I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses can accept a 6% deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
Well, looks like those waiting lists are just going to grow...
Scottish nurses got a better deal too. Edinburgh is a lot easier to move to than Sydney.
Fine the taxes will be much higher than England and Australia too as will the prices as Scottish inflation surges, Australia also has more private health providers than we do paying higher salaries to health workers
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses can accept a 6% deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
Well, looks like those waiting lists are just going to grow...
Scottish nurses got a better deal too. Edinburgh is a lot easier to move to than Sydney.
In any case, it's known as "devolution" and "doing things differently". And "above inflation"? Pull the other plonker, there's years of high inflation baked in already.
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses can accept a 6% deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
Well, looks like those waiting lists are just going to grow...
Scottish nurses got a better deal too. Edinburgh is a lot easier to move to than Sydney.
Fine the taxes will be much higher than England and Australia too as will the prices as Scottish inflation surges, Australia also has more private health providers than we do paying higher salaries to health workers
Well, you obviously need to do something down south to speed up the deaths if your party relies on inheritance as a means of income.
Discrimination is against protected classes that you can't control.
People who choose to pay extra by using an inferior, insecure and more expensive medium are responsible for paying for their own choices. If you make a choice, take responsibility for your own choices.
My Mum is 75, and gets horribly frustrated by newfangled parking meters. Don’t underestimate the effect of these changes on groups like the elderly.
It caused my parents (so staunch they make @HYUFD look like a floating voter) go Indy in the locals over the proposed introduction of charging by the Tory run local authority.
Apple people - are there battery issues on the current iPhone? My Pixel 6 Pro has an unfortunate tendency to heat the Tensor processor up for no good reason and burn the battery. A switch to the incoming iPhone15Pro under consideration
Nick @ManUnitedYouth Fully expect the club will have to backtrack on this anyway, but they’ll do so having made everyone fully aware what they were ok with. Excellent work
Discrimination is against protected classes that you can't control.
People who choose to pay extra by using an inferior, insecure and more expensive medium are responsible for paying for their own choices. If you make a choice, take responsibility for your own choices.
Quite. People should die for using cash, because all life has risks.
Have I got that right?
The theme of Mad Bart - Road Warrior - seems to be that everybody should be exactly like you, and if they choose or have to live slightly differently, THAT'S ON THEM. You have a car and a smartphone, so stuff the bus or cycle and cash money brigade. And renters: if they choose an inferior, insecure and more expensive form of tenure, they should take responsibility for the choice. And the homeless...
What the f**k are you talking about. No its not remotely what I'm saying.
What I'm saying is you make your choices, and live with your choices. Its up to everyone to choose what they want to do and nobody should try and compel others to be like them. So the exact opposite of saying everyone should be like me.
But you think being non-Bart should pay for being Bart. Bart has a credit card, so cash should be the expensive and difficult option.
Discrimination is against protected classes that you can't control.
People who choose to pay extra by using an inferior, insecure and more expensive medium are responsible for paying for their own choices. If you make a choice, take responsibility for your own choices.
My Mum is 75, and gets horribly frustrated by newfangled parking meters. Don’t underestimate the effect of these changes on groups like the elderly.
We've spent the last month living the easy life around Dorset and the New Forest. Probably spent 100-120 quid on parking. It's effing expensive, but the place is rammed so no real alternative. What's bugged me is the inconsistencies and sheer hard work involved in payment methods. Cash/card/phone app. A few times I've had no cash, only to find the parking is cash only, other times I've had a crap signal so app wont work and no cash, or not enough cash but the phone app isn't working and the machine doesn't like my card. Royal pain in the arse!
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses can accept a 6% deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
Well, looks like those waiting lists are just going to grow...
Scottish nurses got a better deal too. Edinburgh is a lot easier to move to than Sydney.
Fine the taxes will be much higher than England and Australia too as will the prices as Scottish inflation surges, Australia also has more private health providers than we do paying higher salaries to health workers
Also: interested in this notion you have thast Scotland has a separate currency. Where can we get some of what you are on?
Nick @ManUnitedYouth Fully expect the club will have to backtrack on this anyway, but they’ll do so having made everyone fully aware what they were ok with. Excellent work
Backtrack on what?
I am expecting them to announce that Mason Greenwood is back in the squad
Nick @ManUnitedYouth Fully expect the club will have to backtrack on this anyway, but they’ll do so having made everyone fully aware what they were ok with. Excellent work
Backtrack on what?
Letting Mason Greenwood play for Manchester United again.
Apple people - are there battery issues on the current iPhone? My Pixel 6 Pro has an unfortunate tendency to heat the Tensor processor up for no good reason and burn the battery. A switch to the incoming iPhone15Pro under consideration
Can't help - still on an iPhone12 (no battery problems).
Side-effect of Apple products lasting well - less frequent need to upgrade.
Apple people - are there battery issues on the current iPhone? My Pixel 6 Pro has an unfortunate tendency to heat the Tensor processor up for no good reason and burn the battery. A switch to the incoming iPhone15Pro under consideration
You made your choice, you live with your choice. If your phone heats up and you catch fire and die, so? Your decision, so that's on you. Life comes with risks, everyone dies, nobody was forced to live in Grenfell Tower. It's all about choice.
Apple people - are there battery issues on the current iPhone? My Pixel 6 Pro has an unfortunate tendency to heat the Tensor processor up for no good reason and burn the battery. A switch to the incoming iPhone15Pro under consideration
There was a bad batch of batteries (I had one) but generally battery life is awesome, though the latest software update is draining the battery which should be fixed with a new update.
Nick @ManUnitedYouth Fully expect the club will have to backtrack on this anyway, but they’ll do so having made everyone fully aware what they were ok with. Excellent work
Backtrack on what?
Letting Mason Greenwood play for Manchester United again.
Ok, I guessed that was it but not aware that a decision had actually been made yet.
Discrimination is against protected classes that you can't control.
People who choose to pay extra by using an inferior, insecure and more expensive medium are responsible for paying for their own choices. If you make a choice, take responsibility for your own choices.
Quite. People should die for using cash, because all life has risks.
Have I got that right?
The theme of Mad Bart - Road Warrior - seems to be that everybody should be exactly like you, and if they choose or have to live slightly differently, THAT'S ON THEM. You have a car and a smartphone, so stuff the bus or cycle and cash money brigade. And renters: if they choose an inferior, insecure and more expensive form of tenure, they should take responsibility for the choice. And the homeless...
What the f**k are you talking about. No its not remotely what I'm saying.
What I'm saying is you make your choices, and live with your choices. Its up to everyone to choose what they want to do and nobody should try and compel others to be like them. So the exact opposite of saying everyone should be like me.
But you think being non-Bart should pay for being Bart. Bart has a credit card, so cash should be the expensive and difficult option.
Eh? What are you talking about again? Did you hit your head or something, as the words you're using have nothing to do with the conversation.
For years I had to avoid shopping at places because they wouldn't take cards, and I pay with cards. I never moaned about it, or said that the law should be changed to facilitate my custom. I simply took my business elsewhere.
Similarly for years I often paid extra, or had to make a minimum purchase amount, to pay with my card. Which again, I never moaned about, or said the law should be changed. I simply paid the charges, or met the minimum, or took my business elsewhere.
Cards used to be the difficult and expensive option. So as card user, I lived with that. I could have switched to using cash, but I didn't want to, so I had to live with my choices.
Now cash is the difficult and expensive option. Oh well, times change. So cash users have a choice, same choice I faced, either change payment method, of face the consequences of your payment method being expensive and difficult.
If you want to be expensive and difficult, and a firm is OK with that, then an exchange can occur. But be prepared to pay for it.
I came across this gem from the NUS Scottish President:
"However, NUS Scotland president Ellie Gomersall, who has campaigned for a change to gender laws, backed Leith Arches.
She told BBC News: "This is about the comedy club's right to decide who it is they are platforming, who it is they are promoting, who it is they are allowing their space to be used by.""
She does realise that, on her interpretation, she would be happy with a club banning someone who is black, gay, disabled etc? After all, she is taking about the comedy club's right to refuse someone....
The funny bit is that Nigel Farage has campaigned on allowing restaurants to be able to ban people from breastfeeding in them.
And I fully support that!
The law should be used sparingly. People should be allowed to say "my church is only for heterosexual marriages", or "my comedy club will only have people who are trans-friendly".
Now, clearly there are lines. If you are inciting violence ("at our church, we openly advocate for the murder of Radiohead fans"), then you have crossed the line.
But - by and large - people should be allowed to be bigoted. And on the other hand, it's OK for us to boycott and demonstrate outside their premises about how bigoted they are.
Christ, is there any issue that Nigel Farage isn't completely wrong-headed on? How can anyone in their right mind object to a woman feeding her child as nature intended? It's like saying restaurants should be able to ban people coughing, or doing up their shoelaces. Complete madness.
I don't support restaurants that ban women from breastfeeding. But I don't think it's the law's job to enforce that.
I absolutely do. Women who are nursing have the same rights to go to a restaurant as anyone else. People shouldn't be able to arbitrarily deny service to people.
Of all human activities breast feeding should be the one which most engages our support and kindness. Protecting it should be sacrosanct and a normal mark of a civilised community. Gentlemen should refrain from noticing, staring or looking but might feel a small glow of joy that the world contains such icons.
Those who find it disturbing or troubling in any sense should seek urgent psychiatric help.
I don't find it any of those things.
I merely think creating new laws is something we should do incredibly sparingly.
The real question is what happens next with the SNP finance story.
I honestly can't think of an explanation that makes sense of the facts we know.
Hmm, the reality is that the £600k was treated as party funds and was spent. That was probably ok in the context of the SNP=independence. Proving that there was a more detailed fiduciary obligation in respect of that money is problematic.
The bigger problem is that Nicola and her husband seem to have been operating 2 sets of accounts. The "official" version and the unofficial version where funds that they had had donated to them was a sort of amorphous slush fund into which the party, and Nicola and her husband in particular, could dip as and when this matched the greater good. That was a breach of various provisions of the Political Parties Act which is designed to ensure we can see where the funds have come from and what influence, if any, the donors then had. That, in my totally uninformed view, is where the charges will come.
Rudy Giuliani is staring down hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills and sanctions amid numerous lawsuits in addition to the new criminal charges – related to his work for Donald Trump after the 2020 election.
In court on Monday, the former New York City mayor said the legal quagmires have left him effectively out of cash. He even appears to have responded to some of the money crunch by listing for sale a 3-bedroom Manhattan apartment he owns for $6.5 million.
Not including standard legal fees, Giuliani faces nearly $90,000 in sanctions from a judge in a defamation case, a $20,000 monthly fee to a company to host his electronic records, $15,000 or more for a search of his records, and even a $57,000 judgment against his company for unpaid phone bills.
“These are a lot of bills that he’s not paying,” Giuliani attorney Adam Katz told a New York state court on Wednesday. “I think this is very humbling for Mr. Giuliani.”
While the former mayor has declined in court to provide details of his financial state, his lawyers wrote this week that “producing a detailed financial report is only meant to embarrass Mr. Giuliani and draw attention to his misfortunes.”
Giuliani’s financial situation is likely to become even more difficult to navigate in the coming days. He faces potentially perilous court decisions against him in two 2020 election defamation lawsuits.
While Giuliani’s attorneys’ fees have not been paid directly by Trump’s political action committee, Trump’s PAC paid more than $300,000 in May to a company handling Giuliani’s archived records for evidence preservation in court cases, according to federal campaign finance records and court filings.
“He is having financial difficulties,” Giuliani’s lawyers said in a filing this month in a civil defamation case brought by two Georgia election workers against him. “Giuliani needs more time to pay the attorneys’ fees and would like the opportunity to seek an extension from the Court.”
On Wednesday, Katz argued Giuliani did not have the funds to pay for producing records in a lawsuit brought by voting technology company Smartmatic, adding that the “third-party source” that paid for his earlier bill was “not willing to give any additional money.”
Giuliani is facing disbarment proceedings in DC and New York. His law license is already suspended – a situation his attorneys say leaves him further hampered from making money. And he is facing a personal lawsuit from an ex-employee filed in May, which he is contesting.
Discrimination is against protected classes that you can't control.
People who choose to pay extra by using an inferior, insecure and more expensive medium are responsible for paying for their own choices. If you make a choice, take responsibility for your own choices.
My Mum is 75, and gets horribly frustrated by newfangled parking meters. Don’t underestimate the effect of these changes on groups like the elderly.
We've spent the last month living the easy life around Dorset and the New Forest. Probably spent 100-120 quid on parking. It's effing expensive, but the place is rammed so no real alternative. What's bugged me is the inconsistencies and sheer hard work involved in payment methods. Cash/card/phone app. A few times I've had no cash, only to find the parking is cash only, other times I've had a crap signal so app wont work and no cash, or not enough cash but the phone app isn't working and the machine doesn't like my card. Royal pain in the arse!
