power after a long long period in opposition.
    Imagine a Liverpool fan who didn't like Kenny Dalglish, or a United fan who hated Ferguson, it's not easy is it? The very idea is fantastical. There is something deeply wrong with the Labour Party when so many members revile their most successful leader ever.
    The Labour Party hate Blair because of Iraq, which to be fair I don't think is that unreasonable.
    Tories also used to hate Blair because he fooled them into being the most enthusiastic supporters of Iraq, but they've moved on. He's now handy for beating SKS up for being crap by comparison, and Labour lefties for repudiating his electoral success.
  • CatMan said:

    At the next election, no one will remember the fuel crisis, and no one will remember the Labour Party Conference

    Indeed.

    But they may well remember the coming £20 UC cut.

    Especially in the Red Wall.

    I will be surprised if the UC cut actually happens
    I expect it will be ameliorated
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    Is it acceptable for a senior politician to publicly call opponents scum

    Acceptable 17% Unacceptable 70 %

    Working class voters

    Acceptable 17% Unacceptable 71%

    Yougov 27th September

    What do those scum voters know?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,249

    There were other results in that poll.....



    Second lowest in the series - pipped only by Ed Miliband....

    So Starmer is actually doing worse, on that metric, than Corbyn??
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,751
    Leon said:

    There were other results in that poll.....



    Second lowest in the series - pipped only by Ed Miliband....

    So Starmer is actually doing worse, on that metric, than Corbyn??
    Starmer doesn’t have the uncritical admiration of a large chunk of ultra left wing diehards like Bastani, Sarker, BigJohnOwls etc…
  • isamisam Posts: 40,731
    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    glw said:

    Tribune rally opened by @zarahsultana: “Want to open this rally with solidarity for our comrade Andy McDonald.” (Cue enormous applause). Says the current Labour leadership is “shameful.” Attacks the “Blairites.” #Lab21

    Sultana attacks the “Blairite clique” which she says is dominating the leadership, “gathering in drinks receptions with Peter Mandelson” [boos] “reliving the 1980s and 1990s.”

    More cheers when Sultana says “it’s an absolute disgrace that the leadership have let a scum newspaper have a stand at conference this year.”


    https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1442555117182537728

    What an idiot, if the Labour leadership was dominated by a "Blairite clique" then Labour would be ahead in the polls and idiots like Sultana would have been booted out ages ago.
    Ultimately Labour seems like a party where half of the MPs don't want to win over the 2-3m Tory voters they need to get a majority. They'd rather stay in opposition than win the votes of the scum who had the temerity to vote Tory.
    As I said yesterday, they are like servants viciously battling for the job of butler, in the basement of Downton Abbey. Labour knows its place. Opposition.

    They have lost any idea of actually going Upstairs and being the posh people, ie the government. That is the Tories and always will be

    It is tragic, really
    I think it is the natural order of things, in England anyway - we want slightly nasty right of centre politicians to be in charge, but kept in line by nagging, whining lefties. Sensible posh folk in charge of the purse strings, even if they are implementing left wing policies
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,461
    edited September 2021

    isam said:

    Isn't life confusing?

    When Tories want to hike the wages of working people, it's excellent news and a welcome corrective to all those years when wages were undercut by our membership of the EU and FOM.

    When Labour wants to hike the wages of working people, it's extreme socialism, if not communism, in action, and how on earth are they going to afford it?

    Not really - the free marketeers on here have pointed out it will probably happen organically anyway - the only one against it is Sir Keir, unless it's a photo op at Wandsworth McDs
    Presumably the "free marketeers" you refer to, who want wages to settle "organically", are opposed to the minimum wage then? They certainly were back in 1997, warning of devastating consequences for employment levels. For free marketeers, wages must be able to go down as well as up, surely? Otherwise it's a rigged market, not a free market.

    Tories / free marketeers seem to be all over the place on wages, actually. Some of us just want significantly higher wages for all those paid poorly. Not just McDonalds and HGV drivers, but also textile workers, warehouse workers, shop assistants, care workers and lots of other poorly paid public sector workers. I don't think for a moment that Tories really want to raise the wages of all the lower paid.