Speaking as a 'young pensioner', it's a complete pain to have to download an App for parking (and for lots of other things now). Those who have weaker phone skills must find it virtually impossible. It's worth remembering that poor eyesight is a feature of the elderly as well, making it even harder when out and about. Where I live, it seems to have fuelled an increase in the (probably illegitimate) use of disabled parking badges.
Parking anywhere should offer a choice of cash, or card tap. We could all manage one of those.
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses can accept a 6% deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
Well, looks like those waiting lists are just going to grow...
Scottish nurses got a better deal too. Edinburgh is a lot easier to move to than Sydney.
Fine the taxes will be much higher than England and Australia too as will the prices as Scottish inflation surges, Australia also has more private health providers than we do paying higher salaries to health workers
Also: interested in this notion you have thast Scotland has a separate currency. Where can we get some of what you are on?
Holyrood and the Scottish government can raise some taxes, including income tax within a range as well as spend more.
The BBC is running another front page article today about how rents are going up at the "fastest rate since 2016", at 5.3%. The media narrative is continuing everywhere it seems that this is in part the fault of interest rates and landlords leaving the market.
There's somewhat of a flaw in this analysis. Inflation to July is 6.8%. Wages (to June so not directly comparable to inflation) are going up by 7.8%.
Can any of our innumerate journalists ever consider if 5.3% is more or less than 6.8%? Or more or less than 7.8%?
For one of the only times in decades real rents, and real house prices, are both falling. Both in real terms prices, and relative to income.
In 2016 by contrast rent rises were higher than today in nominal terms, while inflation was supposedly only 1.6% and wage growth was only 2.2%. So that was a massive price rise in both real terms and as a proportion of income.
For the past two decades rents like house prices have typically risen faster than both inflation and house prices. It's baby steps but excellent news that the opposite is happening today and ideally long may that continue.
We need to build massively more houses still in order to further reduce the real cost of housing in both absolute prices for those buying, and rent for those who can't.
Developers are scaling back their activities at the moment. IE:
Unsuprisingly there isn't a great will to build houses for sale in a falling market. Developers are also complaining about the new rule that you have to build two firefighting staircases and four lifts in every building over 18 metres high - this reduces significantly the space per floor, increases build costs, and all the layouts need revising .
It is funny to hear from so many commentors that we need a massive 'housebuilding drive' to house the masses - could we not just try removing some of the mountain of restrictions preventing the industry from meeting the demand? Ludicrous EU rules (which should have been disapplied by now) concerning additives going into rivers is another one - currently preventing 100,000 houses from being built.
There is pressure to add more regulation on to the building industry from every lobby group imaginable. If they were all accepted then no house would ever be built. What has happened now is that the Conservatives have no policy on housing. In this vacuum they now seem to add in every single new regulation any vaguely favoured group demands. It is a complete reversal of where they started in 2012/2013, when they got rid of regulations to facilitate new housebuilding - although this approach abruptly ended with the Grenfell fire. I suspect that this cycle will just basically repeat itself again several times over my lifetime.
I'm just too cynical - I just don't think they have any intention whatsoever of helping housing supply meet the demand. I'd suggest the opposite in fact. Probably a Davos thing. We are meant to 'own nothing and be happy about it' in a few year's time as the infamous quotation goes.
You think that UK building regulations are part of the "Davos agenda"?
Apple people - are there battery issues on the current iPhone? My Pixel 6 Pro has an unfortunate tendency to heat the Tensor processor up for no good reason and burn the battery. A switch to the incoming iPhone15Pro under consideration
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Yep, the cost of doing otherwise in terms of NHS targets, GDP (which is being seriously adversely affected by public sector strikes) and the health of the nation make such a deal a no brainer. JFDI.
The BBC is running another front page article today about how rents are going up at the "fastest rate since 2016", at 5.3%. The media narrative is continuing everywhere it seems that this is in part the fault of interest rates and landlords leaving the market.
There's somewhat of a flaw in this analysis. Inflation to July is 6.8%. Wages (to June so not directly comparable to inflation) are going up by 7.8%.
Can any of our innumerate journalists ever consider if 5.3% is more or less than 6.8%? Or more or less than 7.8%?
For one of the only times in decades real rents, and real house prices, are both falling. Both in real terms prices, and relative to income.
In 2016 by contrast rent rises were higher than today in nominal terms, while inflation was supposedly only 1.6% and wage growth was only 2.2%. So that was a massive price rise in both real terms and as a proportion of income.
For the past two decades rents like house prices have typically risen faster than both inflation and house prices. It's baby steps but excellent news that the opposite is happening today and ideally long may that continue.
We need to build massively more houses still in order to further reduce the real cost of housing in both absolute prices for those buying, and rent for those who can't.
Developers are scaling back their activities at the moment. IE:
Unsuprisingly there isn't a great will to build houses for sale in a falling market. Developers are also complaining about the new rule that you have to build two firefighting staircases and four lifts in every building over 18 metres high - this reduces significantly the space per floor, increases build costs, and all the layouts need revising .
It is funny to hear from so many commentors that we need a massive 'housebuilding drive' to house the masses - could we not just try removing some of the mountain of restrictions preventing the industry from meeting the demand? Ludicrous EU rules (which should have been disapplied by now) concerning additives going into rivers is another one - currently preventing 100,000 houses from being built.
There is pressure to add more regulation on to the building industry from every lobby group imaginable. If they were all accepted then no house would ever be built. What has happened now is that the Conservatives have no policy on housing. In this vacuum they now seem to add in every single new regulation any vaguely favoured group demands. It is a complete reversal of where they started in 2012/2013, when they got rid of regulations to facilitate new housebuilding - although this approach abruptly ended with the Grenfell fire. I suspect that this cycle will just basically repeat itself again several times over my lifetime.
I'm just too cynical - I just don't think they have any intention whatsoever of helping housing supply meet the demand. I'd suggest the opposite in fact. Probably a Davos thing. We are meant to 'own nothing and be happy about it' in a few year's time as the infamous quotation goes.
You think that UK building regulations are part of the "Davos agenda"?
Everything is part of the Davos agenda. Especially you.
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses can accept a 6% deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
Well, looks like those waiting lists are just going to grow...
Scottish nurses got a better deal too. Edinburgh is a lot easier to move to than Sydney.
Fine the taxes will be much higher than England and Australia too as will the prices as Scottish inflation surges, Australia also has more private health providers than we do paying higher salaries to health workers
Well, you obviously need to do something down south to speed up the deaths if your party relies on inheritance as a means of income.
It is this government's fiscal discipline which will keep London the financial centre of Europe and the inherited wealth that flows from that into the surrounding areas.
By massively above inflation pay rises Yousaf's government will also risk further rises in UK interest rates, hitting Scottish mortgage payers and small businesses trying to borrow and get going, as well as causing rising Scottish inflation
The BBC is running another front page article today about how rents are going up at the "fastest rate since 2016", at 5.3%. The media narrative is continuing everywhere it seems that this is in part the fault of interest rates and landlords leaving the market.
There's somewhat of a flaw in this analysis. Inflation to July is 6.8%. Wages (to June so not directly comparable to inflation) are going up by 7.8%.
Can any of our innumerate journalists ever consider if 5.3% is more or less than 6.8%? Or more or less than 7.8%?
For one of the only times in decades real rents, and real house prices, are both falling. Both in real terms prices, and relative to income.
In 2016 by contrast rent rises were higher than today in nominal terms, while inflation was supposedly only 1.6% and wage growth was only 2.2%. So that was a massive price rise in both real terms and as a proportion of income.
For the past two decades rents like house prices have typically risen faster than both inflation and house prices. It's baby steps but excellent news that the opposite is happening today and ideally long may that continue.
We need to build massively more houses still in order to further reduce the real cost of housing in both absolute prices for those buying, and rent for those who can't.
Developers are scaling back their activities at the moment. IE:
Unsuprisingly there isn't a great will to build houses for sale in a falling market. Developers are also complaining about the new rule that you have to build two firefighting staircases and four lifts in every building over 18 metres high - this reduces significantly the space per floor, increases build costs, and all the layouts need revising .
It is funny to hear from so many commentors that we need a massive 'housebuilding drive' to house the masses - could we not just try removing some of the mountain of restrictions preventing the industry from meeting the demand? Ludicrous EU rules (which should have been disapplied by now) concerning additives going into rivers is another one - currently preventing 100,000 houses from being built.
There is pressure to add more regulation on to the building industry from every lobby group imaginable. If they were all accepted then no house would ever be built. What has happened now is that the Conservatives have no policy on housing. In this vacuum they now seem to add in every single new regulation any vaguely favoured group demands. It is a complete reversal of where they started in 2012/2013, when they got rid of regulations to facilitate new housebuilding - although this approach abruptly ended with the Grenfell fire. I suspect that this cycle will just basically repeat itself again several times over my lifetime.
I'm just too cynical - I just don't think they have any intention whatsoever of helping housing supply meet the demand. I'd suggest the opposite in fact. Probably a Davos thing. We are meant to 'own nothing and be happy about it' in a few year's time as the infamous quotation goes.
You think that UK building regulations are part of the "Davos agenda"?
You didn't attend that seminar at Davos?
I think it clashed with the 'Ending the use of cash to empower the Davos elite' seminar I was attending.
Discrimination is against protected classes that you can't control.
People who choose to pay extra by using an inferior, insecure and more expensive medium are responsible for paying for their own choices. If you make a choice, take responsibility for your own choices.
My Mum is 75, and gets horribly frustrated by newfangled parking meters. Don’t underestimate the effect of these changes on groups like the elderly.
We've spent the last month living the easy life around Dorset and the New Forest. Probably spent 100-120 quid on parking. It's effing expensive, but the place is rammed so no real alternative. What's bugged me is the inconsistencies and sheer hard work involved in payment methods. Cash/card/phone app. A few times I've had no cash, only to find the parking is cash only, other times I've had a crap signal so app wont work and no cash, or not enough cash but the phone app isn't working and the machine doesn't like my card. Royal pain in the arse!
Speaking as a 'young pensioner', it's a complete pain to have to download an App for parking (and for lots of other things now). Those who have weaker phone skills must find it virtually impossible. It's worth remembering that poor eyesight is a feature of the elderly as well, making it even harder when out and about. Where I live, it seems to have fuelled an increase in the (probably illegitimate) use of disabled parking badges.
Parking anywhere should offer a choice of cash, or card tap. We could all manage one of those.
Point of order - having a disabled parking badge (I've got one) rarely exempts you from carpark parking charges these days. For me the big plus is a parking space wide enough to get in and out of the car from a wheelchair.
The point about apps and eyesight is a good one. Since disability is a protected characteristic someone might want to take a council to court for discriminating based on a hard to use app.
Apple people - are there battery issues on the current iPhone? My Pixel 6 Pro has an unfortunate tendency to heat the Tensor processor up for no good reason and burn the battery. A switch to the incoming iPhone15Pro under consideration
Isn't it remarkable how old phones suddenly have battery issues just days/weeks before the next model of phone is released. Such unfortunate timing ...
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
Apple people - are there battery issues on the current iPhone? My Pixel 6 Pro has an unfortunate tendency to heat the Tensor processor up for no good reason and burn the battery. A switch to the incoming iPhone15Pro under consideration
Isn't it remarkable how old phones suddenly have battery issues just days/weeks before the next model of phone is released. Such unfortunate timing ...
Apple people - are there battery issues on the current iPhone? My Pixel 6 Pro has an unfortunate tendency to heat the Tensor processor up for no good reason and burn the battery. A switch to the incoming iPhone15Pro under consideration
You made your choice, you live with your choice. If your phone heats up and you catch fire and die, so? Your decision, so that's on you. Life comes with risks, everyone dies, nobody was forced to live in Grenfell Tower. It's all about choice.
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
The average private sector wage is also not rising anywhere near 12% and actually the average public sector worker is paid slightly more than the average private sector worker
I'm so old I remember when you and Boris Johnson (and other PBers) were cheering above inflation pay increases in 2021 as a benefit of Brexit.
Some of us did warn that inflation would be back and is rather difficult to get rid off, the herpes of economics.
I came across this gem from the NUS Scottish President:
"However, NUS Scotland president Ellie Gomersall, who has campaigned for a change to gender laws, backed Leith Arches.
She told BBC News: "This is about the comedy club's right to decide who it is they are platforming, who it is they are promoting, who it is they are allowing their space to be used by.""
She does realise that, on her interpretation, she would be happy with a club banning someone who is black, gay, disabled etc? After all, she is taking about the comedy club's right to refuse someone....
The funny bit is that Nigel Farage has campaigned on allowing restaurants to be able to ban people from breastfeeding in them.
And I fully support that!
The law should be used sparingly. People should be allowed to say "my church is only for heterosexual marriages", or "my comedy club will only have people who are trans-friendly".
Now, clearly there are lines. If you are inciting violence ("at our church, we openly advocate for the murder of Radiohead fans"), then you have crossed the line.
But - by and large - people should be allowed to be bigoted. And on the other hand, it's OK for us to boycott and demonstrate outside their premises about how bigoted they are.
Christ, is there any issue that Nigel Farage isn't completely wrong-headed on? How can anyone in their right mind object to a woman feeding her child as nature intended? It's like saying restaurants should be able to ban people coughing, or doing up their shoelaces. Complete madness.
I don't support restaurants that ban women from breastfeeding. But I don't think it's the law's job to enforce that.
I absolutely do. Women who are nursing have the same rights to go to a restaurant as anyone else. People shouldn't be able to arbitrarily deny service to people.
Of all human activities breast feeding should be the one which most engages our support and kindness. Protecting it should be sacrosanct and a normal mark of a civilised community. Gentlemen should refrain from noticing, staring or looking but might feel a small glow of joy that the world contains such icons.
Those who find it disturbing or troubling in any sense should seek urgent psychiatric help.
I don't find it any of those things.
I merely think creating new laws is something we should do incredibly sparingly.
We don't need a new law just make breastfeeding a protected characteristic.
I have no objection to breastfeeding in public spaces, far from it, although I did for a time use a train on the SouthWest line into Waterloo where a woman would regularly get on at Salisbury and breastfeed her 4 year old (!) son before getting off at Basingstoke.
She'd always bag the seat opposite the wheelchair space (more room?), and she clearly didn't understand the meaning of discretion, since she'd simply pull up* her sweater, exposing all, to let her kid have a guzzle. Very odd lady.
(*It would be rude of me to mention that she didn't need to lift the sweater up very far.)
Discrimination is against protected classes that you can't control.
People who choose to pay extra by using an inferior, insecure and more expensive medium are responsible for paying for their own choices. If you make a choice, take responsibility for your own choices.
My Mum is 75, and gets horribly frustrated by newfangled parking meters. Don’t underestimate the effect of these changes on groups like the elderly.
We've spent the last month living the easy life around Dorset and the New Forest. Probably spent 100-120 quid on parking. It's effing expensive, but the place is rammed so no real alternative. What's bugged me is the inconsistencies and sheer hard work involved in payment methods. Cash/card/phone app. A few times I've had no cash, only to find the parking is cash only, other times I've had a crap signal so app wont work and no cash, or not enough cash but the phone app isn't working and the machine doesn't like my card. Royal pain in the arse!
Speaking as a 'young pensioner', it's a complete pain to have to download an App for parking (and for lots of other things now). Those who have weaker phone skills must find it virtually impossible. It's worth remembering that poor eyesight is a feature of the elderly as well, making it even harder when out and about. Where I live, it seems to have fuelled an increase in the (probably illegitimate) use of disabled parking badges.
Parking anywhere should offer a choice of cash, or card tap. We could all manage one of those.
Point of order - having a disabled parking badge (I've got one) rarely exempts you from carpark parking charges these days. For me the big plus is a parking space wide enough to get in and out of the car from a wheelchair.
The point about apps and eyesight is a good one. Since disability is a protected characteristic someone might want to take a council to court for discriminating based on a hard to use app.
Fair point, though I was thinking more about all those in my city with blue badges who simply park on the street on single/double yellow lines, which presumably doesn't incur a parking charge.
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
Wages have risen above inflation for the overwhelming majority of the past 100 years.
That's how you have real living standards improve.
If the state can't afford real pay rises, then it should be treating people reasonably across the board. Especially since the state spends more on welfare* than it does on wages, yet its increasing welfare by double digits while capping wages. And has the audacity to call itself "Conservative" while doing so.
* which does not mean for the poor, most welfare nowadays does not go to the poor, which is why the poor are struggling and the state is broke.
Discrimination is against protected classes that you can't control.
People who choose to pay extra by using an inferior, insecure and more expensive medium are responsible for paying for their own choices. If you make a choice, take responsibility for your own choices.
My Mum is 75, and gets horribly frustrated by newfangled parking meters. Don’t underestimate the effect of these changes on groups like the elderly.
We've spent the last month living the easy life around Dorset and the New Forest. Probably spent 100-120 quid on parking. It's effing expensive, but the place is rammed so no real alternative. What's bugged me is the inconsistencies and sheer hard work involved in payment methods. Cash/card/phone app. A few times I've had no cash, only to find the parking is cash only, other times I've had a crap signal so app wont work and no cash, or not enough cash but the phone app isn't working and the machine doesn't like my card. Royal pain in the arse!
Speaking as a 'young pensioner', it's a complete pain to have to download an App for parking (and for lots of other things now). Those who have weaker phone skills must find it virtually impossible. It's worth remembering that poor eyesight is a feature of the elderly as well, making it even harder when out and about. Where I live, it seems to have fuelled an increase in the (probably illegitimate) use of disabled parking badges.
Parking anywhere should offer a choice of cash, or card tap. We could all manage one of those.
Point of order - having a disabled parking badge (I've got one) rarely exempts you from carpark parking charges these days. For me the big plus is a parking space wide enough to get in and out of the car from a wheelchair.
The point about apps and eyesight is a good one. Since disability is a protected characteristic someone might want to take a council to court for discriminating based on a hard to use app.
I would like it noted in the Great PB Almanack of Wankpiffle that I never once got excited by this, despite many expecting me too, and asking me too, and others hyperventilating
Apple people - are there battery issues on the current iPhone? My Pixel 6 Pro has an unfortunate tendency to heat the Tensor processor up for no good reason and burn the battery. A switch to the incoming iPhone15Pro under consideration
Isn't it remarkable how old phones suddenly have battery issues just days/weeks before the next model of phone is released. Such unfortunate timing ...
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
Wages have risen above inflation for the overwhelming majority of the past 100 years.
That's how you have real living standards improve.
If the state can't afford real pay rises, then it should be treating people reasonably across the board. Especially since the state spends more on welfare* than it does on wages, yet its increasing welfare by double digits while capping wages. And has the audacity to call itself "Conservative" while doing so.
* which does not mean for the poor, most welfare nowadays does not go to the poor, which is why the poor are struggling and the state is broke.
Call yourself a Conservative and a free market liberal, pathetic! You would make Thatcher turn in her grave!
If you push wages above inflation without big productivity improvements you get an inflationary wage spiral.
The fact the poorest people on the state pension, universal credit and minimum wage got an in line with inflation rise NOT a massive above inflation rise like Yousaf has given does not change that at all!!!!
I would like it noted in the Great PB Almanack of Wankpiffle that I never once got excited by this, despite many expecting me too, and asking me too, and others hyperventilating
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
The average private sector wage is also not rising anywhere near 12% and actually the average public sector worker is paid slightly more than the average private sector worker
I'm so old I remember when you and Boris Johnson (and other PBers) were cheering above inflation pay increases in 2021 as a benefit of Brexit.
Some of us did warn that inflation would be back and is rather difficult to get rid off, the herpes of economics.
Pay rises for the lowest earners mainly due to ending free movement and less competition for low skilled work is not the same at all and you know it!
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
The average private sector wage is also not rising anywhere near 12% and actually the average public sector worker is paid slightly more than the average private sector worker
I'm so old I remember when you and Boris Johnson (and other PBers) were cheering above inflation pay increases in 2021 as a benefit of Brexit.
Some of us did warn that inflation would be back and is rather difficult to get rid off, the herpes of economics.
And yet when bankers, directors and professionals pig out on salaries its somehow ok.
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
The average private sector wage is also not rising anywhere near 12% and actually the average public sector worker is paid slightly more than the average private sector worker
I'm so old I remember when you and Boris Johnson (and other PBers) were cheering above inflation pay increases in 2021 as a benefit of Brexit.
Some of us did warn that inflation would be back and is rather difficult to get rid off, the herpes of economics.
But inflation today has √ (bugger all) to do with above inflation pay increases in 2021.
Inflation today is because of a shortage of supply post-Covid and the war in Ukraine.
Real term pay rises should be the norm, it should be afforded by productivity improvements, and any business that is so unproductive during a period of full employment that it can't afford higher pay should go out of business which will boost average productivity levels.
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
The average private sector wage is also not rising anywhere near 12% and actually the average public sector worker is paid slightly more than the average private sector worker
I'm so old I remember when you and Boris Johnson (and other PBers) were cheering above inflation pay increases in 2021 as a benefit of Brexit.
Some of us did warn that inflation would be back and is rather difficult to get rid off, the herpes of economics.
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
Wages have risen above inflation for the overwhelming majority of the past 100 years.
That's how you have real living standards improve.
If the state can't afford real pay rises, then it should be treating people reasonably across the board. Especially since the state spends more on welfare* than it does on wages, yet its increasing welfare by double digits while capping wages. And has the audacity to call itself "Conservative" while doing so.
* which does not mean for the poor, most welfare nowadays does not go to the poor, which is why the poor are struggling and the state is broke.
Call yourself a Conservative and a free market liberal, pathetic! You would make Thatcher turn in her grave!
If you push wages above inflation without big productivity improvements you get an inflationary wage spiral.
The fact the poorest people on the state pension, universal credit and minimum wage got an in line with inflation rise NOT a massive above inflation rise like Yousaf has given does not change that at all!!!!
One of Thatcher's first acts was to lower pension increases and say that pensions would go up further when they could be afforded. She did not ramp up welfare every more guaranteeing that welfare would always go up by more than wages.
So yes, I do agree with the policies of Thatcher.
In Thatcher's day we had mass unemployment, today we have full employment. We should be seeing real pay rises, and any business that can't afford that should shut down liberating its capital, property, labour etc to be used for more productive purposes instead.
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
Yeah but the problem is that it is against a backdrop of pay not following inflation for a decade, so it is actually year on year of pay cut. I earned £38k per year in London as a local government employee in 2013. The same job now pays about £42k, had pay followed inflation according to the bank of england, it should be £50k. Unsuprisingly no one is happy with this and there is no one applies for these jobs when they are advertised, so the Council has to pay the same people £45 per hour plus 10% agency fee to do the job as a contractor, about £80k. This process in itself is inflationary, even if it is not tracked in the pay stats because the employee gets recategorised.
Discrimination is against protected classes that you can't control.
People who choose to pay extra by using an inferior, insecure and more expensive medium are responsible for paying for their own choices. If you make a choice, take responsibility for your own choices.
My Mum is 75, and gets horribly frustrated by newfangled parking meters. Don’t underestimate the effect of these changes on groups like the elderly.
We've spent the last month living the easy life around Dorset and the New Forest. Probably spent 100-120 quid on parking. It's effing expensive, but the place is rammed so no real alternative. What's bugged me is the inconsistencies and sheer hard work involved in payment methods. Cash/card/phone app. A few times I've had no cash, only to find the parking is cash only, other times I've had a crap signal so app wont work and no cash, or not enough cash but the phone app isn't working and the machine doesn't like my card. Royal pain in the arse!
Speaking as a 'young pensioner', it's a complete pain to have to download an App for parking (and for lots of other things now). Those who have weaker phone skills must find it virtually impossible. It's worth remembering that poor eyesight is a feature of the elderly as well, making it even harder when out and about. Where I live, it seems to have fuelled an increase in the (probably illegitimate) use of disabled parking badges.
Parking anywhere should offer a choice of cash, or card tap. We could all manage one of those.
Point of order - having a disabled parking badge (I've got one) rarely exempts you from carpark parking charges these days. For me the big plus is a parking space wide enough to get in and out of the car from a wheelchair.
The point about apps and eyesight is a good one. Since disability is a protected characteristic someone might want to take a council to court for discriminating based on a hard to use app.
Fair point, though I was thinking more about all those in my city with blue badges who simply park on the street on single/double yellow lines, which presumably doesn't incur a parking charge.
Usually true but you can get caught out - e.g you can;t park where there's a no loading notice.
Council car parks used to be free for blue badge holders but now that they charge I have the choice between: pay for a carpark space, or park for free for 3 hours on double yellow lines. The latter is often tempting tbh.
It's a tricky one because on the one hand there's no real justification for carpark parking to be free for blue badge holders but on the other hand there is (imo) a justfication for those of limited mobility to be able to park on yellow lines (yet how would you charge for that?) A real conundrum for councils.
I came across this gem from the NUS Scottish President:
"However, NUS Scotland president Ellie Gomersall, who has campaigned for a change to gender laws, backed Leith Arches.