    Anyway, I'm off now to watch Brighton stuff Palace and move to the top of the PL.
    I thought you were 'northern'?
    I am by birth, upbringing and soul. But right now I live down here among the luvvies. Staring out of my window (at half time) watching the Labourites crawl from pub to pub. I'm a Leeds man, but may as well back Brighton as well, as I'm living here.
  • CatMan said:

    glw said:

    glw said:

    Tribune rally opened by @zarahsultana: “Want to open this rally with solidarity for our comrade Andy McDonald.” (Cue enormous applause). Says the current Labour leadership is “shameful.” Attacks the “Blairites.” #Lab21

    Sultana attacks the “Blairite clique” which she says is dominating the leadership, “gathering in drinks receptions with Peter Mandelson” [boos] “reliving the 1980s and 1990s.”

    More cheers when Sultana says “it’s an absolute disgrace that the leadership have let a scum newspaper have a stand at conference this year.”


    https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1442555117182537728

    What an idiot, if the Labour leadership was dominated by a "Blairite clique" then Labour would be ahead in the polls and idiots like Sultana would have been booted out ages ago.
    Reliving the 1990s?

    Yes. When Labour last defeated the Tories and won power after a long long period in opposition.
    Imagine a Liverpool fan who didn't like Kenny Dalglish, or a United fan who hated Ferguson, it's not easy is it? The very idea is fantastical. There is something deeply wrong with the Labour Party when so many members revile their most successful leader ever.
    The Labour Party hate Blair because of Iraq, which to be fair I don't think is that unreasonable.
    Tories also used to hate Blair because he fooled them into being the most enthusiastic supporters of Iraq, but they've moved on. He's now handy for beating SKS up for being crap by comparison, and Labour lefties for repudiating his electoral success.
    I voted for Blair twice
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    Leon said:

    There were other results in that poll.....



    Second lowest in the series - pipped only by Ed Miliband....

    So Starmer is actually doing worse, on that metric, than Corbyn??
    That's one way to look at it. The other is the lower numbers of "disagree" being better. i honestly don't know which is more favourable.
  • CatMan said:

    glw said:

    glw said:

    Tribune rally opened by @zarahsultana: “Want to open this rally with solidarity for our comrade Andy McDonald.” (Cue enormous applause). Says the current Labour leadership is “shameful.” Attacks the “Blairites.” #Lab21

    Sultana attacks the “Blairite clique” which she says is dominating the leadership, “gathering in drinks receptions with Peter Mandelson” [boos] “reliving the 1980s and 1990s.”

    More cheers when Sultana says “it’s an absolute disgrace that the leadership have let a scum newspaper have a stand at conference this year.”


    https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1442555117182537728

    What an idiot, if the Labour leadership was dominated by a "Blairite clique" then Labour would be ahead in the polls and idiots like Sultana would have been booted out ages ago.
    Reliving the 1990s?

    Yes. When Labour last defeated the Tories and won power after a long long period in opposition.
    Imagine a Liverpool fan who didn't like Kenny Dalglish, or a United fan who hated Ferguson, it's not easy is it? The very idea is fantastical. There is something deeply wrong with the Labour Party when so many members revile their most successful leader ever.
    The Labour Party hate Blair because of Iraq, which to be fair I don't think is that unreasonable.
    Tories also used to hate Blair because he fooled them into being the most enthusiastic supporters of Iraq, but they've moved on. He's now handy for beating SKS up for being crap by comparison, and Labour lefties for repudiating his electoral success.
    I voted for Blair twice
    Which is why you'll never be a true Tory according to the only Tory in the village, despite decades of working with the party.

    Similarly I voted for him once, so that's me excommunicated for life according to the only Tory.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,751

    CatMan said:

    glw said:

    glw said:

    Tribune rally opened by @zarahsultana: “Want to open this rally with solidarity for our comrade Andy McDonald.” (Cue enormous applause). Says the current Labour leadership is “shameful.” Attacks the “Blairites.” #Lab21

    Sultana attacks the “Blairite clique” which she says is dominating the leadership, “gathering in drinks receptions with Peter Mandelson” [boos] “reliving the 1980s and 1990s.”