She told BBC News: "This is about the comedy club's right to decide who it is they are platforming, who it is they are promoting, who it is they are allowing their space to be used by.""
She does realise that, on her interpretation, she would be happy with a club banning someone who is black, gay, disabled etc? After all, she is taking about the comedy club's right to refuse someone....
The funny bit is that Nigel Farage has campaigned on allowing restaurants to be able to ban people from breastfeeding in them.
And I fully support that!
The law should be used sparingly. People should be allowed to say "my church is only for heterosexual marriages", or "my comedy club will only have people who are trans-friendly".
Now, clearly there are lines. If you are inciting violence ("at our church, we openly advocate for the murder of Radiohead fans"), then you have crossed the line.
But - by and large - people should be allowed to be bigoted. And on the other hand, it's OK for us to boycott and demonstrate outside their premises about how bigoted they are.
Christ, is there any issue that Nigel Farage isn't completely wrong-headed on? How can anyone in their right mind object to a woman feeding her child as nature intended? It's like saying restaurants should be able to ban people coughing, or doing up their shoelaces. Complete madness.
I don't support restaurants that ban women from breastfeeding. But I don't think it's the law's job to enforce that.
I absolutely do. Women who are nursing have the same rights to go to a restaurant as anyone else. People shouldn't be able to arbitrarily deny service to people.
Of all human activities breast feeding should be the one which most engages our support and kindness. Protecting it should be sacrosanct and a normal mark of a civilised community. Gentlemen should refrain from noticing, staring or looking but might feel a small glow of joy that the world contains such icons.
Those who find it disturbing or troubling in any sense should seek urgent psychiatric help.
I don't find it any of those things.
I merely think creating new laws is something we should do incredibly sparingly.
We don't need a new law just make breastfeeding a protected characteristic.
I have no objection to breastfeeding in public spaces, far from it, although I did for a time use a train on the SouthWest line into Waterloo where a woman would regularly get on at Salisbury and breastfeed her 4 year old (!) son before getting off at Basingstoke.
She'd always bag the seat opposite the wheelchair space (more room?), and she clearly didn't understand the meaning of discretion, since she'd simply pull up* her sweater, exposing all, to let her kid have a guzzle. Very odd lady.
(*It would be rude of me to mention that she didn't need to lift the sweater up very far.)
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
The average private sector wage is also not rising anywhere near 12% and actually the average public sector worker is paid slightly more than the average private sector worker
I'm so old I remember when you and Boris Johnson (and other PBers) were cheering above inflation pay increases in 2021 as a benefit of Brexit.
Some of us did warn that inflation would be back and is rather difficult to get rid off, the herpes of economics.
And yet when bankers, directors and professionals pig out on salaries its somehow ok.
How does that work ?
We're worth every penny.
The irony is I received a large bonus and pay increase thanks to Brexit as my preparations made sure my firm was ready for the disaster that was Boris Johnson's Brexit deal which spent more time on bloody fish than it did on financial services.
Guess which one contributes 0.0001% of GDP and which one is the largest contributor to the Exchequer?
Discrimination is against protected classes that you can't control.
People who choose to pay extra by using an inferior, insecure and more expensive medium are responsible for paying for their own choices. If you make a choice, take responsibility for your own choices.
The whole concept of protected classes is a nonsense.
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
Wages have risen above inflation for the overwhelming majority of the past 100 years.
That's how you have real living standards improve.
If the state can't afford real pay rises, then it should be treating people reasonably across the board. Especially since the state spends more on welfare* than it does on wages, yet its increasing welfare by double digits while capping wages. And has the audacity to call itself "Conservative" while doing so.
* which does not mean for the poor, most welfare nowadays does not go to the poor, which is why the poor are struggling and the state is broke.
What you're both groping for is the following set of equations (these should really be set out using logarithms or Fisher equations but I can't be bothered):
Therefore, if wage inflation rises, holding other factors constant, retail inflation will indeed increase, unless productivity growth also increases which it shows no sign of doing.
Wages have only risen faster than prices over the last century because productivity has soared. Unfortunately, for a large number of reasons, that is no longer the case, so real wage increases are highly likely to be inflationary over the medium term.
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
The average private sector wage is also not rising anywhere near 12% and actually the average public sector worker is paid slightly more than the average private sector worker
I'm so old I remember when you and Boris Johnson (and other PBers) were cheering above inflation pay increases in 2021 as a benefit of Brexit.
Some of us did warn that inflation would be back and is rather difficult to get rid off, the herpes of economics.
I would like it noted in the Great PB Almanack of Wankpiffle that I never once got excited by this, despite many expecting me too, and asking me too, and others hyperventilating
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
The average private sector wage is also not rising anywhere near 12% and actually the average public sector worker is paid slightly more than the average private sector worker
I'm so old I remember when you and Boris Johnson (and other PBers) were cheering above inflation pay increases in 2021 as a benefit of Brexit.
Some of us did warn that inflation would be back and is rather difficult to get rid off, the herpes of economics.
And yet when bankers, directors and professionals pig out on salaries its somehow ok.
How does that work ?
We're worth every penny.
The irony is I received a large bonus and pay increase thanks to Brexit as my preparations made sure my firm was ready for the disaster that was Boris Johnson's Brexit deal which spent more time on bloody fish than it did on financial services.
Guess which one contributes 0.0001% of GDP and which one is the largest contributor to the Exchequer?
Most of the Remainers I know are doing well out of Brexit. I cant understand what youre all moaning about.
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
Wages have risen above inflation for the overwhelming majority of the past 100 years.
That's how you have real living standards improve.
If the state can't afford real pay rises, then it should be treating people reasonably across the board. Especially since the state spends more on welfare* than it does on wages, yet its increasing welfare by double digits while capping wages. And has the audacity to call itself "Conservative" while doing so.
* which does not mean for the poor, most welfare nowadays does not go to the poor, which is why the poor are struggling and the state is broke.
What you're both groping for is the following set of equations (these should really be set out using logarithms or Fisher equations but I can't be bothered):
Therefore, if wage inflation rises, holding other factors constant, retail inflation will indeed increase, unless productivity growth also increases which it shows no sign of doing.
Wages have only risen faster than prices over the last century because productivity has soared. Unfortunately, for a large number of reasons, that is no longer the case, so real wage increases are highly likely to be inflationary over the medium term.
Slight error in your 2nd formula but yes, it makes sense.
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
Yeah but the problem is that it is against a backdrop of pay not following inflation for a decade, so it is actually year on year of pay cut. I earned £38k per year in London as a local government employee in 2013. The same job now pays about £42k, had pay followed inflation according to the bank of england, it should be £50k. Unsuprisingly no one is happy with this and there is no one applies for these jobs when they are advertised, so the Council has to pay the same people £45 per hour plus 10% agency fee to do the job as a contractor, about £80k. This process in itself is inflationary, even if it is not tracked in the pay stats because the employee gets recategorised.
£38k is above the UK average salary let alone £42k,I expect many would gladly work for that
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
Wages have risen above inflation for the overwhelming majority of the past 100 years.
That's how you have real living standards improve.
If the state can't afford real pay rises, then it should be treating people reasonably across the board. Especially since the state spends more on welfare* than it does on wages, yet its increasing welfare by double digits while capping wages. And has the audacity to call itself "Conservative" while doing so.
* which does not mean for the poor, most welfare nowadays does not go to the poor, which is why the poor are struggling and the state is broke.
What you're both groping for is the following set of equations (these should really be set out using logarithms or Fisher equations but I can't be bothered):
Therefore, if wage inflation rises, holding other factors constant, retail inflation will indeed increase, unless productivity growth also increases which it shows no sign of doing.
Wages have only risen faster than prices over the last century because productivity has soared. Unfortunately, for a large number of reasons, that is no longer the case, so real wage increases are highly likely to be inflationary over the medium term.
Yet again: We have full employment.
Wages should be rising and if unproductive businesses complain they can't afford it, they go out of business. Their labour, capital, customers and land can be used by other, more productive firms instead.
Productivity rises. Pay rises. The system works.
Trying to depress pay depresses productivity.
Wage Inflation is a problem when its divorced from full employment, when you have mass unemployment and wages are going up anyway because of politics not economics.
I came across this gem from the NUS Scottish President:
"However, NUS Scotland president Ellie Gomersall, who has campaigned for a change to gender laws, backed Leith Arches.
She told BBC News: "This is about the comedy club's right to decide who it is they are platforming, who it is they are promoting, who it is they are allowing their space to be used by.""
She does realise that, on her interpretation, she would be happy with a club banning someone who is black, gay, disabled etc? After all, she is taking about the comedy club's right to refuse someone....
The funny bit is that Nigel Farage has campaigned on allowing restaurants to be able to ban people from breastfeeding in them.
And I fully support that!
The law should be used sparingly. People should be allowed to say "my church is only for heterosexual marriages", or "my comedy club will only have people who are trans-friendly".
Now, clearly there are lines. If you are inciting violence ("at our church, we openly advocate for the murder of Radiohead fans"), then you have crossed the line.
But - by and large - people should be allowed to be bigoted. And on the other hand, it's OK for us to boycott and demonstrate outside their premises about how bigoted they are.
Christ, is there any issue that Nigel Farage isn't completely wrong-headed on? How can anyone in their right mind object to a woman feeding her child as nature intended? It's like saying restaurants should be able to ban people coughing, or doing up their shoelaces. Complete madness.
I don't support restaurants that ban women from breastfeeding. But I don't think it's the law's job to enforce that.
I absolutely do. Women who are nursing have the same rights to go to a restaurant as anyone else. People shouldn't be able to arbitrarily deny service to people.
Of all human activities breast feeding should be the one which most engages our support and kindness. Protecting it should be sacrosanct and a normal mark of a civilised community. Gentlemen should refrain from noticing, staring or looking but might feel a small glow of joy that the world contains such icons.
Those who find it disturbing or troubling in any sense should seek urgent psychiatric help.
I don't find it any of those things.
I merely think creating new laws is something we should do incredibly sparingly.
We don't need a new law just make breastfeeding a protected characteristic.
I have no objection to breastfeeding in public spaces, far from it, although I did for a time use a train on the SouthWest line into Waterloo where a woman would regularly get on at Salisbury and breastfeed her 4 year old (!) son before getting off at Basingstoke.
She'd always bag the seat opposite the wheelchair space (more room?), and she clearly didn't understand the meaning of discretion, since she'd simply pull up* her sweater, exposing all, to let her kid have a guzzle. Very odd lady.
(*It would be rude of me to mention that she didn't need to lift the sweater up very far.)
You're in a wheelchair?
Yes indeed, I have been a paraplegic since 1979 (motorbike accident).
The BBC is running another front page article today about how rents are going up at the "fastest rate since 2016", at 5.3%. The media narrative is continuing everywhere it seems that this is in part the fault of interest rates and landlords leaving the market.
There's somewhat of a flaw in this analysis. Inflation to July is 6.8%. Wages (to June so not directly comparable to inflation) are going up by 7.8%.
Can any of our innumerate journalists ever consider if 5.3% is more or less than 6.8%? Or more or less than 7.8%?
For one of the only times in decades real rents, and real house prices, are both falling. Both in real terms prices, and relative to income.
In 2016 by contrast rent rises were higher than today in nominal terms, while inflation was supposedly only 1.6% and wage growth was only 2.2%. So that was a massive price rise in both real terms and as a proportion of income.
For the past two decades rents like house prices have typically risen faster than both inflation and house prices. It's baby steps but excellent news that the opposite is happening today and ideally long may that continue.
We need to build massively more houses still in order to further reduce the real cost of housing in both absolute prices for those buying, and rent for those who can't.
Developers are scaling back their activities at the moment. IE:
Unsuprisingly there isn't a great will to build houses for sale in a falling market. Developers are also complaining about the new rule that you have to build two firefighting staircases and four lifts in every building over 18 metres high - this reduces significantly the space per floor, increases build costs, and all the layouts need revising .
It is funny to hear from so many commentors that we need a massive 'housebuilding drive' to house the masses - could we not just try removing some of the mountain of restrictions preventing the industry from meeting the demand? Ludicrous EU rules (which should have been disapplied by now) concerning additives going into rivers is another one - currently preventing 100,000 houses from being built.
There is pressure to add more regulation on to the building industry from every lobby group imaginable. If they were all accepted then no house would ever be built. What has happened now is that the Conservatives have no policy on housing. In this vacuum they now seem to add in every single new regulation any vaguely favoured group demands. It is a complete reversal of where they started in 2012/2013, when they got rid of regulations to facilitate new housebuilding - although this approach abruptly ended with the Grenfell fire. I suspect that this cycle will just basically repeat itself again several times over my lifetime.
I'm just too cynical - I just don't think they have any intention whatsoever of helping housing supply meet the demand. I'd suggest the opposite in fact. Probably a Davos thing. We are meant to 'own nothing and be happy about it' in a few year's time as the infamous quotation goes.
You think that UK building regulations are part of the "Davos agenda"?
You didn't attend that seminar at Davos?
I think it clashed with the 'Ending the use of cash to empower the Davos elite' seminar I was attending.
I find it very odd that such an obviously intelligent poster is in thrall to these conspiracy theories.
There's another friend of mine on Facebook* who posts conspiracy stuff all the time, about how the UN is about to do [x] or [y], and even though these things never come to pass, he still posts conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory.
I came across this gem from the NUS Scottish President:
"However, NUS Scotland president Ellie Gomersall, who has campaigned for a change to gender laws, backed Leith Arches.
She told BBC News: "This is about the comedy club's right to decide who it is they are platforming, who it is they are promoting, who it is they are allowing their space to be used by.""
She does realise that, on her interpretation, she would be happy with a club banning someone who is black, gay, disabled etc? After all, she is taking about the comedy club's right to refuse someone....
The funny bit is that Nigel Farage has campaigned on allowing restaurants to be able to ban people from breastfeeding in them.
And I fully support that!
The law should be used sparingly. People should be allowed to say "my church is only for heterosexual marriages", or "my comedy club will only have people who are trans-friendly".
Now, clearly there are lines. If you are inciting violence ("at our church, we openly advocate for the murder of Radiohead fans"), then you have crossed the line.
But - by and large - people should be allowed to be bigoted. And on the other hand, it's OK for us to boycott and demonstrate outside their premises about how bigoted they are.
Christ, is there any issue that Nigel Farage isn't completely wrong-headed on? How can anyone in their right mind object to a woman feeding her child as nature intended? It's like saying restaurants should be able to ban people coughing, or doing up their shoelaces. Complete madness.
I don't support restaurants that ban women from breastfeeding. But I don't think it's the law's job to enforce that.
I absolutely do. Women who are nursing have the same rights to go to a restaurant as anyone else. People shouldn't be able to arbitrarily deny service to people.
Of all human activities breast feeding should be the one which most engages our support and kindness. Protecting it should be sacrosanct and a normal mark of a civilised community. Gentlemen should refrain from noticing, staring or looking but might feel a small glow of joy that the world contains such icons.
Those who find it disturbing or troubling in any sense should seek urgent psychiatric help.
I don't find it any of those things.
I merely think creating new laws is something we should do incredibly sparingly.
We don't need a new law just make breastfeeding a protected characteristic.
I have no objection to breastfeeding in public spaces, far from it, although I did for a time use a train on the SouthWest line into Waterloo where a woman would regularly get on at Salisbury and breastfeed her 4 year old (!) son before getting off at Basingstoke.
She'd always bag the seat opposite the wheelchair space (more room?), and she clearly didn't understand the meaning of discretion, since she'd simply pull up* her sweater, exposing all, to let her kid have a guzzle. Very odd lady.
(*It would be rude of me to mention that she didn't need to lift the sweater up very far.)
You're in a wheelchair?
Yes indeed, I have been a paraplegic since 1979 (motorbike accident).
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses can accept a 6% deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
Well, looks like those waiting lists are just going to grow...
Scottish nurses got a better deal too. Edinburgh is a lot easier to move to than Sydney.
Fine the taxes will be much higher than England and Australia too as will the prices as Scottish inflation surges, Australia also has more private health providers than we do paying higher salaries to health workers
Also: interested in this notion you have thast Scotland has a separate currency. Where can we get some of what you are on?
Holyrood and the Scottish government can raise some taxes, including income tax within a range as well as spend more.
But that's not inflation. It's taxation and spending.
If you dribble on and on about "inflation", do at please try to talk about actual inflation. We might otherwise just as well use the word to apply to the number of exclamation marks you are using as the evening wears on.
The BBC is running another front page article today about how rents are going up at the "fastest rate since 2016", at 5.3%. The media narrative is continuing everywhere it seems that this is in part the fault of interest rates and landlords leaving the market.
There's somewhat of a flaw in this analysis. Inflation to July is 6.8%. Wages (to June so not directly comparable to inflation) are going up by 7.8%.
Can any of our innumerate journalists ever consider if 5.3% is more or less than 6.8%? Or more or less than 7.8%?
For one of the only times in decades real rents, and real house prices, are both falling. Both in real terms prices, and relative to income.
In 2016 by contrast rent rises were higher than today in nominal terms, while inflation was supposedly only 1.6% and wage growth was only 2.2%. So that was a massive price rise in both real terms and as a proportion of income.
For the past two decades rents like house prices have typically risen faster than both inflation and house prices. It's baby steps but excellent news that the opposite is happening today and ideally long may that continue.
We need to build massively more houses still in order to further reduce the real cost of housing in both absolute prices for those buying, and rent for those who can't.
Developers are scaling back their activities at the moment. IE:
Unsuprisingly there isn't a great will to build houses for sale in a falling market. Developers are also complaining about the new rule that you have to build two firefighting staircases and four lifts in every building over 18 metres high - this reduces significantly the space per floor, increases build costs, and all the layouts need revising .
It is funny to hear from so many commentors that we need a massive 'housebuilding drive' to house the masses - could we not just try removing some of the mountain of restrictions preventing the industry from meeting the demand? Ludicrous EU rules (which should have been disapplied by now) concerning additives going into rivers is another one - currently preventing 100,000 houses from being built.
There is pressure to add more regulation on to the building industry from every lobby group imaginable. If they were all accepted then no house would ever be built. What has happened now is that the Conservatives have no policy on housing. In this vacuum they now seem to add in every single new regulation any vaguely favoured group demands. It is a complete reversal of where they started in 2012/2013, when they got rid of regulations to facilitate new housebuilding - although this approach abruptly ended with the Grenfell fire. I suspect that this cycle will just basically repeat itself again several times over my lifetime.
I'm just too cynical - I just don't think they have any intention whatsoever of helping housing supply meet the demand. I'd suggest the opposite in fact. Probably a Davos thing. We are meant to 'own nothing and be happy about it' in a few year's time as the infamous quotation goes.
You think that UK building regulations are part of the "Davos agenda"?
You didn't attend that seminar at Davos?
I think it clashed with the 'Ending the use of cash to empower the Davos elite' seminar I was attending.
I find it very odd that such an obviously intelligent poster is in thrall to these conspiracy theories.
There's another friend of mine on Facebook* who posts conspiracy stuff all the time, about how the UN is about to do [x] or [y], and even though these things never come to pass, he still posts conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory.
* Again, an incredibly bright guy
We've had about thousands of years of people believing "the end is nigh".
This kind of BS gets swallowed time and again by some people.
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
Wages have risen above inflation for the overwhelming majority of the past 100 years.
That's how you have real living standards improve.
If the state can't afford real pay rises, then it should be treating people reasonably across the board. Especially since the state spends more on welfare* than it does on wages, yet its increasing welfare by double digits while capping wages. And has the audacity to call itself "Conservative" while doing so.
* which does not mean for the poor, most welfare nowadays does not go to the poor, which is why the poor are struggling and the state is broke.
Call yourself a Conservative and a free market liberal, pathetic! You would make Thatcher turn in her grave!
If you push wages above inflation without big productivity improvements you get an inflationary wage spiral.
The fact the poorest people on the state pension, universal credit and minimum wage got an in line with inflation rise NOT a massive above inflation rise like Yousaf has given does not change that at all!!!!
One of Thatcher's first acts was to lower pension increases and say that pensions would go up further when they could be afforded. She did not ramp up welfare every more guaranteeing that welfare would always go up by more than wages.
So yes, I do agree with the policies of Thatcher.
In Thatcher's day we had mass unemployment, today we have full employment. We should be seeing real pay rises, and any business that can't afford that should shut down liberating its capital, property, labour etc to be used for more productive purposes instead.
Hunt has NOT increased pensions above inflation only in line with inflation. If private sector companies increase wages above inflation that also leads to an inflationary wage spiral
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
Wages have risen above inflation for the overwhelming majority of the past 100 years.
That's how you have real living standards improve.
If the state can't afford real pay rises, then it should be treating people reasonably across the board. Especially since the state spends more on welfare* than it does on wages, yet its increasing welfare by double digits while capping wages. And has the audacity to call itself "Conservative" while doing so.
* which does not mean for the poor, most welfare nowadays does not go to the poor, which is why the poor are struggling and the state is broke.
Call yourself a Conservative and a free market liberal, pathetic! You would make Thatcher turn in her grave!
If you push wages above inflation without big productivity improvements you get an inflationary wage spiral.
The fact the poorest people on the state pension, universal credit and minimum wage got an in line with inflation rise NOT a massive above inflation rise like Yousaf has given does not change that at all!!!!
One of Thatcher's first acts was to lower pension increases and say that pensions would go up further when they could be afforded. She did not ramp up welfare every more guaranteeing that welfare would always go up by more than wages.
So yes, I do agree with the policies of Thatcher.
In Thatcher's day we had mass unemployment, today we have full employment. We should be seeing real pay rises, and any business that can't afford that should shut down liberating its capital, property, labour etc to be used for more productive purposes instead.
Hunt has NOT increased pensions above inflation only in line with inflation
In line with inflation is too high, unless wages can also go up in line with inflation.
Wages should always rise at least as much as welfare. Especially welfare that is not targeted to the poor.
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
Yeah but the problem is that it is against a backdrop of pay not following inflation for a decade, so it is actually year on year of pay cut. I earned £38k per year in London as a local government employee in 2013. The same job now pays about £42k, had pay followed inflation according to the bank of england, it should be £50k. Unsuprisingly no one is happy with this and there is no one applies for these jobs when they are advertised, so the Council has to pay the same people £45 per hour plus 10% agency fee to do the job as a contractor, about £80k. This process in itself is inflationary, even if it is not tracked in the pay stats because the employee gets recategorised.
£38k is above the UK average salary let alone £42k,I expect many would gladly work for that
Haw, Darkage, he doesn't think you are competent, skilled, or useful. Way to get Tory voters.
The BBC is running another front page article today about how rents are going up at the "fastest rate since 2016", at 5.3%. The media narrative is continuing everywhere it seems that this is in part the fault of interest rates and landlords leaving the market.
There's somewhat of a flaw in this analysis. Inflation to July is 6.8%. Wages (to June so not directly comparable to inflation) are going up by 7.8%.
Can any of our innumerate journalists ever consider if 5.3% is more or less than 6.8%? Or more or less than 7.8%?
For one of the only times in decades real rents, and real house prices, are both falling. Both in real terms prices, and relative to income.
In 2016 by contrast rent rises were higher than today in nominal terms, while inflation was supposedly only 1.6% and wage growth was only 2.2%. So that was a massive price rise in both real terms and as a proportion of income.
For the past two decades rents like house prices have typically risen faster than both inflation and house prices. It's baby steps but excellent news that the opposite is happening today and ideally long may that continue.
We need to build massively more houses still in order to further reduce the real cost of housing in both absolute prices for those buying, and rent for those who can't.
Developers are scaling back their activities at the moment. IE:
Unsuprisingly there isn't a great will to build houses for sale in a falling market. Developers are also complaining about the new rule that you have to build two firefighting staircases and four lifts in every building over 18 metres high - this reduces significantly the space per floor, increases build costs, and all the layouts need revising .
It is funny to hear from so many commentors that we need a massive 'housebuilding drive' to house the masses - could we not just try removing some of the mountain of restrictions preventing the industry from meeting the demand? Ludicrous EU rules (which should have been disapplied by now) concerning additives going into rivers is another one - currently preventing 100,000 houses from being built.
There is pressure to add more regulation on to the building industry from every lobby group imaginable. If they were all accepted then no house would ever be built. What has happened now is that the Conservatives have no policy on housing. In this vacuum they now seem to add in every single new regulation any vaguely favoured group demands. It is a complete reversal of where they started in 2012/2013, when they got rid of regulations to facilitate new housebuilding - although this approach abruptly ended with the Grenfell fire. I suspect that this cycle will just basically repeat itself again several times over my lifetime.
I'm just too cynical - I just don't think they have any intention whatsoever of helping housing supply meet the demand. I'd suggest the opposite in fact. Probably a Davos thing. We are meant to 'own nothing and be happy about it' in a few year's time as the infamous quotation goes.
You think that UK building regulations are part of the "Davos agenda"?
You didn't attend that seminar at Davos?
I think it clashed with the 'Ending the use of cash to empower the Davos elite' seminar I was attending.
I find it very odd that such an obviously intelligent poster is in thrall to these conspiracy theories.
There's another friend of mine on Facebook* who posts conspiracy stuff all the time, about how the UN is about to do [x] or [y], and even though these things never come to pass, he still posts conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory.