    More cheers when Sultana says “it’s an absolute disgrace that the leadership have let a scum newspaper have a stand at conference this year.”


    https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1442555117182537728

    What an idiot, if the Labour leadership was dominated by a "Blairite clique" then Labour would be ahead in the polls and idiots like Sultana would have been booted out ages ago.
    Reliving the 1990s?

    Yes. When Labour last defeated the Tories and won power after a long long period in opposition.
    Imagine a Liverpool fan who didn't like Kenny Dalglish, or a United fan who hated Ferguson, it's not easy is it? The very idea is fantastical. There is something deeply wrong with the Labour Party when so many members revile their most successful leader ever.
    The Labour Party hate Blair because of Iraq, which to be fair I don't think is that unreasonable.
    Tories also used to hate Blair because he fooled them into being the most enthusiastic supporters of Iraq, but they've moved on. He's now handy for beating SKS up for being crap by comparison, and Labour lefties for repudiating his electoral success.
    I voted for Blair twice
    On that subject how many people are going to be watching this?

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09wg9cm/episodes/guide

    I’ve just been rereading Mandelson’s autobiography. It’s remarkable how in just 11 years so many assumptions and attitudes he displays now seem incredibly dated to the point of being positively anachronistic.
  • isam said:

    isam said:

    Isn't life confusing?

    When Tories want to hike the wages of working people, it's excellent news and a welcome corrective to all those years when wages were undercut by our membership of the EU and FOM.

    When Labour wants to hike the wages of working people, it's extreme socialism, if not communism, in action, and how on earth are they going to afford it?

    Not really - the free marketeers on here have pointed out it will probably happen organically anyway - the only one against it is Sir Keir, unless it's a photo op at Wandsworth McDs
    Presumably the "free marketeers" you refer to, who want wages to settle "organically", are opposed to the minimum wage then? They certainly were back in 1997, warning of devastating consequences for employment levels. For free marketeers, wages must be able to go down as well as up, surely? Otherwise it's a rigged market, not a free market.

    Tories / free marketeers seem to be all over the place on wages, actually. Some of us just want significantly higher wages for all those paid poorly. Not just McDonalds and HGV drivers, but also textile workers, warehouse workers, shop assistants, care workers and lots of other poorly paid public sector workers. I don't think for a moment that Tories really want to raise the wages of all the lower paid.

    Anyway, I'm off now to watch Brighton stuff Palace and move to the top of the PL.
    I thought you were 'northern'?
    He's from Hurstpierpoint!
    You what? Don't get that at all.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,226

    CatMan said:

    glw said:

    glw said:

    Tribune rally opened by @zarahsultana: “Want to open this rally with solidarity for our comrade Andy McDonald.” (Cue enormous applause). Says the current Labour leadership is “shameful.” Attacks the “Blairites.” #Lab21

    Sultana attacks the “Blairite clique” which she says is dominating the leadership, “gathering in drinks receptions with Peter Mandelson” [boos] “reliving the 1980s and 1990s.”

    More cheers when Sultana says “it’s an absolute disgrace that the leadership have let a scum newspaper have a stand at conference this year.”


    https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1442555117182537728

    What an idiot, if the Labour leadership was dominated by a "Blairite clique" then Labour would be ahead in the polls and idiots like Sultana would have been booted out ages ago.
    Reliving the 1990s?

    Yes. When Labour last defeated the Tories and won power after a long long period in opposition.
    Imagine a Liverpool fan who didn't like Kenny Dalglish, or a United fan who hated Ferguson, it's not easy is it? The very idea is fantastical. There is something deeply wrong with the Labour Party when so many members revile their most successful leader ever.
    The Labour Party hate Blair because of Iraq, which to be fair I don't think is that unreasonable.
    Tories also used to hate Blair because he fooled them into being the most enthusiastic supporters of Iraq, but they've moved on. He's now handy for beating SKS up for being crap by comparison, and Labour lefties for repudiating his electoral success.
    There were certainly times in the last 18mths when I wondered how better things might be if Blair was PM. Notwithstanding for years I’d have seen him in a cell for the dodgy dossier that took us to war.

    Hopefully he’ll quietly pull his strings and get JK Rowling into the hot seat instead of the current doormat.

    Before saying something interesting and eye opening about UAPs.
This discussion has been closed.