* Again, an incredibly bright guy
Oh come on. Beneath the Smithsonian there is a subset of college professors living with time-travelers harvesting adrenochrome. We all know you’re in on it.
Discrimination is against protected classes that you can't control.
People who choose to pay extra by using an inferior, insecure and more expensive medium are responsible for paying for their own choices. If you make a choice, take responsibility for your own choices.
The whole concept of protected classes is a nonsense.
Necessary, though, thje define the scope of discrimination legislation, otherwise some of us could claim discrinination against Games Workshop enthusiasts, following the shocking treatment of at least one this afternoon on PB.
The BBC is running another front page article today about how rents are going up at the "fastest rate since 2016", at 5.3%. The media narrative is continuing everywhere it seems that this is in part the fault of interest rates and landlords leaving the market.
There's somewhat of a flaw in this analysis. Inflation to July is 6.8%. Wages (to June so not directly comparable to inflation) are going up by 7.8%.
Can any of our innumerate journalists ever consider if 5.3% is more or less than 6.8%? Or more or less than 7.8%?
For one of the only times in decades real rents, and real house prices, are both falling. Both in real terms prices, and relative to income.
In 2016 by contrast rent rises were higher than today in nominal terms, while inflation was supposedly only 1.6% and wage growth was only 2.2%. So that was a massive price rise in both real terms and as a proportion of income.
For the past two decades rents like house prices have typically risen faster than both inflation and house prices. It's baby steps but excellent news that the opposite is happening today and ideally long may that continue.
We need to build massively more houses still in order to further reduce the real cost of housing in both absolute prices for those buying, and rent for those who can't.
Developers are scaling back their activities at the moment. IE:
Unsuprisingly there isn't a great will to build houses for sale in a falling market. Developers are also complaining about the new rule that you have to build two firefighting staircases and four lifts in every building over 18 metres high - this reduces significantly the space per floor, increases build costs, and all the layouts need revising .
It is funny to hear from so many commentors that we need a massive 'housebuilding drive' to house the masses - could we not just try removing some of the mountain of restrictions preventing the industry from meeting the demand? Ludicrous EU rules (which should have been disapplied by now) concerning additives going into rivers is another one - currently preventing 100,000 houses from being built.
There is pressure to add more regulation on to the building industry from every lobby group imaginable. If they were all accepted then no house would ever be built. What has happened now is that the Conservatives have no policy on housing. In this vacuum they now seem to add in every single new regulation any vaguely favoured group demands. It is a complete reversal of where they started in 2012/2013, when they got rid of regulations to facilitate new housebuilding - although this approach abruptly ended with the Grenfell fire. I suspect that this cycle will just basically repeat itself again several times over my lifetime.
I'm just too cynical - I just don't think they have any intention whatsoever of helping housing supply meet the demand. I'd suggest the opposite in fact. Probably a Davos thing. We are meant to 'own nothing and be happy about it' in a few year's time as the infamous quotation goes.
You think that UK building regulations are part of the "Davos agenda"?
You didn't attend that seminar at Davos?
I think it clashed with the 'Ending the use of cash to empower the Davos elite' seminar I was attending.
I find it very odd that such an obviously intelligent poster is in thrall to these conspiracy theories.
There's another friend of mine on Facebook* who posts conspiracy stuff all the time, about how the UN is about to do [x] or [y], and even though these things never come to pass, he still posts conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory.
* Again, an incredibly bright guy
We've had about thousands of years of people believing "the end is nigh".
This kind of BS gets swallowed time and again by some people.
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
Yeah but the problem is that it is against a backdrop of pay not following inflation for a decade, so it is actually year on year of pay cut. I earned £38k per year in London as a local government employee in 2013. The same job now pays about £42k, had pay followed inflation according to the bank of england, it should be £50k. Unsuprisingly no one is happy with this and there is no one applies for these jobs when they are advertised, so the Council has to pay the same people £45 per hour plus 10% agency fee to do the job as a contractor, about £80k. This process in itself is inflationary, even if it is not tracked in the pay stats because the employee gets recategorised.
£38k is above the UK average salary let alone £42k,I expect many would gladly work for that
Haw, Darkage, he doesn't think you are competent, skilled, or useful. Way to get Tory voters.
If Tories are increasing pay above inflation leading to an inflationary wage spiral there is no point the Tories being in government, you may as well just have a Labour government doing the same
The Cortes assembles tomorrow in Madrid and it's going to be interesting. Since the election last month, there's been plenty of manoeuvring between Feijoo, the PP leader and other parties as well as plenty of discontent within his own party with support for the Madrid PP leader, Ayuso.
The options for Feijoo to govern without VOX have gradually closed down so the question is whether VOX will swallow its annoyance of Feijoo and back him or whether they will risk another election perhaps in December.
Having an early finish to a meeting in Winchester, I travelled home mid afternoon. Four beggars in zones 1 and 2 on the same Tube harrassing tourists and others - strange, you never see the beggars on the early morning tubes or indeed in the evenings and you rarely see them outside zone 1 but it must be really entertaining for the tourists.
To be fair, every city has its beggars - the worst experiences I ever had with panhandlers was San Francisco.
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
Yeah but the problem is that it is against a backdrop of pay not following inflation for a decade, so it is actually year on year of pay cut. I earned £38k per year in London as a local government employee in 2013. The same job now pays about £42k, had pay followed inflation according to the bank of england, it should be £50k. Unsuprisingly no one is happy with this and there is no one applies for these jobs when they are advertised, so the Council has to pay the same people £45 per hour plus 10% agency fee to do the job as a contractor, about £80k. This process in itself is inflationary, even if it is not tracked in the pay stats because the employee gets recategorised.
£38k is above the UK average salary let alone £42k,I expect many would gladly work for that
Haw, Darkage, he doesn't think you are competent, skilled, or useful. Way to get Tory voters.
If Tories are increasing pay above inflation leading to an inflationary wage spiral there is no point the Tories being in government, you may as well just have a Labour government doing the same
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
Wages have risen above inflation for the overwhelming majority of the past 100 years.
That's how you have real living standards improve.
If the state can't afford real pay rises, then it should be treating people reasonably across the board. Especially since the state spends more on welfare* than it does on wages, yet its increasing welfare by double digits while capping wages. And has the audacity to call itself "Conservative" while doing so.
* which does not mean for the poor, most welfare nowadays does not go to the poor, which is why the poor are struggling and the state is broke.
Call yourself a Conservative and a free market liberal, pathetic! You would make Thatcher turn in her grave!
If you push wages above inflation without big productivity improvements you get an inflationary wage spiral.
The fact the poorest people on the state pension, universal credit and minimum wage got an in line with inflation rise NOT a massive above inflation rise like Yousaf has given does not change that at all!!!!
One of Thatcher's first acts was to lower pension increases and say that pensions would go up further when they could be afforded. She did not ramp up welfare every more guaranteeing that welfare would always go up by more than wages.
So yes, I do agree with the policies of Thatcher.
In Thatcher's day we had mass unemployment, today we have full employment. We should be seeing real pay rises, and any business that can't afford that should shut down liberating its capital, property, labour etc to be used for more productive purposes instead.
Hunt has NOT increased pensions above inflation only in line with inflation
In line with inflation is too high, unless wages can also go up in line with inflation.
Wages should always rise at least as much as welfare. Especially welfare that is not targeted to the poor.
Those on just universal credit or just the state pension have an annual income less than minimum wage and far less than the average wage earner
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses can accept a 6% deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
Well, looks like those waiting lists are just going to grow...
Scottish nurses got a better deal too. Edinburgh is a lot easier to move to than Sydney.
Fine the taxes will be much higher than England and Australia too as will the prices as Scottish inflation surges, Australia also has more private health providers than we do paying higher salaries to health workers
Well, you obviously need to do something down south to speed up the deaths if your party relies on inheritance as a means of income.
It is this government's fiscal discipline which will keep London the financial centre of Europe and the inherited wealth that flows from that into the surrounding areas.
By massively above inflation pay rises Yousaf's government will also risk further rises in UK interest rates, hitting Scottish mortgage payers and small businesses trying to borrow and get going, as well as causing rising Scottish inflation
"Scottish inflation" yet again.
What's that, the R.34 airship? ? There is no economic concept that answers to that, pending Scottish independence and a separate currency.
I came across this gem from the NUS Scottish President:
"However, NUS Scotland president Ellie Gomersall, who has campaigned for a change to gender laws, backed Leith Arches.
She told BBC News: "This is about the comedy club's right to decide who it is they are platforming, who it is they are promoting, who it is they are allowing their space to be used by.""
She does realise that, on her interpretation, she would be happy with a club banning someone who is black, gay, disabled etc? After all, she is taking about the comedy club's right to refuse someone....
The funny bit is that Nigel Farage has campaigned on allowing restaurants to be able to ban people from breastfeeding in them.
And I fully support that!
The law should be used sparingly. People should be allowed to say "my church is only for heterosexual marriages", or "my comedy club will only have people who are trans-friendly".
Now, clearly there are lines. If you are inciting violence ("at our church, we openly advocate for the murder of Radiohead fans"), then you have crossed the line.
But - by and large - people should be allowed to be bigoted. And on the other hand, it's OK for us to boycott and demonstrate outside their premises about how bigoted they are.
Christ, is there any issue that Nigel Farage isn't completely wrong-headed on? How can anyone in their right mind object to a woman feeding her child as nature intended? It's like saying restaurants should be able to ban people coughing, or doing up their shoelaces. Complete madness.
I don't support restaurants that ban women from breastfeeding. But I don't think it's the law's job to enforce that.
I absolutely do. Women who are nursing have the same rights to go to a restaurant as anyone else. People shouldn't be able to arbitrarily deny service to people.
Of all human activities breast feeding should be the one which most engages our support and kindness. Protecting it should be sacrosanct and a normal mark of a civilised community. Gentlemen should refrain from noticing, staring or looking but might feel a small glow of joy that the world contains such icons.
Those who find it disturbing or troubling in any sense should seek urgent psychiatric help.
I don't find it any of those things.
I merely think creating new laws is something we should do incredibly sparingly.
We don't need a new law just make breastfeeding a protected characteristic.
I have no objection to breastfeeding in public spaces, far from it, although I did for a time use a train on the SouthWest line into Waterloo where a woman would regularly get on at Salisbury and breastfeed her 4 year old (!) son before getting off at Basingstoke.
She'd always bag the seat opposite the wheelchair space (more room?), and she clearly didn't understand the meaning of discretion, since she'd simply pull up* her sweater, exposing all, to let her kid have a guzzle. Very odd lady.
(*It would be rude of me to mention that she didn't need to lift the sweater up very far.)
You're in a wheelchair?
Yes indeed, I have been a paraplegic since 1979 (motorbike accident).
Very sorry to hear that, Ben. I didn't know.
No need to be sorry, though I know where you're coming from - before 1979 it would have been high on my list of 'most terrible things that can ever happen to someone' but the reality is weirdly different.
I've had, and have, a great life - lucky to live in one of the most open-mined, inclusive, and wealthiest countries in the world, and personally blessed with enough intellect to forge a good career in IT and finance, and married to a wonderful woman.
Sorry, I don't want to wear my disability as a badge but I'm not ashamed of it and you did ask.
The BBC is running another front page article today about how rents are going up at the "fastest rate since 2016", at 5.3%. The media narrative is continuing everywhere it seems that this is in part the fault of interest rates and landlords leaving the market.
There's somewhat of a flaw in this analysis. Inflation to July is 6.8%. Wages (to June so not directly comparable to inflation) are going up by 7.8%.
Can any of our innumerate journalists ever consider if 5.3% is more or less than 6.8%? Or more or less than 7.8%?
For one of the only times in decades real rents, and real house prices, are both falling. Both in real terms prices, and relative to income.
In 2016 by contrast rent rises were higher than today in nominal terms, while inflation was supposedly only 1.6% and wage growth was only 2.2%. So that was a massive price rise in both real terms and as a proportion of income.
For the past two decades rents like house prices have typically risen faster than both inflation and house prices. It's baby steps but excellent news that the opposite is happening today and ideally long may that continue.
We need to build massively more houses still in order to further reduce the real cost of housing in both absolute prices for those buying, and rent for those who can't.
Developers are scaling back their activities at the moment. IE:
Unsuprisingly there isn't a great will to build houses for sale in a falling market. Developers are also complaining about the new rule that you have to build two firefighting staircases and four lifts in every building over 18 metres high - this reduces significantly the space per floor, increases build costs, and all the layouts need revising .
It is funny to hear from so many commentors that we need a massive 'housebuilding drive' to house the masses - could we not just try removing some of the mountain of restrictions preventing the industry from meeting the demand? Ludicrous EU rules (which should have been disapplied by now) concerning additives going into rivers is another one - currently preventing 100,000 houses from being built.
Yes, what the country needs is jerry built, poorly insulated, energy inefficient, back to back slums built on flood plains. If they were good enough for our great-grandparents...
How is banning homes being built due to people who will shit in the toliets there, when those same people are already shitting in other toilets, so exactly the same pollution is occurring, preventing any of those things from happening?
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
Wages have risen above inflation for the overwhelming majority of the past 100 years.
That's how you have real living standards improve.
If the state can't afford real pay rises, then it should be treating people reasonably across the board. Especially since the state spends more on welfare* than it does on wages, yet its increasing welfare by double digits while capping wages. And has the audacity to call itself "Conservative" while doing so.
* which does not mean for the poor, most welfare nowadays does not go to the poor, which is why the poor are struggling and the state is broke.
Call yourself a Conservative and a free market liberal, pathetic! You would make Thatcher turn in her grave!
If you push wages above inflation without big productivity improvements you get an inflationary wage spiral.
The fact the poorest people on the state pension, universal credit and minimum wage got an in line with inflation rise NOT a massive above inflation rise like Yousaf has given does not change that at all!!!!
One of Thatcher's first acts was to lower pension increases and say that pensions would go up further when they could be afforded. She did not ramp up welfare every more guaranteeing that welfare would always go up by more than wages.
So yes, I do agree with the policies of Thatcher.
In Thatcher's day we had mass unemployment, today we have full employment. We should be seeing real pay rises, and any business that can't afford that should shut down liberating its capital, property, labour etc to be used for more productive purposes instead.
Hunt has NOT increased pensions above inflation only in line with inflation
In line with inflation is too high, unless wages can also go up in line with inflation.
Wages should always rise at least as much as welfare. Especially welfare that is not targeted to the poor.
Those on just universal credit and just the state pension have an annual income less than minimum wage and far less than the average wage earner
Those with a £73,000 private pension and a state pension are having taxpayer pay double digit percentage increase on the state pension.
Do you honestly think that is a good use of taxpayers money?
If you do, there's no point in the Tories being in office.
I think that people should be taxed on their average hourly income, rather than their annual income
People (like me) working masses of overtime in low paid jobs shouldn't suddenly be taxed at a higher rate because we've worked so hard
People that earn hundreds of pounds an hour shouldn't be taxed at a low rate because they only do a few hours of work a week
Interesting concept, hard to implement. You'd presumably have to tax all unearned income at the maximum rate, which is unlikely to encourage saving.
How about adding unearned income to earned income, in two ways. If regular, then divided by your hours worked over the payment period, and taxed at the appropriate hourly rate. If a one off payment, then then divided by the number of hours you’ve worked over the last year
For retired people, tax people either as if they’re working full time for their income. Or maybe tax it as if they’d worked their average number of hours through their working lives
The real problem with this would be the self-employed, who’d claim to have worked eighteen hours a day for fifty years
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
The average private sector wage is also not rising anywhere near 12% and actually the average public sector worker is paid slightly more than the average private sector worker
I'm so old I remember when you and Boris Johnson (and other PBers) were cheering above inflation pay increases in 2021 as a benefit of Brexit.
Some of us did warn that inflation would be back and is rather difficult to get rid off, the herpes of economics.
And yet when bankers, directors and professionals pig out on salaries its somehow ok.
How does that work ?
We're worth every penny.
The irony is I received a large bonus and pay increase thanks to Brexit as my preparations made sure my firm was ready for the disaster that was Boris Johnson's Brexit deal which spent more time on bloody fish than it did on financial services.
Guess which one contributes 0.0001% of GDP and which one is the largest contributor to the Exchequer?
Most of the Remainers I know are doing well out of Brexit. I cant understand what youre all moaning about.
Because we care about others and hate to see them struggle.
The real question is what happens next with the SNP finance story.
I honestly can't think of an explanation that makes sense of the facts we know.
Hmm, the reality is that the £600k was treated as party funds and was spent. That was probably ok in the context of the SNP=independence. Proving that there was a more detailed fiduciary obligation in respect of that money is problematic.
The bigger problem is that Nicola and her husband seem to have been operating 2 sets of accounts. The "official" version and the unofficial version where funds that they had had donated to them was a sort of amorphous slush fund into which the party, and Nicola and her husband in particular, could dip as and when this matched the greater good. That was a breach of various provisions of the Political Parties Act which is designed to ensure we can see where the funds have come from and what influence, if any, the donors then had. That, in my totally uninformed view, is where the charges will come.
It’s the crazy nature of what was going on.
Denying access to the accounts to people with a legal right of access?
The camper van - ok, maybe it was temporary accommodation, given it was parked on driveway and never moved. But surely buying a flat would have been easier, less conspicuous and would be an asset going up in value rather than down?
Maybe I have the wrong mindset. But this stuff could never end well, could it?
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
Yeah but the problem is that it is against a backdrop of pay not following inflation for a decade, so it is actually year on year of pay cut. I earned £38k per year in London as a local government employee in 2013. The same job now pays about £42k, had pay followed inflation according to the bank of england, it should be £50k. Unsuprisingly no one is happy with this and there is no one applies for these jobs when they are advertised, so the Council has to pay the same people £45 per hour plus 10% agency fee to do the job as a contractor, about £80k. This process in itself is inflationary, even if it is not tracked in the pay stats because the employee gets recategorised.
£38k is above the UK average salary let alone £42k,I expect many would gladly work for that
Haw, Darkage, he doesn't think you are competent, skilled, or useful. Way to get Tory voters.
If Tories are increasing pay above inflation leading to an inflationary wage spiral there is no point the Tories being in government, you may as well just have a Labour government doing the same
I see you are asking yourself the same question I ponder every day: "what (the f*ck) is the point of this Tory government?"
Discrimination is against protected classes that you can't control.
People who choose to pay extra by using an inferior, insecure and more expensive medium are responsible for paying for their own choices. If you make a choice, take responsibility for your own choices.
My Mum is 75, and gets horribly frustrated by newfangled parking meters. Don’t underestimate the effect of these changes on groups like the elderly.
We've spent the last month living the easy life around Dorset and the New Forest. Probably spent 100-120 quid on parking. It's effing expensive, but the place is rammed so no real alternative. What's bugged me is the inconsistencies and sheer hard work involved in payment methods. Cash/card/phone app. A few times I've had no cash, only to find the parking is cash only, other times I've had a crap signal so app wont work and no cash, or not enough cash but the phone app isn't working and the machine doesn't like my card. Royal pain in the arse!
Speaking as a 'young pensioner', it's a complete pain to have to download an App for parking (and for lots of other things now). Those who have weaker phone skills must find it virtually impossible. It's worth remembering that poor eyesight is a feature of the elderly as well, making it even harder when out and about. Where I live, it seems to have fuelled an increase in the (probably illegitimate) use of disabled parking badges.
Parking anywhere should offer a choice of cash, or card tap. We could all manage one of those.
Point of order - having a disabled parking badge (I've got one) rarely exempts you from carpark parking charges these days. For me the big plus is a parking space wide enough to get in and out of the car from a wheelchair.
The point about apps and eyesight is a good one. Since disability is a protected characteristic someone might want to take a council to court for discriminating based on a hard to use app.
I think I have four apps for parking, and they are all horrible to use, even for someone with decent eyesight (and a familiarity with apps, given my age). Why don't they just use contactless, which has the benefit of working when you don't have signal?
When they don't work, I just message the offending council on twitter and let them know my registration plate. They usually apologise and appreciate the message. The worse ones are for hillwalking, and you spend the whole day wondering if your car will still be there at the end.
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
The average private sector wage is also not rising anywhere near 12% and actually the average public sector worker is paid slightly more than the average private sector worker
I'm so old I remember when you and Boris Johnson (and other PBers) were cheering above inflation pay increases in 2021 as a benefit of Brexit.
Some of us did warn that inflation would be back and is rather difficult to get rid off, the herpes of economics.
And yet when bankers, directors and professionals pig out on salaries its somehow ok.
How does that work ?
We're worth every penny.
The irony is I received a large bonus and pay increase thanks to Brexit as my preparations made sure my firm was ready for the disaster that was Boris Johnson's Brexit deal which spent more time on bloody fish than it did on financial services.
Guess which one contributes 0.0001% of GDP and which one is the largest contributor to the Exchequer?
Most of the Remainers I know are doing well out of Brexit. I cant understand what youre all moaning about.
Because we care about others and hate to see them struggle.
Now you've really thrown Alanbrook. Alien concept alert.
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
Yeah but the problem is that it is against a backdrop of pay not following inflation for a decade, so it is actually year on year of pay cut. I earned £38k per year in London as a local government employee in 2013. The same job now pays about £42k, had pay followed inflation according to the bank of england, it should be £50k. Unsuprisingly no one is happy with this and there is no one applies for these jobs when they are advertised, so the Council has to pay the same people £45 per hour plus 10% agency fee to do the job as a contractor, about £80k. This process in itself is inflationary, even if it is not tracked in the pay stats because the employee gets recategorised.
£38k is above the UK average salary let alone £42k,I expect many would gladly work for that
Haw, Darkage, he doesn't think you are competent, skilled, or useful. Way to get Tory voters.
If Tories are increasing pay above inflation leading to an inflationary wage spiral there is no point the Tories being in government, you may as well just have a Labour government doing the same
I see you are asking yourself the same question I ponder every day: "what (the f*ck) is the point of this Tory government?"
Apple people - are there battery issues on the current iPhone? My Pixel 6 Pro has an unfortunate tendency to heat the Tensor processor up for no good reason and burn the battery. A switch to the incoming iPhone15Pro under consideration
You made your choice, you live with your choice. If your phone heats up and you catch fire and die, so? Your decision, so that's on you. Life comes with risks, everyone dies, nobody was forced to live in Grenfell Tower. It's all about choice.
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
The average private sector wage is also not rising anywhere near 12% and actually the average public sector worker is paid slightly more than the average private sector worker
I'm so old I remember when you and Boris Johnson (and other PBers) were cheering above inflation pay increases in 2021 as a benefit of Brexit.
Some of us did warn that inflation would be back and is rather difficult to get rid off, the herpes of economics.
And yet when bankers, directors and professionals pig out on salaries its somehow ok.
How does that work ?
We're worth every penny.
The irony is I received a large bonus and pay increase thanks to Brexit as my preparations made sure my firm was ready for the disaster that was Boris Johnson's Brexit deal which spent more time on bloody fish than it did on financial services.
Guess which one contributes 0.0001% of GDP and which one is the largest contributor to the Exchequer?
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses can accept a 6% deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
Well, looks like those waiting lists are just going to grow...
Scottish nurses got a better deal too. Edinburgh is a lot easier to move to than Sydney.
Fine the taxes will be much higher than England and Australia too as will the prices as Scottish inflation surges, Australia also has more private health providers than we do paying higher salaries to health workers
Well, you obviously need to do something down south to speed up the deaths if your party relies on inheritance as a means of income.
It is this government's fiscal discipline which will keep London the financial centre of Europe and the inherited wealth that flows from that into the surrounding areas.
By massively above inflation pay rises Yousaf's government will also risk further rises in UK interest rates, hitting Scottish mortgage payers and small businesses trying to borrow and get going, as well as causing rising Scottish inflation
"Scottish inflation" yet again.
What's that, the R.34 airship? ? There is no economic concept that answers to that, pending Scottish independence and a separate currency.
You don’t need independence to see prices rise higher in Scottish shops than English shops
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
The average private sector wage is also not rising anywhere near 12% and actually the average public sector worker is paid slightly more than the average private sector worker
I'm so old I remember when you and Boris Johnson (and other PBers) were cheering above inflation pay increases in 2021 as a benefit of Brexit.
Some of us did warn that inflation would be back and is rather difficult to get rid off, the herpes of economics.
And yet when bankers, directors and professionals pig out on salaries its somehow ok.
How does that work ?
We're worth every penny.
The irony is I received a large bonus and pay increase thanks to Brexit as my preparations made sure my firm was ready for the disaster that was Boris Johnson's Brexit deal which spent more time on bloody fish than it did on financial services.
Guess which one contributes 0.0001% of GDP and which one is the largest contributor to the Exchequer?
Most of the Remainers I know are doing well out of Brexit. I cant understand what youre all moaning about.
Because we care about others and hate to see them struggle.
ROFL. I take it this is a new thing since Brexit.
When we were in the EU Finance and professionals imported all the ladies at the dockside and wouldnt pay the locals.
I expect a similar offer in England would stop the strikes. Barclay needs to negotiate.
Absolutely not.
This government has shown fiscal discipline to get inflation down to just under 8% this week from over 11% last year. If the Scottish government wants to be fiscally irresponsible and award massively above inflation pay rises not tied to longer worker hours and improved productivity leading to an inflationary wage spiral in Scotland that is their basis, the UK government should have no part in it. The Scottish government can increase Scottish taxes to pay for it too.
If nurses, physios and porters and ambulance workers in England can accept a 5% pay deal when they earn much less than doctors and surgeons already, so can junior doctors!
At some point it will surely sink in to the blinkered Conservative mindset that it is not a good idea to control inflation by cutting the salaries of public sector workers, particularly public sector workers who can walk out and go in to a higher paying private sector job or return as a contractor getting 3x salary. This is not sensible or prudent, it is just reckless and irresponsible.
No it won't, because unlike economic illiterates like it seems you we know that pushing wages above inflation leads to inflation surging further, as well as higher interest rates hitting mortgage holders and borrowers as well as hitting savers.
The average private sector wage is also not rising anywhere near 12% and actually the average public sector worker is paid slightly more than the average private sector worker
I'm so old I remember when you and Boris Johnson (and other PBers) were cheering above inflation pay increases in 2021 as a benefit of Brexit.
Some of us did warn that inflation would be back and is rather difficult to get rid off, the herpes of economics.
Comments
That's a double whammy for wanky Mets: cars and cash.
Who then lost.
Side-effect of Apple products lasting well - less frequent need to upgrade.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/aug/16/chief-executive-to-decide-mason-greenwoods-future-at-manchester-united
For years I had to avoid shopping at places because they wouldn't take cards, and I pay with cards. I never moaned about it, or said that the law should be changed to facilitate my custom. I simply took my business elsewhere.
Similarly for years I often paid extra, or had to make a minimum purchase amount, to pay with my card. Which again, I never moaned about, or said the law should be changed. I simply paid the charges, or met the minimum, or took my business elsewhere.
Cards used to be the difficult and expensive option. So as card user, I lived with that. I could have switched to using cash, but I didn't want to, so I had to live with my choices.
Now cash is the difficult and expensive option. Oh well, times change. So cash users have a choice, same choice I faced, either change payment method, of face the consequences of your payment method being expensive and difficult.
If you want to be expensive and difficult, and a firm is OK with that, then an exchange can occur. But be prepared to pay for it.
I merely think creating new laws is something we should do incredibly sparingly.
The bigger problem is that Nicola and her husband seem to have been operating 2 sets of accounts. The "official" version and the unofficial version where funds that they had had donated to them was a sort of amorphous slush fund into which the party, and Nicola and her husband in particular, could dip as and when this matched the greater good. That was a breach of various provisions of the Political Parties Act which is designed to ensure we can see where the funds have come from and what influence, if any, the donors then had. That, in my totally uninformed view, is where the charges will come.
Rudy Giuliani is staring down hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills and sanctions amid numerous lawsuits in addition to the new criminal charges – related to his work for Donald Trump after the 2020 election.
In court on Monday, the former New York City mayor said the legal quagmires have left him effectively out of cash. He even appears to have responded to some of the money crunch by listing for sale a 3-bedroom Manhattan apartment he owns for $6.5 million.
Not including standard legal fees, Giuliani faces nearly $90,000 in sanctions from a judge in a defamation case, a $20,000 monthly fee to a company to host his electronic records, $15,000 or more for a search of his records, and even a $57,000 judgment against his company for unpaid phone bills.
“These are a lot of bills that he’s not paying,” Giuliani attorney Adam Katz told a New York state court on Wednesday. “I think this is very humbling for Mr. Giuliani.”
While the former mayor has declined in court to provide details of his financial state, his lawyers wrote this week that “producing a detailed financial report is only meant to embarrass Mr. Giuliani and draw attention to his misfortunes.”
Giuliani’s financial situation is likely to become even more difficult to navigate in the coming days. He faces potentially perilous court decisions against him in two 2020 election defamation lawsuits.
While Giuliani’s attorneys’ fees have not been paid directly by Trump’s political action committee, Trump’s PAC paid more than $300,000 in May to a company handling Giuliani’s archived records for evidence preservation in court cases, according to federal campaign finance records and court filings.
“He is having financial difficulties,” Giuliani’s lawyers said in a filing this month in a civil defamation case brought by two Georgia election workers against him. “Giuliani needs more time to pay the attorneys’ fees and would like the opportunity to seek an extension from the Court.”
On Wednesday, Katz argued Giuliani did not have the funds to pay for producing records in a lawsuit brought by voting technology company Smartmatic, adding that the “third-party source” that paid for his earlier bill was “not willing to give any additional money.”
Giuliani is facing disbarment proceedings in DC and New York. His law license is already suspended – a situation his attorneys say leaves him further hampered from making money. And he is facing a personal lawsuit from an ex-employee filed in May, which he is contesting.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/15/politics/giuliani-money-lawsuits-trump/index.html
Parking anywhere should offer a choice of cash, or card tap. We could all manage one of those.
https://www.techspot.com/news/99779-does-iphone-14-have-battery-health-issues-or.html
/Putinguy1983
By massively above inflation pay rises Yousaf's government will also risk further rises in UK interest rates, hitting Scottish mortgage payers and small businesses trying to borrow and get going, as well as causing rising Scottish inflation
I think it clashed with the 'Ending the use of cash to empower the Davos elite' seminar I was attending.
The point about apps and eyesight is a good one. Since disability is a protected characteristic someone might want to take a council to court for discriminating based on a hard to use app.
(Runs for cover...)
The average private sector wage is also not rising anywhere near 12% and actually the average public sector worker wage is now growing more than the average private sector worker wage. 'Annual average total pay growth for the private sector was 7.9% in April to June 2023, and 9.6% for the public sector. '
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/averageweeklyearningsingreatbritain/august2023#:~:text=Annual average total pay growth,payments made in June 2023.
Some of us did warn that inflation would be back and is rather difficult to get rid off, the herpes of economics.
I have no objection to breastfeeding in public spaces, far from it, although I did for a time use a train on the SouthWest line into Waterloo where a woman would regularly get on at Salisbury and breastfeed her 4 year old (!) son before getting off at Basingstoke.
She'd always bag the seat opposite the wheelchair space (more room?), and she clearly didn't understand the meaning of discretion, since she'd simply pull up* her sweater, exposing all, to let her kid have a guzzle. Very odd lady.
(*It would be rude of me to mention that she didn't need to lift the sweater up very far.)
Wages have risen above inflation for the overwhelming majority of the past 100 years.
That's how you have real living standards improve.
If the state can't afford real pay rises, then it should be treating people reasonably across the board. Especially since the state spends more on welfare* than it does on wages, yet its increasing welfare by double digits while capping wages. And has the audacity to call itself "Conservative" while doing so.
* which does not mean for the poor, most welfare nowadays does not go to the poor, which is why the poor are struggling and the state is broke.
https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/news/motoring-news/are-drivers-who-pay-with-cash-when-parking-being-discriminated-against/?cid=eml-AC058_CHUB_MEMBERS_B-CHUB_MEMSIN_A_W1_B_20230816_193806&utm_medium=email&utm_source=AC058_CHUB_MEMBERS_B&utm_campaign=CHUB_MEMSIN_A_W1_B_20230816_193806&omhide=true&contactURN=63273421&hasBreakdown=true
I can sense bullshit stories
If you push wages above inflation without big productivity improvements you get an inflationary wage spiral.
The fact the poorest people on the state pension, universal credit and minimum wage got an in line with inflation rise NOT a massive above inflation rise like Yousaf has given does not change that at all!!!!
How does that work ?
Inflation today is because of a shortage of supply post-Covid and the war in Ukraine.
Real term pay rises should be the norm, it should be afforded by productivity improvements, and any business that is so unproductive during a period of full employment that it can't afford higher pay should go out of business which will boost average productivity levels.
Can't say I disagree.
So yes, I do agree with the policies of Thatcher.
In Thatcher's day we had mass unemployment, today we have full employment. We should be seeing real pay rises, and any business that can't afford that should shut down liberating its capital, property, labour etc to be used for more productive purposes instead.
People (like me) working masses of overtime in low paid jobs shouldn't suddenly be taxed at a higher rate because we've worked so hard
People that earn hundreds of pounds an hour shouldn't be taxed at a low rate because they only do a few hours of work a week
Council car parks used to be free for blue badge holders but now that they charge I have the choice between: pay for a carpark space, or park for free for 3 hours on double yellow lines. The latter is often tempting tbh.
It's a tricky one because on the one hand there's no real justification for carpark parking to be free for blue badge holders but on the other hand there is (imo) a justfication for those of limited mobility to be able to park on yellow lines (yet how would you charge for that?) A real conundrum for councils.
The irony is I received a large bonus and pay increase thanks to Brexit as my preparations made sure my firm was ready for the disaster that was Boris Johnson's Brexit deal which spent more time on bloody fish than it did on financial services.
Guess which one contributes 0.0001% of GDP and which one is the largest contributor to the Exchequer?
So Susan Acland-Hood on a salary of £300,000 pays taxes of £4.6 million.
Ordinary teachers on a salary of £47,000 pay 5p.
Wage inflation+other inputs inflation=input inflation (dW/dt + dN/dt = dI/dt)
Input inflation-productivity growth=retail inflation (dI/dt + dR/dt = dP/d)
Therefore, if wage inflation rises, holding other factors constant, retail inflation will indeed increase, unless productivity growth also increases which it shows no sign of doing.
Wages have only risen faster than prices over the last century because productivity has soared. Unfortunately, for a large number of reasons, that is no longer the case, so real wage increases are highly likely to be inflationary over the medium term.
Wages should be rising and if unproductive businesses complain they can't afford it, they go out of business. Their labour, capital, customers and land can be used by other, more productive firms instead.
Productivity rises. Pay rises. The system works.
Trying to depress pay depresses productivity.
Wage Inflation is a problem when its divorced from full employment, when you have mass unemployment and wages are going up anyway because of politics not economics.
There's another friend of mine on Facebook* who posts conspiracy stuff all the time, about how the UN is about to do [x] or [y], and even though these things never come to pass, he still posts conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory.
* Again, an incredibly bright guy
If you dribble on and on about "inflation", do at please try to talk about actual inflation. We might otherwise just as well use the word to apply to the number of exclamation marks you are using as the evening wears on.
*disappointed in PB discourse*
This kind of BS gets swallowed time and again by some people.
Wages should always rise at least as much as welfare. Especially welfare that is not targeted to the poor.
https://twitter.com/keir_starmer/status/1691866129629671619
The Cortes assembles tomorrow in Madrid and it's going to be interesting. Since the election last month, there's been plenty of manoeuvring between Feijoo, the PP leader and other parties as well as plenty of discontent within his own party with support for the Madrid PP leader, Ayuso.
The options for Feijoo to govern without VOX have gradually closed down so the question is whether VOX will swallow its annoyance of Feijoo and back him or whether they will risk another election perhaps in December.
Having an early finish to a meeting in Winchester, I travelled home mid afternoon. Four beggars in zones 1 and 2 on the same Tube harrassing tourists and others - strange, you never see the beggars on the early morning tubes or indeed in the evenings and you rarely see them outside zone 1 but it must be really entertaining for the tourists.
To be fair, every city has its beggars - the worst experiences I ever had with panhandlers was San Francisco.
36 hours is not long enough to plan a Bank Holiday.
So firms shut on Friday and don't know if they're opening on Monday or not? Don't be stupid.
What's that, the R.34 airship? ? There is no economic concept that answers to that, pending Scottish independence and a separate currency.
I've had, and have, a great life - lucky to live in one of the most open-mined, inclusive, and wealthiest countries in the world, and personally blessed with enough intellect to forge a good career in IT and finance, and married to a wonderful woman.
Sorry, I don't want to wear my disability as a badge but I'm not ashamed of it and you did ask.
Do you honestly think that is a good use of taxpayers money?
If you do, there's no point in the Tories being in office.
For retired people, tax people either as if they’re working full time for their income. Or maybe tax it as if they’d worked their average number of hours through their working lives
The real problem with this would be the self-employed, who’d claim to have worked eighteen hours a day for fifty years
Denying access to the accounts to people with a legal right of access?
The camper van - ok, maybe it was temporary accommodation, given it was parked on driveway and never moved. But surely buying a flat would have been easier, less conspicuous and would be an asset going up in value rather than down?
Maybe I have the wrong mindset. But this stuff could never end well, could it?
When they don't work, I just message the offending council on twitter and let them know my registration plate. They usually apologise and appreciate the message. The worse ones are for hillwalking, and you spend the whole day wondering if your car will still be there at the end.
When we were in the EU Finance and professionals imported all the ladies at the dockside and wouldnt pay the locals.
In what universe does that make sense?
Why do you wear a single welly in the shower?
Two days later….